Previously: Quite a long time ago when Fitz was still in critical condition from being stuck in the ocean, he coded to a point that he seemed to be dead. The Playground was being raided so they had to leave him there, presuming he would die. Instead, Skrulls picked him and replaced him with a fake Fitz.
More in the present, the team thinks that Fitz and Skye have disappeared, and with the help of Sif hope to find out where they've gone.
Chapter Twenty- Eight
They had searched every inch of the Colosseum, but there was no trace that Skye or Fitz had ever even been there, let alone were there now. They even waited a while to see if they would make an appearance, but as the hours dragged on it became clear that they weren't coming at all, or the team was already too late.
Sif was getting antsy. Ward knew this because when the Asgardian was anxious, she made herself known.
"This is pointless," she stated. "Waiting is not helpful. If I am to stay and help you, we must be doing something proactive."
"Sif's right," Coulson agreed. "We should go help Simmons look at the BUS."
"That is a good idea; I have technologies that could be beneficial in your aircraft."
"We should keep someone here in case they come back or haven't made it here yet," suggested Ward, even though he knew the chances of them coming there now were slim.
"I'll stay," offered May. "Let me know if something comes up."
Coulson nodded. Soon they were piling back into the same SUV they'd used to get there in the first place, and Ward found himself getting tired of the thing after spending so many hours sitting to wait for Sif.
They got back to the BUS. Everyone seemed to be carefully examining the aircraft as they walked inside. As though a murder or some other sort of crime had occurred. It was deafeningly quiet in there.
Until one scientist came bursting down the stairs, that is.
"Oh you're back!" exclaimed Simmons. "I've looked on Skye's laptop, she left it here. Which at first I thought probably meant they didn't leave willingly at all because well, have you ever known Skye not to take her laptop with her? But then of course, even if she had left willingly she was going to give herself up to someone who probably wouldn't even let her use it. Though he may have, but either way-"
"Simmons," Coulson stated. "Do you have anything to report?"
"Yes! On Skye's laptop I found two train tickets from Sorrento to Rome at 5:42 am. I'm guessing they used a bus to get to the former."
Damn it, they were too late, thought Ward. After waiting at the meet point for so long he'd guessed that had been the case anyway, but unless Fitz and Skye were touring the city, which wasn't entirely impossible, they had already beat the team to meeting up with her father.
"Did you find anything promising at the Colosseum?" asked Simmons.
"No," Coulson answered, just as Sif walked passed him purposefully. She probably decided the scientist wasn't going to give them any valuable information. "Did you find anything else?"
"Just some papers in Skye's room," explained Simmons. "They were actually torn to bits."
"What were they?" asked Coulson, interest on his face.
"I'm not entirely sure. They seemed like they were handwritten notes to someone. I was just about to look into it."
Ward swallowed. He knew what those were. He knew they weren't going to help with their investigation.
"Don't bother Simmons," said Ward. "Skye told me about those. They're just letters she was going to give us the first night I caught her leaving."
"Oh," said Simmons dejectedly.
Whether she'd sounded upset from the thought Skye was going to leave with nothing but a note to her or a squashed hope that they could be a clue to something, Ward didn't know. They were both upsetting prospects, he agreed.
"What's that girl doing?" asked Trip suddenly, and they all turned to see Sif trailing around the lab with a device in her hand. It looked like it had something, symbols and information, lighting up around it that resembled data that would come off the holo-table. Unlike the table, it was portable.
"I am scanning what types of life forms this vessel has held in the past," said Sif, obviously engaged in her task. "My device detected abnormalities."
"Well, Skye has been in the lab plenty of times in the past," said Simmons. "Could it be detecting her?"
"It has already identified the half-breed," Sif informed them. "More non-midguardian life has been here."
Simmons, Ward, Triplett, and Coulson all managed to share a look.
"Wolfe never went in there…" mumbled Coulson.
"My blood samples from Skye were gone. He may have gone into the lab..."
"The creature spent a great deal of time here," said Sif. "Many hours over many days."
"But… but that's not possible!" protested Simmons. "I've spent far too much time in there not to notice something. Unless the creature was small enough to be undetected, perhaps."
Sif's device made some sort of noise, and she looked at it with satisfaction. Maybe not satisfaction, but in a sense that her readings were ringing true. "This gives us a logical conclusion. You've had an imposter in your midst, for the creature living with you has been a Skrull."
