A/N: First, thanks so much for all of the comments and kudos. They mean a lot.
Second, I'm sorry this took so long! This chapter was like pulling teeth, I swear. I'm still not entirely happy with it, but I figured I've left you waiting long enough, so...
Third, this chapter makes reference to two of the side-stories: i'll be right here now (to hold you when the sky falls down) and we're arm in arm (as we sing away), to be precise. So if you haven't already read them, you might want to do that now.
Fourth, there are very vague references to torture in this chapter. Nothing graphic or even mildly descriptive, but it was suggested that a heads-up might be appreciated, so. Heads up!
I think that's it. Thanks for reading and, as always, please be gentle if you review!
The first thing Grant does after shooting Victoria Hand is uncuff Garrett. The next thing he does is alter their course.
They'll have to deal with the Fridge at some point, but this isn't the time. It's the most secure of SHIELD's facilities; two men with minimal weaponry won't be able to bring it down, no matter how good their training. To tackle the Fridge, they'll need heavy munitions and at least one back-up team. It'll have to wait.
Instead, he sets course for Havana, Cuba. They have a secondary base there, a hideaway Garrett established years ago. It's underneath a barber shop, which honestly is a little more like a spy novel than Grant typically likes to operate, but it works. The owner of the barber shop, a man named Ernesto, is fiercely loyal to Garrett and won't be spilling his secrets anytime soon, which is all that really matters.
It's a long flight to Cuba, and aside from a brief stop on an unnamed, uncharted island to drop Hand, Jacobson, and Chaimson's bodies, there's not much to do on it. Garrett tells stories, reminiscing about his days as a SHIELD agent, but Grant's heard them all before, so he pretty much just tunes them out.
He tries not to think about Jemma. He mostly fails.
x
Ernesto is overjoyed to see them. He greets them in cheerful Spanish, offers a shave or a haircut, and, when they decline, solemnly promises that no one has been in the basement since Garrett's last visit. They leave him to help the customer waiting and continue downstairs.
"First things first," Garrett says, once they've personally assured that no one else is in the basement. It's not that they distrust Ernesto, exactly. It's just that no specialist makes it past their first six months in action by taking things on faith. "We need back-up."
"Will HYDRA send us reinforcements?" Grant asks, leaning back against a table. "We haven't exactly toed the line."
"We've gone off-script a few times, true," Garrett admits. "But HYDRA's in chaos right now, and we still want the same things. The success of the Deathlok project, the fall of SHIELD, the truth and the light, yada yada yada."
He plays with the sat phone for a moment.
"We need to raid the Fridge," he continues. "It's full of weapons, supplies, and some handy distractions for what's left of SHIELD. But the Fridge is the most secure SHIELD facility. It won't go down easy."
"We need to raid the Fridge to get supplies," Grant says. "But we need supplies to raid the Fridge."
"Exactly," Garrett says, pointing at him. "Pop quiz time, Grant. What do we do next?"
"Hit a secondary target," he says at once. It's the obvious solution. "Something well-stocked but with less security. Like…the Cube."
"Good answer," Garrett praises. "I'll call HYDRA, send a team to hit the Cube. What should their objectives be?"
Garrett's already got a plan in mind. Hell, it's probably already in play. This is a test for Grant, to make sure that his skills are still sharp and that they're still on the same wavelength. It's an old habit of Garrett's, to test Grant like this whenever they're reunited after working apart for any significant amount of time. It's long since stopped irritating him.
"Primary objective is to take control of the Cube," he says. "Secure it for future use—by us or, more likely, HYDRA. It's one less base in SHIELD's hands, makes them that much weaker. Secondary objective is to gain supplies: munitions and transport, mainly."
"Is that all?" Garrett asks, raising his eyebrows.
The answer is clearly no, so Grant thinks quickly. What else? They need to hit the Cube in order to enable them to raid the Fridge. It stands to reason that Garrett already has a clear plan for how to raid the Fridge, and that it requires something specific from the Cube in order to work.
The fact that the Fridge knows to expect Garrett as a prisoner means that they might be able to just walk in through the front door. But Victoria Hand was a paranoid control freak, and there's a chance she put extra security measures in place before she died. Some new pass phrase or procedure, which they have no way of finding out about, with her dead.
They might be able to just walk in. If not, they're going to need a strategy. A full-frontal assault is possible, but unlikely to be effective. Even if it is, it won't be quick and it won't be easy. The Fridge has top-notch security. Their best bet is to get a man inside who can disable security and let the rest of the assault team—assuming that they can get reinforcements from HYDRA—in.
Grant could disable the security easily, but he'll need to get inside first. If they won't just let him in—if there are new security measures in place—he'll need a way to compel the guards to break protocol and let him inside without the proper passphrase or credentials or whatever. Blackmail, extortion, and coercion are all out—they require previous knowledge of the guards, and there's no way, with SHIELD in its current condition, to find out who's even stationed at the Fridge right now, let alone the guard roster.
Which means…
"A helicopter," he says. "Secondary objective is to gain control of a helicopter with heavy firepower. Tertiary objective is to gather whatever other munitions and transports are available."
"A helicopter," Garrett muses. "Now why would we need one of those?"
"Insurance," Grant says. "If we can't get into the Fridge by asking nicely, we can trick them into letting us in by staging a HYDRA attack. Have a helicopter make a couple circuits around the roof, firing on us, and the guards will let us in. Saving the life of a fellow agent trumps protocol."
Garrett grins. "Couldn't have come up with better myself. Good work, son. We'll call in HYDRA, send a team to attack the Cube—with orders to gain control and steal a helicopter."
"You want me to lead the attack?" Grant asks.
"No, I've got another assignment for you," Garrett says. "You'll need a team at your back, too, but it's nothing as challenging as the Cube."
Grant eyes him, considering. What else do they need? He looks around their underground base, taking in all of the changes that have been made since his last visit. To say there are a lot would be putting it mildly. The last time he was here, nearly four years ago, this was essentially a safehouse. It had a stockpile of provisions, weapons, clothes, currency, and several different false IDs for both of them, and that was it.
Now, however…
The underground base has been sectioned off into several different rooms. In this one, the main part of the base, there are numerous tables and accompanying chairs. In the next room, which he can see from his position, there are computers and monitors and several pieces of equipment similar to what he's seen in the Bus' lab.
The base has been remodeled to accommodate a much larger presence, and while it's true they'll need space and storage if they're getting reinforcements from HYDRA…this looks less like a military base and more like a laboratory.
He looks back to Garrett, who raises his eyebrows expectantly.
The main goal of Centipede was always to find a way to save Garrett's life. The super soldier program was always secondary—just a way to keep HYDRA on board and funding their efforts. But Garrett's had the GH-325—the means to save his life—for more than a month, now. And not only has he not taken it, he's obviously set up their base to allow him to study it further.
Which means he intends to continue the Centipede project—to continue his attempts to create indestructible super soldiers to serve HYDRA.
So, what do they need? What will Centipede require—require enough that Grant isn't being sent to the Cube to acquire the tools they'll need to take down the Fridge?
Manpower.
If Garrett is aiming to continue the Centipede project, he's going to need scientists and technicians and test subjects. More importantly, he's going to need someone to run them, because there's no way he has the patience to do it himself.
"Raina," he says. "You want me to break her out of whichever containment facility she's being held in."
"Gold star!" Garrett exclaims, clapping his hands together. "I guess Coulson hasn't managed to ruin you, after all."
