A/N: So this was originally supposed to be a one-shot, thanks to a prompt from Serenity Shadowstar. But I dragged it out too long, so it'll be a two-shot (not that I've written the other half yet). I'm so sorry to have taken so long to write this!

DISCLAIMER: I don't even own the story for this one, credit goes to Serenity Shadowstar for thinking it up! :)

"You know, if you're cheating, I'll find out."

"Why would I possibly cheat when it's so easy to beat you?"

"Hey!"

"Well, it's true…"

Ward gave Skye a look that never worked on her, but was intended to make her fear his wrath. "G6."

"Miss. B1." She replied, slumped back in her seat.

"Miss."

"What?"

Ward looked up. "Miss. Miles away from anything." He said smugly.

Skye shrugged. "Thanks for the tip."

Ward froze for a split second. Damn, she did it again. "How do you do that?"

"Do what?"

"Make me give away clues to help you. I've been trained to avoid that at all costs, it risks lives."

"I'm irresistible." She replied in a casual tone, reaching for a pretzel as she did so to avoid her S.O.'s gaze.

"I'm supposed to compartmentalise."

"Oh relax, Turbo. We're not on a mission. It's a game of Battleship!"

Ward leaned forward to deliver his next move when Coulson got their attention as he descended the stairwell from his office. "Sir?"

"HQ have a mission for you, Agent Ward." Coulson replied, moving to the comm table as May appeared from the direction of the cockpit.

Ward looked back at Skye, a smirk sneaking its way onto his face. "You were saying?"

"Well, now you can compartmentalise." Skye snapped back, and Ward raised his eyebrows. "Sorry."

Ward nodded and stood to follow Coulson.

"Hopefully it's not too dangerous."

Ward glanced back at the sound of Skye's voice, but she was merely watching him out of the corner of her eyes. The typical attitude she held around Ward was there, but concern shone through the more she gazed at him.

"Ward!"

Coulson's shout brought Ward out of his reverie and he walked away from Skye without a word. Skye sighed and started packing up the board game, worry seeping into her heart.

"Sir." Ward greeted as he walked into the briefing room.

"Agent Ward, I need you to be more punctual to mission meetings that don't involve Skye. Focus." Coulson said firmly.

"Sorry, sir."

"So what does HQ want Ward for?" May asked, turning the men's attention to the matter at hand.

"We have a S.H.I.E.L.D. scientist undercover in a Russian mob with ties to the Kremlin. He's recently informed us that he may have been made and called for an extraction."

"So that's where I come in." Ward added.

"Yes. You'll infiltrate the mob, find Dr. Allan Moore, known within the organisation as Abram Danilovich," he said, gesturing to the screen where the man's S.H.I.E.L.D. ID photo was displayed. "And get out. Dr. Moore speaks fluent Russian and single-handedly earned his way into the inner circles of the mob."

"So why couldn't he give us the mob's name?" May queried.

"Because there isn't one. Hard to be charged for affiliation with a mob that they can't name."

"So, I'm to get in, find him, and get out?" Ward asked and Coulson nodded. "Should take a few days, tops."

"Exactly what I wanted to hear. May?"

"Setting the course." She replied, tapping on the tablet in front of her. "We should be there in under twelve hours."

"Copy that. Ward, you have free time for the next five hours, but then I want you to rest before we land."

"Understood, sir." Ward straightened up and left the briefing room, heading straight for Skye's bunk where she had secluded herself. "Skye." He called through the door.

"What?" she pulled the door open.

"Training. Now. Come on." He nodded towards the cargo bay and left her standing there, spluttering noises of protest escaping her mouth.

May and Coulson, still standing in the briefing room, smiled at each other.

"'Training'. He just wants to spend time with her." May remarked.

"As long as she doesn't get vital information out of him in regards to the mission." Coulson said, eyebrow creasing as he considered the very real possibility that that could happen.

"He'd only tell her the outline. Nothing to make her worry too much."

"He has trouble keeping things to himself when she presses him."

"Really."

"You didn't see them playing Battleship. She asked why she missed and he told her it was far away from anything he'd set up."

May considered this. "I'll see what FitzSimmons are up to."

"Good idea."

