Disclaimer: I don't own anything in the MCU. I just enjoy playing with the characters.

AN: Set pre-/during season 2. Soulmates AU - that one where you don't see colors until you meet your soulmate.

Grey walls. White sheets. Black shadows. That's Grant's life down here. Dull. Dank. Even his skin has lost all its warmth and is left a dead grey. All of that, he tells himself, is natural. It's the environment; it's his lack of time in the sun. But there's one thing he can count on.

So he spends a night folding a piece of paper beneath the blankets where the cameras can't see him. In the morning he presses the razor sharp tip to his wrist and holds his breath as the blood flows. A single line of it wells over the broken edge of his skin. It's not until the first drop strikes the floor that he accepts what he's seeing.

Black. It's black. He can't see the color of his own blood, can't see color at all anymore. She's dead.

After Peru, he turns himself over to Jemma so she can stitch up the graze he got on the fight back to the Bus. He's happy for the time alone with her. His eyes are naturally drawn to her whenever they're in the same room and it's tough to hide, even tougher to make himself hide it.

Her hair, her eyes, her clothes, her skin - it's all so beautiful. And apparently this colors thing isn't going to be limited to just her. Eventually they'll both be able to see everything like this. If the whole world is going to painted in colors soon, he can see why people make such a fuss over soulmates.

She draws in a hiss of air when she cuts away his shirt.

"It's fine," he says. "Barely even-"

He trails off as he catches sight of the wound and her hands lift instantly away from his side.

"Did I hurt you?"

For the first time since they met two days ago, he doesn't want to look at her. He's too transfixed by the sight of red covering his side.

"Ward?" she presses. "Grant."

"I can see it," he says, and only after the words are out does he realize he should probably have kept them in.

He's no stranger to blood. His job requires that he be willing to spill a little from time to time - be it his or someone else's - and he spent years hunting and cleaning his own food in the woods. Maybe familiarity is why that's the first thing he can see besides her. But if the same occurs to her, she never says. She only smiles and confesses she can see Fitz's hair.

"Gave me quite a start when I turned around in the lab this morning, I'll tell you."

He laughs with her and keeps his thoughts to himself.

She hates him. Hates hates hateshateshates him.

She thought she couldn't hate him any more than she did when Fitz woke up and he wasn't Fitz anymore. He proves her wrong every morning when she turns on the live feed from Vault D and sees him, every day as beautiful as he was the first time she laid eyes on him. He's the only spot of color in her world now. It's dimmed in light of his betrayal but it's still there; it kills her every morning.

When she opens the feed and sees red, bright and everywhere, she screams.

It's early and the base is large. She and Trip - up to get bringing Ward his breakfast over with - are the only ones there to help.

That first time, their first day on the Bus, she thought him very tall and very put together; now, carried in Trip's arms, he looks small and ragged - but still beautiful.

It's only because of the colors. It's a natural reaction, born of millennia of evolution to help humans both find their best genetic match and then not kill them out of shock when they do. The practicality of this does not comfort her.

She does her duty because duty is all she has left anymore, but it's impossible to ignore what he is to her when the bright red of his blood is warm and wet between the fingers of her gloves.

It would be so easy to go a touch too slow, to let nature take its course. Trip might recognize her pace for what it is but he would still buy her a beer afterward. He'd hold her when she cried and she wouldn't have to tell him it was because she'd never see the amber glow in the drink again. She thinks she might be able to live with that.

All at once the liquid covering her gloves goes black and Ward's skin is a pale grey, not a shade of pink in sight.

"No!" she yells, sounding desperate even to her own ears. It's completely unprofessional but tears run down her face as she begins chest compressions. She puts all her hurt and hate and anger and fear into it. When warm pink rises up beneath the grey of his chest, she sobs, unsure if it's in relief or heartbreak.

"It's okay," Trip says. He rubs a hand up and down her back. "You saved him. It was the right thing to do."

He's trying to convince himself just as much as her and she tries to offer him a watery smile in return. She meets his brown eyes, sees his blue shirt. The walls around them are a touch green and the line marking the downed barrier is yellow.

"Simmons…" Trip grips her shoulder. No doubt she's gone incredibly pale. But the colors are fading fast.

In a moment all that's left is Ward.

She sits against the wall in one of the recovery rooms, the only rooms on base she can safely dispose of her bloody scrubs without fear of Fitz seeing. She's still wearing the gloves, marveling at the way the red fades to grey as the blood dries.

