Chapter Text
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The director of SHIELD is older than she looks—56, to be precise, although to look at her you'd guess she was 40. She's never sure whether to credit her Chinese or her Inhuman heritage for that. Although when she looks at Melinda May, currently settled into a well-deserved retirement with former director Phil Coulson, she thinks it could definitely be the Chinese side.
SHIELD is flourishing. Skye's built it up carefully in the 8 years she's been director, remembering very well the admonishment Fury gave Coulson all those years ago: "Take your time, and do it right." With her work, and Coulson's excellent efforts before her, SHIELD is back to its former glory: not as big as it was, but it has again been accepted by all nations as the agency they can trust to protect the world against an alien invasion from another universe . . . or to protect one man against himself.
The science division, headed by Leo and Jemma Fitz-Simmons (though they still use their unmarried names when they publish), is once again the world leader in research and development of technology and life sciences. But under Fitzsimmons' watchful eye, and with the occasional intervention from Skye or Mack, the division focuses only on discoveries that will help the world. Alice Fitz-Simmons, the 20-year-old daughter of said division heads, recently finished her second PhD in biomedical engineering from the reestablished SHIELD Academy and returned to work at the Playground. Her parents had encouraged her to consider school and work outside SHIELD, but the girl had always smilingly refused. "My family's all here," she would say, looking around at Skye and the others. "Why would I leave?"
Mack is the the head of facilities; his second, more secretive duty is maintaining strict control on the alien artifacts SHIELD comes across. Unlike his predecessors, who secretly hoarded all the interesting tidbits they found, Mack is not a bit afraid to have something destroyed if it is too dangerous to keep around. Skye finds that rather comforting.
Bobbi Morse and Lance Hunter are the highest ranking agents in the organization, after Skye, and act as her right and left hands. She'd been a little embarrassed that Coulson named her director and not Bobbi—Bobbi has more experience and seniority—but Bobbi had just laughed when Skye expressed that thought. "I told Coulson years ago that I never want to be director. All that bureaucracy and red tape and kissing up to politicians . . . I'd much rather be out kicking butt." And so they do; it's more common to find them in the control room than the field these days—they're both experts at planning ops—but despite the fact that they're sixty years old now, they are both happy to get their hands dirty when required.
"People overlook you when you're old," says Bobbi, smiling. "It's turned out to be a tactical advantage." It helps that she can still take most people down with her battle staves.
"You should see her," grins Hunter. "Still as good as ever. And still as hot." The pair got remarried on the twentieth anniversary of their first wedding, and this time seem to show every indication of staying together. Skye certainly hopes they do. The last thing she wants is for her dream team of level 9 agents to split up.
They still don't have as many field offices as they did before the rise of Hydra, but those they have are doing well. The UAE office is headed by Murphy, but when someone needs to visit the Playground, he sends his right-hand woman—and romantic partner—Kara, who loves to have a reason to come visit. And the France office recently had a change in leadership; when the old head of the office retired, Skye deliberated a long while before assigning it to her old rookie Lola. She didn't want any accusations of favoritism to come of it, but so far none have been made and Lola seems to be doing a great job (and having the time of her life, as she always does).
Yes, Skye's professional life, her work for SHIELD, is going swimmingly. And as for Skye's personal life . . . well, it's going quite well too.
"Who's that?" asks a new recruit, Patrick, one day, looking across the training ground to see a broad-shouldered man with salt and pepper hair observing a group of trainees sparring with each other.
Patrick's SO, none other than Tani Dhawan, looks up to see who her trainee is looking at. And when she sees, she can't help smiling. "That's Grant," she explains. "He's sort of a consultant. You'll probably meet him soon."
"He's pretty beefy for an old guy," he observes.
"Old guy?" Dhawan repeats, jokingly scandalized. "He's not that much older than me!"
"Sorry," he says, looking embarrassed. "I didn't mean—"
"I'm teasing you," she says kindly. "But seriously, he is beefy. He's a really nice guy, but I'm glad I've never been on his bad side. He was one of the best agents this organization ever had. Best since Romanoff, they used to say."
"Best since—is that Ward?" Patrick demands. "I've heard of him. There's some whiz kid new specialist and I heard Agent Morse say she'd gotten the highest marks since Ward, and Ward had gotten the highest marks since Romanoff."
