Roberta was lead to the room where the lie detector was located, and introduced to Koenig. He was about two inches shorter than her own five foot nine inch height, requiring her to look down to see into his eyes. Koenig was very congenial and welcoming even though she knew that should she fail this test he was explaining to her as they shook hands, the congenial and welcoming look on his face would disappear. His pride in the contraption was almost boyish in nature. Roberta was sure that many had underestimated this man for his height and his apparent sweetness, she however would not be one of them. There was a reason that Fury had put this man here in this position, and one should never underestimate a person when Director Fury had decided something was there.

When Roberta was finally strapped into the monstrosity that was supposed to be a chair, Koenig began to ask his questions. "What is your full name?" He asked in a more subdued voice than she had heard from him before this point.

"Roberta Amell Emerson," she replied succinctly.

"What is your eye color?"

"Grey," she said with some irritation. She knew they had to establish a base line, but the question seemed frivolous just the same.

"Have you ever been married," he asked.

"No," the word loaded with more than just her concerns with Ward currently.

"Please list your immediate family," his tone though all business cut her like a knife.

She hesitated but a moment and said, "Abandoned as a child no legal immediate family to speak of."

"Please list your known immediate genetic family," he pursued relentlessly.

"Mother, Melissa Emerson. Father, James Emerson. Older Brother, Richard Emerson," she bit out.

"What's the difference between an egg and a rock," he asked with a cocky tilt to his head.

"What," she floundered. He repeated the question, obviously serious. Roberta answered, "One has the potential for life. The other does not."

"How old were you when you were recruited to Shield?"

Regaining her bearing with the familiar question she answered firmly, "Twenty."

"How long were you undercover as Hydra?"

"Basically from the beginning I was recruited for the purpose of being a mole," she answered simply.

"Why were you trusted so easily?"

So he was going to go for the tough questions was he? Roberta took a deep breath to center herself. "I was approached by an officer while I was in the Army to join Hydra. They had noticed my anti-social characteristics. Basically they thought I would be another version of Ward as he is a version of hundreds more Hydra recruits. They did not count on my possessing a conscience. I said yes immediately, and then turned right around and betrayed them by looking for anyone who might be able to stop them. Fury found me because I asked the right people the right questions."

"You're on a deserted island alone, sitting on the beach is a box what is in that box?" Koenig asked in all seriousness.

Roberta cocked an eye brow at him in question, and he nodded his head to signal that yes he was completely serious.

"Answers," she replied, unintentionally cryptic. It must not have been too cryptic for Koenig because he moved on.

"Shield no longer has the influence it once did, so why are you here?"

"I have nothing to offer the world except my skills as an agent," she said, the underlying truth that she was not wanted anywhere else that was wholesome went unsaid. Roberta waited to be asked for clarification, but Koenig seemed pleased with the results her responses delivered and went back to his boyish exuberance as he handed her a lanyard.

May waited outside of the lie detector room to lead Roberta to her own room. May obviously had something to say to her or a lower ranking agent would have escorted her to her new quarters. Yet she remained silent as they ghosted over the floors separating Roberta from her place of rest.

Roberta had patience to spare. She could out wait even the most practiced of Hydra's officers to see what they wanted to ask her. A person could give away more than just the words from his or her lips if one rushed to fill silent moments. This was something Roberta had learned early on as an abandoned child in the system. Playing her cards close to her chest and waiting for her opponent to play first always had paid off for Roberta. Tonight though she was impatient. So close to her goal of ending her double life and beginning a relatively normal one in the morning was more temptation than she could resist so she played her hand first, "What is it you need to say to me, Ma'am?"

May turned her head only slightly to look at Roberta out from under an elegantly raised brow. Her lips lifted in a pleased smirk as she answered in her quiet way, "For obvious reasons, your movements will have to be restricted. You cannot go near Ward's holding cell without an escort, and you may not be armed if you do so."

"I have no desire to see him," Roberta's answer seemed to stun the seemingly unflappable woman. Roberta would have supposed that with her infamous pragmatism May would have been the first to understand such a course of action, instead she appeared confused by Roberta's lack of draw to her soul mate.

"I don't understand. The common understanding is that being away from one's soul mate once discovered is painful without the bond being established. Do you not need to see him to be able to function," May asked in a surprising moment of solicitous care.

They had made it to the door of what would be Roberta's quarters so she stopped and turned to face May. It was Roberta's turn to raise her eyebrows at May. The Calvary was not reputed to have an empathetic bone anywhere in her diminutive body. Roberta looked down the almost half foot difference to make pointed eye contact with the senior officer, hoping such an open move would impress upon the woman the seriousness of the situation.

