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.

3. Chapter 3

AN: Thank you so much for all your kind words! I know this is really coming down to the wire, in terms of getting this out before season 3 started, but Gmail ate chapter 3 over the weekend. Seriously, it was just gone, and I had to rewrite about ten thousand words. So this is a PSA, everyone: make backups. And maybe don't use Gmail as a word processor.

This chapter was a difficult one to write. It involves getting inside the head of a man who not only suffered abuse, neglect, and borderline brainwashing, but who also underwent a super sci-fi memory altering program that's now falling apart, leaving him unsure of what's real. That's a pretty particular and unusual set of circumstances, and it's not easy to guess how someone would react. Any story about him is going to involve a certain amount of conjecturing. This is my personal take on where he is right now, emotionally and mentally; you might have a different take, and that's equally valid.

Complicating matters even more is the fact that many of the tragedies of Ward's past are, unfortunately, all too familiar to some readers, and I'm trying to be sensitive to that. It's a delicate process, trying to balance the fact that he is a survivor of abuse with the fact that he's done terrible things. I'm also trying to balance the fact that most of us reading this story care a lot about Ward with the fact that canonically, right now, most of SHIELD would as soon shoot Ward as look at him. I know there might be readers of this story who think I'm being far too harsh on someone who's been treated so terribly all his life, just as I know there might be readers who think I've been far too lenient on a backstabbing murderer.

The point of all this: know, dear readers, whatever you think of this last chapter—if you are upset about how I've depicted his thought processes, or about how other characters treat him, or about the choices he makes—that this was a good faith effort on my part to give a fair shake to the character as I currently see him, and to be realistic according to what we've seen in the show.

Also I don't remember where I got the the idea that Ward's little sister's name is Rose; I know I've seen it in multiple fics. So if you started that . . . good job. It's fanon, as far as I'm concerned.

WARNING: This is where the abuse warnings from chapter one start to apply. Consider yourself forewarned.

. . . . . .

The last thing to be done is to call Luisa and Gaohan over Skype. James tells them that he's decided to get out of the restaurant business and that Mr. Roher will be contacting in the next day to talk about the new management arrangements. He tells them that he's going to pursue a lifelong dream of living in Europe, but that when he makes it back, he'll visit. He'll never visit. But they don't need to know that.

Then it's an afternoon of tests administered by Drs. Fitz and Simmons. Though Dr. Fitz does smile at him a few times, they're both tense around him, as though his decision to get his memories back made him automatically turn into this man who apparently betrayed them all, and it's tiring to be around but it only strengthens his resolve that he's doing right thing.

Then it's morning and he's being led to a room with a machine not unlike the MRI machine from a few days ago. It's flanked by Blondie and the Brick Wall, and Drs. Fitz and Simmons fiddle with machinery nearby. Coulson, who brought him down there, looks at him one last time, a question in his eyes. James nods, and Coulson gestures toward the slab he's obviously supposed to lay on.

"We have to restrain you, for your own safety," says Coulson as James climbs onto the slab and the Brick Wall starts putting restraints around his ankles and then his wrists. "Reaction to returning memories is sometimes . . . violent."

None of this is helping his resolve to see this through, so he grits his teeth. "Let's get started."

"You'll see flashes of things," says Coulson, and James wonders if the director has ever used this machine himself. "Your brain will grab onto the most dramatic or meaningful memories and experience them as they come back to the surface. But the other memories, the less exciting ones, they're coming back too. Understand?"

James nods and takes a deep breath, and Coulson nods at Dr. Simmons, who pushes a button.

And suddenly everything feels blue. There's a blue light all around him and a pressure coming in from all sides to his head, increasing in pressure until it's all he can do keep from scrambling out of the machine, and this is so bizarre and is it even working—

. . . . . .

"The Tahiti protocol has only been used a handful of times, and no one's lived with it for longer than a couple years." That's Coulson speaking, but it wasn't Coulson—James was looking right at him and didn't see his lips move. And suddenly there are images in his mind; it's the video from earlier, but he's not seeing it from the camera's perspective, he's seeing it from Grant Ward's. This is a memory. This is Ward's memory. "We don't have any scientific data about its long-term stability."

