A/N: First of all, thanks so much for all of the comments and kudos! I'm honestly just blown away by the massive response this story has received. I'm glad most of you expressed the opinion that the longer, the better, because this chapter is just as long as the last one.
Second, I have never been to Malta, and while I've visited Colorado, I had never even heard of Barnroof Point until I watched this episode. Any mistakes in the geography of either location is entirely my bad-I'm working off of Google, here. Other things I know nothing about: firearm maintenance, scientific explanations for invisibility, and what on earth the writers were smoking when they laid out the timeline for this episode. Seriously, it's like they just flip a coin to decide whether it should be day or night during any given scene. But enough about that.
I keep forgetting to mention, the title comes from Skillet's Sometimes. Also, this chapter contains brief mentions of child abuse, so be wary. Anyways, thanks for reading, and as always, please be gentle if you review!
He's managed to schedule Skye's training around his own, so that he has time for his morning and evening workouts before he has to guide her (or rather, drag her) through hers. It would be easier if she was a little more enthusiastic about it, but it's only been two weeks. At least she's finally gotten the hang of doing push-ups on her feet instead of her knees, even if she whines through every second of them.
Jemma is a much more welcome addition to his routine. Despite her claims of being a night owl, she's in the cargo bay with him every morning, sitting on the bottom steps and drinking tea while he trains. It's the only time of day they can guarantee they won't be interrupted—there are really no private areas on the Bus, aside from the bunks, and Grant can barely fit in one by himself—and they take full advantage of it.
So she sits on the steps and they play twenty questions every morning while he works out, then she goes upstairs to shower and eat as he puts Skye through her paces.
(On the third morning, she tells him about her parents, how going away to university so young left a distance between them that she regrets. She says that she calls them every week and they talk, but they're still not close. They don't even know she's taken a position on a field team—she told them she's gotten a transfer, but they think it's just to another lab.
In return, he tells her about Ashton, about Ashton's soulmate, Claudia, how they've been married for three years and are talking about having a baby, how he doesn't talk to them often but sometimes he goes and stays with them when he's got mandatory medical leave. When she asks about the rest of his family, all he tells her is that they're not in contact. She doesn't push.)
Evening training is different, of course. Jemma's always hard at work in the lab with Fitz, so there's no time or privacy to talk, but he still finds he likes it. It's soothing, almost, having her right there in his peripheral vision while he does his evening regimen and drags Skye through hers. It certainly helps him keep his temper as Skye complains every step of the way.
Which is exactly what she's doing, one evening two weeks after the disaster in Peru.
"Why do I even have to do this?" she asks between half-hearted hits at the punching bag. "I'm sure FitzSimmons' supervising officer didn't make them do this…muscle stuff." She devolves to hitting the bag with the backs of her hands, and he shakes his head.
"Said you wanted to be a field agent, like Coulson," he reminds her. (Those were her exact words, actually: "I wanna be a field agent. But like, a Coulson-like field agent, not a you field agent." He might have been insulted, if he weren't so relieved. It's hard enough pushing her along the current training plan—he honestly might have shot her by now if he had to try and bully her through specialist training.) "But, if you'd like to switch disciplines…"
He turns to face the lab and calls, "Hey, Jemma!" She pulls away from her laptop and looks at him expectantly. "What did your SO give you guys for morning drills?"
He actually already knows the answer to his question—they've spent plenty of time talking about their respective Academy experiences—and he knows Skye will be as confused by it as he was.
"Oh, atomistic attribute drills," she says cheerfully, looking to Fitz. "Yeah, we'd name the mechanical, chemical, thermal—"
"Electrical properties of materials," Fitz continues.
"Okay, okay," Skye grouses. "They made your point."
"Thank you," he says to Jemma and Fitz, who trade confused looks and then turn back to their work. He circles back around to hold the bag still as Skye goes back to punching it with, if not more enthusiasm, at least a little more effort. "There will come a moment when you have to commit to this, or bail. Every SHIELD agent has a defining moment—ask Coulson—when you have to make the hard call: to either dedicate yourself to this, or to curl up in a ball and run."
Skye stops punching to ask him, "How can you run if you're curled up in a ball?"
He ignores her (admittedly fair) question and continues, "It's my job, as your SO, to make sure you don't die before then." He pushes on her wrists to get her hands up, then slaps the bag. "C'mon."
"So what was yours, Agent Ward?"
"Ten minutes."
"Your defining moment? Come on, tell me! I wanna know." When he just looks at her, not answering, she suggests, "I could get Coulson to give me some of that truth serum. You could spill your little heart out to me again."
He's spent the last two weeks working with Skye, and he's still getting nowhere. It's been an annoying and, quite literally, thankless task. He deserves a reward, and the look on her face when he spills this will do very nicely, he thinks.
So he feels absolutely no guilt at all when he leans against the bag and asks, "You mean my…level one overshare that miraculously got you to cooperate? I hate to tell you this, rookie, but. We don't have a truth serum."
The look on her face is, as expected, immensely gratifying. Unfortunately, he doesn't get to enjoy it for long before the intercom dings and May says, "Changing course. Briefing in three."
Three minutes isn't much time, but he'd at least like to change into a less sweaty shirt, so he heads up the stairs without delay. As he does so, May announces that their destination is Colorado. He wonders at that—they're all the way on the other side of the Atlantic, having just left Lisbon, and even if May pushes, it's at least a nine hour flight. Surely there's a SHIELD team closer to Colorado that could take care of whatever the problem is?
When he gets back to the lounge, Fitz and Jemma are already there, sitting on the couch and looking eager. Apparently the last field mission nearly ending with them getting dumped out of the airlock didn't dent their enthusiasm any. He sighs and takes a seat on the arm of the couch, next to Jemma, while Skye claims a recliner.
"A few minutes ago, a SHIELD transport was attacked while carrying a priority red protected asset off route 76 near Sterling," Coulson says as he enters the lounge.
"Priority red?" Jemma echoes. He really wishes she didn't sound so enthusiastic.
"The asset was Canadian physicist Franklin Hall," Coulson begins, "Known for his work in—"
"Oh, no, not Frank!" Jemma exclaims, interrupting him. She and Fitz sit up.
"He was our chemical kinetics advisor our second year," Fitz says.
"Yeah, he's so enthusiastic about science, we just adored him," Jemma continues sadly. She leans to the side a little, pressing her arm against Grant's thigh, and he discretely puts his hand on her upper back. "We can rescue him, can't we?"
Well, at least that solves the mystery of why they've been called in to investigate over a closer team. Jemma and Fitz's personal connection may prove useful.
"He's one of ours," Coulson tells her. "We're gonna try."
"And the attackers?" Grant asks.
"Invisible," Coulson says. Then, apparently done with the briefing, he walks away.
"Wait," Skye says, excited. "Invisible? Ha, so cool." He gives her a dirty look and she sobers. "But terrible."
"Go rewrap your hands," he orders.
"What? But we have a mission!" Skye protests indignantly.
"We're still nine hours from Colorado, and I said ten minutes. You've only done one. Go rewrap your hands."
Skye stomps off, grumbling to herself, and Grant looks down at Jemma.
"You okay?" he asks.
"Oh, yes, I'm fine," she says, but she looks worried. "I do hope that Frank is all right, though. He's such a lovely man, not to mention a truly brilliant scientist."
Grant rubs his hand across her upper back. He'd love to be able to promise that they'll find Hall, rescue him before he's harmed, but the fact is, they might not. That briefing was worryingly short, not even thirty seconds, which means they don't have any information. It's not a good sign. And that's not even taking into account that the attackers were apparently invisible.
"We'll do our best for him," he promises instead. He looks between Jemma, who's fully leaning her weight against him now, and Fitz, who's holding on to a throw pillow so tight it'll tear any moment. Looks like a diversion is in order. "So. Invisible attackers. What could've caused that?"
