A/N: So. Hi. Anyone out there?

I know this has taken forever (tomorrow will be five months to the day, in case you're curious), and I am very, very sorry about that. Somewhere over the course of writing this fic, I started to hate it. I still kind of do, tbh-just thinking of the Pilot makes me cringe-but time has eased it. So here we are again.

Speaking of the Pilot, I also have to apologize because giving you such a short chapter-the only chapter since the Pilot not to break 10,000 words-makes me feel bad. It's like coming back from a mid-season hiatus with a boring filler episode. But at least it's not a clip episode?

In other news, in case you missed them, I posted two sometimes-related works during my little hiatus: something to scream about (with empty lungs), which is Jemma's POV of coming back to Providence to find it empty, and i'll have to fly (there's no one to catch me), which is a break the glass story with the premise that the kidnapping attempt in we're arm in arm (as we sing away) actually succeeds. So check those out, if you haven't already.

Lastly, since it's been a while, just a friendly reminder that a) this is not canon compliant with season two, and b) Ward's thoughts and opinions do not necessarily reflect my own.

Thanks for reading and, as always, please be gentle if you review!

The hard drive is locked to a diner—the place Skye first met Mike Peterson, or so she claims. It seems like a weird choice, to Grant, but he has to admit it's an effective one; if he'd been forced to figure out the hard drive on his own, he never would have guessed it was locked to some random diner in LA.

So it's a good thing he wasn't.

She says it'll take a few hours, which is irritating—and not just because he's finding it oddly difficult to maintain his cover, now that he's so close to the end of its usefulness.

The last time he was in LA was after being exposed to the berserker staff; the team spent five days of downtime here, and he and Jemma barely left their hotel room once. It's impossible to be here without thinking of it—of her—and the change in circumstances makes the memories bitter.

He's lost her.

And that's not all. He can't make contact with the team—it's been long enough that they might have already returned to Providence to find it empty, and if they've figured him out (which they're going to do sooner or later; Koenig's corpse won't stay hidden for long), he can't risk giving them a way to trace him.

Which means he has no idea how things in Portland went. He doesn't know if Jemma's safe or if she's been injured or if Daniels escaped or what. His worry for her is a constant nag at him, and he bounces from it to anger to despair and back again over and over.

Even the conversation Skye starts when she gets irritated with his impatience can't distract him—which, as it turns out, is really unfortunate.

Garrett was right when he called attachments weakness. Grant is so focused on his misery, on the knowledge that he's essentially lost his soulmate—not to death, as he's always feared, but instead by his own actions—that he doesn't notice how strange Skye is acting until it's too late.

She asks questions about his undercover work, about killing Garrett, and it takes him too long to notice the vicious undertone to her words and the determinedly still way she holds herself—like she'd be shaking otherwise. It takes him way, way too long to realize that she knows.

And when he does realize—when the visual and verbal cues he's been ignoring finally process past the haze of misery—it's too late to do anything about it. The cops who've been giving him the side eye are clearing people out of the restaurant, which means they're about to make a move, and Grant does not have time to be arrested. Not today.

He can still salvage this, though. If Skye doesn't realize that he knows she knows—

"They're starting to clear people out," he says. "We should go."

"No, I think I'm good here," she says, and he barely bites back on the urge to swear.

She's been playing nice this long because she was scared—afraid of what he'd do to her, probably, and he has the unfortunate suspicion that she figured him out by finding Koenig's corpse—but the presence of the cops has emboldened her. She's counting on the police to protect her, so she's not going to play along anymore.

He doesn't want to hurt Skye. He hates to admit it, even to himself—hates to think of it in these terms—but she's family. He meant it when he told her that.

"Skye," he tries again. "We've been made. Come on."

"No," she says, and spins her laptop to face him. On the screen is an LAPD warrant for him, the picture clearly taken right here in this diner, and he studies it with a sinking feeling. He's been so out of it that she had time to put out a false warrant for him without his notice.

He needs to get his head back in the game.

"I tipped them off," she tells him, and he can't tear his eyes away from the screen to look at her but he can hear the disgust in her voice when she adds, "Hail HYDRA."

Something about it—whether hearing that tone in Skye's voice or hearing those words from her—sets him off. He doesn't know why—why it affects him so much, why it bothers him at all—but it does. The berserker rage, already so close to the surface, rises up to choke him, and it's almost a relief when one of the officers draws his gun and approaches them.

He doesn't want to hurt Skye. But the cops? Them he's perfectly happy to hurt.

He loses himself in the rage, barely keeps track of his own moves as he takes out all the cops in the diner. He breaks a glass, a plate, and at least six bones before Skye takes advantage of his resistance. She flees out the door while the cops are distracted with him, and the fury in his chest mixes with pride, because she's always been a survivor but he helped make her a better one.

It's weird that he's proud of her. Becoming her SO was a mix between a strategic call and May dodging the job herself. He wasn't supposed to get attached. But he undeniably did.

He has so many attachments, now: to Skye and to Fitz and, always, to Jemma. Even to May.

If this clusterfuck is any indication, it's probably gonna get him killed.

Part of him wishes he could let Skye go—because he doesn't want to hurt her, but that doesn't mean he won't, and if she's gonna fight him he's gonna have to—but he knows he can't. She hasn't unlocked the drive for him yet, and he can't go back to Garrett without that data.

So he crosses off the cops that are still conscious and chases her out of the diner. He finds her in the process of getting arrested by two cops outside and shoots them both. But he makes the mistake of trying to reason with her rather than just grabbing her, and she manages to make it into the police car and drive away before he can stop her.

