anchoredinthestars:

He leaves her behind, but he never stops watching.

S.H.I.E.L.D. never quite rises from the ashes HYDRA burned it down to, but the team does. He suspects she’s a part of that, and there’s a part of him that can’t help but swell with pride at the idea; it is his rookie, after all. But it’s a part of him he swears he buried away the day the lines were drawn and he found them on starkly different sides.

They retreat into the shadows—deep enough and long enough that HYDRA eventually writes them off as disbanded. But there were little things, like the occasional wiped mainframe and weapons he’ll notice are missing while checking inventory at a newly-captured base. Of course, though, he’s the only one who ever knew them well enough to recognize the signs.

Garrett gives him a couple days off, and it isn’t until then that he commences his search. He tells himself that it’s only because there’s no point in informing HYDRA of a threat that might not even exist. But then he eliminates the first person who asks one question too many, and to hell with reason anyway.

***
He doesn’t find them until his last night, cooped up in an ordinary brick building deep in New York. It’s well past midnight, and there’s only one window still with lights on: Coulson and May. They’re gathered around a dining table, discussing something he’s too far away to see. They look strangely domestic, he contemplates to himself, both in a shirt and sweatpants when he’s only ever seen them in suit and gear. Before he even realizes it, the phone is poised in his fingertips, his thumb barely an inch away from hitting ‘call.’

But then another light goes on, and he sees her.

Her face is tear-struck, and he can’t hear anything past the pane of glass and the couple hundred feet, but he can see her screaming. Simmons has her wrapped in her arms; Fitz watching, concerned, from the door. Soon, Coulson and May are there, too—exchanging a look that clues him into the notion that they had all gone through this same song and dance many times before. His stomach drops despite himself, and he can’t help but feel like the same old Agent Grant Ward who found her on the verge of death on a cellar floor. Every fiber of his being is pulling him towards her, desperate to take away her pain, and so he leaves.

With every mile he puts between them, the more he manages to convince himself that it wasn’t his name he saw her screaming.

***
After that, he comes around often enough to know that while it may be Coulson who first gets her to crack a smile, it’s really May who coaxes out genuine laughter. He learns that she celebrates her birthday on Christmas, and that she has something of a weakness for Fitzsimmons’ chocolate cake. When someone he doesn’t recognize walks into their loft, he watches as she picks up a gun and prepares to fire in record speed. For the first time, her form is textbook perfect. It is also, he notes, the first time he sees her with the kind of murderous conviction that could burn down the world.

He’s not sure how he feels about the fact that she didn’t even need the Berserker staff to cultivate that kind of rage. After all, even if she’s angry, at least she’s not broken.

But later that night, she wakes up screaming and screaming and she doesn’t stop. This time it’s Coulson who gets to her first, and he quickly pulls her against his chest, whispering a string of comforting words into her hair.

He swears to himself that when the nightmares stop coming, so will he.

***
As it turns out, the stranger from before soon becomes the resident supervising officer of the team. He spars with May, while Fitz and Simmons observe studiously from the edge of the room. He only has a few seconds to wonder where she is before Coulson walks her in. She takes in the scene around her with confusion. As soon as she realizes what’s going on, however, her expression instantly hardens, and she slams the door behind her.

A few days later, the new SO catches her walking through the living room, and he quickly intercepts her path. He pulls out a board game from behind him—something of an olive branch, if he had to wager a guess—but she only punches him in the face.

Once the room is deserted, he pulls out his binoculars, and he finally sees why—sitting on the coffee table, left unattended, is a game of Battleship.

***
Garrett sends him away for three months, and when she’s his first stop the moment he gets back, he realizes that he’s stopped trying to justify himself long before he ever left. He’s greeted with the image of her working on a punching bag, eyebrows furrowed and eyes fiery and focused. He’s not all that surprised, really; it was only a matter of time before she got back in the game. He’s not even surprised to find that the SO is there, too, calling out corrections and sets and doing everything that he used to once upon a time. What does catch him off-guard, however, is when the SO unknowingly pokes her side—a particularly sensitive spot he knows about all too well—and she erupts into a fit of giggles before encircling her arms affectionately around his neck.

He’s proved himself to be the master of compartmentalization. So why can’t he seem to stop his own heart from breaking?

***
He watches as they train night after night, serious regimens evolving into something distinctly more fun and lighthearted. He still loves watching the mischievous glint that sparkles in her eyes, he realizes, when she throws out a comment full of wit and snark the way only she knows how. She smiles at her new SO; and it’s so much like the one she used to reserve just for him that for a few precious moments, he lets himself pretend that it’s him who’s at the receiving end of it and that nothing ever had to change.

She’s still impossible to beat at Battleship, he learns. As much as she claimed that the game was just stabbing mindlessly in the dark, there’s only so much luck a person can have before it runs out—and he’s never seen her lose.

She’s more alive now than he’s ever seen her in a year and a half. This new SO, he makes her happy. He’s good for her, leagues better than he could’ve ever been. But he knows that if anyone’s to thank, it’s the team. He can see that she knows it, too—in the way that she sits through hours of Call of Duty with Coulson, and in the way she tries to prank May. When a bar opens in the building over, she plays faithful wingman to Fitz; though she somehow always manages to bring Simmons into the mix. He thinks back to her late-night training rants, and the way she used to passionately lament the utter injustice that was a non-romantic FitzSimmons. If they couldn’t make it happen, she yelled as she attempted to land a punch on him, what chance in hell did anyone else stand?

And he can’t help but wonder what chance they would’ve stood. If this was maybe the future that he could’ve had with her in another life. But he had chosen his past with Garrett, and that was a decision he would never have been able to turn his back on.

He downs his drink quickly once he realizes that she and the SO are headed towards the bar. He accidentally brushes against her shoulder, and even the minimal contact sets all his nerve endings on fire. He quickens his pace through the throng of dancing bodies, but once he’s safely outside, he watches through the pane of glass as she carefully turns back around and closer inspects the crowd, as if she somehow sensed he was there, too.

He’s not entirely sure if he wants her to find him. He certainly doesn’t take any more precautions to keep himself hidden. Her eyes pan slowly through the length of the room, and she’s so close, just one more turn of the head—

But the SO pulls back her attention as he hands her a shotglass. And a part of him can be glad that she’s finally getting that drink, even if it isn’t with him.

He leaves her behind, but he never stops watching.