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Ward catches Skye eating peanut butter at three in the morning, hunched over in one of those leather seats. It looks like the chair might swallow her at any moment, her tiny body and her shaking hands. She eats like a woman starved, unaware of his eyes on her. The flicker of her bracelet catches his eye every time she lifts the spoon to her lips, licking at the inside of her mouth.
“That’s not a meal,” he finally says, making her straighten in the seat.
“Agent,” she says, and she’s called him Agent for three days straight now, long enough that he’s starting to worry it might be permanent. “I was hungry.”
“Because you haven’t been eating.” Ward notes. She’s been locked in her room for longer stretches than he’s accustomed to. Her hair is tangled and she looks exhausted, hollow, and throughly unhappy to see him.
“I eat when I’m hungry,” she replies, turning her gaze away from him and back to the jar of peanut butter. She holds the spoon in her mouth while she seals the lid back on to the jar, and for a moment it looks like she’s been lost to her own world, again.
“That’s not healthy,” he notes, and she pulls the spoon from her mouth. Her grin is bitter and cracks at the edges. It makes him feel alienated, like he’s never really known the girl sitting in front of him.
“I promise,” she says, rising from her seat, “I won’t waste away. I just don’t eat when I’m stressed.” She reaches on the tips of her toes to reach the cabinets again, and Ward steps in far too quickly for her liking. She moves away from him with a sudden purpose, and he can almost feel the space between them pressing against his ribs. Noticing she still has the jar in her hand, she tosses it to him and he easily makes the catch, but it doesn’t distract him from the clatter of the spoon onto the bar or the padding of her feet as she leaves the room. He swears under his breath before turning to follow her, softly calling her name in the hallway. He knows she hears him but she ignores it, pulling the door of her bedroom open and trying to seal herself inside before he reaches her.
“Skye,” he says, catching the door, and she flops onto her bed, motioning for him to come inside.
“Are you going to try to talk to me?” she says, and there’s something mocking about it. “Tell me that there’s no way for you to trust me anymore?” He swallows down the tangles in his tongue.
“I wanted to tell you that you’ve missed combat practice, four days straight.” She tosses her head back, her chest rising and falling with a careful concentration. She holds up her wrist, the monitor blinking between them.
“I’m not an agent,” she says. He fights the protest in his throat, the one that says, demands, “yes, you are.” She looks too wary to believe him. He feels exposed, like she’s seeing the man he’s been trying to hide this entire time.
“What are you, then?” he asks. It comes out snide and vindictive, a question that he already knows the answer to.
“Prisoner of SHIELD,” she returns, cool and all too aware of her limits. “Exactly what I figured I would be. You guys are really fantastic liars, huh?”
“You’re one to talk,” Ward retorts, too quick and too harsh. She flinches.
“Nice one, Agent Ward,” (she says his name like it’s poison), “have you been working on that all night?”
“Don’t you talk down to me,” Ward says. She snickers, and it makes him unsteady.
“Sorry, sir,” she spits, “Agent Ward, sir.” She stretches out on her bed, the first time he’s seen her take up space all night. She’s been far too aware of her surroundings, caged in her own body. He sits on the edge of her bed before he can think better of it, and she immediately shrinks back, pulling her knees to her chest.
“It doesn’t have to be this way,” he offers, trying to find his softness, “you can reform yourself. You can earn our trust back.” He regrets it the second it leaves his lips, as Skye uncurls herself and shifts onto her hands and knees. She crawls towards him, and he feels suddenly hot and terrible and sick. Her lips are a hair’s width from his ear, and her breath is warm and-
“Fuck off, Agent,” she hisses. She falls back, her eyes dark. He fists his hand into her sheets.
“I’m trying to help.” he says.
“So make a deal with me,” she replies, waving her wrist. “Get this off me, and you’ll never see me again.”
“What about your parents?” He blurts, before he can stop himself. She glares at him.
“Don’t,” she warns. He doesn’t think she had any right to be the cruel one here.
“What good is it going to do you if you keep running?” he pushes, “You didn’t find them that way. You didn’t find much of anything, did you?”
“I wasn’t in a cage!” she snarls back, “You have no idea, Agent Ward. This is who you are-” she gestures to him, “cold and confined and feeling nothing at all. I can’t be a robot.”
“What are you, then?” he spits back, “A little freedom fighter?” He’s being too aggressive, too defensive. “You must be so proud of yourself, fucking everything up from being the scenes, leaving me to clean up after you.”
“Tell you what,” she offers, and she’s almost yelling at him, her arms spread wide and her eyes brimming with a set loathing, “next time I’m in the field, just let someone shoot me. Problem solved!” It jerks something in his chest, the very notion of it, and though he knows she’s talking in hypotheticals, beating against his shell with her taunts, it still eats at him, the second mention of her disappearing off his radar for good.
“I’m not going to let anyone shoot you,” he says, “I’m not taking your monitor off, I’m not having this discussion with you. You’re being insane.”
“Did it bother you?” she interjects, “That I slept with Miles?” Ward stiffens, eyeing her face for a sign that she’s joking, that she’s not going to press this issue.
“It bothers me that you went behind our backs to screw a wanted criminal,” he replies. She’s grinning.
“You really think I can’t tell?” she says. It’s a demand for a confession-and he refuses to listen to her, prying secrets out of him with her tiny fingers and her never ending presence in his brain, like a sunspot that won’t go out.
“Screw you,” he says, and she grins wider.
“Good talk,” she mocks, “Agent Ward, sir.” He almost replies to her. He almost stays seated on her bed. He almost grabs her by the ankle and pulls her forward, and he almost kisses her as he so badly wants to.
Ward gets up too quickly, and knows her face has fallen without needing to see for himself. She waits one, two, three seconds after the door closes behind him, before throwing something heavy at the wall. He doesn’t come back.