As expected, this thoroughly distracts the two scientists, and they immediately start listing possible ways the attackers could've made themselves invisible. Grant can barely make out any individual words, the way the two of them are talking over each other, but they seem to do fine—at one point, Jemma says something that Fitz disagrees with, and it devolves to an argument. He thinks. It's kind of hard to tell.
He sits there and watches them argue until Skye comes back to the lounge and presents her rewrapped hands for inspection. She's getting better at it—he only needs to make a few adjustments, rather than rewrapping them entirely like he had to do for the first week.
"Let's go," he says, standing. "Ten minutes."
He glances down at Jemma, who's currently arguing the merits of temperature gradients with Fitz, and shakes his head. He's pretty sure she won't even notice he's gone. There's nothing as single-minded as a SHIELD scientist with a mystery to solve.
x
By the time they reach the highway where the kidnapping took place, the question of invisibility is no longer a sufficient distraction for Jemma and Fitz. They stopped discussing possible causes somewhere over Florida and have been looking increasingly anxious ever since, so Grant sticks close to them as the team approaches the scene.
"Dr. Hall was an asset?" Skye asks.
"One of a few select scientists SHIELD has been protecting," Coulson tells her. "People our enemies would love to get their hands on. We keep them hidden, keep them on the move."
"Which is why Fitz and I were so lucky to have him," Jemma interjects, sounding distressed. Grant subtly adjusts his path so he's walking even closer to her, and she gives him a little smile. With the street so dark, he can see the slight green glow coming from her timer, and just the sight of it fills him with warmth.
"We don't have him anymore," Coulson responds.
"And what does priority red mean?" Skye presses.
"It means security should have been…" Coulson trails off as they all come to a stop, staring up at the SUV stuck in the high branches of a tree. "Heavy."
When they reach the scene, Coulson and May split off to talk to the driver while Grant takes Jemma, Fitz, and Skye to the destroyed semi. Jemma and Fitz stop in their tracks when they see it, and immediately turn to interrogate the agents on scene.
Grant detours around the back of the semi to capture the tread pattern in the grass. The agents on scene will already have gotten it, but he prefers to have his own records to work with. When he returns to the semi, he finds Skye kicking through the boxes on the ground, looking bored out of her mind. Unfortunately, there's really not much they can do here, other than stay alert in case the attackers come back—which is highly unlikely.
Jemma and Fitz have finished interrogating the agents on scene, and after a brief round of rock-paper-scissors, which Jemma wins, they split up—Jemma heading towards the back of the semi while Fitz lingers near the cab. Grant motions for Skye to stay with Fitz and then follows Jemma.
Once she's past the semi, she kneels down to open one of the cases she's carrying and pulls out a pair of bright green glasses and what looks like some sort of meter.
"I'll need you to stand back, please, Grant," she says, and he obligingly takes a few steps backwards.
She pulls the pen off the side of the meter and begins to wave it around, and Grant has to work hard to keep from smiling. In the neon green glasses, waving around a little pen, with a completely serious expression…she's adorable. He can't even deny it to himself anymore. She's honestly the most adorable person he's ever met. (She's also the sexiest, kindest, most brilliant…but he doesn't really have time to stand around and ponder everything that makes Jemma superior to everyone else.)
After about five minutes of Jemma taking slow, tiny steps and waving the pen everywhere, the meter begins to let out a strange buzzing sound.
"Fitz, what am I seeing here?" she calls over her shoulder.
Fitz turns away from the semi. "Well," he says, sounding aggrieved. "I'm not wearing the full-spectrum goggles I designed, so…no clue."
Seeing that Fitz and Skye are approaching and assuming that means he no longer needs to hang back, Grant moves a little closer to Jemma. At the same time, Fitz extends a hand. "Let me have a look, come on."
"No, whoa, whoa, whoa! Wait! Don't move," Jemma orders, crouching to pick up some gravel. "Wait a second."
She tosses the gravel forward, and instead of scattering back to the ground, it stays in the air, whirling around in a sort of mini-tornado. Grant stares.
"What the hell?" Skye asks quietly.
"I think the electro-static field scanner activated some…thing," Jemma says, plainly fascinated. The tornado fluctuates a little, sending gravel pinging everywhere, and Grant tugs Jemma a step back.
"Okay," Coulson says. "Can we deactivate it? Now?"
"Have to increase the density," Fitz mutters at Jemma.
She snaps back, "I tried, Fitz, but it's—" she breaks off as Fitz takes the scanner right out of her hands and begins pressing buttons.
"Fitz," May says, annoyed, as they're pelted with more gravel.
The scanner sparks and the gravel suddenly falls to the ground, the tornado disappearing like it was never there. Jemma seems to spot something and crouches back down, reaching out with a pair of tweezers and picking up a tiny metal…thing.
"That did all this," she says, wonderingly. Coulson takes the device off the end of the tweezers and holds it up.
"What is that?" Skye asks.
"Something big," Coulson answers, his eyes fixed on the device. Then he turns and walks away, May on his heels.
Skye stares after him, nonplussed. "Is he going to do that a lot?"
"Do what?" Grant asks, "Make vague declarations and then walk away?"
"Uh-huh."
"Then, yeah. Probably," he tells her. He turns to Jemma. "Do you have everything you need?"
Jemma looks at Fitz. "Did you get the—"
"Yeah. Have you got—"
"Mm, it's in the bag, but I don't really think—"
"No, probably not, but still—"
"Guys!" Skye interrupts. "Please just answer the question. Or at least finish a sentence."
Jemma and Fitz exchange a long look, then turn as one to face Grant.
"We're done," they say together.
"We can leave now," Jemma continues.
"Nothing more to do here," Fitz says over her.
Grant shakes his head and sweeps a hand in the direction of the SUV. Sometimes it's really obvious why everyone at SHIELD knows these two by one name.
When they get back to the Bus, he heads up to the briefing room while the rest of the team gathers in the lab. It's the work of only a few moments to run the tractor tread against the SHIELD database, find that it's a specific 2010 model, and then run a search for purchases within a 500-mile radius. He filters those results by those likely to associate with criminals—people with priors, financial troubles, or a propensity for risk-taking—and gets three names.
"Big brother's always watching," he says to their photos as he scans through the information SHIELD has on the three men. There's a lot of it, considering none of them are prospects for recruitment and only one of them rates higher than 'stray Lego' on the threat scale. He heads down to the lab and enters just in time to hear Skye to offer to check the tread pattern.
"Already done," he tells her. He summarizes the information for the team as he pulls up the profiles on the three suspects on the big screen. "Three suspects."
"Who may have sold their construction equipment to the kidnappers," Coulson supplies—for Skye's benefit, since Grant already knows and Jemma and Fitz are focused on the device they found at the scene. "We'll ask."
Grant nods and leaves the lab, heading back to the briefing room. Using GPS from their respective cell phones, he finds that two of the suspects are at home, presumably asleep, and the third, Todd Chesterfield, is off the grid entirely.
It takes nearly an hour, but he manages to use the record from Chesterfield's GPS to approximate a last known location, then use satellite imagery to track him to a secluded cabin in Barnroof Point.
"Narrow down the suspect list yet?" Coulson asks from the doorway.
"Well, if I had to guess," Grant says, putting Chesterfield's location on the screen. "I'd go with the one who's hiding in the middle of nowhere over the ones safely asleep in their beds."
"Good guess," Coulson says. He checks his watch. "How far is Barnroof Point?"
Grant inputs it into the system. "Eight hours by highway. The nearest airport—Durango-La Plata—is forty minutes away."
Coulson taps his fingers against the doorframe. "All right. With Dr. Hall's life on the line, we can't afford to wait. I'll alert May. Be ready to go as soon as we land."
