This is what happens when I listen to my favourite album directly after rewatching "The End in the Beginning". Blame Gabrielle Aplin and her song "Human" for the feels. Also, the fact that Ward was heartbreaking in this scene and so clearly and deeply cares about Skye.

"I thought you were Coulson."

Skye's eyes met with Wards across the sterile interrogation room. It was a vastly different atmosphere from the last time they had been alone in that room together. When they had first met it had been playful. She had toyed with him; exploited is total inability to lie by making him uncomfortable. It had been a thrill if she was honest with herself. There was none of that this time. They had both been so innocent then.

Skye handed Ward the bottle of water she had brought as some lame sort of excuse to see him. She wasn't fooling anyone, least of all herself.

"Thanks." Ward said softly as they both sat down on the cold steel chairs.

There was an awkward moment of silence; the calm before the storm. Skye was endlessly confused and Ward's stoic expression gave nothing away.

"Why'd you do it?" Skye voiced the exact thought that had been running on a loop in her head ever since she heard the gunshot over the comms.

As she waited for his response, she never thought she had seen Ward look so utterly out of his depth. It unnerved her. Her SO was unflappable and unemotional; or at least he tried to be. To see the warring emotions etched across his features was so completely foreign.

"I lost it..." Ward muttered, the last of the careful defenses he had spent his life erecting crumbling. She had a way of doing that. "I got angry. He pushed all the right buttons."

"Coulson said the mission was to capture. Not to kill." Skye's frustration leaked into her words, making Ward flinch.

"Think about what the Clairvoyant said." Ward leaned forward, his eyes pleading with her to just understand. "What he's done. Think about the Centipede program. How he experimented on innocent people like Mike Peterson. How he kidnapped and tortured Coulson. How he ordered Quinn to shoot you and he wasn't going to stop, Skye."

Every desperate word betrayed Ward's emotions. His fears and nightmares. There are those that may say that Ward had no feelings and no sense of empathy but that was clearly a lie. He was the most fiercely protective and unwaveringly loyal man she had ever met.

"Not until you were..." Ward's treacherous voice broke at the thought of the Clairvoyant taking her from him. There it was... the real reason he had not hesitated, for even a second, to put a bullet in the Clairvoyant.

Skye simply didn't know what to do with that. Months of a reserved, purely professional relationship that could scarcely be considered friendly at times and now this?

"I wasn't going to let that happen." Ward broke Skye out of her frantic thoughts.

"So what happens now?" Skye asked.

"I face a S.H.E.I.L.D. review board. Whatever the punishment, I'll take it." Ward said, his emotions masked once more.

The thought of him facing some faceless board, ready to convict and imprison Ward was more than Skye could bear. He should never have done it, not for her.

"I deserve it but I don't regret what I've done." Ward sounded so sure, so determined.

"You don't?"

"No, not if it means you're safe." Ward looked at her so intensely she could scarcely hold her gaze.

"You and the rest of the team." He said, averting his eyes and trying to distract her from just how much he had given away.

"Don't do that." Skye whispered.

Ward looked up at her, confused and troubled by how upset she looked.

"I know you care about the team, but don't use that to hide from me." She said, finding her voice and shifting closer to him.

"Skye, I..." Ward desperately tried to backpedal. He couldn't afford to become compromised like this.

"Ward, don't." Skye's voice regaining the anger it had held when she first sat down. "You don't get close to anyone and it isn't because you don't have feelings or you don't care! It's because you hide them behind walls so thick and impenetrable that no one can even get close!"

Ward stared at her, completely speechless.

"That might have worked when we first met, when I thought you were just some robot, but it sure as hell isn't going to work anymore."

"You know why, Skye." Ward murmured softly. She may not know his whole life story but she knew enough.

"Yeah... I do." Skye replied, reaching across the table to grasp his hand. "I also know why you shot him and it wasn't to protect the team, not really."

Ward met Skye's penetrating eyes and where he would have shied away before, he now held her gaze. How the hell did she do that? See through all his bullshit and just know the deepest, darkest parts of him?

"Skye I can't. We can't..." Ward somehow managed to extract his hand from her grasp and retreated as far as the small interrogation room would allow.

Skye watched him pace in front of her, his agitation and helplessness evident with every step. She got up and walked around the cold metal table, grasping his arm as he tried yet again to turn away from her.

"You're human, Grant!" Skye all but yelled at him. "Stop pretending that you're n..."

Skye's rant was cut off mid-sentence as Ward crashed his lips to hers. His desperation and pure overload of emotion was evident in the way he grasped her close with one strong hand while the other tangled in her hair. Skye couldn't contain a muffled noise that was somewhere between a squeak and a moan. Ward only responded by kissing her with an even fiercer abandon.

Once Skye recovered enough from her surprise to move she responded in kind, reaching up to grasp his neck and dragging him closer to her. Eventually his kisses grew shorter and Ward pulled back, resting his forehead against Skye's.

"When you got shot I caught a glimpse of what my life would be without you." Ward whispered, his right hand ghosting over the curve in her waist so close to the scars that had barely begun to heal.

"It was terrifying."

Skye didn't miss the way he grasped the side of her neck a little tighter as if to convince himself she was truly standing in front of him.

"Grant, I'm still here." Skye whispered, scarcely knowing what to say.

"I will do whatever it takes Skye." Ward murmured, his eyes impossibly earnest and his thumb tracing across her cheek. "I can't go back to what I was... to a world without you in it."

Skye stayed uncommonly silent, safe under Ward's gaze and in his arms. There, it felt like all this worrying was for nothing. It felt like nothing could touch her.

I feel as though this may develop into a Gabrielle Aplin song themed series because her songs are painfully applicable. Let me know if you want it.