Skye's POV
I didn't even notice when Ward walked into the room I was so focused on trying to get Eric to agree with me.
"You can't goad me into..." Eric spotted Ward and hurriedly used a folder to cover his tablet tracking our movements.
"Can you help me convince Steve Rogers here to suit up, grab his shield, head into battle?" I asked, inwardly blushing as I thought about the blonde super soldier. I had already been thinking about him way too much lately what with working on his birthday surprise and worrying about how he was doing after the events at the Triskelion.
"Okay. Who's he supposed to battle?" Ward asked.
"If we hack NSA satellites, we can get footage from The Fridge breakout, see who was there, where they went!" I told him.
"Well, she's right. It's worth trying," he told Eric. I turned to Eric and crossed my arms in victory happy to have Ward's backup. You know, I can't hack the NSA but maybe I can upload the hard drive you gave me, get the specs on the weapons they might be carrying," Ward added.
"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," I explained. Noticing that Ward looked so disappointed by this. I wonder why.
"Okay! All right!" Eric said standing from his chair. "Color me impressed. Now impress me more. Get me that footage," he told me. He handed me a lanyard out of his pocket but held it back before I could grab it. "These are the keys to the comm/sat room. The mainframe is in there. Start the hack but then send the feed to these monitors," I nodded and grinned as he handed me the keys, both of us failing to notice as Ward looked away worried and disappointed at how things were going.
"Let's live dangerously!" Eric said with a grin.
"Yeah!" I cheered high fiving him before starting to head out of the room.
"How long before you get visuals?" Ward asked.
I turned back around with a sigh thinking.
"NSA satellites should be tough. Give me an hour," I told him. Sincerely glad that I had already managed to edit all the footage from earlier and fully prepped the music videos and everything else to be ready for Steve's birthday at midnight. It was looking like I was going to be busy & I didn't want to end up forgetting anything for tomorrow since I had fans all over the world now who were looking forward to seeing their messages etc play out tomorrow.
*****
"Eric?" I called out as I entered his office. I looked around but didn't see him anywhere. "Eric?" I called again. I walked up to the bank of monitors and saw the feeds from the NSA satellite, now cleared up, displayed on the monitors.
"You did it," I heard a voice behind me say.
I jumped a bit and sighed after realizing it was Ward.
"Koenig said you managed to hack the NSA," he said.
"Yeah, it looks that way. Where did he go?" I asked.
"He's sending everything over to NATO, CIA, Interpol. Guess he hopes they'll take it as a sign of good faith from Shield," he said.
"That's smart. Though, it looks like all I got was lots of views of an empty rooftop," I said dejected as I flopped down on the couch.
"May's gone," he informed me as he sat down next to me.
"What do you mean, "gone"? Gone where?" I said sitting up.
"She left. I'm sure if I had asked her where, she wouldn't have told me."
"Wow. So, no goodbye? No nothing?" I said with a frown. "She never felt anything for us, did she? She just played us so she could keep an eye on Coulson," I frowned. I knew she wasn't Hydra but it just reminded me of their mind games.
"That was her mission," Ward said.
"Did you feel anything for her?" I asked as I sat cross legged on the couch and looked at him.
"Um...no. The only comfort we took in each other was knowing we didn't have to."
"You can't choose to feel," I told him.
"Usually, I can," he replied.
I stared at him and bit my bottom lip, it was one of my nervous habits.
"It's different with us," Ward added. He stood and walked over toward the monitors.
"Us" is a strong word," I commented, not really knowing how I felt about him. To be honest the only person I could really think about at the moment was Steve, but I chalked that up to it almost being his birthday. Only a few hours now.
I watched as Ward reached out and grabbed a bottle of liquor.
"I mean, I know I kissed you, but to be fair I thought there was a 97% chance we were gonna...die," I said. I laughed as he opened the bottle and poured us both drinks. I decided not to mention that alcohol had no effect on me. "But we didn't die."
"Which is good," Ward said.
"Yes, that is very good. But there's still no rush on us being an "us". It's not like it's a good time to start anything," I said slowly.
"There's never a good time. We've got to start somewhere," Ward pointed out.
