Chapter 3: Stop me
Ward
It's easy enough to get in. When we get closer to the hideout, Skye takes off my cuffs and scowls at my flirty bondage reference. What? I waited a long time before I took it there.
When we show up at the door, the retina scan verifies me as true blue Hydra and we head on in. Oddly, seeing some of my former associates makes me feel damn unsettled, like I don't want Skye to see me talking and joking with these murderous psychotic thugs. Worse, it's almost like I don't even want to talk to them. Like I'm sick of this game. I knew Hydra was a crock well past it's losery sell-by date when I joined up, but Garrett had always assured me there was a higher purpose and that associating with these scumbags was a means to an end. Now I have to wonder whether he ever had a plan beyond saving his own ass, and it makes me feel like an idiot. But what other entity in this world did I ever have a chance to put my faith into before Garrett came along? Skye's right, I was weak. Now I'm waking up to that fact, and man, that is one rude alarm clock.
Could I be more than the sum of Frankenstein parts that Garrett sewed together to make his convenient little surrogate son and henchman? Am I more than just some programmable zombie too damaged from a childhood of unfathomable hurt to save himself from an abyss of depravity?
I have to stop thinking like this. There's no hope for me. That's why there's only here and only now, and whatever minuscule, fragile connection I can feel with Skye to tide me over.
I introduce Triplett as my good buddy and launch into some high octane bullshit about new orders from Garrett while Skye sneakily investigates the specific room I told her houses the motherlode of Hydra intel...because it is in that room and I have no problem giving her full access or whatever else she wants, ever. It's taking every bit of remaining dignity I still have to maintain the ruse of trying to harass, intimidate, or tease her. My heart is broken in nine billion places every time she flinches away from me.
"That's a damn cute IT girl you got there," one of the Hydra goons cackles, winking at me. Before he can ask if I'm tapping that, because I know that's where this is going and I don't want to have to mortally wound him, I change the subject.
"Garrett will be back in touch shortly," I lie smoothly. "Be prepared to move immediately once you hear from him."
Unfortunately, another Hydra goon, an especially vile specimen named Kyle, comes stalking in with Skye. Her arms are pinned behind her back and Kyle is pissed.
"I caught this bitch hacking into our mainframe," Kyle announces. He pulls Skye's arms even tighter and I grit my teeth, trying to keep it together. Beside me, I feel Triplett tense and prepare to spring into action. He sucks at selling a cover.
"Aww, let her go, Kyle," I suggest in a voice equally laced with humor and menace. "She's just doing her job. Chill out. Since when are you some tech ace?"
"I found a virus," Skye invents, "I was just trying to fix it before the whole world could ferret out our secrets."
"Does that not sound important to you?" I ask, holding my hands up in a confident gesture of "we're all pals here" that falls short of its goal.
But I was wrong about Triplett because he sizes up the crash and burn perfectly and moves to avert total failure with an aptitude that surprises me.
"What the hell, man?" Trip asks me, getting right in my face and looking livid. "Have you turned on Hydra?"
"It sure looks that way," observes goon #1, aka Smith. He has a gun aimed at Skye in an instant, the same amount of time it takes me to step in front of her. When her eyes meet mine, there's a new confusion there I can't quite read.
When Smith moves to grab me, I knock his weapon out of his hands and brutally apply every bit of my hand-to-hand combat skills to incapacitate him, knowing that both he and Kyle will have to be taken into SHIELD custody now so that we can smooth this over and prevent the higher-ups from figuring out we've hacked them.
Wait, "we"? I'm not SHIELD anymore and I never was. I'm losing the thread here, or it lost me.
A few more Hydra agents come rushing in, much to my extreme annoyance. As Smith falls to the floor in a crumpled heap, guns are raised all around us and I have just a second to react when someone pulls the trigger on Skye. I push her out of the way and let the bullet strike me instead. It hits my arm and I look over my shoulder to make sure Skye is safe.
"Enough," Triplett shouts, halting the pandemonium. "Lock 'em up. Let's report back and await further orders."
I know that Skye's usb loaded into their system a tricky little program she conceived to mislead Hydra agents into thinking they are sending updates back to their leaders, when really the information will feed back to SHIELD and garner a fake response back from Coulson and the gang. It's virtually undetectable and will take Hydra a while to figure out. We have that working for us, anyway.
Next thing I know, me and Skye are being locked in a cell and I'm just hoping Triplett is as good at jailbreaks as he is at deception.
"Great, locked up again," I whine, shaking my head as the door is slammed in my face. "There must be something about me that just screams 'put me behind bars.'"
