A/N: First of all, this does contain spoilers for recent episodes. Fair warning.

Second, more fair warning: Ward is a creep in this one. Like, seriously. Usually I write him a lot softer than canon, but this one? Nope. Creep.

Third, title comes from "I Don't Care" by Fall Out Boy.

I think that's it! Thanks for reading and, as always, please be gentle if you review.

Jemma leaves SHIELD forever mere weeks after they settle in at the Playground.

There's no single cause—nothing she can point to and say, "This did it. This is the final straw." No, it's a combination of factors. First and foremost, of course, is Fitz. The damage to his temporal lobe was both severe and permanent, and while he's improving…well, his progress is slow. And not only does her presence not help him, she actually makes him worse. The confession he made to her, there in that tiny box at the bottom of the ocean, has broken something between them irreparably.

Or rather, her inability to return it has.

It's not that she doesn't love Fitz, because she does. He's the other half of her brain, the Watson to her Holmes—the only person she's ever met that can match her on an intellectual level, for all that their disciplines are entirely different. Together, they're twice as smart. She does love him—as a partner, as a best friend, as a brother. She simply isn't in love with him.

No, she saves her romantic love for a man who is wholly unworthy of it.

Grant—Ward—is another factor, of course. In more than one way, in fact. First is the guilt. The fact that she could date a man for three years, be married to him for nearly four, and never once see a hint of his true nature…

He's a murderer and a liar and a traitor, and she never had the slightest clue. It keeps her up at night, wondering what could have been prevented—what she could have stopped—if only she had seen. If only she had questioned him, pressed a little harder about his work—could she have uncovered his secrets? It might have led to the discovery of HYDRA years earlier. Thousands of lives could have been saved.

But she didn't press. She took him at his word, always. Every time he shipped out for another op, another undercover assignment, she kissed him goodbye and wished him luck and wore his ring around her neck until he returned. She wonders, now, just how many of those assignments were actually for SHIELD, and how many were for HYDRA.

Perhaps it doesn't matter. SHIELD was HYDRA and HYDRA was SHIELD and no one's loyalties are certain, not anymore.

That's another reason she leaves. She doesn't know how much of the staring—the suspicious glaring and the second guessing and the sideways looks—is her imagination. She doesn't know whether she really does get doubted every time she opens her mouth. It's irrelevant, really. She feels as though she is—as though she's been put under permanent suspicion for her failure to see her husband as the traitor he was. Is.

Whether it's real or her imagination or some combination of the two, the fact remains that she can't stand to be around the others. Not Skye, who was trained by and kidnapped and nearly murdered by him. Not Coulson, who trusted and joked with and was nearly murdered by him. Not May, who chose and fought beside and was nearly murdered by him.

Certainly not Fitz.

(And not Koenig, whose identical twin brother she performed a post-mortem on after he killed him.)

There's too much hurt there, from what he did and what she didn't stop, and whether it's actually happening or all in her head, she can't stand the staring.

And, of course, there's the other thing.

The fact that he's there, there in the Playground, locked in a cell beneath their feet. How could she possibly sleep at night, knowing that? How could she even close her eyes, knowing that the monster (wearing the face of the man she loves) that haunts her nightmares is only a floor below her? How could she spend a single second of her day not watching the feed, making certain that he hasn't escaped?

She can't.

Perhaps she could have survived one or two of these things. If she were only able to return Fitz's love, or if he was locked away somewhere else, or if she felt less like everyone suspected her of being a traitor, as well—perhaps she could have stayed.

But everything is happening, together and at once, and, worse, show no signs of stopping. So she leaves.

Coulson tries, briefly, to talk her out of it. He offers her an assignment, but it's half-hearted, and he changes his mind halfway through describing it. She never even learns what it was. He doesn't trust her enough, she thinks, to send her on assignment. Better to be far away, where she can't threaten anyone—where she can't attempt to finish the job her husband started.

Of course, leaving has its own complications. Skye wiped all of their identities shortly after they left the Hub. Jemma Simmons, effectively, no longer exists. Coulson offers to have Skye draw up a new one, but Jemma can't bear to accept it. And, honestly, can't bear to stay a single moment longer. She says she'll figure something out.

She has something in mind, already. It kills her to do it—to use it—but she will. And if it causes her pain—if it only adds to the heavy weight she carries on her shoulders everywhere she goes—well. It's no less than she deserves.

x

After goodbyes, which are painful and horrible and terribly awkward, she walks three blocks from the Playground to the nearby bus station. She knows she's imagining the stares here. These people—complete strangers all—are not looking at her as a traitor, for leaving SHIELD, or a failure, for not stopping her husband. It's all in her head.

