Chapter 37: Bereft


"The measure of a man's real character is what he would do if he knew he would never be found out."

-Thomas Babington Macaulay


Skye was sitting on the hallway floor, leaning against the wall and staring at nothing, when May found her place beside her.

Skye did not react. Lethargy clung to her since the moment she finally realized that she was not going to find Grant unless he wanted to be found and that Grant didn't want to be found by Hydra, by SHIELD, or by the woman he declared he loved before fucking off on a plane to anywhere else.

Six months ago, after Grant had run away like a coward- fled because he felt abandoned by her because she never said how she felt, never explained that she wasn't choosing SHIELD over him, because she thought they'd have more time- Skye had returned to the SHIELD base with confidence she'd find him- desperation, she had been frantic and determined, she had to find him.

But Skye had not found him that day, or that month, or the last six months. She had set up tracers and created algorithms and obsessed over security footage until her eyes blurred to no avail. She had publicly dismissed the sympathetic assertions from Bobbi and Trip and even Coulson that if Ward didn't want to be found, he wouldn't be. She had crawled into her bunk at night and let the doubt fanned by their words echo in her head.

Time passed, as it always did, even when all Skye wanted was to drag her feet and refuse to let it take her, and with it the likelihood she would actually see Grant again. Franticness bled away to despair, and still time passed.

And as Skye had always known but had somehow forgotten after the wounds of never being a fit had begun to scab over, nothing and no one that feels like home was ever a sure thing.

They had been sitting in silence for at least twenty minutes when May finally spoke.

"In my years in the field, I've seen many people come and go. Fellow agents died, retired to desk jobs," May lips quirked up minutely at that one, "Or even betrayed their fellow agents. But I've seen enough to know that goodbye isn't always goodbye forever. People drift in and out of your life when you least expect it, when you most need it."

May's eyes were soft as she stared through Skye to her memories.

"People who are meant to be in your life, people who deserve your love, they eventually find their way back to you. Or you to them."

It was definitely not approval, and May did not do sympathy- not really at least. May dealt with facts. This was strangely sentimental of her though, and Skye was afraid to ruin the rare mood.

Still, Skye scooted closer and said nothing as May wrapped her arm around her.


Grant lowered his sunglasses slightly to peer over the top to glare at the sole bank employee working behind the counter. The man was chatting with the current customer and had been for the last fifteen minutes. Grant was exceptionally patient and had no pressing business beyond depositing the money from his and Kara's last job but he was irritated on a matter of principle.

His irritation was mirrored by the dozen people waiting in front on him in line. The woman in front of him tapped her right foot incessantly while her son danced around her playing with a ball the size of his tiny fist. It was almost amusing to watch the kid bounce the ball higher and higher.

When the kid finally put too much force behind his bouncing, the ball flew between his outstretched fingers and towards Grant.

Grant was only half paying attention because his focus was primarily on the annoying bank teller still yapping his customer's ear off, but he still managed to catch the ball flying at his face easily.

The boy froze, eyes wide in comical horror, and it seemed his sudden lack of movement caught his mother's attention. She turned around immediately.

Grant threw the ball up and caught it once with a smirk. "I believe this is yours," he said to the kid easily slipping into unaccented Spanish. He held his hand outstretched to return the ball.

The boy shook off any hesitation and stepped forward to take the ball back. There was a childish trust that he placed in a stranger, not a hint of fear entering into Grant's space. Grant could not remember ever being like that.

"Miguel," the woman chastised before turning back to Grant. "I'm so sorry for bothering you."

Grant smiled thinly, not in the mood for polite conversation. "No problem at all."

The boy was already preoccupied with his returned toy and no longer interested in Grant, but the woman placed a hand on her son's shoulder to regain his focus. "Miguel, apologize to the nice man and thank him for returning your ball."

Miguel reluctantly tore his attention away from the ball and huffed. "Sorry," he said with a slight lisp, "And thank you."

Grant nodded, not quite unfriendly but clearly not interested in engaging.

