The dirt beneath Skye's feet didn't feel like the dirt road outside of the Ward home. It felt much more like a dirt path carved out of the wilderness. "Where do you think we are this time, teach?" she asked Ryan.

"I don't know," Coulson replied for the Guardian, "but we need to find Ward."

Skye jumped, surprised by the sound of the voice she wasn't expecting. "AC?" she asked, "what are you...guys...doing in here?"

"Every time we get a new lead in this case," Esposito explained, "it seems to lead back to your friend Ward here."

"I no longer believe this block is a coincidence," Coulson agreed. "We need to get rid of it. Yesterday."

"But how?" asked Skye. "This is the first time we didn't jump into his mind and land in his..."

Coulson gawked in amazement as Skye disappeared in the blink of an eye...and a dark brown dog appeared in her place. "Skye?" he exclaimed. "Is that you?" Skye barked in response, so Coulson turned to Ryan and Esposito for his answers. "Honored ones..."

"Trust me," Esposito declared, replying to Coulson's question before he had a chance to ask it, "it's easier to just roll with it."

Ryan's attention was focused on the dog in their midst. "Skye?" Skye barked again. "Huh..." he commented quietly. Ryan knelt down to get closer to the dog's eye level. He reached his hand up toward the dog's face, then pulled it down before it made contact. "I was almost going to scratch you behind the ears," he admitted, blushing. Coulson and Esposito chuckled when Skye let out a low, threatening-sounding growl...so Ryan changed the subject back to the focus of their mission. "Your senses are stronger like this, right?" Skye barked a third time. "So do you have a better idea where Ward is?"

Skye tilted her snout up into the air to get a better sniff of the cross-breezes, then took off in a direction the group had not yet considered. Coulson, Esposito and Ryan all followed the dog until the trees opened up to a small meadow of tall, dry brush. Ward was sitting on a fallen tree trunk on the other side of the clearing, affectionately praising dog-Skye. "Stay out of sight a bit," Ryan told the other two men, "we need to get the lay of the land first."

"How?" asked Coulson.

Ryan shushed the older man before opening a connection between Skye and the minds of the other two men he was standing with. The wide open connection allowed them to hear everything that Skye was hearing...

"What happened, Buddy?" Ward asked Skye. "Couldn't find that deer, huh?"

"I'll meet you at the truck," Garrett told Ward. "I *can* meet you at the truck, can't I? Or do I need to watch you..."

Garrett's voice trailed off as something caught Skye's attention. Guys, she asked through the group mind-link, did you see that?

See what? asked Coulson.

I thought I saw...a flash of something, Skye explained. When I looked at Garrett.

Let me get a look at him, Ryan and Esposito thought simultaneously.

Skye trotted down the path, keeping her head up so the Guardians could see through her eyes. It didn't take long before she saw it. There! she exclaimed. Did you guys see that?!

I saw it, Coulson agreed, I don't believe it, but I saw it...

I believe it, Ryan countered, recognizing the situation immediately. That was Christian. Ward's brother.

That's not Garrett? asked Esposito.

Ryan shook his head. I think it's both of them. It's...whatever this is that we've been fighting. Just in a different form.

"WARD!" Garrett screamed, loud enough for the other three men to hear it from clear across the field. "Take care of that bitch or I will!"

C'mere, Buddy, the men heard Ward coax Skye through the mind-link, let's go find that deer, eh girl?

Ward walked through the meadow. Skye trotted along obediently by Ward's side, but her head kept turning back toward Garrett as she tried and failed to put an explanation to what she had seen. Teach, she asked Ryan through their mind-link, do *you* have any idea what that was?

I might, Ryan replied, but since Garrett's not here right now, let's see how this plays out first.

Okay, Skye agreed. The unmistakeable smell of decaying flesh filled Skye's dog-nostrils. I'm guessing that's the deer...

Better go get it, Coulson teased her through the mind-link. Fetch!

Skye resisted the urge to roll her eyes as she ran ahead of Ward to the source of the smell. It was then that Coulson saw the flash of light bouncing off of the metal object in Ward's hand. Skye! he exclaimed through the mind link, Gun!

Where? Skye stopped without thinking and sat at attention, her head wheeling around from the left to the right, looking for the weapon in question. It took her only a moment to find it in the trembling hands of the young man standing behind her.

Coulson had to resist the urge to interfere in the standoff that was occurring in front of him. What are you *doing*? he asked Skye. Get out of there!

He won't shoot me, Skye insisted, her voice radiating a confidence that none of the men in the mind-link were feeling.

He's HYDRA, Coulson insisted.

Not *this* Ward, Skye countered. Let me prove it to you.

The standoff continued for what felt, to Coulson, like an eternity. Skye stared up at Ward with wide, pleading, innocent eyes...and Ward's hand shook and trembled with a level of intensity that seemed to be increasing by the minute.

Finally, Ward capitulated. He fired into the air several feet above Skye's head. "Go on," he exclaimed, just loud enough so that Garrett couldn't hear him, "get out of here!"

Skye's heart was soaring. What'd I tell ya, boys?

Coulson was shaking his head in confusion. Guess you were right...

Esposito cut off Coulson's comments before he could finish them. "THERE'S ANOTHER SHOOTER!" he yelled at the top of his lungs, forgetting his place. "SKYE! RUN!"