That doesn't make it any easier to bear.

There's a bus leaving for Miami in ten minutes, and she hurries to buy a ticket. She has several hundred dollars in cash—an unexpected gift from May, who slipped it into her hand when she hugged her goodbye (itself a very unexpected act) and refused to take it back—so the purchase is simple. It's slightly odd, though. It's the first time in weeks that she's spoken to someone outside of SHEILD. The woman's friendly smile and cheerful wish of a good day is almost off-putting.

She really does need to get away.

The choice of Miami isn't solely because it's the first bus leaving, although that's certainly a stroke of luck. No, Miami is a deliberate choice for a specific reason, and she spends the entire drive second guessing it. She makes lists in her head—pros and cons, alternative options, risk assessments—and it's entirely possible that she's speaking out loud, or at least mumbling, because the other passengers give her a wide berth.

That is hardly her biggest concern, however.

The important thing is that by the time she reaches Miami, she's resolved. Instead of leaving the station or buying another ticket, she heads for the lockers. She has a key to one of them. It's on her key ring and has been for nearly three years.

Years ago, shortly after…after Ward proposed, he told her about his drop boxes. They're stashes of identities and currency and weapons, located all over the world: in bus stations, in banks, and the occasional property he owns. And, once they were engaged, he added identities for her, as well. He gave her keys to a few of them, made her memorize combinations for the locks of others, and taught her the locations of several.

All of it was just in case. In case of what, he would never say. Something like this, she imagines—SHIELD falling, HYDRA coming out of the shadows, her real identity being burned or erased—though certainly he couldn't have predicted the exact circumstances.

Building a new life with one of these identities is most likely incredibly dangerous. Ward, of course, is locked up, but there's no telling how many HYDRA agents are still out there, nor how many of them might know about these identities. She's taking her life into her hands, here, and if someone comes looking for her she'll have no way to protect herself.

So be it.

She takes the entire duffle bag from the locker. She won't need the weapons, of course, or the explosives, and certainly not the various identities in Ward's name. But she can't dig through the whole mess here, in the middle of a bus terminal. It's far too likely to end in tears.

So she takes the whole thing. She goes outside, summons a cab, and asks for the nearest decent hotel. As the cab cuts through traffic, she digs through the bag. She takes the first driver's license she finds—Ingrid Wallace, as it happens—and tucks it into her pocket. It will do for getting a room.

And it does. She takes a room—on the second floor, as there are none available on the ground floor—and declines the offer of assistance with her luggage. Then she takes the stairs (because the lift is too small, too reminiscent of another tiny box she's been in recently) to the second floor, finds her room, and locks herself in.

Then she drops the bag by the door, crosses to the bed, and lies down on it and cries for at least an hour. It's the first time she's done so. Everything that's happened—Eric Koenig's murder, the revelation of Ward's true nature, Skye's kidnapping, chasing the Bus, being dropped from the Bus, Fitz's injury—it was all so much, so fast. She never had time to catch her breath, let alone cry.

But she has the time now, so she takes it.

All of her hopes and dreams are gone. The life she built with Ward, the future she planned for—gone. The agency she dedicated her life to—effectively gone. The partnership which has defined her professional life for the last decade—irreparably broken.

She can't even take comfort in her memories, because all of them have been tainted by the truth she now knows.

She sobs into the scratchy hotel coverlet for a very long time. She's shaking uncontrollably and her heart is in her throat and more than once she thinks she might be physically sick (although, fortunately, never is). By the time she finally runs out of tears, an indeterminate amount of time later, the coverlet is soaked through and she feels strangely hollow.

She washes her face in the sink, drinks a bottle of water from the mini bar, and makes herself a solemn promise. Those are the last tears she'll be shedding over Grant Ward. Ever.

Then she gets to work planning her new life.

x

The identity she settles on is Sarah Cunningham. Sarah is from Reading, has an MSc in Chemistry from King's College London, and immigrated to America five years ago to be with her husband, Luke. He is an American marine, and there's not much she can do to end the marriage—lacking the sort of technical skills that would allow her to alter public record. Still, it's irrelevant. He's locked up and will, with any luck, remain so for the rest of his life. What does it matter if public record says they're married?

Sarah also happens to be certified to teach high school in several states, which is something Jemma plans to take advantage of.