His aloofness did nothing to upset either Miguel or his mother. Miguel looked to his mother for approval with a gap-toothed smile and his mother affectionally ruffled his hair.

As they faced forward once more, the woman moved to wrap her arm around Miguel's shoulders and he stopped playing with the ball to hug her legs at once.

Grant pushed his glasses up to cover his eyes completely. Something about the scene made him want to fidget in discomfort for reasons probably obvious if Grant had any desire to examine the myriad of family issues he had.

Instead, Grant thought about where he wanted to go next. The last six months had seen Kara and him travelling across the world taking a variety of mercenary jobs. Money wasn't an object since both of them had saved up a ton in dropboxes everywhere, but after just two weeks of sitting around, the two of them were bored out of their minds. Playing house was not his thing.

Unfortunately, they needed to keep a low profile to stay off SHIELD and Hydra's radars, which translated to jobs of little consequence that they were hilariously overqualified for. So really it was only slightly less boring than sitting around.

"Finally," he heard the woman mutter in front of him when the bank teller finally asked for the next person in line to step forward.

Vienna. That's where they should go next, Grant was thinking when he first noticed something amiss.

He had seen the man in black pushing through the doors enter and leave the building twice already. The first time he returned and resumed looking around the building, Grant noted it but deemed it unalarming. He may have forgotten something in his car and been looking for someone in the crowd he planned to meet. Now, however, it was obvious he was up to something. There was a bulge barely noticeable under his jacket that had not been there before.

Grant slowly let his eyes case the parking lot out the window. There was a white van parked. Several men in masks approached the building.

Grant sighed to himself. A bank robbery would attract attention. News outlets would depict the scene regardless of the robbers' success. Grant only hoped the robbers would be in and out quickly and not cause such a stir that this would be seen as newsworthy outside of the city.

Grant lowered his cap slightly to conceal his features. As soon as this began, he would likely not be able to keep carefully angling himself away from the cameras if he wanted to appear cooperative.

The masked men began screaming as soon as they were through the doors.

"Everyone freeze!" One of them stepped forward brandishing a gun. Six other masked men, one of whom was clearly the man Grant made before, backed up the speaking man.

Cries rang out from the disturbed patrons. It was almost odd as Grant took in the horror surrounding him because he just felt annoyed. The men and the threat they posed were laughable, but Grant would have to leave the country with Kara as soon as this was over to be safe and could even have SHIELD and Hydra on their tail again. Grant was going to play along like he was another terrified customer; he just hoped these weren't stupid robbers. Stupidity made every crime easier to trace, assuming they even got away.

The leader shot into the air. "And shut the hell up! If I hear one more word, I'll blow your heads off."

A hush went over the crowd. Grant saw the mother hug Miguel closer to her and place a hand over his mouth to prevent him from speaking. He squirmed in her grasp, eyes darting around from the banker to the robbers to Grant before returning to his mother. He tugged on her sleeve, but she ignored him and wisely continued to focus on the robbers.

"Now, get over there," the leader gestured and had a few of his men herd the crowd while the other two proceeded to approach the bank teller and claim the money they were after.

On his knees with his hands raised, Grant mimicked the frightened expressions of the other hostages easily. He had managed to position himself just right that he was confident the cameras wouldn't get a good enough read on his face to allow SHIELD or Hydra to track him.

"Mama," Miguel whispered next to him. He clutched the ball to his chest and bit his lip.

His mother hushed him quickly, but Grant noticed they had attracted the attention of the goons who were guarding them.

Grant silently hoped the kid would stop talking, not just to avoid any focus on himself considering their proximity but also for their sakes. Grant had stared into the eyes of many killers, and he knew the soulless apathy when he saw it.

Luckily, the men were professionals and already bagging up the money they came for. In a few minutes, they would be gone, likely before the alarm had even been activated.

"Mama," Miguel tried again, pulling on his mother's sleeve. "I don't want to be here."

He stared up at his mother like she held all the answers and could make the bad men with the guns go away. There was that childish trust again. It made Grant grit his teeth this time.

"Quiet, Miguel," the woman pleaded under her breath, but it was too late.

