He agreed with her too often, and that annoyed the hell out of her. What good was an assistant who agreed with every word she said? The beauty of working with Fitz was that at least half the time they were tackling different sides of the same problem, and if they agreed it was because they were both right.
Henry- who, to be fair, was quite good looking in that teutonic, chiseled kind of way- said she was right every step of the way, and it was enough to make Jemma want to have an unprofessional pout in a storage closet.
Admittedly, she would have been even more outraged if he had been determined to prove her wrong, so she supposed she had better count her blessings.
"I think we've made progress, Dr. Simmons," he said with a bright smile at the end of a particularly long day. "Drink?"
"So sorry," she replied coolly, purposefully waving goodbye with her left hand so that her ring caught the light. "I'm making an early night of it."
"Tomorrow night, then?"
"No, thank you."
"Even SHIELD agents need the occasional night off." He was keeping pace with her, which was very irritating. In a casual, light-hearted gesture he reached out, tugging gently on a lock of hair that had escaped her bun. "Come on, let down your hair for a bit."
She stopped stock-still in the middle of the hallway, ignoring the grumblings of the agents who had to quickly veer to the side to continue around them. "I'm sorry that you did not understand my polite deflections, Dr. Gardner," she said in a crisp tone, inwardly wishing that she were even half as imposing as Natasha. "I'm not interested, tonight or any night."
He almost looked crestfallen. "You're too lonely, Jemma. I was just trying to be a pal."
With benefits, she would guess, but she supposed that her currently uncharitable frame of mind might be coloring her perceptions. "I-"
"Oi!"
Their little tableau was shattered as they both turned sharply toward the noise. Bobbi Morse and some unknown man at the end of the hall, facing off with intense looks on their faces. Ex-lovers, Jemma would guess. Maybe more.
"No one told me she would be here!" the man said to the hall at large, gesturing widely. "This is bloody entrapment, this is!"
"Hartley probably just wanted to avoid hearing you moan all the way here," Bobbi replied with an annoyed little shrug. "Calm down, Lance."
Jemma drew closer, more out of that inborn, instinctual desire to watch a trainwreck than anything else. Definitely ex-somethings. Bobbi looked uncharacteristically discomposed, and Jemma was torn between sympathy and a kind of smug pleasure. The sympathy was proof that her month undercover had not completely hardened her, at least. The smug pleasure, on the other hand, was solely because she had now been in this damn bunker for a month with nothing to show for it other than a sincere desire to see the sunlight and an almost desperate need to spend a few hours wrapped in Phil's arms. If she had to suffer, everyone should have to suffer, dammit.
Her movement attracted Bobbi's gaze. "Excellent," the other woman said, grabbing the man's arm and towing him over to her. "Jemma, Lance. Lance, Jemma. Talk about soccer, or something."
She strode off quickly, leaving the two of them muttering a defensive "Football," in her wake.
"So, are you a fan of the new world order or is there a tracking bracelet around your ankle?" the man asked her bluntly after they exchanged silent, assessing looks. Henry, who had been loitering nearby, straightened in shock.
Jemma weighed her choices, finally settling on an enigmatic smile before saying, "Who needs tracking bracelets when we have such friends to keep us company?" She tilted her head toward the long end of the corridor. "Come on. The food's terrible, but the beer isn't half bad."
She hid her smile when Henry tried to muffle his grunt of irritation, and was grateful when he turned to walk in the opposite direction. The man- Lance, she reminded herself- watched Henry leave, his brow furrowed. "I know I just got here," he said quietly, angling his head downward so that the movement of his mouth would be more difficult to catch on camera, "but my gut feeling is that you don't want to make an enemy of that bloke."
Jemma forced herself to stay composed, her quick, brief flutter of blinking her only outward response. Henry's constant presence in the lab would have been bad enough as an assistant cum spy, but his attempts to strike up a relationship with her had kept Jemma on edge for weeks. He looked straight past the ring and her mark as if they weren't even there, and she couldn't shake the feeling that he had been given explicit permission to do so.
She shouldn't have to guard herself against this shit. She was doing what they asked, wasn't she? Doing her best to be an excellent little convert as she weaponized one of her most persistent nightmares, which inevitably either kept her from sleeping or kept her twisting and turning in the night until she woke up in a tangled web of sheets and a cold sweat. She shouldn't have to commit adultery in order to prove herself.