He held one of the glasses out to me and I gave him a warm smile.
"If that's how you felt, you had a funny way to show it," I said.
"Specialists don't spend time with a lot of people. The ones we do, we're all cut from the same cloth," Ward tried to explain.
"Black Kevlar?" I joked.
"Trained to get the job done, keep emotions in check. But you – you're different," I could understand where he was coming from. Being raised by Hydra hadn't given me much opportunity to feel anything other than hatred, fear, and other negative emotions. It hadn't been till I met the avengers and then Coulson and everyone in Shield that I had started to open myself up more as well.
"Different" bad?" I prodded.
"Bad for me. I didn't want to think about you. I wanted to stay focused. And then I saw you, after you were shot...fighting to stay alive? But you're right. I'm Kevlar. You're not," Ward said. I frowned, thinking that was only half true.
"You don't have to be. You don't have to shut people out," I told him. It was what I had been telling myself ever since I met Coulson. It was actually something he had said to me.
Ward look3; down and away when I said this.
"Yeah, I do," I couldn't blame him, that had been my exact response to Coulson.
"There are things about me...that you wouldn't like if you knew," he said.
"You think I don't have skeletons?" I asked him.
"It's different. You're...Good." I bit my tongue to stop my knee jerk reaction to say that I wasn't.
"So are you!" I chose to say instead.
"Not always." He set his glass down on the table and sat up straighter and closer to me. "I lied to you." I took a deep breath and also sat up a bit straighter. "My older brother...he didn't beat up my younger brother. He was crueler than that. He made me do it."
I closed my eyes. That had not been what I expected him to say. Ugh, his family sounded like the guys at Hydra. That was exactly something they would have done.
"And I let him. I was afraid of him," Ward said.
"What about your parents?" I asked.
"They were worse." He leveled me with a very serious look, and it almost looked sinister – I am not a good man, Skye."
I got up and sat down next to him on the couch.
"Hey," I said. He was looking down and away so I took his chin turning his face toward mine. "Yes, you are," I told him.
Ward's eyebrows furrowed together, he put his hand behind my neck and pulled me in kissing me. It slowly got more heated and I could feel months of pent up emotions fighting to be released as I put my hand to Ward's cheek by his ear. When I pulled my hand down his face a trail of blood comes away with my fingers.
I ignored the pleased smile on his face as I noted my fingers were wet and held them into the light, realizing there was blood on them. He puts his hand behind his ear and stood up quickly.
"Yeah, one of my – one of my cuts must have just opened up," he said.
I stood up too holding a hand out to him.
"Let me help. Let me help," I offered.
"No, no, no, no. No!" He said, pushing my hand away and stepping out of my reach. He started walking toward the door. "I just need to clean up."
*****
I sat at Eric's desk looking at a folder. I sighed as I stood and shut the folder putting it back on the desk. As I did so I noticed his laptop under another folder, the tracking program he used still pulled up. I picks up the tablet and saw a dot labeled "Koenig".
"There you are, Eric."
I lifted the tablet higher and turned a few times orienting myself on the map, then I set off to find Eric.
*****
I walked down a hallway with the tablet held up looking at the map. The map showed I was right outside the room where Eric was. I put my ear close to the door and knocked.
"Eric?"
I tried the knob, it twisted so I opened the door. When the door opened I heard what sounded like something small and metal hit the floor. I looked down confused and saw a penny spinning, I looked up then picked up the coin.
"That's weird," I thought to myself.
"Eric?" I called out again as I entered what looked like a storage closet. "Eric?"
I looked down at the tablet and saw that my little dot was literally right on top of Eric's. Suddenly a few drops of blood hit the tablet. I looked up and gasped as I saw Eric's body stored up in the ceiling rafters. I glanced back down at the tablet and saw Ward coming towards me. My eyes widened in shock as I realized what had happened. & then suddenly it was like my brain was exploding and my memories rewriting themselves as I re-remembered finding out that Garret and Ward were Hydra only this time it was before everyone else had found out. I clapped a hand to my mouth as I fought the urge to hurl. If I had only remembered sooner, how much death and destruction could I have prevented! I felt sick to my stomach. I raced out of the room and down the hall and closing the door behind me as I entered a random room.
