Apolutrosis
by Sammie

See part 1 for notes. Nearly every scene is controversial. You are forewarned. And no, I'm not about to get into a battle about it on the comments page. You can PM me.


SHIELD keeps her and Fitz locked up for a whole week, trying to determine whether or not they're really them and whether or not they're HYDRA plants. She and Fitz put up with it with great patience because, well, they'd have the same suspicions if somebody else came back like this. And seriously - they're home. They're so giddy with joy SHIELD could have locked them up for another week and they'd have taken it without complaint.

Skye is, of course, the first one to believe them. For a street-smart hacker, she's really rather trusting. Too trusting.

Jemma can see the weariness on May and Coulson's faces. They want nothing more than for all this to be true, to have FitzSimmons back, but they are too cautious to be completely welcoming, especially after Ward's betrayal.

And Ward. After she's told he's been treated for his wounds and is recovering nicely, Jemma doesn't think of him for a week. It's unlike her, but then she hasn't been herself in the last few months.

He's being held in a glass cage. The walls are made of a metal alloy not unlike what they had on the bus, but it's been made transparent so they can see what's going on inside his room. There's a blanket on the floor - no pillow, no bed. There's a garbage can in one side and a bucket with a lid on it in another; Jemma realizes with a small shudder that the latter is the toliet.

The visitor's log states that the only people who have been to see him are May and Coulson. It would explain why he's still alive. She's not sure Hand or Blake would leave him breathing, especially the former, given how Ward shot her.

Fitz still refuses to visit.

Skye seems both reluctant and eager to see him, a mix of horror and curiosity. They go down together finally, and Ward stands when he sees them.

Skye goes first, picking up the phone outside in the hallway that connects to his inside. He picks its partner up. They say each other's names as greetings, and then there's an awkward silence, and then Skye mentions something about May taking over her training. Jemma doesn't watch, giving them privacy, but when she looks up, he is looking straight past Skye at her.


She doesn't feel comfortable telling others about the pregnancy, partly because she's still in shock from the news. By her calculations, it's been a mere four weeks from the time she was last with Ward to now - what an insane four weeks - and so she has at least two months to decide what to do, possibly even longer, before she begins to show. She keeps her condition hidden as long as she can, packing away her fitted shirts and opting for looser blouses and sweaters. She's also unexpectedly aided by the return to SHIELD: she and Fitz had gotten rather thin while at HYDRA - partly due to stress, partly due to the meager meals - and so some of her weight gain and filling out can be attributed to that the removal of those stressors. The SHIELD doctor knows, but Simmons swears her to secrecy, and it's easier to hide once they all move back to the bus. She's got some time.

May notices first, and when a startled Jemma asks how she knows, the older woman doesn't answer.

She has carried this burden so long and so silently that everything just spills right out. She's so grateful she's sitting in the cockpit with May, because everybody knows not to bother the agent in her inner sanctum.

"Have you decided what to do with it?" May asks quietly. "Nobody would blame you, you know."

"I know." Some days Jemma hates the baby so much.

"So?"

"How can I punish it for something it didn't do?" she asks suddenly, voicing her ethical concern. "It didn't rape me, it didn't torture me, it didn't kneecap Fitz. It's not HYDRA. I can't punish it for merely existing."

"Simmons, what happened to you was abuse."

"And I couldn't punch you in the face because of what a HYDRA agent did to me, so how can I do something to it because of what its father did?"

Her heart wars with her head. It's always been a battle she's fought as a biochemist in cutting-edge science, but it feels different on a personal level. After a long silence, May squeezes her hand. "Take some time to think about it," she says gently. After a pause, she asks, "Have you told him?"

"No. Fitz is angry enough on my behalf as it is," Jemma says automatically.

"Justifiably so," May concedes. "But I meant Ward." When Jemma looks up sharply, May replies, "I know you went to check on him - back on the helicarrier."

"So had Skye." Jemma gives a counterargument.

"So did Coulson and I," May adds. "But I saw Ward's face when it was you who went down to see him. Then, you and Fitz being alive, given how many times you should have died? Fitz's prosthetics? Your pregnancy? I put two and two together."