He's fast, but he's not fast enough to catch up with a car on foot, and there are no convenient vehicles to hotwire. He's left standing in the middle of the street, with a diner full of dead cops and two injured officers at his feet, staring after her as she speeds away.

And then the car screeches to a halt as Deathlok drops out of the sky to land on the hood.

x

The drive back to the Bus passes in tense silence. Deathlok's face is blank, but there's a glare hiding behind the ready to receive orders expression that makes Grant grateful looks can't actually kill.

It's a little awkward.

Skye is quiet, too, but that's mostly because Deathlok choked her into unconsciousness. Grant's kind of curious about that, whether those were his exact orders or if he was moved to an extra degree of violence by Skye's choice of diner, but he doesn't ask.

He also doesn't ask what the hell Deathlok's doing here. He wasn't expecting Garrett to send someone to back him up, but he wasn't not expecting it, either. He knew, when he called in on the flight from Providence to tell Garrett he was headed to LA, that there was about a fifty-fifty chance he'd be getting company.

Admittedly, he wasn't expecting Deathlok, but whatever.

On the Bus, Deathlok deposits Skye on the cargo bay floor while Grant gets the SUV locked into place and raises the ramp. He doesn't want to stick around any longer than he has to—Deathlok jumping fifteen feet in the air and punching through a windshield caught more than a few eyes, and it's sure to draw the team's attention (they'll be looking for them soon, if they aren't already).

Unfortunately, they can't take off just yet.

However Skye figured out that he was HYDRA—and if it really was by stumbling across Koenig's body, Grant is going to be extremely annoyed—it's obvious that she knew before they reached LA. The hard drive, of course, wasn't locked to the diner, and chances are she's not going to be eager to give up the real location.

It'll take some time to get it out of her, and they've only got so much fuel. They can't afford to fly around in circles while waiting for Skye to talk, not if they want to then fly to wherever the hard drive actually is locked to and then on to Cuba.

So as much as he'd like to get the hell out of LA before Jemma—before the team shows up, he's out of luck.

There's nothing to do but wait for Skye to wake up.

Deathlok remains motionless as Grant paces the cargo bay, agitated. It's a struggle to keep his thoughts away from Jemma: whether she's okay, whether they've finished in Portland yet, whether she knows who—what—he is now. He can't stop himself from picturing her reaction—what she might think, what she might feel, when she finds out the truth.

Mostly to distract himself, he snaps, "You had to knock her out?"

"You should be thanking me," Deathlok snaps back. "I saved your ass."

Honestly, he kind of did, but Grant's itching for another fight and this is the perfect excuse.

"You didn't save my ass," he says, stalking up to Deathlok. "You turned it into a public spectacle."

"You let her get one over on you," Deathlok counters. "That's exactly what Garrett was afraid of."

"And Garrett told you to stay out of sight." Or so Grant presumes.

"He ordered me to shadow you," he corrects. "He knew you had a soft spot for Skye and she might take advantage of it."

Is that what happened?

It's true that he has a soft spot for Skye, that the friendship begun mostly to keep Jemma happy morphed into a real one somewhere along the way. Wasn't he just thinking it in the diner, that she's family and he doesn't want to hurt her? She did get one over on him, tipping the cops off without him realizing, and if Deathlok hadn't intervened, she would've gotten away.

(He's sure he would've thought of something and managed to catch up to her pretty quick, but she could've done some serious damage in the meantime.)

But was that because of the way he feels about her? He blamed it on Jemma earlier—on his fixation on her, his inability to think past the imminent end of their relationship—and that was definitely the main cause, but…

He wasn't watching for it. He wasn't on edge, wasn't expecting betrayal from Skye.

He's always expecting betrayal.

He's so fucking compromised that it's almost funny.

"Well, he was wrong," he says, a bit belatedly. "We have her. And once she gives us the location, we'll be off."

"Yeah, that's not gonna happen," Skye says hoarsely, and he and Deathlok both turn to find her climbing to her feet.

Grant never even noticed her stirring. He needs to get his head in the fucking game, already. He can't afford any more mistakes.

"Take a walk," he orders Deathlok. "I can handle this."

"Can you?" Skye asks, disdainful. "You haven't so far."

It's an unfortunately fair point.

Deathlok leaves after passing on a five minute time limit from Garrett, and Grant is left alone to face Skye's reaction.

Somewhat surprisingly, her reaction is violence. She shoves him, punches him in the face, and—when he pins her against the stairs—head-butts him, all with impressive force. As the person responsible for her training, he's proud. As the person on the receiving end of it, he's annoyed.

He's got the handcuffs the cops tried to put on him in the diner tucked in his back pocket, and he uses them to cuff her to the stair railing and backs off for a minute. His nose is bleeding; he grabs a hand towel from the lab and uses it to blot the blood away while Skye seethes.

"All this time," she whispers. He wonders if it's just emotion, or if Deathlok did serious damage to her throat. "Everything we've been through. Why? How could you?"

"I was on a mission," he says. "It wasn't personal."

Predictably, Skye doesn't take that well. He didn't expect her to.

Of course, he also didn't expect her to call him a Nazi.

"Stop, wait," he cuts in. He was intending to let her rant for a while, get it out of her system, but he really can't let that pass. "I'm not a Nazi!"

That's just fucking ridiculous.

"Yes," she says. "You are. That is exactly what you are—it's in the SHIELD Handbook, chapter one. The Red Skull—founder of HYDRA—was a big, fat, frickin' Nazi!"

"That has nothing to do with today," he tells her, but she doesn't even seem to hear him.

"You know, you always had that—Hitler Youth look to you, so it's really not that surprising."