Everyone seemed to wrack their brains as the name itched their memories.
Wolfe had mentioned those when he was talking to Skye. They were one of the beings that were after her… what he had said caused the curse that made the Inhumans unable to breed. The prophecy that Skye was being blackmailed into fulfilling.
And there was one here?
"What?" Simmons exclaimed. "A Skrull? An imposter? What does that mean?"
"Skrulls are beings that can take any form they so please. With the proper preparation, they can even steal habits. Memories. Though they always make mistakes," the Asgardian finished, her words ringing through Jemma's head.
Make… mistakes.
He had made mistakes. Small mistakes, but he'd made them. Plenty of them.
Jemma was going to throw up.
Her head spun with a terrible vertigo and she tried to steady herself. Feelings of horror-struck disbelief rolled off her in a waves, but it made sense. The facts added up.
"Simmons?"
Coulson was talking to her. He was trying to comfort her, maybe attempting calm her down. Was she acting out?
Of course she was. She was on the ground, sobbing and trembling.
"I knew," she said shakily. "I knew he was wrong but none of you saw it so I thought maybe it wasn't too b-bad. But it was! Oh my god."
There was a sword in her face. That should probably have set off some sort of alarm in her mind, but she barely flinched. It didn't matter; nothing did, because Skye didn't convince Fitz to drop her off.
He had taken her there.
And he wasn't Fitz at all, was he? But that meant…. That meant…
"She's not the one the alien impersonated," protested Ward, his arms outstretched in front of her as Sif's double bladed sword attempted to reach her. "It was her partner."
She sobbed.
Was her partner?
She hyperventilated.
"He's dead," she said, trembling with disbelief through her crying. There was a heavy weight to her words. They echoed through her ears with repetition and reminded her it was true.
"Simmons, we can't know-"
"Of course we know! Why would they keep him alive? There's no point to it!" she said wildly, trying to convince the stunned faces of her friends to turn their heads from hope. "Look at the facts: he's been gone for days, and he was off life support when we left him… oh god, we just left him!"
She was shouting. She was angry and she was sad. In such despair that her heart felt like it would explode it at any moment. Like the tears cascading down her face would never stop. Languish crept on her skin as she was once again drained from the exhausting pain of loss filling her bones.
She couldn't go through this again.
Jemma tried to wipe off the tears and tried to get up, but her knees wouldn't move. New tears just replaced the old. She could feel herself falling apart. Her best friend. Her best friends…
"He may not be dead," said Sif, prompting Simmons to raise her head to look at the woman with bleary red eyes.
"What do you mean?" asked the scientist hoarsely.
"Skrulls like to keep their prisoners alive as long as possible, in case they need to clone their memory banks again. It's their process."
"You couldn't have mentioned that before she went into hysterics?" asked Ward, voice tinged with annoyance.
It didn't matter. It didn't matter if Simmons had just gone off in front of her team or if Sif's words would have stopped Jemma from doing so. The woman was saying he could be alive. There was hope. Dear god, all she needed was hope, until she needed truth behind it.
With renewed realization that her friend may not be dead, other horrors hit her anew.
The team didn't know he'd been gone. He'd been captured and in enemy hands for a week while they were all blissfully unaware, going about their lives as though he was right there beside them. Anything could have happened to him. He could be being tortured or he could still be in a coma. Meanwhile, an alien had been waltzing around by her side.
And Simmons realized, as much as anything could be happening to Fitz, anything could have happened to her.
She was alone with "Fitz" many times since they'd found him in Costa Rica. No wonder he'd kept taking her by surprise. Kissing her in sudden attacks that were so unlike him.
And she'd kissed him back.
Why did this have to happen? Why did he have to be on the brink of death in the first place? She thought she had him back, she thought he was safe… so what if was a little different. Fitz had been home and that was what mattered.
Right next to the man who'd taken him away in the first place.
"You," Jemma seethed, turning on Ward. "This is all your fault!"
"What?" asked Ward. Simmons saw him glance around the room to eventually land eyes on Coulson, as if fearing her accusation would make the older man turn on him. "I've never even heard of a Skrull before."
"Not the bloody Skrulls you utter halfwit!" Simmons screeched. "Fitz nearly died because of you, and those creatures have him now for that exact reason!"
