A/N: First of all, thanks so much for all of the comments and kudos! They really mean a lot.
Second, I posted a side-story last Saturday called "we're arm in arm (as we sing away)". If you haven't read it already, please read that first. You can understand this chapter without reading it-or at least I think so-but this chapter does make reference to the events of that story, and future chapters will, as well. So, please check that out if you haven't already.
I think that's all. Thanks for reading, and, as always, please be gentle if you review!
Things on the Bus are slightly tense. Grant knows he's a major part of that; he's been having serious difficulty controlling his temper, and the team is walking on eggshells around him, trying not to set him off.
Or, well, Fitz and Skye are, at least. Coulson and May are actually making things worse—Coulson, who keeps doing his empathy thing at Grant, more so than May, who keeps giving him disappointed looks at his failure to maintain his calm.
He really is trying. It's just not easy to follow May's control techniques when the first thing he sees every morning is the still-fading bruise on Jemma's face. Add to that the frequent nightmares—both hers and his—and he thinks he should be commended for his control. After all, it's been two weeks since Jemma was nearly kidnapped, and he hasn't killed a single person.
The nightmares are pretty much what one would expect. Jemma dreams of the kidnapping attempt succeeding, of being tortured the way Coulson was, of Skye being killed trying to save her—and, still, of the cadet who died three weeks ago. Grant, on the other hand, dreams of Jemma dying. Sometimes at the hands of the kidnappers, sometimes at his own hand. Once at Garrett's, twice at Coulson's, and once, bizarrely enough, at Claudia's.
He knows enough about how his mind works to interpret most of the scenarios—he's afraid that he'll do something to get Jemma killed, that Coulson will get her killed by making a bad call on a mission, and that Garrett's mission will interfere with Grant's ability to protect Jemma, leaving her vulnerable—but the last one has him completely baffled. His subconscious is really getting paranoid if it thinks Jemma has anything to fear from Ashton's kindergarten-teaching soulmate.
He's started getting up an hour earlier every morning, so he has time to work out the worst of the night's rage before Jemma joins him in the cargo bay. He always thinks himself in circles while he does—it's annoying, but he can't stop his mind from revisiting the same ground, over and over again.
Namely, the kidnapping attempt.
He knew as soon as he heard Coulson mention cyanide that the men who tried to kidnap Jemma were HYDRA agents. He went downstairs fully intending to call up Fury and tell him all about the secret organization that was hiding within his organization. He was completely drowning in his rage that anyone dared to lay hands on Jemma—that some goddamned bastard had the nerve to actually hit her, hard enough to leave a bruise that bad. And that that selfsame bastard then killed himself, depriving Grant of the pleasure of skinning him alive, well…
After a few hours with the punching bag, however, he managed to get enough control back to think logically.
HYDRA has no reason to go after Jemma. She's long since been marked as pointless for recruitment attempts—HYDRA has analyzed her as less than a tenth of a percent chance of turning—so it wouldn't try to take her for that. And while it's true that Jemma has a lot of classified scientific knowledge, Alexander Pierce—the Secretary of Defense, for crying out loud—is a member of HYDRA. He's Level Ten; there are no secrets from him.
In the same vein, Jemma's expertise on the topic of Centipede is irrelevant—Grant doesn't believe for a second that the raids carried out during Coulson's kidnapping took out more than a fraction of Centipede's resources. After all, SHIELD found the Centipede bases through Vanchat's selling history, and it's not like every Centipede lab was taking delivery from the man.
So HYDRA has no reason to kidnap Jemma. And if it was so monumentally stupid as to try and kill her, a half-assed kidnapping attempt like the one she and Skye described would not be the way it tried.
So, the kidnappers may have been HYDRA, but they weren't acting on HYDRA's orders. Which leaves Garrett. Centipede is, after all, nominally part of HYDRA, and Garrett is highly placed enough to borrow a few HYDRA agents for a mission, if he has the need.
But why would Garrett try to kidnap Jemma? And why send regular thugs and not his Centipede soldiers? For the first question, he has nothing but vague suspicions. When it comes to the second question, though, there are three possible explanations.
The first is that Garrett underestimated Skye's ability to protect Jemma, which Grant considers possible, but unlikely. After all, as her Supervising Officer, he's been submitting reports on the progress of her training to SHIELD—reports that Garrett certainly has access to, as a Level Eight operative. He even has a ready-made excuse to look at them, since it's only reasonable that he would wonder how his former trainee is doing with a trainee of his own. And it's not like Garrett to underestimate anyone. So, while it's possible he held back his Centipede soldiers out of pure arrogance, it's not likely.
The second explanation is that there were no Centipede soldiers available. Grant hasn't been in touch with Garrett at all since this assignment began, so he has no idea how many Centipede soldiers Garrett has, or what he has them up to. It's a reasonable explanation, but it, too, strikes Grant as unlikely. After all, Garrett is a master strategist. He always plans twelve steps ahead, and it's hard to believe that he wouldn't have planned to keep at least one Centipede soldier free in case of emergencies—or sudden desires to kidnap innocent scientists, at least.
The third, and most likely, explanation is that Garrett didn't want the kidnapping attempt to succeed. It would explain a lot—as a whole, the kidnapping attempt was incredibly sloppy. Jemma's description of the attackers' inept attempts to impersonate SHIELD agents made it sound like the men had never so much as seen one before, and since HYDRA agents are SHIELD agents…
If it was a deliberately terrible attempt, that explains the HYDRA agents failing so miserably. It also means that the attackers probably aren't actually dead—the rapid response team that SHIELD sent out was likely HYDRA, as well. They simply waited for the men to regain consciousness, then let them go. The autopsy photos were probably mocked up beforehand—they're really not that hard to fake—and the men's identities wiped clean, so that SHIELD (and, more importantly, Skye) wouldn't find anything on them.
HYDRA likely has the men set up with new identities somewhere, laying low until the search for information on them dies down. In a few months, maybe a year on the outside, they'll be back in action, working for the 'glory' of HYDRA.
He's seen it happen before, more than once.
The obvious benefit—namely, that Grant can still track down and punish the man who hurt Jemma—aside, this theory still leaves him with a lot of questions. If the kidnapping attempt was deliberately unsuccessful, it means that Garrett didn't actually want Jemma kidnapped—he just wants them to think he wanted her.
Why?
This is what he's been fixating on, these past two weeks. Why would Garrett want the team to think that he's after Jemma?
The only idea that he's been able to come up with is that it's a warning. It's entirely possible that Garrett's got something new brewing, something that might put Jemma in danger, and by making a half-assed kidnapping attempt, he gives Grant justification for keeping Jemma out of things.
If that's the reason (and it really is the only one he can think of) then Grant appreciates the gesture. But they're still going to have to have a talk, the next time they're in a position to speak freely, about Garrett's methods. Grant's glad of the excuse to keep Jemma safely on the Bus, but he is not happy with the injuries she sustained. There's going to have to be a reckoning about that.
Speaking of Jemma, he's pulled from his thoughts by the sound of her footsteps on the stairs. She's taking them carefully, one hand clenched around the railing as she makes her slow way down.
Jemma's the other reason that things are tense on the Bus. Her face is nearly healed, but her ribs are still in fairly bad shape, and it's affecting her work.
She can only manage about five hours in the lab before the pain in her ribs gets to be too much. It's far better than the first few days, in which she could only take an hour or two before needing to lie down for the rest of the day, but it's nowhere near her usual work day, and it's driving her crazy.
She has plenty of narcotic painkillers on hand, which would help with the pain a lot more than the over-the-counter stuff she's been taking, but she says they mess with her head.
So her options are to either work until she can't stand the pain, or take relief from the pain and be unable to work at all because she can't think straight. It's really upsetting her, and more than once she's been driven to tears by the combination of pain and frustration.
Grant's keeping count. Every time she cries means an extra hour of pain he'll inflict on the man who did this to her. And he will definitely be having words with Garrett about his methods.
In the meantime, all he can do is support Jemma—and get ready. If Garrett went to all the trouble of staging a (pathetic) kidnapping attempt, whatever's coming must be big.
x
It's another week before he finds out exactly what Garrett's got brewing. Jemma's doing better—she's working eight-hour days, now—but she's still in pain, and it still pisses him off.
