This is going to be the last chapter before the new year. Hopefully, I can get ahead of schedule for this story during my break, so there's that.

But for now, this is going to end the year dealing with Grant Ward. Remember back in the second or third chapter of this when Simmons got her delivery from a man? Yeah, well what he was going to do after that is about to be revealed.

Currently, the poll right now has his allegiance tied between Simmons and Coulson. If you can find time, please, please go to my page and cast your vote. I can't decide how I want him to go.

I'm listening to the soundtrack to 3:10 to Yuma as I write this. This sounds so random, but it really fits what Grant is meant to feel.

Also, anyone out there curious for a little Traina? It grabbed on my heels a while back and even though the winter finale changed that, (How dare they!) I still ship it. Should I include it later, or no.

Chapter 9: Innocent Traitor

2 months ago

The man in the stolen guard's uniform slunk down the corridor toward his target. His hand fell to his side on the handle of his knife. With every door he walked by, he scanned the numbered plate beside it, looking for the right one.

This was part two of his mission from Darwin. The first step had been easy-slip in with a supply group to deliver a serum to help Agent Simmons's comatose SHIELD associate. Now, part two required him to sneak into a maximum security prison to inflict serious harm on an inmate. 'Make sure he is close to death, but does not succumb,' were Darwin's orders for him.

The command had made little sense to him until he read a report on Agent Simmons. The message made sense after that. You hurt one of us, we hurt one of you.

The correct plate finally came into view. With a smile, he unlocked the doors with the key ring he had swiped and stepped inside.

Present Day- 3 days after Skye, Fitz, and Simmons's disappearance.

Grant Ward stared down at his wrist. It had been handcuffed to the bolted down table the minute he entered the interrogation room. On either side of him were two guards. They were far enough so he wasn't uncomfortable, but close enough to stop him from attempting anything funny.

Grant knew that Coulson was coming, as they always put him in this room when he did. Coulson was his only visitor anyway. When he did come, he would sit down across from Grant and ask a few questions. Grant usually tuned them out and remained silent. His former boss would eventually leave after a half hour of silence, and he would go back to his cell. Sometimes he would hear other guards say that his silence was stubbornness, but it was far from the truth.

His larynx had originally silenced him, but once it had healed, guilt muted him. Guilt for the good people like Victoria Hand and Eric Koenig and the two men in the elevator at the Fridge and all the other good people out there who he'd killed in Garrett's name. He felt guilt over allowing Garrett to shoot Skye and saying nothing as they worked to save her. There was guilt over how he'd betrayed Skye's trust and then threatened her. But the worst guilt of all came from what he had done to Fitz. He hadn't just dropped him from a plane in a metal death trap. No, he had dropped him from a plane in a metal death trap with Simmons.

Grant had gained a new fear of the biochemist after Raina had told him the story of Skye's parents and how they were monsters, her father especially. Immediately after hearing this, he easily pieced together that Simmons was in cahoots with Raina, as well as Skye's father. When she'd told Fitz that he didn't care for the two of them anymore, Grant saw a murderous glare in her eyes for a moment that still haunted him today. When Coulson had told him that they survived, but Fitz 'might never be the same again', Grant immediately wondered what Simmons had done down there with him. Had she double-crossed him to escape? Had she exposed her dark side and driven him mad? Those were some of the questions he kept asking himself.

Two months after he had been locked away, his door opened in the middle of the night. He could only see a shadow of a man from the light in the hallway. For a few moments, Grant thought that it was a guard giving a random check. They did them often there, just to throw off the prisoners from their routines to make sure nothing was being plotted. He had thought that was what it was, right until the 'guard' approached him and Grant saw him draw something that looked like a knife from his side.

Despite his confines, Grant had still been working out. Still, he hadn't expected this. For a while they struggled on equal ground, and then he felt the cold metal pierce his shoulder. He screamed as loud as he could to alert someone that he was in trouble, hoping that he could be heard. The knife was pulled out and then new pain blossomed in his abdomen. The weight of the blade inside his body vanished and he remembered falling to the ground. As he hit the floor, his thoughts flashed back to the basement in Italy, when Skye had been shot. This must be his payment for not speaking up about Garrett then.

"I bring you a message," the shadowy figure said. Grant knew almost all the guards, but this one's voice was unfamiliar. "Try to kill one of us, one of us shall try to kill you."

"Who are you?" he rasped, trying to hold a hand to the wound on his front. "Who sent you?"

"I speak for the Doctor," was the response he received as his assassinator left the room.

Grant slumped fully on the floor, his mind going hazy from blood loss. A shout came from down the corridor, and he heard footfalls running closer to his cell. The last thing he remembered before blacking out was a flashlight shining on his face, held by a real guard.

When he woke up, he was in the hospital wing in a bed beside the window. For a long time, he stared at the natural light permeating through the thick smoky glass. It had been months since he had last seen sunlight, and it had been one of the things he'd missed the most. His cell was windowless, and the paths the guards lead him on when he went to the interrogation room or the showers or the room where he had to meet a therapist once a day (he never talked to her either) bore no windows. Now, after so long, there was finally light in his life again.