"Yes, sir."
He sets the computer to record a copy of the satellite feed, just in case Chesterfield decides to switch hiding places in the next two hours. Glancing at his own watch, he considers forcing Jemma and Fitz to go to bed—neither one of them slept a wink on the flight from Lisbon—but he knows it'll be a waste of time. They won't want to leave the lab until they've figured out the device that was used to lift the semi, and even then, they'll probably be too worried over Hall to get any rest.
He rolls his eyes at himself. Now even he's thinking of the two of them as one unit. He's obviously in need of rest himself, and he won't have much to do until they touch down at Durango-La Plata, so he heads to his bunk to take a quick power nap.
x
Two and a half hours later, Grant settles himself behind some trees just off the trail to Chesterfield's cabin. It doesn't afford much cover, and he's not exactly dressed for hiding in foliage, but Chesterfield's likely to be distracted by Coulson and Lola.
Grant listens to Coulson and Chesterfield's conversation with one ear, but keeps most of his attention on Chesterfield's movements. A shotgun like that can do a lot of damage at close range, and while Coulson can certainly handle himself, the objective here is to not kill Chesterfield—or at least not until they find out everything they can about who he sold his excavator to.
Chesterfield pulls his shotgun out, but he doesn't even have time to finish his threatening sentence before Grant's there, pulling it out of his hands and using the force to throw Chesterfield to the ground. Off of his horse. Add in the fact that he's wearing a cowboy hat and Grant's aiming a shotgun at him, and there's only one thing Grant's thinking.
"Feels like the Old West," he says to Coulson, earning a smile.
"They gave me money for my equipment. That's all," Chesterfield says. "I never saw a face, I never heard a name."
"And how did you receive this money?" Coulson asks. "They write you a check?"
Chesterfield points to his saddlebag—seriously, a saddlebag, John Wayne's gonna come out from behind a tree any second—and Grant keeps the shotgun aimed at him with one hand as he pulls at the saddlebag with the other. It's heavier than he expected, and the bag falls open, dropping actual gold bars to the ground. Grant stares at Coulson crouches to pick one up.
"He paid you in gold?" Coulson asks, incredulous.
"Now it really feels like the Old West," Grant says disbelievingly. Coulson gives a little nod, obviously still stunned.
x
When they get back to the Bus, Grant takes the gold—actual gold bars, what the fuck, between that and the invisible attackers this is already in the top ten weirdest cases he's ever had, and if any aliens show up he's taking Jemma and bailing—straight to the lab.
"Got a present for you," he says to Jemma. She's looking pale, and he makes a mental note to drag her to bed at the soonest opportunity, whether they learn anything from the gold or not. (Then he has to bite the inside of his cheek to push away mental images of other situations in which he could drag her to bed.)
"Oooh, what sort of present?" she asks happily. "Is it evidence?"
"Yep," he says, upending the bag and letting the gold bars clatter on to one of the lab tables. "Very expensive evidence, which a cowboy received in exchange for his excavator."
Jemma stares at the gold for a full three seconds, then looks at Fitz.
"Will you—" she begins.
"Check for distinctive impurities, right," Fitz interrupts. He takes one of the gold bars to a scanner across the room, while Jemma begins organizing the rest of them into two neat rows. Once they're laid out to her satisfaction, she turns to Grant.
"Would you be so kind as to fetch me the…" she trails off, apparently reconsidering, and then points at a cabinet below the counter. "There's a silver case with a blue label in there. Would you bring it to me, please?"
Grant, amused to see that his constant requests for simple English are finally being met, crosses to the counter without saying anything. There are six silver cases in the cabinet, but only one of them has a blue label, and he pulls it out and brings it back to Jemma.
"Thank you," she says distractedly, opening the case. She pulls out a scanner of some kind, then looks over at Fitz.
"Got it," he says, and brings back the gold bar he'd taken. "Are they all—"
"Checking," Jemma tells him in a little sing-song tone as she adds the last bar to the top row. Grant eyes her, a little concerned. She sounds cheerful enough, but she doesn't look nearly as enthusiastic as usual. He's definitely forcing her to get some sleep as soon as they're done here.
She begins scanning the gold bars, keeping her eyes on the readout the whole time.
"Yes," she says to Fitz once she's finished with the top row.
"Why do they look like that?" Grant can't help asking. He's honestly curious. He's never seen gold bars in person, of course, but he would've expected something a little more…uniform.
Coulson enters the lab as Jemma begins scanning the second row.
"It looks like this because it's a doré bar," she tells them. Seeing their blank looks, she explains, "It means it was made at the mine rather than in a refinery. It's only about 92% pure. The cowboy got cheated a bit."
"Can you determine the mine based on the impurities?" Coulson asks.
"Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah," Fitz says, taking a seat in front of one of the lab computers, "We've done that already. It's from the…Dacey mine in Tanzania, which is owned by—"
"Quinn Worldwide," Coulson interrupts. "I'm sure you studied the CEO in your chemical engineering classes, or saw him on the cover of Forbes. Ian Quinn."
Grant shakes his head as Coulson leaves the lab. Even he's heard of Ian Quinn. If Quinn's behind Hall's kidnapping, this just became exponentially harder.
"Okay," he says, clapping his hands. "Time for all the good little scientists to go to bed."
"What?" Jemma and Fitz ask together.
"No," Fitz says. "No, we're not children, you can't just send us to bed—"
"Grant, we haven't finished with the device we found at the scene, we've still hours of work to do—"
"Dr. Hall's life is at stake, we're not gonna be bloody napping while he could be—"
"And just because you're my soulmate, it doesn't mean you can just—"
"Guys! Guys," he says, raising his voice to be heard. "It's three in the afternoon in Lisbon, and you two haven't slept at all. You're not gonna do Dr. Hall much good if you're passing out from exhaustion."
"We've stayed awake for longer than this," Jemma says at once.
"Yeah, you should've seen us during finals week," Fitz agrees.
"No one's life was on the line during finals week," Grant points out, but he has a feeling he's not gonna win this one. Time for a compromise. "Okay, fine. I'll give you three hours, and then you're going to bed, even if I have to drug you."
Jemma and Fitz exchange looks, maybe considering protesting further, and then nod.
"Fine," Fitz says.
"Sounds fair," Jemma agrees. Then she comes around the table and goes up on her toes to kiss Grant's cheek. Even on her toes, he still has to bend down a little so she can reach him. "Thank you for being concerned."
"Jemma," Fitz whines.
"What?" she asks, crossing her arms. "It's very sweet of him to worry about us."
"But did you have to do that? In the lab, of all places!"
"I kissed him on the cheek, Fitz, there's nothing inappropriate—"
"Three hours," he reminds them loudly, but he's pretty sure they don't hear him. He rolls his eyes and leaves the lab, heading upstairs. Regardless of whether they're ready for it or not, he's dragging them out of there in three hours. In the meantime, he'll draw up a plan to rescue Hall from Quinn. SHIELD is sure to have the specs on the man's various properties—Quinn has been on the watch list for years.
(And sometime soon, he swears to himself, he's going to give Jemma a real kiss.)
x
It's only been two hours when he's called to the briefing room. Apparently Jemma and Fitz have found something, and he's hoping that means they'll be willing to go to bed, because it's really getting ridiculous at this point.
In the briefing room, Jemma and Fitz explain that the device found at the scene is actually something that Hall drew up years ago, a device conceptualized to change the rules of gravity. However, he was never able to actually create it, because it depended on Gravitonium—an element no one was actually sure existed. Except, apparently, Ian Quinn—who happens to be a former classmate of Hall's—has managed to find it.
"So, we need to rescue Dr. Hall, and before he can be made to do anything with the Gravitonium," Coulson summarizes.
"That's…gonna be a problem, sir," Grant tells him.