However, he's finally (mostly) regained control over his rage, and that, combined with Jemma's ability to work longer hours, means that things on the Bus are a lot less tense. The rest of the team has, at least, stopped looking at he and Jemma like one of them might snap at any moment.
It's Monday night and, aside from Coulson, who went up to his office earlier, the team is hanging around the cabin area. Skye's in the briefing room—nothing new there, she's been working on tracking Ian Quinn like he owes her money—while May is in a window seat, reading something on her tablet.
Grant is at the kitchen table, playing Life with Jemma and Fitz. It's one of the board games they ruled out, weeks ago, as unsuitable for team activity, but Jemma didn't have to try too hard to talk the two of them into giving it another chance.
She doesn't have to try very hard to get anyone to do anything, at the moment—everyone is falling all over themselves to make her smile, Coulson included. May's a little less blatant, but Grant doesn't think it's a coincidence that she just happened to decide to make Jemma's favorite meal for dinner. But, hey, it's not like he has any room to talk. He's pretty pathetic over her even when she's not injured.
Oh, well. At least the game is less likely to devolve into throwing plastic children at each other when Skye's not involved.
There's no shortage of snarky commentary, though.
"Summer school, Fitz?" Jemma chides. "Really? You should spend time with your children, not send them off for more schooling."
"Look to your own life, Simmons," Fitz suggests, nodding to Jemma's car. "And lay off of mine!"
The little blue peg representing Jemma's character's husband has fallen out of the car, and she picks it up with a little frown.
"Do you suppose that means he's died?" she asks, playfully concerned.
"Yeah," Fitz nods. "Definitely."
"Oh, what a shame," Grant says, insincerely, as he spins the spinner.
Jemma gives him a narrow-eyed look. "Did you have something to do with this?"
"Jealousy is a terrible thing," Fitz says, shaking his head in mock sorrow. "Terrible thing."
"I never said I was involved," Grant defends, holding up his hands. "I'm sure he died of perfectly natural causes."
"Perfectly natural," Fitz mutters. "Like blood loss?"
"I'm afraid I'm going to have to insist upon a post-mortem," Jemma decides. "I need the closure."
"Oh, you don't wanna do that," Grant disagrees, amused. "It might…taint your memory of him."
"Don't listen to him, Simmons," Fitz advises. "He's hiding something."
He's about to claim innocence again when Coulson comes down the stairs.
"Briefing room," he orders.
They hurriedly box up the game, then follow Coulson into the briefing room, where they find the screen covered in pictures of Ian Quinn.
Grant has the feeling he's finally going to find out what Garrett's got going.
Sure enough, Skye has managed to track a purchase that Ian Quinn—someone that they now know works for the Clairvoyant—recently made from Cybertek. The team, of course, is entirely unaware that Cybertek is working with Centipede, so nothing about it strikes them as odd.
For Grant, it's like giant neon letters spelling out the word TRAP.
Quinn's ten million dollar purchase from Cybertek is being transported on a train through the Italian countryside—another indicator that something is wrong, since Cybertek generally delivers things by air, like a normal company—and Coulson thinks that following the package will lead them to Quinn. However, the package is travelling with a lot of security, and Coulson thinks their best bet is to go undercover.
May's unhappy, but Grant's entire career has consisted of undercover work, so he's fine with it. Or at least, he is at first.
"May and Ward, you're front and center. Once we locate the package you'll tag it with a tracker."
Yeah, he can do that.
"Skye and Fitz, you'll be running communications. After the package is tagged, we'll follow it to Quinn."
Sounds reasonable enough.
"Once we capture Quinn, we'll be one step closer to the Clairvoyant."
This is definitely a trap—Cybertek? Cooperation from the authorities? A train?—so he has a feeling they'll be a hell of a lot more than one step closer.
"And what about the two of us, sir?" Jemma asks.
"We'll be tagging the head of security so he can lead May to the package."
Wait. What?
"No," he says, almost involuntarily.
Everyone looks at him. Too late to back out now.
"I mean, uh, Jemma's still injured, sir," he points out. "She should sit this one out."
Jemma gives him a distinctly unimpressed look, but it's Coulson who responds.
"All she has to do is sit in a seat here," he says, tapping at the holocom to bring up the train's floor plan, and then indicating a specific car. "Stand at the right moment, and spill something on the head of security. She won't exert herself at all."
"With all due respect, sir," Grant says. "No plan survives contact with the enemy. Things get unpredictable in the field."
"I'll be with her the whole time," Coulson says. "If things get out of hand, I'll take care of it."
The rest of the team is looking back and forth between them, heads swiveling like it's a tennis match, and Jemma is looking unhappier by the moment. But Garrett staged an entire kidnapping, and this has to be the reason why. He can't let Jemma go on this op.
"The last time Jemma went out in public, she almost got kidnapped," he reminds them. "We still have no idea who was behind it. What if they try again?"
"Grant, you're being ridiculous," Jemma bites out. Oh, yeah. She's angry. "We're going undercover. No one will know who I am."
"Jemma," he says, reaching for patience. "You can't lie."
"I'll be with her the whole time," Coulson repeats. "We need all hands on deck for this, Ward. It's the best lead—the only lead—we've got on the Clairvoyant."
He can tell he's testing Coulson's patience, and if Jemma were a slightly more violent person, she would've hit him three sentences ago. But this is a trap. This is unquestionably a trap. And the last time Garrett set a trap for them, Grant got shot and Coulson got tortured. How much worse is this going to be, if Garrett went to the trouble of giving him a way to keep Jemma out of it?
He's only got one more card to play, and it's risky. It could jeopardize whatever plan Garrett's got going here, and that's the last thing he wants to do. But if he doesn't play it, then Jemma goes on the op, and that can't be allowed.
So he takes a deep breath and points out the obvious. "Sir, the last time we got a lead on Centipede, it was a trap."
He feels it's a particularly relevant point, since this is a trap, but apparently it's a step too far for Coulson.
"My office," he orders sharply. He barely glances at the others as he continues. "The rest of you are dismissed. We need to be at the station at 0700 tomorrow, so we'll hold the final briefing at 0500. Get some sleep."
Jemma is the first to leave the room, and she does so in a huff. Fitz darts a nervous glance at Grant and then follows her out.
"Let's go," Coulson says, and leads the way out of the room.
Skye passes Grant's arm sympathetically as he passes her, and he thinks that she, at least, is on his side in this. She certainly was uncharacteristically quiet during that argument, and if she disagreed, she would definitely make it clear.
He struggles with himself as he follows Coulson up the stairs. He can't allow Jemma to participate in this mission. Not with what he knows. She'll be in danger on this op. It's the only explanation. Garrett wouldn't have put on that farce of a kidnapping attempt unless it was important, and it can't be a coincidence that he's setting a trap for them less than a month later.
If only this had happened last week, Jemma's participation wouldn't even have come up as an option. He never thought he'd regret her health improving, but…
Damn it.
When they enter the office, Coulson leans against his desk and crosses his arms. He looks a little calmer now, more sympathetic than angry, but he's still obviously not happy.
"You're emotionally compromised," he says flatly.
Grant considers that for a moment. Is he? He knows for a fact that if he allows Jemma to participate in this op, she'll be in danger.
But she's always in danger. It's part of field work. Hasn't he been over this with himself before? It's better to have Jemma with him, in danger, than to be without her. He can't stop her from doing field work—even if he got her removed from Coulson's team, she'd just go find another one, one where he couldn't keep an eye on her. She's always in danger. He's accepted that.
This time is different, though. It keeps coming back to the kidnapping attempt—Garrett pulled that for a reason, and this is that reason.
Isn't it?
He's not thinking strategically. He interrupted the briefing with the argument, so he only knows the bare bones of Coulson's plan. He doesn't know how well the plan will do without her, or how her absence will affect it.
But does the plan even matter? It's a trap, for crying out loud.
One thing is certain: Coulson's right. He's emotionally compromised.
"Yes, sir," he agrees finally. "I am."
Coulson sighs, dropping his arms to brace himself against the desk. "It's understandable. And I sympathize, I do."
"But?"
"But your exemption to the fraternization regs is contingent upon your ability to remain detached," Coulson says. "We need Simmons on this op, and if you can't get it under control, we're going to have a problem."
Grant drops into a chair and scrubs a hand over his face.
"I know, sir," he says, resigned.
