Author's Note: Sorry for the delay, but this took twice as long to write than any other chapter. Not because it's twice as long, but because this is the first time I tried to write from Skye's point of view.

Good Lord. Every time I tried, she just came out awful. I had serious issues trying to make her seem sympathetic or remotely understandable when I don't understand her at all in the show. So, for Skye fans - I'm sorry. For not Skye fans - still kinda sorry. This isn't going to be turning Skyeward or Fitz/Ward, or anything else. There's too much else going on for me to try and make an effort at it and still make it sound decent. So, please read and review - you guys are extraordinarily helpful with writing this thing because of your feedback and suggestions!

"Skye, how many times are we going to go over this?" Coulson asked, pinching the bridge of his nose.

"Until it makes sense!" Skye demanded. "Why does he have to stay here? There has got to be another base, another hospital, hell another prison to put him in!"

Coulson waved behind her with his file, losing his temper. "Sure, Skye. We'll move Ward. You tell me what you think is going to happen to Fitz. Or do you think he deserves to be put in prison too?"

Skye huffed, folding her arms across her chest as she paced angrily. "No, of course not, but…I mean, how much is it really helping that we're letting Ward be his emotional crutch? Is that really smart? Look at how codependent Agent 33 became after only a few weeks!"

"You mean Kara, who is now currently going to rehabilitative therapy at SHIELD's base in New York, and who will hopefully return to the field with minimal damage from her time spent as a brainwashed double agent?" Coulson asked pointedly. "Skye, we have been over this. More times than we should have, and I have told you the exact same thing every single time. The Grant Ward we have now is not the same person who we last saw at the Arctic base. I understand that you had personal feelings towards him, we all did. But just the same way that you saw something in your father that could be saved, there is something there now that we have to at least try and help. You keep saying that Ward has Fitz wrapped around his finger, but you never actually observe them together. It's the other way around."

It had been several weeks since Fitz and Ward had both been brought back to HQ. For the first few weeks, Fitz was practically a wraith. He slunk around in the shadows, carefully avoiding anyone who wasn't Hunter or Ward. He hardly ate, he rarely slept, and he managed to drop even further weight that he could ill afford to lose. He flinched at contact, and more often than not, he would react to things that only he could see and hear. The problem was no one seemed to figure out what triggered them. Sometimes he would happily be working in his lab next to Mack and the next second he would freeze, zone out, and start to ramble at people that weren't there.

And while his zone outs were kind of creepy, it was nothing next to his explosive anger. You couldn't do anything that might possibly be misconstrued as an order or a demand. Anything. Like 'pass the salt'. Or "hand me that." If someone made a suggestion that he actually follow the doctors' instructions, Fitz went into a blinding rage that would put Dr. Banner to shame. He threw nearby objects, slammed his hands on tables, or, if it was someone trying to convince him to take his meds like he was supposed to, they were lucky not to get hit and have whatever they were trying to get him to take thrown back in their face.

He didn't talk to anyone. He didn't look anyone directly in the face. He started only coming out at night, and during the day, they would know if he was sleeping because they would hear him shouting in his sleep.

God help you if you tried to wake him from a nightmare. Mack and Hunter were lucky and didn't sustain serious damage. No one tried to wake him anymore.

And then something happened. Hunter obviously knew what, but the only person he would tell was Coulson, and the Director was silent on the matter.

Fitz started to eat. Fitz started to sleep. He still didn't talk to the therapist, and he still wouldn't be seen in medical, but he was starting to put on weight. His cheeks started to fill out, and the haunted, vacant look wasn't nearly as omnipresent. He came out during the day – but the only people he willingly sought out were Ward and Hunter, and to a lesser degree, Coulson. He still didn't talk to the others, but she could hear him and Hunter chatting and laughing away when they went to visit Ward while he was still confined to the hospital bed.

What was stranger was the complete one eighty in Ward. Well, more like a solid ninety. Ward had been dying – from what, no one could figure out. A lingering, vague illness that no one could properly identify. When asked, the doctor simply shrugged and suggested that Ward was dying simply because he was willing himself to. It wasn't unheard of in prisoners of war, which is how both Fitz and Ward were categorized.

And then, as suddenly as Fitz's behavior changed, so did Ward's. He started to get his color back. He still couldn't eat on his own, but that was a psychological problem more than physical. With the PEG tube inserted, he was slowly putting desperately needed weight back on, and he actually managed to stay awake for more than a few minutes at a time. His shoulder was unwrapped and he was now in a figure eight harness and he had use of both his hands, though range of motion was still limited with his arm. He no longer looked like a corpse just waiting to be buried. Ward's reactions were pretty much polar opposite of Fitz's, which was just bizarre in itself – of the two of them, she expected the irrational rage from Ward, not Fitz. Instead, Ward still had mini heart attacks when there were medical personnel in his room. He still shook and flinched every time someone approached his bed…unless Fitz was there.