"That's the one," says Dhawan. She leans in close, a smile on her face. "So I'd suggest you don't call him old to his face."
"Definitely not," he replies.
Across the training ground, the director of SHIELD approaches the consultant and winds an arm around his waist. He immediately leans down and presses a kiss to her temple, and their contented smiles are visible to anyone who looks their direction.
"Whoa," says Patrick. "Clearly he's more than just a consultant."
"That's the important title," Dhawan says. "That's the one you should respect, because that's the position he's going to be operating in when he deals with you. But yes, he's also the director's husband."
"I didn't know so many of the high-ranking agents were married—the Fitz-Simmonses, Agent Morse and Agent Hunter, and now these two?"
"Oh yeah, all sorts of agents are married. You do have ask special permission of the director to get married. But—" and she casts a look across the field, at where Skye is laughing at something Grant said— "she's pretty in favor of the institution. She usually says yes."
Skye and Grant start walking toward them then; after that first warm greeting, they've gone to keeping a respectful, professional distance apart, although the way they look at each other spoils any chance that a person might look at them and think they're merely colleagues.
"Dhawan," Skye smiles when they get closer. "Good to see you. How was Santiago? Bobbi told me the retrieval was successful."
"Successful and boring," Dhawan smiles. "Which I don't mind. I find that the older I get, the more okay I am with boring."
"Ha!" Skye chuckles back, while Grant smiles next to her. "I know what you mean." She turns to Patrick. "Don't tell me. Patrick . . . Gagakuma, I believe?"
"I'm impressed you remember, Director," Patrick responds respectfully.
"I try to keep up on the recruits," says Skye. "And Dhawan's an old friend. Patrick, this is one of our consultants, Grant."
"Patrick was just commenting on how many of the high-ranking agents are married," says Dhawan conversationally.
"Right?" says Skye. "How did that happen? We didn't plan it."
"It helps that Coulson made that rule allowing it," says Dhawan.
"Thank Bobbi and Lance for that," says Skye. "I'm glad of it. I definitely benefited."
She certainly did benefit, although Dhawan isn't entirely sure how. The last she'd heard, Grant Ward couldn't enter the USA because of the indiscretions of his past. And then one day seventeen years ago, Skye appeared on base after a long weekend away, Grant in tow, and informed everyone that they'd gotten married; Coulson, looking completely unsurprised about the whole thing, assigned them one of the boxy little houses on the edge of the base, between the second and third security gates—standard procedure for a non-SHIELD spouse living on base. Grant's been doing contract work and consulting for SHIELD ever since. Skye will never explain how Grant is legally in America; the only clue that anyone has is that when Bobbi jokingly explains, "I'm telling you, you just save the president's life so he owes you a favor and then you can ask for whatever you want," Skye just nods sagely. And given that she is a bona fide superhero, it's probably possible.
Patrick's watch beeps then. "Comms rotation," he tells his SO.
"I'll walk you down there," says Dhawan. "Skye, Grant, good to see you."
"See you later, Tani," says Grant. He's the only one who calls her that—an old joke between them from a long time ago.
"Nice to meet you, sir," says Patrick to Grant. And then to Skye, "Good to see you, Director Johnson."
Once they're alone and there's no one watching, Skye slips her hand into Grant's. "I know it's been years, but it still sometimes surprises me to hear people call me Johnson," she says. She didn't take Grant's last name when she got married; he's not very fond of it and didn't want to pass it on to anyone else. And anyway, she might have gotten the government to stop pursuing Grant Ward, but it's still a name that might not engender confidence with some, both because of Grant and because of some of his family members. So he joked, when they wed, that rather than her taking his name, he could just drop his name and they could both take a new one. And since Poots was a terrible choice, they jokingly settled on the only last name that either of them had ever had that they didn't hate: Johnson.
(Neither of them took the name legally, because they didn't really marry legally: they both completely deleted their identities a long time ago, so getting a license from the government would have been difficult. So their wedding was really just a change of status in her SHIELD records, plus, just to make it feel more real, a visit to a small church in upstate New York with a kind and accommodating clergyman who knew just enough about SHIELD to know not to ask questions. But it felt like an important step to both of them, to be married: a sign to the world that they'd finally completed their lifelong searches to find a real family. So they still call it a wedding, and they still celebrate that day as their anniversary.)