"Skye? Skye!" I gasped quietly as I heard Ward calling out my name. I had to think quickly of some way to warn the others without letting him know this time.
I looked around the bathroom trying to come up with ideas when I spotted a nail file. I decided this time to just use my fire power to burn the message into the wall but used the little window mechanism to hide the message and the nail file to lock the previous photo in place so that Ward wouldn't notice and cover my message up like last time. I also decided to use my glamour ability to hide a trail of golden light leading towards my message but in such a way that only those who I wanted to see the trail of light would be able to.
"Skye!" I heard Ward call out again.
I used my super speed to put back the penny - now knowing Ward had used it as a way to figure out if someone had been in the storage room and then popped up behind him a few minutes later after he had checked to make sure the penny was still there.
"Hey," I called out to him.
He quickly looked up to see me standing at the end of the hall giving him a pretty convincing smile.
"Think I'd be hiding in a closet?" I asked, trying to sound as light hearted as I could.
He gave me one of his warm smiles as he shut the door then walked over to me. The smile didn't fool me for one second anymore though.
"I was wondering where you went. I went back to the room, you weren't there. Why'd you leave?" He asked.
"Truth?"
"I'd appreciate it," he replied.
"You scared me," I told him. Watching as his face turned somber. "Opening up, and that kiss – which..." I rolled my eyes and put on a fake smile as I moved in closer to him. "Was a very nice kiss, I admit." He smiled a bit and shook his head.
"I didn't mean to scare you."
"I don't exactly over analyze. I just act impulsively and then I freak out after the fact," I told him, which was completely true.
"Are you still?" He asked as he stared at me.
I shook my head and stepped in even closer to him kissing him. I broke off the kiss and backed away giving him a little smile.
"No. I'm good," I told him, lying through my teeth. "I want this," I said out loud though in my mind I was picturing Steve in order to get the words out. "And you? What do you want?" I asked him.
"What I want...is to stay here with you and imagine the world outside doesn't exist," he replied. "But the world outside does exist. I just got word from Fitz. They need our help. The Bus is fueled up, ready to go," he said.
I decided to give him once last shot. "We should tell Agent Koenig," I said.
"I just did. He's headed outside to open the hanger doors. We're in a hurry," Ward said and I felt my heart sink in my chest, knowing that the bastard was lying through his teeth.
"I just got to grab a couple of things," I said and turned to go but Ward grabbed my arm, stopping me.
"Hey. We need to go right now!" He said seriously.
"Of course we do!" I said giving him a light laugh. "Lead the way."
He started off down the hallway then glanced back again before holding out his hand to me, I took his hand in mine this time trying to imagine that it was Clint's hand I was holding. But I still felt sick to my stomach.
*****
I glanced out at the view in front of me as Ward and I sat in the cockpit. I glanced at the time and noticed that it was officially midnight on July 4th.
"Happy Birthday, Steve" I thought to myself as I once again thanked the stars that Eric and I had the foresight to set up everything in advance since it didn't look like Ward was going to let me out of his site anytime soon.
"It's so beautiful," I said as I stared out at the night sky. Hoping that Steve's day would end up going better than mine was. "So, are we off to Portland?" I asked.
"Actually, Fitz thinks the 0-8-4 plasma ray we found in Peru might help," Ward said.
"Didn't we jettison that to the sun?" I asked, confused.
"Yeah, but, Fitz has the specs on it," Ward replied.
I thought for a moment before realizing what he was after.
"On the hard drive," I finally said. Ward nodded. "You need me to decrypt the hard drive," I said inwardly smacking myself for not realizing sooner what this was all really about.
"The team does. And since it's coupled to specific coordinates, Agent Skye...you're in charge," Ward said giving me a little smile. "Where to next?"
(Author's Note - ok so the next chapter is just going to be a full POV of Steve on his bday and basically a run down of what the birthday album video recordings were of and then the next chapter will continue with the next episode of the show. I just wanted to make that clear for people in case they ended up getting confused on the timeline since it's basically going to be describing the same day twice just from two different perspectives tho once I'm done with Steve's bday the timeline will obviously continue.)