He won't be able convince Coulson to keep Jemma out of this. Coulson doesn't know what he knows—about the mission or the kidnapping attempt—so he has no reason to believe that Grant is being anything other than overprotective and emotional right now.
"It's just…"
"It's just that she's your soulmate," Coulson offers, entirely sympathetic now. "And I'm taking her into the field three weeks after she was nearly abducted."
"We still don't know who was behind that," Grant points out—technically true, as he does, but they don't. "Or how they knew where Jemma and Skye were going to be."
"I'll be with her the whole time," Coulson says for, what, the third time? Grant is very impressed with his patience. "If anything happens, I'll take care of it."
He's not gonna win this one. And Coulson's right—if he can't get a handle on this, Coulson will have no choice but to revoke their exemption, and that is something Grant can't allow.
Garrett tried to give him a way to keep Jemma out of this. That means that whatever the trap is, it's got nothing to do with her. He'll just have to hope that that means she won't get in the way of it…and trust Coulson to watch her back if she does.
"Okay?" Coulson asks. "You good?"
"Yes, sir," Grant says, standing. "I'm good."
"Excellent," Coulson says, clapping his hands. "Now that that's settled, I think you have some groveling to do."
No kidding. He remembers the look Jemma gave him earlier and has to hold back a wince. That is not going to be a fun conversation.
"Yes, sir," he says. "I should…get on that."
Coulson nods. "Yep."
He finds Jemma in the lounge, sitting on the couch next to Fitz while Skye perches on the coffee table in front of her. The three of them are embroiled in a heated conversation—about him, judging by the way they go silent when he approaches.
"Hey," he says, feeling more than a little awkward under Skye and Fitz's stares.
"Hello," Jemma says, somewhat frostily.
"Well, that's our cue," Skye says brightly, standing. "Fitz? Why don't you show me the…thing? That you were talking about before?"
It takes Fitz a moment to catch on. "Right. The thing. It's…in the lab."
"To the lab we go then," Skye says. "Later Ward, Simmons."
Fitz allows himself to be dragged out of the lounge, but not before giving Grant a very pointed look—the kind of look that suggests that if he doesn't fix this soon, he'll find himself being used as a test subject for Fitz's latest weapon prototype.
Usually he'd be amused by Fitz attempting to intimidate him, but right now he's more concerned with Jemma.
"Can we talk?" he asks.
"Yes, I think we'd better," she agrees quietly.
He takes a seat on the table in front of her, not sure if she'll welcome him sitting right next to her at the moment. He's kind of at a loss here; he and Jemma have never really argued before. Oh, they've had disagreements, sure, but most of the conflict in their relationship has been external—Chitauri viruses, Asgardian berserker staffs, that kind of thing.
Usually a lack of arguments would be a good thing, but it means that he doesn't know what Jemma's like when she's truly angry. Which means he doesn't know what the best way to calm her down is.
Might as well start with the direct approach.
"I'm sorry," he says.
Jemma just looks at him.
"It's not that I don't think you're capable," he continues. "I know you're an asset to this team. But in the field, you're…" He realizes that that sentence is headed in a direction which could, from a certain perspective, be considered an insult, and changes tacks. "You were nearly kidnapped less than a month ago, and you're still injured. You're struggling right now, and I…I worry. That's all."
Jemma remains tense and blank-faced for a moment after he finishes speaking, then loosens, slumping back against the couch and shaking her head.
"Oh, Grant," she sighs. "I know that you worry about me. That's not why I was angry."
The was is an encouraging sign, but the rest of the sentence has him lost.
"It's not?"
"No," she says. "Of course not. I know that my injury has made things difficult for you—although I feel compelled to add that it's certainly made things even more difficult for me."
He nods, because he knows it's true.
"I entirely sympathize with your desire to keep me out of the field," she continues. "That's not what upset me. What upset me was the way you went about it."
He's still lost. "What do you mean?"
"I mean that if you have concerns about my participation in field work, you should bring them to me," Jemma says patiently. "Rather than attempting to override our commanding officer in the middle of a briefing. That was very high-handed of you, and I don't appreciate you going over my head right in front of me."
Well, when she puts it that way…
"I'm sorry," he says. "I didn't mean to disrespect your…agency." It's kind of a pun, which is why he hesitates—this isn't really the moment for humor—but she and Skye throw the word around sometimes when something on the news gets them upset, and he thinks she'll appreciate the proof that he listens. "But you're not upset anymore?"
"Apology accepted, and no. I was very angry when the briefing ended," she says, looking slightly sheepish. "And then Skye reminded me that I did essentially the same thing, a few weeks ago. Before…well…"
It takes a moment to click, and then he completely understands her sudden hesitance. She's talking about DC, the meeting right before he and Coulson left for a short fact-finding mission. She and Skye both put up a fight about it, trying to get them to stay on the Bus—they were suspicious of the secrecy, since the last time two of the team were sent alone on a classified mission, Grant and Fitz nearly died.
At the time, he was a little annoyed by the argument and more than a little touched by the concern, but he and Coulson went on the mission, anyway. Of course, he regretted it later, since while they were gone, Jemma and Skye decided to go sightseeing, which ended in Jemma nearly being kidnapped.
"Right," he says. "You did do that."
"And I apologize," she says. "Both for the hypocrisy and for disrespecting your agency."
He has to smile at that. "Apology accepted. I guess it's something we'll both have to work on."
"Or we could just quit field work entirely," she suggests with a rueful smile. Neither one of them will be giving up this team anytime soon, and they both know it.
"Yeah," he says. "Or that."
He's suddenly exhausted. He knows there's no way he's keeping Jemma out of the op tomorrow, and while it tests the control he has over his rage, it also terrifies him. Right now, she's in so much pain that she can't even get dressed without his help. What's she going to do if she needs to run? Can she run?
He pushes that aside, for what is probably the first of many, many times. All he can do is hope the trap leaves her untouched, and trust Coulson to protect her if it doesn't.
Of course, the last time Garrett set a trap for them, the target was Coulson, but…chances are he's not the target this time. After all, the team had an entire month off—a month that Coulson spent alone and vulnerable, already in pretty horrible condition. Garrett could easily have grabbed him then, if he didn't get what he wanted the first time. No, whoever this trap is aiming to catch, it's not Coulson. Probably.
This would be so much easier if he were in contact with Garrett.
Whatever. The point is, he's exhausted, and tomorrow is doubtlessly going to be a very, very long day.
"So, are we okay?" he asks.
"Yes," Jemma nods. "We're okay."
"In that case," he says, standing. "I don't know about you, but I'm ready for bed."
Her eyes dart to the clock on the wall, and then she sighs.
"I suppose tomorrow is going to start early," she says, allowing him to help her off the couch. "If the briefing is at five, we need to be up at four."
"I sure hope this plan of Coulson's isn't too complicated," he muses. "Half the team'll still be asleep when the train leaves the station."
x
The plan, as it happens, is complicated. Not overly so, true, but considering the fact that all they need to do is follow a package to its destination? It's strangely elaborate.
If the head of security—a man named Carlo Mancini—has even the barest ounce of competence, he's going to be patrolling the train. Jemma and Coulson will be in one of the main cars, posing as father and daughter transporting their wife/mother's ashes to be scattered. When Mancini approaches, they'll stage an argument and Jemma will stand to storm away at precisely the right moment to 'accidentally' spill the ashes on Mancini.
Of course, they're not going to be ashes. The urn actually contains a mix of chemicals designed to give off a specific heat signature (with a few other things mixed in, to make them look like ashes). This leads to Grant and May's part of the plan.
The two of them will be posing as a couple, with tickets for a first-class overnight compartment. Or at least, that's their cover for getting on the train. Once they're in the compartment, May will go out the window and onto the roof of the train, while Grant changes into a conductor's uniform.
On the roof, May will use thermal imaging goggles to trace the heat signature Mancini will be giving off after getting covered with the fake ashes. She'll be able to follow him to the package, which is where Grant comes in. Using the cover of a conductor, he'll visit whichever car the package is in and tag it with a tracker.
Then Fitz and Skye, who will be set up with their gear in the luggage car, will electronically follow the tracker once the package is removed from the train. The hope is that it will lead them to wherever Quinn is hiding out, at which point Jemma and Fitz will hang back while the rest of them move in to take Quinn into custody.
