His first night in prison is uneventful. After being tossed into his cell, literally, he lies down on the floor and closes his eyes. There is bed across the room (and by across the room, really, it's 2 feet away) and a toilet, but right know he feels he needs the sensation of the cold stone pressing into his back. He needs to feel the pain, because he's not sure what else to feel. He doesn't know. He's never known. All his life has been orders, orders, orders. And now, nothing. Only pain, his throat, hell, his entire body, and his heart. He embraces the feeling of pain and blacks out.
He wakes up to his first day in prison to a clanging on the bars of his cell. A guard shoves a plastic tray with a meager amount of food through to him and tells him he has ten minutes. He doesn't touch it, and ten minutes later the guard comes back. The guard glances at the tray and asks him why he hasn't eaten in a voice that shows he doesn't really care. He opens his mouth to answer but then his throat is on fire so he shuts it. The guard takes the tray walks away.
On the third day the interrogators start coming. He is pulled out of his cell, chained at the hands and feet, and brought to a dimly lighted room with gray walls and metal chairs. The first time he enters it, he is inexplicably confused at the lack of hexagons covering the walls. Then he remembers where he is, and where he is not. They sit across from his, agents he once maybe knew as they ask him question after question. He opens his mouth to speak, but again, his throat catches fire. He always expects to be beaten, but instead the agents give him something that could be a sympathetic look before walking out the door.
On his sixth day in prison they tell him he will most likely never be able to speak again.
On his tenth day in prison he starts to feel the silence. His life was always full of sounds, whether it was the screaming from his childhood, or the sounds of the woods, of the steady hum of the bus- but no- he's not allowed to think of that anymore. Now the silence swallows him whole. After a life of commands, he cannot find a way to hear his own voice in his head. He hasn't slept in days, since that first night, only laid on the floor with the ghosts from his past rushing through his head
"Not yet-"
"Grant, please"
"…that Grant Ward is useless…"
"..I will never, ever give you what you want…"
On his fourteenth day in prison, the shock that has kept him sane for the past two weeks wears off. He starts pounding the walls, silently screaming, clawing at the sides of his cell until his fingers bleed. He finds a button on his pants and rips it off, and is lost in haze of blood and pain until suddenly everything has gone black.
On his sixteenth day in prison he wakes up to a bright light and wonders how the hell he made it to heaven. But it's not heaven, it's the prison's infirmary, and he feels the bandages around his wrists and the soft bindings holding him the bed before he opens his eyes. When he does open his eyes, he is glad that this is not his heaven.
Coulson is standing there. But he instead of the harsh look he gave him a little over two weeks ago, instead his gaze holds something akin to pity. He closes his eyes and turns himself away. He does not want to have Coulson's pity, hell, he doesn't deserve it. He hears the soft footsteps approach from behind, feels a hand hover over his shoulder before it disappears. Coulson sighs behind him before saying in a quiet voice that he has scheduled someone to talk to him. He doesn't move his position until the soft footsteps have echoed out the door.
On his twentieth day, he is brought back to a different cell, one with a mattress and a toilet. He opens his mouth to thank the guard, and although no words come out, his throat doesn't burn. He sleeps that night, which was a mistake.
On his twenty first day in prison, at three am (not that he would know) he wakes up in a cold sweat and with a scream dying in his throat. He looks down at his hands and breathes a sigh of relief at the absence of blood, her blood, and his head falls back down to the floor. He breathes heavily for a few second before starting the first of many middle of the night workout routines. He does two hundred push-ups, but then the identical still healing cuts on his wrists start to burn, so he stops. He doesn't want to risk another visit from Coulson.
It's there, on the floor, that he decides he will tell his psychologist, his interrogators, anyone, everything.
On his twenty-fourth day in prison he starts speaking again.