During the time he spent in the hospital wing, Grant thought about a lot of things. Mainly, it was what the attacker had said to him that night. One terrible thing about him was that when he was going to kill someone, he usually succeeded. There was one instance when that had failed, and it was when he had dropped Fitz and Simmons (he could never think of them as FitzSimmons after Jemma had talked with him in the closet) in the ocean. Grant was betting that the man had been speaking about Simmons with the one he'd tried to kill. In that case, it was easy to determine that her allegiance, along with Raina's, was to 'The Doctor'. In the closet, Simmons had said she was part of something more advanced that Hydra that was built to last. If her loyalties were with something worse than Hydra, then it posed a larger threat to his former team than Hydra ever could.

Grant knew at that moment that his silence needed to be broken, and that the team needed to know a greater, more dangerous threat was out there. However, he also worried that exposing what he knew on Simmons could very well lead to him getting attacked again, and this time he would be silenced in one way or another. That was the last thing he wanted to happen to him, so he needed to find another way. Eventually, he figured out that if he told Coulson about The Doctor, then the team could draw on that lead and find connections to weed out Simmons and her ulterior loyalty. All subversive organizations were connected to each other-the fall of SHIELD to Hydra was enough proof.

The door opened, and Coulson entered, followed by a woman he had never seen before. She was glowering at him, but Coulson's face was neutral and unreadable. Despite their differences, Grant had always admired the man's ability to remain calm in any situation. Considering what he had done to Coulson and the rest of his team, Grant had massive respect for him right now.

"Director," he greeted, remembering to address him by his new title that he'd heard when Coulson first visited.

Coulson looked surprised. "Ward," he said as he sat down across from him with the other woman. "This is Agent Hartley."

"Ma'am," he nodded politely to Hartley before turning back to Coulson to ask a question he's held onto for four months. "Fitz, is he okay?"

"Save it," snapped Hartley. "We've heard that you've decided to get chatty with your therapist in the past two months. Got a reason for it?"

Grant sighed, knowing that this question was going to come up when he first started to talk again. "I've done a lot of terrible things," he confessed. "It's taken me a while to realize the full extent of the consequences I'm facing for my actions, and now I want to do something right."

"You should have thought about that before you followed Garrett and his twisted path like little lapdog!" Hartley spat.

He winced as the memory of his first meeting with Garrett came back to him. It had been very similar to the setting they were in now. "What I did back then-I was in a rough spot," Grant told her. "I don't regret going with him to leave the place I was in, but I do regret not doing anything to stop him. It's taken me too long to realize that he took me out of one hell only to throw me in an even worse one. He saw me as weaker, and he only made me weaker. I wish that I had done something to stop him, but I can't change the past. I can, though, help the future of SHIELD, even if I'm in here the rest of my life."

His two visitors were silent once Grant finished talking. The Coulson looked him dead in the eye. "Do you really mean that?"

Grant nodded. Prison gave a man a lot of time to think about his actions, and what he could do to be a better person. At least that's how he was taking it. "Yes sir."

"And how do you feel about Skye?" Coulson's voice grew harsher now. Grant remembered very well that Coulson and Skye had a father/daughter relationship. "Still holding a psychotic love for her?"

Thinking back on the things he's said to his former rookie made Grant cringe. In the last days in Garrett's control, he'd become obsessive over her, saying things that sounded romantic at the time, but now were twisted and possessive. His self-imposed silence after his arrival gave him some time to think about his feelings for her.

"Ward," Coulson repeated. "How do you feel about her?"

"I care about Skye," admitted Grant honestly. "But the way I felt for her a few months ago is very different than the way I see her now. Back then, I was a monster, obsessed with her to the point where I wasn't myself anymore. In here, I've had a lot of time to think, and I realize I don't love her like I thought I did. My cover got too deep, and I spun out of control. I couldn't distinguish my own feelings from the ones I was supposed to have. But even though I don't love her, I still care about her. Skye was my first rookie, and that's all she is now. I'm sorry for what I did to her. She'd already been through so much, and I only made it worse."

"If something happened to her, what would you do?" Hartley asked bluntly.

Coulson flinched a little bit at the question, and Grant felt his gut twist in worry. His mind backtracked to Simmons giving him the photograph of Skye. Had she finally decided to act?

"Is she okay?" he asked.

The two agents said nothing, which only confirmed Ward's fears. "What's happened?" Grant looked back and forth at them. "Please tell me."

Hartley and Coulson turned to each other. The former nodded at the latter. Coulson looked back at Grant.

"Three days ago," he began. "I flew out along with May and Tripp to pick up Agent Harley and her group. On our return flight, we received a call from an agent who had stayed behind. A squad somehow broke in, and the agent was knocked unconscious. When he awoke, Skye, Fitz, and Simmons were gone. Security footage was wiped clean, and we found signs of a possible struggle."