Left.

Right.

Left, left.

Right.

Over and over, Skye jabbed in a repetitive fashion, her arms burning from the excessive use. But she didn't stop or complain, partly because she wanted to impress Ward and give him peace of mind while on his mission and partly because she was frustrated that he wasn't giving anything away. Although that reason may be fuelled by the fact that May was on the other side of the glass.

"Good." Ward praised, proud of how intensely Skye was focusing on the task at hand. "Now again."

Skye dramatically gave an internal sigh and lifted her hands once again.

Right.

Left.

Right, right.

Left.

"Agent Ward!" May called, striding through the glass doors half an hour later. "It's been an hour. Give Skye a break."

"Oh thank god!" Skye groaned in relief, letting herself fall onto the mats. Cringing, she rubbed and massaged her burning arms.

"You should have said something, Skye." Ward said, walking over to where his rookie was lying down. "If you were in that much pain."

"You'll be gone for the next few days, so I thought intensive training was in order." Skye ended with a mumble, not meeting her S.O.'s gaze.

"The punching bag will still be here."

Skye flicked her eyes up to Ward's to find a mixture of amusement and pride.

"You did good. Is there anything else you wanna work on before you shower?" he asked, pulling her to her feet.

"Not for the first time, I really wish there was a swimming pool on this plane." She quipped as she unwrapped her hands. Ward moved to unhook the sack of sand that hung from the ceiling.

"The sheer weight of holding any decent amount of water, or any liquid for that matter, would have to be carefully balanced out on the other side of the plane." Simmons interjected from the other side of the open lab doors.

"And more weight requires more fuel." May added.

"Okay, okay, I was just making a suggestion." Skye relented. "And it's not like we don't have a water tank for the bathroom, anyway." This part was only heard by the specialists, who sniggered at Skye's last-word attitude. The rookie in question grabbed the mats from the side and placed them where the punching bag had hung merely moments earlier. "Sparring, Robot. Come on."

An involuntary smile jumped onto Ward's face and he shook his head, moving onto the mats to stand in front of her. May smirked and shared the look with the two scientists before signalling for them to leave. They hurriedly shrugged off their lab coats and made for the exit. The couple in the cargo bay had already started their mock fight, and they heard a thump as Skye hit the mats with her back, Ward almost completely covering her.

"Are you trying to make it even easier for me to beat you?"

"Are you trying to be obnoxious?"

FitzSimmons laughed silently as they left the lab, still hearing their bickering from the stairs.

"We have a mission." Coulson announced.

"Please tell me we're not sending someone else off alone. I'm worried enough about Ward." Skye said as she emerged quickly from her bunk.

"He's barely been gone a day, he'll be fine." Simmons assured her, standing against the comm table next to Fitz.

"Yeah, I hope so." Skye muttered.

"So the mission?" May asked Coulson, knowing that a change in topic would alleviate Skye's increasing concern for a while.

"An 0-8-4."

"Our MO." Skye remarked.

"Skye!" Both Coulson and May scolded, although they were partly amused. The hacker made no acknowledgements of their exasperation.

"So an 0-8-4…where?" Simmons redirected the conversation back to the mission.

"France. Southern France, to be exact. In the remote mountains of Parc National de la Vanoise." Coulson answered her, throwing a warning look to Skye to behave.

"Some cave painting come to life?" Skye added in again, getting somewhat shocked expressions from the two eldest in the room. The scientists, meanwhile, rolled their eyes.

"No." May answered carefully, looking at Skye suspiciously.

"But…?" she challenged in the same tone.

"It is in a cave." Coulson finished for her. "How do you guess these things?"

Skye glanced away and back again as she pouted, adding a shrug for the complete effect. "Stabbing in the dark?" she frowned. "But something about this mission just doesn't feel right."

"It's completely illogical to be coming to conclusions when we have so little data." Simmons interjected. "Gut feelings, however, can be worth listening to under the right circumstances."

"Yeah, thanks for that Spock, but I'm seriously concerned about the legitimacy of this op, or at least its levels of safety."

"We'll be in remote mountainous terrain, Skye. How safe do you expect it to be?" Fitz spoke up, his accent affected slightly by the underlying laughter in his voice.