"Hey, you!" One of the lackeys waved his gun at Miguel's head. "Didn't you hear the boss man? We're blowing heads off of any annoying brats who can't shut their damn mouths."

Miguel didn't seem to grasp the threat, but his mother definitely did. She pulled him behind her protectively as apologies tumbled off her lips. Her voice shook to match the increasingly noticeable trembling of her body.

Grant tore his eyes away from her to face the threat. Like he expected, the leader had picked up on the commotion and moved to join them.

"Problem?" he asked.

"Yeah, boss," the lackey replied. "Stupid brat won't shut up."

The leader's beady eyes surveyed Miguel and his mother. "Is that so?"

"Mama-" Miguel began to speak again before his mother threw her hand over his mouth.

"I don't think they quite get your threat, boss," the other goon chimed in.

"No. Just a boy being a boy," the leader said jovially. "Kids that age always tugging on their mothers' skirts."

The woman was relaxing at Grant's side at the leader's apparent disregard, but for the first time since the robbery began, the hairs on Grant's arms stood up. That tone… it took him back to years by John's side. Nothing good ever followed.

The goons snickered, as if they also knew what was coming.

"We just gotta teach him proper respect," the leader continued. He tilted his head in an unspoken command.

"No," the woman shrieked as the goons tore her son out of her arms. "Please, please, please!"

Miguel thrashed pointlessly in the men's grip, "Mama!"

"Please, my son! Don't hurt him! Please, he's just a boy!" Uncaring of her own safety, the woman rose to her feet and made to rescue her son.

"Whoa there," the leader said as he shoved the barrel of his gun at her chest. "Did I say you could move?"

Tears streamed down her face as she pleaded. "Don't hurt him! I-I-I'll do anything, please."

Grant quickly glanced at the other hostages. There were no heroes in this crowd, all of them cowed by the cruelty they were witnessing. One man and woman held a thankfully quiet little girl close, terrified that their daughter would be similarly targeted.

Without moving his gun away from Miguel's mother, the leader used his free hand to grip her chin. "Now, now, we're just teaching him manners. Right, boys?"

One of his henchmen violently shook Miguel as if in answer. The boy was crying now, finally realizing the danger he was in.

Grant glanced behind the scene to see that the money had been bagged away and the banker was crumpled in a heap at one of the men's feet. The unconscious idiot had not set off any alarms, Grant could tell, and no one was going to notice the commotion anytime soon. The bank branch was miles from town- that's why Grant chose it to visit. He liked that it was cut off from society.

"Boss?" One of the men with the bags of money called. "Ready when you are."

Grant couldn't see his mouth, but the movement under the leader's mask seemed like a smile. "Get everything ready. Let me have my fun."

Apparently unsurprised by the behavior, the two men left with the money to load up their van.

"Ow," Miguel complained. One of the goons had bent his arm behind his back in such a way that Grant knew it'd break if pushed just a little more.

Miguel's eyes frantically searched the room, and for a moment, they met Grant's.

Grant had tried hard not to think of Skye in the months since he ran away from SHIELD, Hydra, his old life, and everything he had known. He had tried so hard that most days he succeeded. She still snuck into dreams every night and sometimes small things would remind him. Kara would say something like "superspy" or he'd see a James Bond movie while flipping channels on TV and think of Skye saying "Bond Villain Level Evil".

But in that moment, Grant could hear Skye's voice in his head with perfectly clarity.

"You having the power to help people and doing nothing with it is what's frustrating me! You have all this information and all these abilities to help put a stop to Hydra, and you just do nothing!"

It had been so long since he thought of his time in SHIELD's captivity. He wanted nothing to do with those memories of being helplessly trapped behind an energy field while the memory machine still wreaked havoc on his mind.

"You're in a position to save a lot of lives and do some good if you just did something about it."

But Grant could remember every word Skye used to plead with him, even if he wished he could forget it.

"Because I think you're capable of being better, because I want you to be better."

