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Ward moved instinctively, wedging his body between Skye and the table, as if his body could protect her from the image on the screen and the words flowing out of his mouth.
"Coulson," Ward said, his voice tight, silently begging the Director to do something. When the Director turned to look back at the specialist, his face as blank as the rest of the team's, Ward turned to the Black Widow.
"'Tash, what's he talking about?"
The redhead recovered herself quicker than Coulson, "I…I don't know. I never ran into any leads that could involve him."
Ward pushed on, refusing to let this be another situation that caught them off guard and left them hopelessly in the dark, "Maybe he was following you. Maybe he was involved and you just missed his name-,"
He knew all the possibilities that he was coming up with weren't viable- Natasha Romanoff was too meticulous, too good at what she did that there was no way she had missed anything that simple. It was bigger than just this one kid. Frustrated, Ward put both hands on the table and kicked the bottom of it.
He felt a gently hand on his shoulder, "Ward. Grant. It's okay."
Ward turned his bowed head slightly in her direction as he fought to keep his cool, "No, Skye, it's not. There's something…" He raised his hand to cover his face briefly, effectively pulling away from her touch. She had been so animated, so aggressive just moments before but although she was still tense, she was quiet now, more reserved. He glanced up to see her face and immediately wished that he hadn't. Not an hour ago he had encountered her bright, smiling face in the kitchen. Now she looked as though she had aged fifteen years, fifteen hard and stressful years. Her features had transformed so that they were weary, too tired to fight the fight. She looked ready to give up. The polar opposite of her usual determined and flamboyant self. She looked vulnerable and Ward felt his heart clench painfully.
"I'll go in and talk to him." Trip said and this time, it wasn't an offer. He left before anyone could stop him. Ward cut his eyes to the Black Widow, wondering if they should tell Skye what they had discussed back at the restaurant but Romanoff caught his eye and shook her head almost imperceptibly as if she had read his mind. Ward turned back to Skye.
"Ward," She said again quietly, reaching out to grasp his fingers on the table, "It's okay. You can't always control everything." She reminded him in a whisper so that no one else could hear.
"So, you're the rookie that broke onto the Director's plane." Trip's voice appeared over the intercom and Ward turned reluctantly away from Skye before he could respond. He should be the one comforting her, not her him.
"I asked for Coulson." Ward detected a tremble in Dan's voice, so miniscule that it could easily have been the static from the feed but Ward was too rehearsed in reading people that he wasn't so easily fooled.
Simmons was bent over one of her trusty tablets whispering the conditions of Dan's vitals to Fitz who had sent a D.W.A.R.F. in after Trip to collect data.
Thankfully Trip was as good an interrogator as Ward and picked up all the signs he was supposed to. He leaned forward, taking up as much table space as he pleased so that Dan would be forced to shrink back to keep his personal bubble.
"See, I was sent in here to determine if you are here as a friendly or Hydra. Those are your two choices. Tell me, Dan, are you familiar with how we treat Hydra? You must be; you were there when we took the French base. I bet you never saw so much carnage before in your life." Suddenly, Trip got up from his chair with a terrible scraping noise, causing Dan to flinch and Skye to jump beside Ward. He reached down to take her hand which he had to pry off the edge of table. Immediately, her fingers wove through his and squeezed hard, showing how tense she was.
"I'm here to help," Dan insisted as Trip approached him and Ward saw the detainee's hands shake in effort to keep from cowering as Trip stepped well into his personal space, bracing one hand on the back of Dan's chair, the other on the table in front of him.
"I know that you know that as agents of SHIELD we don't do much of torturing or killing if we don't have to," Trip looked up at the camera and gave a nod, as if to signal that the camera should be turned off. After waiting for a beat as if to make sure that the camera was turned off, Trip kicked the leg of Dan's chair, causing him to tumble onto the floor. Kicking the chair aside, Trip towered over the now openly cowering boy, "I usually agree with those policies but if there's one thing that I won't stand for it's strangers sneaking onto my plane while I'm sleeping, otherwise peacefully, at that. So I'm going to give you one more chance to tell me – what is your purpose here?"