"I have known from the moment I could understand the concept of morality that one of my soul mates was going to be psychotic. I have researched a great deal what it is like for a sane person to be mated to someone like Ward. Encouraging the formation of any kind of bond with him would be ill-advised and careless. I cannot risk the inherent outcomes that come with an emotional bond were it to form even if I was capable of with-standing the pull to establish the actual mated bond with him. I would become a liability for Shield and another pawn for his use."

May then said something that floored Roberta who never expected a woman so renowned for her pragmatism to utter such naiveté, "Surely finding his soul mate changes things for him."

"No, ma'am. For people like Ward things don't just change when they meet their soul mates. He doesn't have an unfavorable vice that he would give up for the love a good woman. He is a cold blooded killer, capable of murdering those who thought him to be their friend. He pursues Skye believing she belongs to him when she is obviously happy with whatever she has going on with the Soldier. He is completely unhinged and amoral, the soul mate bond is not some magic fix that can repair his mind or even his soul. And I…" she trailed off for a moment trying to find the words to make this woman understand that though she was on the side of good, she wasn't much better than Ward. For her the ends had to justify the means. How else could she live with the things she did knowing that she had made moral compromises all along the way to achieve her goals? "I don't have the ability to be the good woman whose love can heal or save him. I have made some incredibly disgusting choices as a double agent to maintain my cover," again she stopped. She couldn't believe that she was sharing this much. She had never done so in all the years since she learned why her parents gave her up for adoption. It was, however, imperative that this woman know, so she could tell Coulson, that Roberta could not be used to redeem Ward. He wasn't redeemable and Roberta herself wasn't either really. She was just going to be a very effective tool for them to use elsewhere. "Ward and I deserve each other really, I have also killed people that believed I was their friend or ally. The only difference between he and I is I did it in the name of the good of the many. That doesn't change the fact I have killed my share of the few, and I would honestly kill him too if it came down to it. So no, ma'am, I cannot help him. I cannot redeem him, only he can choose to do that, but he doesn't want to. He had his chance when I said his words and he still wants Skye. I can't help you regain his loyalty or mind."

"I don't believe you deserve each other. We saw your file. You aren't just a name on a list of faceless assets. We had a file on each of you. I think you deserve a break. The thought was naïve, but for your sake I do hope that finding you can change things for him," the way May spoke was so straightforward and incongruent with the caring sentiments she expressed.

"Thank you, Ma'am. I am tired, care if I go to bed now," Roberta asked hoping to end this conversation quickly.

"Yes," May said in her short way. As Roberta made to enter her room May stopped her, "Don't think I didn't pick up on the part where Ward is only one of your soul mates though."

Roberta turned to look over her left shoulder at May with a self-deprecating smile gently lifting the right side of her mouth, "I didn't think you had missed it. I haven't met them, judging by Ward's reaction I thought it possible it was Skye."

"No, Skye has only one mark; and Barnes is her mate," May replied.

"Then I have no idea who it could have been. Ward may know. I'm to bed now if you have nothing else you need to say?" It was a question more than a statement and it was followed by a barely suppressed yawn.

"No, go to bed. I will have them assess Ward for any clues as to who might be your third."

"If you must. Good night," with that Roberta retreated to the darkness of her room. Hoping for sleep to claim her quickly and completely leaving no room for the dreams that would normally haunt her. She fumbled to find a switch for a source of light. The overhead came on with a blaring intensity that stabbed through Roberta's over tired brain. When she blinked the purple spots from her vision she caught sight of the lamp by the bed, she moved to turn it on and then turned back to the source of the blinding fluorescent glare and switched it off. The room was now bathed in a soft yellow light that Roberta found soothing.

Thankfully there were clothes in the drawers seeing as all her own possessions had been left behind. She hadn't had many to speak of in the first place, but she knew at the outset of this mission that she was going to be lugging around a man who easily weighed two-hundred and fifty plus pounds. She hadn't wanted to try and cart her things around as well. She had obviously made the right choice, digging as she was in a drawer of warm comfy socks. They were plain and white; the sweats and tees she found were a plain grey, but equally as comfy. She made her selections and then padded out of the room to the barracks style bathroom.

The bathroom held the kind of silence that only emptiness can breed. She cleared her mind as she went about her shower routine, finding a measure of peace in the simple bliss of being clean. She refused to dwell on what Ward's second mark would say, trying to convince herself it didn't matter. If the person was like Ward Roberta really didn't need the head ache, and if they weren't the poor bastard really didn't deserve to be so unfairly saddled with what Roberta believed to be the dregs of humanity as his or her soul mates.

The thought that she had the hardest time shaking though, was that a person named Bucky had now entered her life; and he was the famed asset that Hydra believed she would retrieve for them. Who could Barnes possibly know that wasn't like Ward?