"He's very persistent," she said finally, in a carefully modulated tone of voice. "I don't think he cares very much that I'm married."
She set off down the hall at that, and he kept pace with her, his gaze flicking downward to catch her ring before looking straight ahead. "Husband's not here?"
"He is unlikely to be transferred to this base."
Unless he were in a cell, and that would happen over Jemma's dead body.
Lance nodded. "Fucking inter-agency politics," he said sagely, giving her a brief look that indicated he knew exactly what she was inferring. "Just stick by big brother Lance, then. If need be, I'll hold him still while you crush his balls."
Funny. Less than five minutes acquaintance and she could already tell they would be good friends.
"On the plus side," Natasha said, sounding amused even over their spotty connection, "he really seems to be embracing this big brother role."
Phil paced the floor of his motel room, loosening his tie with his free hand. "Does it make me sound like a possessive jerk if I admit I like the idea of a glowering mercenary following her around?"
"Actually, yeah. If you're nice to me I won't tell Clint… or Jemma."
"Fair. You've heard good things about him?"
She snickered. "He's a complainer that gets the job done and keeps his mouth shut when the situation actually calls for it. A reluctant gentleman, if you can believe it." She paused, and then laughed again. "And Jemma just kicked his ass at scrabble. He talks a big game, Phil, but my gut says he turns out to be a useful ally."
"Any chance we can approach him off the radar?"
She hummed under her breath, the sound barely discernible from the static. "I can set it in motion. I discussed the possibility of finding outside allies with Jemma before she left; it might be worth the risk."
He considered the notion, idly watching the bedside lamp as it flickered. "Your gut instincts have never let me down, Nat."
"I'll see what I can do."
He slumped back against the pillows after he had hung up, releasing a rough sigh. Tomorrow, another round of negotiations, another round of reining in Steve and trying to smooth over the mess Hydra had left them in. Tonight, another set of nightmares that would leave him reaching for someone thousands of miles away.
He wondered about Jemma, in between (and sometimes during) the endless meetings that occupied his days. It had been, what? Four weeks now? Four weeks of worrying over what nightmares she might be having, and whether she was hungry or sad or scared or any number of things that he couldn't bear to have her experience. Consoling himself with all the things he would do once they were together was not as comforting as he might have liked, but he made his list anyway. Maybe she would enjoy a spa day? He would ask Pepper where her favorite spot was, and maybe she would be willing to accompany Jemma for a day of rest and indulgence. Though if Jemma didn't want to go out, he would be perfectly willing to draw her a bubble bath before giving her a full-body massage. He'd paint her toenails, too. His hands were steady enough.
He rather liked the idea, now that he had thought of it. Plenty of time to talk or for her to drowse in sleepy contentment on the bed while he applied the delicate layers of color. It would be a much more enjoyable version of his brief dalliance with alien-influenced art, and if she were willing he could think of a few interesting things they could do while the lacquer dried.
He moved toward the bathroom, shrugging out of his shirt. Lance Hunter had better be everything Natasha claimed he was or Phil would be having a long chat with the man. It wouldn't be a very polite chat, either, though knowing Nat he would have to fight her for the right to be first in line.
Frowning, he started the shower, avoiding looking at himself in the mirror. The furrows in his brow were looking to become permanent, and examining them just made him feel worn out and tired. He hated the thought that Jemma would be coming back to a man who looked so… so old.
A vacation, he decided. He would get his wife back and then take a vacation, and then maybe, maybe, he would be able to look into a mirror again without grimacing.
A week after they first met, Lance showed up at her bedroom door with two beers in hand and an apologetic grin. "Care for a chat?" he asked, holding up the bottles and waggling his eyebrows in a manner that was far too hilarious to even approach seductive. "I asked for heavy wet, but they only had this pale piss, per usual."
If Henry had showed up like this, she would have slammed the door shut and turned the lock. For Lance, she stepped back after a moment of thought. It could be a coincidence, but the reference to heavy wet sounded suspiciously like a code phrase Natasha had given her. That was in addition to the fact that she sensed Lance had no intention of taking advantage of her- though if he tried, both Natasha and May had taught her a number of nifty tricks that would help Jemma incapacitate him.
