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Chapter Four
Birds of a Feather Stick Together

Ward was back in the cell.

He did not want to be back in this cell. His cell. The cell he'd sat for months in, with so few visitors it had made him feel as though his being entire was made up of merely sitting in strained anticipation for someone to make an appearance.

One girl in particular.

But that didn't matter. The dreary predicament of being in his cell was mere background noise compared to what was causing him an epitome of worry.

They'd taken Skye away before they even got him out of the handcuffs. It had been like he wasn't even there. Ward had assumed the man that had ended her torment and killed Blackwell to be Hunter, as Skye had let his name slip in the past.

The damn mercenary couldn't even tell when an agent had a knife in her leg.

But because he had unintentionally twisted it, caused Skye to bleed and to lose consciousness, Ward was barely a blip on the new agent's radar of concern as the man found a way to unchain her. After haphazardly fixing her up, he'd taken her carefully out and away with the aid of another agent, a blonde woman.

Skye had appeared profoundly broken when they took her away from him, and not just from the way her body hung completely limp in the man's arms as he carried her away.

It was her pale face dripping in sweat. The way her clothes were ripped and fell tattered from her still form. The breathing Ward strained to hear but couldn't quite make out, though he prayed the movement he saw in her chest wasn't just his mind playing tricks due to some mad hope.

The blood. The bruises. The burns.

The way Hydra had stamped her like cargo ready to be shipped.

Ward prayed S.H.I.E.L.D. could fix her; wished he could follow them. He wished he could know what became of Skye as the man carried her out of the interrogation room, the blonde pressing down on the injured woman's thigh as they went.

And though soon enough the soldiers came for him, they gave him no information. They merely took him back to the small hole he'd come to think of as a dull purgatory, transformed into hell as they threw him in to stew in the dark with no inkling as to what became of his old rookie.

He didn't have to sit with his thoughts alone long, as S.H.I.E.L.D. soon asked Ward what happened. They asked him for details on how Skye got into the condition she was in. What exactly had happened, what Hydra wanted. But he wouldn't answer. He wouldn't give them anything.

Because they wouldn't tell him about Skye.

They wouldn't tell him if she was alive, if she was paralyzed, if she'd been sent away.

They wouldn't tell him a goddamn thing.

"What happened to wanting to talk, Ward?" Coulson asked simply, not bothering to take the seat in front of his transparent cell. "Thought we were rebuilding trust, as you put it."

Grant knew being completely silent would only infuriate the man. So, he spoke.

"You shot that idea down pretty quickly when you tried to send me to my brother."

"Well, your brother had a Hydra mole in the mix, and here we are again," snapped Coulson, gesturing to Ward in the cell. "So what was it that was so important you wouldn't give them the information? That you wouldn't do the only thing you've been trying to do for months, and get out?"

Skye.

Skye was the answer to every single question he was asking. It wasn't the information. Ward didn't give a shit about Garrett's precious intel, the man was gone. Skye was there. Skye was S.H.I.E.L.D., and Skye would have suffered if he gave them anything.

Suffered more.

But as much as Skye was the answer to Coulson's questions, she was to Ward's as well.

"Or maybe you just didn't want to go back to Hydra. Be their pet again," continued Coulson. "Not so worth it without an SO that will watch your back I take it?"

No, it wasn't.

"But I'm just shooting in the dark. I won't know unless you tell me. You have to work with me here Ward. We don't need a repeat of those three weeks."

"I will tell you everything. Everything that went on in that room," Ward told him. It was a slight lie. He didn't plan on going into the details of Skye's torment. Coulson wouldn't want to hear it, Skye wouldn't want him to know. "In exchange for one thing."

Coulson scoffed. "You think you can make demands now?"

Ward cocked his head. "Not demands. A deal."

"Not that this is going to happen, but humor me. What are your terms?"

"I only want to know what happened to Skye. If she's ok, just… anything you can tell me."

Coulson considered this. Stared at Grant long and hard, with an expression similar to the one he'd worn when Ward told the man he still was a part of the team. When the director had disagreed with him, heatedly.

"Please, Coulson. I just want information."

"No."

"What?" asked Ward, genuinely surprised. "I'm not asking to see her, I just want know-"

"Stop talking!" Coulson snapped. "You are done making deals. You were supposed to be gone when you ran out of information before. Skye's already told us Hydra didn't get what they wanted. If you want to answer my questions, add to your delusions that you're part of this team and try to help, then do it! But it's not necessary for us to know. You have nothing. You can't barter anymore."

Coulson was on a roll and clearly not done with his rant just yet, but Grant took a moment to take stock of what he'd just said. The man had, in fact, inadvertently given Ward at least a piece of what he wanted to know. Coulson said Skye had given him information.

Which meant she was at least alive.