That part of the plan is puzzling him, a little. Not that Jemma and Fitz are hanging back—that was never in question; there's a big difference between going into the field and participating in a full assault—but that Skye isn't. Sure, he's been training her for months now, and she did prove herself pretty well during the attempted kidnapping, but…
She's been weirdly gung-ho, lately. Not just in her endless search for Quinn, to which she's been more dedicated than he's ever seen her with anything, but with her training, too. She stopped slacking a while ago, but all of the sudden she's started working twice as hard. Something has got her pushing herself, but he doesn't know what.
It's more than just the little push he gave her towards trusting SHIELD when they visited the Academy. That might be part of it, sure, but it doesn't account for her sheer determination, the endless effort she's suddenly started putting in to every aspect of her training—not just the strength training and the sparring and the weapons practice, but the lessons on protocol and procedure, too.
There's something go on with her, and Coulson definitely knows what it is. He's not talking, though, and Grant's been too busy worrying about Jemma to push him.
Speaking of worrying about Jemma…
"Be careful," he says quietly.
The Bus is parked in a hangar a few miles from the station, and this is where they go their separate ways. Coulson and Jemma will be taking Lola to the station, while Skye and Fitz take a cab and Grant and May have a hired car coming to pick them up. It's entirely necessary—they can't maintain their covers if they all show up to the station together—but it makes him nervous. This whole thing makes him nervous.
It's a trap. There is absolutely no question that this is a trap. And not only is Grant letting Jemma walk into it, he's letting her do it without him. He'll be several cars away from her, and if anything goes wrong…
Trust Coulson, he reminds himself. He has to trust Coulson. He can trust Coulson—wasn't it Coulson who came for Grant and Fitz, when they were stranded in South Ossetia with no hope of survival? If there's one thing he can count on, it's that Coulson will watch the team's backs.
Jemma will be fine. Coulson will be with her the whole time. When things go wrong, he'll take care of her.
As for the rest of the team…
Grant has no idea what Garrett's goal is this time. He can't predict what's going to happen today, not with the way he's been totally in the dark on Centipede's movements since he began this assignment. But he knows that whatever Garrett's got going, he'll have a good reason for it.
Trust Coulson. Trust Garrett.
He can do that.
"I will," Jemma promises. "If you do the same."
"Of course," he says. "I'm always careful."
Jemma's face clearly shows what she thinks of that, but there's no time for banter. It's time to go; the team is moving out.
All Jemma has to do is stage an argument and spill some ashes. She'll be fine. And if anything else happens, Coulson will have her back.
"Good luck," she says, and all he has time for is a brief kiss before he has to join May outside.
She'll be fine.
x
The plan goes well, at first. Jemma successfully spills the fake ashes, May successfully follows the trail, and Fitz successfully locates the package using the feed from May's goggles.
That's when things start to go wrong.
Grant finishes changing just as the package is located, and leaves the compartment, tucking the tracker into his pocket. When he alerts May that he's headed for the dining car, though, all he hears over the comms is static.
Looks like the trap's been sprung.
Deep cover means that he proceeds as he would if he had no idea what's going on. He has to take all possible action to get the mission back on course, and if that interferes with Garrett's goal, well…Such is the way of deep cover ops. Occasionally, you have to work against your own interests.
If he didn't know that this was a trap, his first thought would be technical error, so he tries the comms twice more. Both attempts fail, which means he moves on to the second theory: sabotage. The best course of action to take is to locate Coulson (an attractive option, since it means locating Jemma, too), but before he can do so, a woman steps out of a compartment further down the car.
She requests his assistance with her suitcase, and while he tries to brush her off, she's persistent. Refusing to help her will draw attention, possibly causing more of a delay than the three seconds it will take to help, so he gives in. He picks up the suitcase (which is, in fact, incredibly heavy) and carries it into the compartment.
He senses more than hears the movement, has a split second to realize that she's just drawn a gun, and turns quickly, hitting the woman in the face with the heavy case. It knocks her back, but before he can take her down, a man bursts out of the en-suite bathroom, and Grant has to turn away from the woman to block the man's swings.
He knocks the man into the wall easily enough, but it puts him in an awkward position, and the woman manages to slice him in the arm before he can stop her.
Two against one in cramped quarters are not great odds, but Grant's faced a lot worse than this, and eventually he knocks both of the attackers out. He tries the comms again, but they're still down, so he exits the compartment and heads for the car Coulson and Jemma are in.
He moves through the train quickly, keeping his hand pressed to the cut the woman managed to inflict on him. It's on his right upper arm, high enough to sting when he moves but not high enough to actually interfere with his range of motion, and he's grateful for that—although, obviously, he would've preferred not to be injured at all.
He's already annoyed by the injury, and it does not help his temper at all to walk into the car and see Jemma sitting alone. There had better be a very good explanation for Coulson's absence.
Jemma straightens as he approaches, her eyes fixed on his arm, but he doesn't give her the chance to ask about it.
"We've been made," he says flatly. "Comms are down. Where's Coulson?"
"He went to the dining car to find the package," she says. It's dismissive; her attention is fully focused on his injured arm, and he thinks she misses the way his hand clenches on the back of the seat at the information.
I'll be with her the whole time, he said. Apparently not. He and Coulson will be having fucking words later, for sure—Grant was trusting him to watch over Jemma, and what does he do? He leaves her, alone and injured and with no way to contact the rest of the team, at the first sign of trouble.
Oh, yeah. There'll be words, all right.
He pushes his anger away; there's no time for it, not now. He needs to get Jemma somewhere safe, find Coulson, and try to salvage this mission.
Cybertek knows they're here, and the team is far outnumbered. Jemma's in no condition to run, which means she needs to hide. Somewhere defensible, somewhere—the luggage car. Fitz and Skye are there, and he knows for a fact that Skye, at least, is armed.
"You've been hurt," Jemma is saying, reaching for his arm. "Let me take a look."
He stops her, grabbing her hands and holding them tight. "Not now. Go to the luggage car. Lock yourself in with Fitz and Skye. Don't come out until I get you. I'm gonna get Coulson."
He thinks that last sentence comes out a little more ominous than he intends, but Jemma doesn't seem to notice. She just nods, pulling off her glasses and standing, then squeezes past him, running for the luggage car. He watches her go, fighting the urge to follow her and take her off the train, rest of the team be damned.
She'll be fine.
The door has no sooner closed behind her than three men stand from where they've been sitting at the back of the car. One of them is Mancini, so it's probably safe to assume the other two are his men, and they're looking at Grant like they know exactly who he is.
There are too many civilians here; if it comes to a fight, they'll get in the way. He turns and leaves the car at a brisk walk, well aware that Mancini and his men are closely following.
He heads for the dining car. Why not? With any luck Coulson will be there, and Grant can kill two birds with one stone; let Mancini's men get a few hits in on Coulson, to express Grant's displeasure at finding Jemma alone, before he and Coulson team up and take them down.
Speaking of Jemma, it was nice of Mancini to wait until she was gone to make his move, wasn't it? Orders from Garrett, most likely, and while Grant certainly appreciates the sentiment, it puts him a bit on edge, as well. And not only because singling Jemma out like that will be cause for serious suspicion if Mancini gets captured and decides to talk.
First the warning in the form of a kidnapping attempt, now (possibly) orders to keep his men from harming her. If Grant's suspicions are correct, Garrett's going to more than a little trouble to keep Jemma from getting hurt in this trap of his.
Which is great and all, but that means that someone is supposed to get hurt. Garrett's aiming to injure someone, here, and he's going out of his way to make sure that it's not Jemma. Grant appreciates that, he does, and it almost makes up for Jemma's bruised ribs—almost—but it's got him completely confused, because why would Garrett want to injure a member of the team?
(And is there any way Grant can maneuver things so that the victim is Coulson? Not just because of how he left Jemma after promising he'd be with her the whole time, either—Grant is strangely uncomfortable at the idea of Fitz, Skye, or May being the ones injured.)
There's no time to think about it any further, though. He reaches the first dining car and, since there are no civilians around whose suspicion he needs to avoid arousing, breaks into a run. Mancini and his men run after him, and he bursts through the door into the second dining car to find Coulson standing next to a table, looking around uselessly.
"Ward!" Coulson calls.
"We've been made," Grant tells him—entirely unnecessary, since Mancini is right behind him, but it's better than demanding to know what the hell Coulson was thinking, leaving Jemma alone like that.