"What's the problem?" Coulson asks. "The man's a prisoner, and it's up to us to get him out."
Grant pulls up the specs on security at Quinn's Malta property. It's the most likely place for the man to keep Hall, since Malta has always refused to cooperate with SHIELD.
"We've checked the specs," he says. "There's no way in to Quinn's compound without a large SHIELD strike force. Or a man inside. He's got neodymium laser fencing surrounding the property."
"They'll never allow a strike force into Malta," Coulson says, outlining the exact problem Grant was just talking about. "Plus, this weekend, Quinn Worldwide's got its annual shareholders gathering. We'd risk global outrage. But…"
"If we go in alone," May supplies.
"SHIELD can disavow us," Coulson continues, "Claiming ignorance."
"Without a man inside, it's impossible," May points out, "Unless you're immune to pulse-laser emissions."
"If we had a monkey, we could get in," Fitz says.
"Oh, Fitz," Jemma groans, exasperated. Grant's guessing this isn't the first time Fitz has suggested a monkey.
"If we had a small monkey, he could slip through the sensors and disable the fence's power source with his adorable little hands," Fitz insists, apparently in all seriousness.
"Drop me in the hills outside of Valletta," Grant suggests. It's not a great plan, since it'll leave Hall in the hands of Quinn for several weeks, but it's pretty much all they've got. "I'll spend a few weeks establishing a cover, gathering intel—"
"Hall doesn't have a few weeks," Coulson interrupts.
"And to restate," Jemma says, a little angrily, "Any agent of SHIELD caught on Maltese soil can be shot to death. With bullets. Legally."
"Yeah," Fitz nods.
"Not me," Skye interjects. They all turn to face her. "I could go in."
"Skye," Grant says, annoyed. "This is serious."
"Wait," Coulson says. "What are you saying?"
"Well, I'm not an agent of SHIELD, so I can go in without breaking all these stupid rules."
"International laws," Jemma puts in.
"This isn't something the Rising Tide can hack, Skye," Grant tells her.
"Did you hear the deadly lasers part? Without a brave monkey—" Fitz begins.
"You said you could go in with a man inside," Skye argues.
"And you wanna be that man?" May asks doubtfully.
"FitzSimmons loved the guy, and he needs help," Skye says, still tapping away at her phone. "They could be torturing him, or worse, making him do strength-training."
Grant rolls his eyes.
"But you don't have the background or clearance or experience with any of this," he tells her.
"I know," Skye says as her phone beeps. She holds it up. "But I've got an invitation."
They all stare at her.
"Well, technically it's an e-vite," she amends.
"Okay," Coulson says after a moment. "May, set a course for Malta. Ward, work up a plan with FitzSimmons. Skye's going in."
Grant would really like to argue, but looking at the relieved expression on Jemma's face, he can't bear to. Not in front of her, at least. He'll wait until he can get Coulson alone.
"Yes, sir," he says instead, as May leaves for the cockpit. He turns to look at Jemma and Fitz. "Alright, you two, we've got an hour to work up a plan. What have you got for me?"
"An hour?" Jemma asks, confused.
"Yeah, and then you're going to bed," he tells them. "You won't be any help rescuing Dr. Hall if you haven't slept in two days."
Fitz starts to argue, but Jemma shakes her head at him. After what looks like a brief argument of facial expressions, Fitz rolls his eyes and nods.
"Fine. The first thing we've got to do is take care of the deadly fence," he says. "In absence of a monkey, Skye will need to do that for us."
"Or make it possible for us to do it from the Bus," Jemma continues.
"Let's go with the second option," Grant suggests. He'd like to believe that Skye's really offering to help out of the goodness of her heart, but he hasn't survived this long by being trusting.
x
An hour later, they've got a workable plan. It requires some equipment that Jemma and Fitz will have to build, but when pressed, they admit that it will only take about twenty minutes, and they'll certainly have time to do it in the morning, before the gala. So he sends them to bed.
He's not planning on staying up much longer himself—they'll be arriving in Malta at four a.m., local time, and the best way to fight the jet lag is sleep through the flight. He's not going to skip his evening workout, although he tells Skye she can, and he needs to talk to Coulson, but then he'll be going to bed.
After his workout, he finds Coulson rifling through the closet outside his office.
"Sir," he says. "I'm not sure about sending Skye in."
"I understand your concern," Coulson says. He's flipping through his suits as he speaks. "But we don't have a lot of options."
"Hey, I'm impressed," Grant admits. "She just wrangled an invitation on her phone using insider back-channel voodoo, in minutes. But sending her in with no training, you're taking a huge risk."
Coulson pulls a suit out of the closet and heads into his office.
"I know Director Fury felt he owed you after you sacrificed yourself," Grant continues, following him.
"And my card collection," Coulson mutters.
"He gave you some autonomy, but Skye on a covert op?" Grant presses.
"Are you worried about her safety, or her loyalty?" Coulson asks.
"Both," he replies. "The Rising Tide is the reason she got an invite. Who knows how many protocols she violated?"
"That's her job," Coulson interrupts. "Ignore protocol, find connections and back doors that nobody else can see. Something else is bothering you."
Grant turns away and sighs.
"She's holding back, sir," he says. "She says she wants to be an agent, but she won't commit. She doesn't listen, makes jokes…"
"Were you hard on her?" Coulson asks.
"Sure. I tried playing nice, too. I need a new strategy."
"Try no strategy," Coulson suggests. "Stop thinking like an operative, start thinking like a person. Maybe Skye will let that person help her."
"Help her what?"
"Help her think like an operative," Coulson says. It's a clear dismissal, so Grant excuses himself and heads downstairs for his bunk. He needs to consider Coulson's suggestion. Skye did ask about his motivation, his defining moment, but he's had no intention of telling her. It might be the only way to get through to her, though.
He shakes his head as he slides the door to his bunk closed. He'll think about it tomorrow.
x
The next morning, he's intending to ask Jemma about Hall, give her the chance to vent a little and gain control of her emotions before they have to set to work saving the man's life.
So he's as surprised as she is when the words, "Ashton isn't my only brother," burst out of him as soon as she comes down the stairs.
Her brow scrunches a little in confusion, but all she says is, "No?"
It's not that he spent all night thinking of what Coulson said about motivating Skye, because he honestly didn't. But it strikes him as wrong, somehow, that Jemma doesn't know. And Coulson's right—nothing he's tried so far has worked on Skye, so he's going to have humanize himself to her, and it would be wrong to tell her before he told Jemma. So.
"We have an older brother," Grant tells her. He gets to work on his push-ups. Strangely enough, he kind of wants tell her this, or at least a part of him does, but it'll be easier if he's not looking at her. "Maynard. He's…messed up."
"How so?" she asks quietly.
"Violent," he says. "He used to beat the crap out of us for no reason. Our parents didn't do anything. Hell, he picked it up from our dad—he was always beating on mom, but Maynard didn't have a soulmate handy, so he made do with us."
He can hear Jemma take a deep breath, but she doesn't say anything. He's glad.
"It took me a long time to learn to stand up to him," he continues. "I let him…for a long time, I just let him hurt me. Hurt Ashton. It took Ashton nearly dying for me to start protecting us."
He bites the inside of his cheek to keep from continuing. That's already more than he was intending to say—there's no way he can tell her about how he had hurt Ashton on Maynard's orders. He can't let her know that, not if he wants her to think well of him. Jemma Simmons, so firm in her moral convictions, her determination to do what's right, would never understand.
So instead, he begins telling her about Garrett. It's on record with SHIELD that Garrett was the one who convinced him to join up, so there's no harm in telling her about it. Of course, he leaves out all details relating to HYDRA, being broken out of juvie, and years alone in the woods, but, still. That leaves a lot.
