Usually when Coulson sat with May in the cockpit he was the one doing the talking. A normal cockpit conversation between the two would be 90% Coulson talking and 10% May mentally giving her opinion through various non-expression expressions. It's how their relationship worked and they loved it.

But on their way to Portland, they sat in silence. Coulson just sat there staring off into space deep in thought. May was waiting for him to bring up something to talk about but he never did. Something was wrong.

"Phil…"

He snapped out of his thoughts and quickly turned to her.

"What's up?", he said like nothing was wrong.

"Something bothering you?"

"No. Nothing's wrong. Why?"

"You're not talking and you have on your thinking face."

"What? I don't have a thinking face."

She scoffed and let him think about it. He finally needed to talk about it.

"It's just um… Every time I think about my time with Audrey I just get reminded about how foolish I was being. She's younger than me, a lot. I was looking for something to distract me from what I was really feeling. She was looking for something real. I… I feel like I wasted her time. That's all. In that time we were together she could have found someone to settle down with. She thought it was me but deep down- actually, not that deep down, I knew that that wasn't me."

She knew exactly what he was feeling. Coulson and May had always had lots in common. It was the reason they got along so well. They were so alike that after they separated they reverted into the same coping methods. The main method they both attempted was finding comfort with someone else.

May met that someone else during a mission with an enhanced person. He was the therapist, Andrew Garner.

He was the first person in a long time that made her feel anywhere close to how Coulson made her feel. Andrew helped her forget about her traumas. She never told him about any of them. She didn't like talking and going into detail about what she was feeling. That was something she's only ever felt comfortable doing with Coulson. But she stuck with him.

They got pretty serious in their time together, even moved in with each other. She was happy but nowhere near as happy as when she had a baby and her father. May thought Andrew was on the same page as her but she would find out that he wasn't.

During their trip to Vegas in 2008, Andrew asked her to marry him. She couldn't say yes.

"I know what you mean. The entire time I was with Andrew he wanted something more, whereas I didn't know what the hell I wanted. I didn't know what I wanted until he asked me to marry him. I found out that he wasn't what I needed in my life. He wasn't what I needed to feel whole."

He nodded to show that he understood and looked back into the clouds. May saw that he started to smile.

"Why are you smiling?"

"I didn't realize how alike we are."

"Why do you think we get along so well?", May said as she flipped a few switches to start the descent.

"That's a bad idea, Skye. That's a terrible idea. The NSA's already got SHIELD on its watch list. Why poke the bear? The big, scary, waterboarding bear.", Koenig said to Skye while they were trying to track down all the escaped inmates.

"Ohh! I thought you were a comms agent, not agent of playing video games while hiding in a bunker."

Ward walked into the office to find them arguing.

"You can't goad me into…"

"Grant, can you help me convince Steve Rogers here to suit up, grab his shield, head into battle?"

"Ok, who's he supposed to battle?"

"If we hack the NSA satellites, we can get footage from The Fridge breakout, see who was there, where they went."

This wasn't good for Ward. He was there. Probably seen on the satellite footage Skye's trying to uncover. But he couldn't disagree. It would be suspicious. Especially since Koenig suspects him.

"Well, she's right. It's worth trying.", Skye turned to Koenig to rub in that Ward agrees with her. "You know I can't hack the NSA but I can upload that hard drive you gave me. Get the Acela on the weapons they might be carrying."

"Absolutely we should but we can't. The encryption is location based. We'll have to take a field trip at some point to decrypt it."

Koenig by this point was convinced Skye knew what she was doing.

"Okay! Alright. Color me impressed. Now impress me more. Get me that footage.", he said as he reaches into his pocket and takes out a lanyard. "These are the keys to the sat room. The main frame is in there. Start the hack and send the feed to these monitors.", he handed her the lanyard, "Let's live dangerously."

"Yeah!"

Ward waited for Koenig to completely leave the room before speaking.

"So how long until you get visuals?"

"NSA satellites should be tough. Give me an hour."

An hour later Ward walked into the office to find Skye sitting in front of a bunch of screens showing rooftops.

"Eric?", she said as she turned to see who walked in, "Oh, hey Grant."

"You did it.", he said in reference to the footage on the monitor. "Koenig said you managed to hack the NSA."

"Look's that way. Where'd he go?"

He was a specialist. He was trained to lie. But he was trained to lie enemies, random people; not the girl he loved.

"He's sending everything over to NATO, CIA, Interpol. Guess he thinks they'll take it as a sign of good faith from SHIELD."

"That's smart, though it looks like all I got was a bunch of views of empty rooftops."

"That's alright something will turn up."

He walked over to the bar and started pouring two glasses.

"What are you doing?", said Skye when she saw what he was doing.

"I know it's not really a date, but- it's normal.", he said holding out a glass for her.

His spontaneity made her smile. She put the tablet down and walked over to pick up the second glass. They both downed the whole glass at once.

"Damn. I needed that."

"I know. It's been a crazy couple of days."

"For you especially."

Ward had a confused look on his face as he reached for the bottle.

"Me?"

"Yeah, you. SHIELD fell, your mentor turned out to me the mastermind behind everything our team's been chasing for the past six months, you had to fight all those inmates and Hydra agents at the Fridge, and on top of that you had to put down Garrett."

"Sometimes I forget how direct you can be."

"It's not that hard when your boyfriend is a rock. I've gotta find new ways to get you to loosen up."

He laughed.

"You've always known how to 'loosen me up'"

"Guilty.."

"Besides I've already told you everything that's ever gonna bother me. Everything goes back to the well. All this stuff with Garrett and SHIELD will never hurt me as much as that day at the well."

She held his hand and turned his chin to bring his lips to hers.

At this point trying to be normal was never going to happen for these two. But that wasn't a problem. The problem was that there were secrets being kept.

Skye pulled away when she felt something wet on his neck. They looked down at her hand and saw that there was blood all over it. Ward felt behind his ear and felt a cut. He stood up.

"Uh… one of my cuts must have opened up.", he turned to leave.

"Grant, let me help."

"No no no no no, it's ok. I'll be right back.", he bent down and gave her a quick kiss before leaving the room.

Ward was taking a while. Skye was getting bored. She wanted to talk to Koenig about the footage but he was nowhere to be found. She remembered that if he was wearing his lanyard, his location would show up on the tablet.

She followed the tablet to a random closet. The room was empty. Skye walked throughout the room but there was nothing besides pantry items.

As she was about to leave, she stopped to look at the map on more time.

All of a sudden drops of blood fell on the screen. She looked up and found Koenig laying against the grid on the ceiling with a red, dripping line on his neck. It scared her, she was confused. Who would- no.

She found herself sitting on the floor of a bathroom with tears streaming down her face. She had come to the terrifying realization.

In a shaky voice she admitted to herself out loud.

"He's Hydra."

Questions, comments and suggestions are encouraged. Thanks for reading:)