The most popular theory on the soulmate phenomenon is that everyone always sees colors but the brain refuses to recognize them until it first recognizes the individual's "soulmate." Jemma never really understood it until she began to see colors and they were all just so obvious. Of course grass is that rich, hearty color and the sky is that ever-changing hue and Lola is red. She wasn't surprised by the color of anything, only by the added intensity color added to the world around her.

When she woke up at the bottom of the ocean, everything was again in shades of grey. That didn't change when she reached the surface or even when she was told Ward was still alive. It made sense. Colors are all in the head and when her head finally realized Ward was a traitor - when he betrayed her - it stopped viewing him as her perfect match. She did not love him. Maybe she had never loved him. And did it really matter if she had? Love, after all, is nothing more than a chemical reaction.

But then Coulson had Ward brought to the new base. Hooded, bound, and drugged, he was wheeled in in the dead of night. She held Skye's hand as a grim-faced Trip pushed the gurney past. She nearly sobbed when she saw the pink skin of his hands.

Every day she watches the security feed of his cell, drawing up memories of every horrible thing he has ever done. He never fades.

Until today.

She turns her hands. The blood's lost its luster. It's more of a rust color now and the grey is settling in faster. She rips the gloves off and makes to stand, only to be startled by the sight of May standing just inside the door. How long she's been standing there, Jemma can't guess.

"Oh! I'm sorry, did you need-"

"You're fine," May says in that measured, calming tone of hers. "I only came to talk." She toes the biohazard trashcan and the lid flips up.

Jemma tosses the gloves inside from her spot on the ground. She settles awkwardly back into her seat as May takes one a hand's width away, giving her space but not so much she feels she's being avoided. Jemma tries not to fidget. She's never sure what to expect from May and after this morning, she's already plenty on edge.

"I started seeing colors when I was a little older than Skye," May says. Jemma's stomach drops. This is the last thing she wants to talk about. "When it stopped …" She smiles a little sadly. "I knew it wouldn't come back but I found myself looking anyway, wishing I could still have this part of him to hold onto."

"I'm sorry," Jemma says sincerely. She's sure it's not May's intention, but this isn't helping her feelings of guilt. May's soulmate was probably a good person while Jemma's is a monster, yet he's the one still breathing.

"No need. It did."

It takes Jemma a moment to understand just what May's saying. May's smile twists into a genuine one.

"Yeah, yeah. Don't go spreading it around though. You kids make enough 'mom and dad' digs as it is."

"Says the woman calling fully grown adults 'kids.'"

May shrugs, unrepentant. "When you stop acting like it…," she murmurs. "My point is, maybe it hasn't come back yet but that doesn't mean it never will. You've both changed, him especially, and that means you'll have to work harder to get to know him again the way he is now."

Jemma's good humor is chased away by a chill flood. "What- what do you-" she stutters. "I mean, what-"

May gives her an indulgent smile. "You started looking right after we came here. It wasn't hard to figure out why."

Jemma's always been a truthful person and keeping this secret for nearly a year has been a weight on her. The truth - that it is Ward and not Fitz who she- who is her soulmate - wells up in her throat but all that comes out is a sob. She falls into May's shoulder and the woman holds her while she cries.

It's Ward's idea to keep it a secret. Not to lie, he says. Secrets are different. She's not lying when she refuses to divulge classified SHIELD intelligence to Skye because of her consultant status, is she?

It sounds so simple when he puts it like that. Everything is so simple with Ward.

"Protocol," he says when she tries to bring it up, "says teammates can't be in a romantic relationship."

"We're soulmates. It's implied."

"Not necessarily. There are plenty of people who barely even see their soulmates."

"Oh," she says, looking away. He hisses back a wince.

"No, I didn't mean- dammit."

He runs a hand through his hair, which forces him to lean slightly into her space. They met less than an hour ago and they're in the bowels of the plane. It's the only place they can hope to have some privacy but it's a tight fit down here, especially for him.

"I'm not saying I don't want…"

She can feel the heat of one of his hands hovering over her hip. She's keenly aware of how attractive he is. It's not just the colors - though that certainly plays a major role; it's his strong features and his build and the way he looks at her.

That might just be because she's in color but it doesn't lessen the heat his gaze stirs within her.

"But," he says, "I can wait for a different assignment if it means I get to know you."

"And there will be plenty of time for that on the Bus." She takes a pointed step back, angling her body around a large something-or-other sticking out from the floor. It might have something to do with the landing gear but she's not certain.