He tells her about how Garrett is like a father to him, how Garrett taught him to use his anger, to collar that desire to protect people and redirect it towards being the best specialist possible. He tells her how hard he worked at the Academy, determined to make Garrett proud of him, and how happy he was the day Garrett was assigned as his SO.
Jemma doesn't say anything about his change of subject. She doesn't say anything at all. She just sits there and listens, and he can feel her eyes on him. He keeps his head down, focuses on keeping count and talking.
Eventually, though, he's done. Both with his push-ups and with talking about Garrett. He stands up, crosses to the SUV to get his water bottle, and sips at it, all without looking at Jemma. Once he's sufficiently hydrated, he pulls on his gloves and approaches the punching bag. Jemma still hasn't said anything, and he's a little torn on whether that's a good thing or not. One the one hand, he hates the silence. They've shared comfortable silences, some mornings, but there's nothing comfortable about this. It feels heavy and awkward. On the other hand, there's really nothing Jemma can say to make things better—his childhood was horrible, and that's that. There's a reason he never thinks of it anymore.
Jemma clears her throat. "I know you don't like it," she says, and he turns to look at her, nonplussed. "The…FitzSimmons thing? Whenever anyone calls us that, you make a little face. So I know you don't like it. But I've never told you how it started, have I?"
"No," he agrees. He turns back to the punching bag to hide his expression from her, because he has no idea what his face is doing right now. He's so grateful, so unspeakably thankful, for her subject change. It's how they always talk in the morning—sharing things about a particular subject, then moving on. Jemma treating his revelation like it's normal, like it's not horrible, makes the knot in his chest ease slightly.
"It was very lonely, you see, being a prodigy," she tells him as he begins hitting the bag. "I've told you how young I was, when I went off to uni, and of course, all of my classmates were so much older that we really had nothing in common besides our studies. So I had my books, and science, and of course that was plenty, but. Well. One does need social interaction, doesn't one? Or at least I do. And Fitz had the same problems, of course, so when we met at the Academy…"
She trails off, and he can hear her take a sip of her tea.
"It was so lovely, to suddenly have someone my own age who could understand me, who wouldn't just smile and nod while I talked about my latest experiment. Someone who could challenge me, push me to rethink my ideas, and someone for whom I could do the same. We were rather past the age of friendship bracelets and secret handshakes, and naturally Fitz would have considered them too 'girly' in any case, but we wanted…something. A way to acknowledge what it meant, to have each other. The best friend—the sibling—we always wanted."
He looks over at her, just for a second, and sees her staring thoughtfully at her knees.
"There was an Academy-wide message board, where students would share ideas," she continues. "We started signing our responses to posts as 'FitzSimmons', and it caught on. Very quickly. Soon enough, our classmates were addressing us as such in class, and then our professors picked up on it, and then the training officers came from HQ to assess our suitability for graduation, and they called us FitzSimmons as well. Then we got our first lab posting, and on our first day, when the agent in charge called us FitzSimmons, we realized that it was really going to stick."
"Does it bother you?" he asks her.
"Oh, no," she assures him. "Actually, it's rather nice. It's as if everyone we meet immediately acknowledges what we mean to one another. Of course, that's not what they're doing—usually they just can't be bothered to remember which of us is which—but that's what we treat it as. I'm very sorry it bothers you, though."
He stops hitting the bag, grabs it to stop it from swinging, and turns to face her. Before he can decide what to say, though, he hears the sound of feet on the stairs.
"Okay, I'm here," Skye says. "On time, might I add. No need for extra push-ups!"
Jemma stands to let Skye pass, then smiles at both of them.
"I'll go get started on breakfast," she says. "Fitz and I have a lot of work to do before you go in, Skye, so I'll see you both later."
She heads upstairs, and Skye stares after her.
"Did I interrupt something? Because it looks like I interrupted something."
"No," he lies. "And no push-ups today. One extra morning of relative strength training isn't going to help you. We're going to work on some things that are more immediately practical."
He shows her how to take a gun from an opponent that's aiming it directly at her, walks her through the steps five times and then tells her to do it. And, of course, she proceeds to goof off. She turns it into a joke every single time, making cracks about being a 'proper Southern lady' and what Jemma would think if she saw them like this, and Grant just wants to shake her. Does she not realize how much danger she's going to be in today?
He doesn't shake her, though. Instead, he decides to give Coulson's suggestion a try.
"How did you learn computer science without committing yourself to it?" he demands.
"CS comes naturally to me," Skye says. "I'm sorry I'm not naturally…whatever you are."
"You think this came naturally?" he asks quietly. "I had a brother who beat the crap outta me—me and my little brother. For nothing. For eating a piece of his birthday cake. I had to learn to protect us. The way I am trying to protect you."
He's surprised at how easily the words come, like talking to Jemma about it stole all of the pain attached to the memories away. He doesn't feel the need to hide, the way he did telling Jemma, and part of that is because he doesn't care as much about Skye's reaction as he did about Jemma's, but part of it is the memory of how well she took it.
"That was my moment," he continues, staring Skye in the face. He can tell she's uncomfortable. "You asked."
"Sorry," she says. "Didn't mean to push…but I did manage to take this."
She holds up the plastic gun, and Grant takes it back from her.
"Getting the gun is one thing," he tells her, backing up. "Pulling the trigger, that is another. Now, again, slowly. What's first?"
She sighs, looking down at the gun, but she does it. Slowly. Again and again. She only cracks three more jokes, and one of them is actually kind of funny—not that he lets on.
Coulson was right. The human approach does work. Who'd have guessed?
x
A few hours later, they're holding the final briefing. Grant is only slightly more optimistic—Skye did take the last hour of her training seriously, but, well. It was only an hour, and she's going in alone, with no back up until they can disable the fence. There are a million ways this can go wrong.
Grant's used to those kinds of odds, but that doesn't mean he likes them.
"Skye will walk in the front door," Coulson's saying as Grant enters the briefing room. "The only external access point to Quinn's underground facility is from a beach cove. A two-man extraction team could slip in there, but it's not easy. FitzSimmons?"
"The perimeter is surrounded by a 20-foot-high neodymium laser grid. Touch it, and you're toast," Fitz says.
"Dead toast," Coulson clarifies. Grant opens the closet where they store the small arms and begins to dig through it. They won't be able to bring much, not with the speed they need to keep, but he's not going in without at least three guns. He's got his sidearm and his back-up already on him, so he only needs one from the closet. "The only way to disable the grid is to crack the system and trigger a reboot. This would give the team three seconds to cross. Of course, Quinn's too smart to allow any wireless-access on his property."
"That's where I come in," Skye guesses.
"Yes," Jemma agrees, opening the case on the table. "Working compact, holds up to x-ray—"
"Desert rose, to match your complexion," Fitz puts in, holding up the compact for inspection. "But oh, what's this? A readout, okay? Turns green if you're in close enough proximity to a computer to gain wireless access."
"When it does, you just drop this nearby and walk out," Jemma says cheerfully. "We'll do the rest. Easy as pie."
Grant has to admit he's very much in favor of this part of the plan, which leaves Jemma safely on the plane with Fitz and May. Still, there's a lot that can go wrong, and the whole thing depends entirely on Skye being trustworthy.
"Or it will be," he says to Skye. He tries to keep his tone even, but he's pretty sure he fails. "If you stick to the plan."
"Got it," Skye says. "Plan, green, drop, walk. Pie."
With the plan established, Grant takes one last look into the arms closet. He ignores Coulson and May having a quiet disagreement, as well as Jemma and Skye's cheerful conversation, as he considers the supply of nonlethal weaponry. He's got room in his pockets, but after a moment he decides he'd rather bring along an extra clip. Or seven.
"All right, team," Coulson says. "Suit up."