Once the door was closed he raised a brow, handing her one of the beers before digging a familiar little instrument out of his pocket. He carefully placed one of Fitz's prized anti-bug transmitters onto her desk, waiting for the tiny green light to flash before speaking again.
"So," he said, popping the cap off of his own beer, "a really scary woman with red hair backed me into a corner a few days ago and made me an offer I couldn't refuse. Told me to tell you that the cliffs of Wales are high and steep." He rolled his eyes, taking a long pull on his drink as he continued to perform a very thorough sweep of her miniscule room. "I knew you were interesting, Princess. Didn't realize you had friends like the Widow."
"Natasha took a liking to me." She popped off the cap to her own beer, taking a sip while she considered him anew. "Just what are my captors hearing at the moment, by the way?"
"We're arguing over football, apparently."
"Hmm-mm."
"And Doctor Who."
"You hate Who."
"Though she said if you need in-house security, I can switch the feed to the sounds of two people having a very good time."
She frowned. It wasn't out of the realm of possibility that she would need an ally close at hand at night- within a few feet, even- but that wasn't a path she wanted to tread.
Still, at least with Lance there wouldn't be any actual infidelity. "I hope you have it on the right setting."
"Yeah, I was careful about that." He sat on the edge of her bed, apparently done with his search. "She gave me the basic details, fitted me with my very own tracking device, told me that if I hurt you she would track me down and eviscerate me. The usual."
"Sounds like Nat."
"She was very convincing." He began picking at the label on his bottle, more genuine worry on his face than she had ever seen. "What have they really got you doing, love? Our current overlords, I mean. Red made it clear that you insisted on going undercover, so it's fairly obvious that your self-preservation instincts are a bit lacking."
She grimaced, but supposed he had a point. "I'm researching an alien virus. Gonzales wants it weaponized. That part is easy enough, but finding the correct method of transmission is more complex."
"Not the kind of virus that grows Alien Junior in your intestinal cavity, is it?"
"No. The kind that kills by emitting an EMP blast radius of, oh, an eighth of a mile or so." She pulled out the desk chair and sat, feeling weariness tugging at her bones. "They think I'm the perfect candidate for the job because I created the anti-serum over a year ago." At his blank look she rolled her eyes, clarifying, "The vaccine."
"Someone caught it, then?"
"I did."
They exchanged long, assessing looks, and finally he shrugged and took another drink. "I bet you're sleeping well," he commented after swallowing.
"Like a baby," she replied dryly. "I'm going as slowly as I can, but Weaver knew me in the academy- I can only delay for so long before she figures out something is up."
"Well, if it helps, your time here now has an end-date." He raised a hand at her eager expression. "A vague one. After talking with Red I met Fury- who is looking great for a dead man- and they've made headway on reestablishing SHIELD's legitimacy. The day SHIELD is officially legal on American soil is the day I'm supposed to pull you out."
"ETA?"
"A month, at best. Maybe much longer."
She considered that. "I might be able to dally for another month or so."
The thought made her sick. There was only so much longer she could conceivably spend on animal testing. In a week- maybe two, if she were very lucky- human trials would be required. Where would they pull their victims from? Captured Hydra pawns? SHIELD agents who refused to change loyalties? Those unlucky powered individuals that Gonzales seemed to hate so much?
He was watching her closely. "You okay?"
"Eventually they'll want to test my work on something other than lab rats and chimps," she said quietly, worrying at the dampened label on her beer. "I have a very limited amount of time before they put a living person in front of me."
"You've got a vaccine, though."
She didn't bother to correct him. "Yes, but with a new method of transmission… well, I will only have some very educated guesses as to how long it will take for the virus to run its course. They'll want me to run a number of… of scenarios to determine the correct dosage for body weight, for special abilities. They might want me to work with the virus, to either increase or decrease the time from transmission to end."
He swore faintly under his breath. "And politics move as slow as mud, too."
"The unfortunate truth."
She hoped that her earrings were still picking up all of this. Likely Fitz had modified the device given to Hunter so that it would work with her earrings, rather than against, but sometimes mistakes were made. "Do me a favor, Hunter."