Jemma stares at her, then suddenly bursts into tears, and she tries to get herself under control. May just gets up, coming to sit on the arm of the chair Jemma occupies, and she holds one hand and rubs her shoulders and her back as she sobs. She is hurt and confused and furious and depressed all at the same time.

It's a good five minutes before she can actually speak. "I hate him," she sobs. "I hate him for this HYDRA thing. I hate him for what he did to me. But I don't know if I'm angry at him or grateful he kept me and Fitz alive and safe, and for saving me and bringing us home."

May squeezes her tight in her arms, and it astonishes Jemma that May can be so comforting. But it's welcome.

It takes a good ten minutes before the tears stop. May takes her hands in hers. "You survived, Jemma," she says, her voice soft but still firm. "You survived. You and Fitz. And even more than that - what was done to you, you're still you - and you turned somebody - you turned somebody," May says in a voice that's proud in its astonishment. "Most people don't come back from experiences like this, much less do that."

Jemma's eyes flicker to hers, and she sees only pride in the pilot's look, something which puzzles the younger woman to no end.

May squeezes her hands. "A year with us, Skye's shooting by the Clairvoyant - none of that stopped Ward from leaving for HYDRA. But you and Fitz disappear for four months, and he comes back and willingly puts himself in chains day in and day out." She shakes her head. "Whatever you did - " she trails off, still shaking her head.

"Do you...do you know why he..." Jemma trails off.

"No. Coulson and I are still debating it." May sighs and rubs her eyes. She gets up, takes back her seat across from Jemma. There's a long silence, and then she said firmly but quietly, "HYDRA would have executed Ward for saving you, yes," May concedes. "But we would have executed him for treason - nearly did. So why come here?"

Jemma falls silent.

May continues, "We've been monitoring him, and he's got no communications going out. Ward has genuinely not tried to contact anybody."

Jemma frowned. "So - is he waiting, like before, when he was a sleeper?"

"I don't know." May sighs. "There's also the question as to why he didn't drop you two off and then hightail it somewhere else. He's got identities around the world. He could effectively disappear and never pay for his crimes. Why is he here?"

Simmons looks at the older agent; she opens her mouth, then shuts it. She has no answer.

"HYDRA agents also have implants," May continues, "including a cyanide implant in the tooth they can activate if they're caught. He hasn't activated that, either."

Jemma swallows, hopelessly confused.

May smiles gently at her. "Jemma," she says, and it's the first time the older woman has ever used her first name, "you focus on getting better first. You'll have to decide soon about the pregnancy."

Jemma doesn't want to, but May insists. She and Fitz start seeing therapists, separately, and it's more of boon than not. The biochemist has little use of psychiatry or psychology, but having somebody uninvolved in this entire mess is wonderful. Kara is kind but firm, and never once does Jemma feel like she's talking to a psychiatrist, but to a friend. She is also intelligent, and for that Jemma is grateful. She does not suffer fools easily, and having somebody who can at least understand what she's saying is gratifying.

With each passing day, and each weekly session with Kara, Jemma feels more like herself.


Triplett has been assigned to the team, at least temporarily. It's a precaution Hand insists upon, since Ward is being sent from the SHIELD helicarrier to the bus as well, along with two guards.

May and Coulson fight over that transfer. Coulson wants him on board; May doesn't. Skye wants him on board; Fitz doesn't. They look at her for the tie-breaking vote, and she simply tells them to do what's best for them all. After the three younger agents troop off, though, she sees May and Coulson exchange looks, and the argument is even more heated, though hushed, than before.

She knows that May's arguments are in part made for her benefit.

She discovers later that Ward fights hard not to be assigned to the bus. May's first suspicion is that he wants to be on the helicarrier as a spy, but before she can even voice that concern or let on that she's thinking it, Ward suggests he be put at the re-secured Fridge, in the Sandbox - before suddenly suggesting the SHIELD lockdown in Barrow, Alaska. May and Coulson are staring at him, slightly dumbfounded. There is seriously nothing in Barrow, nothing HYDRA would want, but not really the most escapable location, either, given its surrounding area.

Jemma will discover months, months later that May finally wrings it out of Ward: he doesn't want on the bus because he feels his presence punishes her and Fitz.

