The Persistence of Memory

by Eienvine

James Shaughnessy is a respectable but average person living a respectable but average life . . . except for the dreams. Except for the scars on his body that he can't explain. Except for Daisy, the beautiful girl who comes to his restaurant sometimes and looks at him like she knows him.

2. Chapter 2

. . . . . .

James wakes with the vague sense that he has been out for at least a few hours. His head hurts, but he has a feeling it was hurting worse earlier, when . . . why was his head hurting so badly earlier?

Suddenly memory returns to him like a flash of lightning and his eyes fly open. "Dasiy!" he says aloud, the words slipping from his mouth without his meaning to speak. She's alone with that . . . that man, the one who glows and shoots lightning and had threatened her life. Is she all right? He tries to sit up and dizziness overtakes him, forcing him to lie back down.

As he lays there, waiting for the spinning to stop, he takes a moment to take in his surroundings. He's not in the alley anymore. In fact he's in what appears to be a hospital room, dark and windowless, lit only by the readouts on the machinery around him. He's entirely alone, and aside from a periodic beep from one of the machines and a low electronic hum, all is silent. The digital clock on his bedside table tells him it's 1:35 in the morning—he assumes he's only been out for a few hours, but honestly it could have been a whole day for all he knows. There's a bandage on his head; clearly one or both of those hits he took drew blood. His neck is quite sore, spreading into his shoulders and chest, but he's not wearing one of those brace things so apparently he didn't damage his neck too much. And he's wearing a hospital gown and there are electrodes on his skin. That is everything he's capable of ascertaining right now.

When his head has stopped spinning he tries sitting up again, slowly this time. This time he manages to make it upright with no negative consequences and only an increased heart rate to show for it. He wonders if someone's monitoring that heart rate machine and they're going to come running in, but a minute passes and no one does. Apparently he's in here on his own.

For several minutes he sits there, trying to decide what to do next; he can see no nurse call button (that's a thing, right? Nurse call buttons? He doesn't know, he's never been in a hospital before—as far as he's aware. Although his scars would indicate he's been shot and tried to commit suicide in the past so maybe he has been hospitalized and just forgot). But he needs to know what's going on—where is he? Where's Daisy? He feels all right; he thinks he could walk. So, after he's sat long enough to get thoroughly tired and frustrated and confused, he pulls off the electrodes, wraps himself in a robe that's hanging by the door, and eases himself out of his hospital room.

He's in a short hallway, stark and institutional-looking; there are no windows anywhere, and he wonders if he's underground. There are also no people anywhere, just a handful of doors identical to his and a cart with fresh linens and a water jug down the way a little. Unusual hospital, if it is a hospital. Maybe it's not. Maybe the glowing man captured them and this is his . . . lair. A guy who shoots lightning probably has a lair, right? (He thinks all this, jokingly, but he doesn't really believe it. He's James Shaughnessy, a restaurateur who runs a respectable but unglamorous Italian bistro in a respectable but unglamorous neighborhood on the upper tip of the Upper West Side. People like him don't get captured by glowing lightning men.)

He's in the process of deciding which direction to choose when he hears a sound, like a muffled shout from nearby. That makes his decision for him, and he moves quietly toward the sound. It turns out to be coming from a lab of some kind; the wall between it and the hall he's currently in is floor-to-ceiling windows, meaning that if he gets close, he'll be seen. So he hangs back a little. He's not hiding, precisely, but he wants to be sure of what he's getting himself into before he lets them know he's awake. Just in case he was in fact captured by the lightning man.

"I'm telling you what I've been telling you all along." Daisy! She's all right. But she sounds angry, so now he doesn't want to interrupt. "It didn't work. And if it didn't work on Ward, maybe it's about to fail on Cal."

Ward. She used that word—that name?—several times in that alleyway. Used it to refer to James, actually, come to think of it.

The next voice that speaks up is female, young, and British. "Scans show his brain activity is normal. We have no evidence that the Tahiti protocol failed."

"I have the evidence," says Skye, sounding exasperated. "I've seen the evidence in talking to him. There are gaps in the background we created. He's finding them all the time."

A man speaks then, a man with a mild, pleasant voice. He sounds tired, though. "We put in as much detail as we thought he could hold," he says.

"I know," says Daisy, and she sounds quieter, more placating. "Maybe human memory is still too complex for us to try to mimic—especially an entire lifetime's worth. And then there are concrete things we can't change. Like his scars."

One of James' hands goes up to unconsciously touch the scar on his wrist. Are they talking about him? If so, why are they calling him Ward? And what is the Tahiti protocol? There's that nausea again, like he gets when he thinks too hard about memories he can't find. And the pain in his head increases sharply.

The British woman speaks. "We tried, the first time. We provided a blanket explanation for the scars—but clearly some of them required more detailed explanations. So we try again and we fix that mistake."

"It's not just that," said Daisy. "This will all be in my field report, once I have time to write it up. What I'm seeing is, we can manufacture memories, but we can't manufacture the emotions that attach to them. He noticed that he didn't love his parents. We can't make him love his parents. A person is always going to notice that kind of disconnect."

It's him. They're talking about him, for sure—he told Daisy his feelings about his parents, and now she's telling whoever these people are about it, and they claim they manufactured his memories. How is that possible? Why would anyone even do that? And she was going to write about it in a field report—has she been observing him? Spying on him? Was her walking into Ottavio's that first night not mere chance but part of an assignment she was on? The pain in his head has been increasingly slowly and inexorably and it's blinding now, and he reaches out for the wall to hold himself up and ends up backing into a cart behind him and knocking water glasses to the floor. A moment later, the door to the lab opens.

It's Daisy. "Wa—James!" she says, looking worried. "You shouldn't be up. Your head injury—"

"He's awake?" comes the voice of the British woman, and a face appears behind Skye: young, pale, brunette, very pretty. "I thought you'd be out for ages," she mutters. "You always were resilient."

"You should get back to bed," says Daisy, stepping forward.

But James backs up a step. "Were you talking about me in there?" he demands, and Daisy and her companion both grimace.

"You heard that?" Daisy says resignedly.

"Daisy, what is going on here? Where am I, and what did you mean about manufacturing memories?"