She would never know. If Grant stayed quiet now and let the boy be killed and maybe the mother as well, Skye would never know. Grant could slip away unnoticed by everyone and not have to worry about Hydra and SHIELD picking up his and Kara's trail.

And even if she did, why should Grant care? Skye was no longer a part of his life and would never be again. She chose SHIELD and a path Grant could never follow, even if he wanted to. Her judgement really meant nothing, and really, she had seen and heard of him doing so much worse. She probably hated him for leaving her anyway, if she ever cared that much.

Grant realized that he actually believed that. Whatever he did here had nothing really to do with Skye.

So why was he still so bothered?

Grant took a subtle breath as he peered over his glasses to where the leader was turning the mother's face back and forth with his grip on her chin, getting a good look at her.

It would be so easy to take out the man and his lackeys. The two men who had left with money had returned, but six normal guys with guns were nothing to a fully-armed and unhurt Grant. Grant could likely do it in under a minute without a single shot fired.

But the movement would definitely require Grant expose himself and allow the cameras to get a lock on his face, alerting both SHIELD and Hydra along with a variety of other organizations who were undoubtedly tracking him.

He didn't know the woman, he didn't even know her name. She and her kid meant nothing to him. Skye would never know. Kara wouldn't even know. The other hostages, the woman, Miguel, they all had no idea he could do anything, thinking Grant was as helpless as they were.

"You could be not so horrible looking if you stopped that ugly crying," the leader spoke, interrupting Grant's thoughts. Something colder had crept into his voice.

The woman's eyes widened as she heard it, too.

"Why don't you and your boy join us as we go, hmm?" The leader dug the barrel of his gun deeper into her sternum.

The woman shuddered and miserably cut her eyes to where Miguel was still being held. Sobs wracked her frame, but she did not say anything.

"Hate to break it to you, but I don't think she likes you like that- or at all," Grant drawled.

The leader started at the sound of another voice. He whirled on Grant, taking his gun away from her chest as Grant had intended.

In the time it took him to open his mouth, Grant had risen gracefully from his knees, grabbed the gun from his hands, and slammed the hilt into the side of his face. While the man was disoriented, Grant darted forward to the closest lackey to disarm him and shove his body into the next closest man who tried to intervene. He made sure to knock the two out by slamming the hilt of the gun to their heads.

Without missing a beat, Grant spun and fired two precise shots into the kneecaps of the men farthest from him. A memory from long ago stopped him from aiming for their stomachs as he had initially thought to do. He ignored their cries of pain as they writhed on the floor.

There was still the last goon holding Miguel captive, and Grant turned to him almost lazily. The man's hand trembled slightly as Grant regarded him. His gun wavered as he struggled to decide whether he should point it at Grant or the boy in his arms.

While not lacking in cruelty or experience in armed robberies, the men had obviously never encountered someone who could actually fight back.

Grant kept his gun trained on the man as he sensed the leader behind him. Without a weapon, the leader lunged for Grant and his stolen gun. At the last second, Grant ducked under the attack and kicked his legs out from under him. The leader sprawled gracelessly forward unthreateningly.

"Attacking a man from behind? Not very brave," Grant said lightly, not even looking at the man. Grant had kept his gun trained on the forehead of the last goon the entire time. "Of course, what could I expect from a man threatening a little kid? I'd stay down if I were you," Grant warned.

The lackey in front of him had not come to a decision on whether he should use his gun on Miguel or Grant, so Grant decided to help him out.

"Release the boy and lay down your gun," Grant said.

"Don't you dare," the leader snarled. "Shoot him!"

The guy was either not that loyal or not that stupid because he ignored his boss and looked to Grant. "Why should I do that?"

Grant let all emotion drain from his expression suddenly in a way he knew was unsettling. Kara told him once that it looked like he "shut down his soul".

"Because otherwise I'll kill you," Grant said with the confidence of someone who had taken more lives that he could keep track of.

It must have shown on his face because the lackey released Miguel like he was on fire and threw his handgun away. The boy stumbled slightly as he was dropped and looked to Grant and then behind him, presumably to his mother, for guidance.

