Matter of Importance

Spoilers: Season 2 promo

Disclaimer: I own nothing, Marvel owns it all!

The cell was dark and only slightly warm, kept just below the standard so to be humane but not comfortable. Nothing like what Ward remembered but then again his memories were all a dream and the fact he lay on his small one person bed alone was proof. They'd at least given him something other than scrubs, figuring he wasn't a threat to his own life anymore.

A sound made him sit up but he saw nothing in the darkness, standing by the bed he walked to the barrier and reached out. The barrier grid lit up but showed nothing in the background till the light came on, dim but not bright. He found Skye sitting on the bottom step of the stairs in what clearly were pajamas. Her hand held the control tablet but she didn't seem like her normal defensive self.

"Skye?"

"You said once you felt bad after you killed someone." She looked at him, "was your level one overshare lies or…"

Ward sat back down on the edge of the bed. "Who did you kill?"

"Donnie Gill, the kid from the Academy who created the super storm. He could freeze people on contact but he'd been brainwashed." Skye shook her head and looked down. "It's been three months but all I see is the blood on my hands when I'm not distracted. Does it ever go away?"

"I wish I could lie and tell you it does but it never does. I'm haunted too by all the people I've killed." Ward looked down at his hands, "I just learned to compartmentalize it, ignore the faces and move on." He looked up at her, "I guess that just took some of my humanity with it."

Skye nodded and stood up, "thanks. Goodnight."

"Try to get some sleep." He gently spoke and she stopped midway up the stairs.

"I don't think I'm meant to kill, I can't tell Coulson or May because they'll see me as weak but when I shot him I felt a part of me die inside. I guess that was my humanity too."

Without further words she took the few steps to the top and grabbed the door handle to open the door. "No it's not." Her eyes looked down at him as he stood by the barrier, "you are everything that embodies humanity. You'll never lose that because it's what makes you who you are. Get some sleep mia bella and forget about it all when you wake up."

A slight nod later and the door opened, the lights shutting off as the heavy door closed. Ward moved back to his bed and laid down, trying to forget the fact that he was unable to comfort Skye. He also tried to ignore the anger he held for May and Coulson for ordering Skye to be the one behind the rifle. They obviously were blind to how much it ate at Skye's soul to take a life. She wasn't meant to kill, harm possibly but never kill.

Halfway through two days later Ward lay on the bed mentally reading a book when the door opened. He looked up expecting Coulson but found Skye with her laptop and a blanket, as he turned to sit on the edge of the bed he found her sit on the floor against the stairs with her computer. She threw the control tablet a few inches from her leg and opened her computer.

"Skye?"

She looked up at him, "Mom and Dad are fighting and the other kids are trying to assist in resolving issues but I know better. Just ignore me, I'll go upstairs whenever the security feed tells me they're done having it out."

"Why are they fighting?"

"Not that I should be telling you but," she shrugged. "Coulson and May got into a tight bind the last mission they went on. Let's just say May doesn't like it that HYDRA nearly decapitated him but he is still insistent on going on another mission."

Ward looked confused, "decapitated?"

"Lasers." Skye shrugged, "apparently they are either deadly or annoying." Her face gave away her annoyance. "You run into problems with lasers?"

He sat down on the bed, "more times than I'd care to."

She set her computer aside and hugged her knees, "tell me about one."

"Uh, well there was this time in the Academy." Ward sat back and looked down at the floor as he remembered. "If you'd visited the Ops Academy before the takeover I'd have been legendary story of what not to do in Laser Evasion."

"You're kidding me, you screwed up Laser Evasion?" Skye chuckled, "okay now I have to hear the story. What happened?"

Coulson and May stood eye to eye, silent as Hunter and Trip stood a few feet away. Silence seemed to settle on the entire group as Coulson and May finished their yelling match. Not that Melinda May's quiet, calm speak could be considered yelling but it was close enough. Just as May was about to speak Hunter spoke.

"Uh, I think that's more interesting than your fighting." He pointed and they all looked at the video feed at the corner of the screen of Ward's cell. He was in view, on his bed but it was Skye sitting on the floor a few feet away with her hand over her mouth that drew attention. "Is she laughing or crying?"

Coulson hit the audio immediately and they heard Skye's laughter as well as saw it as the screen enlarged.

"…no, not possible. How could you screw up something like that? I mean, you were trained by Garrett to survive in woods, trained to be a specialist but you screwed up Laser Evasion over a girl?"