"I'm not volunteering."
"No, that isn't it at all." She let drop a strip of the label onto her desk. "They'll be suspicious if you suddenly turn cooperative, but a bit less resistance wouldn't go amiss. I don't want them to decide you're expendable."
He pulled a face, but nodded. "Yeah, yeah, I can play nice. Not with Bob, though," he added, waving his free hand dismissively. "It would make her suspicious."
"She's already suspicious," Jemma replied, grinning slightly. "I don't think she expected for us to actually hit it off. She might be a little jealous."
"Bob doesn't get jealous. That would require having a heart."
Jemma considered the way Bobbi's warmth toward her had cooled over the past week. They hadn't been friends, exactly- certainly there was no trust there- but Bobbi was one of her few points of contact. The other agents tended to shy away from Jemma, for whatever reason. "You might be surprised."
"You're seeing things." He stood, reaching out for the small anti-bug device on the desk. Quickly he pressed a small button before tucking it into his pocket. "Sleep well, Princess."
"You're worrying yourself sick," he chided her gently, stroking loose strands of hair away from her face. "Even asleep, your mind is whirring away."
Dream-Phil was not as good as the real thing, but she would take what she could get. "Keep doing that," she said with a sigh, settling with her head on his thigh. "My head aches."
His fingers smoothed over her aching brow, one thumb tracing over the arc of her eyebrows. "Call an end to this, sweetheart."
She grumbled at that, turning her head slightly and refusing to open her eyes. "It figures that particular voice would look like you," she said tartly, annoyed that the little voice that had been chanting run, run, run since practically the beginning had interrupted her fantasy. "Act more like Phil."
"Okay."
One moment she had her head in his lap, the next she was underneath him. "Sweetheart," he said, breathing the endearment against her neck, "please come home."
It seemed like every day that passed merely deepened Phil's already low tolerance for politics in general. The first day had been fun, in its own weird way. Appearing unannounced in President Bartlet's private rooms with Captain America in full gear beside him had made for some interesting reactions, at least. The in-depth interrogation Steve had received from the current leader of the nation and history nerd supreme (once Bartlet had recovered from his shock) had been an excellent sign that their efforts were not entirely in vain.
It helped, of course, that Hydra had gone from an immediate threat to tattered remnants in the wind. Bartlet had asked how they had accomplished that, of course- asked with the expression of a man who was genuinely curious, and appeared to have no information on the matter- but Phil had demurred, merely saying something vague about an inside source. The fact that the inside source was Skye's clever virus would only lead to more questions, and Phil had no intention of discussing Jemma's contribution with anyone.
But now there were arguments, and compromises, and Fury had somehow pissed off the attorney general over a hand of cards. When that card game had taken place was unclear, and for all Phil knew it had been ten years before, but its legacy was still alive and well as negotiations continued.
"Nick," Phil said one evening after a particularly aggravating day. "Either this ends soon or I'm extracting Jemma and going off the grid."
"'Soon' is pretty vague," Nick noted, giving him a one-eyed glare. "At the risk of being crass, you have two hands, Phil."
The noise Steve made at that sounded suspiciously amused. Jackass. Seeing as his own soulmate was miles away, Phil had expected a bit more sympathy.
"It's not lust," Phil said in irritation. "It's the bond. I'm stretched thin."
It was lust, too, but he certainly wouldn't be saying that aloud.
"What about you, Rogers? Itching to run off to Barnes?" Nick asked, and Steve shrugged.
"The bond doesn't hit everyone the same way," he said, paging through the latest batch of reports. "I miss him, yeah, but I don't think it tugs at me quite as badly as it tugs at Phil." He lifted his head to look at them both, and Phil got the distinct sense that he was downplaying, at least slightly, how he felt about the separation. "But I still get to talk to Bucky. Phil just gets a greatest-hits report from Nat at the end of the day."
Phil cast a glance at his phone. He was due for that call. Even those snippets of information were better than nothing. "Soon," he reiterated, picking up his phone and leaving the room quickly. His tie seemed intent on strangling him.
