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When Skye’s phone rang at 4 in the morning, her first instinct was to throw it at the wall. But before releasing it, her bleary eyes focused enough to see Grant’s face on the screen, so she pulled it back and tucked it up to her ear. “Grant?”
“Hi.” His voice sounded strangely hesitant. “Is this - is this a bad time? God, I don’t even know what time zone you’re in.”
Sitting up, she rubbed the sleep from her eyes as she answered, “No, it’s fine. What’s going on? I haven’t heard from you for a while.”
“We’ve been… well, we’ve been moving around a lot.”
“Okay,” she said slowly. “Anything exciting?”
Grant didn’t really answer her. “Do you remember that circlet you had, y’know, in the Starbucks…”
Skye smiled. “Yeah, I think I remember that. What about it?”
“Did it…” He fell silent, but she could hear him breathing over the phone connection. “Did it make you… feel anything? Or see something?”
She frowned in confusion. “Just a little tickle in my arm. And spots for a few seconds if I forgot to close my eyes. Why d’you ask?”
He didn’t say anything right away, and she let him take his time. “We found… something. An Asgardian artifact. And when I touched it -“ Grant choked off the end of his sentence.
Skye gripped the phone tightly, and softly asked, “What happened, Grant?”
“It - it showed me my worst memories. Things… I put them away, Skye, a long time ago. Put them in my past and never looked back.” His voice was softer than she’d ever heard it, and he sounded as if on the verge of crying - or screaming. “Now, it’s like it’s all I can think about.”
She ached to reach through the phone and hug him, gather him tightly and comfort him. “I’m sorry, Grant.”
“Worst part is I’m so angry, and snapping at everyone. And I completely lost control this afternoon, scared the shit out of everybody, myself included. I’m…” He hesitated, and when he continued his voice was so low she could hardly hear him. “I don’t know if I can keep this up. Not like this.”
“Are you kidding me?” Skye shook her head in disbelief. “You’re Grant Ward, super spy extraordinaire. It’s gonna take more than a lousy alien artifact to take you down.” When he didn’t respond, she continued in a softer tone. “Look. Anger is just an emotion. And memories? They can suck, but they’re part of your past, not your present. These things only control you as much as you let them. Trust me. I know.”
Grant let out a deep breath. “It feels like a lot more than that.”
Frustrated, Skye scrambled to think of another way to attack the problem. “Okay then. I’m assuming FitzSimmons checked out you. What did they say?”
“Simmons called it a ‘bio-chemical reaction.’ Said it put my hormones out of whack or something.”
“Okay. Did she seem to think it was permanent? Did she find any actual damage?”
“No. But the - our expert,” he corrected himself, “He said the effects could last for decades.”
“For an Asgardian, I’m sure. But don’t they live a lot longer than we do?” she asked.
“Yeah…”
“So, maybe it won’t stay in your system as long. Or it just plain works different from humans. I mean, I assume your expert was talking about how it works for Asgardians, right?”
“Skye, there’s no reason to think it’ll work any differently on humans.”
“And there’s no reason to think it won’t.” Skye pressed her lips together, listening to him breathe on the other end and wondered if she was even helping. “If it helps, you don’t sound so scary right now.”
She heard something resembling a laugh. “Probably because I’m practically asleep on my feet.”
“Well, I turn into a royal bitch when I’m that tired, so you’ve obviously got better control over yourself half-asleep than I have.” This time his chuckle was more distinct. “What do you want, Grant? Do you want to talk about those memories? I’m a good listener.”
“I know you are.” A quiet moment. “I don’t think I want to talk about that over the phone, though. Or at least, not tonight. It’s too… Everything’s too muddled.”
“Hmm.” Skye thought quickly. “Well, would you rather I distract you? Tell you how I took down Trip yesterday on the mats?”
“Really.”
“Yes, really! I’ve been working hard since I last saw you!” She smiled to herself. “Though it probably helped that I dropped an ice cube down his back.”
Her smile grew as she listened to Grant laughing on the line. “Maybe I should have warned him you like a good prank.”
“Oh, I’m sure he has the idea now. In fact, I’m watching over my shoulder for when he retaliates. I just hope it’s good enough to justify escalating on the next one.” Listening closely, she asked, “Was that a yawn I just heard?”
“I don’t yawn, Skye.”
“Oh, right, that goes right under spies don’t get chafed.” He groaned, but she could hear his amusement. “Can you at least tell me what time zone you’re in?”
“We’re in Ireland.”
“Ward, it’s well after midnight there! If you’ve been too busy to call in almost a week you’ve got to be half dead by now.”
“Guess I just needed something else to think about first.”
“Feeling any better?”
“Yeah.”His voice was unusually soft. “It helped to talk. Thank you.”
“Hey, no problem. You can call anytime. I mean it.” She hesitated a bit. “And don’t shut out your team either. I mean, I know you can’t tell them everything, but… well, Fitz has got to be good at least for a board game or something.”
“Poker.”
“Huh?”
“We’ve been playing poker. Though Fitz has a million tells and he never wins. I honestly don’t know why he keeps playing.”
“Must be the company he enjoys,” Skye suggested.
“Can I…”
“Yes?” Skye prompted.
“Can I call you tomorrow? Or, I guess later today. You’re right, I should get some sleep, but if…” She could hear the sleep creeping into his voice, and felt relieved that the tension from the beginning of the call was gone.
“If you need to talk some more, yes, you can call me. You know I always have my phone, and I’ll text back if I’m in the middle of something.”
“Okay.”
“Okay,” she repeated. “You should get some sleep.”
“Okay. And, Skye?”
“Yeah?”
“Thanks.”
“Always,” she replied, then listened for him to disconnect. She reached to sit her phone down by the bed, then scrolled through her pictures instead. She found a picture of Trip and Dan in matching t-shirts they’d bought while in Zimbabwe and scheduled it to send as an SMS to Grant in a few hours, captioning it with, Our team has twins, too!
Finally turning off the phone and settling back to sleep, she frowned as she thought about what Grant told her. She hoped he’d call later and talk about what was haunting him. Grant Ward may play the strong silent type, but she could hear in his voice tonight that he needed someone. She knew he didn’t have many options, but she still felt glad that he trusted her enough to reach out like that tonight.
Almost as if our ‘relationship’ were remotely real.
Snorting to herself, she rolled over and told herself to go to sleep.
She was still awake when her alarm buzzed two hours later.