"Any suspects?" Grant had a feeling why they were now meeting with him after two months.

"Our current suspicions lie with Hydra," Coulson informed him. "Specially the theory that you passed off the layout of the base where you stayed at for a week before coming here to a contact in this facility. But we've spoken with your guards, and I doubt that the visitor you had two months ago actually wanted information from you. There doesn't seem to be any other way you could have leaked the information, unless there is something you aren't telling us."

Grant shook his head. Coulson's suspicions were making him think back to Simmons again. Had she finally struck? Coulson said that she was missing along with Fitz and Skye, but it was entirely possible that she was the kidnapper herself. A brilliant strategy, if that was the case. Maybe it was time Coulson needed to know about The Doctor.

"There is something you should know," he said to them. "When I was attacked, the person said something to me about almost killing one of theirs, so I would almost be killed as well. I asked who sent them. The reply I received was that he spoke for The Doctor."

Hartley frowned. "We don't know anybody by that name, at least not that we know of."

"I don't know who he is either, but before I was put in here, Raina told me something back in Cuba," Grant revealed. "She told me a story about a baby found in a village in China, and how the baby's parents destroyed the village in search of their child. Apparently, Skye is the baby. An 084, you could call her."

"Where are you taking this?" asked Hartley. She seemed a bit surprised by the revelation, but Coulson looked as though he already knew.

Grant took a deep breath. He wanted to tell them about Simmons, but his fear of what she could do to him held him back. She'd already proved that she had connections that could get him killed if it was needed. Grant would have to use another reason if he wanted them to find out about her. "Garrett was responsible for Skye getting shot, and I was involved. The Doctor could be Skye's father, and I hurt her a lot in the past four months. He could have found out and wanted me hurt but not dead, so that's a reason for why I got stabbed. Once in the back, once in the stomach. I backstabbed her when I revealed that I was Hydra. She got shot in the stomach, so I did to for letting Garrett do that."

"So you think that we're dealing with Skye's father here?" Coulson clarified.

Grant nodded. Coulson pursed his lips together. "You've done a lot for us today, Ward," he told him. "You've come a long way in the last two months."

"Therapy helps," he answered. It really had done wonders for him. "I understand how screwed up I was now."

"Do you want to help us get them back?"

"What?!" He and Hartley cried, staring at Coulson. Was he actually serious?

"Phil, you can't actually mean this," Hartley was telling him. "He betrayed you!"

"You haven't been here with him like I have, Izzy," Coulson retorted before returning his attention to him. "Ward, I'm offering you a chance to redeem yourself outside of this place. You can help us get Skye and Fitz and Simmons back. You can work with us to help find out who this Doctor is, and if he's behind all this."

Grant felt a little bit of hope fill him, but waited for the catch.

"But if we're going to let you out," Coulson continued. "We will be keeping a tight watch on you. If you attempt any funny business, then you go straight back here, and you stay back here. So what's it going to be?"
Skye's furious glare the last time he'd seen her. Fitz screaming his name before disappeared out of the plane. They were his ghosts, haunting him for what he had done to them. Every minute of every day, they stayed with him, and Grant wanted to right his wrongs with them. "I'll do it."

"I had a feeling you'd agree," Coulson smiled as he stood up. "Glad I already turned in your release forms. They need few days to process you through, and by then we'll be back to pick you up. You're going to have to wear a tracker, and someone's always going to be nearby to keep an eye on you. Eventually, both will be removed when you gain enough trust back."

A little more hope filled him now. "Thank you, sir," Grant said gratefully. "I promise I won't let you down."

Hartley rolled her eyes, but Coulson didn't say anything to her. "I hope not," he chuckled as he and Hartley moved to leave.

"Sir?" Coulson turned around. Grant swallowed his courage. "You never answered my question about Fitz. Is he okay?"

The director of SHIELD studied him. "You do deserve to know."

Grant leaned toward him as far as he could. He needed closure on Fitz. He had to know what he was going to have to live with.

"He was in a coma, but he came out of it all right," Coulson told him as a guard opened the door for him and Hartley. "He's not the same person who you dropped out of a plane though."

With that, they left the room. One of the guards moved the handcuff attached to the table back to his wrist and lead him back to his cell. He entered it and the door was shut behind him. Sitting back down on his cot, Grant ran a hand over the beard he had grown over his stay at the prison, wondering what Coulson meant exactly when he said Fitz wasn't the same.

So I'm not a big Skyeward shipper, which is why I had Grant's feelings be more obsession based. That's what it felt like to me, and it feels the same way these days. Pre-Hydra, I could live with them, but now I don't know what to say with him. Might have made the people who ship Ward with anyone but Skye happy with that though.

Anyway, please leave a review behind to give me some feedback. Also, voting on Ward's fate would do me a favor. I'm seriously stuck on him.

Hope you've enjoyed this chapter, and I hope all you wonderful people return for more next year!