His phone rang as he was halfway through his shower, the first ring masked by the falling water. He moved quickly to answer it on the second ring, pressing the correct button at the tail end of the third as he stood naked in the steam. Belatedly he reached out to turn off the water before stopping himself at the last second, mindful of the need to keep the conversation private. "Nat?"
"With your daily report." The words, which should have been playful, fell flat. "Gonzales called her in for a meeting today."
"A bad one?"
"Human testing begins tomorrow."
He had been pacing the length of the small bathroom, and at that he stilled. Six weeks and four days since Jemma had entered that compound, and they had just now reached this point. He knew his wife well enough to know that she had stretched this process out for as long as possible, just as he knew that she would be sleepless tonight. They might not make her deliver the fatal dosage, but there would be an autopsy for her at some point in the near future. "Do we know the subject?" he asked carefully.
"No, and no word from Rumlow or Hunter, assuming they know." She paused, and sighed. "She's crying in her room."
Not surprising. "Is she… I mean, in other respects, is she okay?"
"Will she get through it? Yes. Will it leave a scar? Yes to that as well." There was a murmur of another voice in the background. "Bucky wants to talk to you."
Barnes' voice, over the line, was deep and rough. "Nat disagrees with me, but I say we pull her out," he said without preamble. "I don't like some of the characters around her, and if she doesn't deliver what they're looking for I think they'll cut their losses."
"What's your feel on how they're organized?" Phil asked, hating that he couldn't go straight to yes, pull her out now. They would go on to human trials with or without Jemma, and she would likely give him the dressing-down of a lifetime if her time away did nothing to bring them an advantage.
"Tip of the iceberg," Barnes admitted. "We get some from Rumlow, some from Hunter, but all three of them are kept on a fairly tight leash. The guys get a bit more slack, seeing as they more or less volunteered, but Gonzales really likes his hierarchy."
"It could be years before they work their way up the ranks."
"Exactly."
Silence on both ends of the line. Extracting Jemma now would be safest for her and for his peace of mind, but would it bring them any real advantage? They knew very little, and Gonzales now had a very useful weapon in his back pocket: Jemma's virus. One of Stark's labs had been churning out her anti-serum for almost a month at this point, stockpiling the stuff against a dark day, but that would only go so far.
"You don't like the people around her?" Phil asked, though the question didn't need to be asked. From what Natasha had told him, Phil wasn't a fan of anyone on that base either. Hunter had his grudging respect, if only because he had taken to his new role with enthusiasm.
"I think they were hoping to sway her with a pretty face and some muscles. Why they thought she would fall for it is the question." He huffed an amused laugh. "After all, if it were that easy Steve and I would have carted her off long before this point," he said, a definite teasing note in his voice.
"You, maybe," Phil replied dryly, rolling his eyes. "I'm not sure Steve would have swayed her."
It was the truth, more or less. Steve and Jemma were almost too alike to coexist; Barnes recognized her raw edges and managed to make them meld with his own. If Phil were out of the picture- and Barnes didn't have that soulmark- they could make a decent go of it.
"Steve never knew how to act around a dame," Barnes said lightly. "We need to pull her, Phil."
"Are you volunteering to take the blame, later?"
"Yeah, I'll let her yell at me." Barnes paused. "It'll kill you if we don't, Phil."
That was certainly true. He made the decision instantaneously, casting aside any thought of strategy. "Do it."
Barnes yelled something in Russian on the other end of the line, and there was a small scuffle as the phone changed hands. "We barely know anything, Phil."
"This is a long-term op, Nat. They're more close-mouthed than we counted on, and I'm…"
He sighed, coming to a sudden realization. "I'm making her choices for her."
"That you are." A pause. "You worry, I know. I do, too. I'll send her a message." Her voice turned tart. "As dangerous as this is, she gets to choose. You aren't her SO."
"I know." He leaned against the counter, resting on his elbows in a defeated stance. "Shit, Nat."
"You're wasting water, Phil."
He bit back the words of frustration building in his throat. What he wouldn't give to skip this ridiculous situation and go straight to course listings and the New York City skyline, complete with lazy Sunday mornings and Jemma curled against his side. Hadn't they served their time?
"Send your message," he said instead. "But if you even get the slightest hint that they're planning on harming her, I don't care what you have to do to get her out."
"Understood."
