pls write this fic im begging
My headcanon is that Skye and Ward are operating as spies in the Middle East, collecting intel for S.H.I.E.L.D. that affects real wars. The constant travel and danger wears on them emotionally, especially when their assets are caught and imprisoned/executed. Some of these assets are good people risking their lives to pass on intel because they want to do something to help their nations or to fight against their corrupt governments. But sometimes there's nothing Skye and Ward can do. They have to walk away to save more lives. Their hands are tied.
Along the way you have Ward teaching Skye tradecraft and the two tending each other's injuries in hotel rooms (not in a sexy way, but in a grim, messy, troublesome, scary way) and sometimes Skye falls asleep in the backseat of the car or at her desk while she's encrypting their reports to send to S.H.I.E.L.D. or reviewing the latest intel requirements. And Ward covers her with her jacket and falls right back into bed because neither of them have slept more than four hours at a time for a week. Sometimes Skye notices that Ward is doing more than he should, and she takes a longer shift and doesn't wake him up.
Occasionally they have blowups. Maybe they're tired from the constant travel and they lose their temper. Maybe they're arguing over how best to protect their assets and accusing each other of not doing their job properly. Maybe they're sorry...they're just trying to do the right thing in a confusing world.
Their darker sides come out every now and then. Ward loses it and beats up a diplomat they're trying to recruit into a slush pile when he sees his kids, who bear marks of abuse. Skye kills someone to protect her asset. They can't tell anyone else this without being misunderstood. When they report back to S.H.I.E.L.D, they'll have to stand before a review board and defend each and every one of their decisions. No one else realizes what it costs them to do this job.
The romance develops slowly. They're colleagues - they're supposed to act in a professional capacity. Hell, Skye isn't sure she wants to give up the possibility of having a normal life with a normal guy one day - house, picket fence, cushy tech job - outside this life of espionage. Being with Ward? That ties her to it, because in all her worst days, all her memories of being an operative, he's right there by her side.
And Ward's concerned with bigger things. How to develop their assets to get them access to more important intel. How to deal with the politics of the higher-ups at S.H.I.E.L.D. and get them to back off because they're putting too much weight on Skye; there's no way any team could produce the amount of intel they keep demanding. When he sees her exhausted & frustrated, he just wants to protect her because she's still young, even if she's no longer his trainee. A relationship is the last thing he needs to burden her with.
But they get together ofc. One night after a difficult mission, when Skye has to physically restrain him from jamming the diplomat's face backwards into a door right in front of his terrified kids and wife. They return to the hotel and Skye looks at him as though she doesn't know him, because she really doesn't, apart from the fact that they operate together and live together and are basically joined at the hip due to their work.
She doesn't know about Christian. Or that he shipped out to military school because he gave so much trouble at home that his parents wanted to wash their hands off him. She doesn't know he stole a car, burned down his house and was sent to juvie (non-HYDRA Ward here).
But she comes in to check on him and brings medical supplies from the pharmacy. They go out to dinner, because they have to eat. The meal is subdued. They scarcely talk. Walking back to to hotel along the pier, Skye suddenly asks why he did what he did.
It's difficult to tell her. He stops by the railing, thinks of how to explain it all. She knows him as this reliable, good agent, but he's not who she thinks he is. He tells her about Christian and his parents, then to make her understand that he is like them too, tells her about the time he pushed Thomas down the stairs because he was angry and tired and overwhelmed by the things Christian was doing to him and the way his mother loved Thomas to bits. That he's destructive and cruel - but Skye interrupts him and tells him that's not true, because the man she knows is good.
She begins to list out the things he's done. The times he risked his life to protect a burned asset when he could have just walked away. How he's always putting himself in danger for a bigger purpose. The small things he does that he thinks she doesn't see, like the way he drops her off and gets rid of their car at the end of a mission when they're both exhausted so that she doesn't have to.
She's looking at him with this complete conviction in her eyes and before he knows what he's doing, he's holding her chin in his hands and kissing her, and then he breaks away because neither of them are really thinking - but Skye is tugging him to her by the collar and her fingers are in his hair and then he's really not thinking anymore. When they walk back to the hotel, Skye slips her hand in his.
This would be a scene 3/4 into the story and the fic has to end at some point related to their missions. Maybe they deliver intel that allows S.H.I.E.L.D.'s peacekeeping forces in the region to end the conflict. Maybe their tour of duty ends, though I doubt that would be a fulfilling end to the milieu aspect of the fic. The writer will probably also want to wrap up what happens to the assets Skye and Ward still have - whether they compensate the families of the bereaved or manage to exfil and relocate them etc.
Basically the idea is that I wanted them to be more realistic characters in a realistic world, where they can't always punch their way out of situations, and they are limited in the amount of good they can do against mass injustice, though they try to make sense of the world and their role in it.
I'm just going to call this my Laila Barghouti fic idea if I continue adding mentally to this AU. Laila is an original character who forms the other major subplot. She's one of the assets Skye and Ward handle, a highly placed source in a corrupt and brutal government. She is also the moral center of the story - where real bravery is shown in ordinary people.
(My original idea was based on Laila as a Palestinian woman working for Hamas. She resents Hamas for its brutal repression and governance; more than that she loathes Israel for the suffering it inflicts on her people. Therefore she secretly betrays Hamas to pass intel on Hamas' activities and interactions with Iran to S.H.I.E.L.D. (aka Skye and Ward), which is conducting peacekeeping operations in the region.) The issue is that I came up with this idea at the point in time when I was hearing reports of Palestinians protesting against Hamas and being kidnapped and repressed. It was only later that I began to understand - I am in Asia, which is quite detached from Middle Eastern affairs - the brutality of Israel's genocide, and the way Palestinian support increased for Hamas since it was defending them.
The entire issue is very tricky. I do think Hamas is a selfish and terrible government to its people in some ways. I also think that I may well be mistaken, if I am not a Palestinian or at least Arab person. Cultural context aside, right now, I doubt I need to be adding to the narrative that Hamas is the villain even more so than Israel. The world just needs to focus on getting Israel to stop bombing civilians first. So that story about Laila isn't a story that I feel I can tell in good conscience right now, although I am certain that there are a small number of brave Palestinians who have suffered greatly for their beliefs on what Hamas should have done as a government responsible for its people's welfare.
Drawing from the original plot outlined above, the story I want to tell is still the same, though the facts may change (eg. she works for a different government or nation). Laila's story is one of a woman embroiled in the centre of a conflict. Not just in her everyday life, living under the fear of war, but in her work as a non-combat military official/intelligence officer working for Hamas. There's a deliberate element to it, a will to use her position to fight against brutality and corruption, to work for the safety and freedom of her people. Laila essentially fits into the trope of the rebel, the ordinary hero.
other notes: only alerted the Mossad 24 hours before the Arab armies’ surprise attack began, his previous information on the Egyptian military’s war planning and leadership deliberations made Egypt “transparent” to Israel at the time of war. safari club military intervention before invasion
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