"But you don't know that's not an act!" Skye protested. She could only think back to Fury's bunker, when Ward had stumbled in, broken and bleeding with a convincing smile and story to back it up. How he smiled to their faces, to her face, and pretended like everything was fine not minutes after he slit another man's throat and hid him in the ceiling of a storage room. He beat a lie detector test that not even Natasha Romanoff could beat. There was no way she was going to accept a sob story about how he had changed now, no matter who told it.

Coulson slammed his hand down on the desk, and she jumped slightly. "Skye, you are not only suggesting that Agent Ward is faking a serious traumatic experience but that Fitz is faking it too. Ward is not the one who is telling us anything. It's Fitz. And I swear to you, if you do anything to set that poor kid back after all the progress he's made in the last two months, I will make sure next time you leave the facility, you will not be coming back. Do. You. Understand?"

Skye opened her mouth to protest, but bit back any retort she could say when Coulson pointed at her.

"Think very, very carefully about how you proceed, Agent Skye. You're taking advantage of your status here thinking you're going to get what you want simply because it's what you want. Your personal opinion on this does not trump physical and psychological wellbeing of another agent. I'm not asking you to forgive Ward. I'm not even asking that you play nice. I am ordering you to stay away from both of them if you cannot keep your feelings out of the equation. Ward is not going anywhere until he is one, physically well enough to be evaluated, but two, until we know for sure what happened. SHIELD has too many recent failures of its own people to do anything less. You of all people should understand that."

Skye wanted to protest. It was not the same circumstances. It wasn't her choice to become a human seismic event. She couldn't help who her parents were. She was on the good guys' side, and Gonzalez and "Real SHIELD" had turned on her as if she was a mass murderer, when she had done nothing to warrant it. Ward, on the other hand, had a fifteen year career as a covert spy and executioner, and they had all personally witnessed the level of betrayal he was capable of.

"Fine," she spat. "But when he turns out to not have changed at all, don't say I didn't warn you."

"Noted," Coulson said. "You're dismissed."

Skye stormed into the kitchen , flinging open the fridge. She was too angry to sleep, and there was only so much steam she could blow off in the gym without losing control and destroying something. And she was waaay too upset for yoga. No matter how often May lectured her on keeping her calm, it never seemed to help.

She grabbed a Red Bull from the fridge, kicking the door shut with her foot as she popped the top. If she wasn't going to sleep, then she might as well get an early start on caffeine.

Not paying any attention, she went to pull out a chair from the table and almost had a heart attack when someone else spoke.

"Not that one!"

She choked on her Red Bull, the caffeinated drink going up her nose as well and down her windpipe as she flailed for the light switch.

The light flickered on overhead, and she wished she hadn't turned it on at all.

Ward sat opposite the chair she was about to pull out, spoon in hand and an open container of gelato in front of him, one eyebrow raised, and squinting in the sudden brightness.

"What the hell, Ward!" she gasped, grabbing a sheet of paper towels and swiping at the sticky redness across her face. "What are you doing here?"

He held up the half empty gelato container.

"You couldn't take that back to your room?" Skye snapped. "What are you even doing up, anyway?"

Ward didn't immediately answer, but took another spoonful of the gelato. "One," he said, talking with his mouth full and she felt her temper rise, "I'm sick of the same four walls after a month and a half." He sucked on the spoon, making an obnoxious smacking noise with his lips. "And two, they said short walks were okay until I get used to the plate."

She glanced down at the chair she'd been about to pull out and saw his leg propped up on it. The fixator looked less gruesome after the pin sites had healed and the stitches had come out. The only outside sign of trauma was a W shaped, angry red scar that cut across the middle of his shin. Instead of barefoot, Ward now had basically an added section of casting for him to be able to walk around in.

She went to move the chair anyway, but Ward lifted his leg, grimacing at the quick movement before she snatched it out from underneath him. He swiveled sideways, cautiously putting his leg back down on a different chair, teeth gritted together the whole time.

"You couldn't find someplace else to sit?" he grumbled. He massaged his leg right above the fixator. "Like on a hot stove?"

"I thought you liked talking to me," Skye said, smiling sweetly.

"Yeah. Back when you were nice," Ward snapped back. He at another spoonful, eyeing her warily.

"You mean back when I thought you were nice," she corrected.

"No. Back when you were nice," he repeated. "You always knew I was an ass, because I told you I was. You just chose to ignore the warnings."