He lingered in the steam for a minute more after the call had ended, feeling useless and completely drained. Tomorrow would be another day of politics, and all the while he would wonder if Jemma were standing over an autopsy table with scalpel in hand, or if she would be facing an even worse fate.
What a mess he had dragged her into.
Waking up with a man who was not her husband on top of her was not at all ideal, particularly when a hand was clamped over her mouth and her body was pinned down by quite a bit of muscled weight.
"Shhh," came the quiet whisper in her ear, and while she couldn't quite pin down the 'who' she was at least certain that it wasn't her unwanted assistant. "The Widow sent me to ask you a question."
She stopped her struggling, warily lying limp against the bed. The weight against her body lifted and drew back, and a dim light turned on, revealing her companion. Rumlow.
"Not dead, then," she said quietly once he had drawn back his hand, and he shrugged.
"Too useful," he replied, and pulled a small, blinking device from his pocket. Another one of Fitz's bug disrupters. "If you want out, we have a twenty minute window."
The sudden offer of escape almost paralyzed her. Here was her free pass, unexpected and offered without conditions. An out. Within a few hours she could be once more in the company of friends, perhaps even with Phil, and that latter thought was enough to render her breathless. "Why?" she asked, forcing the question through even as her mind shouted for her to take the offer and run. "Why now?"
"You start a new level of testing tomorrow," he answered easily, but there was a furrow to his brow, as if the information weighed on him. "This is your chance to run, if you don't want to involve yourself."
The laugh was slight and automatic. She couldn't escape being involved. Even if she left now, the project would always weigh on her. "That's not a good enough reason."
"At least a few people seemed to think it was."
"Trying to salvage my fragile mental state?"
Judging by his lack of response, perhaps. Jemma acknowledged that she was feeling shaky enough to warrant that kind of action, and she had certainly wept for long enough into her pillow before sleeping. "I'm not leaving until I've discovered something worth… worth all of this," she said bleakly, realizing for the first time how much 'this' really covered. The deaths of thousands, perhaps. She might never rid her ledger of this much red, to borrow Natasha's metaphor. "Or until I have no other choice than to leave."
She didn't particularly want to be tortured, after all. If Phil managed to make his deal, they might strap her down just on principle.
"You're tough," he said with grudging admiration. "The Asset won't like this."
Bucky and Phil were leading this charge, in other words. Would that she could take them up on it. "Go back to your room," she said, her voice heavy. "I need to sleep. I have a long day ahead of me."
It was a matter of seconds, and then he was gone. They weren't monitoring the ventilation shafts as well as they could, she realized, tucking that bit of information away.
She curled back around her thin pillow, shaking under her blankets for reasons other than the chill in the air. She had volunteered for this. She would survive.
God willing, Phil would forgive her.
The text came at roughly six the next evening, when Phil was carefully attempting to keep a calm expression as another round of complaints began to circle the table. He hated everyone at that moment. Everyone other than Jemma and her guardians, who would be remembered in all his infrequent prayers for the rest of his life.
A Hydra agent, the text read. They did not ask Jemma to administer the dose. His death took three minutes and twenty-one seconds. When they delivered the body to her for examination, she was told to create a formula which would take longer to kill.
And extend the agony of the recipient, he thought, sneaking glances at his phone under the table and resisting the urge to frown. Jemma? he texted back.
Talking her way through an autopsy. All is well.
All was not well, but he understood Natasha's underlying message well enough. Jemma was alive, Jemma was unhurt, Jemma was coherent. It was the minimum he could ask for.
"You've done very well," Anne told her, that same smile on her face Jemma had seen when she had aced her final project in the Academy. It was out of place here, in this office that could have belonged to any administrator with a normal job and a liking for greenery. After two weeks of living on the knife's edge, Jemma found this little room disconcerting. It should be sharper, or brighter, or something other than cozy. It was hard to feel like she deserved cozy, not after two weeks of autopsies and nightmares and the feeling that her hands would never be clean.
Four bodies.
Four Hydra agents, she tried to remind herself.
Four people.
"Even Director Gonzales is pleased," Anne continued.
"I'm happy to help," Jemma said through numb lips, noting the slight sardonic shift to Anne's smile.
