"How are you feeling?" Coulson asked Skye.
"Good. Well as good as someone who, I assume, got the crap kicked out of them to the point of losing their memory can feel."
Coulson smiled "That's all we can ask for." He shared a look with Hunter and Ward before sitting on the bed next to Skye.
"Gonzales," he began, not sure how to tell her "He's not just after me. He's hunting you too."
"Me? What the hell did I do?" She was honestly slightly pissed. This man she had never met was trying to arrest her? Rude.
"He thinks you're a threat because of the miracle drug, same as me," he hesitated "But not only that. Remember how I told you about your past?" He hated to bring it up and hated it even more when he saw the look that crossed her face because of it.
"Yeah." She gulped, voice wavering in anticipation.
"He knows about your 084 status."
She was about to speak but he continued.
"And he's not the only one. Hydra does too." He told her, watching the colour leave her face.
"How?" Was all she asked.
"I don't know." He had to lie, not able to tell her about her powers just yet.
"But the point is they're hunting you. So I need you to promise me something. That you'll be even more careful than we normally have to be and you'll never go anywhere by yourself until this whole thing blows over."
She didn't respond.
"Promise me." He pressed, needing her to cooperate with this.
"I promise."
He searched her face to make sure she was telling the truth.
He nodded, not seeing any trace of deception "Thank you. There's too much at risk here to play around with anyone's safety."
She gave a small nod, her eyes darting to Ward and Hunter.
"They know about you being an 084." He saw the question on her face.
"You told them?" She said, more of a statement than a question.
"Yeah. Like I said this is about safety now. Everyone needs to know what they're getting into."
She looked to Ward "I'm so sorry I didn't tell you. I figured it was better to keep it a secret. It didn't turn out too well for most of the other people who knew."
Ward watched her while she explained, eyes wide in panic like she used to look at him when she'd done something that she thought would disappoint him or make him mad. It was the same look she had when she had been found with Miles. As if begging him not to hate her.
She just didn't know it was now him who had to do the begging.
"Skye," he tried to reassure her that it was fine but she kept going.
"And it wasn't exactly like there's ever a good time to say 'hey, by the way, I'm a human 084' you know? And if I told you I would have had to tell Fitzsimmons and they probably would have freaked-"
"Skye," he finally stopped her "I understand. Remember when I told you that people keep secrets for a reason?"
He hated the sticky sensation of guilt and shame that accompanied him saying that sentence.
She didn't know what his secret had been, wouldn't know until her memories came back.
And he highly doubted she would like it any better the second time around.
"Yeah. Guess it only makes sense when you have a secret of your own." She smiled sadly at the memory of him sternly saying those words to her when she was taken by him and Coulson and brought to their plane.
"What's the plan here Coulson?" Hunter interrupted, mainly to distract Skye from whatever she was thinking about "The gifteds kidnapped by Hydra. How do we help them?"
"And Mike." Skye added.
Coulson stood from the bed "That I haven't worked out yet."
Fitz entered just then "Coulson? Can I have a word?"
"Give me a minute." He stepped into the hallway.
"Simmons gave me this," he handed Coulson what looked like a piercing gun.
"To give us all sick earrings?" He joked, but was genuinely confused.
"No," he shook his head "It's a device for trac- for tracking the movements of whoever it's implanted into." He stuttered, but Coulson wasn't too worried as it seemed that any problems with his speech were getting less frequent.
"This for Ward?" He asked, hopeful.
"Yeah. It's weaponised too. Only dendrotoxin but it's strong. Me and Simmons made it last year when we were playing around with the night night toxins."
"Once again, you're both brilliant Fitz." He took the gun gratefully.
If they really had to deal with Ward for the time being then he would feel a lot better if they had a fail safe.
And this was perfect.
"You'll have to be fast when you inject him with it though. I can distract him, or maybe when he's sleeping-"
"No need," Coulson held up his hand "Something tells me he'll do it voluntarily." He said, watching Skye and Ward through the partially opened door.
————————
"So this will monitor my location?" Ward asked, staring at the small gun.
"Yes. And knock you out if you do turn out to be a lying son of a bitch. Again." He felt the need to add.
"I'm not lying." Ward clenched his jaw "I really will help you take down Hydra. I don't need this," he gestured to the gun with a scowl "As incentive. If you'd listened to me to begin with when I was in that ridiculous cell then we would have got here a lot faster."
"Oh I know what your incentive is," he looked into Ward's eyes to let him know that he knew the real reason he was here with them.
Ward didn't know if he was capable of lying in that moment so instead of rebuking Coulson's unsaid claims he kept his mouth shut.
"But I need reassurance. And this is it. So if you want to stick around and maybe help us destroy Hydra in the process then you're going to be sticking around with this in your arm."
Ward weighed his options and quickly realised he didn't have any. If he wanted to stay with Skye until her memories returned then this was what it would take.