It's not her first choice, of course. Her first choice would be to return to academia—get another PhD, perhaps, or find work in a private research lab. Unfortunately, it's not possible. Those circles are relatively small, and Jemma's is a well-known name. It's one of the side effects of being a prodigy.

Should she apply for a position anywhere in academia—university, research lab, or other—there's a high chance she'll be recognized. Too high a chance, honestly. And since she's currently been branded a terrorist, she just can't risk it.

So she has to think smaller.

She applies for every open chemistry teacher position in every state for which she's certified to teach. It's hardly what she wants out of life, but…well. Everything she wants is far out of reach, now. Perhaps it's time to try something new.

x

She's offered several positions, but the one she ends up accepting is in a small town in Texas. And she does mean small. Small enough that she's not hired as a chemistry teacher, she's hired as a science teacher. Each grade is assigned to take a specific science and she's teaching all of them—because ninth and tenth grade are small enough to only need one class each, while eleventh and twelfth need only two each. She's teaching IP&C, Biology, Chemistry, and Physics, and she still has a free period every day.

It's a little overwhelming, but in a nice way. Planning lessons, drawing up exams, and grading papers for four different subjects should keep her plenty busy, and that's exactly what she needs, right now.

The day she signs her contract, the principal—Mrs. Fessler—asks about the fading tan line on her ring finger.

Jemma has a story prepared. In short, she plans to say that she's just out of a bitter divorce. She's concocted a tale of a dangerous, vindictive ex-husband—a tale which will not only explain her sudden desire to move to a small town in Texas out of nowhere, but will also serve to discourage the locals from pointing any strangers her way, should anyone come to town looking for her. It's an excellent story and she practiced it several times. She's ready to share it.

Unfortunately, her mouth appears to have a mind of its own, as her pre-planned story is not at all what slips out.

"I lost my husband recently," she says quietly. She rubs her thumb against the inside of her ring finger, along the base where her ring used to sit. She can't possibly wear it anymore—not when she knows what she does—but, weeks after she removed it, its absence still feels odd.

"Lost?" Mrs. Fessler asks, eyes wide with anticipatory sympathy.

"He was a marine," she says. According to the cover, it's true. But she has no idea why she says it. "He was recently killed in action."

And that is nothing short of a blatant lie. Her husband is not dead—and, despite everything, she hasn't the heart to wish him so. To spend the rest of his life in a cell, yes. To die, no.

It's a complete lie, and she has no idea why she tells it.

"Oh, you poor dear," Mrs. Fessler says. "I'm so sorry for your loss."

"Thank you," she says, and folds her hands in her lap. "It's been…difficult."

"I'm sure it has," Mrs. Fessler agrees kindly. "Is that why you moved here? I did wonder; we don't get too many visitors."

"It is," she confirms. "Our home—I just couldn't bear to live there anymore. Not without him."

Mrs. Fessler is full of sympathy and obviously very moved, and Jemma—having had a little experience with the woman during the interview process—is confident in assuming that the lie will be all over town by the next day.

And it is.

She receives sympathy everywhere she goes, and it makes her terribly uncomfortable, because she doesn't deserve it. However, she can hardly retract her story. All she can do is wait it out—eventually, she's sure, they'll lose interest.

And she still has no idea why she lied. It makes no sense at all.

Still, she finds herself grateful for it. Despite her resolve not to think about anyone or anything she left behind in SHIELD, her mind often drifts towards them. All of her neighbors—who insist on having her over for dinner—and colleagues—who are assisting her in getting settled—are very understanding when she goes quiet in the middle of a sentence. She thinks that without the cover story, she would be considered quite odd by the end of her second week in town.

With the cover story, she's the recipient of overwhelming kindness.

She feels horrible accepting it, but she doesn't have a choice. And it does make things better, in some ways. After weeks of mourning, which followed weeks of panic and grief, which followed months of non-stop action, it's nice to be surrounded by kindness instead of fear.

x

Of course, she arrives at the tail end of the school year. The previous science teacher is retiring, after forty-five years of teaching, and is all too happy to hand half of his classes over to her. The students are fascinated by her—Mrs. Fessler wasn't kidding about not getting many visitors, it seems—and she has to work hard to keep them on task, especially when they keep getting distracted by her accent. Or, to be more precise, her phrasing and pronunciation of certain words.

"Wait, say that again" becomes her least favorite thing to hear.

