...

A loud yell escapes Grant Ward when he is next examined by their captors, or rescuers, or whatever the hell you want to call them. Freaking aliens. Again. He would roll his eyes if he wasn't so... preoccupied.

He wiggles in his seat, fighting against the restraints as someone comes way too close to him with what looks like a giant slug or worm or who knows what it is. But it's nothing good and he doesn't want it anywhere near him.

"Get the hell away from me!" He yells out, but no one pays him any attention.

"Grant Ward was infested with a worm-like symbiotic life form before. Grant Ward should not feel repulsed."

He snorts. "Really? Is that your reasoning? That… that Inhuman thing didn't ask me before taking over my body. I was freaking dead, you understand? Dead! Ask Phil Coulson - if you can find the bastard. He killed me!"

Straining against his binds, he tries to get away from the people, vaguely realizing that they do look like humans now, and maybe his mind was playing tricks on him before? No. They are using some kind of interface now, like a virtual reality type thing, to communicate with him. He is guessing it's the same for Lincoln, too, but he hasn't gotten around to asking the kid, seeing as this is a very new development.

No more tentacled cliché extra terrestrial beings then. He can't say that he minds.

But this feels all too real regardlessly. One more movement and… he feels the worm crawl down his ear canal, no matter his desperate attempts to convince them not to do it.

Just like anticipated, it's a rather unpleasant feeling, to put it mildly. He can't stop yelling. All the way back to his cell, he is yelling in pain, the thing's loud movements in his ear making him feel like it's eating away at his insides.

...

They leave him in a heap on his cot, and he dimly notes that the cell is vacated, Skye's newest boy toy probably getting the same lovely treatment, before he pushes himself up on his elbows and fishes for the thing he has been working on in secret these past few days or weeks or however long it's been.

He's half crazy with the scraping, slithering feeling in his head, a panic creeping up inside of him as the worm seems to make its way deeper into his head, toward his brain probably, and god knows what it's supposed to be doing there once it has reached its destination. He really doesn't want to know.

All he wants is for that thing to get out of him, and when his grappling hand finally reaches the cool plastic of the spoon he hid after stealing it from one of their lunches (and for which he paid with an interrogation and a beating, thank you very much, you alien assholes!), he breathes out in relief before quickly rushing over to the door with its small wire-glass window, hoping to catch his reflection so he won't have to do this completely in the dark.

An unclear image of himself stares back at him, a milky face with sunken eyes, dark stubble and ruffled hair, but he is not here to admire himself. He needs to get that thing out, stat.

Positioning himself so that he can see the rough outline of his right ear, he takes the spoon and turns it around, the sharpened handle now pointed toward him. Then he grits his teeth and plunges it in.

The next thing he knows, he is on his knees, facing the door, holding the shiv in his shaking hand, a harsh pain pulsing in his poor mangled ear. Hissing, he stumbles up and into a standing position, bracing himself against the wall, eyes trained on the worm that he just somehow managed to skewer out of his body.

"Gotcha, little sucker," he breathes, triumphantly, before unsteadily walking back to his cot.

Now what, he wonders, before he starts feeling too shaky and drowsy and decides to just lay down on his cot for a bit. Just a moment to steady himself. Just to close his eyes and rest…



...

Daisy is merely functioning at first. She is functioning only because she doesn't allow herself to think about what happened, doesn't allow herself to dwell on the past, including the people that she loves.

Those still alive, and those not…

But there is no such thing as staying away, and she is easily pulled back in when her team needs her - when she needs them.

...

Months later, and she suddenly finds herself in a different hell altogether, the Framework, and when Aida promises she can bring Lincoln back, Daisy feels herself falter.

A deep ache spreads inside of her as she is faced with an impossible decision, and when she makes that decision in spite of everything, she still feels guilty.

But she has to choose her real life friends over the coded version of Lincoln Campbell, because of course he is dead, and no zeros and ones can ever bring him back for real.

What does real even mean, anyway?

