A/N: Most of this will be very familiar, with the dialogue taken directly from the show, but I think that Ward's POV puts a new perspective to what happened, as he tries to balance his loyalties.


Chapter 2

Even now as his fight against Hydra was almost over and Ward was on his way to Garrett, there was a list of numbers, names and faces running through his head, that was haunting him every day, reminding him of how high the price for this victory had been.

Ever since Garrett had one of his own men killed for asking the wrong questions, after Ward had tipped him off about that, the specialist had been keeping count of all the people he had killed, or for whose deaths he had been responsible in the name of Hydra, either still as a loyal follower or to maintain his cover.

One. Dan Monroe, a loyal SHIELD agent and father to a six year old son, who had made the mistake of trusting him to advise him on how to handle his suspicions about Garrett. He hadn't meant for anything to happen to the agent, when he had told his former S.O. about his call, but he might as well have pulled the trigger himself.

Two. Three. Two more of Garrett's agents apparently killed on the hunt for Ian Quinn, but Ward had known better. He wasn't sure if the two men had already had suspicions about their boss before the death of their team member, but as the 'Clairvoyant' had ordered the hit on them shortly after that, it was obvious the incidents were connected, meaning that those were two more deaths that Ward was at least in part responsible for.

It didn't matter that by that time he had already been working for Maria Hill, trying to take down Hydra, others were still paying the price for his mistakes.

Four. Thomas Nash, the fake Clairvoyant, whom he had shot to keep the real identity of the man behind the Centipede project a secret.

Five. Six. Seven. The two guards and Victoria Hand as they had been heading for the Fridge to lock up Garrett.

Eight. Nine. The two SHIELD agents in the building's elevator, who had only broken protocol and let them inside to save their lives a few moments earlier.

And even though they had taken out the rest of the facility with a potent sleeping gas, Ward knew that raiding the Fridge itself and freeing all the prisoners had probably caused more collateral damage than everything else he had done combined. They had freed murderers and super-powered psychopaths, while putting the most dangerous weapons on the planet into the hands of the biggest sociopath of them all, John Garrett.

He had even shown him where Coulson had locked up the gravitonium, something his former S.O. would have never found on his own, but while he had been worried about the consequences of that action, it had been the only way to make sure to get Ian Quinn back in the game after Garrett had stopped posing as the Clairvoyant. And if he had wanted to take Hydra down, he had needed all the players out on the field again.

Ward was just glad that when he had temporarily rejoined his team at the Providence base, he hadn't been forced to add any of their names to his list. To see their reactions after his cover had been blown, and having to force Skye at gunpoint to decrypt the hard drive containing the team's research had been terrible enough, but he wasn't sure if he would have been able to sacrifice one of them at that point to keep them believing he was Hydra.

He had even gone back to treat Coulson's gunshot wound to the arm, to make sure the agent didn't bleed out, endangering his cover in the process, but looking back, Ward wasn't sure if he would make that same decision again. Not if it meant putting his mission at risk for one man, no matter how much he cared about him.

Even back then he had known that his attachment to his old team had been holding him back, and so a part of him had actually thought that things would become easier once his betrayal had come out and he had left the secret base and his friends behind, stealing the Bus in the process. He had thought that he would be able to focus more on further infiltrating Hydra, but he hadn't anticipated how persistent Coulson and the others would be.

Not only had they managed to find the files on the original Deathlok project in one of Cybertek's offices, they had also tracked them to Havana, found the old SHIELD base they had been using there and had even located the plane.

Not that that last part had done the team any good, but it had thrown another wrench in Ward's plan to keep his friends out of harm's way for as long as he had to appear loyal to Hydra.

When Garrett had spotted Fitz and Simmons surveilling the Bus, the specialist had initially hoped that he would deem the two scientists too valuable to be harmed, but when Fitz had used a handheld EMP device against the older agent, almost killing him, he had instantly known that all bets would be off.

