Grant Ward, Out of Darkness. A 50-sentence-prompt sequel.

#01 – comfort

There are still days—so many days—when he wakes from a nightmare to the strength of her hand wrapping around his.

#02 – kiss

God, when he kisses her everything is new.

#03 – soft

No one would have called a former Hydra soldier "soft," but when May sees him carrying a sleeping Dana up to bed one night, she doesn't comment.

#04 – pain

His third week of class, someone asks him about Hydra and he turns as white as ghost until Skye comes and takes his hand in hers.

#05 – potatoes

Skye and Jemma claim that he's trying to make them gain weight with all the carbs he's been cooking, but damn they're never going to say no to Grant Ward's mashed potatoes.

#06 – rain

He dances with her outside the Academy until they're both soaking wet and Coulson shouts at them that he can't be having the co-director of S.H.I.E.L.D. die from a lightning bolt or a goddamn bout of pneumonia.

#07 – chocolate

It's on the day when Skye asks for pickles—pickles!—with her chocolate ice cream that Jemma mentions "pregnancy cravings" and Ward falls out of his chair in shock.

#08 – happiness

On the day Grant Douglas Ward feels his son kick inside Skye's womb, the small foot so firm and alive against his hand, he knows that despite all the destruction in his past, it is finally, finally possible for him to create something breathtaking.

#09 – telephone

Grant calls Skye at least once every day throughout the pregnancy to make sure she's doing okay, and Coulson can't even fault him for it because he calls her at least twice.

#10 – ears

He hears his son cry—a high thin wail—and Grant Ward almost weeps.

#11 – name

They call the baby Dana Leo Ward, and, as Skye points out when Ward is uncertain about parenting, this child has something neither of them had—a family to belong to.

#12 – sensual

They have a baby who won't sleep through the night, a massive intelligence organization to run, and a host of teenagers to oversee at the Academy, but god he's glad she still wants to fuck him in the storage closet between classes.

#13 – death

The anniversary of Garrett's death is harder than anything, but surprisingly enough, it's Triplett who silently pours two glasses of scotch and sits beside him in silence.

#14 – sex

Skye is dirty in bed (and Grant isn't on top).

#15 – touch

He's never been good with casual physical contact, but when Skye invades his personal space, he never seems to mind.

#16 – weakness

There are still days when he is nothing but a shell filled with memories of Garrett and the triggers he pulled, and on those days, they know how to wait, their silence giving him time to find his voice—and his way—back out of the dark.

#17 – tears

"No—no—don't cry for Uncle Fitz. Jemma, what the hell do you do when a baby's crying? Jemma? Jemma, help!"

#18 – speed

Skye borrows Lola and shows up at the Academy on a Friday, ordering a substitute for Ward and taking him on an impromptu date (which, he discovers later, an irate director did not approve of).

#19 – wind

Sometimes he still spars with May, but only if it's outside and far away from his students, with nothing but the wind on his face and that old, familiar freedom from care.

#20 – freedom

He's walked away from all of this before and he knows he can do it again if he has to, but Grant Ward knows that this is the place where he found a different kind of freedom.

#21 – life

The thing about life is that it ends—he has seen it end; caused it to end—but on the terrifying day when baby Dana unexpectedly stops breathing and Ward gives him CPR until he hears that precious wail, he knows what it is like to give life.

#22 – jealousy

He's jealous, but it's not because of Skye—it's an odd, forlorn jealousy, almost grief, for the life he could have had if Garrett had not robbed him of that chance as a teenager.

#23 – hands

He can't keep his hands of Skye, something which Fitz objects to childishly until the day when Ward and Skye find Fitz and Jemma shamelessly snogging in the hallway.

#24 – taste

When he thinks of taste, it's her. It's always her.

#25 – devotion

Grant Ward has known devotion to duty, devotion to debts…and now he is learning devotion to love (and he doesn't mind being Skye's pupil).

#26 – forever

There is a ring on Skye's left hand ten years after he returned to the team and three years after their son is born, and he knows—god, how he knows—this is so much more than he deserves.