She steps forward again, and he steps back again and hits the wall. "Don't," he orders her harshly, and thinks that this must be a dream. Maybe this is one of those awful dreams he's always having and forgetting. And in fact, he prays this is one of those awful dreams he's always having and forgetting. Because to find out the only girl who's ever meant anything to him is a liar and a . . . whatever this all is, would be unbearable.

The pain in his head is so sharp now that he's swaying on his feet; he fights the urge to lay down right here on the floor. And Daisy seems to notice his discomfort. "James? Is it your head?"

Unable to do anything else, he nods, slowly.

She and the British woman exchange glances. "Look," Daisy says, "I know you're confused and upset right now. But you need more time to recuperate. Can we please take you back to your room and give you something for your head?"

He wants to say no, he really does. But right now he thinks he's in very real danger of his head just exploding from the pain. So he nods again.

The British woman leads the way back to his hospital room and Daisy walks there by his side; at first she keeps a respectful distance from him but by the time they reach his room she's got one hand on his arm and the other on his back in an attempt to keep him upright. In his room, he takes off the robe and gets back in bed, willing at this point to do just about anything to make his head stop hurting. His two companions converse together quietly a moment, and then Skye approaches the bed and sits in a chair next to it.

"Hey, James," she says quietly, while he watches her skeptically. "I know you're mad at me right now. And that's fine. I don't blame you. But you need to rest, and Dr. Simmons here thinks you need something to stop the pain and help you sleep. But we're not going to inject you with anything without your permission. Is it okay for her to give you this shot?"

He stares at her, saying nothing. Laying down has helped the pain in his head, but only a very little. She's right; he'll never fall asleep like this. "Where am I?" he demands.

"You're in a military base, ish," she says, and he supposes it could be true; that mostly matches what he's seen.

"Why did you bring me here?"

"Reynolds and his goons did a number on you," she says. "Knocked you around a lot. We needed to make sure you're okay. And . . ." She hesitates, but something about her body language gives him the feeling that she's still telling the truth. "We wanted to try and sort out what's going on in your head."

So there is something going on in his head. Maybe it really is her fault. Or maybe he's just losing touch with reality. "You had something to do with . . . all this?" He gestures at his head.

"I promise we'll give you answers when you've had time to heal," she says. "But right now you really need to sleep." She hesitates, and then she reaches out and takes his hand in hers. And just like last time, he is struck by how familiar it feels. "Please trust me, James."

He looks up at her face, that face he used to think about every single work day, longing to see her walk through his door. He wants to trust her; he wants to believe she has his best interests at heart. And anyway, what choice does he have? He can barely walk right now. He can barely think. So he nods. "Fine, give me the shot."

Daisy squeezes his hand, and Dr. Simmons approaches the bed and deftly injects something into his arm. The pain begins to fade almost immediately, and with it his consciousness. It is blessed relief after that pain, and James decides that even if it kills him, it might be worth it. He can sleep now, definitely, and actually this bed is feeling incredibly comfortable.

Daisy's grip loosens and she moves as though to stand, but he tightens his grip on her hand. "Stay, please," he speaks without thinking, already too far gone in that lovely drug-induced haze to care that he's being forward and that she's been lying to him all along.

She hesitates, then settles back into her chair. Her other hand comes up so she can run her thumb across his knuckles. And it's nice; he can't remember the last time he felt looked after like this. Even if she's part of whatever this all is, it's nice to fall asleep with someone's hand in his.

And finally, his eyes drift closed.

. . . . . .

The next time he wakes up, his head feels much better, which he supposes is from having had time to heal—from the scruff on his face, he's been in this military hospital for three or four days. According to the clock, it's 5:40 in the afternoon. This time, he's only awake for a few moments before someone enters the room: that British woman, Dr. Simmons.

"Good morning," she says, sounding professional, as though this is a totally normal doctor visit and that episode from a few days ago never happened. "How are you feeling? How's your head?" There's something strange about her manner, though; he gets the sense that she doesn't like being in here with him, but is staying out of duty.

"Better," he says warily, watching her bustle over and look at readouts on several different machines. "Nice of you not to leave me in the dark like last time I woke up." Rude? Probably. But he feels like he's probably got the right to be rude right now, after being snatched from home and hospitalized in this place. (He doesn't dwell on the other thing they might have done to him: that they might have manufactured his memories. Because the last time he was awake, he'd been disoriented and frightened and he'd believed such a thing was possible. But now, well-rested and clear-headed, he knows the whole notion is nonsense, just science fiction, and that conversation he overheard feels more like a fevered dream than reality. He misunderstood what they were saying, he's sure of it. Or maybe he dreamed it all up.)

Dr. Simmons looks appropriately chagrined. "I do apologize," she says. "I wasn't monitoring you as closely as I should have—I was quite certain you'd be unconscious for a long time yet, and I'd been called into a . . . fairly important meeting. It won't happen again, I promise you. I pride myself on my professionalism."

And she seems so apologetic that he almost feels bad for bringing it up. "All right," he says. "Any chance you're going to tell me what's going on?"

Her smile is tight, without warmth. "Above my pay grade, I'm afraid. Telling you is, I mean. We're leaving that for the director."

"Director of what? I thought this was a military hospital."

"It is. He's the director of our . . . group."

Before he can ask what that means, she's leaning over him and shining a light in his eyes, which is quite distracting and effectively derails his line of questioning. So he's quiet a long moment, until he thinks of another question. "How long have I been here? And how long will I be here? I have a life to get back to. I have a job and . . . friends." He does have friends, really. Well, he has Gaohan, anyway. And Luisa likes him quite well, although she's nearly sixty and they definitely don't hang out in their off-hours.

"That's all been taken care of."

"Taken care of? How?" he demands. "Who's running the restaurant? Is it still running?"

"We've contacted your people. It will run just fine for a few days with you gone—your chef and your staff are taking care of it. And any major decisions can be made by your partner, Mr. Roher."

Mr. Roher? How do they know about him? Do they know every piece of his life? Before he can get too worked up about it, though, there's a knock on the door. Is it Daisy? In spite of everything, he hopes it's Daisy, and he's mad at himself for that hope but he can't help it. Half of him is angry with her and half of him can't help but forgive her, trust her, wish he could hold her hand again.

It's not Daisy. It's a middle-aged white male, brown-haired and average-looking, dressed in a suit. "Can I have a few minutes with the patient?" he asks Dr. Simmons, and she nods and leaves the room. "Glad to see you're awake," he tells James, and his voice is familiar. This is, he's fairly sure, the man that Daisy was talking to in that lab.