"No, sir," Grant agrees. Usually he'd be insulted by the suggestion, but…he's not.
"Suit up, son," Garrett orders. "I'll get on the horn to HYDRA."
"Yes, sir."
x
Eleven hours later, Grant leads a HYDRA strike team against the containment facility where Raina is being held. Security is minimal, and it takes less than five minutes to reach Raina's cell—even with the occasional stop to cross off the guards he encounters.
The guard just down the hall from Raina's cell is helpfully equipped with the keys to it, so once he's shot him, Grant takes them and uses them to unlock the door. Raina is sitting on her bed, waiting patiently, but when he opens the door she gets to her feet.
"What are you doing here?" she demands.
He enters the cell, ignoring the way she backs towards the wall, and drops the backpack he's carrying onto the sink so he can open it. Garrett sent a gift with him for Raina; partially in appreciation of all the hard work she did before being captured, and partially to serve as reassurance, since she doesn't actually know that Grant works for Centipede.
He takes the box out of his backpack and approaches Raina, who's pressed against the wall and watching him warily. Seeing that she's not about to make a move to take the gift from him, he pulls off the lid so she can see the contents. She stares at it for a beat, then looks up at him with wide eyes.
"A gift from the Clairvoyant," he says.
Raina exhales and finally moves away from the wall, reaching forward to pull the dress (decorated with flowers, of course, and Grant has no idea where Garrett found it) out of the box. She holds it up, smiling to herself, and then presses it to her chest and examines the length of it.
"It's perfect," she whispers.
Then she looks away from the dress to raise her eyebrows at him expectantly. Obviously, she intends to change into it before leaving, and she's waiting for him to turn around. He has exactly zero interest in seeing her naked, but it's a very stupid man who gives his back to a woman like Raina. Luckily, he has a third option.
"I'll be in the hall," he says flatly. "You have three minutes."
She gives him a slightly unsettling smile. "That's all I need."
He grabs his backpack and his gun from the sink and then ducks out into the hallway. He's only been waiting for thirty seconds when one of the HYDRA agents approaches from the other end of the hall.
"Facility's clear, sir," the man says.
"Good," he says. "Wipe the security feed, then hit the self-destruct. You'll have ten minutes to clear out."
"Yes, sir." The HYDRA agent salutes him, then pauses. "What about the rest of the prisoners, sir?"
"Let them out," Grant orders. "No reason to make it obvious who our target was."
"Understood, sir."
Raina exits her cell as the HYDRA agent walks away. In addition to the dress Garrett bought for her, she's wearing stockings and heels that he's pretty sure weren't in the box. She catches him looking and gives him another one of her unsettling smiles.
"I have my ways," she says.
"Right," he says. As weird as that is, he doesn't actually care all that much. "Come on."
He leads the way out of the facility and to the small transport parked just outside the perimeter. The HYDRA agents will be returning to their usual base, rather than accompanying him to Havana. HYDRA did hand full control of a fair-sized unit to Garrett, but those agents are currently attacking the Cube. The strike team here in Arizona with him was a one-time-only loan, and is therefore no longer Grant's problem.
Raina is quiet the whole way to the transport. She keeps her head tipped back and her eyes closed—presumably enjoying the sunshine after several months spent locked in a cell—but her steps never falter. Not until they reach the transport, and she sees the blood staining the floor between the seats.
It's Hand's blood, of course. He's had plenty of time to clean it, but never the inclination.
Raina stares at the bloodstain for a long moment, presumably contemplating the possibility that this is all a trap, and then steps daintily over it.
"Where are we going?" she asks, settling into a seat.
"To meet the Clairvoyant," he says, and continues on into the cockpit.
He gets them off the ground and sets their course for Havana, then hesitates. Does he really want to go join Raina in the back? On the one hand, he's really not in the mood for conversation. On the other, he finished his book on the flight over, and the last thing he wants right now is to be left alone with his thoughts.
To the back it is, then.
"It'll be about ten hours," he informs Raina as he sits down across from her.
She folds her hands on her knee and smiles pleasantly at him. There's something more than a little unnerving about this woman, and, not for the first time, Grant seriously wonders about Garrett's taste in employees.
"Ten hours," Raina says. "And then we'll see the Clairvoyant?"
"That's right," he says.
She tilts her head thoughtfully. "Have you been working for him for very long, Agent Ward?"
"Longer than you have. Why?"
"Just curious," she says, with another pleasant smile. "I had no idea."
The way she keeps smiling at him is a little disquieting. "I was undercover."
"You helped rescue Agent Coulson," she reminds him. "Before I could get the answers we needed from him."
"I was undercover," he repeats. "I had to act as an Agent of SHIELD, not a Centipede asset."
"That must have been very difficult," she muses.
She's definitely trying to work him—trying to get inside his head and see what makes him tick. He knows, from Coulson's report, that she managed to talk him into getting into that memory machine of his own free will. That had to have been difficult. Raina's an accomplished manipulator, and while Grant doesn't doubt his own skills…
He's far off his game at the moment. His struggle with his emotions regarding Jemma and everything that's happened this week has him off balance. It took him way too long to realize what Raina's up to, and he can't guarantee that he won't give her anything if he allows this conversation to continue.
"Not really," he shrugs, and stands. "The Clairvoyant's got a lot of work waiting for you. You might wanna get some sleep."
"Maybe," Raina agrees.
He can feel her eyes on him as he retreats to the cockpit, and it sends a chill up his spine. That woman is seriously creepy.
He settles into the pilot's seat, but doesn't bother to disengage the autopilot. He doesn't mind piloting—actually enjoys it, sometimes—but it will be a very long, very dull flight to Havana, and there's no reason to subject himself to that when he doesn't have to.
Honestly, he should probably take his own advice. They'll be raiding the Fridge just as soon as they have what they need from the attack on the Cube—assuming that that team is successful—and he hasn't had any real sleep in days. He slept a little on the flight to Havana, after what happened at the Hub, but aside from that…
He pushes away the memory of the last decent sleep he got—in his bunk on the Bus, with Jemma draped over him—forcefully. He can't afford to linger on that. He can't afford to linger on her. He has a job to do, and that's that.
What he should be focusing on is what's coming next, not what he's left behind. And what's coming next is an assault on SHIELD's most secure facility. He needs some rest.
He's not crazy about the idea of sleeping when he's got a woman he barely knows—and definitely doesn't trust—right in the next compartment, but it can't be helped. In any case, he's confident in his ability to take her if she makes a move against him.
And, logically speaking, she probably won't. After all, she wants to meet the Clairvoyant, and he's taking her to him. Without Grant, all she'll have to go on is the location programmed into the autopilot—and Havana's not a small city.
She won't make a move. And if she does, he can take her. He's got nothing to worry about.
Grant crosses his arms, leans back in his seat, and falls into a light doze.
x
He wakes just in time to land the transport—one thing the autopilot can't manage, hence the handy alert built into the system—at an airfield just outside the city. It's a very small airfield, which makes it lucky that he's flying such a small transport. The Bus wouldn't have been able to fit.
He doesn't know whether or not Raina slept on the flight, but the hours seem to have eliminated her urge to converse with him. She's silent as she follows him off the transport and to the car he's got waiting.