Okay, for one thing he doesn't even know what that's supposed to mean. For another, this line of conversation is starting to annoy him.

He is not a Nazi. He's barely even HYDRA. His and Garrett's work with HYDRA was strictly means to an end; funding and manpower for their personal goals.

"It's not like that," he says. "I'm a spy. I had a job."

It gets her off the Nazi thing, luckily, but she moves right on to the fact of him killing people. It's kind of a weird complaint, as far as he's concerned; it feels like he's been crossing people off at least once a week, every week, since he joined the team, so he doesn't know why she's acting like it's news that he's a killer. The sheer absurdity of it helps him start to regain his calm, and for a minute he's almost amused.

But then she starts asking if he's going to kill her.

"Just gonna kick back, and watch me bleed, until it's your turn to pull the trigger," she accuses.

Okay. That…actually kind of hurt.

"You think I had a part in that?" he demands. As if he wasn't just as frantic as the rest of the team, waiting for news—watching her struggle for life. "That I would let that happen to you?" She looks just as incredulous as he feels, meaning she's probably less inclined to violence now, so he risks moving closer. "You know how I feel about you, Skye. I told you; you're family."

She mouths at him wordlessly for a minute, eyes filled with tears.

"Wait," she breathes, and he obligingly stops where he is. Her voice shakes as she continues, "So, even though you've been lying—to everyone—about everything…you're saying that you—you—"

"You're family," he repeats. It's suddenly become vitally important to him that she understand this, though he's not sure why. "I care about you, Skye. I always have."

She lets out a shuddering breath. "You're insane." She backs away, as far out of range as the restraints will let her go, pressing her lips together like she's trying not to cry. "And we are not family."

The berserker rage, banked since he killed those cops at the diner, sparks suddenly to life at the denial. This matters. It shouldn't, but it does. Skye is family, family like Maynard and his parents never were—family like Garrett is—and hearing her deny it is infuriating.

How dare she just write him off? She doesn't know a fucking thing about this—about how he ended up where he is. She doesn't know his reasons. After everything they've been through, he thinks he deserves the benefit of the doubt.

"You—do you think this has been easy for me?" he demands. It's a struggle to control the rage; he keeps his voice deliberately low to avoid shouting, and grasps the railing on either side of her to keep from shaking her. "Do you have any idea how hard it was?"

Walking a fucking tight-rope between keeping his cover and letting Jemma know him. The lengths he had to go to in order to keep the team safe without screwing up Garrett's plan. Marching to SHIELD's drum, even after Hand abandoned him and Fitz in fucking South Ossetia.

"The sacrifices, the decisions I had to make," he gave up his fucking timer, "But I made them. Because that's what I do," she's never understood him—his work—not really, "I'm a survivor."

Skye looks about three seconds away from tears, but she firms her chin and meets his eyes evenly.

"And what about Simmons?" she asks. "Doesn't she mean anything to you at all?"

The change in topic is enough to give him whiplash, but it does nothing for the rage. Hearing her question that—hearing her suggest that Jemma might not mean anything—might not mean everything—to him pisses him off even more than her denial of their relationship did.

"Of course she does," he snaps. He lets go of the railing and eases back a step, like putting distance between them can put distance between him and his rage. "I love Jemma."

Skye scoffs.

"I don't believe you," she says. "If you loved her, you never could've pulled this crap."

He takes a deep breath, trying to ground himself with the pain in his ribs. "And what the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"It means she's never gonna forgive you for this."

It's nothing he hasn't thought himself—a thousand times in the last hour alone, even. Hell, it's half the reason Skye got one over on him in the diner. He knows that things between he and Jemma are done, that she'll never be able to accept this about him. He's known it.

But—somehow—actually hearing it said aloud, and by one of Jemma's closest friends, no less, hits him so much harder than thinking it himself did.

"She will," he says. "Once I have a chance to explain—"

"Explain what?" Skye demands. "That you're a serial killer? That you've killed God knows how many people in the name of HYDRA? Garrett tried to have her kidnapped! And you've been working for him this whole time!" The cuffs rattle against the railing as she tries to gesture sharply, apparently forgetting, in her anger, that she's restrained. "You can't explain away being the fucking enemy, Ward!"

It's true. He knows it's true. Jemma is sweet and soft-hearted, but she's not stupid and she's not easily swayed. She hates violence, and while she understood the necessity of it while he was serving SHIELD, he knows HYDRA will be a different matter.

Hell, just his connection to Centipede would probably be a deal-breaker. He knows how disgusted she was by the implants, the kill switches that forced the soldiers into doing Garrett's bidding.

"Jemma is never going to forgive you," Skye reiterates spitefully. "I hope your precious HYDRA was worth losing your soulmate."

He can't truly argue that.

So he lashes out instead. "And what the hell would you know about soulmates, huh?" She shrinks back as he looms over her, and he grabs her right wrist, just above the handcuff, and gives it a shake. "You don't have a soulmate. You don't even have a timer."

It's a low blow and he knows it. But if he was expecting it to wound Skye into silence (was he? He's lost complete control of this conversation; he has no idea what the fuck he's thinking), he's disappointed. Her face crumples, but only for a fraction of a second; then her glare returns.

"How much do you think Jemma's gonna envy me for that?" she hisses.

He releases her wrist and falls back a step without conscious thought. He's considered that before, too—that Jemma will regret her timer—but not in those exact words. Not in terms of her wishing she'd never had it at all.

"She's gonna wish she never met you," Skye says, vicious satisfaction in her tone. "You can do whatever the hell you want to me, but you will never—ever—be able to fix things with Jemma."

She's right, but like hell he's going to admit it.

