A/N: First of all, shout out to sapphireglyps for looking this over for me. Thank you, darling; you are, as always, my absolute favorite.
Second, this is a season two AU that doesn't take itself too seriously. Ward isn't precisely a good guy, but he's nowhere near canon (or erase myself) levels of bad. Take that as you will. Also, the end of S1 didn't go exactly the way it did in canon, but more on that later.
Title comes from "War of Change" by Thousand Foot Krutch.
Thanks for reading and, as always, please be gentle if you review!
Jemma learns of Ward's escape approximately two seconds before he saves her life.
She's in Toronto, and she's alone. It's a common state for her these days; the closest thing she has to a team is nine traumatized cadets, none of whom will leave the base she's established for them with anything short of a grenade launcher. And since that sort of thing tends to attract attention—well.
The point is, whenever she needs to leave their base (another one of Fury's secret locations, handed over by Coulson as a sort of goodbye present when she told him she couldn't stay in the Playground any longer and intended to discover exactly what became of the various Academies' cadets), she generally does so by herself. Not that she leaves the base often; the children are terrified and half-trained and so very, very young, and leaving them without supervision is truly inadvisable.
Sometimes it's unavoidable, however. Such as when she hears word of another cadet's whereabouts, for example, or when Coulson calls upon her to provide medical treatment for any team which finds trouble within 200 miles of the Courtyard.
Or when they run out of Nyquil.
That's what draws her out of the base on this particular day. Elijah, one of the Operations cadets, has been nursing a horrible cold for weeks, and he's entirely used up their supply of over-the-counter remedies. She can hardly take him to a doctor (unless she wants to physically carry him there, which is unlikely to be effective; for all that he's ten years younger than she, he happens to be eight inches taller), and thus the only thing she can do is keep him stocked in non-prescription medication.
She only intends for it to be a quick trip. A brief drive into Toronto (she tries to shop in the city proper, where it's easier to get lost amongst the crowds), a five minute stop at whichever pharmacy catches her eye, and then back to the base. Unfortunately, it doesn't quite work that way.
The first part goes well enough. She finds a pharmacy, buys Elijah's Nyquil (plus a few dozen other over-the-counter medications for good measure), and picks up some minor treats for the others (chocolate for Marta and Ben and Oscar, who greatly resent being forced through combat training and deserve some sort of reward for their efforts; pretzels for Yvonne, who has complained endlessly about the lack of them in the Courtyard's stores; Seventeen and People magazines for Lacey, who shamelessly enjoys celebrity gossip (nearly as much as she enjoys thrashing anyone who tries to make her feel badly about it); and a Hot Wheels car each for Alice, Adam, and Toni, who have dealt with the enforced isolation by turning the entire west side of the base into a very, very large track).
It's as she's putting her bags in the backseat that things go wrong.
She senses the man's approach—being responsible for nine teenagers has done more for her instincts than ten years of failed field training ever could—but she doesn't have time to go for the ICER holstered beneath her jacket or the actual gun under the front seat before she feels a gun pressed to the base of her spine.
"Easy, Agent Simmons," the man says. He's English—from Yorkshire, unless she misses her guess (a possibility; it's been far too long since she's been home, she thinks with an ill-timed pang)—and, absurdly, it makes her resent him even more than she otherwise might have. "Don't want to cause a scene, now, do we?"
No, she doesn't. This is an area with heavy traffic, and the last thing she wants is for civilians to get caught in the crossfire. HYDRA—and he must be HYDRA; who else would address her as Agent Simmons whilst threatening her?—doesn't care about collateral damage. As much as it grates on her to go quietly, so to speak, she can't risk him (and/or any accomplices he might have) turning his gun against innocent people.
"What do you want?" she asks.
"Come with me," he orders, and the pressure against her back disappears half a second before he grabs her upper arm.
She barely has time to close the door before he's tugging her away from the car and towards the back of the car park. Her mind is racing, considering and discarding various plans as too risky, too far-fetched, and too complicated. She has a panic-button on her key-chain, but it's meant more for damage control than rescue; pressing it will put the Courtyard in lockdown and send an alert to Coulson, and while both are things that might need to happen right now, they won't do much to get her out of this situation.
She's willing to die for SHIELD, of course, but, if it's at all possible, she would really like to avoid it.
Still, it's possible that this is some kind of diversion. HYDRA might even now be attempting to breach the Courtyard, and the cadets might be at risk. Her captor is walking on her left side, and her keys are in her right pocket, so…
"Where are you taking me?" she asks, struggling against him a bit—purely for show. "What do you want?"