He glances over his shoulder, and what he sees nearly stops his heart at the same time that it sends his temper spiking.
Fuck fucking fuck, that's a goddamn grenade, and he can't protect Jemma if he's not on the train but he also can't protect her if he's dead, so they're going to have to jump. He shares this information with Coulson, and the two of them throw themselves out of the open door at the back of the car, hitting the ground hard and rolling with the impact.
Mancini leans out the back of the car and tosses the grenade after them, and Grant barely has time to think oh, shit before it detonates, and the train vanishes in a cloud of blue smoke.
What. The. Fuck.
Grant's seen a lot of weird shit in his time with SHIELD, but an entire train disappearing right off the tracks absolutely takes the cake, and for a brief moment he's too stunned to feel anything else.
He pushes himself to his feet and moves closer to the tracks, staring at the empty space where the train used to be.
"The train," he says uselessly. "It just…"
"Yep. Vanished," Coulson completes, and just like that, Grant's shock is gone, replaced by worry (and anger, of course, but that's pretty much a constant, these days).
Jemma is still on that train. And just because Cybertek didn't take the opportunity to hurt her earlier is no guarantee that they're going to avoid hurting her at all.
Fitz and Skye are on the train, too, and Skye's come a long way, but she's not fully trained yet. How long can she be expected to defend herself and Jemma and Fitz, when she's got no way of knowing exactly what she's up against? What are the chances that the three of them will stay in the easily defensible luggage car instead of leaving it to try and join up with the rest of the team?
When no one comes for them, they'll assume the rest of the team has been captured or severely injured. They won't be content to sit and wait in the relative safety of the luggage car then. No, they'll go searching for Grant, May, and Coulson—try to save them or protect them or what ever stupidly brave untrained scientists and hackers think they have to do for fully trained specialists and field agents.
Speaking of field agents, Coulson's still talking, and Grant is just about at the end of his patience with this man.
First he insisted on bringing Jemma on this op, even though he easily could have spilled those ashes on Mancini himself. Then, he left Jemma alone, even though he promised he would be with her the whole time. Now the train has disappeared with half of their team—the vulnerable half of their team, no less—on it, and he's joking around.
Grant takes a moment to focus, putting his rage aside like May taught him. The last thing he needs right now is to blow up at Coulson—it will only serve as proof that Grant is emotionally compromised, and that will put his and Jemma's exemption in jeopardy.
Once he's sure he has a hold on his temper, he speaks.
"I told Jemma I'd come back for them," he says. It sounds a little more accusatory than he means it to, but if Coulson notices, he doesn't comment.
"May's there," he says instead. "They'll be okay."
Unfortunately, it's at about that point that Grant notices the thermal imaging goggles May was wearing earlier. They're lying in the brush, abandoned, and they're not damaged at all. Usually, that would be a good thing—these things are expensive, and while the team has a fairly large budget, they do tend to be pretty rough on their equipment—but there's no way the goggles could've been tossed from the train without getting a scratch.
These weren't dropped from a moving train. Chances are, May's off the train, too, and she ditched the goggles because she doesn't need them anymore.
Which means a) May is MIA, and b) Jemma, Fitz, and Skye are alone on the train.
Great.
Coulson stumbles forward a little, apparently still stiff from their jump off the train. Good. Grant hopes he's really hurting.
"Is your phone working?" Coulson asks.
He pulls it out of the inner pocket of his jacket and gives it a try.
"No," he says. "Cybertek must have taken out our electronics."
Cut them off from each other, take out their communications…It's what Grant would do, if he were running the op. Divide and conquer's a classic for a reason.
It's a smart move—exactly what he'd expect from an op being run by Garrett—but right now Grant's wishing Cybertek were a little less effective. He's also wishing that he had managed to figure out a way to keep Jemma out of this op, but he forces himself to shove that aside. He's not going to get anything done if he keeps worrying about Jemma. He has to compartmentalize.
She's fine. She's with Fitz and Skye. They're her best friends; they'll have her back, just like she'll have theirs. They're all fine. Really.
Coulson pulls a handkerchief out of his pocket and uses it to pick up part of the grenade that was thrown at them. The grenade that somehow managed to make the entire train disappear right in front of their eyes.
"Not a grenade, exactly," Coulson comments, as if reading Grant's mind. "Might be some kind of cloaking mechanism." He brings it up close to his face, squinting at it.
"Maybe it…created some kind of portal?" Grant suggests. He's completely at a loss, here. "Jumped the train there."
"Ah, let's hope not," Coulson says. "I can't deal with Asgard today."
Frankly, Grant will deal with whoever it takes, as long as Jemma makes it out of this mostly unscathed. And Fitz and Skye, obviously. And May.
Coulson's welcome to get as hurt as he likes, though. I'll be with her the whole time Grant's ass.
…Okay, apparently his compartmentalization could use some work. He takes a deep breath and focuses on putting away his rage and his worry. It won't help him here. He needs to think like a specialist, not a soulmate. Preferably a specialist who doesn't have inside information on the enemy's movements. Speaking of which…
"Cybertek knew we were coming," he says. It's obvious, and he knew it was true going in, but it needs to be said. "How?"
"Could've been the Clairvoyant," Coulson says quietly.
Well, yeah.
Before he can think of a way to respond to that, they're distracted by the sound of approaching vehicles. Chances of them being driven by friendlies are very, very low, and they don't stick around to double check. They head off into the conveniently placed vineyard beside the tracks, trusting the overgrown plants to hide them from view.
They need to get back to the Bus, ASAP.
Of course, the problem with hiding in a vineyard is that everything looks the same. And with their phones down, they don't have access to SHIELD's all-purpose GPS positioning tech to help them find the nearest road. Hell, they don't even have Google Maps.
So they wander the rows for a while, looking for a way out, and Grant doesn't know about Coulson but he, personally, is feeling really pathetic. Seriously, getting lost in a vineyard? Somewhere, John Garrett is shaking his head in shame, and he doesn't know why.
Actually, he probably does. Grant would not put it past Garrett to have eyes on them right now. He still doesn't know what Garrett's endgame is with this trap—but thinking of that leads to thinking of Jemma, so he stops before he can get very far with that train of thought.
Damn it. What a stupid expression.
Grant's starting to consider desperate measures when they come across a truck, parked among the plants like it belongs there. It probably does—it's got a flat bed, probably good for harvesting things, likely in the large plastic crates stacked behind it.
"Keys might be in it," Coulson says—rather optimistically, Grant feels.
Grant just shakes his head.
"It's the country," Coulson defends, making for the truck. "People are very trusting in the country."
'Trusting' is one word for it—the keys aren't in the truck, but it is running. It's been hotwired. Who hotwires a vehicle and then leaves on foot? Pretty suspicious, as far as Grant's concerned, although, naturally, Coulson's more inclined to think of it as fortuitous.
They'll just have to take the chance that this is part of the trap; they need to get back to the Bus so they can work on tracking down the train.
x
The drive passes in silence. Luckily, the train didn't get very far from the station before they had to jump off it, so it doesn't take long to get back to the Bus. When they get there, they find the holocom in the briefing room flashing with an alert for an incoming emergency call, and Coulson wastes no time in accepting it.
Disappointingly, it's not one of the team. It is, in point of fact, no one that Grant recognizes. Coulson seems to, though, and listening to the conversation is enough for Grant to fill in the blanks.
This man—Russo—is Coulson's government contact, the one whose investigation the team took over. He says that Cybertek knew they were at the station and that most of his men are dead, but Grant has the feeling that Russo's in with Cybertek. There's no real reason for that feeling, nothing in the conversation to tip him off, it's just…a hunch.
Coulson promises to send the Bus' coordinates to Russo so he can join them and work on figuring this out, while Russo promises to put his people on looking for the train.
After disconnecting the call, Coulson says he'll call HQ, and gives Grant the piece of the grenade he picked up at the scene.
"You take this," Coulson says. "We need to figure out what the hell happened to that train."
Grant's glad for the excuse to get away from Coulson for a while—he can feel his temper fraying at the edges, the leash on his control of his rage just waiting to snap—and he gratefully takes the grenade fragment down to the lab.
Of course, being in the lab doesn't really help his temper—he spends a lot of time down here, keeping Jemma and Fitz company while they work, and it pisses him off to see it so silent and empty. But he's not angry for very long, because he's quickly distracted by his efforts to work the holotable.