"We'll see about that," he says, but watching her next words die on her lips isn't as gratifying as he would've expected it to be.

She looks terrified. His rage evaporates.

Does she—does she think that he would hurt Jemma? Does she seriously think he's capable of that? That he would ever do anything to—to—

It's a relief when Deathlok calls for him from the back of the lab, and Grant has the excuse to turn away from Skye.

He cares about her. She's family. The idea that she thinks so low of him—that she's actually scared he's going to hurt Jemma—sits like a knot in his chest.

His ribs are killing him.

"What?" he asks, as he joins Deathlok in front of the door to the storage area.

"Garrett's done waiting," he reports. "He wants answers. If you can't get them, he's leaving it to me."

It goes without saying that Deathlok's way of getting answers would involve violence. Grant doesn't want that—doesn't want to see Skye hurt—but he knows they don't have a choice. They've been in LA for too long already: long enough that the team could've arrived and searched half the airfields in the city by now.

They're running out of time, and Grant's attempt to get the hard drive unlocked never even got started. He let Skye distract him from the issue at hand with her accusations—with her emotional reaction.

Sloppy.

"All right," he says, and Deathlok falls into step with him as he crosses the lab.

Skye is trying to escape her restraints via squeezing the cuff of her wrist, which is so inefficient that he's actually annoyed. He has the passing thought that he'll have to add escaping captivity to her training curriculum—then realizes what a ridiculous thought it is.

He's not her SO anymore. He won't be training her in anything.

"Time's up," he tells her. "You can tell me where to unlock the drive—" He jerks his head at Deathlok. "Or you can tell him."

Because she's Skye, of course she doesn't make it that easy. Grant walks away, just to put some distance between them, and leans back against one of the lab doors as she tries to appeal to Deathlok's better nature. Of course, she tries to do it by reminding him about his son, which would be more effective if said son wasn't currently the leverage by which Garrett is forcing Deathlok to do his bidding.

The Incentives program really is a stroke of genius, but Skye's mention of Jemma—in the context that she and Fitz will be able to figure out a way around the kill switch—reminds him just how poorly she'd look on it.

The thought aches.

It also pisses him off.

Deathlok's angry, too, albeit for entirely different reasons, and he puts a quick end to Skye's attempt at bargaining. He steps right up into her space, towering over her, and as her SO, Grant is kind of proud of the way she doesn't flinch or back away.

"Tell us how to unlock the drive," Deathlok orders.

Skye's quiet, "No," isn't unexpected, but that doesn't make it any less annoying.

"Damn it, Skye," Grant says, pushing off the door.

"You could've shot me, back in Italy, but you didn't," Skye says to Deathlok, ignoring Grant. "They made Quinn do it because there's still good in you, Mike, and I don't think you're gonna hurt me."

She…really doesn't understand how this coercion thing works, does she?

"You're right," Deathlok says quietly.

What?

"I won't hurt you," he says. He turns suddenly to face Grant, raises his arm, and—before Grant can even react (he's let his guard down, fucking sloppy, he is so goddamn compromised)—fires a small, circular disc from his gauntlet.

It lands right over Grant's heart, and he stumbles back a step, grabbing on to the door for support, as he feels the edges of it dig through his shirt to pierce his skin.

What the fuck—

It lights up, sparks, and his heart stops. Literally.

Pain.

He can't breathe. His legs give out from under him. He's flat on the floor but his head is spinning and he can hear Skye and Deathlok talking but he can't comprehend the words. He can't think straight, not really, but he can connect his current state to the little disc Deathlok just fired at him, so he tries to pry it off his chest, but he can't make his hand close around it—

And he forgets to try again because he's thinking of Jemma, thinking of her timer going red and her being happy about it, would she even grieve him after all of this—

He can't breathe—

"He's a murderer," Skye says, a million miles away.

"Yes, he is," Deathlok agrees. "Are you?"

That means something, he knows it means something, but he can't figure it out. His vision is greying out, lungs burning; his entire chest is on fire—

Skye and Deathlok are still talking, he can hear her voice rising, but he'd swear they're not speaking English (or any of his other languages)—

And then it stops.

Suddenly Grant can breathe again, and he gasps for air. He's covered in a cold sweat, shaking all over like the worst adrenaline crash of his life, and now that he can think again he realizes that Deathlok almost just fucking killed him.

He tries to sit up as Deathlok drags Skye into the lab, ordering her to start the hack, but can't quite manage it. He reaches for the door, intending to use it as leverage, but his depth perception is out of whack and he can't make contact with it.

What the fuck was that fucking thing?

He's still struggling when Deathlok comes out of the lab and pulls him to his feet. He'd like to punch him in the face, but his legs are so unsteady that he's pretty sure he'll be back on the ground the second Deathlok lets go of him, so he restricts himself to swearing at him.

"Get the plane in the air," Deathlok says, which might just be the most fucking ridiculous thing Grant's ever heard.

"Can't," he grounds out, leaning against the door behind him. "I can barely stand."

Deathlok gestures; the little disc attached to Grant's chest gives a hum, and an indescribable jolt runs through him. Suddenly, it's no trouble at all to breathe and stand up straight.

Seriously. What the fuck is that thing?

"That should help," Deathlok says, patting him on the cheek. Then he walks away.

Grant turns to watch him go, seething, and rips the fucking disc off of his shirt. The berserker rage is bubbling in his chest, and he needs to get a handle on it before he does something stupid. He's already let his emotions get the best of him too many times today; he can't afford any more weakness.

But as he watches Deathlok walk away, his eyes catch on Skye, and the sight of her makes him forget his rage. She's in the lab, typing away, and there's a set to her shoulders that suggests she's deliberately keeping her attention fixed on her laptop in order not to look at him.