He might even do something good while he was at it.
He stuck his arm out.
"I figured you would choose that option." He smirked and took the former agents arm, pulling the trigger and sending the little chip into Ward.
He didn't even flinch and Coulson had to admit that the willingness to be tracked like this with the possibility of being tranquillised at any given moment made him slightly more certain of Wards commitment.
It went against everything the man was trained to do, either with shield, Garret or hydra.
You didn't let yourself get this vulnerable and you especially didn't let yourself get this vulnerable willingly.
"So, now that I'm tagged like a dog will you let me help you?" Ward asked, acting exasperated but Coulson could see the tiny spark of hope in his eyes.
"Sure. Until you disobey an order then you'll be face down in crappy motel carpet. Which I don't have to tell you is one of the worst fates imaginable."
When they came back into the motel room they all seemed to migrate to, they found Skye and Hunter mid conversation.
"So you and I met two days ago?" Skye clarified.
"Yes." Hunter replied, trying not to laugh "We really hit it off love," he sent her a charming smile "You just kept begging me and begging me to enter into a friends with benefits relationship with you. Of course I said no cause I'm a commitment type of guy."
A snort sound came from Fitz.
"No," Skye snorted too "I might be missing a few memories but I seriously doubt that I begged you for sex."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Hunter frowned.
"You're not really my type, dude." She shrugged.
"Stunningly charming, intelligent, and charismatic isn't your type?" He listed the traits on his fingers.
"I guess not." She smirked.
"Well the offer is still on the table." He winked at her.
"You can take that offer and you can shove it up your a-"
"Agent Ward." Coulson stopped him, trying to prevent a fight.
"Say anything like that to her again and you won't be capable of saying anything to anyone." He approached Hunter, eyes dark and voice even darker.
"Woah, Ward, calm down he's just joking." Skye grabbed wards arm to pull him back from Hunter.
"It wasn't funny." He spoke to her but maintained eye contact with Hunter.
"Cool it mate, I'm just having a laugh. In fact me and Skye are good friends even if she can't remember it."
"But we only met two days ago right?" She confirmed again.
"Yeah. But I'm easy to love." He smiled at Skye laughing but gave a mental sigh of relief that he hadn't let slip how long they'd actually known each other.
He was doing ok keeping his mouth shut until the jail bird had come at him like an attack dog.
He had heard of how he had refused to cooperate and share intel unless Skye was the one he was giving it to.
And now he understood why.
But he wasn't really propositioning her for gods sake. He just thought that when Skye got her head back on straight again she'd appreciate the joke.
They had made a million jokes like that to each other in the months they had been friends.
Ward took a breath to calm himself down. What was he doing? He knew he had no right to get pissed. He wasn't anything to Skye anymore, professional or otherwise, she had made that clear.
But he couldn't help it. This was his Skye. His rookie who still believed he was a good man.
And good men defended people right?
Especially those they cared about.
Skye touched his arm lightly again and he finally turned to look at her.
"Hey," she spoke to him softly "You've been off all day." She stared at him hesitantly as if she wasn't sure she should say what she wanted to.
"If this is about Lorelai," she paused again "You know I'm here if you wanna talk about it right?"
He wondered for a very brief split second why she was talking about the asgardian then remembered that to her, that event had only taken place a few days ago. He recalled how worried she had been about him when he came back, insisting that he was checked out both medically and psychologically.
He had insisted that the only thing he wanted to do was play battleship with her.
So they did.
"Yeah," he looked down at her "I do wanna talk."
She looked shocked despite having made the offer which he assumed was because of how many times he had declined talking.
But he wouldn't this time or any other times he was allowed to have with her.
"Come on then," she smiled and grabbed his arm, dragging him out the room.
"No." Coulson stopped them, eliciting a confused eyebrow lift from Skye.
"What? We're just going outside." She assured him.
He took them both in, Skye holding Ward's arm and the former specialist trailing behind her.
There was no way he wanted Skye alone with Ward but he couldn't very well say it was because the man had a tendency to try to kill people who trusted him.
"Outside. There, and in view." He pointed to the rooms window that overlooked the trees out back.
"I told you how dangerous it is to be alone right now. You promised to listen to my orders." He tried to convince her.
"Sorry AC. Yeah I remember. We'll stay there I promise."
And they left.
————————
"This looks fine," Skye gestured to a clearing in the trees but still in sight of the window "At least there's no trash in it."
The motel they had chosen must have attracted litter bugs because every few steps outside the building had garbage of some form lying there.
"Looks good." He agreed.
"Ok then. Sit." She sat and pulled him down next to her.
They were silent for a few moments until Skye broke it.
"I'm sorry." She said, playing with the blades of grass.
"What? Why?" He asked, confused.