The scene plays out, and then suddenly it changes. Ward's being led down into Vault D, where James has been the last few days, and suddenly James feels a rush of irritation and resignation. These must be Ward's feelings, how he feels about the memory or how he felt at the moment the memory was made. James can hear, as though it was spoken aloud, the thought Coulson does always love to put me in this same cell.

The scene changes again and Ward is in a warehouse somewhere, holed up in a back office, cornered and weaponless. James knows somehow that SHIELD is closing in, and he is overwhelmed by the wave of hatred Ward feels for the organization. But it's also tinged with shame: shame that Skye and Coulson will see him like this, followed by shame that he even still cares what those two think.

Now he's standing guard at the door of a jewelry store while a collection of shady-looking characters rifle through the cases. Ward doesn't want to think about the people whose livelihood he's ruining; these people have to learn that trusting in the system won't protect them. Everyone has to learn that eventually. And he needs the money for his cause: the new Hydra.

Now he's in a bar with those same shady-looking characters, telling them he's in charge now, telling them he wants a team by his side again. Someone asks what he's after, and he looks down at a photo on the bar of a beautiful girl—not Skye. The name comes to him easily: Kara. "Closure," he says."

Now Kara, some kind of strange scar across her face, is dying in his arms, and he's looking in horror at her and at the gun in his hand. The gun that's still awfully close to the bullet wounds that are killing her. He killed her. Ward killed her. He loved her—well, he cared about her, anyway—and he shot her in the stomach and now she's dying. He only ever wanted to protect her, to make up for all the times he's been unable to protect the people he cares about; but she was disguised as someone else and he unknowingly killed her. "Baby," she says one last time, and Ward swears revenge.

Now he's standing in front of that blonde woman from a few days ago—Bobbi Morse, Ward's memories helpfully supply. She's tied up at a table, and there are . . . are those needles? Long needles sticking out from under her fingernails, covered with black and drying blood. Her face is bruised and bloody. And in the moment before Ward's thoughts kick in, James is horrified by the image. This looks like . . . this is torture. She is being tortured. Why isn't he doing anything about it? Why is he just standing there? Unless . . . James feels bile rise in his throat. Did he do that to her?

. . . . . .

"I need to stop," James calls weakly, and the machine's humming slows and then stops. He lays there, that image burned into his brain, convulsing slightly. It's Dr. Fitz who realizes what's going on first, and he comes to the side of the gurney with a trash can just in time for James to turn and vomit into it.

"Bobbi," he says softly when he's done, staring up at the ceiling. "Why in the world did I do that? What could she possibly have done to make me think she deserved that?"

No one says anything, but the Brick Wall looks angry; a friend of hers, maybe? After the silence has stretched on for too long, Coulson says, "You did well for a first run."

"How long was I under?"

It's Dr. Simmons who answers. "Six minutes," she says primly.

It's going to be a long day.

"It gets better," says Coulson. "Once you really get into the process, the memories start coming faster. Which is good—less time to focus on any given one." He hesitates. "You ready to go back under?"

He's not. But he thinks that to stop now would be worse than to keep going—he'd never know why he did these terrible things. So he nods, and the machine hums to life again.

. . . . . .

He's in a military base somewhere—Hydra, according to Ward's memories—with Coulson, Skye, Fitz and Simmons, and a beautiful Chinese woman who Ward knows as May. They're meant to be infiltrating it, but suddenly Simmons throws a disintegration grenade at him. She misses, but James is as shocked as if she hadn't. Professional, prim Dr. Simmons, who as a doctor ought to respect life, has just tried to kill him. What did he do to deserve that?

Now he's in a bar with Kara, laughing as she throws darts at a dartboard; she's so drunk that most of them hit the floor instead. Laughing too, she stumbles over and winds her arms around his waist. "I love you," she says, entirely unexpectedly, and Ward freezes. He wishes he could say it back, but he can't, not honestly. He cares about Kara, really, but the fact is that he doesn't love her; the fact is that he's always known that she feels far more for him than he does for her. Luckily she's too drunk to notice that he doesn't respond.

Now he's in what appears to be a commercial kitchen, collapsing on the ground with searing pain on his side. Skye is standing unapologetically over him, a gun pointed right at him, as she reminds him never to turn his back on the enemy. "You taught me that," she says as she walks past him, leaving him to die on the floor. Those gunshot scars he couldn't explain? Skye is the one who shot him. Daisy is the one who shot him. How could she? echoes through his mind twice, once as Ward thinks it of Skye, and once as James thinks it of Daisy.