Now that he's not dying, he can comprehend what just happened. Skye gave up the location, not under torture, but in order to make Deathlok stop the heart attack he was giving Grant. Deathlok used Grant's death as a threat against Skye, and it worked.

She saved his life.

He needs to get the Bus off the ground. The emotional spiral he's been in all day has thrown his internal clock for a loop—and the heart attack sure didn't help—but he knows they've lingered at the airfield for too long. The team could come across them at any moment.

But he wants to know why Skye saved his life, and he's in no condition to read it off her right now. And while there's no time to waste, he needs a few minutes to recover before he goes to deal with Air Traffic Control, anyway. (Even private airfields have some manner of control tower; that's how mid-air collisions are avoided.)

Skye's shoulders stiffen as he enters the lab.

"I'm working on it," she snaps before he can say anything. "It's gonna take a minute."

"That's fine," he says, placating. That jolt, whatever it was, gave him a lot of his strength back, but he's still feeling a little unsteady; he leans against the table across from her for balance, careful to make it look casual. "I'm not here to rush you."

"Then what do you want?" she demands, hands stilling over the keyboard. "Haven't you done enough for one day?"

"You just saved my life, Skye," he reminds her. "I wanted to thank you."

Her jaw clenches. "Yeah, well, I didn't do it for you."

"Why did you do it?" he asks.

She's quiet for a long moment. Her fingers flex above the keyboard, but she doesn't resume typing.

"Simmons," she says finally. "I did it for her."

Huh.

"Really?" he asks. "I thought you said she'd never forgive me for this."

"She won't," she snaps. "But she deserves the chance to tell you to your face that you're a disgusting traitor and she hates you."

"No, that's not it," he says, evaluating her expression. "You…thought she'd be angry if you didn't?"

Skye swallows audibly. "She doesn't—she's." She presses her lips together and pins him with a glare. "Simmons is a good person. She's not like you." She rolls her shoulders. "She won't want you dead."

"No?" he asks.

"No," she says. She hitches her chin. "When the team catches up with you—and they will—they're not gonna kill you. You're gonna spend the rest of your miserable, worthless life in a tiny, dark cell."

"We'll see," he says. Personally, he doubts it.

"Yeah, we will," she says, looking back down at her laptop. "Even though it's better than you deserve."

She resumes typing, and he lets her continue in silence for a few minutes. He needs to get them off the ground—he's delayed too long already—but he's got one very important question left. It won't make a difference, really, but…he's curious.

"One more thing," he says. "How'd you know?"

Although he half expected her to, Skye doesn't pretend not to know what he's talking about. "I found Eric."

Damn it.

"I went looking for him when I finished my hack," she adds, voice rising a little. "And I found his bloody corpse in the storage closet—where you stuffed him in a vent like some—some—"

She stops abruptly, looking away and taking a slow, shuddering breath.

"I knew as soon as I saw him." Her voice is tremulous as she meets his eyes again. "How could you—how could you do that to him?"

"I didn't have a choice," he starts, and she scoffs.

"You didn't have a choice about brutally murdering someone who helped us?" she challenges. "Who gave us a place to hide when half the freakin' world was hunting us? You didn't have a choice other than being a backstabbing traitor?"

She's starting to tick him off again.

"If you want someone to blame, blame yourself," he says lowly. "I wouldn't have had to kill him if you hadn't insisted on hacking the NSA."

"No," she says sharply. "Don't even try to—that's crap and you know it. You had a million other choices you could've made."

He shrugs stiffly, uses the pain it causes to calm himself. "He would've blown my cover as soon as he saw the satellite feed. Crossing him off was my only option."

"Because your cover is the most important thing," she says derisively. "More important than any of us—your team."

"I'm a spy," he reminds her. "That's just how it is. How it has to be."

"It could've been any one of us, couldn't it?" she asks. "You'd kill us all without a second thought."

She's wrong, but she'll never believe it. He doesn't answer.

"Did May really leave?" she asks, voice barely a whisper. "Or did you kill her, too?"

That he's not going to let go unanswered.

"She left," he promises. "Like I said, she got tired of how Coulson was treating her. That's all." He cracks his neck; his strength is returning, but as a consequence the ache he's feeling all over is increasing. "Can't say I blame her."

Skye sneers, but it does nothing to hide the relief in her posture. "Of course you don't. Not like you would understand anything about loyalty." Before he can respond to that, she continues, "Would you have?"

"Killed her, you mean?" he checks.

"Yeah." She watches him evenly. "If she hadn't left. Would you have killed her?"

"Yes," he admits, and Skye nods like it's exactly what she was expecting.

"And Simmons?"

…What?

"What about her?" he asks.

"She told me you didn't want her to go," she says. "About how you tried to convince her to stay." She smiles sardonically. "She asked me to keep an eye on you, you know. Make sure you actually got some rest and didn't spend the whole time worrying about her."

Of course she did.

He doesn't know where Skye's going with this, but if her goal is to hurt him, she's doing a great job.

"So what would you have done?" Skye presses. "If she'd stayed? Would you have killed her, too?"

He's not expecting the question, and it hits him like a physical blow.

How can she even ask that?

"Don't be ridiculous," he snaps. "I would never."

"Oh, so you do have a line," she says, mocking. "Isn't that a shock." Her lip curls. "So? What were you gonna do, then? Kidnap her? Force her into working for HYDRA? Put one of those kill switches in her head like you gave Mike? Or maybe—"

She's cut off by the sudden beeping of her laptop, and they both look down at it reflexively.