On his twenty-eighth day in prison, he tells the S.H.I.E.L.D therapist everything. He sits in yet another room in the prison, one with a long glass mirror on the wall across from him, and the woman explains it is so the person speaking can come to terms with what they are saying. He doesn't need to tell her that he knows two-way glass when he sees it. He only hopes with a faint spark that the right people are standing on the other side. He tells her everything, from his childhood, to the fire, to juvie, to the woods, to working for Garrett, to the bus. To her. He tells the therapist about everything he felt, said did. He does not say her name. He cannot, because no matter how many things he says about her, he knows he cannot bear to relive those memories. He goes back to his cell in silence, and wonders why the weight of the world still feels as though it is on his shoulders. In the silence of his cell, he whispers out her name.
That night he lies awake and is assaulted by memories of her. Their first meeting, training her, battle ship, saving her life, her offering to get a drink, her getting shot, waking up, realizing he was in too deep. Realizing he was in love with her, maybe from the start. And Providence, after he- after he killed Agent Koenig, he telling him he was a good man and he could feel the blood on his hands but still he kissed her and kissed her and kissed her and made love to her in a way he had never made love before. Because before her, he hadn't truly known what love was. And then the bad stuff. Realizing what he had done, defiled her perfect innocence, but it wasn't so perfect, and as she spit out words at him and ran from the diner. When he chained her to that staircase and told her that he loved her. When she told she would never give him what he wanted. Watching her face as Coulson backed Lola out of the bus, and thinking it was last time he would ever see her and seeing her again in Cybertek. The last last time.
He doesn't say her name again for a very long time.
On his thirtieth day in prison, Grant Ward stops counting the days.
The days seem to move quicker after he stops counting, or slower, he can't tell anymore. However, an unknown t amount of time passes before he gets his first visitor. The guard brings him into a small, well lit room, and his heart stops.
Jemma Simmons couldn't hurt Grant Ward if she tried, but that doesn't stop him from feeling as though he is going to die in this room. She smiles at him, and he is sure of it.
"Shield handbook chapter fifteen, all pods stationed on any aircraft are equipped to handle both land and water without any sustainable damage to the person inside." She says this with a straight unwavering tone, "If you wanted to kill us, you could have shot us in the heads. Those pods are supposed to float. We know that. You did, too."
He nods in affirmation, unable to find his voice as tears cloud his eyes. She approaches and places a hand above his shoulder, hovering for a second before laying it softly there. He wraps his arms around her whispering words of apology until his voice cracks from the use. She pulls back and smiles.
"I have to go, "she says, "I'll come back soon." And then she is gone, and he wonders whether it was just a dream.
Weeks later she returns with Fitz, who despite his six week long coma is fine, and apparently constantly gloating over the fact that he was right that Ward did in fact care about them. Ward smiles at this, and the fact that his care has Fitz made Fitz a hundred dollars richer (even though Coulson took away twenty on the grounds of making inappropriate bets.) They chat for a while, and he feels the weight on his shoulders lessen. Until he asks about her. He doesn't mean to, but the words slip out before he realizes and both of their expressions become nervous. He still doesn't say her name.
"She's uhh- she's doing well. You know, despite-"
"Jemma." Fitz cuts in, hoping to cover up his partner's horrid ability to not tell the truth.
Jemma sighs and puts her head in her hands, and his stomach fills with ice.
"She's not-" he chokes out, struggling to breathe, "hurt, is she?"
"No," Fitz says almost too quickly, "she's just…different."
"How," he says, still choking on his own voice.
They don't get a chance to answer him because the door opens, the guard tells them they are needed back. They turn and leave, with no words, only looks of sympathy.
He does not sleep that night, or the next, or the next.
Two weeks later, he gets another visitor, but instead of being led to the small room, he is instead led to a line of phones facing each other. And then he sees her. Sitting there, in one of her blue paid button downs, elbows up on the counter, patiently waiting for him to sit down and pick up his own phone. She does not move as he sits down, only stares up at him with an unreadable expression. He reaches for the phone slowly, prepared for an onslaught of terrible words to flow through the line. He places it to his ear almost cautiously, waiting for her yelling. Instead, her voice is calm, level.
"Hi." She says one word, and he swears it is the most beautiful sound in the entire world.
"Hi."
