Chapter Twelve: Louder Than Words
When Grant threw himself from the AIM plane, he gave himself a moment to think on how familiar yet foreign the experience was. He had made many jumps and the disorientation, fear, and surprise of it all had faded long ago. He was completely focused and unmoved as he hurtled to the ground. It was just like any other time- except it was not at all.
Grant's eyes narrowed against the wind and scanned the air below. With his arms tucked into his sides and his legs pressed together to drive him faster, he had successfully ensured that he could cover the distance between Dr. Simmons and himself. But none of that would matter if he could not locate the agent.
Ward supposed if he could not save her that would mean little. This whole stunt playing with the SHIELD agents had been stupid enough to begin with. If the biochemist died, it was nothing to him. He should have let her and the others die back in Futurepharm and spared himself this whole mess.
Grant wondered how bad things must be that he could not even convince himself that he believed that. Some master manipulator he was.
Maybe he should look at it differently. He was just following through with his initial choice to save the woman. Now that he had already gone to so much trouble, even getting himself captured, it just made sense to prevent her from falling to her death. It was easy for him, natural as breathing, to do this. It was not like he was really going out of his way to protect her by getting her now.
But he had already gone out of his way for her, Skye, and Fitz. And this was not even a straightforward jump. If he delayed pulling his ripcord for too long, Simmons would not be the only one dying. He forcibly stopped his thoughts, they were pointless.
Ward had no way of calculating his distance to the ground, but experience gave him rough estimates in his mind. He was halfway down already and every second propelled him further.
The ground below indicated that they would not have a water landing, which was a mixed blessing depending on how late Grant deployed his chute. He could only hope there were no trees.
Grant spotted her just as hit ten thousand foot mark. Her limbs were all over the place, and she was flipping around in the air. Considering she fell out accidentally and had no previous experience, it was unsurprising. She was at the mercy of gravity and panic was driving her to lash out in uncontrollable motions. That also made his job of securing her harder. Eight thousand feet.
Finally catching up with Simmons, Grant widened his stance to match the resistance of her fall. The alignment was not perfect, but their speeds were roughly even now and Ward accepted that as good as it was going to get. He reached his arms out for her. Five thousand feet.
Simmons' expression was twisted with terror and despair before she noticed him approaching him. Grant witnessed the exact moment she realized that certain death had become less certain. She became focused and determined right before his eyes. There was no hesitation of anxiety in her movements as she stretched to grab his arms. It was a strange kind of bravery to be able to cast aside hysteria in the face of hope. Unfortunately, one of their hands brushed but fell short of securing a grip. Two thousand feet.
Grant knew they were running out of time. If he was unable to pull his chute soon, there would not be enough time before impact for the parachute to save them. Canopy chutes like this one required hundreds of feet just to deploy. Given that there would be two people held up by the one chute, they were twice as likely to need more time. The latest deployment of these types of chutes that did not end in a fatality that Ward had ever heard of was three hundred feet, and that guy broke most of his bones and wound up paralyzed. It was not a fate Grant wished to share. Not to mention he was only one person.
An insidious thought wormed its way into Grant's mind. He could just pull his ripcord now. The biochemist would die, of course, but did that really matter to him? It was not his job to save her from her own weakness.
Her skin was cold to the touch and her grasp nearly painful, but Grant welcomed it. Once his grip was secure, he yanked her to him. He grabbed one of her thighs to pull up to his waist, and she caught on immediately. She wove her legs tightly around him and encircled his neck with her arms as well. She clutched him firmly, nails digging into his skin and heels jabbing his sides. He just hoped it would be enough.
He pulled the ripcord under nine hundred feet. They were still careening towards the ground alarmingly fast with the chute beginning to slow their fall not quite quickly enough. Simmons' mouth was open in a silent scream drowned out by the wind. The force of the hard opening when the chute finally deployed rocked them, but Simmons proved stronger than she looked and held tight.
In seconds, the ground came up to meet them. Grant's ankle crumpled under the force of the fall as he fell to his knees. His hands reached out to brace for the impact as he toppled forward, which only resulted in his recently reset wrist breaking again. All of his formerly twisted fingers jarred painfully as well.
On all fours with the SHIELD agent still attached to his chest and his body wracked with pain, Ward was just glad in that moment to be alive.
His ears were ringing from the change in altitudes and the abrupt stop. He panted in both relief and exhaustion as it finally sunk in that the threat of falling to death had passed. His voice was hoarse when he spoke. "Dr. Simmons, you can let go now."
She was shaking against him, not that he could blame her. While his mind worked faster under pressure, the reality was that Simmons had fallen out of the plane less than five minutes ago. In that time she had realized that she was definitely going to die, agonized over it, discovered he may be able to save her, wondered if he actually could, feared it was too late, and finally found that they had made it. It was a lot of emotions to process in such a short period of time.