The ultimate decision is made by Hand, backed by Blake. Basically, neither of them want a potential HYDRA leak on board, and better send him off with Coulson's Crazies where only a few agents will die than have him sell out a whole helicarrier. Any potential feelings Jemma and Fitz have about this don't matter. "I feel so loved," Fitz mumbles sarcastically.

It turns out to be a boon.

HYDRA manages to tractor beam the bus - but rather than pull it onto a HYDRA carrier, it latches a huge HYDRA transport onto the bus. May can't shake it, no matter what she does, and Skye and Fitz are unable to prevent the HYDRA computer from temporarily taking over their mainframe.

Triplett is in specialist mode, shoving weapons into Fitz's and her hands, and into Skye's. He and May and Coulson decide to take the fight to HYDRA: they're going to raid the transport before they can send men down to the bus. They're even taking Ward's two guards with them - the circumstances are that dire.

The plan works - to some extent. No HYDRA agents ever make it onto the bus. It doesn't mean the battle goes well.

All HYDRA has to do is keep the plane attached, and their course is set for the HYDRA headquarters. They just have to hold off the five SHIELD agents long enough to get the bus within HYDRA hands. No matter what Skye and Fitz do, they can't break the link. Coulson radioes them, tells them to cut the bus loose any way they can - essentially sacrificing the three older agents - and the two bodyguards - to save the plane and the younger agents still on board. Never mind that the younger ones don't really know how to fly the thing once it's detached, and Coulson specifically had SHIELD's control over the avionics removed - meaning nobody on the ground can fly it for them.

Jemma is frantically deleting as much as she can from the SHIELD computers - Skye is giving her override codes - and she forces herself to turn her mind away from potentially becoming a HYDRA prisoner again. It terrifies her to no small extent. And it terrifies her for the fetus she carries.

During World War II two of the Axis powers - the ones who revived HYDRA - used live humans for scientific testing. However she feels about her pregnancy, she is horrified by the thought that this tiny life will be subject to that.

Skye reappears - when did she disappear? - and the first words out of Fitz's mouth are, "OH, H-LL NO!"

"Fitz! We don't have a choice!" Skye shouts as she runs by. "I don't know how to fly this d-mn thing!"

Ward is right behind her.

His leg shackles are off. His hands are still loosely bound by steel cuffs, connected with a three-foot long chain. They run towards the cargo bay stairs, up towards the bus.

Fitz takes off after them, using his arms to help pull and to steady him as he goes up the stairs. Minutes later he's sliding back down the stairs, shaking his head. He grabs Jemma by the hand and sweeps their equipment off the table, into a cabinet he shuts securely. He pulls her out of the lab, then hits a button to lock the lab doors.

He's swearing under his breath the whole time.

"What's going on?"

"Skye's about to do something stupid," is all he says. "Well, Skye's about to let Ward do something stupid." He motions to the seats with the seat belts. "Get in, quickly."

They're barely strapped in tightly when she notices the plane stop and immediately turn around - heading into the wind, this time. She's barely managed to get a hold of herself when the the plane begins tipping, rapidly. It takes Jemma a second to realize what they're doing, and good night, it makes her stomach roil so badly morning sickness is like petting a cute puppy.

Ward is barrel-rolling the bus. Like it's some jet fighter.

The first barrel-roll results in a sickening scrape of metal on metal, and suddenly the bus bounces like a balloon as the HYDRA transport comes loose. After that, Jemma, whose general sense of balance is not bad, counts three more, even more quickly executed barrel rolls. Fitz counts none. He is sick to his stomach.

When they finally right themselves - and stay that way - Skye comes bolting down to the cargo bay, shouting at them to come up. They quickly unbuckle their belts and run upstairs, where they survey the damage. They're free of the HYDRA transport, though, and more than that - as they lean out, looking at the transport through the windows of the bus, they see May give them a salute. The unanticipated move from the bus and the detachment of the two vehicles gave SHIELD the element of surprise they needed to take over the transport.

It's the first captured HYDRA plane, a HYDRA product and not a SHIELD product co-opted by HYDRA. SHIELD is practically drooling over this capture.