The director moved a couple of feet, almost pacing. But not quite. He pressed fingers into his forehead.

"And even if you could make a deal, the last thing you are ever going to get is Skye. So long as it's in my power I will give you no information about her, let you talk to her, or even see her. This obsession is sick, Ward, and I'm putting a damn end to it!"

Coulson looked at him with exasperation, the rough proclamation signaled that he was done with the tirade, but Ward didn't know what to say.

He certainly wasn't expecting the small outburst Coulson had made, though the shock was momentary as realization set in. The director must have been just as worried and concerned for the injured hacker's well being as he was. Ward had noticed the man had affections for Skye. Strong. Near paternal.

His refusal of Ward's terms made sense then. Coulson was taking out his anger and fear of what would happen to Skye on the only person who'd been present when she was hurt. Maybe he thought it was Ward's fault.

Which in reality, it was.

If Grant hadn't insisted he'd only talk to her in those weeks prior, Hydra wouldn't have recognized their connection. Known how much he cared for her.

Skye wouldn't have been tortured.

But Coulson's frank upset made Ward wonder further, as the man seemed sincerely angry. Ward knew Skye was alive now, but if Coulson was letting himself off the rails in worry...

What was her condition?

This was him being told he was going to his brother all over again. Losing Skye from his life all over again. Except this time, he didn't know what her health was. If she'd be ok.

But this time he had more information. He could hold out. He did want to prove to Coulson he wanted to help.

But he wanted Skye more.

Skye anything. Skye information, talking to Skye, hearing about her. It didn't matter. And as long as there was a chance for any of that, he wouldn't speak. Not without the deal. He didn't speak for three months before and they'd sent her eventually. He could do it again. Even if it destroyed any progress that they made, even if it ruined their trust. He wasn't sure if they'd actually made progress, but if they had, it would be gone.

Ward then recognized that he was obsessed. And it may have been sick; an unhealthy obsession, like Coulson had said. But it was all he had. The only incentive to be good, to be a good person, so he clung to it.

He stayed quiet.

Coulson left.

Two months passed.

He was down there to rot for his silence with not a clue as to how Skye was faring. She had been making fairly frequent visits to grill him for intel before, though those were certainly meant to stop when he was to leave. Go to his brother. But he'd run out of valuable intel now. Even if he hadn't, he didn't expect Skye to come down. How could she now? Not after what Ward had done.

She'd begged him not to do it. He still did. He told Blackwell to put that thing on her.

Then the man did as Ward said, and Skye would never be the same. She had to be disgusted with him and he wouldn't blame her. He could never blame her.

There had been weeks of trying to talk to her about her father. Trying to convince her that they could be useful together, find the man together, just so she would like and trust him enough to let him out to help her. But none of that mattered now. Any progress they'd made, any tiny inkling that Skye may have started to put trust in him. It would be gone now, but that was fine.

Because Ward knew it was better for Skye to be disgusted with him than hating herself.

Which was why he was so shocked when she finally ran down the stairs to his cell, as frantic as a child running from monsters in the dark.

Shocked at the first words that fell out of her mouth.

"Thank you," she whimpered, seeming to be on the verge of tears.

Of course, Ward barely even heard the words at first. He had to process, process that the girl was in front of him. She was alive and standing and virtually unscathed.

The relief was overwhelming.

Despite her obvious decrepit emotional state, she seemed ok. Stable, physically. Everything on her appeared in working order. A harsh burn marked her hand, but she had two working legs. The scar on her neck was prominent, though her voice sounded fine. The damage didn't seem permanent as far as handicapping.

But her hair seemed uncared for. Her shirt wasn't pulled all the way down, as though she'd been in a hurry to put it on. Her eyes were wild. Physically, she appeared fine. Her mentality may have been a different story.

After his cursory observances, he pondered her words.

What could this girl honestly be grateful to him for?

"What?" he asked, breathless and truly curious.

"I should have come earlier... I know I should have. I just couldn't bear seeing you," she said regretfully.

While this didn't erase his confusion for her gratitude, this made sense. He expected it. She hadn't come down because he'd let them touch her. He'd let them mar her, from the scar on her neck to the memories he was sure haunted her nightmares now.

They haunted him.

"God Ward, I'm so sorry!" she cried out of the blue. Wait.

Grateful and sorry?

Maybe she forgot whom she was talking to.

"You're not the one who should be sorry," he stated simply. "I let them do that to you. And you asked me not to."

She seemed to despair over the comment, like someone had opened a wound she'd been nursing.

"I know," she said in a horrific whisper. "I asked you to give up information, about my organization. Where my loyalties are. And you didn't!"

"I'm so sorry Skye, I-"

A growl erupted from her mouth. It cut him off immediately.