"I… need to -," the words were forced and Ward was sure that the foot soldier was about to wet his pants.
Trip leaned down menacingly, "I'm sorry, what was that? You what?"
"They sent me to give the message!"
Bingo.
Trip withdrew left the room abruptly, reappearing in the Command Center moments later.
"Whenever you're ready, Agent Romanoff." He said graciously.
"I thought you didn't want her going in because she would scare the crap out of him." Rogers commented.
Trip shrugged, "Nah, man, I just wanted to be the first one to do it."
Romanoff only smirked before brushing past the team, summoning Rogers along with her so they could rattle Dan to the extreme.
Ward glanced at Skye who was looking determined but pale.
"You okay?" He whispered, fully aware that May was watching them carefully.
"I think I need to step out for a minute." Skye said in a forced calm voice.
"Maybe you should go sit down for a bit." May suggested in a surprisingly gentle voice, "You could use the rest." Skye hesitated but Coulson convinced her.
"You won't hear anything any more sooner but just standing here. Go try to relax out there. We'll handle this."
Without another word, Skye strode out. After a few moments, Ward followed under after having the team stare expectantly at him.
"I didn't ask you to come, Ward." Skye snapped but Ward sat down on the sofa nonetheless and watched her pace.
"You know, most people don't consider pacing as a relaxing activity. All you're doing is projecting your stress onto the floor of this plane."
"Ward stop."
"No, hey, come here." He reached out and grabbed her, pulling her down onto the couch next to him. She struggled for a minute but eventually fell still when she realized that there was no way he was letting her go. Slowly, she sat up and adjusted her position so she was looking him in the eye.
"Sometimes I wish I never had a family to begin with. Maybe this is causing more trouble than its worth."
"Skye…" He knew that eventually she would go down this road and he knew that when she did, he wouldn't know what to say to her. On one hand, Ward wanted to tell her to keep believing in family and love and the good in people. On the other hand, he knew that he was the perfect example of why those were only ever just fairytales.
She buried her face in his shoulder, muffling her words, "All my family as ever brought me is pain. Literally. Maybe I should just forget about all this. Then the team won't have to endanger their lives for me. I just want to be done searching, done reaching dead ends and not knowing what is going on half the time." Suddenly, she sat bolt upright and fisted her small hand sin the front of Ward's shirt and looked directly into his eyes.
"Let's run away."
Ward chuckled before realizing that she was being dead serious, "Babe-,"
In one swift movement, Skye was on his lap, her hands placed excitedly on his chest, "We could leave the team and go off on our own. We'd take care of each other and they would be safe here away from us if my family ever came looking for me or if I spontaneously turned into a psycho…"
You could be monsters together. Raina's words echoed in Ward's mind but he pushed them down. One of them had to be rational here.
"We can't." His voice came out a more forcefully than he had intended. Skye held his gaze for a moment, the frantic gleam slowly fading out of her eyes.
"You're right." She murmured, sliding carefully off his lap. Ward let out a small breath of relief. One more second and he would've thrown all rational thoughts out the window and agreed to run off with her. He added a quip about how May and Coulson would have killed him if they had left but it was too late and she wasn't listening anyway.
"Hey," Gently, Ward reached out and took her chin in his fingers, turning her to look at him, "We all just want you to be happy. You would have done the same thing for us- for them. I'll ask Coulson to call it off if you want but don't think for a minute that anyone is doing anything that they don't want to. Plus, I know you'll never forget yourself if you let this lead go."
Skye's doe-like eyes lingered on his before she took the hand that was holding her chin in two of her own. Her head came down to rest on his shoulder and Ward felt her petite body shift against him as she let out a long breath.