Skye gave him a very unimpressed look and turned back to Coulson. "Did you pick out this op, or did HQ give us no choice?"

"The latter." May said for him, equally unimpressed.

"Regardless on our gut feelings, we have a job to do." Coulson ruled, issuing order like a judge in a courtroom. "So, May and FitzSimmons will be the ones to go into the cave, pick up the 0-8-4. I will be at the exploration team's camp to ensure their safety, and Skye will remain here, overseeing communications."

"The exploration team?" Skye asked, half amused, half confused. "What were they looking for, some alien carvings?"

Again, Coulson and May looked surprised at the accuracy of the hacker's witty guesses.

"Holy no way. They actually were?"

"Ahh…more specifically, carvings and paintings of aliens, by humans." Coulson replied, shaking his head in bemusement. Another Skye-abnormality I have to get used to.

"We touch down in 10 minutes." May interjected, pushing the conversation on with the mission parameters.

"Skye, are you getting this?" Simmons squealed as her, Fitz, May and the DWARFS worked their way into the rear of the cave. In the centre lay an object the size of a child's head, black in colour, yet it seemed to be glowing and gave off the strongest light in the room.

"Receiving and recording feed." Skye answered over the comms, hitting a few electronic buttons on the holocomm in front of her, and glaring at the visuals she was getting. "And be careful, you guys. That thing's giving me bad vibes and I'm still on the Bus."

"Och, stop worrying so much, Skye." Fitz scoffed, rolling his eyes and sharing laughing looks with his teammates. "We're not even gonna touch it until we've determined as much as we can about it, and even then it's not gonna be with bare hands."

Simmons knelt down close to the alien object, taking in every detail covering its intricate surface. "The next time you say 'gonna' twice in a sentence, Fitz." She threatened. "I'll tie you to the sofa and make you watch a documentary on the evolution of modern English."

Fitz's eyes widened, freezing a little as he wasn't sure whether or not to take her seriously. A faint snicker from May jolted him back to the task at hand and he refocused on the tablet in his hands.

"Sir?" Skye's voice through his ear piece made Coulson jump a little. "May and FitzSimmons are done and on their way back."

"Copy that, Skye." Coulson replied, turning around to look at the mountain looming next to them. "I see them."

When the team finally stood next to them, the item in a crate held by May, Coulson smiled at them. "Great work, guys. What did you find out?"

"It seems to be some sort of artefact. A remnant, perhaps, of alien visitors to this area, and the people who lived here at the time may have perceived it as a relic." Simmons began explaining. "The cave paintings date to at least 34,000 years ago, and that's just the entrance." Her enthusiasm seemed to seep onto Fitz as he took off from where she stopped.

"From what the DWARFS tell us, nothing appears to have activated it, so perhaps it's been glowing like it was when we found it for…thousands of years."

"Glowing?" Skye verbalised Coulson's curiosity, and he reached out to open the crate.

"Careful, sir. It could well be like some of the other alien 0-8-4s that S.H.I.E.L.D. have come across."

"In what way?" he asked as he lightly brushed it. Its light pulsed and the low hum of the comms in their ears died.

"Guys? Hello? Dammit." Skye cursed and contemplated leaving the Bus to look for them. She knew that she was under strict instructions to stay on the plane, but she was more concerned and curious to pay anything more than base attention to that. What would Ward do? she thought.

Marching out through the living area of the plane and out through the cargo hold, Skye saw a mass panic of people as they scattered, May dragging Fitz away from Coulson and Simmons who were frantically trying to find a way to deactivate the item that was pulsing more rapidly. After pausing for a moment, unclear as to whether or not she should go any closer but seeing that Simmons was becoming increasingly panicked, she ran forward. Ignoring May's shout of warning, Skye grabbed the artefact and threw away as hard as she could.

Just in time. No sooner had Skye thrown the artefact away and the three of them ducked for cover, Coulson and Simmons instinctively rushing for the open cargo ramp of the Bus, the pulsing climaxed and let out a shockwave that tossed Skye like a rag doll into the side of the aeroplane. She hit the ground mere seconds later, lying limp and unmoving on the ground.