"When you went missing..." she trailed off, feeling the same panic she felt when she had heard about Ward leaving with the woman "It was my job to find you. Maybe if I had found you faster then you wouldn't have gone through as much-"
"Skye stop. That wasn't your fault. That was magic that we weren't prepared to deal with. Even if you guys had found our location then we still had no way of breaking the effect on me until Sif showed up. If anything I should have been able to fight it. I was-" he managed to cut himself off before he used the past tense "I'm a shield agent for gods sake. I'm trained to be in control even when I'm not."
"Ward, no." She shuffled closer to him on the grass "Is this why you've been acting weird? You've felt off ever since I woke up."
He stared at her, taking in her face to see if she had noticed anything else off about him that could give away what he'd done. But he knew that was impossible until her memories came back.
"I guess." He didn't need to lie. This conversation had brought back the shame and guilt he had felt at being so easily controlled by the sorceress and how he felt such diminished emotions in regards to him team, how obediently he would have crossed them off.
"That had nothing to do with you. You had no free will Ward. It doesn't reflect on how well trained or strong you are. You're one of the strongest people I know. Sometimes scary strong." She joked.
He felt his lips pull up but when a thought occurred to him they flattened out again.
"What if I was in control?"
"Yeah but you weren't-"
"But if I was. Say I had been on Lorelai's side. That she had trained me to become a fighter, a survivor. That she saved my life and I owed her everything, even at the expense of what I wanted."
"Ward? What are you-"
He cut her off again, not able to stop talking, trying to tell her what he'd done without actually telling her. Covering it with the guise of Lorelai.
"What if her life was at risk and she asked me to save her but that meant hurting the team."
She reached out to grab his face and turned him to look at her "Ward. Slow down. What are you talking about? Lorelai never saved your life."
"No, I know. I just," he took a steadying breath "I had a friend. More of a colleague. We had the same SO anyway."
"A shield agent?"
"Yeah. His SO had known him long before he joined shield. He saved him from, well, himself really. He hadn't had a good life before he met him, was actually on the fast track to jail. You remember how we saw the hydra agents today?"
She nodded "Yeah, the guys with a thing for marine life."
"You could say that," he smiled despite how serious this conversation was "Well, it turned out his supervising officer had been a part of hydra all along and by proxy so had the shield agent."
"So he never knew his S.O was hydra?"
"No, he knew. His S.O had been on a mission for shield and left to die. So naturally he told his trainee how bad shield were and how they never cared about individual people. He loved this man who had rescued him, respected him. So naturally he began to hate Shield too. And when he asked him to join as a sleeper agent for him he did it. Without question."
"What happened?" Skye asked, completely compelled by the story. He would laugh at her expression if the story wasn't about him.
"The agents supervising officer was dying. Because of what had gone down on the mission that he was left to die on. So the only way he knew of to save himself was something S.H.I.E.L.D. had been working on. And his trainee was near frantic when he told him, needing to find a way to keep the only person who had ever cared about him alive. He joined a shield team a lot like ours."
Exactly like ours.
"He got to know them, got them to trust him. He realised too late that suddenly his supervising officer wasn't the only person who cared about him. And when the time came to choose between saving him or saving his relationship with the team he chose wrong."
"He chose his supervising officer?" Skye asked. In her mind she didn't know these people yet she looked so worried. Hopeful that the man from the story would have chosen his team.
He nodded "But it was pointless anyway. He still died. And he finally saw that what he viewed as love was just manipulation. But what he had built with the team. His team," he shook his head in regret "That was love".
Skye stared at her own supervising officer, speechless. She didn't think she had ever heard Ward talk this much in one go.
"We're you close with the Agent?"
"Not really. It's just after being under lorelai's control and us having the same supervising officer I realised how easily that could have been me."
It was me.
"I'm so sorry Ward. It must be so painful to trust someone, to have them train you only to find out they were lying the whole time." She shook her head, pissed on his behalf.
It wasn't a lie with you, he wanted to say. But he couldn't because she wouldn't know what the hell he was on about.
"But Ward. You're forgetting one thing. Even if that was you and you were manipulated to do these things. You're a good guy. You would eventually do the right thing."
God how he wished she was right.
"How do you know?" She sounded so sure.
"Because I know you. You're the self sacrificing hero type. I'm sorry I don't make the rules," she held her hands up "You might not wear the cape and underwear but it's obvious."
He heard the warmth in her voice and had to look at her. The way she was looking at him made his breath catch.
She was sitting here, on the grass a few feet away from discarded wrappers, forest on one side and a crappy motel on the other. But in the dying last few rays of sunshine, staring at him with admiration and respect and fondness and so many other emotions he most likely hadn't experienced first hand yet, she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.
This was the way Skye had seen him before. A hero, someone who saved people. Not a backstabbing traitor who she once told to rot in hell.
And he knew he would do anything to keep her looking at him that way.
An: So, what do you think it would have took for the team to accept Ward again????