May and Ward fly both crippled machines back to the nearest SHIELD helicarrier. SHIELD takes the latter into custody the minute they land; he stands quietly in the lounge as his guards shackle his legs and lash those to the chains on his hands. He stumbles a little on the stairs as they lead him down from the main floor to the cargo bay. They push him towards the open cargo bay door, but he resists a little, pulling back long enough to look at Jemma, his eyes searching her over quickly before being pulled away.

All of them are debriefed. Ward is interrogated for days.

In the ensuing weeks, SHIELD learns that their locking mechanism, similar to the ones HYDRA uses, are only slightly less susceptible to what Ward did to detach the HYDRA transport. They're square locking mechanisms, able to latch on firmly but not flexible enough to adjust to rapid shifts. The rapid 180-degree turn, the air resistance of heading into the wind, and then the quick barrel rolls tore the transport off the top of the bus. Ward suggests a gimbal-based locking system for flexibility, but acknowledges that giving it the firmness and the solidity of the square-lock transports will be difficult.

Coulson is complaining, albeit without force, about the damages to the bus and not having the budget to fix it; May is just smiling broadly; Triplett is giddy, nearly laughing; Skye is laughing; and Fitz is moaning about not wanting to embrace this change and having vomit on the ceiling of the cargo bay - but his face is filled with relief.

She smiles at their joy, and she feels a little of it, but she just can't seem to be as delighted as they are. All she can think of is what she would have done if she'd ended up in HYDRA's hands again, and with this baby.

When they bring Ward on board, he's still chained. Despite all of them standing there, he looks straight at her, his eyes searching her worriedly before he's yanked away. His scrutiny doesn't go unnoticed; while Coulson and May and Fitz aren't paying attention, Skye sees where Ward's attention goes, and Triplett notices her expression and traces it back to the chained prisoner.

The party slowly disbands, and Jemma heads back to work.

Later, Coulson comes up from Ward's cell to check on her. He's quiet and gentle, and he keeps asking a series of questions which basically revolve around how she's feeling, asked in eight different ways.

When she finally asks why he keeps pushing, since she's fine, he sighs. "He's worried," the older man says without ceremony, and she doesn't need to know who 'he' is. "He doesn't say it, but he keeps asking if he made you - or the others - unwell. And he keeps talking about not ending up back in the hands of HYDRA."

"Well, HYDRA would execute him if they recaptured him," Jemma points out reasonably.

"But Ward's never feared death. Him coming back to SHIELD proves it," Coulson replies, then looks at her to see if it's sinking in.

She shifts uncomfortably. She doesn't know what to believe.

"Don't believe it was him he was worried about," Coulson finally says what he's thinking. He smiles at her, pats her hand, and walks out.


Skye makes more frequent trips to see Ward, now. Jemma supposes that Skye would be good for Ward, and she herself is just a mess right now, so she doesn't go down to see him. Besides, food is delivered regularly, and his meds are kept up, and his cell on the bus has an actual toliet, and he's not sick, so there's no reason for her to go down, is there?

Fitz doesn't go down to see him, either. Jemma isn't sure she would if she lost both of her legs like that.

May mentions in passing, casually, at dinner one night that perhaps Ward needs to have his blood checked. It's time for the annual physical, according to his records, and they also need to monitor him to make sure HYDRA isn't kicking in some failsafe to kill him.

Fitz mumbles that it would serve him right. Nobody says anything.

Jemma doesn't go down to see him. Coulson draws his blood and brings it up to her to check. She adjusts Ward's supplement regimen because he's not getting enough Vitamin D.

Skye later mentions off-hand that Ward has been asking after her and Fitz. The hacker searches Jemma's face for some reaction, but there's none to give because she doesn't know how to react.

It's the middle of the night - 3 am - when she finally goes to see him in his cell on the bus. She's never been to see him since his transfer to the bus, and it's been three weeks since she last saw him, after the HYDRA transport incident. She doesn't know why she chose this time; perhaps she's hoping he won't be awake. She wraps a big robe around her, over her flannel pyjamas.

She doesn't expect him to be awake, but she's barely down the stairs and in the hallway leading to his cell when he suddenly swings his feet from his bunk to the floor and gets up, his muscles tense and ready for some sort of action. He stares at her for a moment, not quite comprehending.

