A/N: Bad, bad, bad things in this chapter.
Huge TRIGGER WARRNING for rape. This chapter is M even though the story is rated as T.
The thing about Skye
She's a bit more broken than they thought
Skye thought he would smell different.
Ward.
After she found out who he truly is. A spy. A traitor. A wolf in the hen house, disguised as it's defender.
She thought he would smell different, after her discovery, but he doesn't. He still smells the same. Like Old Spice shampoo and after shave and mint toothpaste. He smells like Grant. The man who's protected her and the team- their family- for over a year- the man she fell in love with.
Without a different smell, the reality doesn't connect right in her head. She knows he lied. That the person she's come to know- the fiercely protective and loyal person- was all an act. All fake. But he still smells the same- like Battleship and laughter and safety.
"You were right about one thing. I don't like who you really are," she hisses at him, like she hates him, but she doesn't feel that way. All she feels is confused and devastated- why is this happening? It can't be happening. The cold bite of the handcuff says differently.
Grant's face crumples. "No. Don't say that. Don't say that, Skye. You love me- I know you do."
"You're a monster."
He jolts forward, and her reactions are slow- dull. It's Ward. He kisses Skye, and she's dreamed of this, but it's wrong, wrong, wrong. She shoves him as hard as she can with her one hand- the other still cuffed to the stair rail.
She's not as strong as him, especially with only one hand, and he hardly moves backward before he's shoving forward again.
"No, no- Ward- no!" They fumble as Skye tries to fight him off.
"I love you, I love you," he rambles, "Please, just let me show you-" and then, suddenly, she's falling and her forehead collides with the railing.
"Shit!" Grant hisses, as a star-burst of color flashes across her vision before everything goes dark.
Skye comes to slowly and in a cloudy haze as the world spins around her. She's on the table in the lab. Jemma's lab. Did she get hurt on mission? Her head hurts and spins and nausea rolls in her stomach.
She cracks an eye open to see Grant's face ducked close to hers as he dabs and presses a cloth to her forehead. He smiles as he catches sight of her squinted eyes. The light is too bright.
"Hey," he says, gently. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you. You're okay. You're safe now."
Grant did this. Skye's brain works sluggishly to remember and, slowly, she does. It's hazy and confusing and doesn't make sense.
Ward is Hydra. He's a monster. A Nazi. But he smells the same. She wonders why she's stuck on that one thought.
Grant flutters kisses over Skye's face, and they're warm. He kisses her lips and down her neck and whispers in her ear how much he loves her, how she's safe with him.
It's wrong wrong wrong, and she tries to sit up, to move away, but her head spins and her limbs feel heavy. She can only blink as he deftly unbuttons her flannel. Her brain feels slow and sluggish, but she knows this is wrong.
Her arms finally move, but she doesn't have very good coordination, and they bump ungracefully against Ward's head, shoving at it weakly, trying to just get it away as he kisses at her breast, sucking a nipple into his mouth.
No, no, no, this isn't right, not right, not right. "Please, please, please," she slurs, shoving at his head, begging him to stop, stop, stop.
"I know, I know," he murmurs, coming back up to kiss Skye on her rambling, uncoordinated, lips. "I'll take care of you."
He tugs at her pants, sliding them down her legs and delicately slipping them off each ankle one by one.
He's gentle. It's like her dream- is she dreaming? Why is her dream so warped to produce this strange, monstrous, Grant Ward.
His kisses her thighs and knees, and why can't she move- why can't she say anything other than please? This isn't Grant.
Her head hurts. Hot tears pour from her eyes, streaking down her cheeks and leaking into her ears. She hates getting water in her ears. And she doesn't think she's cried in years.
What's happening again? Something important. Something wrong wrongwrong.
Grant is between her legs, licking through her folds. It feels good- but distant- far away- wait nononono, this is wrong!
Skye shoves at his head, but Ward hardly reacts, only licking her more firmly.
"Please," she sobs. "Don't. Please. Stop."
He finally pauses, hesitates, then starts his ministrations all the more frantically.
Something in Skye clenches. Something distant and terrible and not right. Something in her dies.
Ward stands up straight, and Skye falls in and out of awareness. She thinks she wants to die. It's not a new thought, but she hasn't had it in a while.
Skye's vision clears again as she feels her body dragged closer to the end of the table, until it feels like her butt is hanging and she's about to fall off.
"That's it," Ward whispers, stroking her hair and dabbing at her head with the red stained cloth again. "That's a good girl. See? See how much I love you?"
He grabs her arms and tugs. The world swoops and dives and Skye's stomach almost rebels before everything settles back into its increasingly normal lazy spin, and Ward smells like safety, but Skye doesn't feel very safe slumped on this imposter dream-Ward's shoulder.
Skye feels something nudging at her between her legs, and she's suddenly somewhere else. It doesn't really make sense. Suddenly she's fourteen again, and at the Thompson's, and her arms are tied to the bedposts. Keeping watch all night doesn't actually keep the monsters at bay.
She's faced with a monster, but she keeps drifting out between that stained bed to Jemma and Fitz's lab table (somewhere that's supposed to be safe with that smell of Old Spice, and after shave and mint.
Skye. Isn't. Safe. She twists and thrashes, but Ward clutches at her hips and thighs and keeps rocking back and forth, whispering that Skye is safe, she's safe, she's safe, but it's a lie. She can feel him moving in and out of her, twitching, and no matter how hard she fights, she feels like she's tied to that bed. Her wrist from where the cuff was burns like the rope did, his hands bruise like Mr. Thompson's did, making indents in her thighs as he holds her to him.