"Are you happy?" Anne shuffled the papers in front of her, averting her gaze casually toward her desk. "You do seem to have made friends with Agent Hunter."
Jemma briefly considered saying something ridiculous, perhaps about the length of his cock and a girl having needs, and then realized that was the same instinct that had had her shouting false accusations about prostitutes at Phil months before. "Friends," she agreed. "Though his favorite football teams are utter rubbish."
Anne smirked at that. "And your assistant?"
"He comes on too strong," Jemma replied, the words matter of fact. "I'm fairly sure that he considered patting my arse this morning, and only stopped because I was carrying a scalpel. What was the point of having him around, I wonder?"
Anne sighed at that. "Not my choice, Jemma."
"Gonzales thought I would just hop into bed with him, did he?"
"No." Anne paused. "Another board member thought it would be amusing."
Jemma considered her for a long moment. "Who?"
"She favors flowered dresses."
That threw Jemma for a loop. "The last time my path crossed with that particular person, she was torturing my husband."
Anne was silent at that. Jemma elected to keep quiet as well. No need to help smooth over the awkwardness.
"We know what Coulson is attempting," Anne said finally. "He's very close to cutting a deal, Jemma."
Jemma gave her a blank stare, blinking in a way that she hoped indicated a complete lack of understanding.
"Don't give me that look," Anne said with a glare. "Even if he didn't brief you on this before, I know you haven't been thinking that he's been sitting around moping while you were gone."
Jemma relaxed back into her chair. "He's very resourceful," she said in a vague tone. "You should see what he can do in the bedroom," she added with a tinge of wicked glee, her own embarrassment easily outweighed by Anne's startlement.
"If you don't provide us with something big, Coulson's victory won't go well for you," Anne said after a moment, recovering quickly. "I'm very fond of you, Jemma."
And perhaps she was, in some strange, mercenary kind of way. Jemma was an excellent tool to have around, though a stubborn one. She had a choice in this moment, she realized. She could say what Anne wanted to hear, exit this interview gracefully, and attend another autopsy the next morning.
Or she could attack.
It was more instinct than actual thought that decided her, as her right hand found the lip of the pot which held some kind of trailing ivy. The dirt around the ivy's roots was not firmly packed, which worked in Jemma's favor. Surprise also favored her cause: once Anne was blinded by the dirt, she hesitated for a second too long, allowing Jemma's fist to slam her head against the desk.
She went limp, but she breathed.
"Well," Jemma whispered to herself, suddenly wanting to kick the part of herself which continued to do ridiculous things like this. "Good. No, bad. Fuck."
In a very organized kind of panic she turned to Anne's laptop, bringing to mind every trick Skye had ever taught her- and a few Skye didn't realize she had taught her- to strip the computer of as much information as she could possibly gather that would fit on a thumb drive.
Except there were no thumb drives, she realized with a burst of irritation, and shut the screen with a flick of her wrist. Fine. She would take the bloody laptop, and surely Skye would be able to retrieve something from it. Even if they did a remote wipe, that would still leave traces, right? Jemma had to assume yes, because otherwise she had just wasted over two months of work for nothing. Tucking the slim laptop into the back of her trousers, she looked up. Rumlow's disappearance into the vents had stuck with her, even playing into her dreams at odd points. If he could move through the vents, so could she. It might end with her getting lost in the vents (and wouldn't she catch hell for that later from Clint, king of ventilation shafts?), but if forced to choose between hours of confusion and being on the wrong end of a knife, Jemma knew what her choice would be.
She climbed up onto Anne's desk and pushed at the screen covering the nearest shaft, and as she clambered up into relative safety she took a few seconds to brush her trainers against the distinctive shoe prints on the desk. It wouldn't fool them for long, but perhaps for long enough.
"Absolutely mad," she muttered, feeling a surge of adrenaline even as nausea over her own foolhardiness built in her stomach. "Nat," she hissed between clenched teeth as she carefully fitted the screen back into place, "if you have any hints on what direction to go, find a helpful ally to relay them, please."
She began to move south, toward the one exit she remembered, and then stopped. Resting on her hands and knees, cobwebs drifting against her face, she bit back a groan. Bloody hell.
East. East to her lab.
She had reparations to make.