A/N: anonymous said: "Hey, sorry i don't have tumblr, but just read your collection of Jemma/Grant drabbles :) could you write on where Jemma returns to shield after S2E02 and breaks Ward out?"


In the end, it's very simple.

Jemma returns to the Playground, full of apologies and tears. She tells Coulson that he was right, and SHIELD is where she belongs. She's not exactly the world's best liar—although she's certainly miles better than she used to be—but he buys it at once. He's so smug, so self-righteous, that he doesn't look past the tears. And why would he? It's exactly what he was expecting when she left: that, soon enough, she would come crawling back to be showered with I told you sos.

Agent Koenig makes noises about procedure and testing and the need for a new lanyard, but Coulson overrules him.

"That can wait," he says benignly. "I'm sure Agent Simmons would like to see her partner first."

"Yes," she agrees. "Very much. How has he been?"

Coulson smiles, all smug benediction, and she looks down because she's not sure she can keep her opinion of his condescension off of her face.

"Why don't you go see?" he suggests.

"Thank you," she says, standing. "And then, Agent Koenig, I promise I'll submit to whatever testing you think is necessary."

It's an empty promise, of course. There won't be an and then.

Coulson waves her off, and she leaves the office with relief. Step one complete.

Step two is just as easy. Instead of going to the lab, she goes to the nearest maintenance closet. There's access to the ventilation system, and she makes good use of it. The gas she designed while she was away—odorless, colorless, and very fast-acting—will spread through the base in moments. There are, of course, fail-safes and secondary systems meant to prevent this kind of biological attack, but they're easy enough to disable—after all, she designed them, too.

It was very sloppy of them, she muses as she removes the gas mask and gas canisters from her handbag, not to do so much as a cursory search of her belongings. But then, sloppy is an excellent descriptor for Coulson's operation as a whole.

She pulls on the gas mask, deploys the canisters, and waits. She gives it ten minutes, starts to leave, and then hesitates and decides to wait another five to be safe. Haste makes waste, and all that, and if she messes this up she won't get another chance.

Luckily, step two appears to have gone perfectly, as well. The gas has successfully incapacitated everyone in the base. They'll wake in about ten hours—six, at the very least—and by then she'll be long gone.

Which means it's time for step three: a trip to the Vault. She makes her way through the corridors cautiously, one hand on her ICER. There's no reason to believe that anyone could withstand the biochemical agent she's just distributed throughout the base, but she can't get careless.

However, her caution is unnecessary. She makes it to the Vault without encountering anyone—anyone conscious, at least. She does have to step over and around the bodies littering the corridors—people who collapsed where they stood as the gas affected them—and that's…a touch off-putting, but, well, needs must.

The door to the Vault isn't locked at all. Once again, sloppy. And to think her superiors thought it was a risk to send her in alone. Ha! They could have sent one of the children, for all of the opposition she's facing.

She pauses in the act of stepping through the door. Something about that thought…

She shakes it off and continues into the Vault. The forcefield is transparent, at the moment, allowing her to see her target. Ward, of course, was just as affected by the gas as the rest of them. She does wish she could leave him that way—just because she's here to rescue him doesn't mean she's forgiven him for trying to kill her—but, sadly, she doesn't have anywhere near the necessary upper-body strength to get him up the stairs, let alone all the way out of the base.

She deactivates the forcefield—speaking of sloppy, the controls for the cell are right outside of it—and enters the cell, pulling another gas mask out of her handbag as she does so. She has an antidote for the chemical agent—uncreatively named quick knock out gas by the field agents of her acquaintance—but it would hardly do to give it to him while he's still breathing it.

She kneels next to him to fit the mask over his face, checks that it's secure, and then sits back on her heels. She reaches into her handbag, but finds herself hesitating. Perhaps…she should give it a moment.

She examines the scars on his wrists and face. They all seem to have healed well. Good; the stitches were, admittedly, not her best work. To her shame, she allowed herself to be swayed by emotion while she was treating him. It makes her roll her eyes at herself, now, to remember the way her hands shook as she stitched him up the first time.

Enough hesitation. She pulls the antidote—an imprecise term, but the one her superiors used—out of her handbag and injects Ward with it. Then she stands and takes several large steps back, because specialists, no matter their loyalties, do tend to wake up swinging.

Sure enough, she barely has time to blink before he's on his feet. Reflexively, she takes another step back. The motion catches his attention, and his eyes snap to her.

SHIELD (and HYDRA) gas masks aren't like the gas masks the rest of the world uses, of course. Those are too obvious, too blatant—very noticeable. Through a combination of miniaturization, cloaking, and Stark technology, SHIELD's science division managed to create a gas mask which is mostly invisible. Jemma was not involved in that project, which is why the masks are only mostly invisible.