He manages to turn it on easily enough—he's seen Jemma and Fitz do it a hundred times, he knows where the switch is. Unfortunately, that appears to be all that he's managed to pick up. He gets the various projections cleared off and the grenade in place, but then he stalls.
Before he can start trying anything—'anything' here meaning 'poking things at random in the hopes that it will make stuff happen'—Coulson enters the lab, bearing news. SHIELD pulled up satellite imagery, and apparently the train's gone. They're checking alternate routes.
What follows is something that Grant can never, ever, ever allow Fitz to find out about. Or Skye. Or Jemma, even, because she would definitely tell the others, and they would never let him live it down. Coulson has the protection of rank, but Grant would be a fair target, and no amount of extra push-ups or threatening stares would be enough to stop Skye and Fitz from mocking him forever.
So, no one can know about his and Coulson's pathetic attempts—and even more pathetic failures—to work the holotable. Ever.
"Let's just…upload the specs to HQ," Coulson suggests eventually.
"Good idea," Grant agrees. And if, in the process, he just so happens to accidentally erase the last five minutes from the lab's security feed…
Well, he's distracted. Who could blame him?
However, he doesn't get the chance to upload the specs or delete the footage, because it's at that moment that a car pulls up at the bottom of the ramp. He and Coulson exit the lab and approach the ramp as Russo gets out of the car.
"Agent Coulson!" the man calls, starting up the ramp. "It's going to be all right. We found your people. The train, it's, uh—"
He cuts off in the middle of his sentence, blood bubbling out of his mouth, and falls forward, revealing the knife buried in his back. May's standing at the bottom of the ramp, obviously the source of the knife, and she looks like she's been through hell and back.
She also looks like she'd like nothing better than to kill the both of them.
"Wheels up in five," she bites out.
"You okay?" Grant asks. It's a stupid question, but someone has to ask it, and Coulson's still stuck on May killing Russo. He demands an explanation, and May's got a hell of one.
"The train didn't disappear. Russo sold us out."
x
After they get the Bus in the air and May gets a shower, she fills in a few blanks for them. Apparently, the grenade didn't actually make the train vanish. Instead, it froze Grant and Coulson in some sort of suspended animation, where they appeared to be in perfect health but didn't react to any external stimuli. May, after getting shot off the train, found the two of them by the tracks, and left to get them transportation.
She's the one who hotwired the truck they found, but before she could come back for them, Russo's men captured her. She brushes over that part of the story, although judging from her condition it wasn't a pleasant experience. Instead, she tells them that Russo has been working with Cybertek, making sure their products get moved without interference from the authorities.
She also says that Russo was looking for Grant and Coulson, specifically. He apparently made no mention of Jemma, Fitz, and Skye. But is that because Cybertek isn't interested in them? Or because they already have them?
They'll find out soon enough—SHIELD contacts them while Coulson is stitching May up to inform them that the train has been found, stopped suddenly in the Italian countryside. Grant volunteers to set the coordinates, since things are looking weirdly intense between May and Coulson.
Also, he needs something to do. They'll reach the train within ten minutes, and he feels like he's about to crawl right out of his skin with his worry for Jemma.
He also takes the time to change out of his conductor's uniform and into his tac gear. It's possible that they'll find Jemma, Fitz, and Skye on the train and that will be the end of it, but it's not likely. After all, this was a trap, and as far as Grant can tell, it hasn't caught anything yet.
x
SHIELD is already on site when they reach the train, and the agent-in-charge (Santoro) is ready and waiting to give Grant an update. Apparently the train parked fifteen minutes ago, and the agents on the ground have no idea why. There are confused passengers milling about the scene, and Santoro says they're still taking account of them, matching names on tickets to faces, and running background checks on all of them to make sure none of them are connected to Cybertek.
He does say (apologetically, and with a wince that suggests Grant's reputation has preceded him) that there's no sign of Jemma, Fitz, or Skye on the train. Grant manages to keep his tone mostly calm as he thanks Santoro for his time and excuses himself, but he's fighting to keep his grip on his anger as he walks away to join May and Coulson, standing off to the side.
They're fine. Jemma ran right past Mancini and his men, and they didn't even twitch towards her. There's no reason to believe they'd go after her.
Except this was a goddamn trap, which Garrett went out of his way to give Grant a chance to keep Jemma out of. Something Grant entirely failed at.
He shoves his rage down, again, and fills Coulson and May in. He's just finished saying that there's no sign of the missing members of their team when Coulson stops in his tracks, staring up at the train. Then he starts moving again, hurrying to board the train without offering an explanation.
Once they've boarded the train, Coulson indicates the luggage car. The door is closed, and if Santoro and his agents failed to check this car after being specifically told that it was Jemma, Fitz, and Skye's last known location, Grant is going to have words with the man.
Grant leads the way in with his gun drawn, May and Coulson right behind him. The car is silent, no sign of anyone, and there's something a lot like panic starting to build in Grant's chest, because if Jemma's not here, he has no idea where she could be—they have literally no other leads.
His panic is not helped by the discovery of the laptops set up on a table near the window, screens pierced by multiple bullet holes.
Grant is starting to give serious thought to shooting Coulson in the face for his part in this debacle when he's distracted by a clatter. Jemma pops up out of nowhere—was she on the ground? Why?—shouting and shooting the night-night pistol.
The three of them dive for cover.
"Simmons!" Coulson yells. Grant's still trying to find his voice, as the panic and rage twisting in his chest have suddenly been replaced by pure relief. "Stop!"
Jemma lowers the night-night pistol, breathing hard and spinning in place. She's obviously completely confused, and Grant has a feeling she's been under the effects of one of those grenades, too.
He holsters his gun and moves past May and Coulson to stand in front of Jemma. Her eyes flick over him briefly, obviously searching for injury, and then she reaches out and grabs his arm.
"Grant," she says, still slightly out of breath, and it's got to be hurting her ribs to wheeze like that. "Where are Fitz and Skye?"
"We don't know," he admits, after glancing at the ground behind her—because it would be really embarrassing to miss more than one person hiding there.
He puts his hands on her shoulders, in lieu of a hug, since between the tac vest he's wearing and her bruised ribs, it would only hurt her. What he really wants to do is drag her off this train and back to the Bus, then lock her in the Cage where she'll be safe, but he pushes the urge away.
"Jemma," he says. "What happened? Are you hurt?"
"No," she says. "No, I don't think so. As to what happened…" She looks around, obviously at a loss. "I have no idea. I came to the luggage car, like you said, and there was a man with a grenade, and I—and then he and Fitz and Skye were gone and you were here."
That's pretty much what he expected.
"Yeah, we got hit with one of those, too," he tells her. "Doesn't seem to cause any damage, just puts you in some kind of frozen state for a bit. You wake up and it's like no time has passed at all."
It's a measure of how worried Jemma is for Fitz and Skye that she doesn't express even the slightest interest in how the grenade might have worked. Normally she'd be all over it, asking them questions about their experiences to compare it to hers, questioning May on her outside perspective, theorizing possible methods of achieving such an effect…
But no. Not a word. He doesn't like it at all. He understands it, of course. But he doesn't like it.
"There's nothing more we can do here," Coulson says after a long pause. "Let's head back to the Bus."
There's a comment on the tip of Grant's tongue, a very rude, very insubordinate comment about Coulson's tendency to leave when things get difficult, but he swallows it down.
He should've known to expect it. Didn't he warn Jemma about it, just a few weeks ago? That Coulson, after giving up so completely, begging to die while he was in Centipede's hands, would be feeling the need to prove his strength to himself? Grant should've expected that Coulson would make his own move instead of just sitting tight and trusting his team when things went wrong.
It still pisses him off that Coulson went and left Jemma alone, but with her standing right in front of him, alive and well, he's a little more willing to forgive it. (Not forget it, though. He won't be trusting Coulson with anything anytime soon.)
On the way back to the Bus, they fill Jemma in on what she's missed. Every word increases her worry for Fitz and Skye, and by the time they pull into the cargo bay, she's digging her nails into Grant's hand hard enough to make him wince.
Not hard enough to make him pull away, though. There's still a little bit of lingering panic and rage in him, after those hours of not knowing where she was or if she was okay, and keeping her close is the best way to shake off those remnants.