...

When she meets Grant Ward in the Framework, when she leaves him behind again, she feels almost deprived. Because there is the man she once thought he was and knowing that he had it in him, if only his path had taken a different turn, if only… It breaks her heart. She never thought she still had compassion left for him, after everything, but apparently she does. Go figure.

Daisy Johnson is a screwed up girl, and there's nothing new there. But she is strong, too, and determined. Now she only has to figure out yet again how to live life, how to adapt. (And she's freaking good at adapting, so screw you, fate!)

She can do this. Look ahead, never back. She says goodbye, finally, to Lincoln, to Ward, and takes a shuddering breath as she follows Coulson into the diner.



Ward finds the kid banging his head against the wall like a madman when he wakes up from a short (or was it?) slumber. He isn't quite sure whether it's because of the diet they keep them on - and that barely offers enough calories to go on, or whether they pump some sleeping gas into their cell or something, but they often feel incredibly tired, and barely ever have enough energy to do anything involving physical activity.

It would explain a lot, that gas. Why else would Grant Ward have slept through their captors bringing his cell mate back in this state. It's not like Campbell is exactly quiet, either. No, he's screaming on and off. There is no question as to why, of course. But what gets through to Grant now is a different sound, quieter, more ominous: a staticky crackle emanating from the kid's hands.

Ward sees it happening in slow motion, too mesmerized for a moment to react, before he realizes what is going on and jumps up abruptly, rushing toward the kid.

"No!" He is yelling. "Stop!"

The kid is going to fry his own goddamn brain.

Ward doesn't think, just grabs Campbell's arms by the wrists and pulls them away roughly.

"Stop!" he repeats, as Lincoln tries to fight him off, banging his head into the wall again, before turning against Grant, trying to free his arms. But the older man has a death grip, and the kid a worm in his ear, so their fight is no fight of equals, and Grant easily manhandles the younger one over to his cot.

"Calm the fuck down," he hisses, shoving the man down with both arms, never letting go of his wrists.

"I'm trying to help. But you have to stay still."

"Get it out get it out get it out!"

Lincoln can't help himself. He yells the words, they sputter from his lips in a never ending cascade as he clutches his head in his hands, desperate for relief. For it to stop.

"Easy, kid. I can't do anything if you don't keep still and let me see, okay?" Ward soothes but it barely registers with him. Lincoln still can't believe he is stuck in this nightmare with Grant Ward of all people. But here they are. Somewhere in his head he thinks he would have rather shared a cell with Hive (at least he was Inhuman too, at least he understood, and how fucked up is that thought?), but no such luck.

"Get it out…"

He's almost crying. No, he is crying, it's too much to handle, and he doesn't even care that Ward is there to witness.

Lincoln has screwed his life up; he's an addict, he almost killed his ex-girlfriend and himself, his friend John died because of him. He's been chased, by the ATCU, by SHIELD, by Hydra, he's been cut into and tortured before, and now by these people, whoever they are, again. But this, this crawling thing, is the worst.

"Hold still!" Ward's tone is commanding, and Lincoln tries to obey, he swears he does, but there's this bug inside his ear and it's wiggling and making noises, tenfold amped up by the fact that they're right in his freaking ear and it hurts. It hurts. It hurts so bad, it feels so nightmarishly uncomfortable, he wants to die.

Just yesterday he had been hopeful for a bit. The first day without experiments. They had left them both alone, had even given them access to some books. He had worked out a bit to get his mind off things and had listened to Ward's musings about what might have happened, why Hive was gone and Grant Ward back from the dead, and Lincoln had allowed himself to hope they would manage to get out of this place somehow, that maybe he would get to see Daisy again after all.

"Surprise! I'm not dead," he could say and smile at her and she would be shocked for a bit of course, they would probably test the verity of his claim that he was indeed Lincoln Campbell and not an imposter, or Hive in a different body. But honestly, he wouldn't even mind if they kept him in one of SHIELDS containment units for a month at this point.