She's quiet and still on the drive to Ernesto's, but he can practically see her anticipation building. She honestly believes that Garrett is psychic, and she's very anxious to meet him. He wonders how she'll take the truth. If she takes it badly, they might be in trouble—crossing her off won't be a problem, but replacing her will. There's a reason that Grant was sent to break her out of the containment facility instead of just recruiting a new head for the Centipede project.
Raina's the best person for the job. It would be both difficult and inconvenient to replace her. So he hopes she takes the truth well.
The project really can't afford any more delays.
x
Raina takes the news of Garrett's deception fairly well. She's angry, at first—she actually calls Garrett a fraud right to his face, which is impressively gutsy—but her anger fades in favor of resigned acceptance soon enough.
Garrett gets a kick out of the barber chair lowering slowly into the basement, so he sends Raina down that way and follows, but it's all a little too cliché for Grant, so he takes the stairs.
When he reaches the basement, he finds Raina wandering around, exploring the base, while Garrett waits for him at a table covered in blueprints.
"Heard from Kaminsky and his crew while you were gone," Garrett tells him. "They're on their way."
Grant examines the blueprints, taking in the notes scribbled in the margins, and then looks up at Garrett.
"You have a plan, sir?"
"Oh, I've got a thought or two," he grins. "Let's see if you can do any better."
x
They're doing a final run-through of their plan to storm the Fridge when the phone Grant took from Hand—which they've been using to communicate with HYDRA—begins to ring. He picks it up and checks the display.
"It's Coulson," he tells Garrett.
"By all means," Garrett invites.
He steps away from the table and takes a moment to center himself, falling back into the persona of Grant Ward, Agent of SHIELD. Then he answers the phone.
"Sir? Is everything all right?"
"Well, that was going to be my question," Jemma says, voice light and teasing. "Minus the sir, of course."
For a moment, he can't breathe. All of the emotions he's spent the past three days shutting down threaten to surface. He pushes them back down forcefully.
"Jemma," he says, flicking a significant glance at Garrett, who straightens from his position leaning over the blueprints. "Is everything okay?"
"We're fine," she promises. "But Coulson asked me to let you know that Grant Ward no longer exists."
He pauses, briefly thrown. The only meaning for that he can think of is that his cover has been blown, but there's no way Jemma would sound so calm and so pleasant if she knew the truth about him, so…
"Sorry?" he asks, as Garrett wanders away to sit down.
"Skye's in the process of wiping all of our identities," Jemma expands. He can hear the smile in her voice, but underneath it, she sounds tired. "We've all been named terrorists, you know, and an American colonel was sent to take control of the Hub. We managed to escape before he arrived, but Coulson wants us all off the grid."
"Makes sense," he says, and it does. It's kind of overkill, in his opinion, but Coulson's not used to operating without the full force of SHIELD behind him. It's understandable.
Also understandable is that the United States military is after all of SHIELD. They'll probably just toss everyone into prison for interrogation at their leisure. Who cares about the innocent, misguided SHIELD agents in the face of all of the HYDRA agents who have been operating under everyone's noses for all these years?
It's inconvenient, but it also provides a handy excuse, and he hurries to take advantage of the opportunity. The longer he can explain away his absence, the better.
"Agent Hand picked up some Navy jets in the vicinity," he lies. "She has us taking the long route to the Fridge just to be safe."
"Good," she says. "It's best to be cautious. You did hear me, though, didn't you? All record of your existence has been erased."
"It's not the first time my identity's been compromised," he dismisses. Then, before she can ask about that, he continues. "Have any idea where Coulson has us headed?"
"No," she sighs. "In fact, I'm not sure he knows. We left in a bit of a hurry."
"To avoid the colonel, right," he says. "How are things otherwise?"
"We're fine, Grant," she says, in a tone of fond exasperation. "Well, I say fine…we have limited fuel, which is decreasing by the moment, since the fuel line's damaged, but Agent Triplett says he can fix it as soon as we land. So, it's nothing to worry about."
That's debatable, and he's a little concerned, but at least he's got confirmation that Trip left the Hub with them. Not that he ever doubted it, but it's good to hear.
"So, Trip stuck with you?" he asks.
"I had to vouch for him to Coulson, but yes, he did," she confirms. "He's been hovering constantly since you left the Hub. You wouldn't know anything about that, now would you?"
"Nope," he says, in a deliberately unconvincing tone. "Not a clue."
"Of course you don't," Jemma says, amused. Then she sighs. "Well, I just wanted to update you. I'll let you know when Coulson decides on a destination."
He wants desperately to prolong the conversation. He's been doing his best not to think of her since he left the Hub, with varying levels of success. He knows, even though she doesn't, that they're on a timer again. But instead of counting down to their meeting, like the one on her wrist, this one is ticking off the time left before she finds out the truth about what she's done.
There's only so much time—days, minutes, hours—until Jemma hates him. Until the warmth in her voice fades to be replaced by disgust and betrayal.
But he has no good reason to continue the conversation, so, reluctantly, he lets it go.
"Good," he says. "I'll catch up with you when I can."
"Please do," she says. "In the meantime, be careful?"
"You, too," he says. He hesitates, mindful of Garrett sitting behind him and blatantly eavesdropping, then rolls his eyes at himself. He should take every opportunity to say this while he can, because it won't be long before Jemma doesn't believe it. "I love you."
"And I love you," Jemma says, voice soft with affection.
His throat is tight as he slides the phone into his pocket. He knows that saving Garrett was the right decision, but it's difficult. After six months of pretty much constant contact, getting one phone call in three days—and knowing that soon he won't even have that—is torture. Actually, having been tortured on more than one occasion, he can safely say that this is worse.
Torture ends eventually. This won't.
"Man," Garrett laughs. "That straight version of you is something else."
Grant swallows and turns around, walking over to join Garrett. He's a little too restless to sit, so he leans against a chair, elbows braced against the seat back.
"Tricking your soulmate," Garrett continues. "I don't even think Romanoff could pull that one."
"Well, it wasn't without its complications," Grant says. Despite his best efforts, a little bit of his anger leaks into his voice.
There's a conversation that he and Garrett need to have. They haven't had the time for it, thus far, but it needs to happen. Because there hasn't been much tricking involved in Grant's relationship with Jemma, not really. And the biggest deception—the biggest lie he had to tell, aside from the whole HYDRA thing—was entirely Garrett's fault.
"Oh, come on," Garrett groans, standing. "You're not still upset about that."
"A kidnapping attempt was not part of the plan," Grant reminds him.
"There was no way of predicting that you'd meet your soulmate on the first day," Garrett says. "And that kidnapping attempt was just a warning."
And insurance in case Garrett ever got captured, which is exactly what happened. Grant knows that the kidnapping attempt worked for them in more than one way. But he spent more than a month watching Jemma suffer because of those bruised ribs, and he can't just let it slide.
"Which I appreciate," he says. "But Jemma was in pain for weeks because of your warning. I don't appreciate your methods."
"Hey," Garrett shrugs. "If the job was easy…"
"There was nothing fun about that," Grant snaps.
Garrett is silent for a long moment, just looking steadily at Grant, and for a second he thinks he might have pushed it too far. Then Garrett sighs.
"All right, I admit," he says. "That got a little out of hand. I gave them orders not to hurt her, but." He shrugs. "HYDRA goons, right? What can you do?"
Grant pushes away from the chair he's been leaning against as Garrett starts to walk away. "Where are you going?"
"Come on," Garrett says instead of answering.
Grant follows.