"James, right?" says the man. "Phil Coulson. I'm the director here."

James shakes the offered hand cautiously—he is not usually a suspicious or mistrustful person, but the last few days may have changed that for good. "Here as in this hospital?"

"This hospital is part of the organization I run. We are a . . . defense organization, you could say."

Isn't that kind of what Daisy said she did? "Are you Daisy's boss?"

Coulson looks surprised at the question, but he nods.

"Did you send her to spy on me?"

Coulson gives him an apologetic look, and James can feel himself scowling. He thought they were friends, but he was always just an assignment to her.

"Why?"

"I can't tell you that yet."

Of course he can't. "Why am I here?" James presses.

He's expecting more runaround, so he's pleasantly surprised with the amount of information in Coulson's answer. "You witnessed and were involved in an altercation between one of my agents and what we refer to as 'powered' or 'gifted' individuals. You were badly hurt in the fight and my agent was worried about you. We took you in on her insistence, and because we want to help you with your current . . . condition."

Condition? James wants to ask what exactly he means, but Coulson interrupts. "Does that seem all right to you? We'll need some cooperation from you for the next couple days." James considers for a moment, but if they can provide answers about his scars and his memories, he's willing to give them a chance. He sort of trusts Daisy, although he probably shouldn't, and this is her boss. So he shrugs and nods his acceptance, and Coulson launches into a list of questions. "Now, you, James Shaughnessy, run an Italian restaurant in New York City. Correct?"

James nods, and Coulson heads off into questions about the restaurant, the staff, how long he's been there, what does he think about New York City. And James tries to stay angry and suspicious, but it's hard—this Coulson guy has a very disarming way about him, and by five minutes into the conversation, James finds himself liking and even trusting the man, quite against his will.

And then the questions shift to his life before New York. Coulson asks him a lot of questions about his trip to North Carolina—why in the world does that matter?—and then about growing up and going to college in Chicago.

"Do you ever miss Chicago?" Coulson asks, and James hesitates, then shrugs.

"No, not really. I had some great times there, but it . . . I don't know, going back doesn't sound appealing right now."

Coulson's expression is grave, and James wishes he knew what was going on behind that face. The man's mild manner is the perfect mask: absolutely inscrutable.

Finally the questions begin to slow down. "Do you ever have bad dreams?"

Surprised, James nods.

"About what?"

"I never remember," says James. "But they wake me up, and I can tell they've been . . . upsetting."

Coulson nods. "One last question," he says, and gestures with his pencil to James' right wrist. "Can you tell me where you got that scar?"

James' jaw tightens. "I can't."

"You can't tell me or you can't remember?"

"I can't remember," James says, and the nausea that he has come to associate with thinking about this scar comes back in full force.

"Try," says Coulson calmly. "Think back. It doesn't look that old. Think back to last year and try to remember."

And James does. He tries, he really does. It's just— thinking about that void in his memory is the blankest his mind ever gets, and it's frightening. Coming across it in his memories is like stumbling in the dark over a chair when you know you didn't put a chair there before you went to sleep. He hates this feeling he hates it he hates it—

"James?"

James looks up at the director with an embarrassed grimace, remembering what Daisy said about the last time that happened to him. "How long was I gone?" he asks meekly.

Coulson's face is absolutely grim. "Almost a minute," he says, and he suddenly looks very old and very weary. With a sigh, he stands from his chair. "I need to do some thinking about your condition," he says. "I'll let you know as soon as I have any answers."

"Sir?" James doesn't know why he's calling this man sir, but it feels right. "When do I get to go home?"

Coulson gives him an apologetic look. "I'm not sure."

That annoys James. "What if I just got up and walked out of here?" he asks.

"You'd have trouble," Coulson tells him. "This is a very secure facility."

And that pricks at James' stubborn streak. "Am I a prisoner?" he demands.

Another sigh. "No. But this situation is more dangerous and more complicated than you realize. We don't want to lock you up. But I will take any steps I have to in order to protect my people. And protect you, even if that means protecting you from yourself." Then a tiny smile lightens his face. "It won't be much longer now, I promise."

He leaves the room, and James drops his head back on his pillow and wonders how his life got so surreal.

. . . . . .

Dr. Simmons comes in a little while later with a companion, a young man about her age wearing a cardigan and a button-up shirt. He has curly hair of a nondescript color and pale skin, and his face goes even paler when he sees James. James gets the feeling that this man, like Dr. Simmons, has what seems like an entirely unfounded dislike of him. Where is all this hate coming from?

"James, this is Dr. Fitz," says Dr. Simmons. "He's going to help me out while we give you an MRI." She hands James the robe, and he puts it on and gets in the provided wheelchair, deciding not to point out that he can walk just fine on his own because it doesn't seem like anyone here listens to him anyway. Dr. Fitz pushes the wheelchair down the hall to a room with a big machine that James recognizes from TV shows. For half an hour he lays in the machine while it whirs and hums around his head and Dr. Simmons occasionally asks him questions or instructs him to perform a small task. Dr. Fitz speaks up once or twice—usually responding to something Dr. Simmons said—and it surprises James to learn the man has a Scottish accent. He's met four people here so far, and two of them have been British. Are they even still in America? He was out for a while, so who knows?

Afterwards they return him to his room and bid him a cautious goodbye, and to James' surprise he falls into bed and quickly starts to doze off. After how long he slept, he'd have thought he'd be awake for days, but this whole ordeal has drained him, apparently. In a matter of minutes, he is asleep.

The next time he wakes up, it's morning and Daisy is sitting by his bed. "You're up," she says with a small smile. And in the moment before he remembers that she's been lying to him all along, he thinks how nice it is to wake up to the smile of the woman you—but no, he remembers now: she's not what she pretended to be and it's probably best not to think like that anymore. It's probably best to get right down to business.

"Are you here to give me answers?"

Her mouth tightens into a hard line and she nods wordlessly. There's a long silence while she appears to search for words, and suddenly she bursts out, "First, can we talk? About—anything? I don't even care about what, let's just talk."

"Why?" he asks, baffled, as he sits up in his hospital bed.