"Put down Fitz and Simmons!" That order had sent a sharp feeling of dread running up Ward's spine, leaving him breathless for a moment.

Ten. Eleven.

Despite his conviction to do whatever it took to remain Garrett's loyal right hand man, every fibre of him had protested against the mere idea of hurting the two innocent scientists.

"What? No, there's plenty of time. I won't leave you," he had argued, his expression probably betraying his reluctance.

"And I'm telling you to cross them off for me. It's not a weakness, is it?" Garrett's voice had been weak, but decisive, leaving no room for an objection.

"No." And so the specialist had stood back up and followed his two former team mates down into the lower parts of the Bus, where they had obviously just managed to escape the Hydra agents that had been supposed to guard them.

They had tried to run away from him, but the plane had only so many hiding places and so they had finally locked themselves into a med pod like the one Skye had been lying in after getting shot.

The association alone had made his stomach clench painfully, but neither of the two scientists had seemed to be aware of their friend almost dying in a place like this as they, or at least Fitz, had tried to plead with him to abandon his loyalty to Hydra and help them instead.

"Ward, please, I need to understand."

How much he had wished that he could have told him the truth, but no one had been allowed to know, and even if Ward had wanted to tell him, there hadn't been enough time, as he had been too busy trying to find a way to save the two young agents' lives.

He had known that it would be only a matter of minutes, or maybe just seconds, until more Hydra agents would find them and they would have been more than happy to finish the job if he hadn't by then. No matter what, there had been no way that Fitz and Simmons could have been save anywhere on the Bus, and this feeling of helplessness, along with the fact that Garrett had called them Ward's weakness, had brought back the memories from ten years ago, when he had been accepted into the academy and Garrett had ordered him to shoot his dog Buddy, just to make sure he would never get attached to anyone or anything ever again.

Back then, he had actually considered killing him for a moment, but ultimately hadn't done it and had instead fired a shot into the air to get the loyal animal to run off in an attempt to save his life. However, it had been a futile attempt, as Garrett had used his rifle to finish the job himself, reminding Ward that no matter what, his orders would always be carried out.

So, when he had looked at Fitz and Simmons, who had been staring back at him through the window in the door with fear in their eyes, he had known that the only way to save their lives, the only remote chance that they could survive, was to get them as far away from his boss as possible.

"You need to accept the truth, Fitz, he doesn't care about us, about anything." Simmons had always been brilliant, in fact one of the brightest people he had ever met, but just this once she had been so incredibly wrong and Ward had wanted nothing more than to tell her the truth. But he hadn't. Even as Fitz had continued to defend him, he had never let his Hydra appearance waver, even though deep inside he had already been begging them for forgiveness for what he had been about to do.

"I know that you're a good person, Ward, and you can choose right now to be good. It's a choice," Fitz had told him, obviously still not able to believe that the man he had considered to be one of his best friends had been a traitor all along. But it had been to no avail.

"I got my orders," Ward had replied stoically and when they had still refused to open the door, as he had known they would, he had stepped over to the control panel, activating the plane's unloading protocols, just as he had started to hear the door from the lab being forced open by the Hydra agents who had been following the scientists earlier.

He had tried not to listen to Fitz and Simmons's shouts, begging for him to stop, but even though he had known that he had been giving them their best chance by dropping the pod into the ocean, given the plane's low speed and altitude, he had still felt like he had been about to murder two of the people most important to him.

Ten. Eleven.

Two more deaths on his conscience.

After it had been done and he had sent the other Hydra agents away again, Ward had taken out his phone to send a short text message to a number Agent Hill had given him months earlier, with the specific instruction only to call in an absolute emergency and with the warning that the number would go dark after that to avoid being traced back to SHIELD.

He hadn't even been sure if there had still been someone on the other end, as most of the organisation had fallen apart by then, but it had been the only option he had had left. The message hadn't been long, just the coordinates where he had dropped the pod and three words.

"Underwater. Send help!"

To be continued…