Skye sobs as Ward thrusts a hand between their moving bodies and rubs furiously at her clit.
"Come on," he urges, panting heavily against her neck. "Come on, come for me again. You can do it."
It's Grant, it's Grant- she loves him. She hates him. She hates herself as her body betrays her in the worst way, and Ward grunts deeply as his thrusts become erratic, then slow, then stop.
He sighs against Skye's neck, and her head lulls against his, too heavy to hold up.
"Time's up, where is-" Deathlock breaks off as he bursts into the room and catches sight of the state of the two.
Ward curses and hurriedly pulls up his pants before moving to cover Skye with her own shirt. She sways drunkenly, not even present.
"What did you do?" Deathlock accuses, unable to hold back the pure fury and hate from his vocals.
"We were having a moment," Ward scowls at the heavily scarred man, unconcerned with his temper. He won't turn on him no matter how angry he is- not with his son in Hydra's custody.
"You call this a moment?" Deathlock gestures to Skye, who doesn't even react. Only stares straight ahead at the center of Ward's shirt. Dissociated. Damn. She hasn't done that in a while, either.
In the end, Skye unlocks the encryption hard drive. She doesn't remember doing it, but she must have, because she's left alone in the cage.
And that's where Coulson finds her- staring at the hexagonal walls. She's slow to react when the door is thrown open, but when he rushes toward her, she takes a stumbling step back.
Coulson freezes, staring at her hard. She hasn't ever dodged a hug from him before.
"Are you okay? Did they hurt you?" His eyes linger on the laceration across her forehead and the dazed, uncertain look in her eyes. A concussion, he easily diagnoses. He's had plenty of those to recognize one.
"My head," she answers slowly, and her words are slightly slurred, which is only more confirmation. "I hit it on something. A rail. And I think I unlocked the encryption on the-"
"That's okay," Coulson rushes to reassure. "Let's just get you out of here."
His concern only grows when he reaches for her, and she cringes away from him again. He wants to respect her need for space, but there just isn't time. Every second they are on this plane is a second closer to getting caught.
Coulson grabs her arm and tugs her at a quick pace after him, forcing his conscience down for the moment.
"How'd you get past Deathlock?" Skye slurs, stumbling after his quick stride.
Coulson freezes.
…
Skye sits quietly and stiffly on the edge of the motel bed as Jemma stitches up the laceration on her forehead. The doctor keeps shooting Skye concerned looks, but she ignores it entirely. Her head is clearing more by the minute, and she knows that she won't be okay for long.
She'll need to get away, soon, if she wants to have her breakdown in private.
"Skye?" she calls worriedly when she notices the hacker's mind once again drift. "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine, Simmons," Skye brushes off. She stands sharply. "I'm going to shower," she mutters, ignoring the eyes that follow her all the way to the bathroom.
Skye's breath is already coming quick by the time she fumbles the lock on the door and her legs hardly keep her up long enough for her to clamber into the tub. She muffles any sound by fisting the sleeve of her flannel into her mouth.
She just needs a minute. Just a minute to accept this new reality and reassemble her crumbling mask.
Just a minute. She just needs one minute.
…
They are home. The first home Skye has ever had other than her van, but this… the bus is warped.
She should have expected that the first thing May and Coulson would do, once reclaiming it, would be to watch the security tapes. It's probably protocol, or something.
Skye freezes, watching herself on screen sway and blink slowly and do nothing as Ward gently and lovingly rebuttons her shirt as Mike stands by and watches.
He tried to talk to her about it, after taking down Garret, but she shut him down quick. It wasn't his fault.
These two people, though… They won't be so easy to shut down- won't let it go so readily.
Skye sighs, and they whirl to face her, faces full of disbelief and pity and fury.
"Skye…" Coulson says, drawing closer. May's jaw clenches, and Skye wonders if she wishes she finished Ward off while she had the chance.
It will be harder now. Now that he's locked in a cell in the belly of the plane. Locked in the same cage he locked her in after he raped her. Her home is warped, now.
"Why didn't you say anything," May demands. Her tone sounds harsh, but that's just May.
"I didn't want you to know," Skye shrugs uncomfortably. Her head still hurts. "Should have thought to erase the tapes," she mutters to herself bitterly, but they hear it.
"No, you should have told us," Coulson scolds, but it doesn't sound biting. It sounds shaken, which is odd because hardly anything shakes the man. "If we knew, we never would have-"
"What," she cuts in. "Put me in the field? You needed me and you know it. I'm fine. I'm not compromised, if that's what you're worried about. This," she gestures harshly to the screen, suddenly angry. Angry, angry, angry that she keeps letting this happen. "I've dealt with it before. It's nothing new."
But it is. Foster fathers and foster brother and that one teacher in high school before she dropped out. But she's never been raped by someone she trusted. Never someone she felt safe with.
Trust and safety are so rare for her.
Damn Ward. Damn him.
Coulson and May don't look any more reassured with Skye's words, so she decides to just lock her jaw and stop talking while they decide what gloves they want to wear or what platitudes and apologies they want to give, or if they want to decide that it's maybe not so good an idea for her to stay after all.
(She has to remind herself that this isn't really another foster home- while ignoring that it kind of actually is. It's still her usefulness that determines if she stays.)
And that's how they learn that she's a bit more broken than they thought.
May takes over her training, but Coulson starts avoiding her. Skye figures it's her fault until she later learns that the true reason for his avoidance is because he's started carving alien writing.
A/N: Please let me know what you guys think.
~Silver~