She looks down and plays with the cuffs of her black shirt. "Because everything's going to be different after we have this conversation. Me and you aren't going to be . . . on good terms with each other anymore. And I'm not ready to let go of this just yet. Just five minutes, that's all."

Curiosity about this dire message she plans to deliver is killing him a little, but he also can't deny that his heart is lifting at her words. They don't have a chance; he knows that. He still has no idea what she does, but according to Coulson she's an agent for some kind of defense organization, and her job includes getting into "altercations with powered individuals." James isn't entirely sure what that means, but he is fairly sure it means that he and she don't have a chance, even without the lies between them.

But that doesn't mean that part of him doesn't wish that they did—have a chance, that is. And he is moved and gratified by this evidence that she might be sorry about that fact, just like he is—that this something between them is not purely in his imagination.

"It doesn't have to be that way," he says. "We're smart. We're adults. We can figure out a way to stay . . . friendly with each other."

She gives him a sad smile and one hand tentatively reaches out to rest on his forearm. "I don't think so," she says quietly. "Because when we're done here you're going to hate me. You're probably going to hate yourself too."

James feels a chill run down his spine at the finality and bleakness in that statement. He can't imagine what they're going to talk about that would make him hate her and himself, but Daisy clearly absolutely believes that it's true. So he nods. "Okay, let's talk about something else," he says. "What do you want to talk about?" Surely the answers he seeks can wait five minutes.

She smiles and removes her hand from his arm, and he immediately wants it back. "I don't know. Tell me . . . about the shelter you volunteer at."

So James acquiesces. He tells her how he started by helping out putting up some shelves—"Because I'm tall and can lift things, not because I'm any good at handy work"—and then stayed when he learned that they needed help in the kitchen in the mornings. He talks about the job placement program and how he uses his connections with other restaurateurs to find waitressing and kitchen positions for some of the residents. He talks about helping some of the kids with their schoolwork and organizing games and activities for them. He talks about Ricky, who looks so much like a kid version of James that they all call him "James' little twin" and how sometimes looking at him makes James think how lucky he is, how different his life could have been if he'd be born to an abuser like Ricky's dad.

Daisy listens and laughs and asks questions in the appropriate places and contributes some of her own stories of growing up in foster care. At some point, around the time he's talking about Ricky, her hand creeps into his again and he carefully doesn't react, doesn't do anything to call attention to it and maybe frighten her off. Because apparently whatever they're going to talk about next will ruin this, and if this is the last time he gets to touch her, he's going to cherish it. Because despite everything, she's still the most perfect girl he's ever met.

He really is a sucker when it comes to her.

The time flies by and when he next looks at the clock by his bedside, he sees that they've been talking for forty minutes—quite a lot past the five she originally asked for. Part of him wishes they could just keep talking, but he can feel something in the conversation shifting and he knows they've reached the point where they've got to talk about it, whatever it is. So he sighs and looks up at Daisy, and she sighs and nods.

"You know," she says after a moment, "you don't have to do this. You've been happy in New York, haven't you? You told me that. We could send you back right now and you could just keep running your restaurant."

He considers this. "Would you still come check up on me, or whatever you've been doing?"

A half-smile brightens her face. "Yeah, I could do that."

And it's tempting. It's quite tempting. But he doesn't know if he'd stay happy, with this mystery on his mind. If his reaction to the scar is any indication of what would happen, he'd eventually drive himself mad thinking about it. "If you knew there was some mystery about your past, could you just let it go?"

Her smiles turns rueful. "No, I couldn't. That's actually the reason I became a shield agent, to solve the mystery of my past."

Shield agent . . wait, is this SHIELD? Well, why didn't Coulson say so? James would have been way more trusting if he'd known—public opinion might have turned against them after the whole Hydra thing, but James still believes in them. Although he supposes he knows why Coulson wouldn't bring it up—they're not exactly popular and mentioning the organization might have made certain people less likely to cooperate. But this is the Avengers' SHIELD. This is Captain America's SHIELD.

James turns his mind back to the matter at hand. Daisy's veiled warnings that he'll be unhappy if he learns the truth are giving him pause, but now that he knows there's some life-changing secret he doesn't know about his own self, but that SHIELD is interested in, he doesn't think he could rest easy until he understands. And he doesn't know if could live happily now that he knows he's living a lie. So he hesitates, and then he squeezes her hand (why not, might be his last chance). "I'd rather know."

She nods and squeezes his hand back, just for a second, and then releases it. "I left some clothes for you in the bathroom; we're going to go for a little walk and I figured you'd be more comfortable if you were dressed. We're in no hurry; take a shower if you'd like."

In the bathroom, Ward finds sweat pants and a t-shirt, just his size, both with a small eagle logo on them. This is SHIELD, all right. He takes a three-minute shower—it's been days, he definitely needs it—and then dresses quickly. His unshaven face he can do nothing about; they haven't left him a razor or anything. But there's a comb, and he uses it to wrangle his hair into some semblance of order. Then he steps into the slippers by the door and comes back out to find Daisy waiting for him. "Let's go," she says, nodding at the door.

He follows her out the hall and down in the direction they went last time. And as they pass that lab with all the windows, he stops and stares at the most unexpected sight he could imagine: a tall, beautiful blonde woman is looking at something under a microscope, and next to her is Noel Roher, his partner in the restaurant.

He can't help himself; he turns around and walks back to the door of the lab. "Mr. Roher?" he asks, dumbfounded. "What in the world are you doing at SHIELD?"

Mr. Roher and the blonde woman look over at him and both visibly tense. In their eyes, he sees the same dislike he sees in the faces Drs. Fitz and Simmons, plus in the woman he sees something else, something he can't name. But she's clearly upset at the sight of him.

Daisy comes up behind him. "Oh, you weren't supposed to see them." She looks apologetic.

"Sorry, Skye," shrugs the man.

She sighs and turns to James. "Well, as you might guess, your Mr. Roher is one of ours. And he's actually not Mr. Roher."

James is flabbergasted. "SHIELD is the other owner of my restaurant? How long have you guys had your hands in my life?"

And Daisy gives him a small, sad smile. "A long time."

She leads him back out of the lab, promising to explain everything soon, and as James follows her he can't get the woman's facial expression out of his head. "They hate me," he says bluntly as they walk along. "Just like the two doctors hate me."

Daisy's response is a sigh. "I told you that you'd have been happier going back to New York."