"Jemma," he says, reaching for her. It's the first time he's said her name - her first name, that is; he asked for Fitzsimmons when he boarded.

She shakes her head. "No. No, I'm not- I'm not hurt. I just, well … it's all rather overwhelming and if we're agreed to … to refrain, then I think some distance might be in order."

He smiles. It lights up his whole face with a sort of smug pride that she'd love to wipe away but she knows if she steps closer it will devolve into just the sort of thing they've agreed not to do.

Trip brings him breakfast in the mornings. There's a pass box in the wall with a separate force field attached just in case he gets the bright idea to try crawling through. Trip slams the door on it and heads for the stairs to sit while he watches Grant eat.

Grant doesn't get up, just stays in bed running the pad of his thumb over the scars. He's accumulated quite the collection in the last few weeks - a smaller cut on his other wrist and one on his forehead - but the first cut took the longest to heal and he only just got the stitches out for good.

"Coulda had those out a long time ago if you'd stop with that," Trip bites out. He doesn't like being down here, probably wishes Grant would eat so he could leave or at least make an attempt to escape so he could shoot him.

Grant's not sure that would be such a bad thing. There's no pain anymore when he touches his arm, nothing to drown out the ache in his chest. It won't work but he might as well make some attempt to fill it with food.

He opens the pass box to find the same thing they feed him everyday. Stew so boiled down he could gum it and a thick piece of bread. No utensils. It meets all his nutritional needs and probably started out as some vacuum-packed field rations. The presentation is all for his benefit. He sits on the floor beneath the pass box and dips the bread into the stew.

The medpod was the best chance he could give Jemma and it failed. Maybe things could have gone differently if he'd just told Garrett he found his soulmate, but she was a distraction and Garrett never had much patience for distractions. And while he's thinking of maybes, maybe if he'd just thrown Christian into the well when they were kids, he could have avoided all of this mess.

Maybes are useless. He has to face facts.

Jemma's dead.

He had six months of his life when the world was beautiful, six months of being happy together. He's not insane. He's not going to set the world on fire just because she's gone. He still has her love. She may not have loved all of him, but he can be that guy again. A true agent for the new SHIELD this time, not some HYDRA sleeper. But he can't do that from in here.

He glances up towards the barrier. It buzzes like a bug light all the time so that he barely hears it anymore. They'll never let him out, which means he'll have to make a way.

"I wanna talk to Skye," he says. He runs his finger around the bottom of the bowl to scoop up the last dregs of the stew. "Tell Coulson I'll give him whatever intel he wants, but I'll only give it to her."

When she asks to leave, everyone thinks it's because of Fitz. They're right, to a point. She's come to realize that Fitz - the Fitz she worked with and laughed with and loved like a brother - died in the ocean. This other person has his name and his face and yes, even his mind, but he's not her Fitz.

It might have ended up this way even if he'd come out of it all unscathed. He loves her in a way she can never return. Loving someone to the point of forsaking color. It sounds tragically romantic and is, in fact, the driving plot behind several films; none of which that she's seen deal with what happens if both parties aren't mutually enamored. For good reason, if her life is any indication.

She doesn't relieve anyone of their misconceptions. This late in the game she's aware of the chance that, should her connection with Ward ever come out, she will be considered a potential traitor by association. They'd never let her out of their sight in that case and she needs to leave.

It takes her only three days of contacting old professors and colleagues to get an interview at a HYDRA office. The recruiting officer is overjoyed to have her, her reputation having preceded her even with her identity erased.

There is, of course, a hiccup.

"You were a SHIELD agent," the woman says, her smile flagging a little, "and while many of our newest recruits were, it's been months since the uprising. I can't help but wonder if there might be some … hesitation on your part. So why are you here, Dr. Simmons?"

May provided her with a back story for just such a question. It involves being stranded and frightened and unsure where to turn. It makes perfect sense and this woman would believe every word of it - if it were coming from May.

Jemma opens her mouth to give it her best go - this is the plan, after all - but finds herself falling silent as the real answer presents itself before her mind's eye. She can still remember the way her gut clenched when all color faded from his body. She was sure, in those brief moments, that she would never be whole again without him. Which was absurd because she would live her life without him regardless.

"My soulmate," she says, more croaks actually. "He was killed by a SHIELD agent during the uprising. I couldn't-" Her voice breaks and the interviewer rests a clammy hand over hers on the desktop.