She looks a mess, she knows - she hasn't been sleeping well, her morning sickness just came back, she wiped off all her make-up to go to bed, and her hair is in a big messy bun on her head, and she's wrapped up in a gigantic Captain America bathrobe with the star on the shield falling off. And on top of all that, she's still dealing with the trauma of everything.

His hand reaches for her almost inadvertently, towards the glass, and then he quickly puts it down at his side when he realizes what he's doing.


When she can no longer hide it, she reveals the pregnancy to the team, who are understandably furious that HYDRA would do this to her. Besides May, who already guessed who the father is, Jemma only tells Fitz. Fitz is furious, but he does nothing because Jemma asks him not to. "But don't expect me to go see him," Fitz bites off.

She doesn't tell Coulson or Skye who the father is.

Ward, of course, knows. The day she decides to tell him, she wears her fitted sky blue shirt with white stripes and the tie, and it's so obvious that she has to put her coat on over top. She goes down there, and he takes one look at her, and his eyes grow round. He shuts them for a full minute, and when he opens them, she can see the self-loathing, the murmured apology on his lips. She wonders if it's all an act.

{ }

She gets her answer two weeks and three days later. They're being pursued by HYDRA, and May is trying to get the bus, which is already running on fumes and patched like a quilt, out of the way of a helicarrier that's crashing into their path. She seems to be wrestling something, and that's when Skye and Fitz figure out that the mainframes of both vehicles has been destroyed by a HYDRA logic bomb.

There's a huge argument upstairs, between May and Coulson, as the three younger agents sit on the main level, waiting tensely. When they appear, May says curtly, "I want all systems routed here to the briefing room."

"You better be right," Coulson mutters as he and May head downstairs.

They lead Ward out in handcuffs and leg shackles. His steps are mincing, to make sure he doesn't trip over anything. Fitz refuses to look at him, and Skye seems torn between anger and puzzlement.

Coulson spreads a garbage bag on the ground and Ward steps onto it. The older man then takes a pair of scissors and cuts a single slice from the neck of his tee-shirt down to the shoulder seam, then steps back.

"Do it." May hands Ward a knife.

He takes the tool, and with the two older agents looking on stoically, he raises his cuffed hands and slices through the skin on his deltoid muscle. The three younger agents gasp in horror as blood begins to spill out and trickle down to his hand. May hands him a thick, flexible steel cable, pulling it from the wall panel.

"What the h-ll!" Skye exclaims, even as Fitz is stunned silent.

Jemma can only see the long cut, and the blood coming out and dripping onto the garbage bag, and the steel cable with wire going into his body, pointed in the direction of his neck, towards his spine.

When she looks up, she sees him staring straight at her, his face stoically still but his eyes screaming with pain.

"Get on it!" Coulson barks at the hacker, and as she and Fitz quickly turn their attention to the monitor. Jemma can only stare at the blood pooling on the plastic on the floor. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Fitz and Skye frantically rebooting the bus's computer systems. All she hears is something about clearance codes and biometric checks and something about Ward having both SHIELD and HYDRA biometrics implanted in his nervous system, and soon Fitz and Skye are shouting directions at each other as the stream of information coming from Ward's HYDRA neural implant nearly overloads the system.

It seems like hours to her, but in five minutes it's all over. Skye shouts in triumph as she uploads all the new data to the helicarrier, and within two more minutes, that ship has righted itself as well.

Skye turns to Ward with a big grin, and even Fitz is laughing in relief. May is running back to the cockpit, even as Coulson is completing the last parts of the override on both the bus and the helicarrier, something which requires his clearance level.

Jemma doesn't make it to Ward in time, dashing around the table towards him and reaching him just a few seconds after he hits the floor, his bloodshot eyes rolled up in his head. She quickly cradles his head in her arms and carefully pulls the cord from the long gash in his shoulder. "I need my kit now!" she barks, and Skye runs down to the lab.

Ward's unconscious, so she doesn't make anything of his bloodied hand gently resting on her belly.


She's sitting in the chair next to the phone connected to Ward's cell, asking him questions and typing away answers for her research into HYDRA implants. He stands on the other side of the glass, the phone on his side pressed to his ear. It's how they always interact now, when they do.