"I was going to save this for later," Garrett tells him as he leads the way through the base. "But, hell, you've earned it."
"Earned what?" he asks. He has no idea how they got from arguing about the kidnapping attempt against Jemma to this—or even what this is.
Garrett comes to a stop outside of a closed door. It's one of the new additions to the base, so Grant has no guess as to what might be behind it. He's completely shocked and more than a little pleased (although he's careful to keep both off his face) when Garrett opens the door to remain a room in which three men are waiting.
He's never met these men, but he knows who they are. He studied them—studied their 'autopsy' photos and the screen grabs from the Conservatory security cameras—and memorized their faces months ago. These are the men who tried to kidnap Jemma.
"As soon as our reinforcements get back from hitting the Cube, we're heading for the Fridge," Garrett tells him. "You've got until then to do whatever you like."
"What the hell does that mean?" the tallest of the men demands, surging to his feet. The other two follow suit.
Grant ignores them for a minute to look at Garrett, judging his sincerity. "Really?"
"Really," Garrett confirms. "Whatever you like. I'll have a disposal team standing by."
The three men shift uneasily, exchanging wary looks, and the skinny one makes what he probably thinks is a subtle move for his gun.
Grant knows, from Jemma and Skye's accounts of the attempted kidnapping, that two of these men never laid hands on Jemma. They were too busy getting their asses kicked by Skye to get anywhere near Jemma. Those two men—the weasel-ish one and the skinny one—he'll give mercy. He'll cross them off quickly—just snap their necks and have done with it, because there's no reason to make them suffer.
The third man, though…
The big one, with an old, ugly scar on his face that Jemma described in perfect detail (and a newer one, which might actually be from the branch Skye hit him with, and damn if that doesn't make Grant weirdly proud), is the one that hit Jemma. The one that bruised her ribs.
Grant spent five weeks watching Jemma suffer from that pain. Five weeks of having to pull her away from her work when the pain got to be too much. Five weeks of helping her with simple tasks—with her hair, her clothes, her shoes—while she was driven to tears by the frustration of being unable to do them herself.
The emotions he's been carefully suppressing, already close to breaking through thanks to that phone call, surge forward. The rage, which he mostly has a handle on these days, rises to the surface. And, for once, he's got the perfect outlet for it.
There's no way that he can match the pain he felt, watching Jemma struggle and suffer through those five horrible weeks. It's not possible to inflict that level of physical harm on this man.
But he'll definitely do his best.
"So, what do you say?" Garrett asks, clapping him on the shoulder. "Am I forgiven?"
"Yes, sir," Grant says. He starts to step into the room, then pauses. He pulls the hard drive he took from Skye—the one containing all of Jemma's research—out of his pocket and hands it over. "Here. For Raina."
"Is this what I think it is?" Garrett asks, examining the hard drive with a grin.
"Jemma's research," he confirms. "All of it. On the Centipede serum, the GH-325, and everything else the team encountered."
Garrett grins and tucks the hard drive away. "Good work, son."
He claps him on the shoulder again, then gestures grandly into the room, where the three would-be kidnappers are obviously on edge, their hands on their weapons. They'll be putting up a fight. Good.
"Have at it," Garrett invites, stepping away from the door. "I'll let you know when it's time to go."
"Thank you, sir," Grant says, and enters the room. He closes the door firmly behind him, then turns to face the three men inside with a smile that has two of them stepping back and the third actually drawing his gun.
"So," he says. "Who's first?"
x
He's just about finished with the man who hurt Jemma—by which he means, the man is weak and unable to withstand his rightful punishment, and is probably only moments from death—when Garrett returns.
"Sorry to interrupt," Garrett says regretfully. "But Kaminsky called. He's five minutes out and he's got the chopper. It's time to move."
"That's all right," Grant says, straightening. "I was just about done here, anyway."
He looks down at the man on the ground, taking in his condition, and estimates that the blood loss will kill him in the next three minutes—if his heart doesn't give out before then, that is; this man has no tolerance for pain at all.
Either way, he'll be dead in less than five minutes. Grant could speed that up—it would barely take a fraction of a second to strike a killing blow—but decides not to. Why cut short his suffering?
Jemma was in pain for five weeks. This man didn't even make it an hour.
He steps over the man—and his two friends, whose necks he snapped in his first three minutes in the room—and approaches the door.
"Feel better?" Garrett asks, looking him over.
Grant looks back at the man with the scar, considering. "Actually…yeah."
His rage, though still present (as it has been since he touched the berserker staff, and possibly always will be), is muted. So is his grief and his longing for Jemma. He's feeling completely settled for the first time since—since when? He doesn't even remember the last time he felt this calm.
"Glad to hear it," Garrett grins. He makes a move like he's about to clap Grant on the arm, then stops and grimaces a little. "You might wanna take a shower before you suit up, son. You've got a little blood…everywhere."
"Yes, sir," Grant agrees. It's true; things got a little…messy. "Did you get Raina set up?"
For lack of a better option, he wipes his hands on his jeans as he follows Garrett out of the room. He's heading straight for the shower, but there's no reason to leave blood on every doorknob and hanging divider on the way there.
"Yep," Garrett says. "She's very eager to get started. She'll have things up and running by the time we get back." They come to a stop in the main room. "Go on and get your shower. I'll debrief Kaminsky."
Grant nods and heads for the living quarters. Or, rather, what used to be the living quarters. They've been converted into more of a barracks than anything else, in deference to the fact that this base is suddenly holding a lot more than just two people.
The spare clothes and gear he's had stashed here for years are still present, though, which is all he really cares about. He grabs his shower kit and a change of clothes—the bare bones of tac gear—and makes his way to the showers.
That was a nice, strangely calming, diversion, but it's time to get back to work.
x
After his shower, he returns to the main room to find that Kaminsky and his people have arrived. The room is swarming with HYDRA agents in varying stages of preparedness. Garrett is moving among them, checking gear and giving orders, while Raina hangs back, watching him.
Grant joins her, after a moment's thought. He wants to gauge her mental state—determine just how much the revelation of Garrett's deception has shaken her.
"You were disappointed," he observes. "That he wasn't a real Clairvoyant."
"There was a question I would have asked," she says softly. Then she turns to look at Grant. "You've known him a long time?"
She's trying to work him again.
"Since I was a teenager," he says, glancing at Garrett. "He pulled me out of a hell. Saved me from myself." He steps back a little, giving Raina a smirk. "So, now do you know me?" He leans against the brick column behind him. "Know how to work me?"
"I'm just curious," she claims, with a little smirk of her own. "If I wanted to work you, I'd ask you about Coulson and his team and…how you managed to gain their trust."
His first instinct is to lie, because he gained the team's trust through Jemma and the last thing he wants to do is bring Jemma to Raina's attention. But he knows that lying would be just as telling as the truth—after all, there's no way Raina doesn't know that Jemma is Grant's soulmate. Leaving her out of it, dodging around the truth, would give Raina just as much—if not more—ammo than being honest.
So honesty it is.
"Jemma," he says plainly. When Raina gives him an expectant look, he continues. "Simmons. Team biochemist. She's my soulmate."
"I've heard," Raina smiles softly. "Congratulations."
He's…not going to address that. "Jemma trusted me at once, because I'm her soulmate. The rest of the team followed. It…humanized me. Being protective of her, obsessing about her safety, hovering in the lab even when she wasn't in danger…that, and jumping out of the plane to save her life, all convinced the team that I was trustworthy."