When Grant did not immediately hear anything from her, he spoke calmly, "Go to your mother, Miguel."

The boy walked cautiously forward, close enough to the leader that Grant saw the intention to grab him on the asshole's face. Grant moved forward and kicked his face before grabbing one of his arms and twisting it behind his back.

"You don't learn, do you?" Grant said.

Did Grant need to break the man's arm to incapacitate him? No.

But no one ever said Grant Ward was a good person.

Grant removed his mask as a final insult. There was nothing remarkable about his face, just another brute who wanted to hurt people weaker than him because he could. He looked up at Grant like Grant was the devil, but for the first time in his life, Grant felt like he wasn't the monster.

Grant gave it no more thought as he slammed the gun against the leader's temple to rob him of his consciousness. He looked to the last goon.

The last man raised his hands helplessly, glancing nervously around at his unconscious accomplices. "I did what you asked."

Grant frowned as he considered his options. A second later, he easily knocked him out as well.

What do you know? It took more than a minute. Grant snorted to himself, he must be losing his touch.

Surveying the mess he made to himself, Grant mused that at least this was a little more challenging than most of the mercenary gigs he and Kara had taken recently. He had to move quickly though because he was sure he was already on SHIELD and Hydra's radar now. He had to go to Kara-

"Sir?"

Grant spun around, gun raised instinctively, before he quickly lowered it when he registered the alarm on Miguel's mother's face.

Grant engaged the safety and tucked the weapon into the small of his back to dispel the tension. He was still armed, but she didn't know that.

Miguel's mother continued to clutch the boy to her chest as she regarded Grant. "Thank you," she said emphatically. Miguel peered at him from his mother's embrace and gave him a gap-toothed smile.

Grant blinked.

"That was so cool, mister," a squeaky voice rang out.

Grant glanced over at the little girl, grinning heedless of her parents half-hearted attempts to quiet her. They also looked to Grant with small smiles.

Everyone was looking at him, he realized. All of the civilians were staring at him with a mixture of gratitude, warmth, and a healthy dose of wariness that was overpowered by the appreciation he could see in their eyes. A couple of people even voiced their thanks.

Grant shifted his weight, uncomfortable in a way he couldn't place. He felt the weight of their expectation. They didn't seem to get he wasn'ta good person, he wasn't a hero.

Grant found he liked that they didn't know that though. He couldn't remember anyone really thinking he was a hero. Skye and Fitz sometimes, maybe, but they trusted so easily it didn't really count. Those he encountered while he was pretending to be good little SHIELD Agent Ward or someone else counted even less.

His chest constricted. He liked it, he liked it more than he wanted to.

"If you want to thank me, tell whoever asks that I looked around 5'7, had green eyes and blonde hair. That I said I was going to Australia. That I was never here," Grant said gruffly before he turned and left.


Skye was in a team meeting when she got the ping. She had been valiantly attempting to keep the boredom off her face when she heard it that she immediately jumped at the distraction.

Skye whipped out her tablet and began clicking through as the others asked what it was. Skye really only had a few alerts set up, mostly pertaining to Hydra leadership on the run and inhumans, so everyone was on edge as she looked into it.

She was expecting a rogue inhuman. She had projected the tablet to the main screen thoughtlessly assuming it was something that the whole room should see. While Skye was usually the one sent to deal with criminal inhumans to see if she could connect with them and help them find their way, she always left with backup in case it wasn't a good guy on a bad path and just a jackass on a power trip.

So she was thrown at what the alert actually was.

"You got a lead on Ward?" Fitz asked, perking up next to her.

Skye hesitated. She wished she had taken this in her bunk instead of in front of the others. In the six months since she last saw Grant, she had only received one alert on his location.

She, May, Bobbi, and Hunter had rushed out to pursue the lead, but when they entered the dingy bar, they found Sunil Bakshi wrapped up like a present for them. There was even a note addressed "to Coulson".

Hunter had laughed so hard he had fallen over.