"I am nice!" she protested, and then mentally kicked herself for rising to his baiting. This is what Ward excelled at. Manipulating people and pushing buttons until he got the reaction he wanted, which usually meant irritating her.

Ward raised an eyebrow, his face clearly saying Oh really.

"I am!" Great. Now she sounded like a petulant teenager.

Ward shrugged indifferently. "You were a lot nicer when I was your SO. May's turned you into a mini-May." He took another bite. "Don't listen to her if she tells you it isn't personal, 'cause that's a load of shit."

Skye crunched her can slightly, and then closed her eyes, breathing deep. Do not rise. Do not rise.

"Aww, she's teaching you her yoga tricks," Ward said, cooing like he was talking to a toddler. "You'll be a regular psychopath like the rest of us in no time." He waved his spoon at her. "Watch out. It's a slippery slope between SHIELD Specialist and Government Employed Serial Killer." He paused, making exaggerated expressions like he was considering it. "Mostly spelling, but hey. Glad you found your niche."

"I hate you," she growled. "I can't believe I ever thought there was something good about you."

Ward sneered, lip curling back. "You shot me four times in the chest and left me for dead. Pretty sure you're sitting higher on the asshole scale than I am right now."

"You were working for HYDRA!" Skye protested. "You killed Koenig! And Hand and I don't even know how many others! What did you think I was going to do?"

"I didn't work for HYDRA!" Ward growled. "I worked for a spy agency. It doesn't matter what fucking letters made up their name because they did the same goddamn things." He waved his hand to indicate the whole building. "You know when Garrett first brought me in to actual SHIELD instead of his twisted field ops training, I didn't know why the hell he bothered to tell me there were two agencies in one? SHIELD couldn't tell who was HYDRA, but guess what? HYDRA couldn't tell who was SHIELD. So no, no I didn't really care whose name wound up on my list because it didn't matter. SHIELD hired me to kill people, they don't get to be cranky about me following orders. I still had a line, though, which is more than I can say for May, and you seem perfectly okay with taking orders from her."

"She is nothing like you," Skye said. "Don't you dare compare yourself to her."

Ward smirked. "Of course we're nothing alike. I don't kill kids, and I don't take on a contract to kill my boss after he saved my ass more times than I care to count. Even if it's the Director himself who ordered it."

Skye felt herself bristle, mostly because she hadn't agreed with May's complacency with the possibility of having to kill Coulson, even if it was Fury who told her to do it. Orders were orders, May said, and she would follow them.

But if she agreed with Ward, it meant he had a point. And if he had a point, then maybe he was right about other things, too. And she wasn't willing to admit that just yet.

"You know, I don't get you," Ward said, interrupting her thoughts. "Your father is a murderer, and more than a little unhinged. You're willing to cut him some slack, find some bullshit excuses why he did what he did – including kill a bunch of innocent civilians, trying to draw SHIELD out. Mike Peterson did work for HYDRA, and you forgave him pretty damn quick. Yeah, he was being blackmailed, but he still killed people following their orders. Bobbie and Mack were working for Gonzalez behind Coulson's back, and May's now turned on him like three times. Jemma wanted to catalogue and contain you and your new superhuman band of misfits as soon as you were different, and you're now like this." He crossed his index and middle fingers.

Skye glared over the top of her can. "What's the question?"

"Why do they get a second chance and I don't?"

Skye scoffed, and took a long drink from the Red Bull can without answering.

A slow smile spread across his face. "You're not mad about what I did to other people. You're mad because you liked me. You thought you knew me." He chuckled. "You and May both. I guess it's a good thing you became her protégé. You two are the exact same. You make things way too personal, and worse, you get mad when someone else does the same."

"You killed people," Skye repeated, even though she knew she was beginning to sound like a broken record. How many ways could she repeat the issue she had with him?

Ward obviously knew she was lacking a good defense, and simply rolled his eyes. "You ever consider maybe the reason why I shot Hand without batting an eye was because I took it personally that she sent Fitz and me to die in the field without an extraction team? Not that she didn't give us one, but because she said that there was one when there wasn't?"

Good point. The rest of the team had been just as upset at the time, but when Fitz and Ward had come back safe and sound because they had gone to rescue them, it seemed to take a back seat to other issues. Not that she was about to say that.

"So what's your excuse for Koenig?" she asked. "What was the reason you sliced his throat so deep you practically decapitated him and then hid his body in the ceiling?"

"That was tactical decision, one which I'm beginning to regret," Ward said. "Had I known how you were going to turn out, I wouldn't have argued as hard as I did to get Garrett to leave you alone. The original order was to kidnap you, bring you to him, and let HYDRA make you give them the coordinates for the hard drive. For some stupid reason that I can't understand anymore, I decided it would be easier to coerce you into it."