Nonetheless, she grows fond of the students, and she thinks they become fond of her. They regard her with a certain amount of bemusement—specifically, her enthusiasm for the subject matter seems to take them aback—but they joke with her in a way she remembers doing with very few professors, so she takes it as a good sign.

The school apparently offers both remedial and advanced classes over the summer, in the hopes of keeping the students out of trouble, and Jemma is asked to teach a few of them. It's for a far reduced salary—the school simply hasn't the funding for it, Mrs. Fessler explains apologetically—but she accepts at once. The last thing she wants is to be idle.

So, even after the school year ends, her days are full. She teaches classes at the high school in the mornings, assists with the classes at the junior high in the afternoons, and accepts a position as a counselor for the weekend summer camp happening at the elementary school.

It serves to integrate her into the community very effectively—soon, it becomes common for her to hear, "Hi, Mrs. C!" from children of all ages wherever she goes. She begins to recognize them and their parents, and learns well in advance of her actual job starting which of the students are problem kids, which are good kids who simply don't focus well, and which are the kids who appear good but are actually serious trouble. She also learns which students will require special or careful handling, as well as the best way to go about providing said handling.

In short, it's a very effective way to spend her summer.

But that's not why she does it.

She works herself into exhaustion every day and collapses into bed late at night. Sometimes, if her day has been sufficiently busy, she sleeps peacefully and dreamlessly.

Most nights, she doesn't.

She's haunted by horrible nightmares. It's hardly surprising. There's no way to stop them and no way to avoid them, aside from being completely exhausted when she goes to bed, and even that doesn't always work. All she can do is suffer through them.

She becomes almost accustomed to them—to the sight of Fitz rotting away at the bottom of the ocean, of Eric Koenig stuffed in a vent, of the man she loves killing people with a smile. She learns to live with dreams of the accusing eyes of the dead she could have saved, if only she had known, staring through her.

And if sometimes she wakes, sobbing, in the middle of the night from dreams which should be happy—from dreams of her honeymoon, or holidays, or the many, many good memories she built up over seven years spent loving a murderer—well. It's only to be expected.

x

By the time the new school year starts, she's comfortably settled in. She knows almost all of her students by name, has a good idea of most of their personalities, and has been completely welcomed by the community.

She's not happy, not precisely. She doesn't know if that's even possible for her anymore, after everything she's lost and everything that still weighs on her shoulders. But she's certainly content.

For a little while, at least.

She's aware of Senator Christian Ward, of course. Ward—the one she married—didn't speak of his family often, but he did mention a few things. Including what his older brother did to him. How much of that was true, she couldn't possibly guess. Perhaps none of it was. Perhaps it was all a lie, intended to drum up sympathy and keep her from wanting to ever meet his family.

Regardless of how much was truth and how much wasn't, she knows who Christian Ward is. She knows it the first moment she sees him on television, raving about the threat SHIELD poses. He's a constant, unwelcome reminder of the life she left behind and the husband she lost—and she does mean constant. Every time she turns around, he's on another talk-show or news channel, speaking about the evil of SHIELD.

Any progress she was making—and she was making a bit—stalls in the middle of September, when he begins making all of these appearances. It's impossible to put her husband and his various crimes out of her mind when his brother is everywhere she looks. Her nightmares, which had begun to fade, increase in severity once again.

Still, she muddles through it. Remembering the success she had with exhaustion over the summer, she buys a treadmill and starts running. Every night before she goes to bed she runs. At first just a little, then gradually, as her endurance increases, longer and longer. It does wonders to help her sleep. She still has nightmares, of course, but they begin to diminish again.

And when she does wake in the middle of the night, rather than spending the rest of the night watching mindless television, unable to sleep (which is what she was doing), she runs some more. Usually, she's able to get back to sleep within the hour.

It's not entirely healthy—she's lost more weight than is really advisable, and she knows very well that literally running from her problems won't help her deal with them—but it's what she needs to get through the day. By the time Halloween rolls around, she's back on an even keel.

Once again, however, it doesn't last.

x

The United Nations gets attacked by a group of men wearing the SHIELD symbol, and Senator Ward responds by telling the world that his younger brother is a HYDRA agent. Jemma, upon hearing the speech he makes—about good and evil existing side by side, and cutting evil out of one's heart, and other sound bites which are sure to be replayed on a regular basis in the last few weeks leading up to the election—is actually, physically sick. Christian swears that he'll put Grant on trial and personally see to it that he receives justice.

She doesn't know what that means for her. She doesn't know what she wants it to mean. Their marriage was never actually dissolved—how could it be, with both their identities erased—which means (if her knowledge of American law serves) that she can't testify against him. The others, however, have no such…obstacle? Protection?