Jemma grimaces a little as she gets out of the car, and he has the feeling that she's more than overdone it today.
"You okay?" he asks.
"Yes, I'm fine," she says with a distracted little smile. He can tell she's still worrying about Skye and Fitz. After a moment, though, she focuses on him, frowning. "What about you? Did your arm ever get seen to?"
…No. Actually, in all of the chaos, he forgot at all about it.
Jemma seems to read the truth on his face, because she sighs.
"Come on, then," she says, taking his hand and pulling him in the direction of the lab. "Let me take a look."
Coulson and May follow them, presumably to strategize—they really have no clue what the next step is—and they've barely set foot in the lab when one of the computers starts beeping wildly, a map appearing on the screen. Jemma hurries over to it, still holding his hand, and he allows himself to be tugged along behind her.
"What is it, Simmons?" Coulson asks.
"It's the tracker," Jemma says, typing with her free hand. "It's just been activated."
May and Coulson look to Grant.
"I never had time to place the tracker," he says. "It got smashed when we jumped off the train."
"Fitz has a spare," Jemma tells them, still typing. "He's letting us know where he and Skye are!"
Grant exchanges looks with May and Coulson. His working theory was that Cybertek captured Fitz and Skye, leaving Jemma behind on Garrett's orders, and he can tell by the looks on their faces that they were thinking the same—minus the Jemma part, obviously. But if Fitz has activated the tracker, it means he's probably not in custody; Cybertek's not sloppy enough to leave a genius engineer and a first-class hacker unsupervised.
"If they saw Cybertek leaving the train with the package," May says slowly.
"They might have followed," Coulson finishes. "Trying to get to Quinn."
"So if they activated the tracker," Grant muses. "Is it because they found him? Or because they got into trouble?"
"Either way, we need to find them," Coulson says. "Fast. Simmons?"
"Triangulating now," she says. "And…there! Found them."
May moves closer to check the map.
"That's nearly twenty miles from here," she points out, frowning just a little. "Faster to fly."
"Better get moving, then," Coulson says.
"Wheels up in three," she tells them, then leaves the lab at a run.
"Simmons," Coulson starts, but Jemma shakes her head sharply.
"They may need medical attention, sir," she says. "I'm coming with you."
Grant squashes his immediate urge to protest. Frankly, he'd just as soon have her with them; they're going to have to land fairly close to wherever Fitz and Skye are, and there's no telling what kind of security the place might have. The last thing they need is to leave Jemma alone on the Bus, only to have it stormed by Centipede soldiers.
Not that the rest of the team knows for certain that Centipede is involved, here. And Grant still has no idea what Garrett's aim is. Aside from a theory that he's trying to injure one of the team, but even that's just based on guesswork—and, even if he's right, it still leaves a lot of questions. Like who and why, for example.
"You're right," Coulson sighs. "But stick close to us, okay?"
"Yes, sir," Jemma nods, then turns to look at Grant. "Now, let me see your arm."
"Jemma—"
"Just a quick peek," she insists. "You don't want to bleed out in the middle of the rescue operation, do you?"
He's pretty sure that the wound isn't that bad; when he changed into his tac gear earlier, it wasn't even bleeding anymore. But Jemma's looking slightly frantic around the eyes, obviously worrying about Fitz and Skye and what they're going to find when they reach the tracker, and he doesn't mind serving as a distraction.
So he tugs up his sleeve and lets her fuss. As expected, it's not too bad. It doesn't even need stitches. Jemma cleans it and puts some butterfly bandages on it, then pronounces herself satisfied.
"What about you?" he asks as he rolls down his sleeve.
"What do you mean?" she asks, pausing in the act of closing the first aid kit.
"I mean you look like you're hurting," he says. "You wanna take something for your ribs?"
She sighs and leans against him.
"I am hurting," she admits. "More than a little, honestly. I don't think paracetamol will do much good right now."
That's a hell of an admission, from Jemma. She must be in even more pain than he thought, and once again he has to quash the urge to ask her to stay on the Bus, instead of coming with them. He reminds himself that there's no guarantee the Bus will be safe and shoves aside his worry.
"It's all right," she says, squeezing his arm. "Once we've found Fitz and Skye, and we're all safely back on the Bus, I'll take some fentanyl."
Fentanyl's the narcotic painkiller she doesn't like, the one she resists taking because it makes thinking difficult. She's seriously hurting if she's going to take it without any prodding from him, and he wonders if something happened that she didn't tell him about. After all, he got hit with one of those grenades, too, and it didn't do any damage.
Before he can ask, though, the Bus starts to descend. It's a vertical landing, so it only takes a few seconds, and Coulson walks into the lab before the Bus has even finished settling.
"If Quinn's there, we need to capture him alive," he says. "Simmons, do we have any more night-night guns?"
"Of course," Jemma says, moving away from Grant to open a cabinet on the other side of the room. "We've three more."
"Great," Coulson says. "You still got the one you shot at us with?"
"I do," she confirms, entirely unashamed.
"Good. Ward, you take two. I'll take the other."
"Yes, sir," Grant says, accepting two of the guns from Jemma. He'd prefer real guns—shooting someone with the night-night pistols just isn't as satisfying, and he's got some pent-up emotion to work out—but Coulson's right. They need Quinn alive.
"Okay," Coulson says, taking the other gun from Jemma as May appears in the cargo bay. "Let's move."
x
It's only a three minute drive from the field they landed in to the tracker's location. The signal leads them to a large manor house, surrounded by trees, and Grant takes point as they close in on the signal.
He rounds a corner to see a man pointing a gun at Fitz, and shoots the guy with a night-night gun before either one of them realize he's there. Fitz stares at Grant blankly for a moment, like he can't process Grant's presence, as the rest of the team joins them.
"Where's Skye?" Coulson asks, as Jemma runs forward to hug Fitz.
"S-she, uh, she didn't wanna let Quinn get away," Fitz stammers, pointing at the house.
Coulson gives Grant the nod and, after a brief glance at Jemma, he circles around to the front of the house while Coulson goes in the side. The double front doors are large, but apparently not very thick; Grant can hear the murmur of conversation through them. He draws the other night-night gun, holds both at the ready, and slams his way into the house.
Quinn's in the entry hall, along with a whole crowd of bodyguards. Poorly trained bodyguards, apparently, because even with the element of surprise, there's no way Grant should be able to take them all out before any of them even have a chance to draw their weapons. And yet, that's exactly what happens.
Quinn tries to run, but he barely makes it into the next room before Coulson's there. He holds a gun to Quinn's head and drags him back into the entry hall, slamming him facedown onto a table—either to make cuffing Quinn easier or just because he's in a bad mood.
Quinn tries to catch himself against the table, revealing the blood spatter on his right hand, and Coulson pulls him right back up again, shoving a real gun under Quinn's chin.
"Where's Skye?" he demands.
Jemma and Fitz are walking in as Coulson asks, and they both pause, waiting to hear the answer.
"You know, Agent Coulson," Quinn chuckles, oddly smug for someone with a gun pressed to his jaw. "It's dangerous…to keep sending her in like that, all alone. When she means so much to you."
Coulson rears back and pistol-whips the guy, which Grant can't say he saw coming, and they drop Quinn back to the table.
"Search the house," Coulson orders. "Find her! Now!"
Jemma and Fitz go up the stairs, and Grant hesitates for a moment. Splitting up is the quickest way to search the whole house, but…
Jemma and Fitz both have night-night guns. They'll be fine. He shoves his worry away and follows Coulson further into the house.
They split up at another staircase, Coulson heading into the basement while Grant sticks with the first floor, and it's only a few minutes later that he hears Coulson start yelling for Jemma.
Shit. That's not a good sign.
He races back to the basement stairs to find Jemma already hurrying down them—how did she get down here so fast? There must be another staircase somewhere—with Fitz and May on her heels. He takes the lead as they reach the basement, gun at the ready in case Coulson's found more trouble than just Skye.
Skye is the only trouble, though. She's soaked in blood, cradled in Coulson's arms, and Coulson offers the completely obvious information that she's been shot as Jemma kneels to look at her.
"Keep her upright," she orders.
"I've got no pulse," Coulson says as Jemma looks Skye over.
"Uh, she's lost too much blood," Jemma says frantically. "I don't…" She trails off, looking at the strange tube at the other end of the room. "Put her in there!"