The irony of the situation was, if Fitz was indeed alive, the only people to be accredited with that feat would be the Skrulls.
No thanks to Ward.
"You've been so gung ho about helping Skye, I pushed passed the fact that you tried to kill us. Kill us, Ward! That you were a traitor and had been working for Hydra the whole time I knew you. I even felt sorry after I stuck you with that sedative!"
"Simmons, I-"
"Don't even try to defend yourself! You do not get to defend yourself!" she exclaimed, pushing on him with multiple angry shoves to the chest that barely made him stumble. He didn't lift a finger to stop her, though. "You've been back here with us for days. Days we've let you walk around and I tried to ignore you because you were an asset. But you never even tried Ward."
He scrunched his brow. "Tried what?"
She growled in frustration. "To apologize! You never apologized! Never even tried. Not that an apology would even make up for what you did, but you needed to at least do it. I can't believe I even allowed myself to so much as speak with you!"
Ward swallowed, but he didn't say anything. Was he not even going to try to say sorry after she'd just laid it out for him? Was he that dense? Maybe she didn't give him long enough to gather his thoughts, but she couldn't wait anymore.
Simmons bolted out of the room.
Ward watched her go, feeling as though he couldn't quite move. He wanted to explain to her. He wanted to apologize because he knew he should be groveling to every single last one of them, let alone at least try to repent for that horrible action.
But that would mean going into the box.
And he'd kept that box tightly shut in the corner of his mind. If he opened it, that would mean exposing everything. He could become unstable. He couldn't do that to Skye, not now when she needed him. He couldn't become unpredictable.
When he turned away from the now empty corridor Simmons had run off to, he was met with double death glares, emanating off of both Triplett and Coulson.
Maybe Ward didn't have a choice.
"I think I should go back to your city of Rome," said Sif, as if she hadn't noticed the explosion of emotions the scientist had just gone through and the tension that now took residence in the air. She was focusing on her Asgardian tech. "My devices can detect if Skrulls have any technologies in the city. There was no sign of Inhuman or Kree intelligence, but this makes sense now."
Coulson nodded to her. "Thank you. Agent Triplett can escort you."
"That would be a helpful service," responded Sif, nodding her appreciation at Trip.
He appraised the Asgardian head to toe. "Trust me, it's my pleasure."
Back in the SUV they went, heading right back where they came from. The drive was a short enough distance that it hadn't been a particularly difficult trip.
After the SUV was out of the vantage of the open cargo bay doors, Coulson turned on Ward. Surprisingly, he didn't look angry. But he did look intense.
"Is this going to be a problem?" asked Coulson, and Ward could feel the heat of his gaze.
"I'm not entirely sure what you're referring to, sir," said Ward stiffly.
There were indeed a good amount of problems floating around the team lately, but Grant was actually pretty positive he knew what the man was talking about. Another response just didn't come immediately to mind.
"I've got an agent up there who had a cross-off attempt directed at her by someone on her own team, who I'm pretty sure she believed to be her friend. Then he turned out to be reporting on her, and said team, for months. You don't think that would make someone harbor ill-feelings?"
Coulson appraised Ward after he said his carefully chosen words, and Ward had to think about his just as much.
"Of course it would. I have no delusions it wouldn't."
"Well it strikes me as odd you wouldn't be doing everything you can in your power to fix it," Coulson stated. "We're in quite a situation here and I don't have time to send you to a seminar on how to get along with your co-workers. I've been giving you the benefit of the doubt to help us out here as you've proven to have some worth, but if either of you are emotionally compromised you can't be at full working capacity. That puts our two agents in jeopardy. So find a way to fix it."
Ward wanted to say that in order to fix it, he might become emotionally compromised himself. He wasn't one to usually let his emotions run him, but that was because he could compartmentalize his feelings. He wasn't' forced to rip them out at the surface. He was trained to put them away until such a time that he could handle them and work them out on his own.
He wanted to tell Coulson this. And maybe he should have, but he didn't. Instead he slipped back into the persona Coulson wanted him for, the only reason he kept him around. He didn't care about Ward's feelings. He cared about what happened to his actual agents, and for that he needed soldiers. So that's exactly what he would be.
"Yes, sir."
A/n: The POVs change a bit in this chapter. It goes Ward Simmons Ward, I hope that didn't confuse anyone as I thought line breaks would make it seem like time passed so I kept them out.