Skye did not want that to deal with the despair of another false lead in front of the others again. But she pushed it all down- there was nothing to be done about it now, and in all likelihood, it was Grant giving them their location for some other Hydra lead anyway. The others should know.

Skye took in the coordinates, hours away even in the quinjet, and clicked play on the video that trigger the alert.

"What the-" she heard Trip mutter as the video began.

It was… a bank? Several faceless, pixelated people decorated the screen as they waited in line. Skye frowned.

"Is your tracker working?" Simmons asked beside her.

"Hey," Skye said while she checked just that, "I don't tell you how to do your science mumbo jumbo."

She found no issues with the algorithm, but then the weirdly domestic scene took a turn for the worst.

Skye's brows furrowed. Grant would have no cause to rob a bank. It's not that she thought it was morally beneath him, but he couldn't be struggling for cash. And if he were, there's no way he'd have a crew. He was a one man army after all. He wouldn't sloppily lose his mask either.

There was no sound so Skye clicked through to engage the lip-reading tech to at least get part of the conversation.

When the Chief Jackass started threatening a little boy and his mother, Skye tensed in horror. She knew logically that this wasn't real time and they were hours away besides, but the nauseating helplessness was so much that Skye was tempted to shut down the video. She was confident Grant was not one of the robbers and that maybe it really was an error.

"Left of the woman," May said, breaking the silence.

"Yes," Bobbi nodded. Hunter squinted beside her and seemed to see whatever it was the same second.

"What's left of the woman?" Fitz asked.

Now that she was looking, she noticed the perfectly still figure next to the woman being threatened. In a baseball cap and sunglasses, he was beneath notice to anyone not looking for someone trying not to be seen. Her breath caught in her throat.

And Skye thought a false lead would be bad. She felt strangely judged all of the suddenly. Everyone in the room knew she had feelings for Grant and now they were all watching as he pretended to be as helpless as a civilian while an innocent woman and her child were threatened. Skye did not think she could take it if they were actually murdered.

"Damn," Hunter said. "You can track with that level of detail?"

"What?" Skye said distractedly, "No. This wouldn't be picked up. Grant has to face the cameras directly…"

Skye trailed off as she watched the scene unfold. The room was quiet other than the robotic dialogue picked up by the lip-reader.

When the video cut off, Skye did not know how she should feel. She thought maybe it'd make sense if she were proud or relieved, but she felt even emptier, like someone had reached into her chest to steal her heart and now there was just this chasm left unfilled.

"We can send a team to the coordinates," Coulson said.

"It's unlikely Ward stuck around after that," Bobbi said not unkindly.

Skye nodded mechanically. "Yeah." There was a beat and then she realized everyone was waiting on her reaction and Skye was still nodding like an idiot. "I'm going to- I need to prepare. For my mission."

She made herself leave the room with composure and slow, measured steps when all she wanted to do was run away and hide under her bed's blankets.

He was better. This was confirmation of that. Grant was in a better place, a place where he seemed to be helping more than he was hurting. He was free of Hydra and SHIELD and all the burdens the life of a secret agent had placed on his shoulders. He was good.

And Skye was good. She was. She was? She definitely was.

Maybe not good. She was fine. She was okay. Skye was getting by, and Grant was good.

It had to be enough.


Following Grant's unceremonious disappearance, Skye had bundled up the agony and guilt and channeled it into her work; having reached a sense of peace with her powers finally, Skye found herself focused on helping other inhumans find a place as well.

"I'm not going with you to SHIELD. I don't trust them."

Which was why she was rehashing the same old argument with Lincoln Campbell with the patience of a saint, thank you very much.

"No one at SHIELD is going to do anything to you. You're being an idiot," Skye said.

Hey, not all saints were that patient. Skye would know- she was practically raised by nuns.

Lincoln frowned. Despite his distrust of SHIELD, he and Skye actually got along very well most of the time. He had actually asked her out a couple months ago, and Skye had to awkwardly tell him she was taken while knowing that was a complete and utter lie.

She wasn't actually taken, that would imply she was seeing someone. She was just in love with a moron who would rather live on the run then actually talk to Skye obviously.