"You aren't supposed to be sorry! Not for this!" She ran a hand through her hair, paced the front of his cell frantically. "I broke, Ward! I begged a Hydra agent to give up S.H.I.E.L.D. confidences after just a few hours."

Her face was full of such raw despair, Ward didn't have the heart to tell her.

They hadn't been in there even one hour.

"But you didn't tell them," Skye continued. "They could have helped you... you could have gotten out of here! You… you were better than me," she told him shakily. "I couldn't take it. I would have let them take everything I had if they'd asked me, and you made sure they didn't get what they really wanted."

"I only did it for you, Skye," he told her, because he didn't know what else he could say. It was the truth. "But I'm not better than you. You know that."

This was wrong. He was supposed to have saved her from herself. Ward was aware she hated him. The girl had made her disdain clear enough on every visit she'd made in the months prior. So if she was apologizing, thanking him…

How much did she hate herself?

"You are though," she said quietly, as if almost just realizing it to be truth herself. But it wasn't the truth. He wasn't better. "Because I didn't tell them," she admitted in hushed tones.

Ward didn't understand.

"Tell who?"

"Coulson and the rest," she whispered, sounding near horrified. "I didn't tell them what you did. All I told them was Hydra didn't get any information. I think… maybe... I think they assumed Blackwell interrogated me, and that I just didn't break. I couldn't tell them you were… what you did. For us."

Ward blinked.

"That's ok."

"No, it's not! They think I'm brave. I'm disgusting, Ward! I'm just like you!"

Well, that was somewhat confusing. One moment she was saying he's better than her, the next they're both disgusting.

"You may have been down here for being a traitor for Hydra before, but now it's because I couldn't tell the team that you held up. That you stood strong for S.H.I.E.L.D. As much as you betrayed us and lied to us before, you still stepped up and I couldn't tell them because I'm ashamed? What kind of person does that to someone else!"

Ward couldn't help but notice the amount of times Skye's hand went to her neck. How every time she said the word Hydra, mentioned his allegiance, her fingers would drift there. It was like a constant presence weighing her down.

Her next words made him near wonder if she could read his thoughts.

"I guess Hydra's a part of both of us now," she said, sounding resigned.

She was so vulnerable. Looking up to him.

It was his chance.

He could use this. Tell her she's right, convince her to let him out of there. It would be so simple. She'd readily accept it.

But he couldn't. Not to her. Not when it was so so far from the truth. Not when it would break her more.

"Hydra is not a part of you," he told her firmly. She glanced up at him and there was a clear anger in her eyes. She didn't like being told wrong, but it had to be said. "And you are not disgusting."

She scoffed. "Don't you get it Ward? We are the same now. Or at least… equal."

"You-"

Her voice bellowed easily over him.

"I'm a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent they broke down. You're a Hydra soldier who stepped up. You and me, we're on middle ground. Were both scarred by… them," she said spitefully, her hand rubbing deep into her neck now. "I've just got a mark to prove it."

Skye came down nearly every day after that. Sometimes twice a day. She didn't grill him for information. She didn't ask him much at all. She'd just talk.

And she'd let him talk. It was organic. It was strange.

The first time was nearly awkward. She didn't have anything abrupt to say like she had the day before, no gratitude or apology. It seemed that she merely wanted to see him. She walked down the stairs, gently taking off a scarf she'd had wrapped around her neck and stuffing it into her pocket, just before she sat down on the metal chair across from him. But she'd seemed more confident, more built up than she had been a day earlier.

She'd said, "What's up?"

To which of course Ward didn't really have a response, considering his days pretty much consisted of waiting for something, anything to happen, when nothing did.

Until now.

And it became a routine. He knew she would come. At different times sure, but she would be there every day. Ward even got a small warning before her presence, because the camera's green light would turn off. It's also how he knew she was doing this without Coulson's permission. That could be bad. That could be bad for both of them.

He didn't ask her about it.

"I'm sick of having to get up every day at four am," Skye groaned.

"I'm actually a little surprised that you do," admitted Ward, and Skye grinned.

"May's strict. Much stricter than you were, despite that you may have led yourself to believing you had the most rigorous training plan for a rookie. You really weren't that tough."

"I never thought I had a ridiculously hard training plan for you. You thought that."

"Well… pull-ups can be hard without motivation," she defended. "Anyway, now that Hydra's around and S.H.I.E.L.D.'s sort of a disaster, we won't have to worry about lacking motivation for a while."

She would talk like this. Casually. As though nothing fazed her. Not Hydra, not Ward being a traitor. She would bring up memories from the past as easily as if they were old friends needing to catch up.

She also never brought up anything specific. She never brought up missions or current going ons. She barely talked about the other teammates, save for training with them. She may have been letting go, but she was also being very guarded.

Smart.