They quickly reach a small office, where they sit on either side of a desk and Daisy starts pulling something up on a computer there. As she works, he thinks of a question that's been nagging him for a while but is now at the forefront of his mind. "Mr. Roher—or the guy who's not Mr. Roher—called you Skye. And you called yourself that right before that fight in the alleyway. Is that your name? Is 'Daisy' another lie?"

She watches him a few moments as she turns the speakers up—apparently she's preparing to play an audio or video file. Then she explains, "Skye is the name I went by for a long time. Last year I finally found my birth parents, and I found out they'd named me Daisy. So I started going by that professionally; 'Skye' still had some baggage attached to it, because of some hacking I did in the past, and also going by Daisy was a way to honor my dad. He was a good man."

She doesn't mention whether her mother was a good woman, and James thinks it's best not to ask.

"But most of my friends here met me when I was still Skye," she goes on. "They still call me that. So I go by both names these days."

"I recognized it," he confesses. "Skye. I heard you say it to—I guess you had some kind of ear piece in. Right before that fight with the glowing man. You said 'Skye out' and I recognized your name."

A sad smile quirks her lips. "Of all the things that could have stuck with you, you remember how to fire a gun and my name. That's . . . exactly what I would expect from you."

James is silent, thinking of things said and unsaid over the last several days, and after a few moments he is sure that the guess he is about to make is a good one. "So I knew you when you were Skye?"

She nods.

"Were we friends when you were Skye?"

She gives him an unhappy smile. "We were," she says. "And then we weren't."

Whatever she's pulling up appears to be ready, and she turns the computer monitor to face him. She makes eye contact, a questioning expression on her face, and he nods. She nods back and hits Play.

It's a video of an office with the same color scheme and furniture style as the one they're currently in; somewhere in this building then, probably. There's a man sitting at a desk; the video is from behind him and slightly to the side, so only about a quarter of his face is visible, but James is immediately sure it's Coulson. There's a knock on the door, and Coulson calls for the visitor to come in.

James half expects what he's about to see, but that doesn't make it any less shocking when the door opens and in walks his own self. He looks nearly the same age as he is now; this can't have been that long ago. He's in what appears to be dark gray scrubs and his hands and feet are bound, but with enough slack that he can walk. He's flanked by two men: one black, a huge brick wall of a man with a shaved head, and one white, smaller than the other man and with blond hair and a neatly trimmed beard. His guards, obviously.

"Have a seat, Ward," video Coulson says graciously. Ward—Daisy called him that a few times. Is that his real name? Ward? How odd—is it a first or a last name? James turns it over in his mind a few times, but it doesn't strike a single note of recognition.

James' video self sits down at the desk, and now that he's closer to the camera James can see that while it's definitely him, he doesn't look exactly identical. He's got a beard, for one thing—James generally prefers to stay clean-shaven—and he looks like he hasn't showered in a while; James can see it in his hair and face. Most of all, his video self seems . . . James is struggling to understand all the expressions on his own face. He looks angry and sad and tired and hopeful all at once.

How? James wonders, staring at the screen. How do I not remember this meeting? How do I not remember being in SHIELD custody? Because surely that's what's going on here.

He wants to believe it's someone else, an actor who looks like him, until his video self speaks. Yes, that's him; that's undeniably his own voice. And the way this doppelganger moves and holds himself, the expressions on his face—they're all so familiar. They're all him. So if this is some kind of hoax, it's a very good one. "I've been thinking about your offer," video James—or 'Ward,' as the case may be—tells Coulson. "And I've decided to take it."

"You're sure?" asks Coulson calmly.

Ward nods. "Forgetting sounds . . . like a pretty good idea. And anyway it's better than spending the rest of my life in prison." He puts his manacled hands up on the desk, and around the edge of the cuff on his right wrist, James can see his scar, the one that's baffled him for so long.

Coulson leans forward. "The Tahiti protocol has only been used a handful of times, and no one's lived with it for longer than a couple years. We don't have any scientific data about its long-term stability."

"You trusted it enough to use it on Skye's father," Ward points out, and back in the real world James fights back a gasp and forces himself not to look at Daisy. Her father? But she said her father was a good man. And this video makes it sound like the Tahiti protocol is an alternative to prison.

"We did," agrees video Coulson. "And we'll use it on you, if you choose. You just need to know the risks. In case it fails I don't want you looking to take revenge on all of us for doing something to you that you weren't well informed about."

"If it fails, will I remember this conversation?"

"Possibly not," acknowledges Coulson. "Which is why I'm videoing this right now. If it fails, I'll show it to you the video so you know agreed to the treatment."

On screen, Ward looks around and finds the video camera, apparently, because he stares right at it and gives a very insincere grin. James finds it extremely unnerving to be looking himself in the eyes like that. "All right, future self," he says to the camera, "this is me telling you that I went into this willingly. Better than being in jail, I'm pretty sure, and better than remembering . . . everything." His face falls, and James supposes he's remembering everything right then.

He turns back to Coulson. "Will you send people to check up on me?"

"Occasionally," confirms Coulson.

Ward looks down at the desk. After a long time, he starts, "I know I have no right to ask. But . . ." But he never finishes.

But maybe he doesn't have to, because Coulson says, "It might be Skye sometimes."

Ward nods, and then he looks up at the big man next to him. "I'm ready to go back to my cell," he says, and there's resentment there. But then, who wouldn't resent being locked up? The man nods and leads Ward from the room, Blondie following behind. The door shuts. And the video ends.

James sits in silence a long time, staring at the desk. He's fairly sure that if he thought about the video as a whole, he'd go stark raving mad in that very instant. So instead he thinks about the little insignificant details. Why did he have his facial hair so long? Didn't he find it itchy? Since when do prisoners wear scrubs? Don't they wear orange jumpsuits? How long has SHIELD had memory-altering technology, and have they considered licensing it to private consumers who want to forget about bad breakups or embarrassing moments? Does Coulson video everything that happens in his office, or only special occasions?

(He tries very hard not to think of the big details: what did they do to him? What did he do to deserve a lifetime in prison? And what relationship did his former self have with Daisy, that of all the SHIELD agents in the world, he asked for her to monitor him?)

After what feels like a long time, Daisy says gently, "James?"

James doesn't look up. "That isn't my name, is it?"

It takes her a moment to answer. "No, it isn't."