He sympathized, but her clinging to him needed to stop. Her fingers were digging into his shoulder wound that was still full of debris from the explosion. His arms trembled from supporting both their weights. Grant began to feel dizzy. If he were not afraid they would collapse upon moving, Ward would have forcibly removed her grasp already.
Simmons untangled herself haltingly, movements disjointed and clumsy. She plopped to the ground in front of him. Her hair was a wild mess and her face unnaturally white. She stared at him with a wide-eyed expression of disbelief- whether it was due to surprise that they lived or shock that he saved her, he could not say.
It was then he noticed the shaking had not stopped when she let go. That recognition led to a new one: he was the one who was shuddering, not Simmons. He needed to get ahold of himself. He could not believe he was acting so pathetically, and in front of an enemy as well.
Before his eyes, he observed Simmons raise the hand that had been aggravating his shoulder injury not too long ago. It was painted red with fresh blood.
Jumping out of a plane was in the running for simultaneously being the most exhilarating and terrifying experience of Skye's life. Considering she could uproot the ground with her mind, that was saying something.
Her fingers were curled around Fitz's wrist while Fitz kept a firm hold on her own. Whatever else happened, they were in this together.
Fitz looked awful. His cheeks were wet with tears, and Skye could not tell if he was still crying or not. His face was distorted in anguish. Skye was slightly concerned that he might not pull his own chute if she should let go. He was clearly unable to think past his despair at the moment.
Skye was not faring much better. She supposed the only reason she could even focus currently was because part of her refused to believe it. Simmons was her best friend, Skye could not imagine a world where she was not running around all nerdy and logical and alive. Simmons was her sister in every way that counted.
Fearing the agony would consume her if she did not focus on something else, Skye peered downwards in the hopes of catching a glimpse of Zach. The sting of betrayal that came with the thought of him abandoning them was a welcome distraction from her distress. He just jumped without even a word, leaving them frozen in their grief and in danger of being shot. Skye knew she should not have expected any kind of loyalty from him, he made his opinion on that very clear. He stressed multiple times that they were not a team, but Skye had foolishly believed he was just posturing. Deep down she always assumed that he was dependable. That was her fault though, he had been nothing but honest about his intention to leave them as soon as he could. They were just burdens to him.
Skye was an idiot. A absurdly naïve idiot who let her attraction to a Nazi terrorist see things that were not there.
On second thought, maybe this distraction was more pain than it was worth.
Still, Skye needed to focus on Zach because she wanted to time their deployment right. Zach told her to pull around four thousand feet. Assuming he was not lying about the safe altitude, she needed to get a feel for how far they were from the ground. Following his lead felt like the safest course of action.
Skye found that plan was full of faults immediately. First, she could not be sure the black blob she was staring at was actually him. Second, if it were, then Zach was propelling towards the ground faster than Fitz and Skye for some reason, which increased the distance between the two of them and made it even harder to get a lock on him. The next thing Skye noted was that the ground was coming up fast, and he still had not activated his chute. Skye and Fitz were further up and had more time, but he really should have pulled his ripcord by now. Even an inexperienced jumper like Skye could tell that.
There was likely something wrong with his parachute. Unbidden worries came to her at that realization. Despite just reprimanding herself for believing there was anything in good in him, Skye really could not bear the thought of him dying now, not after Si- Skye cut her thoughts off.
Her throat tightened, and Skye was afraid she was going to start crying. Everything was her fault, she did this when she suggested that they jump. It was a terrible idea, and her terrible idea probably led to the deaths of two people she cared about.
Fitz pulled her attention away from her self-condemnations by scratching her skin with his nails. Skye turned to look at him and saw him gesturing towards his ripcord one-handedly. He wanted them to pull their chutes now. Skye agreed with him, they were clearly approaching the four thousand foot mark. He still looked like the walking dead, but apparently Fitz had his act together more than she did.
Skye held up her free hand and began to count down from five. Both of them poised their hands over their ripcord and as one yanked the cords. The parachutes fell open faultlessly. The jerk as they activated threatened to tear her from Fitz, but they managed to keep ahold of each other.
Soon enough the two of them were floating thousands of feet above a clearing as safe as anyone could be considering. They dropped steadily down, and Skye thought in any other circumstances, she would have enjoyed the escapade.
"What the bloody hell is he doing?" Fitz's voice barely carried to her ears though Skye could tell he was shouting. Skye faced Fitz and saw his focus was directed downward.
It took Skye a second to realize that he was looking at the direction where Zach should be. It was hard to see anything concrete from so high, but it was clear that he had not activated his chute despite being well below four thousand feet. Suddenly, she saw the canopy expand, but he had waited too long. It was too fast and did not have time to fully deploy. Skye held her breath as she wondered if she were going to watch him die right before her eyes.