"You kidnapped me, and tried to trick me into turning over all the files on Deathlok and Centipede," Skye hissed.

"So? I never hurt you. I never hurt anyone on the team on purpose. Deathlok caused you to wreck, punched through the windshield and really kidnapped you. He also, under orders, gave me a heart attack. I at least felt bad about what I did."

"You mean when you were a traitor?"

Ward smiled. "Lines in the dirt on the playground, honey. I'm not asking you to forgive me. I'm just asking that you understand that you're now a part of this shadowy organization that you thought was so awful when we first found you. It took them years to turn me." He pointed an accusing finger at her. "It only took the 'good guys' a year to turn you. Think about that before you decide to use moral fiber as a basis for your argument against me."

Skye didn't really intend to hurt him. She reacted without thinking, like she had done dozens of times when they were still friends, still SO and trainee. She punched him in the leg he had propped up next to her on the chair. It was an annoyed reflex. It wasn't even half strength. It wouldn't have done anything other than maybe leave a temporary red mark and make a slapping noise if it'd had been his other leg.

But it wasn't. And her fist landed just shy of the edge of the fixator which was supporting only 6 weeks of new bone growth and barely healed skin.

Ward howled in agony, launching himself forwards and curling protectively around his damaged leg.

"Oh my God, I'm sorry!" Skye's hand flew to her mouth. "Shit, I didn't mean – I completely forgot…" she tried to apologize.

Ward bit off his cry of pain, teeth digging deep into his lower lip as he tried to breathe. It came out as a harsh gasping wheeze, like it hurt too much to even cry. His hands hovered over his leg, clearly wanting to grab it but unwilling to touch it.

"I'm sorry!" Skye repeated. She could hear running feet – someone woke up thanks to Ward's scream. "I'm sorry! Let me see if it's-" her head snapped round with the unexpected right hook from Ward.

"Don't touch me!" he growled through clenched teeth.

Skye rubbed at her cheek, mouth open in shock that Ward had actually hit her. If his shoulders hadn't been held upright by the figure eight sling he still wore for his healing scapula, be might've actually broken something.

"What the hell is going on here?!" Hunter demanded, skidding to a stop at the door. Mack wasn't far behind him, and neither was Fitz.

"What happened?" Mack asked, pushing the Brit aside so he could take a look at Skye's rapidly swelling jaw. He turned to glare at Ward, but his face immediately softened when he saw how stark white Ward had gone. "What happened to him?"

"I-I accidentally hit his leg," Skye stammered, hand still on her cheek. She felt herself blush crimson with the lie, but hoped no one saw it around the bruising.

Ward glared at her, teeth still clenched tight, looking murderous.

Don't say anything, she thought desperately.

And he didn't. He looked over her shoulder at Fitz and Hunter and shook his head once.

"YOU did that on purpose!" Fitz shouted, and launched himself at her. Hunter caught him around his arm and yanked him back before he could reach her.

"Easy, mate!" Hunter soothed. "He's fine!" He looked back at Ward, shaking his head to indicate to just go along with it. "Ward, tell him you're okay!"

Ward looked like he was about to ignore him, but he finally looked up at Hunter who was actually struggling to hold Fitz back. The normally even tempered engineer looked downright furious, a disturbing blankness in his stare – like he could see her, but he saw something…or someone else, too.

Ward gave a tentative smile, which looked macabre through the blood staining his lower lip where he bit it. "Hey, Fitz. It's fine. It's okay, really!"

"She just fucking hit your leg on purpose!" Fitz protested, twisting in Hunter's grasp. "I know she did!"

"Mack, get her out of here and call Coulson. We might need the medical team," Hunter ordered, trying to keep his grip.

Fitz's training with Hunter must've been working, because the specialist looked like he was trying to hold onto a fish.

Though the way that Fitz was snarling at her, maybe shark was more appropriate.

Mack took her elbow and steered her away and out of the kitchen.

"Knock it off, Fitz!" Hunter ordered.

"Fitz, look at me," Ward said, still obviously in pain but trying to hide it. "It's fine. Leave it alone. Look, I'm okay."

She turned back before Mack pulled her out of line of sight of the kitchen.

Fitz was on his knees next to Ward's leg, cautious, careful finger prodding around the area below the fixator.

"See?" Ward said. "Fine."

The last thing she saw before turning the corner was the look between Hunter and Ward that clearly said everything was not fine.

Sooo...see what I mean? I tried! I really, really tried to make Skye not horrible. I don't know if I succeeded. For those of you who like her, yes, she will eventually come around. But she, I think, would be the last person to ever believe Ward changed, no matter what the circumstances.

Read and review! And THANK YOU TO EVERYONE! One, for your support, and two, for your patience.