"What is my name?"

"That's for Coulson to tell you." She hesitates. "You could still turn back," she says.

And he finally looks up at her. "Could I? Really? Knowing just enough to drive myself crazy thinking about it but nothing more than that?"

She smiles ruefully. "I guess you couldn't. I sure couldn't." She pulls a phone out of her pocket. "So you want me to get Coulson down here?"

James takes a deep breath, and then he nods. No matter what happens from this point on, his life as James Shaughnessy is ruined. Bringing Coulson down is just stomping on the pieces that are already lying broken on the ground. And if he's broken either way, he might as well get some answers while they're available.

Daisy texts something, then looks up at James. "He'll be down here soon," she says, and he nods again.

They sit in silence a long while, until something occurs to him. "Why is SHIELD so interested in me? Whatever awful crime I committed, did I commit it against SHIELD?"

Daisy nods, but he detects her hesitance. "What aren't you telling me?"

She's quiet a moment, then she says, "Before you went bad, you were a SHIELD agent."

"I was a SHIELD agent?" he repeats, shocked. But then something occurs to him, and he adds, "I guess that's how I beat those guys up in that alley."

She nods, a half-smile on her face. "You were good, back then. And you'd done enough fighting that your muscles remembered the movements even when your brain had forgotten." She hesitates, and then her smile blossoms fully. "You trained me, when I first started here."

He's silent a while longer. Finally, "There's one more thing I want to hear from you, not him," he says. "What were we to each other? Were we . . . together?"

She gives him a wry smile. "We were moving in that direction once. For about ten minutes."

"And then?"

The smile falls from her face. "Then you stabbed us all in the back."

James winces. This is unbearable; he's being punished for things he can't remember doing. He's glad that Coulson is coming. At least if he's going to be hated, if he's going to be covered with scars and haunted by bad dreams, he'll know why. That's a comfort, in a way. (Except, from Daisy's hints, he fears it might not be a comfort at all.)

Still, while he's got the chance, he's going to keep asking questions. "Did I love you?" he asks.

She hesitates, then nods.

"Did you love me?" he presses.

Another hesitation. "I thought I could. I thought I did, once, for about ten minutes." She won't make eye contact with him.

He is silent, and a few moments later, there's a knock on the door and Coulson walks in.

. . . . . .

The first thing James finds out is his real name: Grant Douglas Ward. It doesn't sound familiar, but when Coulson adds that he was born in Massachusetts, a light goes off in James' brain. "There was a Senator Ward from Massachusetts, wasn't there?" he recalls. "Burned down his house last year and killed himself and his parents. My friend Gaohan talked about it sometimes—he was convinced the senator was actually murdered. Any relation?"

There's no change in Coulson's expression, but his hands, which have been tapping a pen against his notepad, grow still. "Yes, I believe you're related," he says.

"How closely?"

"I'm not here to answer your questions," says Coulson. "I'm here to give you a choice." (Daisy, who's been sitting beside Coulson, starts looking at her fingernails; James thinks she's nervous or uncomfortable.) "You committed a series of very serious crimes; we caught you last summer. I gave you a choice I'd actually offered you once before: instead of life in jail, you could undergo what we call the Tahiti protocol." He gives James the mild smile that's seems to be his default expression. "Silly name, I know; we really like acronyms in this organization." Oh, it's an acronym. T.A.H.I.T.I, then, not Tahiti. "In that program, your old memories would be buried, and we'd give you new ones. We'd give you the happy childhood and family you'd never been allowed to have. You'd have memories of a normal education and job, instead of the mess you actually lived through. It would all be fake, but you'd be happy. You could move forward without the old baggage to drag you down."

James' brow furrows. "So . . . was it meant to be a punishment?"

And it's Daisy who answers, with a sad smile on her face. "It was meant to be a kindness—better than spending the next fifty years in prison, thinking about everything that had gone wrong in your life, everything you'd lost."

"And we'd never do it to a person if they didn't understand it completely and agree to it," adds Coulson.

"And I agreed to it," says James quietly. He hesitates. "So what happened?"

Coulson shrugs. "The T.A.H.I.T.I. program failed, in your case. Human memory is unbelievably complicated, and altering it is . . . well, it's nearly impossible. It's a miracle that we can do as much as we can. We make the new lives as thorough as possible, but there's only so much tampering the brain can handle at one time, and we sometimes make mistakes when we make assumptions about which memories will be necessary and which won't." He sighs. "We've done eight full memory rewrites in the history of T.A.H.I.T.I. Six took. You're one of the two that didn't. I don't know what makes you different; it may just be that we didn't provide complete enough explanations for the scars, which seemed to be what made you first notice something was wrong. Or maybe you're just very resistant to having your memories altered."

This is insane. This is all so sci-fi and impossible, and if you'd told him a week ago that he'd be sitting in a SHIELD base discussing how his entire life had been constructed by scientists and implanted in his brain, he would have laughed himself silly. But he's here now. But he has proof that Noel Roher is some kind of SHIELD invention. But he's just seen a video of some former criminal version of himself, giving a message to his future self, confirming that he agreed to have his memories altered.

"So what now?" he asks, feeling suddenly impossibly tired.

"I'm giving you that choice again," says Coulson. "You can undergo the T.A.H.I.T.I. protocol again. We'll interview you extensively first, find out exactly what parts of your false memories stood out to you as suspicious, and fix those problems this time. We can even send you back to that restaurant of yours. You'll be James Shaughnessy again."

"Are you sure it would work?" James asks.

Coulson gives him a tight smile. "I was sure last time. So I don't know what my certainty is worth."

That's what James was afraid of. "Option two?"

"We have ways of restoring your memories as Grant Ward. We'll erase your memories as James and you can go back to being your old self. Of course at that point you'll have to go back into custody. But we can send you to a federal penitentiary; I don't have the resources or the inclination to keep you here for too long. You could have a life there. There'd be, you know, gyms and libraries and computer labs and church services. Things like that."

James leans forward and buries his face in his hands. "Are those the only two choices?"

"I suppose you could stay like you are," says Coulson. "With James' flawed memories and only a few pieces of Grant Ward. We'd have to keep you in custody, though. That seems like a poor choice. You'd be locked up and never know why, and you'd keep bumping up against gaps in your memory that would drive you crazy."