Romanoff found them like this when she emerged from the Cage. As soon as Skye saw the Black Widow, she bounced up from the sofa and Ward straightened himself, watching as the rest of the team crowded out from the Command Center.
"Well?" Skye prompted.
"Steve's in there pumping him for any additional information but I think he's said all he could possibly know." Romanoff started and Simmons came around to Skye and sat her back down on the sofa, rubbing her back soothingly. Fitz perched on the other end of the sofa, closest to Simmons and Romanoff and Coulson took the chairs across the sofa. May and Trip remained standing.
"Dan knows of your father but he's never met him before. The only reason he knows anything is because of Raina." Romanoff reported.
Ward groaned, "She got to him too? That woman's almost as good at recruitment as Hydra."
"More like propaganda and manipulation," Trip amended and Ward inclined his head at his fellow specialist conceedingly.
Coulson eyed Ward, "Remind me to ask you about that sometime."
"Guys," Skye prodded.
Romanoff resumed, looking slightly miffed at being interrupted, "They want another meet. This time with Coulson." Ward turned to Skye, bewildered who in turn was staring at Romanoff with the same surprised look.
"Did he say why? Does he want me there too?" Skye pressed not even bothering to mask her urgency.
"No. He does not. Dan doesn't know anything really. Raina just approached him and convinced him that this was what we wanted and that he was doing the absolute right thing coming to us like this."
Ward jumped in, "So why all the cloak and dagger?"
"Evidently he was warned to release the info to Coulson and Coulson only." Romanoff smirked.
Fitz added hastily, "Agent Romanoff and Cap are very good at interrogation."
"Hush, Fitz, they know," Simmons hissed, laying a hand on his lap as if to restrain any more words coming out of the engineer's mouth.
"Dan's nothing but a messenger. A stupid and gullible foot solider that Raina preyed upon. But Raina is good, I'll give her that. The whole time I was chasing down intel, nothing about them came up. They must be playing this really close to the chest. Every contact of mine knows of Raina but they don't know anything about her. All they know is that she just appeared one day commanding things exactly as she wanted as if she had done it all her life.
"Skye, I think it was your father that took Raina in and made her into what she is today."
Skye sat back and Ward ran a hand up and down her arm, "You mean like a pseudo-child?"
"I'm guessing more of a protégé or assistant. For all we know, she could just be another pawn."
"Or the mouthpiece." Rogers strode up to them, his eyes flicking over Skye before returning his attention to the Director, "Dan says the meet is to be between Coulson and Raina. Skye's father won't be making a guest appearance."
May spoke up, "We'll need some new faces for undercover back up."
"Wait," Skye sat forward again, "You aren't really thinking of doing this, are you?"
"We've already decided." Coulson said, avoiding the hacktivist's eyes.
"AC , you can't. You're Director for goodness' sakes. It could be a trap for all you know-,"
Trip mused aloud, "Fat lot of faith you got in your old man."
"Shut it, Trip." Skye snapped before looking imploringly at Coulson, "You don't have to go…"
Coulson got up and knelt in front of Skye, lowering his voice so only Simmons, Skye and Ward could hear him, "You've taken care of me Skye. Now let me take care of you. Please."
"I have a few guys I could call up and ask to come in. There's one that I know who will make it for sure." Rogers told May.
"Yeah? Private contractors?" Trip raised an eyebrow at Rogers, intrigued.
"Of a sort. They're buddies of mine."
Coulson and Skye continued their stare off and if Ward didn't know better, they were exchanging words telepathically.
"Fine." Skye acquiescenced.
Ward stood, squeezing Skye's shoulder and looked to Rogers, "What's the name?"
Rogers eyed him evenly, "Lance Hunter."
Boom. And that's how you integrate season 2 into an otherwise AU fic.
Very special thanks to Lightningtiger2 for helping me come up with ideas on how to get Hunter up in this fic!
Reviews are love~