Grant's in his tactical gear in minutes, and he knows Skye will need more time than that (to do "fussy girl things," she told him earlier) so he takes his guns out to the lounge, along with a cleaning kit. It's not really necessary, of course—he cleans his sidearm and backup after every mission, regardless of whether he's used them or not, and he's the one responsible for upkeep of the weapons in the arms closet, so he knows they're all in good repair. Still, he's got time to kill, and he's always found cleaning guns to be a soothing process. It helps center him before going into the field, and on an op where's he counting on an untrained hacker to get the job done? He could really use some centering.
He triple checks that his sidearm is unloaded, then field strips it. He's in the middle of scrubbing the barrel when Jemma comes and sits down next to him. He looks at her, but she doesn't say anything, so he goes back to cleaning. It's only after he's set the reassembled gun down that she speaks.
"You're very quick at that," she says.
"At what?" he asks, reaching for the next gun.
"Putting the gun back together. And taking it apart," she adds, watching him field strip it.
"Can you do this?" he asks her.
"Somewhat," she says, shaking her head a little. "I understand all of the mechanics of it, of course—Fitz and I have designed a few weapons together, actually—but in practice I'm afraid I'm rather hopeless. I don't quite seem to have the knack for it."
He flicks a glance at her. "Now that I don't believe. You just need the right teacher."
"The right teacher?" she echoes. "Would that be you?"
"It might be," he says, not looking up from scrubbing the slide. "If you're interested."
"I am," she confirms. "But I imagine this isn't the time for it."
"No," he agrees. "It'll have to wait."
He sets down the gun and turns to face her. "And I'm guessing you didn't come over here to ask for lessons in firearm maintenance."
"I didn't," she admits. "I just…wanted to tell you to be careful. Last time we went into the field you were shot—and then nearly pulled from the plane. Of course, last time you needed to protect Fitz and I and this time you only need to protect Skye—and Agent Coulson, I suppose, though one assumes he can handle himself—"
"Jemma," he interrupts, taking her hands. "I'll be fine. I promise."
"And if you're not?" she asks.
"Then I'll actually tell you this time," he says, trying to get a smile out of her. "Even if I can take care of it myself."
She does smile, albeit a little tearily.
"Jemma—" he starts again. He really has no idea what to say, giving comfort not being one of his strong suits, so it's a relief when she cuts him off. Of course, she cuts him off by pressing her lips to his, and that's…that's quite a bit more than a relief.
It's a chaste kiss, a simple slide of her lips against his, but it fills him with more of that amazing warmth. The soul bond seems to thrum between them, and heat slips through his veins as he slides his hand into her hair. It's perfect. It's amazing. He hasn't kissed a girl this chastely since middle school, but he doesn't even mind.
He nips at her bottom lip, just a little, and can feel her smile against his mouth. He's thinking of increasing the kiss, deepening it, a little something to take with him as he goes and risks his life in the name of SHIELD once again, when they're interrupted.
"Jemma!" Fitz squawks.
Jemma makes a dissatisfied little noise and pulls away. "Really, Fitz?"
Grant gives serious thought to shooting the engineer. If he only wings him, Jemma shouldn't hold a grudge for too long. He might even be nice and shoot Fitz somewhere it won't interfere with his work, like a leg.
"Don't 'really' me! What were you thinking? In the lounge?"
"Well you were so upset when I kissed him in the lab—"
"This is a common area, people use it all the time! The whole team spends time here! You can't just—"
Tuning out the argument, Grant sighs and looks down at his guns. He's cleaned and reassembled his sidearm and his backup. He probably doesn't have time for the third gun, the one from the small arms closet, but he spent most of last week cleaning all of the guns in there, and none of them have been used since.
Skye comes out of her bunk and approaches the lounge, distracting Jemma and Fitz from their argument over the 'mentally scarring' outcomes of public displays of affection.
"Oh, Skye! You look wonderful!" Jemma exclaims. "That's a lovely color on you."
"Why thank you," Skye says, with a little mock curtsy. "I do try."
"There's a taxi waiting for you outside the airport," Grant tells her. He arranged it after their morning training. "It'll take you to the National Library in downtown Valletta. All you have to do is cross Republic Square to the cathedral. Another taxi will be waiting to take you to Quinn's compound. You got that?"
"Look for the big church," Skye says with a little nod. "No problem."
"Got your comm and your compact?" he asks.
"Check and check," she says, holding up her purse.
"All right then," he says. "This is a private airstrip, so it shouldn't be too hard to find your taxi. Coulson and I will be right behind you."
"Okay," Skye takes a deep breath. "Wish me luck."
"Luck!" Jemma and Fitz call after her.
Coulson enters the lounge just as Skye exits. Grant's a little annoyed, though not surprised, to see that he's wearing a suit. Really? He's going to go into the field wearing a tie? Again?
"Ready?" Coulson asks him, and Grant stands.
"Yes, sir."
"Lola's too distinctive for this op," Coulson says, looking pained by the admission. "We'll take the SUV."
"Yes, sir," Grant repeats as he holsters his various guns. Fitz gives them a little wave and heads into the briefing room, leaving Jemma still sitting on the couch.
"You've got about thirty seconds," Coulson says, flicking his eyes between them. "We're on a timer here."
Grant nods and watches Coulson leave, then looks down at Jemma. She stands and smiles up at him.
"Do be careful, won't you?" she asks.
"I will," he promises. Then, before he can second guess himself, he leans down to capture her lips. It's a brief kiss, even shorter than the first one, but it's enough to get his blood thrumming.
She sways into him a little when he pulls back, and he can't hold back a grin.
"For luck," he explains, and then, after a little squeeze to her shoulders, he heads downstairs to the cargo bay.
Coulson doesn't say anything as Grant climbs into the passenger seat, just reverses out of the cargo bay as soon as Grant buckles his seat belt. He's glad. He's never had anyone to leave behind before, and it's a very strange feeling. But the op's officially started now, so he puts it away. He can think about Jemma later. He's got a job to do.
x
They park near a secluded beach a good distance away from Quinn's compound, then use a Zodiac to sail right up to the shore of the cove that leads up to the fence. Luckily, the SUV is large enough that the Zodiac fits when both rows of back seats are folded down. It would be pretty ridiculous to need to stop and inflate the boat in the middle of the op.
Grant pulls the Zodiac far enough up the beach that it shouldn't get washed away, even if something goes wrong and they're stuck in the compound during high tide.
"This could have been a traumatic experience for Dr. Hall," Coulson says as they head up the trail towards the ridge. "He may not be the same when we find him, Ward. I'll talk him down—we don't want your personality to set him on edge."
Grant, honestly, is a little offended, even as he sees the logic in it. "Great time for humor, sir," he says, scanning the area. "But my people skills are the least of our problems if Skye can't get us in."
There are no guards in sight, so he and Coulson head further up the trail.
When the reach the warning sign, it's immediately obvious that the fence is still active—Grant can hear it buzzing. Still, Coulson bends down and gets a handful of sand, then throws it forward. The fence lights up as the sand makes impact, and Grant shakes his head.
"Next patrol any minute now," he says, checking his watch.
Since Coulson and Grant's job involves sneaking into the compound, their comms are on a different channel than Skye's. It means that if anything happens, she'll have to contact Jemma and Fitz, who will then have to switch channels to alert Grant and Coulson, which is inconvenient—but they can't afford to be distracted by the rest of the team's idle chatter when they need to keep an eye out for security.
"Skye's offline," May suddenly says. "Repeat, we've lost audio and vitals."
Coulson and Grant exchange a look.
They don't have much time before the next patrol comes around. Between them, they shouldn't have any trouble taking down the patrol, but all it takes is one man choosing to sound the alarm instead of attacking them, and the whole op is blown.
"Abort is not an option," Grant points out, "But if she's compromised—"
"She's still our only way in to get to Dr. Hall," Coulson interrupts.
