NOTES: Since there's another week of reruns, there will be another chapter after this before we fall back into the missing scene territory for episodes. Hopefully I don't write myself into a hole.

Thanks to the_wordbutler for her faithful help.

Anna hears the chime of an incoming Skype conversation and doesn't bother to look at the caller ID before swiping open the call. "What's going on, Brandon?" she asks without looking up from making notes on her sheet music.

"Who's Brandon?" a female voice asks from the iPad.

Anna looks up sharply from the pages around her to see Skye looking back at her. "My nephew," she answers. "You're not him. And I don't recall giving you my number."

"Technically, it's a username," Skye replies. "And you didn't, but, like finding you is the most challenging thing I'll have to do all week." She bites her bottom lip for a second before speaking again. "I need to ask you a favor."

"What's that?"

"Will you please kiss and make up with your boyfriend so we can have our boss back?"

Anna sighs, and her head falls back against the sofa for a moment. "How bad is he?"

Skye shrugs. "He's not, and that's what's weird. He keeps smiling and acting like everything's fine, but there's no way it is. I know it's not. He's told me so."

"What did he say to you?" The question is out of Anna's mouth before she can stop it. She shakes her head. "Don't tell me that. If he wanted me to know, he would tell me. Or at least, that's what he led me to believe." She pauses to huff a bitter breath. "'You've seen my plane, you've met my team…' Sorry."

Skye gives her a sympathetic smile. "At least one of you is reacting properly."

"Skye," Anna sighs, "it's not going to work. We shouldn't have tried it a second time."

"I think you're wrong." Skye ignores Anna's snort and pushes on. "Look, the latest thing we had deal with? This crazy Asgardian chick—"

"Asgardian?" Anna asks as her stomach turns to ice.

Brown hair waves back and forth as Skye shakes her head. "No, not that Asgardian. No one was stabbed. Well, Ward did some stabbing… with a spear… but it was more of the phallic kind." When Anna doesn't respond, Skye blurts, "Ward banged an alien." The young woman tilts her head to the side and half-squints her eyes. "Actually, you might…"

"Might what?"

Skye blinks and makes a surprised, little face. "Nothing. Just, nothing. You might nothing."

Anna begins to massage her temples as she feels a headache flaring back to life. "Skye, is there something—"

"What I was going to say about this Asgardian chick is that she had this power to make men do her bidding. The only guy around here who didn't fall for it was Coulson."

"Maybe he's smarter than that."

"Maybe no other woman could compare to you."

Anna laughs at that—hard. "I really don't think that's the case."

Skye shrugs like a smug smartass. "You have your ideas, I have mine." Her face softens for a second. "But I really think you two should get back together. Or he could hook up with Sif…"

"Sift?"

"Sif," Skye repeats, emphasizing the final letter. "She's one of Thor's pals. Coulson had a major boner for her."

"Umm, okay," Anna stutters, "I don't think—"

"Look, I really doubt he acted on anything. Although, if you're into threesomes—"

"Skye," Anna warns with a sharp tone. "What do you want?"

"For you guys to be happy," she answers with a soft voice and small shrug.

Anna feels her heart lurch and tries to ignore the pain she's been pushing down since Phil left. "I don't think that's possible, at least not with the two of us together. Maybe not even for us separately."

The awkward pause that follows is ended by Felix waking up from his nap on the guest bedroom bed and following the sound of Skye's voice. He jumps up onto the coffee table where the iPad is propped up and paws at it while mewling at Skye's face.

"It's a screen, Felix," Anna sighs. "It's not really her." But neither the cat nor Skye listen to her. Instead, the young woman holds her finger up in the air and darts it around for Felix to paw at. Anna uses the distraction to try and collect her thoughts. Her mind has been preoccupied with Phil since he walked out of her apartment. She knows there's a handful of e-mails he's sent, but she can't bring herself to read them. He's tried to call twice, but only one of those did she truly ignore; the other came in the middle of a dentist appointment.

She misses him; she's willing to admit that much. Maybe not out loud, but she can at least say it to herself, and isn't that one of those twelve steps or whatever? She nearly opened his e-mails a dozen times, but what for? He's still a secret spy, and she's still tired of that lifestyle.

"Earth to Anna," she hears, and she shakes her head.

"Sorry, what were you saying?"

Skye shoots her an almost infuriating look of sympathy. "You okay?" she asks quietly.

"You've seen my healthy stockpile of booze, anti-depressants, and anti-anxiety meds. Rarely do I get to fall under the category of 'okay.' But you look better. How are you doing?"

"Simmons stopped drawing my blood every five minutes to try and recreate the drug that saved me, so I'm feeling less like a buffet for vampires, or at least one vampire in particular. And she's even letting me try solid foods tomorrow. I know she means well, but she can be kind of a pain in the ass as a doctor."

"She cares for you," Anna points out gently. Skye brushes it off with a shrug, and Anna finds herself biting her tongue. She remembers being in her early-twenties and her mind being a little dense. It's how she wound up with her husband.

Skye looks over her shoulder for a second before turning back to the screen. "Sounds like a meeting time. Want me to tell him you said hi?" Not trusting herself to speak for fear of the wrong, or maybe the right, thing coming out of her mouth, Anna just shakes her head. "Okay," Skye says. "I'll talk to you later."

Before Anna can argue that that's probably not the best idea, Skye disconnects the call. It leaves Anna wondering how she'll not only effectively break things off with Phil, but also his entire little spy family.