His voice is always gentle when he asks if she needs a break. She doesn't know if he's playing her. Once she looked up at him, catching him off-guard, and he had an inexplicably hungry and desperate expression which vanished so quickly she doubts now whether she really saw it.

This time, when they're finished, he asks quietly if she has some time. She immediately offers, and he hesitates, then says she needs to some pen and paper.

And so he begins his confession.

His name isn't really Grant Ward. (That she figured out already.) He was actually the child of an American journalist working in Lebanon and a Lebanese woman. His father had been killed during the civil war, and then he and his mother were displaced, eventually ending up in a refugee camp for just a little time. They were there a few years before she was killed in a Hezbollah suicide attack; he ended up back in the refugee camp, this time for much, much longer.

She breathes in sharply. He chuckles mirthlessly. Those camps are just that bad.

It was there, he says, he learned how to fight. It was also there he came to learn and appreciate the need for strict rule, strict order, strict rules. HYDRA was attractive, in its quest for a socially perfect world order by dominating all of society, ending crime and terrorism before it even happened. SHIELD or HYDRA, he has no use for idealistic claptrap about everybody loving each other and having a grand international civilization of mutual affection. He has seen the world - he has seen people. He knows what depths of evil even the regular person is capable of.

She does, as well. That's why she delivers that potentiality talk with such conviction. She is a biochemist, and she grapples with the ethics of what she does daily - ethics which deal far more with security versus privacy or big business versus the individual, but with life and death. She knows quite well the lows to which the human race can sink, even when they wish to do good; after all, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

It was the attraction of the mission, he continues, with the kindness of the people. Garrett recruited him from an orphanage; he took advantage of the fact that he had no family and no father figure. HYDRA was providing for him all that he needed.

He isn't saying this to condemn anybody. Nobody was obligated to care for him. He was simply stating the facts, so SHIELD would understand how he - and no doubt many others - were recruited...so SHIELD would know how to protect against it.

When he was to join SHIELD, HYDRA then gave him the applicant identity of Grant Ward, a young boy who had already died trying to protect himself and his younger brother from an abusive older one. With the resources of SHIELD, HYDRA had implanted in his mind some memories of the Grant Ward childhood, to aid in his deep cover. It's easiest to manufacture feelings which come from truth, he explains, and so he does have some "memories" of things which never happened - like having a younger brother (who never existed in his real life but had in the real Grant Ward's) being thrown down a well. He is well aware of which sets of memories are his own, part of his real identity, and which ones are part of the manufactured Grant Ward identity; he simply has the option to tap into the latter if he needs to do so.

She's busily writing away before a horrible thought strikes her. Her terror is clearly written on her face, because he responds immediately - though he mistakes what it is she's actually fears. Ward promises to go through brain scans, especially if it helps Coulson understand what happened with TAHITI. He owes Coulson.

That's not what she's thinking about, though. She panics when he reveals the stuff about implants. Is he going to die if he reveals too much? Will HYDRA kill him to protect his deep cover? She insists he stop talking until Fitz can set-up a blocking signal so HYDRA can't remotely detonate him. He is irritated by the delay and even insists it's unncessary. Over the long process of making sure he's safe, she discovers, to her horror, that he really isn't interested in staying alive any more. Even though he never says it explicitly, to her it's obvious: for all his intellect and training, he evidently believes it's better for everybody involved if he simply died, and his confession is his way of making sure all the information he can supply is out there before he does.

She briefly ponders refusing to write any more and stopping this confession part-way through, but she knows logically that has nothing to do with whether or not Ward lives after today. Then she wonders why she cares if he lives or dies, given all the things he's done.

{ }

The most difficult part of this whole thing is when he begins to talk about his year with them - from the moment he stepped onto the bus to the moment he brought them back to the helicarrier. HYDRA wanted him to finagle his way onto Coulson's team to figure out how Coulson was again alive. Yes, he was there to spy on Coulson. No, he was not there to spy on them.

No, he did not have anything to do with her or Fitz's assignment to the bus, but it had been too handily convenient. Yes, he had been well aware of FitzSimmons and their cooperative prowess well before he joined the team, even if he hadn't bothered learning who was who at first. It was only later that he had discovered she had worked on Steve Rogers' recovery team. Yes, it was after meeting them that he had suggested to Garrett to take them both to work for HYDRA.

