A/N: Title is a play off the title of the poem Maybe in Another Universe, I Deserve You by Gaby Dunn. (A highly recommended read; I feel like I was subconsciously influenced by it in writing parts of this.)

((This is not a happy one, folks.))

"Villains don't get happy endings."

-Once Upon a Time

It takes him something close to three years to track her down.

Perhaps it's because Skye's always been good at shedding identities like so much excess skin.

Perhaps it's because he's been too afraid to really look for her.

Perhaps it's because she really didn't want to be found.

But, here he is, three years later. And here she is.

Here she is with the house and the white picket fence and the kid. And the kid gives him pause, because Ward's no expert, but the kid can't be much younger than three, and when he looks closer, there is a strong Ward family resemblance.

Skye has her back to him. She's sitting on a blanket in the middle of the yard, laughing and talking to the little boy sitting in front of her. She waves a stuffed rabbit and a stuffed turtle in the air, talking animatedly. The child laughs and claps his hands.

Grant's never really wanted kids, for so many reasons, and whenever he had dared to dream of him and Skye, he had never included kids in that vision. But, in a parallel universe, where he is not Hydra and she is not S.H.I.E.L.D, where he is the good guy and not the villain in her story, maybe he comes home every night to this. To her and to their son.

Skye sees him now; she startles, a full-body panic reaction that she quickly stifles.

He wonders if her body aches at the sight of him, the way his does at the sight of her?

With admirable calm, she leans over and kisses the boy on the forehead. "Stay here, baby. Mommy will be right back."

Happily distracted with toys, the kid barely seems to notice. She walks steadily over to Ward.

"Is he mine?" he shrugs his shoulder the direction of the toddler.

Skye looks up at him defiantly. "He's Fitz's."

Fitz? She ended up with Fitz?

"Are you sure?" Ward smirks, because it's hard to deny that the boy has his eyes and his definitive facial structure.

Skye straightens up and looks him dead in the eyes. "He's mine. He has nothing to do with you."

He doesn't get a chance to reply, because they are interrupted by Fitz.

"Skye?" Fitz is breathless, thinly veiled panic in his voice. So she hadn't been lying about Fitz, then. Interesting. He all but runs towards them, stopping only to look at the boy sitting on the blanket, still happily playing with his toys. Fitz then comes to stand beside Skye and puts an arm around her waist, comfortingly not possessively, and then looks up at Ward. Written across every line of his face is you do not touch them.

"Skye says he's yours?" Ward asks, glancing between the child and Fitz, testing him. Why or for what purpose he's not sure.

"Yes," Fitz says with determination and anger, "Yes, he is. I was the one at Skye's side for every second of the twenty-one hours of excruciating labor she went through. I was the one who was there when he said his first words, took his first steps. I'm the one who kisses him goodnight every night. I'm the one he calls Da-Da. I'm the one who's always been there for him. So, yes, he is mine. Mine and Skye's. You need to leave."

He is mine.

He doesn't get time to dwell on this, though, because somehow Skye must have pressed a panic button somewhere without him noticing—he is impressed—and now he can see May, Simmons, and Coulson, all swarming. Simmons runs into the yard and scoops up his son. "Come on, love, let's go inside."

May comes to stand in front of the two of them, one arm reaching out behind her to touch Simmons, the other stretching out before her in a protective gesture he's intimately familiar with.

The cold metal of a gun barrel—a real one, not an icer—tickles the back of Ward's neck. "I'm not going to shoot you in front of the kid," Tripplett growls in his ear, "But you are going to leave now. Next time, I might not be so forgiving."

Ward takes one more last look at all of them. Skye, standing before him, fighting a losing battle with the tears in her eyes. Fitz, beside her, with his arm now wrapped around her shoulders (they fit so well together, the way their bodies curve in complete complement to each other, Ward notices now that he looks carefully.)

May and Simmons standing in the yard. May has her arm around Jemma's shoulders, her body turned ever so slightly in front of the other woman, a shield should one be needed. His son, held in Jemma's arms, completely oblivious to the cruel world around him.

Coulson and Tripplett flanking Ward, the gatekeepers preventing him from getting any closer to their little family.

The family he could have had.

If he wasn't Hydra and they weren't S.H.I.E.L.D. If he were the good guy and not the villain in their stories.

Some things just weren't meant to be.

"Ok, ok." He throws his hands up—carefully, he doesn't need Coulson or Tripp to spook and shoot him—in a gesture of mock surrender. "I'm going."

He walks away and he doesn't look back.

He does come back, later. He can't help himself.

He knows they won't be there, but hope is a cruel master, and he goes anyway.

The house is empty, with a for sale sign out front.

He picks the lock (and pretends he is turning his own key) and steps inside (and pretends he is coming home).

(But the house is completely empty and he has only his own demons to keep him company.)

He walks through the house (wondering what it would be like if it was theirs, his and Skye's, but seeing only Fitz in his place).

In the corner of a room he imagines must have been the nursery, there is a small stuffed rabbit. He recognizes it as the one Skye and his son were playing with on that fateful day. It seems like a lifetime ago, but he knows it wasn't. He picks it up and something like a sob breaks free from his chest.

He never sees his son or Skye again, but no matter how many times he leaves and leaves, he never leaves that stuffed rabbit behind.

-the end-