"I honestly don't understand why you get up every day at 5:00 to do your workouts," she continued. "You literally have all day! And it's not like the time makes a difference, being in no windows and stuff anyway…"

"Right. Time doesn't make a difference, and my body's internal clock is just set that way. I don't see why I shouldn't just do what my instincts tell me to."

She shrugged, looking pleased enough with the information. Her phone gave a little chirp and she turned her head toward it.

"Well, my external clock is telling me I have to get going," she told him, standing up from the chair.

"Quick visit," Ward observed.

"Stuff to do. Things. You know, the usual. Just more of it."

He nodded. "I understand. There was a time when I had stuff to do, too."

"What about things?" she asked wryly.

He grinned. "And things."

She smiled in amusement, grabbing her scarf from her pocket as she began to wrap it around her neck.

Every day. Every day she would take it off when she came down and be sure to put the fabric back to perfection as it hid the scar. It almost made him feel flattered, that she felt so at peace or comfortable around him to reveal something she obviously found to be a weakness, or repulsing. She was in the right of mind to feel that way too, because Ward didn't care about some burn.

Skye seemed to have thought it made her a worse person, having it there. As if because of some mark on her skin Hydra now owned her. So maybe he shouldn't be flattered. Maybe it just meant that she was ok with him seeing it because there was no one there to impress.

But why bother?

Why bother taking it off every time she came down? Or even putting it on in the first place. Was it that important the rest of the team didn't see it?

Grant knew the answer was yes, but he couldn't bring it up. Not when what they had was so fragile, so precious. He couldn't do anything to ruin it. Though he couldn't help but wonder, with so many secrets and hidden burdens she was keeping: maybe she was ruining herself.

It was two days later Ward decided to ask, as Skye descended the stairs. The scarf was removed but she hadn't gotten it into her pocket just yet.

"Why do you do that?" he asked.

She froze. Her eyes grew wide.

"Do what?"

"You know what."

Her eyes drifted to the side. She started picking at her nails. All the signs of nervousness that she'd been so careful to avoid these past weeks. Ward hoped he hadn't opened a can of worms he shouldn't have.

"They just can't know. And you already do, so… I use the scarf."

"What do you mean they can't know?" asked Ward. "They have to know... what you went through. Don't they?"

"They all know I was tortured," she said bluntly, arms crossed. "They know I was burned and poked and stabbed. They don't know I was marked. Or at least… what with."

This was what Ward was afraid of.

"Skye, it's just a scar. You're a field agent. We all have scars," Ward explained as calmly as he could.

Her eyes narrowed.

"We're not discussing it Ward. I'll walk up those stairs right now if you say another word about it."

"Skye-"

She rubbed her hands through her hair heavily, reminding him of the first night she visited him down there. How emotionally unstable she'd seemed.

"Please, don't make me think about it. Not here," she asked him, somehow firm and so vulnerable at the same time.

"Just... let me say one thing," Ward offered. Skye considered a few moments, dark eyes staring through her wild hair that had fallen before her. But she nodded. Curiosity got the better of her.

As usual.

"If you don't want to show them, at least tell them. Secrets weigh you down and you don't need to keep this one. They're your friends and they are not going to judge you."

"You don't even know most of them," she scoffed. "How would you know what they're going to think?"

"Because no one, not one person, would blame you for it. The only blame, the only guilt you feel is because you're telling yourself you have to. And you don't."

She seemed incredibly skeptical, and Ward couldn't help but wonder what she had been filling her own head with since the incident. He could tell she'd allowed herself to stew, to be alone and to think. And when you have no other side to the argument, it's so much easier to convince yourself of your faults. Or sometiems, convince yourself they weren't as bad as they actually were.

Ward knew from experience.

But before he could truly appreciate even Skye's physical response to his words, he noticed something. He noticed the green blip on the camera, and he noticed the now incredibly blaring fact that it was not absent, as it should have been.

"Skye, did you remember to turn off the cameras today?" Ward asked.

At first she seemed confused, but then grateful for the subject change as her face softened.

"I don't just turn off the camera. I use a rerouted proxy, showing you from a few hours earlier, so there's something on the screen. But yeah, of course."

"Look," Ward told her.

She turned around. Turned around to observe the camera, take in that something was different from their many earlier visits. But that wasn't the only thing to observe. Because at the very moment she spun herself about the door could be heard opening, quickly redirecting her eyes to the source of sound. The source of light revealed Phil Coulson stepping down the stairs.

And the director was not happy.

A/n: I know it's a much different pace from the first two chapters, but i hope you all are still interested! We gonna have lots of angst, comfort and conflict in the next few chapters, and the finale of the story will see some action of course.

Giant thanks to Shadow375 for revising most of this chapter!

And thank you all for reading!