"Coulson told us about-"her voice cuts off as it cracks suddenly, her eyes flying to the scars on his wrists.
"I'm sorry. I-It wasn't worth it. Any of it. It wasn't worth losing you. "
"Don't apologize," she cuts him off, her voice soft, "We saw your session. We know. I'm sorry. For what I said, I called you a serial killer. I didn't mean that."
He looks at her like she put the sun in the sky.
"Why are you behind the glass." He almost doesn't want to hear the answer. Because I'm still afraid. Because I don't trust you.
"Apparently pregnant women are not supposed to walk into high security prisons, and definitely not supposed to meet face to face with prisoners." She says this with a hint of a smile, and he can feel his eyes widen. If he hadn't been clutching the phone so tight, it would have fallen from his hand.
"You're-what?"
"Pregnant, Ward, I'm pregnant. Thanks for that, by the way. Although I suppose it does take two."
She smirks, and he is still opening and closing his mouth like a fish out of water.
"Don't worry though, I'll find a way to bust into this place even when I'm huge. I want you to meet your little girl."
"I know." He says solemnly, "It's a girl?" he says and suddenly the world outside is shrunk down to the two of them sitting in this room.
"I don't know, actually. Just a feeling. But this isn't forgiveness Ward, know that," she says but her tone is not unkind. Her phone beeps, and she smiles apologetically as she hangs up the phone.
On the way back to his cell, the guard asks him why he's so damn skippy today.
The next time she comes back, her stomach is raised under her shirt, and she's chewing on a piece of beef jerky.
"I hate this," she says motioning to the beef jerky.
"I'm sorry." He says, feeling just awful, but she smiles and the sun is out again.
"I don't really. I'm just tired and hungry and sick all the time. It's fine." She says and he doesn't quite believe her. He opens his mouth to say her name, but find her cannot form the word.
"I'm sorry," he settles for, and her eyes fly up to answer but he continues, "For when I told you…my feelings were real. It must have scared you, and I never wanted to scare you."
"I know," she says quietly, eyes downcast. She leaves soon after that.
She comes back again and again, and they talk quietly until something inevitably comes back from their past and they both fall into silence. He will look at her, and she will look down.
She will always hold a piece of him, and he will always have a piece of her, and inside her is a jumble of him and her combined, but they are not whole.
And they both know that sitting in a prison, divided by solid glass, is not the place to have that talk. But it always comes up, and little by little they rehash their whole entire lives. Well, their lives with each other. Some days he feels better as he walks back to his cell, some days worse. The last talk they have like that is about the day they left Providence. How he killed Koenig and had sex with her and she found out about him being Hydra and they left holding hands. He feels the blood on his hands for the first time in a long time. She looks down at hers.
He walks back to his cell with his head down.
He thinks about counting the days.
She doesn't come back for a long time.
When she does, she is very visibly pregnant, and she pushes her stool back from the counter, resting her arms on her stomach before reaching for the phone.
"Ian Quinn is dead." It's the first thing he hears, and he can feel the shake in her voice through the glass. He wishes he could hold her.
"We went- we went back to Italy. That's why we were gone so long."
"Who took the shot?"
"May."
He smiles, and finds himself imaging her as Skye's mom, protecting her against any evil that tries to touch her baby girl. He gulps at the thought of what she will do to him when he gets out. But he remembers.
He's in here forever. There is no when.
She is smiling shakily at him. "She's been training me, you know. Well, she was, before I found out." She gestures to her stomach.
He manages to smile.
"I'll come back soon." She says.
But a few weeks later, it's Fitzsimmons who he meets, again in the small room. Jemma approaches and hugs him, causing the guard outside to shift his footing. She lets him go and they sit down. She has tears in her eyes. She slides a picture across the table and his heart stops and restarts. She is there, looking more beautiful than he'd ever seen her, and she is holding her daughter, their daughter. She is looking at their daughter the way he looks at her and suddenly he has fallen in love with her all over again, and with the tiny girl in her arms.
"Avery Jemma May Ward. Your daughter." Jemma speaks softly, and he does not realize he is crying.