"And we're their only way out," Grant finishes.
Before they can make any plans, they hear a guard shouting an all clear for the beach. They dive for cover, but the guards are following the trail, which will lead them straight to Grant and Coulson. They're out of time—they need to put the guards down, and fast.
Luckily, there are only three guards. It doesn't even takes ten seconds to knock them out, and Grant is moving to search the guards when he sees Coulson fiddling with a gun. He's ejected the magazine no problem, but he's struggling with the slide.
"Damn," Coulson says. "A little rusty, I guess."
After a moment of watching him fight, Grant takes the gun from Coulson and tosses it into the fence. It disintegrates on impact.
"Guys, clock's ticking, where's Skye?" Coulson demands.
Grant crouches to search the nearest guard, and after a moment, Coulson follows suit. Barely a moment passes before one of the downed guards' radios sparks to life.
"We have a man down! Hostiles on the east ridge!" it announces.
"I see them!" someone shouts from nearby, and suddenly they're being shot at.
Coulson and Grant run for the fence, but it's still active.
"We need a reset here, Fitz!" Coulson shouts. There's no response from the team on the Bus. "Fitz!"
"Saying his name repeatedly does not increase productivity," Jemma scolds.
"Okay, go!" Fitz says.
Grant thinks he hears Jemma say something else, but he can't make it out over the sound of the cover fire he's laying down. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees the fence flash yellow as it deactivates, and he dives across the line after Coulson.
He makes it just in time—the fence pops back up as soon as he's crossed. It acts as an excellent shield against bullets from the guards, but he and Coulson don't hang around to test it. They head further up the trail as soon as Grant's back on his feet.
They enter the compound through an empty garden.
"I'll look for Dr. Hall down in the lab," Coulson says.
"I'll get Skye," Grant confirms. They split up.
Grant takes a side door into the main building. It's quiet—apparently Quinn's security hasn't gotten the memo from the perimeter guards—and also huge. He walks down three different hallways, all of which look exactly the same, and finds himself quickly turned around.
"Coulson," May says in his ear. "The leak came from—"
"Dr. Hall," Coulson finishes. "Yeah, I'm getting that."
Well, that's an unexpected complication, but Grant's focus is on finding Quinn's office. He really doesn't regret that Jemma's safely on the plane, but he wishes he had spent as much time memorizing the blueprints of this building as he did preparing for the last op, when Jemma was going to be in danger.
The whole building shakes, and Grant lets out a grunt as he's thrown into the wall.
"What was that?" he asks.
"Ward, Coulson, status?" May snaps.
"Fine," Grant says. "But the whole building just shook."
There's no response from Coulson.
"Coulson?" May says. Still no answer.
Grant bites back a curse. Okay, he needs to find Skye, then find Coulson, then get Skye and Coulson out—hopefully along with Hall, but if he arranged for his own kidnapping, that might be more difficult than anticipated.
"Getting a little turned around, here," he says. Figuring the op's pretty much screwed anyway, he activates his tracker. "Am I headed in the right direction?"
"Yes," May says. "Take the second left and then keep going. You should hit the reception area soon."
He takes the left and speeds up slightly. There's still no word from Coulson. Grant's edging into 'seriously concerned' territory when the senior agent finally speaks.
"Guys, we need to talk," he says.
"Lost you for a minute," May sighs, obviously relieved. "We're aware of the problem, sir. Hall wanted Quinn to kidnap him?"
"Yeah, why would he do that?" Fitz asks.
"What is wrong with him?" Jemma demands.
"Quinn built a gravity generator, like the one we found but bigger," Coulson groans. He doesn't sound good. Grant just hopes he's still mobile. "Hall knew Quinn would need him to control its raw power, but Hall just wanted to unleash it."
"The one we found was 2.5 centimeters in diameter. It stopped a semi," Jemma points out. "How big are we talking?"
"12 feet," Coulson says. Grant barely bites back a curse. "It'll definitely take down the entire compound."
"It'll sink the place," Jemma corrects a little frantically.
"Work a solution," Coulson orders. "I'll disconnect the power before things get…crazy."
Grant's a little concerned about the way he trailed off at the end there, but he doesn't have time to worry about Coulson. A glance out the nearest window shows that he's nearing the west side of the building, which is the side Quinn's office is on. He's getting close, but they're running out of time.
"This place is massive," he says when he finally reaches the reception area. "Where am I heading?"
"Southwest corner," May says hurriedly. "Ward, tell me you've got things covered on the ground. I can't do a damn thing from out here."
The ground shakes beneath his feet, and he barely maintains his balance.
"I'm working on it," he tells her, and continues on his way.
He passes another window, and he turns to it as movement catches his attention. He's just in time to see Skye take a dive into the pool. He looks around for the nearest door, but his progress is interrupted when the building shakes again—and this time he can't stay on his feet. Once the shaking stops, he jumps to his feet, and decides he doesn't have time to screw around looking for a door.
He goes out the window instead.
Skye's not in the pool anymore, but it's easy enough to follow her wet footprints out into the garden. He stumbles a few times as the ground shakes beneath him, but he doesn't fall again, and he makes it to the garden just in time—Skye's being held in place by two men while another stands in front of her.
These guards are better trained than the perimeter guards, and it takes him a little longer to put them down. One of them gets in a lucky hit that knocks the breath out of him, but it's not enough to stop him from taking all three men out. He tosses the last one into the pond, checks that the other two are still down, and then turns to Skye.
She runs up to him and latches on to his vest, clearly out of breath.
"Are you hurt?" he asks her. She shakes her head, still holding on to him, and he tells her, "Just follow my orders, I'll get us out of here," in what he hopes is a calming voice.
She nods a little, and lets go of him as he leads her away from the house. The labs are on the other side, so it'll be easier to go around the outside of the house and find a door there, rather than go back inside and risk getting turned around again. If the way the ground keeps shaking is any indication, they're running out of time.
A few minutes later, the ground pitches underneath them, and all of a sudden they're walking on a wall. Luckily, they had already made it inside. Grant tries to brush off the mental image of himself and Skye floating away into the upper atmosphere as they approach the lab.
"Nothing!" Coulson says. "FitzSimmons? I tried to cut the power—it's still going!"
"Find some sort of catalyst," Jemma tells him. "Something to create a chemical reaction in the core."
Grant and Skye kneel down to look through the window in the wall—or door, rather. He sees Coulson, holding a gun on Hall, and from this position, he can hear Hall speaking.
"They'll call this a…a tragedy," he's saying, "They won't understand the good I did here."
Coulson's eyes flit to the window.
"Killing innocent people?" he asks.
"Saving millions," Hall corrects him. "We have to live with the choices we make, but sometimes we have to die with them, too."
"I understand," Coulson says, lowering his gun. "You made a hard call."
"Yes," Hall says.
"Now I have to make mine," Coulson tells him, and he pulls the trigger. He reaches up and grabs a hanging wire as the glass beneath his feet breaks, sending Hall tumbling down, out of Grant's view. He hears screaming, and then suddenly gravity returns to normal, sending Grant and Skye crashing to the floor.
He opens the door, and Skye scampers into the room ahead of him. Inside, they find Coulson, alone, on his feet. Grant follows his gaze to see the gravity generator, obviously powering down. There's no sign of Hall, and it takes him a moment to realize what that means.
Coulson used Hall as the catalyst. That's what he meant by the 'hard choice'—he sacrificed Hall's life to save the rest of them. As far as Grant's concerned, the guy pretty much deserved it, but Jemma and Fitz are going to be heartbroken.
"You want me to tell them, sir?" he asks quietly.
"No," Coulson says. "It was my call. I'll tell them."
Grant pulls out his comm. Maybe it makes him a coward, but he doesn't want to hear Jemma's reaction to this. Not when he's miles away, completely helpless to offer comfort.