As she was hoping, he jerks on her arm. It is, admittedly, a little rougher than she was expecting (she can't stop from crying out at the way her shoulder wrenches), but the motion provides an excellent cover as she slips her right hand into her pocket and hits the panic button.
There. If nothing else, she knows that her cadets will be safe. The lockdown isn't completely impenetrable, of course, but it will slow any attackers down long enough for Coulson to send help.
There's an alley between the pharmacy and the apartment building behind it, and that's where her captor steers her. Once they've passed into the shadow of the pharmacy, out of sight of the car park, he shoves her away from him.
Caught off-guard, she stumbles a little, and by the time she regains her balance, he has his gun out and pointed directly at her heart.
"In answer to your question," he says. "I should think it obvious, especially to a woman of your intelligence."
"Humor me," she requests, and is absurdly pleased by how even her voice is. May, she thinks, would be proud.
(Skye would be disappointed by the lack of snarking, however. Perhaps she should rectify that. It would undoubtedly be amusing, and she thinks she deserves a bit of laugh before she dies—as she almost certainly will.)
"Fair enough," he shrugs, and takes a step closer. "I'm here to make you an offer. SHIELD is nothing but crumbs, Agent Simmons, as I'm sure you're aware, and will soon be dust. HYDRA has a place for you waiting. All you have to do is take it."
As a scientist, she knows perfectly well that what she invites him to do is anatomically impossible. That's rather the point. Skye would absolutely be proud.
The look on his face is, as expected, extremely satisfying, but she only gets to enjoy it for a moment before he reacts. Violently. He hits her—hard—in the face with his gun (pistol whip, Skye's voice whispers sympathetically in her mind), and there's enough force behind it to knock her down. She's not expecting it, and she cries out when she lands painfully on her wrist.
She takes a moment to blink the stars (and tears) out of her eyes, then scrambles to sit up and face him. The entire left side of her face is throbbing, and she thinks her wrist must be, at the very least, sprained, if the pain radiating up her arm is any indication.
However, it doesn't appear that she's going to be troubled by her injuries for very long, because she's barely made it to her knees before he's got his gun pressed to her forehead. She freezes, swallowing convulsively, and closes her eyes.
"One more chance, Agent Simmons," he says. "SHIELD is the losing side. You must know that. Come work for HYDRA. We have all the facilities and resources you could possibly want."
She steels herself, opens her eyes, and lifts her chin. If she must die, she will not do so cowering like a scared child.
"I'd rather die," she says, and it's the absolute truth.
Surprisingly (and worryingly), he laughs. "Oh, that won't be necessary. No, no. Trust me—soon enough, you'll be happy to comply."
She doesn't know what that means, but she does not like the sound of it.
"I have to thank you, really," he continues, and the pressure of the gun-barrel against her forehead eases slightly as he rocks back on his heels. "Being responsible for the capture of the Jemma Simmons is going to earn me quite the promotion, I expect. I don't know what prompted you to wander Toronto alone, but I truly appreciate it."
She has a fraction of a second to be grateful that he doesn't appear to know about her cadets, and then—
"She's not alone."
Her blood runs cold. The voice is horribly familiar, but it's—it's impossible.
It happens so quickly that she doesn't even see it. One moment the man is standing in front of her, gun to her head and mocking smile fading (presumably in response to the unexpected voice), and the next, he's dropped the gun in favor of clutching at his throat—or, to be more precise, the long slice which has suddenly appeared along the line of it.
She doesn't think she'll ever forget the noise he makes—the horrible, gurgling gasp—before he falls. (She scrambles backwards to avoid being fallen on, and distantly notes that the shooting pain in her wrist suggests that it is, in fact sprained, if not broken.) It doesn't matter that this man (whose name she doesn't—will now never—know) was the enemy and was about to hand her over to HYDRA. It doesn't matter who he was—she saw and heard him die and she's certain it will play a part in her nightmares in the months to come.
Not nearly as large a part as the man who killed him, however.
It's Ward, of course. She doesn't know how it's possible, how it is that he's standing in front of her when he's supposed to be locked in a cell nine hundred kilometers away, but here he is, tucking away a switchblade and looking her over—frowning as his eyes linger on the side of her face where the HYDRA agent struck her.
He's looking at her the way he used to, before SHIELD fell—before he betrayed them—back when he would (pretend to) take each injury any of the team received as a personal insult, and she's not sure whether it makes her want to laugh or cry.