She tries to imagine Skye being forced to sit on the stand and recount her kidnapping—or Fitz, stumbling his way through an account of being dropped out of the Bus. That would certainly make a nice sound bite for Senator Ward, wouldn't it? HYDRA agents are so evil that one attempted to murder his own wife.

Imagining all of the ways the trial could go—good and bad and every space between—keeps her up all night. Which is probably just as well; she can't imagine that any amount of running would save her from nightmares, after all of this.

x

She's oddly jumpy the next day, and more than one person notices. She tells her co-workers that she didn't sleep well and her students that she was up late watching the horror film marathon they were all talking about last week.

"Morbid curiosity," she claims. "It was a terrible mistake and I'm going to fail all of you. For revenge, you understand."

"You'll thank us one day, Mrs. C.," Jeffrey Reed claims.

"For the fact that I'm going to be jumping at shadows for the next three months?" she asks dryly.

"For the excitement," he says. "You could use some in your life."

She thinks, privately, that she's had enough excitement to fill the lives of every student in this classroom combined.

All she says, however, is, "You sound like your mother. And I'm still not joining her book club."

The class laughs—Nancy Reed's book club is a running joke—and the topic of Jemma's jumpiness is forgotten as she gets them back to work.

x

She spends her free period in her classroom. The chaos of the past few days has her behind on her grading, and her ninth graders are starting to become antsy regarding last week's midterm. She's determined to get the grading finished by the end of the period, so she's slightly annoyed when someone knocks on the doorframe.

"Come in," she invites, without looking up.

"You look busy."

Jemma stops breathing.

She closes her eyes for a moment. Part of her thinks that the voice was just her imagination, just her mind playing tricks on her—she's been thinking of him all day, despite her best efforts, and it's entirely possible that she's simply hearing things. Perhaps when she looks up, it will be someone else: Mr. Markham, the PE teacher, who has not-so-subtly been working towards asking her on a date, or maybe Mr. Isaacson, the librarian, who often enlists her help in understanding emails from his daughter (who's studying molecular biology at university).

It's a possibility.

Slowly, reluctantly, she looks up from the exam she's marking.

It's not her mind playing tricks on her.

Ward is lounging in the doorway, arms crossed and one shoulder propped against the doorframe. He looks entirely comfortable and, somehow, not at all out-of-place.

"Hi, honey," he says, tone just this side of mocking. "Did you miss me?"

Her hand spasms around her pen. She has the absurd urge to throw it at him, but instead sets it down gently on the desk and stands.

"Not particularly," she says. Her voice is surprisingly steady, in direct contrast to the tremor in her limbs. "What are you doing here?"

"What, a guy can't drop in and see his widow at work?" he asks.

She stiffens.

"Yeah, I heard about that," he says. He pushes off the doorframe and steps into the room, kicking the door closed behind him. She flinches as it slams. "The woman at the front desk—Mrs. Taylor, was it?—was very happy to tell me all about poor Mrs. Cunningham and her brave marine husband who died in combat." He shakes his head. "Moving stuff, Jem. She actually teared up. When did you learn to lie?"

She swallows. "How did you get out?"

"What, no one told you?" he asks. He wanders across the room to examine the posters hanging on the far wall. "That's pretty cold. A woman's husband escapes from federal custody, you'd think she'd rate a phone call."

"Federal custody?" she echoes, confused. Then it hits her. Of course.

Christian Ward swore to put his brother on trial—publically. He could hardly do so if Ward was locked in a cell in a secret base. They must have taken him out to transfer him somewhere a little more camera-friendly, and he escaped in the process.

Ward reads the realization on her face and smirks a little.

"What can I say?" he asks. "I saw the chance and I took it." He strolls toward her desk, and Jemma takes a step back before she can stop herself.

She bumps into her chair, which rolls back a few feet, and Ward stops. He looks her over—a slow perusal that sets her skin to crawling—and frowns.

"You're afraid of me."

She stares at him, incredulous. He actually sounds hurt. He's faking it, of course—he must be—but that he's even bothering is beyond ridiculous.

"The last time we saw each other, you tried to kill me," she hisses, fear momentarily overtaken by anger. "Of course I'm frightened."

He smiles. It's a familiar smile, the indulgent one he always gave her when she enthused about her work, discussing concepts he couldn't possibly understand. The memory of it—the way he would always encourage her, egg her on in her ramblings and then sit back and smile like that—is actually, physically painful. Again, she's hit with the urge to throw something at him.

