"Well, I'm not sorry," Simmons eventually sniffled disagreeably.
"Not even when you see what a shiner my eye is going to be sporting tomorrow?" Grant asked, carefully trying to lighten her mood.
"No. I'll like to see it."
Simmons was almost pouting, and Grant was biting back an amused smile as he nodded, saying resolutely, "Good."
"Good?" Simmons repeated in confusion, looking up at him for the first time since she'd dissolved into tears.
"Yes, good." Grant smiled at her – his little sister, as it seemed he might actually be inclined think of her as. "I deserved that."
"Yes, you did," Simmons agreed. "And I'm not done being angry with you over it, either."
"I guess the fact that I saved your life once is cancelled out by the fact that I tried to drown you, huh?" Grant halfway joked.
"Not cancelled, just evened out. We're even." Simmons paused before she admitted, "But that meltdown wasn't for me."
Grant raised his eyebrows curiously, prompting her to continue. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw May narrow her eyes a bit with her own curiosity, and he shot her a look that Simmons didn't notice, asking the Asian to get lost. She did, and then Grant turned his attention back to Simmons, whose shoulders his arm was still around as she seemed to struggle to say whatever came next.
"Fitz," Simmons said eventually, voice getting teary. "He…" she took a deep breath and started over. "We sank to the bottom of the ocean, ninety feet down and no way out – or so we thought at first. Eventually, we made a plan to break the glass and swim out, but it was too far to go without breathing, and he knew it. He found a pressurized oxygn mask there, but there was only one breath in it. Two swimmers, one breath. He'd been doing math the whole time, and it was pretty obvious those numbers wouldn't work." Simmons slammed her eyes closed, breathing shallowly for a second to keep her tears at bay, and Grant felt bile crawl into his own throat when she continued. "He… Fitz said I had always been the better swimmer anyway. He-" A deep, shuddering breath, and then she whispered, "He told me that he loved me. That he'd never had the courage to tell me so, and that if we were going to be this close to death, he wanted to show me he loved me instead. He made me take the mask and then he pushed the button that broke the window. And that will be the last time he ever did more on his feet than just shuffle and stumble his way towards something, the last words he ever spoke."
Simmons wiped at her eyes, letting her recounting of the story hang in the air between them.
At a loss for words, he repeated helplessly for the third time, "I'm sorry, Simmons."
"Yeah, well, I can't forgive you yet, Ward. Not yet."
"I don't expect you to," he answered honestly. "I don't expect any of you to."
"Coulson's not going to forgive us either if we don't hurry up and meet up with the others soon," she said, flipping the conversation easily.
Grant nodded and got to his feet, offering her a hand up and smiling weakly when she allowed him to help her.
"Thank you for telling me," he murmured.
She nodded before revealing, "You're the first one who's heard the whole story."
"So what parts do I pretend didn't happen?"
"All of it happened, Ward."
"Well then," he asked, holding apart the bars of the boxing ring so that she could climb out. "What part don't the others know about?"
"They don't know…" her cheeks tinted pink. "What Fitz said."
"I hate to break it to you," Grant said as they headed towards the elevator. "But everyone knows that Fitz loves you." As they stepped into the elevator, he asked the million dollar question. "What we haven't quite figured out is: do you love Fitz?"
Simmons glanced up at him before turning her gaze straight ahead, mouth twitching deviously as she suggested, "Why don't you ask your thoroughly mauled reflection that question."
"Touché," Grant chuckled.
The smile stayed where it was until they hit the fourth floor, where the others were gathered in the living room.
The moment Coulson laid eyes on him, the new director of SHIELD turned to May, saying her name sharply.
"What?" May asked Coulson.
Coulson said in exasperation, "You promised me you wouldn't hurt him!"
"I didn't do it!"
"May, he's got a black eye. You and Simmons were the only ones with him, and out of the two of you, you're the only one who could've done-" he pointed emphatically to Grant's eye. "That much damage."
"I think I may even have a cracked rib," Grant revealed, looking out of the corner of his eye at Simmons.
"Still not sorry," the scientist said confidently, brushing by Ward, Coulson, and May to sit down beside Fitz who was sitting in a plain metal wheelchair.
Grant blinked, forcing his gaze away from the chair – Your fault – and to the face of the man it held. Talk about mistake. Seeing the hope, heartbreak, and sense of betrayal in the younger man's eyes nearly took his breath away just as thoroughly as Simmons' attack had. So he looked at Trip instead. A welcome breath of nothing more than the expected wariness, although he was at least trying to hide it. And then there was Skye. Gosh, Skye. She was as hard to look at as Fitz, and wasn't that just stupid considering the way he'd manipulated Agent May?
They were waiting for him to say something. Why did they all want him to open his mouth? They obviously had a lot of choice words they wanted to share with him, but he couldn't think of anything to say. He was suddenly kind of grateful to Simmons' for her such uncharacteristic yet swift way of making her opinion known and her speediness in getting it behind them.
"Guys, I'm going to say this a lot, I have a feeling, so I'm just going to start now. I'm sorry for everything that I've done to every one of you. Give me this second chance and I'll show you a different, better Grant Ward. I promise."