No, shooting Skye was not in the plan, but had been a last attempt by Garrett to force Coulson to speed up his search for whatever it was which saved him. He had notified Garrett of Coulson's search, and the man had instantly flown out to meet the bus.

No, Triplett was not a HYDRA agent. He had simply come along with his boss. It was Ward who had suggested Trip stay on the plane during the raid on the Guest House, just to keep him out of the way.

He pauses, then mentions rather measuredly how enamored of her Triplett is, and says in a slow, quiet, pained voice that Trip is a good man. When Jemma looks up at Ward, though, that quiet, steady voice is accompanied by a look of deep pain, which he quickly wipes from his face the second he sees her watching him. But it's too late, and she's seen it.

They move on to the time she and Fitz were at the main HYDRA headquarters, a SHIELD helicarrier they had commandeered. Yes, again, he had been the one to suggest to Garrett that HYDRA could use them. Yes, he had planned the raid to separate them from the rest of the team. No, he had not ordered Fitz kneecapped; that had been part of Garrett's plan, just as shooting Skye had been.

No, he says firmly, his voice pained, he had nothing to do, ever, with the male guards assigned to guard her and Fitz.

Jemma closes her eyes, trying to stop her hand from trembling, trying to shut out the images of them coming into her lab that day. Ward asks quietly if they should stop for the day, but she takes a deep breath and opens her eyes. No, they will continue.

The most painful part is how he got the team to trust him. He used reverse psychology on Coulson, arguing that he did not want to be on the team and didn't benefit from it; he knew Coulson would immediately cave and demand him on the team just to show how important it was. How he agreed to be Skye's supervising officer to keep an eye on the unknown variable. How he slept with May to earn her trust.

And jumping after her?

He stares at her for a long moment, and then says in a measured, sharp tone that he jumped out of the plane after her to earn the team's trust. He had a parachute, after all.

It hurts, terribly. Still, she finds herself unsurprised, given all the other things he's already confessed to doing, and forces herself not to dwell on it. And she appreciates what she believes is his honesty.

It's not until a week later, when she's thumbing through a catalogue for used but still usuable lab equipment, that it suddenly occurs to her his argument doesn't make much sense logically. He's either not a very good spy (better than Romanoff?!), or he -

When she confronts him, he doesn't look at her. He says nothing.

{ }

Jemma feels her spirits lift by the whole marathon confession. She takes her meticulous notes up to Coulson and to May, and she shows them all the parts they need to confirm are true. She is not about to be duped by Grant Ward again, and so she passes along her suggestions and his suggestions about using certain private clinics in different countries for DNA tests, using independent verifiers for information. Her gut tells her that Ward is telling the truth this time, and the whole thing makes her happy.

Coulson and May looked surprised but pleased, also - and driven. They're visibly suspicious when she presents them Ward's account, but they are determined to confirm the details. They will order the body of the real Grant Ward dug up; they will run DNA tests on the American journalist their Ward says is his father. There are also a battery of other tests to do, as well. Jemma is buoyed by all this: the possibility of Ward's honesty, the science, the drive, the hope.

She runs her own DNA tests, which confirms Ward's testimony to her: his father, his lack of siblings, his origins. She finds five reputable labs in nations around the world to run the same tests, under falsified names so HYDRA and SHIELD won't know who requested them. They also confirm Ward's current account.

Jemma doesn't realize what damage she's doing elsewhere. Skye is quiet when this all begins; when the DNA confirms Ward's current account, hurt flickers across her face. Jemma is puzzled by this, but Skye doesn't say why she reacts this way. It's Ward who sighs and tells the biochemist that he had used his Grant Ward identity on Skye; he'd lied and told her, as a way to gain her trust, that his reason for joining SHIELD was to protect his younger brother.

As Jemma sits there, looking up at the regret on Ward's face, she wants to kick herself for the pain she has inadvertently caused her close friend.

They sit in silent a few moments, and then Jemma asks, quietly, why he confessed to her - and not to Coulson, or May, or Skye.

His eyes flash with pain. He says nothing.