He stares at the photo until they tell him they have to leave.
"Can I keep this?" he chokes out.
"Of course." Jemma smiles and Fitz hugs him.
One the way back to his cell, the guard asks him if he is okay. He tells the guard it is the best day of his life. The guard looks skeptical, but says nothing.
He puts the picture under his pillow, and for the first time in maybe his entire life, sleeps through the night.
He does not plan on seeing her for a long time, and somehow, he is almost okay with that.
However, he should never underestimate her, because a month after he gets that picture, she comes back, and she is not alone.
She is back in her blue plain shirt and her leggings, her silver necklaces and bracelets chiming as she sits down. She looks the same as she did all those months ago, except for the very small girl currently sleeping on her shoulder. She picks up the phone and places it on her shoulder, moving to cradle their daughter in her arms. Her eyes pop open at the movement, and he finds himself staring into a reflection of his own dark orbs. She is the most perfect thing he has ever seen. She is the image of her mother, except for her dark hair and eyes. She does not cry, only stares up at him in awe. She smiles.
"Are you crying?" the question pulls his gaze away from his daughters and back to hers, her own eyes filled with tears. He realizes that yes, he is crying.
"She's the most perfect thing I've ever seen."
"I know, right? We did good."
"You did good."
She smiles then, and the sun shines even brighter and she gazes down at Avery.
"I can't stay long." She says. "But I'll come back often. I promise."
She carefully stands, and lifts her daughter closer to the glass. Unconsciously, Avery reaches out and touches the cool surface with her hand. He places his hand opposite hers on the other side.
When he is escorted back to his cell, the guard offers him a cigarette, which he turns down with a smile, and congratulations, which he accepts.
Her visits do become more frequent, but he still can't help the feeling in his chest as he watches his daughter grow from the other side of the glass.
On her next visit, Avery is sleeping. But on the third she is awake, sitting with her mother's help on the counter, and banging on the glass in a way that makes the guard come running, and they cannot help but laugh. They meet each other's eyes, and he feels a different light enter him, one that can only be described as hope.
"Coulson needs my help on a mission," she says quietly, after Avery is away from the glass. I'll stay on the bus, but I don't know how long it will take."
His hope doesn't fade, but the all too familiar feeling of terror that comes with her safety washes over him.
"You'll be safe?" he says in a whisper.
"I promise." And she smiles again, lifting Avery back onto the counter. She places her little hand on the glass, and he does the same. His daughter smiles at him, and he terror washes away.
The next time she comes back, her arm is in a sling and she is alone. Before he can ask she says, "Shoulder, through and through, I was doing recon when the place was ambushed. Caught in the crossfire. Nobody's fault."
"But you're okay? And Avery?"
"Fine. A little scared when she first saw me. I couldn't hold her like this, I'm sorry. It's unfair that you can't see just because-"he cuts her off.
"It's okay. I'm doing this for her. And for you."
She smiles but her eyes are full of tears, and god, he wishes he could hold her in his arms.
She comes back a few weeks later, Avery in her arms. His daughter's hair is longer now, almost to her chin, and wavy like her mothers. She stands, with help, pressed against the glass, and gives him a three toothed smile. He places his hand on hers.
"Hi sweetheart," he says.
She giggles, a beautiful sound, before pressing her face into the glass. "Dada," she says.
He freezes and looks at her. She smiles.
"She's been saying that for about a week. I wanted to surprise you." She lifts their daughter back into her arms.
"Thank you."
She smiles as Avery reaches her hand to the glass, now accustomed to this sign of affection form her father. She lifts Avery forward, and father and daughter press their hands together.
The next time he comes he watches as she takes small steps across the tiny counter.
The time after that she races in before her mother.
Fitzsimmons comes back often, filling in the gaps of Avery's life, because honestly, all he and her mother do is watch Avery and smile. He learns her favorite color is purple, her favorite stuffed animal is a monkey named Captain America, and her favorite Disney movie is Mulan. They give him pictures and soon he has a timeline of images that spans the wall in his cell.