"Do you even know what this thing is?" Grant can't help but ask, because really, what the hell is it? It looks like something out of a sci-fi movie, and he's a little worried that if they put Skye in there she's going to come out brainwashed.
"It's a hyperbaric chamber and I said put her in there," Jemma snaps. "Now."
So they do. Once Skye is in the bed—the covers are rumpled, he notes absently, so someone's been in this thing already; who?—Jemma and Fitz fuss with the controls on the side while Coulson and May close the chamber. Grant stands by, entirely useless, and watches Jemma.
"Temperature's dropping," Fitz says.
"Pressure's stabilizing," Jemma adds.
The two of them move away from the controls, closer to the head of the chamber. Skye is still and pale, looking a little too much like a corpse for Grant's taste.
"Is it working?" May asks, slightly frantic.
Jemma doesn't answer.
"Is it working?" Coulson shouts.
As if in answer, Skye exhales, fogging the glass slightly. Jemma lets out an unsteady breath of her own, finally looking away from Skye to make eye contact with Coulson.
"For now," she says. There are tears in her eyes, and she takes a moment to compose herself before continuing. "We need to get her to the Bus."
"I'll get the car," May says, and books it out of the room.
Grant, Fitz, and Coulson carry the hyperbaric chamber out of the basement and up the stairs, while Jemma hovers worriedly behind them. Grant can't help glancing down at Skye every few seconds. Her breathing is shallow, and she continues to be worryingly still. The blood on her face stands out starkly, with how pale she is, and Grant is trying very hard not to look at the wounds on her stomach.
This is bad.
May's got the SUV waiting when they finally get the chamber out of the basement, and they fold down the back two rows of seats to fit it in. Of course, that leaves them without room to sit, and there's still Quinn to consider.
Grant looks to Coulson for orders, but he's silent, standing uselessly beside the SUV. Okay, fine. He exchanges a look with May, who nods and heads into the house, then looks at Jemma.
"Jemma," he says. "You remember where we landed?"
She tears her eyes away from the chamber. "Yes, of course."
"Okay," he says. "You and Fitz take the SUV, get back to the Bus. We'll grab Quinn and commandeer one of these vehicles."
"Right," Jemma nods. "Of course. Come on, Fitz."
"Take that one," Fitz advises, motioning to the car at the far end of the drive as Jemma closes up the back of the SUV. "I disabled all the others."
"Got it," Grant says.
He waits until Jemma and Fitz drive off, then turns to Coulson. May's already on her way out of the house, dragging Quinn behind her, and it takes a few seconds to nudge Coulson into moving.
"We have to get back to the Bus," Grant tells him, a little sharply. Coulson doesn't seem to notice his tone, or that he left off the sir; he just nods and follows Grant over to the car Fitz indicated earlier.
Grant sits in the back with Quinn, mostly because he doesn't trust Coulson not to shoot the guy. Of course, he's plenty tempted, himself, but he's got a little more experience controlling homicidal urges than Coulson does.
The decision to land the Bus so close to the house was a good one, even if it was, tactically, a risk. It only takes them a few minutes to reach the Bus, and they find Jemma and Fitz in the cargo bay, the back of the SUV open.
Jemma directs them to carry the chamber into the lab, and they do so as May drags Quinn upstairs. Either to the Cage or to beat the shit out of him—possibly both, but probably the former, since the takeoff warning chimes very soon after she goes.
Once the hyperbaric chamber is settled, Grant goes back into the cargo bay to close up the SUV and lift the ramp. As soon as it passes the halfway point, the Bus takes off, and May's only a few steps behind him in reentering the lab.
No one's wasting time, here.
The team waits in silence as Jemma and Fitz set up various pieces of equipment around the chamber. Jemma is very clearly in charge, giving Fitz quiet orders, and Grant's eyes are drawn repeatedly to the blood on her hands.
What a mess.
Eventually, Jemma seems satisfied with the set up, and she gives them her report.
"Her core temperature's hovering around forty-four degrees Fahrenheit," she says, voice quiet but steady. "If we don't bring her back up to temp in the next few hours, she could sustain permanent brain damage." She takes a deep breath. "We need to get her to a medical facility, and fast. Until then, I'll do everything I can to keep her alive."
She nods slightly, then excuses herself quietly. She walks out of the lab, back into the storage area, and Grant doesn't follow right away. He needs a minute, himself. So he leans back against the glass wall separating the lab from the cargo bay, trying to think, as Fitz excuses himself and follows after Jemma.
It's no use, though. All he can think of is the blood on Jemma's hands, Skye's shallow breathing, and the hours he spent today in a panic. Giving up on thinking, he pushes away from the wall and crosses the lab to where the first aid kit still sits on a table, grabbing the bottle of fentanyl out of it. Chances are, Jemma will refuse to take it with Skye in this condition, but he has to at least try.
He's going to at least insist that she ice her ribs, so he grabs one of the chemically activated ice packs out of the kit as well. Then he heads back into the storage area, tucking both items into his vest.
He can hear Jemma crying as soon as he leaves the lab, and takes a moment to push down the feelings the sound evokes in him. Then he follows it to one of the storage closets, where he finds Jemma sobbing into Fitz's shoulder. Fitz is looking fairly near tears himself, and Grant makes a mental note to keep an eye on him. He has to be feeling guilty about letting Skye go into the house alone, and it might lead him to do something reckless.
He leaves them be for a moment while he takes off his vest and drops it on one of the shelves. Then he claps Fitz on the shoulder, squeezing just hard enough to get his attention. When Fitz looks up at him, Grant raises an eyebrow, a silent 'you good?' that earns him an unconvincing nod.
He lets it go, for now, and rests his hand on Jemma's back. It takes a few seconds, but eventually she pulls away from Fitz and turns to him, clinging to him just as hard as she was clinging to Fitz. She doesn't pause at all in her sobbing.
Fitz gives him a grateful nod and all but flees the closet, obviously needing a moment to regain his composure.
He still wants Jemma to take something for her ribs, but she needs to calm down first. So he holds her, stroking her hair and letting her cry it out, the same way he does when she has a nightmare. He finds that it's easier to think, with Jemma in his arms, and he can't help the way his mind wanders back to Skye.
This is bad. Even if Jemma's quick thinking, getting Skye in that hyperbaric chamber, keeps her alive long enough to reach a hospital…
Grant's seen a lot of gunshot wounds in his day. He doesn't know that even a full trauma team will be able to do anything for Skye. Chances are, she'll be dead before dawn.
Was this Garrett's plan? Is this what the trap was for? To kill Skye? But why? Skye's not a threat to Centipede, not really. Not any more than the rest of the team is, at least. What does killing her accomplish, other than hurting the team?
Wait.
That's it. Skye is a valuable member of their team, but she's undoubtedly Coulson's favorite. His pet project, even. Coulson won't be willing to let her die, not if there's a way he can stop it. And he can stop it. Something brought Coulson back to life, and he's not saying what. Grant's mission was to gain his trust enough to be let it on the secret, but, four months later—although he's fairly certain he does have that trust—Coulson's still not talking. So Garrett's forced the issue.
When the doctors give up on Skye, as they almost certainly will, Coulson will take her straight to whichever doctor or medicine brought him back to life. He'll bring the whole team along, and Grant will finally discover the secret that might save Garrett's life.
Grant doesn't want Skye to die. He started off hating her, true, and then moved to tolerating her for Jemma's sake, but things have changed. She still gets on his nerves more often than not, and she needles him endlessly, but at this point, she's kind of like the sister he never had (or wanted). He doesn't want her permanently dead.
But if she dies just briefly, just long enough for Coulson to reveal the secret of his survival in order to bring her back, isn't it worth it? Garrett is worsening, he has to be. It's the only explanation for the way things have been escalating, the traps he's been setting.
Skye is barely clinging to life right now. And even if she fully recovers, the trauma of this experience is going to linger. But…to save Garrett's life, isn't it worth it?
A/N: Okay, I know that the bit everyone was looking forward to-namely, Grant finding out that Jemma threw herself on a grenade-didn't happen here, but don't fret! I will absolutely be addressing that. It just didn't really fit into the flow of this chapter; after all, Jemma knows exactly what Grant's going to think of that behavior, so she's hardly going to tell him about it, is she? Unluckily for her, there were witnesses.
So don't worry. It's coming.