"What is it?" he asks, bizarrely grateful to have an excuse to change the subject.

"Decryption's started," she says. The interruption seems to have robbed her of her anger; she just sounds resigned. "Drive'll unlock as soon as we're at 35,000 feet."

…So it's based on altitude, rather than location. Smart. She could have kept them on a wild goose chase for ages, crisscrossing the globe as she gave them false location after false location, and they never would have guessed that there was no location at all.

Still, this makes it all the more urgent that he get them in the air. His legs are feeling steadier, now; he thinks he can make it up the stairs.

"Good," he says, and jerks his head towards the door. "Let's go."

She doesn't move. "Go where?"

"To the Cage."

He's not letting her have free reign of the Bus while he's flying; who knows what she might get up to? And he can't risk her changing the decryption as soon as his back is turned. She can spend the flight to Havana cooling her heels in the Cage, and maybe—if he's really, really lucky—she'll be in a more cooperative mood by the time he gets her to Garrett.

She's still not moving, and he sighs.

"Don't make me drag you," he warns. It's mostly an empty threat—while he's confident of his ability to keep his feet, he thinks it'll be a few hours before he's capable of overpowering anyone—but it works.

"Fine," she says, and stalks past him out of the lab.

He rolls his eyes and follows.

x

Dealing with civilian control towers is a bitch on the best of days, and this is far from that, but he gets through it. Unfortunately, he's no sooner started the Bus moving than his day proceeds to get even worse.

There's a jump jet on the runway Air Traffic Control directed him to, and he's pretty sure it's the one the team took to Portland.

Fuck.

He really shouldn't have wasted all that time talking to Skye.

"Maria Hill to SHIELD-616; you have thirty seconds to stand down and surrender."

Great. Because that's just what this day needs. (How the hell did Hill even get involved in this, anyway?)

With a sigh, Grant reaches for a headset and pulls it on, opening the channel Hill is using to hail him.

"I repeat, stand down and surrender." There's a pause as she waits for a response and he considers just how to handle this. "You gonna answer me, Ward, or do I have to come over there?"

"Maria Hill," he says. "Kinda hoped you went down with the Triskelion."

A lie—he hasn't thought of Hill at all since all this started—but it's the best he can do on short notice. He knew there was a distinct possibility the team would find them before too long (who knows what kind of clues Skye might have left behind in Providence, if she knew before they left that he's with HYDRA), and he thought he was prepared for it. But apparently he wasn't; looking at the jump jet, all he can do is wonder if Jemma's on it.

It's a dangerous line of thinking, and not for the usual reasons.

Hill says something about him being a duplicitous lowlife—points for originality, even if "lowlife" is kind of weak, as insults go—but he's not really listening.

Would Coulson (because Coulson must be involved with this, there's no reason for Hill to care about Grant, otherwise) bring Jemma along on an op against her own soulmate? Would he be that cruel—that crazy?

To save Skye? Absolutely.

It's not a pleasant thought, and his annoyance leaks into his voice despite his best efforts. "Gonna be honest with you, Hill. Havin' a pretty bad day. So if I were you, I'd get the hell out of my way."

He's really not expecting her to agree—life is never that kind to him—but it's worth a shot.

Of course, he doesn't really need her to get out of his way. It'll only take a few seconds to switch the Bus into vertical takeoff mode, so he won't really need the runway. And it's not like she can shoot him down; the jump jet doesn't have the kind of firepower necessary to do any significant damage to the Bus, and even if it did, Coulson would never let Hill put Skye's life at risk like that.

There's no way this ends in any way other than Grant leaving with Skye (and fucking Deathlok, unfortunately).

Why does that make him uneasy?

…Because Coulson isn't going to give up. He disobeyed orders, violated a dozen protocols, and killed two SHIELD agents to save Skye's life when she was shot. There's no way he's going to leave Skye in Garrett's hands. He's going to keep trying until he either rescues Skye or gets himself killed in the attempt.

And he's almost definitely going to bring Jemma along for the ride.

That's the last thing Grant wants. The only thing worse than going the rest of his life without seeing Jemma again would be seeing her on the other end of his gun. He'll cross off the rest of the team if he has to—even Fitz and Skye, as much as he'd hate it—but he can't hurt Jemma. He won't. And he won't allow anyone else to hurt her, either.

His heart gives a phantom twinge that has nothing to do with emotion and everything to do with the fucking heart attack he just had, and it reminds him that he's not the only piece Garrett's got on the board these days. Grant can—and will—refuse to harm Jemma.

But he's the only one of Garrett's operation who will.

He can threaten to kill anyone who touches her—and he'll be doing exactly that, just as soon as he gets back to base—but things can go wrong in a split second in the field, and killing someone after the fact won't undo what's been done.

He needs a way to keep Jemma safe. He'll do what he can on his end, of course, but…

The best way to keep her safe is to keep her out of the field entirely. And the best way to do that…

He thinks of his conversation with Skye, the naked terror on her face when he said we'll see about that, and he knows what he has to do. His stomach turns.

"Give up Skye and we'll talk about it," Hill says. It's the perfect opening.

"You know what, Hill, I'm feeling generous," he says. "I'll make you a deal. You hand over Jemma, and I'll give you Skye."

There's a long pause. He wonders, again, whether Jemma's in the jump jet…and, if so, what hearing him ask for her makes her feel.

Could she be happy that he's willing to give up Skye—his main reason for returning to Providence in the first place, which he's sure they've guessed by now—in order to have her? Probably not. But what does she feel, then? Angry? Betrayed?