Now he's in a forest with a middle-aged man who kind of looks like him: his brother, Christian Ward. The senator Christian Ward; apparently Grant Ward is a well-connected man. Christian is dirty and there are tears on his face, and he seems frightened. But Ward is putting his arm around his shoulder, and for a few minutes it seems all is well. But now they're in a house and Ward is locking Christian in a closet along with two older people, well-dressed and well-groomed and looking terrified: their parents. And now Ward is looking for matches in the kitchen drawers. Gaohan was right: Senator Ward was murdered.

. . . . . .

"I need to stop," says James, dry heaving. He doesn't throw up this time, but it's a near thing. He lays silently a moment, then asks, "Why? Why did I kill my family?"

No one answers, which is starting to irk James. "Will I at least find out if I keep watching?"

Coulson answers somberly. "Yes." He hesitates. "Are you ready to continue?"

Again, he'd really rather not. But now he has to. Now he has to know if he had a reason to want his family dead or if he's just a terrible person by nature. So he nods.

. . . . . .

He's back down in Vault D, and Skye is telling him that they're turning him over to his brother, and Ward is terrified. How could they do this to him? Don't they know what a monster he is? (James, on the other hand, feels a small amount of relief to know that at least Ward apparently had some sort of reason for hating his family.)

Now Skye is replaced by Fitz, but the engineer was not expecting to see Ward and he is horrified; he starts hyperventilating. "It's really good to see you," Ward says uselessly, but it's true. Although maybe it's not so good to see him, because now Fitz is sucking the oxygen from the room, telling Ward he ought to know what it feels like. James winces. Did Ward somehow deprive Fitz of oxygen?

Now Skye is back and it's the first time he's seen her in ages. And even though he's down in the basement, he feels like the room is full of sunlight. Too bad she's looking at him like she hates him.

Now he's waking up in a hospital bed and everything has changed. He's bandaged and bruised, and when he glances at his arm he sees his right wrist is stitched and bandaged up. So that's where that scar came from, he thinks. Apparently I really did do it to myself. But that's all in the past. Ward has had an epiphany; he's seen all the mistakes he made; he knows he can live a better life than he has been living. And he can help SHIELD take down Hydra. He just needs Coulson (or better, Skye) to come down so he can tell them he's turned over a new leaf. He hopes they come soon.

Now he's in handcuffs, and May and Coulson are telling him with some relish that Garrett is dead. Ward is hurt and upset by that, but also the tiniest bit relieved. It's all over now, the crazy writing and the increasingly erratic behavior; Garrett hasn't been Garrett for a while now. It's all over now, doing things he sometimes didn't want to do, because Garrett told him to. Meanwhile, James just wonders who Garrett is.

Now he's facing Skye across a room full of computers, and he wishes he had a way to erase the hatred from her face—to help her understand. But that's impossible; he knows it is. And he's not proud of it, but he's cruel to her. He's heartbroken over her, and he takes it out on her; it's shameful, but he wants her to feel as hurt as he does. But Skye doesn't react. "You're just . . . weak," she says. And both Ward and James think, She's right.

Now he's standing in front of a door with a window in it. Fitz and Simmons are on the other side shouting at him, begging for their lives. Fitz tries to appeal to his better side, his affection for the team, but Simmons thinks her friend is wasting his breath. "I know you care about us!" Fitz yells, and Ward responds too quietly to hear that he's right, he does. But that doesn't stop him from pulling the lever, knowing it will eject the pod from the plane—from a plane that is currently flying over the ocean. It's better this way, Ward is thinking, but James is too busy being horrified to wonder what that means. He's just killed them.

. . . . . .

"Stop," he all but whispers, and the machine powers down.

"How far did you get?" asks Coulson

He says nothing, but his eyes flit over to Fitz, whose expression darkens. So he looks away, but that doesn't help anything because his gaze just falls on Simmons instead. "Why did I do it?" he asks.

Simmons' mouth tightens into an angry line. "Garrett ordered you to," he says.

Fitz's expression is only slightly less angry. "You decided you cared more about him than us."