Actually, her strongest urge is to run away, but she knows she wouldn't get far. Realistically, she wouldn't even make it halfway to the door. There's no point in trying until she actually has a chance.

"Jem," he says, and the hurt is gone from his voice, replaced by an incredibly off-putting fondness. "If I wanted to kill you, you'd be dead."

She has absolutely nothing to say to that. Even if she did, she's not entirely certain her voice would obey. Her anger has failed her, and all that's left is the fear. She knows, now, exactly what her husband is capable of, and it's impossible to look at him without seeing Eric Koenig's corpse, or the look on Skye's face when she was rescued.

Or Fitz, sacrificing himself for her sake.

She's exhausted and heartsick and terrified. She wants him gone. She wants this to be a nightmare. She wants the last year to have been a nightmare—just a horrid, elaborate dream from which she'll wake any minute, curled in bed with him—the him that isn't a murderer—in their quarters at the Sandbox. And she'll tell him about the dream, and he'll laugh at the idea of himself as a traitor, and he'll pretend offense when she mentions the beard he's sporting and how creepy it makes him look.

She wants to wake up. But this isn't a nightmare.

"Why are you here?" she asks.

He has the nerve to look surprised. "For you, of course." He closes the distance between them, so that all that separates them is her flimsy wooden desk. "Seven months and you never once came to visit me. Figured if the mountain won't come to Mohammed, and all that."

"Well, you've seen me," she says. "And now it's time for you to leave."

"Us."

"I'm sorry?" she asks, although she heard him perfectly well and has the horrible feeling that she knows exactly what he meant.

"It's time for us to leave," he clarifies.

Yes, she was afraid of that.

"What makes you think I'd go anywhere with you?" she asks. She tries to sound incredulous, or condescending, or anything other than completely terrified, and fails. Miserably.

He chuckles a little and sits on the corner of her desk.

"You know, I never expected you to leave SHIELD," he says, apropos of nothing. "You were always so dedicated. Loyal." He pokes at the Newton's Cradle on her desk, sets it to swinging. "I guess the HYDRA thing was just too much for you, huh?" He smirks a little. "Or maybe it was me."

She takes a deep breath, but doesn't respond. She doesn't know whether admitting that yes, he did play a large role in her departure, would make things better or worse. So she says nothing.

"Either way, it's a surprise. But you can't have changed too much. You still have a duty to save lives, right?" He picks up one of the framed photographs from her desk—specifically, the one from the field trip to the planetarium in Austin, in which she is surrounded by her ninth grade class. "You've just added to it. As a teacher…you'd want to protect your students." He sets the picture down and smiles at her. "Stop me if I'm getting warm."

Jemma goes cold. "Are you threatening them?"

"Threatening is such an ugly word," he muses. "All I'm saying is…if you don't come with me, I'll have to hang around until you change your mind." He stands. "And I've been locked up for months. My, uh," he smirks. "My self-control isn't what it used to be."

Bile burns at the back of her throat, and she swallows it down. How could she not have seen this? She loved this man. She married this man. She planned a life with him. And all that time, there was this—this cruelty, this coldness—this evil—hiding just beneath the surface.

How did she miss it?

"So what do you say, Jem?" he asks. "Take a road trip with your husband?" He nudges one of the photographs. "Or am I gonna have to find something else to do?"

Her eyes flit to the clock on the wall. In ten minutes, classes will change, and the halls will be swarming with innocent, defenseless children. She can't let him hurt them—and she does, truly, believe him when he says (or, rather, implies) that he will.

She can't think of a single way out of this. Calling SHIELD would be useless—they're too far away. And the local police would stand no chance against him. She'd say that the last thing she wants is to go with him, but that's not true. The last thing she wants is for more people to die because of her.

She takes a deep breath. Her hands are shaking.

"Where are we going?" she asks.

He grins. It makes her flinch.

"I've got some things to take care of," he says, and motions for her to precede him to the door. She grabs her bag and, reluctantly, leaves the imagined safety of her desk. "And you're going to help me with them."

He opens the door and wraps an arm around her shoulders. She tries to duck away, but he simply tightens his grip. Wary of causing a fuss and drawing anyone out of the surrounding classrooms, she gives in and accepts it.

"What sort of things?" she asks, although she's not entirely certain she wants to know.

His arm is a heavy weight on her shoulders. It feels like a threat. "I think it's time you met my brother."