He hopes it doesn't scare her. He wants it to—it's kind of the whole point—but…still. Tactically, the best thing for him is if Jemma is frightened of him—if Coulson thinks she has reason to be frightened, and therefore keeps her out of the field. But emotionally…

He doesn't want her to fear him. Hate, anger, disgust—those he can take. But fear?

"And what do you want with her?" Hill asks eventually.

"With my soulmate?" he asks, mockingly. "Think about it. I'm sure it'll come to you."

He makes himself a little sick with the innuendo he slips into his tone, but it's necessary. The more they're worried about Jemma, the less likely Coulson is to be reckless with her safety.

He's not there to watch her back anymore. The only way to keep her safe is to make them think she's got something to fear from him. It'll keep her out of the field and out of danger. This is the right choice. It's the only choice. No matter how much he hates it.

He never wanted to be the kind of man whose soulmate feared him.

But there are a lot of things he never wanted.

Hill is silent for nearly a full minute, and he busies himself with switching the Bus into vertical takeoff mode. Once that's finished, he decides she could use a little push.

"So?" he asks. "You gonna hand Jemma over or not?"

"That's not happening," she says, and he can hear barely contained fury in her tone. "Ever."

"Then I guess we're done here," he says.

"Not so fast," she snaps.

She threatens to call up some F-16s, but—since she doesn't have that kind of power anymore and, again, Coulson would never let her put Skye's life at risk—he brushes her off.

The thought that Jemma might be in the jump jet is still nagging at him. Just the possibility is enough to make his fingers itch with the urge to touch her, and that's not good. He needs to get out of here before his emotions win out over his ability to think strategically (again) and lead him into doing something reckless, so after a few more insults, he ends the conversation.

As expected, Hill makes no move to attack—or follow—as he lifts off. He closes the channel, gets the Bus on course, and focuses on steadying his breathing as they climb towards 35,000 feet.

It's probably just his imagination that the soulbond is stretching like an old rubber band, about to snap, as the runway falls further and further behind. In fact, he's sure of it. But that doesn't make it any less disconcerting.

He needs to stop this. He needs to leave thoughts of Jemma behind with LA. He's done what he can to ensure her safety—will do more as soon as they reach Cuba—and now he needs to let go of her. If he's lucky, he'll never see her again.

(And that—that is still such a fucking painful thought, the idea that it would be lucky to go without seeing her. But it's miles better than any of the possible alternatives.)

He needs to let go. He needs to put emotion—put weakness—aside and get his head into the fucking game, before anything worse happens. Before any more mistakes are made.

He's no sooner had the thought than his attention is drawn towards a beeping display. He stares at it for a second, honestly stunned by how fucking terribly this day is going.

The cargo ramp is opening.

He's frozen for a second longer by the memory of October, that horrible day—that day even worse than this one has been—when Jemma was infected with the Chitauri virus. For a heartbeat, he flashes back to standing in the briefing room, the sudden snap of realization, and his frantic dash through the Bus to the cargo bay.

Then he shakes it off, because he has a job to do.

He switches the autopilot on and leaves the cockpit, drawing his sidearm as he goes. Deathlok's halfway across the lounge, and he tosses a casual, "Coulson," over his shoulder before Grant can even ask.

Of fucking course it's Coulson. That explains the production on the runway; he must have snuck aboard the Bus somehow while Hill had Grant distracted.

He should've anticipated that. He would have, if he hadn't been so focused on how to keep Jemma out of danger. There's a distinctly troubling pattern emerging here, and if Garrett recognizes it, there's going to be serious hell to pay.

But this is no time to worry about Garrett.

He sprints across the cabin after Deathlok, ignoring the accompanying pain (everywhere. Literally everything hurts, from his face to his ribs to the bottom of his feet), and is greeted by a hail of gunfire as he reaches the catwalk above the cargo bay.

Of course.

Skye and Coulson are in Lola, the headlights of which have been replaced by machine gun barrels, because that's just how this day is going. Grant ducks and crosses the catwalk to get a better angle, then takes aim and fires.

He doesn't want to hurt Skye. Coulson's a different story.

Lola's windshield, however, is apparently bulletproof, and all Grant's doing is wasting bullets.

Deathlok finally gets in the game; he fires a projectile (something else Grant has less than fond memories of—one of those things nearly killed him in Pensacola) out of his gauntlet, and, in response, Coulson reverses off the edge of the cargo ramp.

God damn it. Whose idea was it to give that man a flying car?

Grant makes a few more wild shots, mostly out of frustration, and then turns away, swearing. Deathlok calmly crosses the cargo bay and raises the ramp, like their prisoner getting away is no big deal.

Hell, he's probably happy about it.

Grant curls his hand around the railing, struggling for calm. He failed in every single one of his goals in going to Providence—get the codes for the hard drive, maintain his cover, take Jemma with him when he left—and now he's failed the last of the orders Garrett gave him, which were to bring Skye to Cuba.

The hard drive is unlocked, but that's fucking Deathlok's doing, not his.

He hasn't done a single thing right since he left Havana. He's let his emotions—let his attachment to Jemma—distract him from his objectives, and he's paid the price for it. How much of today did he spend talking to Skye instead of actually doing anything? How many hours has he spent going in circles over Jemma, not just today but every day since HYDRA came out of the shadows?

Making plans to keep her, convincing himself that he can't, telling himself to let go—and then denying it, thinking that he can find a way around it somehow, acknowledging that he can't, and, finally, sulking.

He's been whining to himself about Jemma all day. He let his concern for her—his need to see to her safety in his absence—blind him to the fact that Hill was stalling. He let Skye use her against him, not once but twice.

And all he has to show for it is an empty plane, a hard drive someone else got unlocked, and more physical pain than he's felt since that time he got caught in a rockslide.

