A/N: Last chapter for this one! For those of you who have taken this ride with me, I hope you've enjoyed it. I might do a sequel if there's enough interest (need a cheap excuse to push me to watch SHIELD even though I don't like the current story arc). So let me know in your comments!


Mike Peterson was hating his life at the moment.

Not the company, of course. Skye was probably the best friend he's ever had: gentle and forgiving, with an amazing sense of humor and a passion for the truth like no one else he had ever met. And she was great with Oz. "Skye?" he asked quietly.

"Hmmm?" asked Skye, turning her attention back to her companion after being lost in her own thoughts.

"Why did we never get together?"

That was probably the last question Skye had been expecting. "What?!"

"You heard me," Mike argued, not backing down. "You're a beautiful, intelligent, confident woman. And you've been far better to me than I ever deserved. So why did this..." he waved his hand back and forth between them to signify which 'us' he ws talking about, "never happen?"

Skye leaned back against the headrest of the cab's back seat and sighed, not wanting to think about such things. The answer, though, came to her without warning. "Bad timing," she finally replied.

"Yeah," Mike agreed, chuckling bitterly. He twisted his cane idly in his hands as he thought about the awful truth in Skye's words. "Of course, my little stint as the Terminator didn't exactly help our relationship any."

"No," Skye sighed, hating her crystal-clear mental picture of Mike's previous cybernetically-enhanced life. "No, it definitely didn't."

"You've done pretty well for yourself, though...Shadow."

Skye smiled at the mention of her newly-minted 'Network' codename. "Yeah, well, that wasn't me."

Mike frowned, confused. "It wasn't?"

"No," Skye replied wistfully. "No...I think that was probably my father looking out for me."

Skye's reply did nothing to alleviate Mike's confusion. "I didn't know you were a religious person, Skye?"

The cab pulled into the airport's departure alley, giving Skye the perfect excuse to dodge the question as they got out of the cab and the driver unloaded a medium-sized black suitcase. Mike watched as Skye paid the cab driver and let the man drive off, growing more and more despondent by the minute. "What am I supposed to do, Skye? With my life?"

"Get on with your life, Mike," Skye replied. "Go back to your son."

"But *how*?" Mike demanded, his tone growing angrier by the minute. "I can't go back to SHIELD with this leg, and I'm not strong enough on my own to make a damn bit of difference to anyone about anything. What the hell am I supposed to do now?"

Skye's response was so quiet that, in the chaos of the crowded airport that surrounded them, Mike had to strain to hear it. "Close your eyes, Mike," she whispered.

"What?" asked Mike, confused.

"Close your eyes," Skye repeated, giving the command loud enough for Mike to hear it. Tamping down his frustration for the moment, Mike closed his eyes. Skye drew in a deep breath, let it out slowly, and grabbed Mike's hands to strengthen the connection. Your name is Mike Peterson, Skye projected into Mike's mind. Your son Oz loves and misses you very, very much. You lost your leg in a construction accident but you're not going to get that stop you. You're going to fly home to him and do everything you can to give him the best life you can possibly give him because you're his Daddy and you love him more than life itself. And anything else you think you saw or heard over the past two years is nothing more than bad dreams and scary stories you told Oz to tease him. Nod your head if you understand everything I just told you.

Mike nodded.

Skye broke the connection with Mike and the world returned to normal. She took one more moment to re-focus her thoughts as Mike broke away from the trance and opened his eyes. Skye pulled a sleeve full of paperwork out of the inside pocket of her jacket as Mike shook off the last of his disorientation. "All right, Mr. Peterson," she declared, fighting with all her might to keep her raging emotions under control, "I have your ticket and boarding pass right here, along with the lease to your new apartment and your offer letter for your new position as a Junior Vice President in Stark Enterprises."

"Thanks," said Mike, still slightly disoriented, "Miss, uh, Miss..."

"Lane?" Skye said, feigning insult. "Margo Lane?" She forced her voice to take on a tone of exaggerated teasing. "You're not one of those guys who has to get on a plane hammered because they're scared of flying, are ya? Because, you know, the TSA doesn't take too kindly to that anymore. At least, not until you get past security..."

Mike shook his head, trying to use the motion to shake the disorientation from his mind and focus on the present. "Of course, of course," he said rotely. "Thank you for all of your help, Ms. Lane."

Skye fought with every bit of emotional control she had to keep from crying. Even so, it did little to keep her voice from choking up. "Good luck to you, Mr. Peterson," she finally said. "I know you and Oz will do really well in Los Angeles."

Mike flipped through the papers in his hands as if they held the answers to the questions that were starting to float through his mind. "I guess it's always good to get a fresh start, right?" he asked nervously.