"They never suspected?" Raina asks doubtfully.
"Agent May was the primary threat," he says. "But she has an untrained, vulnerable soulmate, too. We, uh, bonded over it."
They also bonded over May teaching him to control the rage the berserker staff gave him, but he's leaving that out. His rage issues are a weakness, and he doesn't want to give Raina any information on his weaknesses that she might not already have.
He has no idea how much Garrett told her about him—about the team—before she was locked up. It's inconvenient.
"With Jemma came Fitz," he continues. "He was never a threat. Skye was the unknown variable. Being her SO put me in a position to be a sounding board." He shrugs a little. "Get an idea what she was thinking."
"And Coulson?" Raina asks. "He wasn't skeptical when you pressured him to join?"
He laughs, just a little. "He pressured me. You'd be surprised how often you get invited to the party when you don't wanna go."
He mocks himself—or, more accurately, the persona he used with Coulson and the team—repeating word for word the argument that got him assigned to Coulson's team. Raina watches him thoughtfully.
"I gave Coulson a person he thought he could help," he concludes. "Plane was full of 'em."
"It's that simple?" she asks skeptically. "You really felt nothing for them?" She shakes her head. "I spent time with Coulson. He's a good man. Someone who'd lay down his life for you. Don't you owe a man like that something?"
Coulson abandoned Jemma when they were surrounded by enemy agents. Coulson spent the past six months repeatedly endangering the team as a whole. Coulson would let the entire team die to save Skye's life.
Whether Coulson is a good man is certainly debatable, but Grant will admit that he does owe him something. After all, Coulson let a lot of things slide—a lot of protocol violations. Any other lead agent would have had Grant and Jemma's exemption revoked the first time Jemma spent the night in Grant's bunk. Coulson let it happen for months.
Still, even that wasn't entirely unselfish. He all but admitted, shortly before his kidnapping by Centipede, that he was living vicariously through Grant and Jemma, since his own soulmate thinks he's dead.
Grant owes Coulson something, but he owes Garrett a lot more. He owes Garrett everything.
When he says so, Raina pins him with a searching look.
"And Agent Simmons?" she asks. "You owe Garrett enough to abandon your soulmate?"
"I haven't abandoned her," he denies. He should let it go and walk away—she's working him right now, and he's letting her—but he can't let that stand. "I'm doing this for Jemma as much as for Garrett."
She frowns, slightly. "How so?"
"Jemma is loyal to SHIELD," he says. He forces himself to relax, leaning back against the column again. "As long as it exists, in any form, she'll be a part of it." He shrugs. "Until we bring down SHIELD—which we will—Jemma is in danger. This is for her own good."
"Is it?" Raina asks.
He doesn't like the smile she's wearing, knowing with a touch of smug, but before he can say anything, Garrett approaches.
"Ready to go?" he asks.
"Yes, sir," Grant says, pushing away from the wall.
"Good," Garrett says. He looks at Raina. "We'll be back soon. Don't throw any wild parties while we're gone."
She doesn't say anything. Grant gets the feeling that Raina is still trying to figure out how to work Garrett, who's obviously far from what she was expecting the Clairvoyant to be. He wishes her luck; even he doesn't always understand Garrett.
"Let's move," Garrett orders. "We've got a Fridge to raid."
x
It turns out that getting the helicopter was a wise precaution, because after the small transport—piloted by one of Kaminsky's men—drops Grant and a handcuffed Garrett on the roof, the guards refuse to let them in. They know to expect Garrett, but apparently Hand left orders not to let anyone in unless she was present.
Inconvenient, but not unexpected. That's what the helicopter is for.
Grant goes a few rounds arguing with the guards, who call his bluff about calling Hand back to oversee their entrance to the Fridge. He raises the walkie-talkie just as the helicopter appears on the other side of the roof and opens fire.
The doors to the Fridge are bulletproof, so the guards are safe, but Grant dives for cover, pulling Garrett along with him. He takes a few shots at the helicopter with his sidearm, just for show, then drags Garrett back to the doors as the helicopter moves to circle back around.
"Open the door!" he shouts.
"It's against protocol!" the guard hollers back.
"I don't care about your protocol," Grant snaps. "Open the door! You're gonna get me killed!"
After a moment's hesitation, the other guard says, "Screw it!" and opens the door. The helicopter opens fire again as Grant shoves Garrett in and then follows. They back onto the elevator behind them, the guards serving as useful (but ultimately unnecessary) shields as the doors slowly close.
One of the guards uses his lanyard to activate the elevator, and Grant watches them, considering. He needs to cross these two off before he and Garrett can move to step two of the plan. But they're in full body armor. The only vulnerable spots are their faces. He needs to get them both facing him before he can cross them off—and he needs to get them both at once, so they don't have the chance to alert security.
"Took you boys long enough," he says.
"Need to radio security," the one on the left says, ignoring him.
"How the hell did HYDRA know you and Hand were coming?" the other one asks.
"We told 'em," Garrett says cheerfully.
Grant sighs as the two guards turn around, shocked. He draws his sidearm and backup and shoots them both in the face before they can do anything but stare, then frowns at Garrett. That could've ended badly; if they'd been the shoot first type instead of the stare gormlessly type, he and Garrett might've both been killed.
"A little warning next time?" he requests, exasperated, as Garrett breaks his fake cuffs. "I mean, they had automatic weapons."
"I couldn't resist," Garrett claims, digging through Grant's backpack. He hands Grant a gas mask. "It was too good a line."
Grant shakes his head, because that's just typical Garrett, as Garrett tosses him a smoke grenade, then he and Garrett both pull the gas masks on.
"Let's go shopping," Garrett says.
It's time for step two.
Step two is to use tear gas and smoke grenades to sow confusion so that they can make it to the nerve center unopposed, and that's exactly what they do. Admittedly, walking through the halls wearing gas masks while everyone around them coughs and chokes is slightly conspicuous, but the clean air they're breathing gives them enough of an advantage that, even as outnumbered as they are, they're able to cross off anyone who makes a move for them.
Inside the nerve center, they deactivate all of the Fridge's security: disabling and wiping the cameras, unlocking all of the external doors, and disarming the various alarms. Not that anyone is likely to respond to those alarms, SHIELD being in the state it is, but they haven't survived this long by being incautious.
Once the doors are unlocked, their HYDRA reinforcements flood the building, and Grant and Garrett abandon the nerve center in favor of the first of their two main objectives.
Their first objective is a particular storeroom, one which Garrett calls the Toystore. Grant doesn't actually know what's inside of it; he's never had occasion to spend any time at the Fridge, and therefore has never been read in on its contents—aside from the prisoners, that is.
Garrett knows what's in the Toystore, of course, but he's refused to share the information, insisting that it will make a nice surprise. Grant's…honestly a little worried about that.
The Toystore is far below them, on the third floor, so they return to the elevator. By the time they reach the third floor, the air is clear enough for them to remove their gas masks, which they do with relief. Gas masks are incredibly useful, but they're also incredibly uncomfortable. Grant can't help but pity their HYDRA escort, very few of whom make any move to remove their own masks.
"First time I came down here was to lock up Johnny Horton," Garrett reminisces. "Ever heard of him?"
Grant shakes his head.
"Guy somehow gave himself these lion's paws for hands," Garrett makes a little clawing gesture. "Can you imagine?"