He can't look at either of them; he can't look at anyone. Instead he looks up at the ceiling and closes his eyes, feeling thick hot tears streaming from under his eyelids.

. . . . . .

Now he's finally seeing Garrett, a middle-aged man with a predatory smile and some kind of cyborg torso implant that's keeping him alive. He's not doing well; the technology is failing. And Ward would do absolutely anything to keep that from happening. Garrett is everything to him, and the man is not dying on Ward's watch.

Now he's in some metal-lined compartment, collapsed on the ground while the pain in his chest becomes unbearable. Ward's thoughts helpfully inform him that Mike Peterson has stopped Ward's heart on Garrett's command, in order to get information from Skye (which shocks James; this man who Ward would do anything for is letting him die in order to get information? What kind of messed-up relationship do they have?). He hears a screaming voice, faintly. Skye! She's demanding Mike bring him back, promising she'll give up the information—all to save him, even though he's a backstabbing traitor. And Ward and James are both overwhelmed by how much they love her.

Now he and Skye are in a diner and Skye is at her laptop, asking him what he would say if he could talk to Garrett one last time. "Would you tell him he's disgusting? Would you tell him he's a disgusting, backstabbing traitor?" And Ward's heart is in his throat—does she know? Has he lost her forever? Does she know? And then she turns her laptop around and shows him that she's tipped the police off about where they are. She knows. And his heart sinks so low he thinks he'll never find it again. He's lost her.

Now he and Skye are on a couch, kissing, and it's perfect. It's everything he hoped it would be, and she's the only girl he'll ever love, he knows it. They're in an impossible situation right now, but they can work it out. Maybe he can keep his true allegiance from her. Or maybe, whispers some better part of him, he can tell her now, in a way that doesn't scare her off for good. Maybe he can make her understand. But just then she finds blood behind his ear and he bolts. She doesn't need to know that he killed Agent Koenig.

Now Garrett is beating the daylights out of him. It's part of his cover—he has to look like he's been in a fight—but there's more to it; he can feel it in Garrett's punches. He's been weak lately; he's nearly screwed up the mission. So Garrett takes pleasure in these punches because Ward deserves it. And James wonders why in the world Ward put up with it.

Now he's watching Coulson lead Garrett away in handcuffs, and all he can think is no no no no no. Coulson knows about Garrett; Garrett's going away to the Fridge. And that means it's time for Ward to come out of hiding and rescue him. That means leaving the team behind—these people that he's come to love, quite against his will. But he can't turn his back on Garrett for them. The team has been around for a few months; Garrett's been the only person who's truly cared about him in 30 years.

Now he's in a closet, preparing to take down Hydra agents (to preserve his cover, of course), and he finds himself telling Skye honestly about his feelings: that he isn't a good man, that he's made terrible mistakes. Thomas Nash isn't the first person he's killed, but the man was the absolute epitome of helplessness. And it's not helping his guilt that this is the first cold-blooded murder that Skye's been around for. But to his surprise, instead of being disgusted, she kisses him.

. . . . . .

For the first time since they started, he calls for a break because he's tired, not because he's horrified. And he finds himself smiling as he rests.

"Some of it was good?" Coulson asks.

"Yeah, some of it was good."

. . . . . .

Coulson was right; the memories have been speeding up, and now they're coming along at a nice brisk clip. He sees himself mind-controlled by an Asgardian. He sees himself overcome with relief when Skye is awake and snarky in her hospital bed; he sees himself overcome with worry when she is shot and nearly contacts Garrett to chew him out for giving Quinn the order to shoot her. He sees himself sleep with May—he slept with May? He sees himself bond with the team; it turns it he genuinely did care about Fitz and Simmons, which makes what he did to them later even more horrible. He goes on a mission with Fitz and finds the guy is surprisingly okay to have at your back: smart, resourceful, good under pressure. He jumps from a plane to save Simmons and it's partly to establish his cover and it's partly because the thought of her dying is genuinely unthinkable. He sees himself training Skye, trying to break her of her habit of saying "bang" when she shoots a gun, which is simultaneously obnoxious and adorable. He sees himself agree to be her SO, which is probably asking for trouble but he can't help himself; he wants to be around her.