At the last second, the chute caught. Skye could not tell from so far away if it had been in time though. She and Fitz were drifting with the wind east of his location, and she could barely make out what appeared to be his figure. If it was sprawled in a lifeless heap or standing completely unharmed, Skye could not say.
They floated into a nearby forest, which sucked for so many reasons. Fitz knocked his head on a branch and Skye's chute got stuck in a tree. It took them ten minutes just to extrapolate themselves from the mess.
After finally touching ground, Skye peered around trying to pull herself together. They were in the middle of who knows where, outside of civilization for sure. And Simmons.
As if reading her thoughts, Fitz fell to his knees and starting sobbing in earnest. Skye supposed that now that the threat to their lives had passed, the reality of Simmons' fate was catching up with him. Skye would not let it do the same with her though. If she admitted it, it would become real, and it simply could not be real.
Fitz's sniffling died down but did not stop entirely. He stood up and stared at her determinedly. "We need to go."
Skye nodded silently. She did not feel like speaking.
"We should get uhh… Zach I think you called him?" Fitz faltered uncertainly at the end. It seemed it had not occurred to him earlier that he did not even know their fellow escapee's name.
Skye would have corrected him, but she had something more important to say. "No, Fitz. He abandoned us." The words seemed inadequate for all that had just happened and inaccurate in some ways, but Skye was having trouble focusing her thoughts.
"No, we need to go back for him," Fitz insisted stubbornly. "He's probably even more hurt after that fall." If he were not dead was the unspoken conclusion of that sentence. "He saved us from the explosion and then freed us from AIM. We owe it to him."
Skye wondered if Fitz was trying to compensate for failing Simmons. Maybe losing her compelled him to find others he felt a connection with and protect them. She was not sure what exactly it was, but Skye could tell Fitz was determined and would not be talked out of his stance. And after everything, Skye did not have the heart to argue with him. Hopefully having a purpose would distract him for the time being.
Skye reluctantly followed him as he led her in the direction Zach had landed. She dodged low hanging branches mindlessly as she forced a sense of numbness to take over. It was not just Simmons- though even the thought of her name sent an indescribable ache to her heart- but Skye was also not looking forward to seeing how Zach fared. A sense of dread curled in her stomach, and Skye feared they were walking to meet his corpse.
Skye ducked under a leafy limb and strode into the clearing like every step was painful- because they were. She trudged along with her eyes on the ground. That was probably why she did not notice Fitz had abruptly stopped until she ran right into his back.
"Fitz?" Skye called. He showed no response to her voice though. In fact, Skye was not sure he was even breathing. She grew concerned. Skye moved in front of him and looked at his frozen face. He was not even looking at her. "What's wrong?"
He brushed her aside as if he were in a dream and took off running. Skye's eyes followed his back before turning ahead to try and see what had caught his attention. There were two figures sitting on the ground not three hundred yards away. A deflated parachute lay next to them.
The moment Skye processed what she was seeing was the same time that Fitz shouted, "JEMMA!" with just as much joy as he had despair before. Before she consciously chose to, Skye was sprinting as well, eager to reach her friend.
Fitz slid to his knees in front of his partner and threw his arms around the startled scientist. She exclaimed his name and returned the embrace with equal enthusiasm. Simmons drew back and began kissing Fitz's face all over.
Skye slowed down. Suddenly she felt like an intruder in their private moment. Both of them looked at each other as if just the realization that the other was alive ensured that their world would keep turning. Unwanted feelings of jealousy emerged at that thought. Fitzsimmons would not react that way for her, no one would. She was many people's loved one, friend, colleague, but she was no one's world.
Skye felt guilty for thinking that, she should just be ecstatic that Simmons was alive. She was alive! Skye could not ask for more. She ruthlessly squashed the loneliness that refused to leave her.
"So you're still alive," the weary voice surprised Skye so badly she was ashamed to admit she flinched.
She spun around to face a considerably beaten down Zach. His face was strangely pale and one of his arms was actually dripping blood. There was actually a lot of blood everywhere, splattered across his neck, arms and hand. Skye could only imagine what his shirt would look like if it were not black. As it were, she could see it was soaked through. Upon further assessment, Skye noticed that his left hand was puffed up and entirely black and blue while his right one was swollen. The way he was sprawled out implied one of his legs was hurt as well.
"God, you look like hell," Skye blurted out.
He scowled but even that lacked his usual energy and composure. "Sorry," he said not sounding at all sorry, "But my landing was a little rough."
As if his words were the key, Skye suddenly understood. He had not abandoned them like she assumed, he left so quickly because he knew that every second counted if he wanted to reach Simmons in time. He did not pull his chute until the last second because he was prioritizing saving Simmons over his own safety.
Simmons was alive because Zach dove after her and managed to catch her before she dropped to her death.