"You poor thing. Well, don't you worry. Our Troubleshooting Department is working night and day to round up the last of those bastards. I'm sure one of them will get the son of a bitch." She closes Jemma's file with a snap and a smile. "Can you start on Monday?"

When the barrier drops and it's Fitz standing there instead of Skye, Grant's heart leaps into his throat. A lesser man might be overwhelmed by the berserker rage but Grant has always seen shades of himself in Fitz. If Fitz survived the medpod, so did Jemma, or else Fitz wouldn't be alive now.

Grant's vision isn't solid evidence. Jemma liked to talk about the science of colors, how it's an illusion people create subconsciously. He believes it. He's known agents who swore their vision went grey when they were mistakenly told their soulmate died, only for it to return clear as ever when they were reunited later.

His hope cracks as he realizes there's something wrong with Fitz. Then it starts getting difficult to breathe and Fitz is still talking and Grant realizes there's a team in danger. He doesn't know who's on it but if it's Jemma, if she is alive and dies for real before he can even see her again … It's unthinkable.

So he uses what little air he has to make Fitz listen and when Fitz is gone, warning the others, Grant lays face down on his bed to hide his smile from the cameras.

Jemma successfully infiltrates HYDRA. And then gets outed while still within HYDRA. And then has to run for her life with who she thought was an agent of HYDRA.

It's all a bit much. That's what she tells everyone at any rate. She heads for her quarters - "Still right where you left them," Coulson says with that fatherly smile of his - only to detour at the last minute. Her clothes and knick knacks may be present but with SHIELD's limited resources it's entirely possible whatever tech she left behind was returned to the stores.

Her access hasn't been revoked and the only trouble comes in finding a secluded spot to access the computer system. An unused office does the trick and in a few keystrokes she's pulled up the live feed from Vault D. Her heart does an odd little dance in which it tries to sink and rise all at once. There is no denying that she can still see every tone, every hue of him.

The strength goes out of her and she sinks slowly into the office chair. Her face feels numb, as does much of the rest of her. She may not be able to form an expression but she can't deny the happiness she's feeling - or the disgust that chases quickly after it.

She can call it biology all she likes but the simple fact is she's just returned from a very perilous mission and has abandoned her friends to see him.

They're sending him to Christian, who's had more than a decade to plan all sorts of torments for him. Grant makes one final play for Skye's help to escape but it fails. He's desperate and scared and, to be honest, she plays him. He's actually kind of proud.

Trip brings him one last meal before they ship him off. And Grant knows nothing's changed on that front because it's the first time Trip's smiled around him since that base in Canada.

There's no point in planning his escape yet, not until he knows more of the particulars, which he won't have until he's actually being moved, so he plans for after instead.

"You been good?" he asks. It's the first time he's spoken to Trip since the morning he asked for Skye and the first time, period, that he's tried to make conversation.

Trip, expectedly, tenses up. His grin disappears. He doesn't answer.

"Come on, I'm a dead man. I can't know my friend's doing okay without me before I meet my maker?"

"We're not friends," Trip says coldly. "Never were. And if you think you can goad me into dropping this barrier so you can try some shitty escape plan, don't. I will drop you before you make it two steps." His hand on his sidearm adds credence to his words.

Grant smiles. "I really do care," he says with as much sincerity as he can muster. "Just between us, you got up the stones to make a move on Simmons yet?"

Trip gives him a long, hard look before deciding Grant's not worth his time and leaning back against the wall. There's no added rage, no hurt, none of what he'd expect to see if she'd died in that medpod. Jemma's alive.

They march him through the base. It's incredibly stupid since it lets him see some of the layout, which could prove useful should he ever return, but Coulson's making a statement here. Something about traitors and comeuppance. Grant can't really be bothered to care because he's seeing the team one last time. All of them. Even Jemma.

She steps between him and Skye and Grant's world lights up. It's instantaneous.

"If I ever see you again," she says, "I'll kill you."

He believes her but he can't stop smiling. She's alive and here and the world is full of color again. He thought he'd have to fight his way back to her or arrange a mission for SHIELD that she would have to be on to confirm it. He never thought Coulson would walk him right past her.

He keeps his eyes on her as long as he can, until they drop a bag over his head and he's reminded that he's got to escape from this. He'll still have to get back to her somehow but he's seen her, he knows she's alive. He can move on to planning ways to bring her back to his side without fear of it being for nothing. And he can smile beneath the bag, knowing that when it's removed everything he sees will remind him of what he's coming back for.