"That doesn't seem practical," Grant muses, trying to picture it. All he can imagine is a guy with lion's paws trying desperately to turn a doorknob. It's honestly kind of hilarious.
Garrett chuckles. "Everybody's got their own weird thing, I suppose." He stops, motioning to the intersecting hallway. "Here we go."
It's a very short hall, leading to a set of locked double doors. None of the Fridge's internal locks are on any kind of network—they're each on their own, individual circuit, which means there was no way to disable them from the nerve center the way he disabled the external locks.
Luckily, it's not a difficult problem to deal with.
"You know the Slingshot program?" Garrett asks as he plants a miniature explosive on the lock.
"Yeah," Grant says. "That's how SHIELD gets rid of its dangerous technology."
"Do they, now?" Garrett asks smugly.
They turn their backs to the doors and cover their ears as the explosive beeps and then blows. The explosion is minor, but it's enough to break the lock, and they turn back around as the doors slide open.
"Welcome to the Toystore," Garrett says, and leads the way into the room.
At first glance, it's not much. Grant looks around the large room, taking in the numerous shelves loaded with large grey boxes, as Garrett orders their HYDRA escort to grab everything they can—especially if it looks dangerous or, even better, alien.
"It's all here," Grant realizes, as he reads some of the tags on the boxes. "Slingshot's a fake."
He…probably should have guessed that, honestly.
"We shot a lot of empty rockets into space," Garrett tells him as they head deeper into the room. "And maybe everyone once in a while, they put a monkey in one for kicks."
The mention of a monkey causes a strange pang, as Grant's mind goes straight to Jemma and Fitz. He brushes it off impatiently.
"You really think Fury would give away all these goodies?" Garrett asks.
It's true, he definitely should have questioned the Slingshot program. In his defense, if he had questioned every even slightly suspicious thing SHIELD did, he never would have had time to do anything else.
"We're talking about the same guy that messed around with Tesseract technology and sparked an alien invasion," Garrett continues, a little absently. He's obviously searching the shelves for something specific, and after a moment, he grins. "There you are."
He opens the box—it's latched, but not locked, which strikes Grant as a little sloppy—and smiles down at the contents. Whatever's inside, it's giving off a strange blue glow, and Grant moves closer, curious.
"Remember this?" Garrett asks.
Grant leans against the shelf next to him and looks inside the box. Huh.
"Yeah," he says. "We found it in Peru. Some sort of plasma particle beam."
The sight of it causes another pang, which he brushes off as Garrett pulls the 0-8-4 out of the box.
"Plasma particle beam my ass," Garrett says, weighing the 0-8-4 in his arms. "I look at it more as a gold card."
He switches it on, and Grant—remembering what it did to the Bus—takes a few steps back as it powers up. The beam it lets out blows a large hole in the wall, and Grant ducks as concrete goes flying while Garrett laughs.
"Perfect!" he exclaims, delighted. "This is just what we need."
"You might wanna be careful with that, sir," Grant warns, straightening. "It's a little…sensitive."
"I'll keep that in mind," Garrett says. He looks around the room, then nods to himself, apparently satisfied. "You stay here and supervise these goons. I'll go take care of step three."
"Yes, sir," Grant agrees.
Step three is the release of the prisoners. It's partially just to cause chaos—there are a lot of dangerous people locked up in the Fridge, especially in the Ice Box—but also a targeted attack. There's one specific prisoner whose freedom will do them a lot of good.
Marcus Daniels, a gifted who was locked up after using his powers to stalk a woman, is their second main objective in raiding the Fridge. He'll be a perfect distraction for Coulson, since the woman in question—the victim of his stalking—just happens to be Coulson's soulmate. The moment Coulson hears that Daniels is out, he'll head straight to his soulmate's side—giving Grant and Garrett that much longer to work without Coulson's interference.
Sooner or later, Coulson will realize that Garrett is still free, that Grant is a traitor, and that Centipede is still active. But the longer that takes, the better, and Daniels being loose will do a lot to delay that realization.
Grant spends a while digging through the boxes alongside the HYDRA agents. There's a lot of stuff in here; some of it alien, some of it not, but all of it very, very dangerous. He even finds the berserker staff, making him grateful for the gloves he's wearing as he pulls it out of the box.
He'd like to leave it here—or, better yet, smash it to pieces—but he knows it's a valuable tool. So, regretfully, he returns it to the box and motions for it to be added to the take pile.
The Fridge has plenty of planes and transports, both large and small, and they're taking about half of them. The other half will be left for HYDRA, who will be taking control of the Fridge as soon as they move out. Grant supervises the transfer of the items they've decided to take onto the various transports—only three or four per plane; they don't want to put all of their eggs in one basket, after all—and then, once the process is complete, gives Kaminsky's second-in-command the order to call in HYDRA.
Once he does that, he heads for the elevator, because he's suddenly remembered something else that might serve them well—something he's pretty sure Garrett doesn't know about. Or, at least, doesn't know the location of.
He takes the elevator down to the deepest basement level, after ordering a passing HYDRA agent to inform Garrett of his whereabouts. He's glad he took the time to memorize the blueprints Garrett showed him earlier, because it makes it easier for him to visualize the location of the vault he's looking for.
It's not on any blueprints or listed in any records, but he knows that the Gravitonium that nearly destroyed Malta is in a vault beneath his feet. Coulson told him its general location months ago, after the incident in Malta, so that he could reassure Jemma that no one else would die for it.
And, thanks to a little careful prodding, Coulson gave him the exact location a few days ago, when arguing that HYDRA would never be able to get their hands on it.
"Grant!" Garrett calls behind him, just as he's reaching the spot directly above the vault holding the Gravitonium. "Come on! We gotta roll; chopper's almost full."
"There it is," Grant says, pointing at the 0-8-4.
"What the hell you doing?" Garrett asks.
"You mind?" Grant asks, taking the 0-8-4 from him. "You might wanna take a step back."
Garrett doesn't move. "I'm not following."
"Coulson told me there was a little something hidden down below," Grant tells him.
"Hate to tell you," Garrett says. "But, this is the bottom floor. I've seen the blueprints with my own eyes."
"Care to make it interesting?" Grant suggests, a little amused. He knows for a fact that the Gravitonium is here. There's no harm in getting something a little extra out of it.
"Loser buys dinner," Garrett declares.
"Perfect," Grant says, and activates the 0-8-4. "I'm so sick of the crap we ate on that plane."
He blasts through the floor as Garrett turns away and covers his ears. The explosion is large and effective, and when the smoke clears, the case holding the Gravitonium is perfectly visible through the hole in the floor.
Garrett crouches to get a better look, and Grant follows suit.
"Well," Garrett grins. "Hello, gorgeous."
"Thought you'd like that," Grant says, smugly. "And that's not all."
"No?" Garrett asks, looking away from the Gravitonium to raise his eyebrows at Grant.
"That hard drive I gave you," he says. "Has the plans to weaponize this."
Garrett laughs and claps him on the shoulder. "All right, son. You win." He straightens and motions some HYDRA agents over. "Now, let's get this beauty out of its cage and get the hell out of here."
x
Back at the base, Garrett is jubilant. Grant spent the drive from the airfield recounting everything he knows about the capabilities of the Gravitonium device that Quinn and Hall designed, and Garrett definitely likes what he's heard.
"I've never been so happy to buy a man a steak dinner in my life," he says as they reach the bottom of the stairs.