Lincoln had backed off immediately like the nice guy he was and politely asked about her supposed significant other.

Skye told him it was "complicated" and left it at that.

Sad part was that Skye could actually see a world in which she and Lincoln would make a good couple. Well, maybe not a good couple since they both had a lot of issues and an inability to agree most of the time, but they could have been something. Maybe. Sometimes Skye thought to herself that they still could be something and thought about how easy it would have been to just make up a break up with her fake boyfriend and say yes.

She had told Simmons one night over drinks that she had not because it wouldn't be fair to Lincoln when she was still hung up on someone else.

Simmons pursed her lips, and said, "Skye, if that were truly your issue, you wouldn't hold back because you'd know putting yourself out there is the first step to moving on."

Skye spluttered inelegantly in response. Before she could utter a real protest, however, Simmons reached out a hand to grasp Skye's.

"But it's okay not to want to move on. It's okay to have hope."

Skye huffed. "He won't be found unless he wants to be and he doesn't. I love a ghost," Skye muttered.

She did not even look to Simmons' reaction to her confession, staring morosely at the bar instead. Only Coulson had heard her admit her love for Grant previously, and she had not told him that she was still holding a torch months later. Sure it was obvious, but that didn't mean Skye had to admit it.

"It's okay to have hope," Simmons repeated as she squeezed Skye's hand. "Fitz hopes as well," Simmons revealed. "He won't be convinced that Ward is truly gone no matter how much time passes. I think he may even be more stubborn than you."

Skye finally looked up again.

"Besides, Ward's surprised us before; who is to say he won't again?"

That was why Skye did not like to talk to Simmons about Grant. She was too damn perceptive and sometimes it hurt. It hurt having hope, too. Hoping for something and losing it hurts worse than never hoping for anything.

Skye shook off the thoughts and refocused on Lincoln and their current issue.

But any attempt to respond to her brilliant argument was thwarted when a metal ball rolled innocuously between them.

For one split second, Skye stared at the object with incomprehension. She had seen that piece of tech before, she was sure of it. A memory of what felt like a lifetime ago of Grant, Fitz, and a dead man named Marcus Scarlotti flashed before her eyes.

And then the pulse grenade exploded.


Disclaimer- I definitely should've edited more. So sorry for typos, I was on a time crunch.

There's so much I could say- like how I'm not even sure who, if anyone reads this still- but I just wanted to thank everyone who has left comments. I read all of them and they remind me that someone cares to see this to the end, which means I really want to, too. There's not that many chapters left. Depending on how long some things end up being, maybe 5? 4 real chapters and an epilogue, give or take (but definitely give if anything).

Also, someone asked me about May in this fic. I always regret the 2 POVs system because it's very hard to get where other characters are coming from sometimes. I didn't think it was realistic that May would support Ward/Skyeward even with certain revelations. May is a character who can't forgive herself for one heart-wrenching decision she made for the greater good; I think it'd be hard for her to sympathize with Ward for that reason. And if someone like Ward was sympathetic and worth saving and not killing despite the lives he threatened, what does that say about May's decision to kill that girl? But I've always wanted to show that May loves Skye and has her best interests at heart, even if the two are on different pages.

I always write every character, even Garrett and Whitehall, like their decisions make perfect sense from their POV. If I can't get there, get in their heads, then I don't write it because it feels weak. Personally, I think stories should be driven by characters, not plots.

Anyway, on this chapter, it was also important to me that Skye inspired Grant to reevaluate his life and his choices- the person he had become- rather than be the reason he changed. Grant (at some point with his inconsistent show-characterization) was shown to want to be a hero, even if he sucked at it. Skye in this fic inspires him to believe that he could become the person he wants to be and to stop justifying decisions that deep down he doesn't really like because he feels he has to. Fitz and Kara and others play a role. But ultimately Ward's change is on Ward, so I couldn't have them just get together after everything. They both are hurting but needed to grow independently before they could be together.

Well, if you enjoyed it/are still reading, I always love to know your thoughts. Thanks everyone!