The tears Skye had been fighting since Simmons first fell filled her eyes. Zach grew alarmed at her reaction and turned towards Fitzsimmons as if prepared to call them for help. But Skye did not need it.
Skye stumbled gracelessly to the ground beside Zach and wrapped her arms tightly around him. He went rigid at once. Oh, she had forgotten about his wounds. That was careless of her. Skye could already feel the blood seeping into her shirt. Just when she was about to pull away, Zach surprised her by winding his arms around her as well. His grip was hesitant, almost as if he were testing her response, so Skye just nestled her head into the crook of his neck and pulled him even closer. After a moment, he rested his cheek on the top of her head and let out a little sigh.
Somehow embracing him felt like finding a peace she had not known she was missing. The strain of the day bled away in his arms. Skye welcomed the warmth and comfort of it, she did not know how much she had needed this until she had it. She breathed in deeply. She would have thought he would smell bad given the blood and grime he was covered with, but it was the opposite. His scent was musk and smoke and every bit as intoxicating as he was.
All too soon, he pulled away. Skye imagined she could have stayed in his arms for a while more, but she noticed Fitzsimmons had ceased their embracing. Skye and Zach must have been holding each other for longer than she thought. Both of her friends were staring at her. They obviously wanted to say something but were curbing their desire to for some reason.
Skye would bet anything that the words they were not saying had a lot to do with the hug she had just shared with a Hydra agent. Skye wondered what they must have looked like in Fitzsimmons' eyes clutching each other as they were. If it appeared half as intimate as it felt, then Skye was surprised that Fitzsimmons could hold their tongues at all.
Zach unsteadily stood up and shook Skye out of her thoughts. He was very obviously favoring his right leg. Tension lined his body likely from his wounds, but none of it showed on his face. If Skye had not seen the blood and bruises herself, she would have believed he was fine. But he clearly was not, he was just a good actor.
"What are you doing?" Simmons shouted. "You shouldn't be standing on that leg, and you're going to bleed out if you don't let me look at your shoulder."
"I told you, I don't need any help. I'm getting out of here." Zach moved like he planned to do just that. Despite his bravado, he faltered once he put weight on his bad leg. Skye thought for a second that he would give up then, but he proved infinitely more stubborn- and stupid.
"You should really let Simmons take a look," Fitz said. "She's a miracle worker."
"No."
"You're being unreasonable!" Simmons cried. "Skye tell him."
"You're being unreasonable," Skye told him in her closest imitation of Simmons' accent, trying to mimic the tone word for word.
Everyone was silent as they stared at her for a second before the laughter began. Zach fought a smile while Fitzsimmons looked like they were about to keel over from the force of their giggles.
"That's the worst English accent I've ever heard," Zach told her completely straight-faced.
"Oh, Skye," Simmons said. "It hasn't gotten better at all."
"No, I've definitely improved," Skye insisted. "Fitz, tell her." The traitor just shook his head.
But Skye had accomplished what she wanted. She could see the softening of Zach's sharp edges happen right before her eyes. While she still had more questions than answers when it came to the man, she was beginning to realize that he was extremely defensive. For whatever reason, he kept his guard up all the time. He even told her that he had no friends in Hydra or SHIELD. He wanted everyone to think him unshakable and cold.
But no one who was truly detached would have saved Simmons the way he did. He almost died in his efforts, and still he did not give up even when it seemed hopeless. No one would have blamed him if he had not, Skye certainly did not think she could have been rescued.
It was a front, though parts of it definitely were not. The way he dispatched of all the AIM enemies and the utter ruthlessness he displayed proved that. Even with the helpless scientist, Zach illustrated that he was more than willing to be cruel to get what he was after.
But a lot of his demeanor was affected. The rage when he let loose at her on the plane painted him as more emotional than he appeared. When she thought about it, Skye figured that was probably why he pretended to be so apathetic all the time, to cover all of the feelings he bottled up. Not only that, but his decisions to help and save Fitzsimmons and her implied that he cared for others more than he would like. Or just cared more about them? It was hard to say since she had never seen him interact with anyone else. Were all his relationships like this, alternating between insincere detachment and risky heroics?
It made Skye wonder who he really was under all those layers of harsh veneers and trust issues- and how he came to be this way.
I struggled with the one, and I'm still not sure I'm happy with it. It's probably because it felt more introspective and emotional compared to the previous two action-based ones. I decided to change my intended ending of this chapter (which I'll have as the beginning of next chapter) and not leave you guys with a cliffhanger. Well, less of one at least. Also, I did so much research on skydiving you have no idea. Title comes from the proverb "actions speak louder than words".
Am I doing okay? I'm grappling with my writing insecurity at the moment, so I hope you'll excuse the awkward question. But you guys have been wonderful! Thanks to everyone who reviewed, favorited and/or followed!