James sighs. And then something occurs to him. "Why are you doing this? Isn't it your job to lock up evildoers? Why give me the easier way out?"

Coulson is silent for a long time, and finally James lifts his head to look at him. To his surprise, the director looks sad. "It'd be hard to explain without you having your old memories. So I'll just say, your situation is complicated. You made bad choice after bad choice. But there were also a number of circumstances beyond your control that made it hard for you to make good choices sometimes."

That's cryptic. James sighs. "Can I think about it?"

Coulson nods. "But I'm afraid that from this point out you need to be restrained. You're now something of a flight risk. And Grant Ward is still a criminal."

"Aren't you worried about me running right now?" James asks, even as he puts his hands out for the handcuffs.

Coulson smirks. "Skye and I have a few tricks up our sleeves. You wouldn't get far."

The cold metal snaps around his wrists, and that's strangely familiar too, just like the gun and like Daisy's hand on his. Then he gets ankle cuffs as well, and then they lead him down the hall in a new direction. "Not back to my hospital room?" he asks.

Daisy shakes her head. "Jemma—Dr. Simmons gave you a clean bill of health. So now it's to a holding cell. It's better this way—if you were still in the hospital wing but in custody, we'd have to put you in restraints because the rooms aren't that secure. At least this way you can walk around."

They go down a flight of stairs and end up in a strange room: one half looks like a jail cell, but there's no bars around it. Daisy undoes his cuffs while Coulson keeps a gun trained on him, and then they direct him to go sit on the bed while they cross back to the other side of the room and push a few buttons on a tablet Coulson has. Suddenly there's a hum and a faint shimmer where the cell bars should have been; James examines it and realizes it's some kind of high-tech barrier. This is what being Grant Ward would be like, he realizes: locked up. He doesn't know that he'd like being Grant Ward. But he also doesn't know if, knowing now what it's like, he can really go back to being James Shaughnessy either. He wouldn't know it was a lie. But it would be a lie. Nothing in his life would be real.

Coulson excuses himself then, leaving Daisy and James alone. "So how did you become Grant Ward's keeper?" James asks. "It seems like we have a pretty messy history."

Daisy shrugs. "Because I was the first one to notice that the T.A.H.I.T.I. protocol had failed on you. I wasn't the only person monitoring you, but when I realized there was a problem I insisted on being the one to keep making contact. I have . . . an interest in making sure T.A.H.I.T.I. does what it's supposed to."

He thinks back. "Because of your dad?"

She nods, her face suddenly sad. "He chose to go under as well. He's a good man. He wants so much to love, to help others, but a bunch of terrible stuff happened to him that wasn't his fault, and in response he made a bunch of terrible decisions that were his fault, and then to fix things he had to make another set of terrible decisions. He didn't want to live with what he'd done. And we let him make that decision . . . for my sake. And because he helped SHIELD out of a bad spot. Saved a bunch of lives, in the process."

"So did the same thing happen to me?" James asks.

"You mean did terrible stuff happen to you that wasn't your fault?" She sighs. "Yeah, it did. And then in response you made a bunch of terrible decisions of your own."

They're both quiet for a long time. "Do you think I should do T.A.H.I.T.I. again?" he finally asks.

She sighs, not looking at him. "I don't know," she says. "Part of me says yes; you were happy as James, and I don't know if you'd be happy as Ward. But the other part of me says no, because I know I wouldn't do it myself. I couldn't stand making a decision that would bury the truth like that. Freedom of information is kind one of my guiding principles—'the truth will set you free' and all that. I used to be one of those hackers who'd uncover sensitive documents and dump them on the Internet."

A surprised laugh bursts from James. "Seriously? You?"

She nods, smiling.

"Okay, I've got to hear about this."

So she tells him a little about the group she was part of, the Rising Tide, and how she became a hacker and lived in a van and fought the system. It makes him laugh and distracts him from his current turmoil, and before he knows it fifteen minutes have passed. They seem to have a knack for that—getting so caught up in talking to each other that they lose all sense of time.

When he realizes this, he sobers quickly. Finally, quietly, he asks, "If I do T.A.H.I.T.I. again, I'll forget you?"

She looks down at the floor and nods.

"Would you monitor me again?"

She hesitates, then shakes her head. "I might from a distance, but I wouldn't come into the restaurant anymore. You recognized my name last time. I—" and she looks embarrassed— "I seem to be a memory that sticks with you. I don't want to make you start questioning your new memories." Then she gives him what is probably meant to be an encouraging smile. "But you won't remember me, so you won't even notice you're not seeing me," she points out.

He doesn't want to forget. But he just nods quietly. "And if I go back to being Grant Ward, I'll remember whatever I did to make us start hating each other, but I won't remember that we were friends when I was James?"

Again she shakes her head, her mouth pressed into a tight line.

"Will you hate me again, if I go back to being Grant Ward?"

Her eyes are sad. "I'll remember James," she says. "But Grant Ward and I have a lot of baggage. Anyway, you and I won't have any contact. No matter which option you choose, you and I won't have any contact. Ever again."

"There's no good option, is there?" he asks. "I don't want to spend my life in jail. But T.A.H.I.T.I. feels . . . wrong. Just on principle. Now that I know what it's like, it . . . feels wrong."

"T.A.H.I.T.I. has its uses," she says. "I was glad my dad decided on it. But . . . it's complicated."

"Did you encourage me to do it last time?" he asks.

"We weren't talking to each other last time," she informs him. "I hated you. A lot. But when I heard you'd decided on it, part of me hoped you'd find happiness this way."

He closes his eyes. "What do I do, Daisy?" he whispers.

He hears her sigh. "I don't know, James. I'm sorry." Her watch beeps. "But look, I've got comms duty. Think about it. Take your time."

She turns to go, but he calls her name—actually he calls her Skye. Just to try it out. It feels nice on his tongue. She turns to look at him, and he walks as close as he can to the barrier without touching it. She follows suit, and now they're standing just inches from each other but totally unable to reach out to each other.

"Answer me one last question," he says quietly.

She nods.

"Did you have any feelings for James Shaughnessy at all? As in . . . romantically?"

Daisy looks a little embarrassed. "I knew I could if I let myself," she admits. Then: "Maybe I did, a little."

He can feel that the smile on his face is less than happy. "I guess there's comfort in knowing that there's some version of me you could have cared for. A version that had no intention of stabbing you in the back."