#27 – blood

It takes him a long time to get used to the sight of blood again, because he hates the memories it drags up—the memories of blood under his fingernails, staining his skin in a way that still burns in his nightmares.

#28 – sickness

Coulson is the one who gets sick first, an odd virus contracted from an 0-8-4, and this time, it's Skye who goes to the ends of the earth to find his cure.

#29 – melody

Grant never sings—never—but when he thinks no one's around, he sings a lullaby to his son (later, May gives him an odd smile and tells him she's never heard a better lullaby).

#30 – star

When Fitz asks why they chose his name for their son's middle name, Grant just looks at him and smiles, while Skye says, "Leo means lion-heart. Just like you."

#31 – home

They have one, strange as it seems, with a kitchen where he cooks and a laundry room that is never really clean and a nursery with a stack of diapers on the floor. To him, it's paradise.

#32 – confusion

He doesn't know why she chose him, after all this (but god, is he grateful).

#33 – fear

He had never known true fear until the day when he told Coulson he was planning to marry Skye (there were threats of court-martialing from the very same man who had rescued him from an FBI prison).

#34 - lightning/thunder

When eighteen-month-old Dana learns to crawl out of his crib, he joins them in bed when there's a thunder storm, and they cuddle him close (and when Grant looks at Skye, he wonders which she is—the shelter or the storm).

#35 – bonds

He hasn't done active combat for six years, but on the day Skye is held hostage, he suits up with the rest of them, and takes down a dozen men so he can be the one to untie the ropes around her wrists and bring her safely home.

#36 – market

"Goddamnit it, Skye, you can't buy our son's birthday present on the black market!"

#37 – technology

Skye hacked the FBI as a birthday present for him once when he wanted to look up his younger brother, but Grant and Coulson tell her it's not something she's allowed to teach Dana.

#38 – gift

It's taken him years, but he's learned the value of each day, each breath—each time Fitz begins talking about monkeys, each time Simmons says "Oh, Fitz," in exasperation, each time May rolls her eyes at them, each time Coulson mentions Lola in that proud fatherly voice, and dear god each time Skye looks at him.

#39 – smile

Dana's smile as a baby is wide and full of toothless drool, and Grant lives for it.

#40 – innocence

There isn't anything innocent about either of them, so Dana's innocent questions quickly become dirty jokes he has no idea he's making.

#41 – completion

"Completion" is a word for missions he no longer takes part in, "ending" is a word for Garrett, and Grant Ward has a new vocabulary now.

#42 – clouds

Skye steals Lola again, and they make a trip to New York City to visit museums with Dana, who had just turned four at the time, and afterwards they lie on top of the roof of one of his still-unused safe-houses and stare at the clouds as Coulson calls both of their phones incessantly.

#43 – sky

He can't hear the word without thinking of her, of course, and it fits her perfectly, this woman who is his sun and his stars.

#44 – heaven

If there is nothing beyond this life, having this team, this wife, this son—all of it would be more than enough.

#45 – hell

He's looked the abyss in the face and he doesn't want to remember it (but, Skye reminds him, we know how to rob compassion from the abyss).

#46 – sun

He has learned that sometimes simple truths are the ones that matter when he teaches, so he tells the broken teenagers in his class: if you know nothing else, know that the sun rises no matter how dark the night gets.

#47 – past

The nightmares will be there the rest of his life, he knows (but so, Skye reminds him, will she).

#48 – waves

They take Dana to the ocean on his fifth birthday, and Skye asks if Ward would mind if she bought a new dress (a pink, newborn-sized one), and he forgets how to breathe.

#49 – hair

Apparently, badass superspies are also very talented hair-braiders, a skill which Ward develops in the years following his daughter Nadia's birth.

#50 – supernova

When he thinks of supernovas, he thinks of the most dramatic change in his life—a day, so many years ago, when he pulled open a van door in an alley far away and saw a pair of dark eyes staring back at him.