So she goes with neither. She pushes herself carefully to her feet as he watches and wonders whether she dares to reach for the ICER beneath her jacket. She can't imagine she'll have the chance to use it, but she'd feel better dying with a weapon in her hands than on her knees.
Ward smiles a little, like he knows what she's thinking, and spreads his hands. "You're welcome."
"What are you doing here?" she demands, resolutely keeping her eyes on him instead of the body at her feet. "How did you escape?"
"Manners, Jemma," he scolds, and she twitches. "I just saved your life. Don't I at least deserve a thank you before the interrogation?"
"That depends," she says, and eases her good hand towards her side.
"On?" he asks.
"Why you did it."
"Hmm," he says, and steps over the HYDRA agent's body to approach her.
Fear has her retreating automatically, and she curses the instinct when she finds herself backed against the wall with Ward standing far, far too close. She tenses, heart in her throat, when he slips his hand inside her jacket and runs his hand down her side, but all he does is disarm her. He takes her ICER and steps back, holding it up and raising his eyebrows.
"For future reference, these work better in your hand than in a holster," he says, somewhat mockingly. Then he tucks it into the waistband of his jeans and takes another step back. "As for why I saved you…" He shrugs. "Call it for old time's sake."
She really has no idea how to respond to that. She has several thousand words trapped in her throat, words that have built over the months since he betrayed them, but without even an ICER with which to defend herself, she doesn't quite dare throw them at him.
(Is it absurd or simply horrible, she wonders, that a former lover who has just saved her life and has tucked away both weapons he's shown himself to be carrying is more terrifying than a HYDRA agent pointing a gun at her heart?)
"How did you escape?" she repeats instead.
"They made it easy," he says. "A better question would be when, don't you think?"
She's not sure what to make of his tone. She's not sure what to make of anything. The last time she saw him, he was holding her prisoner. Now, he's just saved her life. She doesn't know what it means—whether he's attempting to lull her into a false sense of security or playing some game or what.
But she does wonder, so she asks, "When, then?"
"Four days ago," he says, and he sounds, oddly enough, almost apologetic. "Kind of weird that Coulson didn't tell you, isn't it?" He tilts his head. "Maybe he didn't think you needed to know."
She stands corrected. He's almost certainly playing some sort of game. What that game might be, she couldn't possibly guess, but she does know that she's not interested in playing.
(She can't trust his word that he escaped so long ago, but she'll certainly be having words about it with Coulson as soon as she makes it back to base. If she makes it back to base.)
"So," she says. "What now?"
"Now," he says. "I get out of here before the Cavalry shows up." He grins. "No pun intended."
She twitches with the urge to throw something at him. Actually, what she'd really like is to shoot him in the face, but she is, sadly, entirely without a weapon at the moment.
"Don't call her that."
His grin widens. "Right. My mistake." He's been backing away during the exchange, and now he pauses at the mouth of the alley. "Tell her I said hi. And that I'm sorry for the whole Ice Queen thing. That was rude of me."
He sounds honestly regretful, and she stares at him, baffled.
"And tell Coulson I'm not impressed with the new recruits," he adds. "I mean, I know I'm not easy to replace, but come on. He can definitely do better than that."
She's still stuck on that was rude of me, so all she can do is stammer a bit in response. He checks his watch and grimaces a little.
"Gotta run," he says. "I did miss you, so it was nice to see you again, Jemma. But from now on, you should watch your back. I won't always be around to save your ass."
He gives her a little salute, then disappears around the side of the building, and she's left standing there, still pressed against the wall and entirely speechless.
"I—what?" she demands of the empty alley.
After a moment, the shock passes, and she shakes her head as rational thinking returns.
"He was trying to put you off-balance, idiot," she tells herself. "And you let him."
She was so distracted by the entire exchange that it never even occurred to her that there was a loaded gun within her reach. If she hadn't been caught so off-guard by his apology, she would certainly have attempted to shoot him in the back with the HYDRA agent's gun as he left.
Which he undoubtedly realized, hence his words.
It does leave the question of why he only distracted her and left, rather than killing her—or, say, simply letting the HYDRA agent take her into custody—but her face and wrist and shoulder are all throbbing, and there are nine (likely panicking) cadets currently in the midst of lockdown at the Courtyard.
Theorizing can wait. She needs to get back to them as quickly as possible.
But she'll be calling Coulson on the way, because she has some serious questions for him.