Ward's mouth dropped open when he instantly recognized the name...even as he watched the dog he knew as 'Buddy' run across the meadow. "Skye?" he gasped out, amazed as the memories of his past came back to him full force.

Coulson followed Esposito's line of sight, quickly assessing the situation. "Garrett," he declared, "he's trying to clean up Ward's mess..." Coulson's response was as instinctive as it was instantaneous. He sprinted across the meadow, bound and determined to keep Skye safe at all costs.

While the mention of Skye's name sent Ward into a simple state of shock, his recognition of the man sprinting at top speed across the meadow sent Ward's mind reeling. Memories, real and imaginary...past and present...flooded into his mind like a tidal wave. And while separating fact from fiction was proving to be impossible, there was only one thing of which Ward was completely and totally sure.

Skye was not going to die. Not today.

Not if he could help it.

Muscle reflexes kicking in automatically, Grant Ward lined John Garrett up in his sights, aimed, and fired.

The bullet hit Garrett squarely between the eyes. The gun dropped first, slipping from Garrett's lifeless hands, then Garrett himself fell to his knees and collapsed on the ground.

Ryan, Esposito and Coulson turned to the one thing the three of them all cared about. "Skye?" Coulson asked the dog, "you okay?"

As the dog nodded, her form instantly switched back to the young woman that had entered Ward's mind with them. "I'm fine," Skye reassured them. "Garrett never got a shot off."

"Then whose gun fired?" Ryan asked, clearly surprised by the news.

Skye simply smiled, nudging her head in the direction of the one person who wasn't involved in their conversation.

Coulson's eyes went wide. "Ward shot Garrett?" Skye nodded.

The three men turned their attention toward the traitorous agent, who was looking neither traitorous nor all that confident. Ward was mostly staring at Skye in confused disbelief. "You...you're not supposed to be here," he declared emphatically, his words trying to project confidence even as his voice was shaking and his weight was shifting across increasingly unsteady feet. "I didn't know you when this happened, I know it...but I remember you being at the well and at my house, too...how is that possible..."

Ward's confused ramblings were the last things that any of them heard as the world around them was enveloped in a blinding white light.

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The group woke up on the floor of Ward's cell: first Ryan and Esposito, then Coulson, Skye...and finally Ward, who held his head as he sat up and grunted from the effort of moving for the first time in days. He backed up to the wall, his gaze never shifting away from Ryan. "You were in my dream..." Ward told Ryan, his voice trailing off as he corrected his own description. "No. Not my dreams. My memories. Of my childhood. How the hell are you in my memories from when I was a kid? No...they aren't my memories, but they just...they feel like my memories...and yet I know they're not..."

"Now you know how I feel," Coulson agreed.

Ward sighed, leaning his head back against the wall and closing his eyes. "I must be losing my mind..."

Skye couldn't help her smile. "I'd like to think you're finally getting your mind back, personally..."

The quiet comment sent Ward's confusion to a whole new level. "I don't follow," he told Skye.

"I know everything, Grant," Skye declared confidently. "About Dougie. And Christian. The well, the house...how Garrett busted you out of prison and recruited you to HYDRA. All of it."

Ward's eyes flew wide. "How...how could you possibly know that..." Ward scrambled into a corner as his memories of Coulson's earlier interrogation rose to the front of his thoughts. "You did this to me, didn't you? Some sort of high-level SHIELD interrogation technique that Fury only teaches his most trusted people..."

"SHIELD doesn't exist anymore, Grant," Coulson admitted. "Fury's dead. HYDRA won. Why would I want put you or anyone through what Fury did to me?"

"Revenge," Ward countered. "Because Garrett beat you and your sorry little excuse for a team..."

"Garrett is dead, too," Skye corrected him. "He didn't beat us."

Ward looked like he had just had the wind knocked out of him. A mix of real and surreal memories flooded his mind as he thought about the man he had considered his mentor and best friend. "How...how did he die?"

"He had one of Fury's installations dropped on his head," Esposito replied.

To Ryan's surprise, Ward seemed relieved by the news of Garrett's cause of death...but masked the emotion under a tightly controlled show of grief. "I'm sure you're all broken up about it," he spat out bitterly. Ward then took a second look at his surroundings in the context of the information he had just been given. "If HYDRA won and SHIELD lost," he argued, "then why am I the one being held prisoner here? Where are we?"

"We'll get to that," Esposito replied, growing impatient with Ward's control over the conversation. "I need to know everything you can tell me about the Berlin mission."

"Berlin?" Ward countered, clearly confused by the reference. "Why would you need to know about Berlin..."

Esposito stood up, crossed the length of the room, and violently smacked Ward across the face. "I'll ask the questions here. That factory in Berlin. What did you see?"

Ward looked up at Esposito with a defiant smirk, spitting blood from his mouth before speaking. "Now why would I tell you what I saw in Berlin?"

Esposito angrily pulled Ward up to his feet...and immediately set him back down again. The Guardian's expresion relaxed as he backed away from their prisoner. "You'll tell me about Berlin. One day you'll tell me everything. But today is not that day."

The group followed Esposito as he stormed out of Ward's cell. Ryan immediately understood the meaning behind his partner's cryptic declaration. "The block's gone, isn't it?"

Esposito nodded, never stopping as they left the interrogation area. "I got everything we needed outta him. We gotta go find Doctor Foster."

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