"Let's get out of here," he says to Skye.
He leads the way out of the compound, and soon enough they're back in the Zodiac. As they sail toward the SUV, Skye fills them in on what happened after she ditched her comm. Grant considers taking her to task for that, but honestly, it worked. It doesn't help him trust her any, of course, but he can't argue with results.
"Oh, and he pointed a gun at me!" she says, strangely happy. "I got it away from him, just like you showed me, Ward."
"Good work," he says, glancing over his shoulder at her. "Does that mean Quinn—?"
He trails off as she loses her smile.
"No," she almost whispers. "You were right. It's one thing to get the gun. It's another to pull the trigger."
He nods to himself.
"We can work on that," he says.
x
When they get back to the Bus, they find Jemma alone downstairs. Coulson and Skye take one look at her and immediately head up to the lounge. Grant unbuckles his vest and drops it on a table as he enters the lab.
"Hey," Grant says cautiously. Jemma looks up at him, and he barely holds back a wince. She's obviously been crying.
"Hello," she says. "Are you—are you hurt?"
"No, I'm fine. A little bruised, maybe. And you?"
"Oh," she says, pushing away from the counter. "I'm fine, of course. Why wouldn't I be? I've been here, safely on the Bus, the entire time. I was never in danger. I wasn't shot at, or threatened, or…"
He slips his arms around her and pulls her into his chest as she trails off. She immediately returns the hug, her hands clutching at the back of his shirt.
"I'm sorry about Dr. Hall," he says into her hair.
"I just don't understand," she says shakily. "I mean, of course, as a scientist, one knows the risks—the things we discover, or invent, may be twisted to a purpose we didn't intend, but… His solution was to cause so much destruction—he would've taken half the island with him. How could he possibly think that was the best solution?"
Her voice breaks on the last word, and he tightens his grip on her.
"I don't know," he tells her. He feels completely helpless. "I'm sorry."
She lets out a shuddering sigh, and he's abruptly reminded of two weeks ago, when she'd held him like this after he nearly got pulled from the plane. This time is worse, though—last time, she was holding onto him so tightly because she was relieved he hadn't died. This time, she's holding on because she's trying to contain her tears.
Jemma takes a deep breath that ends on a sob, and suddenly she's crying. He has no idea what else to do, so he holds her close and murmurs hopefully comforting things into her ear. Previous experience with women tells him that asking her to calm down will only make things worse, so he just lets her cry herself out.
It takes a while, but eventually her sobs taper off, and she's just taking deep breaths, obviously trying to regain control of herself. After another minute, she clears her throat and pulls away, patting his chest.
"Sorry about that."
"Don't be," he tells her. He tucks some of her hair behind her ear, unable to resist the urge. "I just wish there was something I could do to help you."
"You did," she says with a little smile. "You really did."
"Well, good," he says. He checks his watch. "It's pretty late. Do you want dinner, or…?"
She shakes her head. "Actually, if you don't mind, I believe I'll turn in. I'm a little behind on sleep, as you know."
"That's fine," he assures her. "Mind if I walk you up?"
"Please."
Upstairs, he walks Jemma to her bunk. When they reach it, he sees that Fitz's door is already closed. Jemma steps into the bunk and turns to face him.
"Thank you," she says.
"For what?"
"For letting me cry all over you in the lab," she clarifies with a slight smile. Then she hesitates. "And…for what you told me, this morning. About your family. I know it was difficult for you, so I wanted to thank you, for sharing it."
He has to resist the urge to kiss her again. It's definitely not the time—she's upset, grieving her former teacher and struggling with what he tried to do—but she's just. She's just perfect, and it completely overwhelms him.
"Thank you for listening," he replies quietly.
"Goodnight, Grant."
"Goodnight, Jemma."
He watches her door close, detours to his bunk to change into a slightly less damp shirt, and then heads down to the cargo bay. He thinks he'll take the night off of training for once, but he left his vest in the lab, and he needs to pick it up. He's surprised, when he reaches the catwalk above the lab, to find Skye at the punching bag. She's hitting harder than she ever has before, keeping her hands up, in the proper stance—basically, she's taking it seriously, for the first time ever.
"You and your brothers, where'd you grow up?" she asks him as he reaches the bottom step.
"Massachusetts, mostly," he answers.
"A house?" she presses.
"You didn't?" he asks.
"One house," she walks away from the bag, fiddling with her wrapped hands. "The Brodys…I was nine. Sent me back to St. Agnes after a month," she shakes her head. "Said I wasn't a good fit."
"Foster parents," he says. "Your first?"
"My third," she corrects, turning to face him. "I'd heard it before, but. This one was different."
"'Cause you wanted them to like you."
"Bad," she nods. "I called her mom, once. Tried it out. Guess it wasn't a good fit."
It would be impossible not to sympathize, and he doesn't even try. He knows what it's like, to wish desperately for the people in your life to care about you—and he knows what it's like not to get it. It doesn't mean he trusts her at all, but he understands her a little better, hearing this.
Skye crosses back to the punching bag and starts jabbing at it. Again, she's a lot more serious about it than any of their training sessions.
"Hoping for something and losing it, hurts more than never hoping for anything," she says.
He grabs the bag to get her attention. "We won't turn our back."
"Doesn't matter," she tells him. "I've made my choice. I want this. Bad."
He braces against the bag, holding it steady as she keeps hitting it.
"And I know there's a truth serum," she adds, in a much lighter tone.
"Whatever you say, rookie."
x
Later, after Skye's gone to bed and he's dropped his vest in his room, Grant heads up the stairs to Coulson's office. He knocks, and Coulson calls him in.
"Simmons alright?" Coulson asks as soon as Grant enters the office.
"She will be," he nods. "But eventually she'll want to know—what's going to be done with the Gravitonium, sir?"
"Deepest level of the Fridge," Coulson says, leaning back in his chair. "In a vault no one knows exists, with no label, and not listed in any record we have."
Grant nods. "Good."
"My thoughts exactly," Coulson tells him with a sardonic smile. "Was there anything else?"
"No, sir," Grant says. "Goodnight."
"Goodnight, Ward."
He goes back downstairs and into the kitchen. He's not really in the mood for cooking, so he grabs one of the frozen dinners from the freezer and sticks it in the microwave. Not the most delicious meal, but he's certainly had worse.
As he watches the plate spin in the microwave, he ponders Skye's unexpected share session. Apparently she's fully dedicated herself to SHIELD, which he's of two minds about. Of more interest to him is that she chose him to spill to. He would've expected, if told Skye was going to talk about her past, for her to tell Jemma.
So why him? Is it because of what he told her this morning? Did she find common ground with him in the revelation that he had a messed up childhood? Was she more willing to share because he did it first? Or maybe, he thinks as the microwave beeps, maybe she told him for the same reason he told her. Maybe she was playing him, trying to get him to trust her. He's made no secret of the fact that he's suspicious of her motivation. He knows he's not the only one on the Bus who is, but he's certainly been the most blatant.
As far as ploys to gain his trust go, spilling her heart out about a troubled childhood is a pretty good one. But why bother? It could just be that she's tired of his suspicion. If she really does intend to stick around, getting on his good side is a reasonable priority. It could also be that she's up to something, and needs him not to be suspicious to get away with it.
Becoming her SO, telling her about his brothers—that was Grant playing her, trying to gain her trust. He knows the secret he's hiding.
What's Skye's? And, more importantly, will it put Jemma in danger? Because Skye has been growing on him, sure, but he promised himself at nine years old that he would never allow anyone to harm his soulmate.
Skye might genuinely want to be part of SHIELD. Or she might be playing the long game, waiting to get something from them. The question is, is he willing to risk it? Or should he get rid of her now, before she can do anything that might harm Jemma?