"You have no one but yourself to blame for that," Skye reminds me, crossing her arms. "Are you even going to react to that bullet wound, tough guy?" Sarcastic. Annoyed. Like it was dumb of me to go and get shot. Is there even a tiny amount of sympathy left in that beautiful gaze of hers for me? Why should there be? Maybe I'm as crazy as they all think I am for even suspecting it's possible.
"Wasn't planning on it," I admit, wincing now because she reminded me that I've been shot.
"Here," Skye says with a trademark eye roll and a heavy sigh. She pulls off her flannel shirt, leaving just a snug-fitting camisole underneath.
"Shut up," she orders me, reading my appreciative glance all too accurately. Then she rips off a long strip of fabric from the shirt. The bullet passed through my arm, so there's basically just the issue of oozing blood. She dabs and wipes at the wound carefully using the shirt and then tosses it aside, tightly wrapping the torn-off strip around my arm to stop the bleeding.
"Don't worry," I say reassuringly, "Triplett will get us out. The others still think he's Hydra, and thanks to that program you left on their computers, Coulson will know what's going on, too."
"Yeah," Skye nods, as if this is all obvious. Something else is ticking along in her mind, another topic she's carefully analyzing before speaking again. "What's going on with you, anyway, Ward?"
"Can you be more specific?" I request, sitting down on an uncomfortable metal bench and cradling my arm.
"Sure," she agrees in a deceptively light tone. "Do you have a death wish?"
"Me?" I ask, as if the idea is too ridiculous to grant credence.
"You. What happened when we parachuted in? Why didn't you pull your cord?"
"I told you, I pulled my cord," I argue feebly.
"I don't believe you," Skye retorts angrily. Why is she so mad? "And what the hell was that a few minutes ago, with you basically volunteering to be shot?"
"Hey, I was protecting you," I defend myself. "I wasn't going to let you get shot. Not again." The memory of the time she was almost killed by Ian Quinn still terrifies me.
"Maybe that was part of it," Skye acknowledges.
"You're welcome," I quip, but I avert my eyes from her questioning look.
"You didn't turn to one side to catch the bullet with your arm. You just stood there head-on aimed at it like a frozen target. It was just pure luck that you didn't end up shot in the heart. I think you're trying to get killed on this mission." Skye glares at me, accusatory. Seething, actually.
"Fine, whatever," I confess. "I don't exactly relish going back to SHIELD 2.0 and getting locked away for the rest of my life, knowing you're all out there going about your lives, hating me for all of my mistakes. Knowing that everything I fought for was a lie. Knowing you will never see me as anything more than a monster."
The enormity of admitting all of this out loud is momentarily too embarrassing for me to handle, so I get up and pace around a little bit while Skye stands there and bores her eyes into me, infuriated.
"So, let me get this straight," she says. "You're trying to die so that you don't have to deal with the consequences of your actions? Could you possibly be any more thoughtless and immature?"
"I'm willing to die because I'm miserable and lost and scared." Hearing those words come out of my mouth so easily makes me realize again the sheer power Skye has over me. Now I'm completely exposed and totally humiliated.
Skye strides over to me, looking like a perfect angel with her soft features expressing some inscrutable blend of conflicted emotions. Then she hauls back and slaps me in the face as hard as she possibly can. I actually stagger backwards a little bit, mostly out of surprise.
I'm still blinking in astonishment from her assault when Skye grabs my face aggressively in her hands and kisses me. The razor of pained happiness that seems to slice into my heart at that moment is overwhelmingly intense. I wrap my good arm around her waist, fingering the material of her smooth, thin cotton camisole and lifting the shirt to touch the warm skin underneath. Skye moans a little bit and leans further into my embrace, kissing me more deeply, pressing her body against mine unrelentingly.
Off in the distance, we hear an object clatter to the floor with a loud metallic clang and our mouths part from each other for a moment. It's just some random occurrence elsewhere in the building, but the noise has broken the spell between us. I keep holding onto Skye anyway and stare into her eyes, my own expression totally bereft of all defenses. What's going on with us, and what does it mean? What is she thinking?
Skye breathes deeply a few times, not moving away from me, her brow furrowing, her hand pressed against my pounding heart.
She seems incapable of speech, so maybe I should talk now. But what can I possibly say? Only one thing occurs to me.
"Skye," I murmur huskily, "I love you." There go the words, and now there's no taking them back. If I thought I was scared before, that was nothing compared to this moment. My heart in my throat, I wait for her answer.