His daughter grows faster than he can fathom, every time coming in speaking more or walking more. She is a chatterbox like her mother going on about the trees and the bus and her Grandpa and grandma and her new favorite color of the week. He loves to see her, but can't help feeling sadness every time she presses her hand to the glass before skipping away with her mother.
A week after her latest visit, he is brought back to the small room, and when he enters, fear comes back into him. Coulson is sitting the chair, and May is standing behind him. He sits down in his own chair, and looks Coulson in the eye.
"Ward." Coulson's voice is kind, and Ward cannot help but think of the two as somewhat disapproving parents.
"Sir," he says holding his gaze, "May." She smiles, and its kind.
"We brought you this," he says handing over a picture of his daughter on her fourth birthday and- holy shit had he really been here five years?
"Twenty-one years ago I sent an agent on a kill mission. He turned it into a capture mission and brought back on the most dangerous assassins in the world. In the interrogation room, I asked her one question, that I'm going to ask you." Coulson pauses, "Where do your loyalties lie?"
"With her," he says, not looking up from the picture, "Her and Avery."
"Okay," Coulson says quietly.
He looks up at them.
"It may take weeks, months, or years, but we will try to find a way to get you out of here."
He looks up at them in disbelief.
"I don't deserve-"
"You may not deserve her," May cuts him off, "but that little girl sure as hell deserves a father."
"Thank you."
They smile and exit the room. He dreams of freedom that night, and awakes to a world full of possibilities.
Six months go by, and as many visits from his daughter, when one day she says something that brings tears to his eyes.
"I wish you weren't in here daddy," she says, swinging her legs while sitting on her mother's lap. "I wish you could be with me and mommy on the flying bus." She says it with all the innocence of a four year old, and he feels an ache in his chest. He doesn't want to hurt her with his knowledge and his past. She looks up.
"I love you daddy," she says with a smile, "Mommy loves you too."
He hasn't heard those words in ever, maybe, and he looks at her only to find her burying her face in their daughter's hair.
He turns his gaze back to his daughter. "I love you too sweetheart, you and your mommy."
He sees her lift her head up, and that she is wiping away tears.
"Is she telling the truth," he whispers.
"Of course she is," she chokes, "she's not allowed to lie."
"I'll never lie either," he says, "never again."
"I know," is her tearful response.
Their daughter is blissfully unaware of their exchange. They sit in silence for a long time, tears drying on their faces, until visiting hours are over. She stands up to leave pressing her hand to the glass along with their daughter.
She doesn't come the next week, but the week after that the guard opens his door and tells him it's his last night in prison.
He pulls the photos off the walls, one by one, placing them in a neat pile on his bed. His old bed he thinks, and smiles. He gathers them up and places them in the back pocket of his jeans, which they brought him this morning, along with a plain white shirt. His prison uniform lays discarded on the floor. At exactly ten o'clock the guard comes and unlocks his cell, leading him through the maze of cells and doors until they reach the exit.
At exactly ten fifteen, he steps out into the sunlight.
The guard shuts the gate behind him with as metal clank.
He hears a scream from across the parking lot.
Avery is running towards him, as fast as she can, screaming "daddy" in one long breath. He kneels down and she launches herself into his arms. He wraps his arms around his little girl, and falls in love with her all over again. He lifts her up, walking back the way she ran as she cries tears of joy into his shoulder. He is stroking her long dark hair, thinking maybe this is going to be alright. Her mother walks up to them, and at first he is expecting anger, but she smiles like the sun and holds out her arms for him to go into.
"Skye" he whispers as he envelops her and their daughter in an embrace. Suddenly he is crying, and so is she, all of them together, a family, a whole. They stand there for hours, holding each other, until Avery lifts her head from grant's shoulder and announces that she wants ice cream. He and Skye chuckle and she reaches her hand out to him to lead him to the car.
Lola sits parked on the curb, shiny and absent of the bullets holes that marked the last time Grant laid eyes on her. He climbs in the passenger seat, and they fly away.