"Wait 'til you see the bill," Grant advises him, amused. The food on the Bus wasn't all bad, and he's not a picky eater, in any case, but it did get repetitive after a while. And, considering what he's sacrificed on Garrett's behalf, he's not going to feel any guilt at all in running up a very large bill.
Raina stalks out of the lab area and up to Garrett while Grant pauses to drop his back pack and his vest on a conveniently placed table.
"Why the long face?" Garrett asks.
"There's a complication with the hard drive," Raina tells him.
Garrett laughs humorlessly. "I don't like complications."
"This one involves Skye," she says flatly.
It turns out that Skye encrypted the hard drive: if anyone but her attempts to access it, it will erase all of its contents.
He really should have predicted that. At the time, he was a little busy trying to suppress his panic for Jemma, but there's no excuse for the fact that it hasn't occurred to him since. Of course, that's mostly because he's been doing his best not to think of anyone on the team, since thoughts of the team invariably lead to Jemma, and the peace he found from punishing Jemma's attackers has long since faded, but…
The point is, it's a complication. A complication they don't need.
Three teams have failed to hack the hard drive. The only person who can break Skye's encryption is Skye herself. Which means they need access to Skye.
Which means that Grant is going to have to go join up with the team again, at least temporarily.
It should be a good thing: a chance to see Jemma again, to spend a little more time with her before she finds out the truth about him. But leaving her was hard enough the first time. A second time will be that much worse.
It won't be anywhere near easy. And there's nothing fun about this particular job.
Before they can make any plans, Hand's phone rings. Grant takes a deep breath, receives a nod of permission from Garrett, and picks it up off the table.
"Hello?" he says.
"Grant," Jemma breathes. "Oh, thank God."
Well. That's not good. She sounds nearly breathless with relief, and there's no reason for her to be concerned about him, unless she knows that the Fridge fell. He has no idea how she could possibly have found out about it—especially so soon—but it's the only explanation.
He needs to get on top of this.
"Jemma," he says. "I was just about to call you." He hesitates, then continues, careful to insert just the right mix of anger, grief, and exhaustion into his tone. "I've got some bad news."
"HYDRA took the Fridge," she says. "We heard. Are you all right?"
"I've been better," he says. If he were a loyal SHIELD agent, there's no way he could have made it out of the Fridge unharmed. Especially since he's going to have to tell the team that Hand, Chaimson, and Jacobson all went down. They'll expect him to have tried to save them, which means he can't be in any kind of good shape if he wants to avoid suspicion. "But I'll live."
"Good," she says, a little faintly. "That's…good."
He's kind of concerned about how shaky she sounds. "Jemma? Are you okay?"
"Oh, yes," she says. "Yes, I'm fine. It's just…when we heard that the Fridge had fallen, I thought maybe…"
"I'm fine," he promises when she trails off. Of course, it does raise a very good question. "But how did you hear about the Fridge?"
"Oh, right," Jemma says. "We found a new base. A secret one."
"A secret base?" he asks, gaining Garrett's attention. "How? Where?"
"Apparently Director Fury—who did actually die, by the way; Agent Koenig confirmed it—set up this base after the Chitauri invasion and kept it completely secret. Then he programmed the coordinates to display on Coulson's badge in case anything ever happened."
That's…more than a little bizarre.
"Coulson's badge had coordinates to a secret base that our dead Director set up for him?" he asks. He does it partially to get the story across to Garrett without making it obvious to Jemma that he's speaking to anyone else, but also to double check his understanding, because that is just…ridiculous.
"Yes, that's about it," Jemma confirms. "It's been…a very strange day."
"Sounds like," he agrees, bemused. Seriously, secret coordinates in Coulson's badge?
"However, I imagine yours was much worse," she frets. "Are you sure you're all right?"
"I've had worse, I promise," he says.
"That's hardly comforting," she mutters, but she does sound a little reassured. "So…what happened?"
He hesitates. He'd like a chance to get the story straight in his head before he shares it. If nothing else, he's going to need to figure out the timing of events and how best to excuse Hand's death. This is one area where he definitely can't allow himself to get caught in a lie.
"I think that's a report I should make in person," he says. "But…it's not good."
"No," Jemma says quietly. "I don't imagine it is." She clears her throat. "I'll just…get you our coordinates, shall I?"
"It would help," he says.
"Just a moment," she says.
There's a bit of static, and then Jemma speaks again, her voice muffled and words indistinct. He assumes she's pulled the phone away from her mouth to speak to one of the others, and takes the opportunity to hunt up a piece of paper to record the coordinates on.
Raina has long since wandered away to return to commanding her scientists, while Garrett is in the middle of changing. Grant has no idea why he's doing that here in the middle of the main room instead of back in the barracks, but whatever.
"Grant?" Jemma asks.
"I'm here," he says. "You've got the coordinates?"
"Yes," she says, and reads them out.
He writes them down, then considers them. If he's not mistaken—and he's fairly certain that he's not—that would put this secret base in the middle of the Canadian wilderness.
"Canada?" he asks. "Really?"
"It was a surprise to us, as well," Jemma says, and he can hear her smile.
"I'll bet," he says. "All right, I'll be there as soon as I can. Is the base secure?"
"Yes," she says. "Completely."
He'll be the judge of that. "Well, be careful, anyway."
"We will," she promises. "However, I think it's safe to say that you are in far more danger than the rest of us, so…be safe, please."
"Always," he says. "I'll see you soon."
"We'll be waiting," she says. "I love you."
"You, too."
He hangs up and tucks the phone away. Garrett is just finishing getting dressed, and he tsks.
"Secret base, huh?" he asks. "Sounds just like Fury."
"Jemma confirmed," Grant tells him, leaning against a column. "Fury's out of the picture."
"Well, that is good news," Garrett says, pulling on a shirt. "Gives us one less thing to worry about." He pulls the shirt down a little, then pauses. "Listen, about the girl—"
"Look, I know how much it means to you," Grant interrupts. "I'll get it done."
It won't be easy. But he owes Garrett everything. He can do this for him.
"Hey, we all have our weaknesses," Garrett says. "And your soulmate, hey, that's a big one. We can't control everything." He finishes pulling his shirt down and moves a little closer. "So, if you can do this the easy way, without blowing your cover, then by all means."
He more than appreciates the offer. The longer he can keep his cover intact, the better. And he's pretty sure he'll be able to keep his cover intact. Skye trusts him—she won't see any reason not to give him the codes to unlock the encryption on the hard drive.
"I just need some time alone with her to get the information," he says.
Technically, it's not the information he needs to be alone with her to get, it's the getaway. Once he's got the codes, he's going to need an excuse to leave the base and return to Garrett. That'll be easier if he's just facing down Skye, rather than the entire team.
"You'll have it," Garrett promises, and turns away. "Coulson'll be busy." He faces Grant again. "I'll give you twenty-four hours to get the password and get out. After that, well…" He pauses. "Cross off the team and bring the girl to me."
Grant hesitates.
"Oh, not Jemma, of course," Garrett assures him lightly. "If you need to bring Skye, you might as well bring your girl, too. I'm sure we can find a safe place to stash her until all this is finished. Then you'll have all the time in the world to get her to see things your way."
He'll need all the time in the world to get Jemma to see things his way, especially if he crosses off the team and kidnaps her. He'll have to hope the easy way works, because the last thing he wants to do is cross off the team and kidnap Jemma and Skye.