But that's hardly the point. The point is that, when activated, the only visible part of the gas mask is the strap that secures it to the wearer's face. As such, Ward has no difficulty recognizing her.

He frowns. "Simmons?"

Then he jerks a little and brings one hand to his face, to the edge of the gas mask.

"Don't take that off," she warns.

He raises an eyebrow, but drops his hand, smart enough to know better than to disobey just for the hell of it. He looks around, taking in the fact that she's inside his cell, and then crosses his arms.

"What are you doing here?" he asks.

"Breaking you out," she says flatly. "Let's go."

She starts to turn away, but his laugh stops her.

"Breaking me out?" he asks. "Really? You think I'm gonna buy that? What game are you playing, Simmons?"

"It's not a game," she snaps. "I'm here to get you out."

He's not convinced. "Why?"

"Because those are my orders."

"Whose orders?"

She spreads her hands, watches the obvious occur to him. Watches his eyes widen and then go blank.

"No way," he says.

"Hail Hydra," she shrugs.

"No way," he repeats. "I don't buy it."

"It's the truth," she says. "Whether you buy it or not. I take orders from HYDRA. And my orders are to get you out of here, so let's go."

Ward still doesn't move. "And you think they're just gonna let you walk out of here?"

"Us," she corrects, frustrated. "And they're not in any condition to stop us, so yes. I do."

"Well," he says. He grins, quick and sharp, and Jemma, for reasons she couldn't even begin to guess, barely suppresses a flinch. "This I gotta see. Lead the way."

Finally. She grabs her handbag, slings it over her shoulder, and leads the way out of the Vault. Ward is tense as he follows her, obviously expecting to be stopped (or perhaps shot) at any moment, and when they come across the first unconscious agent (a very large, very attractive man she hasn't met), he stops in his tracks.

"What did you do?" he asks, crouching next to the agent.

"Quick knock-out gas," she says. "In the ventilation system."

He looks up at her skeptically.

"I didn't name it," she adds defensively. "Are you satisfied now that this isn't a trick? Can we leave?"

He stands. "That could have just as easily been poison. Why only knock them out?"

"Those were my orders," she says simply. "Incapacitate, not eliminate."

Something passes over his face, something she can't read—but then, she never could read him, really—and he nods slowly.

"So that's how it is," he says. "Should've guessed."

"Guessed what?" she can't help but ask.

"Nothing," he says. "Are we going or what?"

That was not nothing, but if he's done arguing, it's all to the good. She nods and gestures in the direction of the garage.

The walk through the Playground in silence. Jemma, in accordance with her orders, takes the route to the garage that avoids the labs entirely, even though it's much longer. Not that they're in any particular hurry—it will be hours yet before anyone in the base so much as stirs—but she does wonder at it.

Still, it's not her place to question orders, just obey.

All of the keys to the vehicles in the garage are hanging helpfully by the door, and she grabs the keys to a CRV at random. It's one of the tracked vehicles, as it happens, but that's hardly relevant. They'll only be taking it a few miles.

She can feel Ward's eyes burning into her as she leads the way across the garage to the CRV in question. And as she unlocks the door. And as they get in—her in the driver's seat, and she's a little surprised that he doesn't protest. And as she starts it up.

It makes her uncomfortable. She can feel the flush building at the base of her neck, and her skin is crawling a little—in a not entirely unpleasant way, which, perversely, makes her even more uncomfortable. She wishes he would stop.

But she's not going to give him the satisfaction of asking him to, so she drives out of the garage in silence. Ward finally looks away as they exit the base, one hand coming up to shield his eyes from the glare of the midday sun.

"Where are we going?" he asks, pulling at his gas mask with the other hand.

Pulling to a stop at a red light, she takes the opportunity to remove her own. "To our pick-up point."

"Is it far?" he asks.

"Not very," she says, checking the street sign reflexively. "A few miles."

"Good to know," he says.

What happens next happens very quickly. Ward, who never buckled his seatbelt, leans across the center console and throws the car into park with one hand. He slings his other arm around her neck and tightens it, his upper forearm pressing against her throat and cutting off her air supply as he pulls her halfway out of her seat.

She claws at his arm, trying to get free—the ICER is in her handbag, which is in the backseat, far out of reach—but the brief physical training she's received is nothing compared to his years of specialist work, and her vision is already darkening.

"Sorry, Simmons," Ward murmurs, and he sounds strangely sincere. "But you'll thank me for this one day."

She'd love to tell him what she thinks of that, but she doesn't have the air to breathe, let alone speak. She claws harder at his arm, takes vicious satisfaction in the way she feels the skin tear under her nails, but it's no use. He says something else, something she can't make out, and then…

The world goes black.