They watched Ward put up his hands, "I was stupid, every guy does something stupid over a girl once. I just happened to trip over every laser in the room trying to impress her."

"Okay I would have paid to see that." Skye laughed and shook her head. "I mean, you screwing up. Wait till I tell Simmons, she'll make her previous attempts at mocking you pale in comparison."

"Oh God!" The man covered his face, "why don't you check the feeds."

Skye smirked, "trying to get rid of my company?"

"To save what sanity I have left, yes!"

Coulson clicked off the audio and looked at May, they turned to see Trip and Hunter trying to hold in laughter. Finally the men gave in and busted out laughing, trying to stop at the stern faces but couldn't.

"Sorry." Hunter put up a hand. "Just, I've been there mate. I mean not there obviously but making a fool out of myself for a girl…"

Trip shook his head, "third grade, tripped over every cone during basketball dribble attempts to impress Keesha Marcus. She laughed till she couldn't breathe, well her and most of the class."

"Tried to make dinner for my ex-wife, ended up burning down the kitchen. She threw me out and all because I tried to do something impressive." Hunter shrugged, "but taking out a whole class."

"Now I know what they meant by 'Don't pull a Ward' when I went there. Never understood that one but man…" Trip sighed and shook his head.

May looked at the screen to see Skye settled back against the wall looking at her computer. She turned to look at the two men. "Dismissed."

Both men left and Coulson folded his arms as he looked at the screen. "I haven't heard her laugh like that since the fall."

"Why is she in there?" May shook her head, "you told her not to go down there again."

Coulson watched the girl on the screen as she spoke quietly to Ward and he seemed to talk to her. Her arms around her legs once her computer was aside, no interrogations or dangling threads. Turing the sound back on he listened to what was said.

"…then it was like nothing I expected. Being shoved in a world full of people when you'd lived so long on your own with only a dog."

"But you adjusted, it's what you do."

"At first I tried to ignore people, do what Garrett told me to do. I took the classes I was ordered to take and did the work but when I received low scores for Interpersonal Interaction in every class I knew I had screwed up."

Skye sighed, "I'm sure Garrett was pleased, whole detachment policy and all."

"No, in fact that was one of the first beatings he gave me. I screwed up on an academy-related op, an assignment, because I failed to get along with my team. I caused us to come in last instead of first like he expected. The day after I could barely stand up, missed several classes because of it but I learned quickly to at least make nice. After that we all had our specialties and blended them together, coming in first each time. Separate but working together…nothing like being pieces to a puzzle."

"He beat you?"

Ward rose from the bed, "I wish I could say it was a lie but I swore never to lie to you. Yes he beat me, whether to maintain a cover or because I screwed up, he did it when he saw fit."

They watched Skye move over to him, staring at him as if silently judging him. "Why tell me this? None of it helps you…"

"But it helps you, it helps you understand why I did what I did. It helps you understand how I came to be who I am." He walked over to her, standing mere inches away separated by the barrier. "Nothing I do or have done since I was placed in here is to help me, it was to help you. Nothing in the world will ever let me leave this cell but I'll do whatever I have to so that you have a life. Nothing in the world matters to me mia bella, nothing except that you keep breathing and living."

"So you'll sale your soul to keep me safe?"

"I lost my soul a long time ago but you haven't lost yours and I hope you never do. The darkness of being alone with no one to hold onto, with no hope or will to live is not a place you should ever be."

Skye nodded, "that's why you tried to kill yourself."

"Yes, not because I was loyal to Garrett or without orders. I nothing, no one to live for till Coulson told me that by spilling HYDRA secrets I could keep you safe." Ward shook his head, "it was like seeing light again, the realization I could keep you safe like I'd been trying to do all along. As long as you were safe I could live with what I'd done."

"Coulson used me as a bargain chip?" Her voice raised slightly, "why?"

"I had information on your father, I told him after the attempt on your life. I thought he'd told you, I thought that's why you shut down the conversation when I brought him up."

"No, I didn't know. What did you tell him?"

Ward shook his head, "about who your parents were, what they did to the village…"

Coulson shut off the audio and pressed a button, the barrier solidified between the two as Ward was speaking. The director looked at May, "get her out of there, I'll lock her out. She can't know any of it."

"Phil she'll become suspicious soon enough."

"Get her out!"

A/N: Secrets are being kept and now they're keeping Skye away from Ward.

Next...Skye hits emotional overload and May does something out of character.

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