He just wants Daisy. He wants to change his mind and do whatever it takes to be with her. Even finishing his training and becoming a real agent doesn't sound so bad anymore.

Gosh, he really wants that.

But then they came back, hurled first Ward, then him away, and he doesn't know what happened to his companion, though since he got a bug stuck in his ear, he's pretty sure Ward got the same treatment. Lincoln doesn't comprehend how the man is still functioning. Clearly he is made from a different cloth, because for Lincoln, ever since that parasite, life has been even more of a hell than before, and he can't take it anymore.

The thing has to come out, or he will go crazy. He will.

Grant doesn't even know why he does what he does: why he is trying to help. It's as if he is on autopilot. No questions asked, no deals made. Surprisingly, he realizes he really just wants to help the guy, he doesn't need to get an extra meal or clean shirt out of it, or whatever the hell the kid could even offer him here. (The truth is, there is nothing he would want.)

"Easy now…"

He is pushing Lincoln's face against the thin blanket they were given and tries to angle his head so he can see inside his ear. The poor kid is only continuing to fight him for a few seconds longer, before he succumbs, giving up or giving in, the difference doesn't matter. It's probably all the same to him now. If he's feeling anything like Grant did mere hours earlier, then he'll just wish for this to be over any way possible; and if over means death, then that is okay too.

The shiv type thing in his hand held at the ready, Ward prepares himself. Briefly, Lincoln's eyes lock on his, a new panic mixing with the old as he sees the instrument, but Grant merely shakes his head at him.

"You want this over or not?"

Upon Lincoln's weak grimace and groaned out "Do it," he gets to work, slowly pushing the long plastic bit into the kid's ear canal.

The reaction is instantaneous: the scream so loud Ward turns around furtively to make sure their captors aren't there to stop him yet.

He finishes his bloody work, trying to still Lincoln's renewed thrashing as best as he can, before there is no moving anymore, before he feels a resistance against the shiv that grows the more he pushes, and with a hard plunge, he finally pierces the alien thing, triumphantly pulling it back out very carefully.

Leaning over to inspect it, he notices that it looks almost exactly like the one in his ear: long, somewhat grayish with a vibrant blue line across its back. But this one has tons of tiny legs, and he briefly wonders whether he just didn't see the ones on his, or whether humans and Inhumans need different kinds of bugs for whatever procedure their captors subject them to.

He shakes his head, trying to clear it. This place is messing with him. Everything is messing with him. He returned from the dead, for fuck's sake, so why is anything even still puzzling him?

"See?" He says, deciding to break his train of thought before he goes down a rabbit hole that would only take his focus away from where he needs it, in the here and now. "There's the little bugger."

He looks at Campbell then, only to find the Inhuman's eyes closed, his body a bit too still. The kid passed out. Great. Grant makes a face, then sits down next to him for a moment, breathing heavily.

What a day. Absently, he pats Lincoln's arm, waits until his own breathing calms down, then slowly gets up with another look at the other man. He sighs, unsure how to handle this. These feelings... It's been a long time since he's felt like this, caring about someone. There was Thomas, of course. And Skye.

He licks his lips, inhaling deeply, looking at the dead impaled worm. He needs to focus. There's only one way to dispose of it without immediately alerting their captors to it, and he knows full well that Campbell probably won't have the guts to do it.

Grimacing, Grant brings the worm close to his face, examining it one last time. He's done this before, just hours, in fact, and while it was incredibly unpleasant, he knows he can do it again. And so he does. Closing his eyes, he takes the worm and shoves it into his mouth, beginning to chew. He gags a couple of times, then swallows.

It's over. For now.

Hopefully there are no cameras or other surveillance he isn't aware of, because if he has just done this for nothing, and for Skye's boyfriend to boot, he'll not be pleased.

He doesn't even know why he spared the man having to dispose of the worm. Did he grow a humane heart all of a sudden? Why does he feel like something in him has changed? Profoundly...