And when she became director, she figured she'd need a last name—not very professional to be called Director Skye. So, remembering that she and Grant sometimes jokingly called each other Mr. and Mrs. Johnson, she took that as her last name.
"At least they're not calling you Mary Sue," he offers, and she bumps him playfully with her shoulder.
She was right, all those years ago: her world is better with him in it. And she was right when she supposed that in a world without Garrett, a world without Hydra—a world with her—things would be better for Grant. He's got purpose here at SHIELD. He's got a home—by far the longest he's ever lived in one place—with a chair they designate as his in its spot by the window, where he can sit and read nonfiction books about long-past wars while Skye teases him for having such a one-track mind.
He's got Bobbi and Hunter and Mack and Fitz and Jemma, all of whom fully accept him now, have done for years. They hang out, have dinner, run operations together, and—his particular favorite—watch action and superhero movies and criticize the fight scenes, the special effects, and the science. He's got Alice Fitz-Simmons, who was three years old when he came to live at the Playground and who, by virtue of his association with her beloved Aunt Skye, immediately started calling him Uncle Grant. He had stood stock-still that first time she did it, blinking a little faster than normal, and then promptly set out to spoil the child rotten and protect her at all costs. (He started teaching her self-defense at age 6 and firearms at 10, pointing out that her parents proved time and again that even scientists have to go out into the field sometimes, and as a result she is the only scientist in the whole base who is also certified as a field agent.)
He's got May—or at least, he got May to be cordial with him, to compliment him a few times, which is honestly as much as Hunter's ever gotten out of her as well so really Skye's calling that a win. He's got Coulson, who speaks to him every time he calls Skye, and whom he refers to in private as his fake-father-in-law. He's not quite as close to the man as Skye is—those two have a bond that even living a thousand miles apart can't weaken—but it's still by far the most positive parental relationship Grant's ever had. Skye still remembers bringing Grant to the Playground for the first time, after their wedding, and Coulson shaking his hand firmly and speaking sincerely. "I always say you can save someone from themselves. But in this case, you did a lot of the saving on your own."
And Grant had smiled. "But you gave me the reason. You gave me a place to belong. And now you're doing it again."
"I had to," Coulson had joked. "If I hadn't, Skye might have dropped this place into a giant sinkhole." But the levity couldn't hide the genuine emotion in both men's eyes.
And most of all, Grant has Skye. Some secret part of her had half-expected them to fall apart eventually—before Grant she didn't have a lot of luck with stable, long-term relationships—but he still looks at her like he did in Claud's study, like he did under the Austrian moonlight . . . like he did in that closet in the Hub, some thirty years ago. He still looks at her she makes the sun rise in the morning. And she's happy with that, because she looks at him pretty much the same way.
And she was right about another thing: in this new world they created when they finally put to rest the ghosts of their past, they do have an album full of photographs of them together around the world. It sits on the table in the front room of their base house, and she flips through it idly sometimes, from the two pictures in Montreal that started so much, through to the picture that the kindly old clergyman snapped of them in front of his church on their wedding day, past smiles and hugs and goofy faces in Honolulu and London and Cairo and Beijing, past pictures with the gang here on base and with Lola in France and Kara in the UAE, past pictures of Skye and Grant in the wedding party when Claud married Drew, all the way to the most recent picture in the book, of the Johnsons on a trip last year in Tahiti—a destination from which they sent Coulson a postcard bearing the message "It's a magical place." Coulson had not been amused.
But Skye finds that what she likes best are their days off, which they spend together reading in their little house, or sparring in the base gym, or going on drives through the countryside and stopping in little no-name towns for lunch. She didn't know how lonely she was until Grant Ward came into her life, and then after his betrayal she didn't know how much she'd missed him until they finally found each other again. And now she finds herself often thinking of his words one December day in Sydney, all those years ago: they took the most winding path possible to get here, but she's happy that this is where it lead to.
They chose happiness, even if the source was unconventional. And now they very much intend to live happily ever after.
. . . . . .
fin