The smile on Skye's face was warm and sincere. "Absolutely." Out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of a monitor that showed the time. "Wow," she exclaimed. "You better hurry up, you don't want to miss your plane!" Skye helped Mike get past the front doors of the terminal, then turned and walked away from the airport.

A red convertible pulled up next to Skye and she got into the passenger side. "You did the right thing," Coulson told her. "He wouldn't have been able to live with the memories of what had happened to him. Not for long, anyway. Better to have a clean slate."

"Was it better for you?" asked Skye.

Coulson found he didn't have an answer for that.

#

The bus was in the air, on its way to deliver Garrett and his team back to the hub. Coulson sipped on his coffee and leaned back in the comfortable 'executive'-style chair in his office. A rumbling purr echoed in the back of his mind, and he smiled, thinking about how much his life had changed in just two short days.

One of those changes casually flopped down in the chair on the opposite side of his desk and sighed wearily. "It's done," she declared. "all evidence has been wiped of anything related to our 'adventures'. Everything will all line up with the official reports."

"Thank you," said Coulson. His expression grew more concerned as he studied her. "Skye, are you okay?"

Skye tried to blow off her boss' concerns. "I'm fine," she insisted.

Coulson wasn't buying it. "You know you can say anything to me, right? I'm not affected by..."

"I know, I know," said Skye, cutting off Coulson's comments. "And I volunteered to do this, remember? The less people who know about us, the safer we are."

Coulson leaned forward across the desk. "You know I will never order you to do...what you do, right? I want your conscience to always be clear when it comes to this. No regrets."

"I thought that was what SHIELD did," Skye countered, clearly sulking. "Take whatever they could find and use it to their advantage..."

"It may be what SHIELD does, sometimes," Coulson agreed. "But it's not what *I* do."

Skye eyed her boss warily. "You're sure you're not protecting me because of..."

"I'm protecting you because I believe you're *worth* protecting, Skye," Coulson insisted. "No more, no less. Skye, you're a genuinely *good* person. That's hard enough to find in the 'real world', let alone in this business. You need to do everything you can to hold onto that. Especially under the circumstances."

"But I'm just doing the same thing that SHIELD did to you, aren't I? Maybe with a little less pain in the process, but..."

Coulson had to fight the urge to wrap his fingers around the medallion under his shirt as his mind wandered to the physical and emotional weight of the gifts *he* now carried. "Skye, if I hadn't gone through that process I wouldn't be where I am now. I don't regret any of it. I don't want you to, either."

Skye thought over everything that had happened to *her* in the previous two days. "No..." she finally relented with a wistful smile. "No, I don't regret it, either. I can't. But..."

"But what?" asked Coulson.

Skye immediately stopped fidgeting and re-focused, knowing how important her next words might be to the both of them. "I'm just wondering if SHIELD is the best place for us to be. Under the circumstances."

Coulson nodded. "That's fair. Our 'mutual friends' did say we had a home with them if we wanted it. We could jump ship. Start over again in New York with them, like Mike Peterson is doing in LA."

Skye sensed there was more to Coulson's argument. "But..."

"What are the odds that you and I would just drop off SHIELD's radar if we left?"

Skye sighed, knowing that Coulson had a point. "I suppose we can do more to help ourselves from the inside than from the outside," she conceded. "So I guess we just carry on like we did before this? Like everything is 'normal'?"

Coulson shook his head and pulled a small box out of his desk drawer. "This is for you...if you still want to take it."

Curious as to what kind of a gift Coulson would be giving her after everything they had gone through together, Skye opened the box...to discover a shiny, brand-new SHIELD badge. "What is this?" she asked.

"Your level 1 credentials," Coulson replied. "Your appointment was already in the works before your shooting, but it didn't get finalized until this morning. You earned this long before any of 'this' happened. You deserve it. And, especially now, I think it's the best way to protect you."

"I don't follow," Skye declared.

"We hide you in plain sight," Coulson explained. "Continue to show 'the powers that be' what an asset you are to them. That way, if things go south..."

Skye was beginning to understand her boss' logic. "They'll be less likely to permanently stick me in a lab somewhere." Coulson nodded. Skye ran her fingers over the raised lettering on the badge, carefully considering her options before closing the case and sticking the badge in her pocket. "If this is what you think is best, then that's what we'll do. But don't forget I'm doing this for *you*, not for them. After all, someone's got to have your back in here...AC."

Coulson smiled at the teasing 'casual' moniker. "That goes double for you, kid. We're family now. Families protect each other."

Family. For so much of her life, Skye had thought that wasn't a word that applied to her. And now, for the first time in her life, Skye knew that the term fit. "Family, huh?" she asked, her expression brightening to a mischevious smile. "Does that make you my...godfather now?"

"I hope not!" Coulson joked with a chuckle. "Could you imagine me with those cotton balls in my mouth..."

"Oh, I don't know," Skye teased. "I think you could do a great Brando..."