Jemma is a weakness. Jemma is his weakness.

He needs to do something about it.

In the meantime, he's not in a hurry to return to Garrett with absolutely none of his objectives completed—he's had a bad enough week already without paying that hell. It might not be too late to go after Skye and Coulson; a classic red Corvette covered in bullet holes isn't going to pass under the radar, not even in LA.

…Actually, going after them's not a bad idea. He can bring Garrett not only Skye, whom he presumes Garrett wants because of her experience with the GH-325, but Coulson, who was actually brought back from the dead by it.

That'll ease the blow of Grant needing to have his ass pulled out of the fire by a fucking Incentives-influenced cyborg.

Yeah. He's going after them.

"What are you doing?" Deathlok asks, following him into the lounge.

"I'm putting the plane down," Grant snaps, tucking his gun away. The last thing he needs is to risk giving into temptation and shooting Deathlok, since apparently he's Garrett's new favorite. "We need to go after them."

"No, we don't," Deathlok says. "We stay with the plan."

A fucking decade (or longer, depending how you look at it) Grant's been Garrett's right-hand man, and he didn't need to be fucking threatened into it. SHIELD has screwed him over in so many ways this week.

"I don't answer to you," he reminds him sharply.

"Coulson and Skye don't matter anymore," Deathlok insists. "We have the data and Garrett wants us back. Right now."

God damn it. He's not gonna do himself any favors disobeying Garrett now.

But this—having Deathlok deliver Garrett's orders—is the last fucking straw. Grant stops and turns to face him.

"Listen," he hisses. "I'm not just gonna forget what you did to me back there. You try anything like that again, I will kill you."

And he will. The enhancements from the Centipede serum will make it harder, but not impossible. He's been strategizing ways around it since December, when Coulson called Peterson in to help them against the Centipede soldiers, and he's only improved them since Italy.

He can take him. It won't be easy, but he can take him.

He starts to turn away, but Deathlok's words stop him.

"It wasn't personal," he says. "I was just following orders."

What a jackass.

But he lets it go. Deathlok stalks away, off to do…whatever the hell he does when he's not trying to kill Grant, and Grant goes to his bunk with the intention of changing.

In the last few hours he's been in a physical fight, a gunfight, and had a literal heart attack; he's aching all over and filthy with dirt, sweat, and even a little blood. What he'd really like is a shower, but he's not willing to risk leaving himself that vulnerable while Deathlok's around. A change of clothes will have to do for now.

It's not the first time he's been in his bunk since Jemma left Providence, but it is the first time since that he's been in it without an ongoing mission. He doesn't have the need to cross off Koenig, the need to get the hard drive unlocked, or the need to keep Skye under control to distract him. Add to that the fact that, less than a day ago, she was helping him change into this very shirt…

The sudden storm of emotion shouldn't be a surprise. Somehow, though, it is.

He tries to force it down as he strips (painfully) out of his shirt, but it's no use. There's a circular burn on his chest, right above his heart, and he can almost hear what she would say if she were here right now—the familiar exchange they saved for when she was patching him up with none of the others around.

(So, Agent Simmons, what do you think?

I think you're a very attractive man, Agent Ward.

Is that your professional opinion?

No. My professional opinion is that you'd be even more attractive if you took better care with your safety. However, I believe you'll live—at least for today.)

Even the memory of her voice—of her playful scolding, of the bright smile she gave him whenever he made it through an op unharmed and the worried frown she gave him when he didn't—is painful. And it's made all the more so by how recently she frowned at him—how recently she sat in his lap and kissed him and told him she loved him—in this very room.

But he can't think about that. Not now.

Instead he thinks, as he pulls on a new shirt, that she'd be furious about that stunt Deathlok pulled. She'd insist on a full physical, probably run no end of tests, and spend the whole time making pointed comments under her breath about…

Not about Deathlok, he admits to himself. Deathlok she'd only have sympathy for. Putting his connection to the team aside, Deathlok—Peterson—is, essentially, a Centipede soldier, and Jemma felt nothing but pity for the Centipede soldiers. Even when they kidnapped Coulson, she remained sympathetic; when Fitz would have seen them dead, she insisted that only non-lethal measures be used against them.

Jemma wouldn't be angry at Deathlok. Not really.

She'd be angry at the person who gave Deathlok the order.

She'd be angry at Garrett.

Even the thought feels disloyal, but it's the truth. Jemma would be furious with Garrett for putting Grant's life at risk, even if it weren't in aid of an objective she wouldn't want accomplished. She would be outraged, and would expect Grant to be outraged, too.

He's not, though.

Is he?

…No. No, of course not. This isn't the first time Garrett's arranged for him to be injured in order to advance their agenda. It's not even the worst. Grant isn't angry. He understands the necessity of it.

He understands why Garrett gave the order. Grant's given him the complete run-down on the team; he knows that Skye's a soft touch, that she could never stand back and watch anyone die, no matter their crimes against her. Garrett knew that Deathlok wouldn't actually have to go through with it. It was painful, but Grant's had worse. Garrett knew he could take it.

And it shouldn't have been necessary anyway. Had Grant managed to do his job right, instead of getting distracted by his emotions—by his attachment to Jemma—the whole thing could have been avoided.

Attachments are weaknesses. If he ever doubted that, today has conclusively proven it. His attachment to Jemma saw him failing in all of his objectives, making mistakes at every turn.

And Skye's attachment to him—and also to Jemma—saw her give up valuable intel and save the life of someone she sees as an enemy.

What happened earlier wasn't Deathlok's fault, but it wasn't Garrett's, either. It was his.

Wasn't it?