She gives him a tiny sad smile, and he's never wanted anything more than to reach out and touch her. But she's out of his reach. Forever.

He knows he's got to let her go. But before he does, he lets himself say one last thing, three little words that James Shaughnessy has never said to anyone and that Grant Ward will never say to Skye again. "You know what I realized?" he says. "I've known you in two lifetimes now, and I've loved you in both."

And Daisy bites her lip, and she looks down, and wordlessly she leaves.

. . . . . .

He takes three days to make up his mind. In those three days, he finds out that he doesn't hate being in prison as much as he thought he would. Well, obviously he doesn't enjoy it. But he finds he can bear the solitude cheerfully. And if he were sent to a real prison, he wouldn't be alone. Not that he expects to find a best friend in prison, but there would be other people there. That has to count for something.

Daisy doesn't return; when the big black guy brings him down dinner one night, James asks where she is and is told that she's been sent on assignment to Paris for a few days. James hopes she gets to see the Eiffel Tower this time.

For the first day or so, he's leaning toward undergoing T.A.H.I.T.I. again; a lifetime of prison sounds like an awful idea. But every time he considers telling Coulson he's made that decision, he feels an anxious twisting in his stomach, and he knows at least some part of him objects to that idea. So he starts considering the alternative.

And as he goes over and over the question in his mind, he comes up with two absolute facts about his feelings:

1. The thought of undergoing T.A.H.I.T.I. again, losing the little he's learned about himself again, feels unbearable. He understands what would have drawn him to do it in the first place. But now that he's tried it, he doesn't like the idea of going back.
2. On the other hand, he's not eager to go back to a world where his memories of Daisy are so negative. He doesn't want to forget that there's some version of himself that she could have cared for—some version besides the fake version that stabbed her in the back and made her hate him.

James Shaughnessy's life seems farther and farther away from him with each moment. He'd miss Gaohan, he'd miss Luisa, but they'd be absolutely fine without him. Even the restaurant would be fine without him; maybe SHIELD could continue to run it via e-mail. Or maybe they could give control over to Luisa.

But it's not until that Dr. Fitz brings him his lunch one day that he makes up his mind. The young man seems vastly uncomfortable to be down there with him. "Your—your meal," he stutters. There's something strange about the way he acts around James. When he was talking to Dr. Simmons, he seemed fine. But talking to James clearly stresses him out, and when he gets stressed he seems to stutter, and one of hands shakes a little. James hopes desperately that Dr. Fitz isn't responding to some trauma that Grant Ward caused.

The young man studiously avoids meeting James' gaze as he fiddles with the controls that will allow him to pass the meal through, and finally it's too much—James has to speak.

"Dr. Fitz, right?" he speaks up, standing from his bed.

The young man nods, not looking at him.

"I don't know what I did to make you hate me," he says, and Dr. Fitz's gaze flits up to his, and then away again. "But whatever it was, I'm sorry. You seem like a really nice guy, and whatever it was, I'm pretty sure I regret it."

Dr. Fitz is silent a long time. And then he looks up with a tiny, sad smile. "Thanks, Ward." And there's something there—worlds and worlds of history, of hurt, of feeling. He thinks they were close, Grant Ward and Dr. Fitz. And then Ward ruined it.

And in that moment, James' decision is made. He needs his memories back, because once he knows what he's done to hurt these people, what he's done to hurt the world at large, he can start making amends. He couldn't do that as James Shaughnessy, but he can do it as Grant Ward.

A phrase he's heard before pops into his head: "Sometimes the only way out is through." He can't go back, but also he doesn't want to hide in the identity of James Shaughnessy anymore. He wants to move forward. If he's ever going to live comfortably in his own head again, he has to own up to what he did and face what was done to him as Grant Ward, to make amends for the former and come to terms with the latter. This time, the only way out is through.

So the next day he calls Coulson to his cell.

"I've decided," he says. "I want you to restore my memories as Grant Ward."

"You're sure?"

James nods. "I'm tired of being so umoored from reality. I want to know who I am, for real. And I want to start finding a way to deal with it, to maybe find a way to atone for what I've done. And this . . ." He shrugs. "It feels right. When I think about it I know all the reasons I shouldn't, but it feels right."

Coulson looks at him a long time, then acquiesces. "All right."

"Two conditions, though." He hesitates. "I think . . . I think I should talk to someone. Would there be a way to see a therapist in prison?"

That earns him a small smile from Coulson. "If there isn't a good one on staff, I'll find you one."

"Second: I don't want you to erase my memories of James."

Coulson looks surprised. "Why? Having two sets of memories could be problematic. It could be hard to keep them straight—it could cause problems later."

"What will it matter?" asks James. "I'll be in jail."

"Good point," says Coulson. "But why?"

James shrugs. "I've been happy as James. I've been safe and secure; I've been generally liked by the people around me. I feel like that was rare in my real life. It could be a comfort to remember that for six months, I made people happy with good Italian food."

Coulson nods, and appears to think for a moment. "That's doable. Any other requests?"

Yes, several, most having to do with Skye. But he knows what the answer will be. So he just shakes his head no.

"We should be able to do all that. It's an easier procedure than T.A.H.I.T.I. We could be ready to go tomorrow morning."

Tomorrow? When is Daisy home?

He doesn't realize he's spoken aloud until Coulson says mildly, "She's out on a mission."

Embarrassed, James looks at the floor. Coulson's quiet for a long time. "James," he says finally, "about Daisy. She's . . ."

"I know," says James. "I know nothing is ever going to happen. Whether I'm James or Ward. That's a lost cause." He takes a deep breath, pauses, lets it out. "Anyway, I guess it doesn't matter if we do it before she gets back. I'm not losing any memories this time—no goodbyes."

Coulson looks at him a long time, and then he nods. "You're sure about this?" he presses.

James nods. "Are you recording this conversation too, just in case I ever claim I didn't actually want my memories back?"

Coulson smiles and nods at the video camera in the corner. "Currently in the process," he says.

James nods, clasping his hands together in something like prayer—his fake parents had been devout fake Episcopalians and even knowing those memories aren't real can't stop that influence being part of his mind. Let this be the right choice, he prays.

Then he takes a deep breath. "All right," he tells Coulson. "Tomorrow I'll become Grant Ward again."

. . . . . .