Not only because of how angry it would make Jemma—not even because of his admitted emotional attachment to the rest of the team.
Simply from a logical standpoint, it would be incredibly difficult to kidnap both Skye and Jemma. He's got nearly a foot and more than ten years of training on both of them, of course, but two to one becomes bad odds when the one doesn't want to actually hurt the other two. Keeping both of them subdued and under his control would be tricky.
Of course, if he's taking Jemma, it's not really necessary to kidnap Skye, is it? After all, it's Jemma's research on the hard drive. She probably has it all memorized. And, as someone who understands all of it, she would be a lot more use than Skye.
He's about to point this out to Garrett, but he finds himself hesitating. For some reason, his mind has gone to Italy, to the nightmare he had their first night there—the nightmare where Garrett ordered him to kill Jemma.
He pictures bringing Jemma here, to their base, and telling her to work with Raina's scientists in recreating the GH-325. He pictures her refusing, as she unquestionably would. And he pictures Garrett putting a gun in his hand and telling him to take care of Jemma.
He called her a weakness, just now. And Grant knows how Garrett feels about weaknesses.
He hears Jemma's voice in his ears, the calm, reasonable tone she used when she said, "You can't save me from yourself, Grant."
"You got your story straight?" Garrett asks.
Grant shoves aside his hesitation. That was just a nightmare. Garrett wouldn't ask him to kill Jemma. He said himself, just moments ago, that they can't control everything. He understands that Jemma is a weakness for Grant, and doesn't hold it against him. He would never give Grant that order, even if Grant brought Jemma all the way here and she refused to help them.
It's just his exhaustion and his lingering guilt over leaving Jemma getting to him. That's all.
Still, there's no point in bringing it up now. With any luck, he'll be able to do this the easy way and maintain his cover, making the kidnapping of anyone unnecessary.
"Yeah," he says, and moves away from the column, to a more open area. "We just need to make it believable."
He told Jemma that he wasn't in great shape. And even if he hadn't, the team will expect him to be injured, after (as they'll presume) fighting his way through the HYDRA forces attacking the Fridge. In his current condition, he'll never be able to sell the story of surviving an enemy assault.
He's still got his injuries from what happened at the Hub, of course, but he'll need more damage—fresh damage—to sell this story. They need to make it convincing.
So he stands still and lets Garrett hit him a few times. Or more than a few. What's important is that by the end of it, he's bleeding and bruised enough to look like he fought his way out of certain death. Also, he's pretty sure he has another broken rib.
Still, it's necessary. He needs to be in rough shape in order to sell this story. As long as the team has no reason to question him, there's no reason for him to break cover. He can get through this without burning his bridges—without turning Jemma against him. Of course he can.
Once they're done, Garrett grips his shoulder for a long moment.
"Good luck, son."
x
He takes one of the jump jets they stole from the Fridge, rather than the small transport he left the Hub in. After all, if he arrived at the Fridge to find it under attack, as he'll be claiming, and stormed the building with Hand, Chaimson, and Jacobson to try and stop HYDRA, there would be little chance of making it all the way back up to the roof to return to the transport after the others were dead. If he got far enough in to see the prisoners escaping—which, of course, he's going to be claiming, in order to distract Coulson with Daniels—it would be more logical to escape through the hangar.
Thus, he needs one of the Fridge's planes. He takes a jump jet because it's the fastest. The sooner he gets to this secret base, the better.
Even in the jump jet, it's a long flight, and he has plenty of time to not only get his story straight, but also to fall back into his undercover persona. Grant Ward, Agent of SHIELD, is a lot closer to his actual personality than his covers usually are—thanks to his need to build a relationship with Jemma—but he's different enough that it takes a while to settle back into being him.
He lands the jump jet about a mile away from the coordinates Jemma gave him, just to be safe. It's freezing outside, the ground buried under several feet of snow, and he's grateful to find cold weather gear beneath the pilot's seat. Especially since his current clothing won't provide much protection from the cold.
He changed into the clothes he left the Hub in before leaving Havana. They're in pretty rough shape, not to mention stained with more than a little blood, but it's all part of selling the story. If he shows up in new, clean clothes, it might raise questions.
It's necessary, and he's certainly worn worse for far longer, but he's still looking forward to rejoining the team and getting a fresh change of clothes from his bunk. He's been a little spoiled by his months with Coulson's team; he's gotten used to being able to change his clothes whenever he wants.
…He doesn't really care about the clothes. He's just trying not to think about what happens next. Namely, he's trying not to think about the possibility that he might have to blow his cover in order to get what he needs. As soon as his cover is blown, he loses Jemma, and that's the last thing he wants.
But he can't really see a way around it.
He uses the walk to the exact coordinates to center himself, pushing away his worries and focusing on his cover. By the time he reaches the base, he's fully adopted his Agent of SHIELD persona, and when he's greeted by an electronic voice, he's able to identify himself without faltering in the slightest.
"Grant Ward," he says. "Agent of SHIELD."
"Welcome, Agent Ward," the electronic voice says. "We've been expecting you."
The heavy metal door slides open to reveal a long hallway. He doesn't notice any further detail than that; all of his attention is focused on Jemma, who's waiting just inside. The sight of her—visibly exhausted but still the most beautiful woman he's ever seen—fills him with an indescribable longing. There are so many ways this could end badly. There are so many ways he could lose her.
He forces through his sudden hesitance and enters the base, removing his ski cap as he does so. The door slides shut behind him.
"Thought you might have given me bad directions," he says lightly.
"At least you weren't greeted by a machine gun," she counters, moving forward. She frowns a little, reaching for his face. "You look awful."
"That's fine," he dismisses. "Because you look beautiful." He starts to lean down to kiss her, but she stops him with a hand on his chest. "What?"
"A proper hello will have to wait," she says regretfully. "You're obviously in need of medical attention."
"It's just a scratch," he says, but he can't contain a groan at the sharp stab of pain in his ribs as he removes his backpack. "Maybe a broken rib or two."
Jemma hurries to help him pull his backpack off. "Straight to the lab with you, Grant. No arguments."
"That's…probably a good idea," he admits. "Lead the way."
She smiles and takes his hand, then pauses.
"I'm glad you're here," she says. "I know it's only been a few days, but…I missed you."
"I missed you, too," he says, entirely honest.
She squeezes his hand. "Well, you're here now. And, with any luck, you won't have to leave us again."
She starts down the hall, and he falls into step with her, grateful that she doesn't seem to expect a response.
The fact is, he will be leaving. That's not in question. The question is how, and he has a sinking suspicion that he knows the answer—and it's not good.
His luck hasn't been all that great, lately. Chances are, the easy way won't work. Which means he'll have to get the codes the hard way. Even odds that when he leaves, he'll be bringing Skye with him. And if he has to bring Skye, he'll definitely be bringing Jemma, as well—most likely against her will.
She might never—in fact, she'll probably never—forgive him. But how can he pass up the chance to keep her with him—the chance to personally ensure her safety?
How can he pass up the chance to get her away from SHIELD, once and for all?
A/N: Oh, one last thing. I posted the first chapter of this untraveled road (where no one wants to go), which is the collection of AUs that I mentioned last time. The first one is kind of dark, so you can give it a miss if that's not your cup of tea, but keep an eye out for upcoming chapters-it's going to be a lot of fun, at least in my opinion!
Thanks for reading!