And now he meets Skye for the first time. She's everything she hates, with her naive idea that giving people too much information is somehow doing them a favor. She's smug and she's pushy and she's not as smart as she thinks she is. But she's just his type, physically, and there's something about her fierce spirit and bright smile that captivates him quite against his will. And Ward realizes he might be in trouble.

. . . . . .

Things are easier as they speed through the time before he joined Coulson's team, stopping occasionally for breaks and for water and once for a quick lunch. They're easier partly because they're going so fast now, and partly because things were actually good in this portion of his life—and by "good," James means "he hasn't had to push any friends out of a plane lately."

Ward runs missions for SHIELD, and occasionally for Garrett. He loves those latter ones; they feel like him and Garrett against the world, just as it should be. But James, watching the proceedings with an outsider's perspective, sees all the affection in this SO-rookie relationship is on Ward's side. Garrett gives Ward all the difficult and dangerous bits, and only seems interested in Ward's utility, as a tool. Ward would take a bullet for Garrett. But Garrett, James can see, would step aside and let the bullet hit Ward.

Now he's living in the woods for some reason, his only company a dog named Buddy, and Garrett has come to visit him. Ward is only 18 at this point; why is he living in the woods, and why is Garrett letting him? Garrett has come to tell him that he's been accepted into SHIELD. The bad news: he wants Ward to kill Buddy, and both Ward and James are horrified at the idea. This is Garrett, who he's never disobeyed, so he pulls the gun out with shaky hands . . . and can't do it. But it doesn't matter, because Garrett kills the dog anyway before backhanding Ward. And James and Ward both feel sick.

Young Ward lives in the woods for years, scavenging and stealing, with just the dog for company. At 16 he is confident in his ability to survive, but at 15 he is huddling under a tree in the rain, starving because he doesn't know how to get his own food, miserable and cold and thinking that coming along with Garrett might have been a mistake. Garrett visits sometimes and James sees that it's not that he's allowing Ward to live in the woods: he's forcing him to. It seems like an awful thing to do to a 15-year-old boy, and James wonders why no one ever questioned the disappearance of Grant Ward and why Ward so willingly followed the man into the woods.

Eventually he finds out: young Ward, only 15, is in juvie. Part of him is defiant, thinking They deserved it, they deserved everything I did, but most of him is frightened, wondering what's to come next. And then Garrett walks in with that predatory smile and offers to take him away from this, make him strong. He flatters Ward, just enough, and adult James sees how insincere it is but teenaged Ward laps it up like honey; no one has ever complimented him, no one has ever believed in him. Ah, thinks James, suddenly very weary. So that's how it started. And he calls for a break.

. . . . . .

"So," he says as he sips at his water, "apparently SHIELD gives its agents pretty free rein."

Coulson is puzzled. "I'm sorry?"

"I mean Agent Garrett," James explains. "This guy basically kidnapped a 15-year-old and abandoned him in the woods so he could mold him into the perfect tool. What does SHIELD stand for, again? Protection?"

Coulson's mouth is set into a firm line. "We don't monitor our agents' lives when they're off-duty," he says. "We had no idea what he was doing." But he looks uncomfortable.

As he should be, thinks James.

. . . . . .

Young Ward loves military school. He turns out to have a knock for that sort of thing, and more importantly, he's away from home. But he's been getting letters from his younger sister Rose, and reading between the lines he knows that in the absence of his favorite victim, Christian has turned on their sister. and Grant knows something must be done.

His childhood might be the hardest part to endure, with his mother and his brother and with their father not caring what they do to each other as long as the bruises don't show up where his rich friends will see them. James doesn't know which is worse: his mother, with her words like knives and the casual way she grabs little Grant's arm and presses the lit end of a cigarette to it, or his brother, who in another life might have been a nice guy but in this life cracked under the pressure of their mother's constant abuse and began adding to it. And since Christian can't touch precious Thomas and he's not going to hit a girl, Grant becomes his favorite victim.

James doesn't realize he's crying until he hears Skye's voice beside the machine, asking what's going on, why haven't they stopped as James to obviously needs to. "Don't stop!" he calls through gritted teeth. "I'm almost done."

It's almost over now. Going to his father at age 8 and asking if he can do something to stop Mother. And being backhanded for his troubles.

His second-grade teacher noticing a bruise just the size of a handprint on little Grant's arm, but doing nothing about it.

(James is still crying and at some point someone takes his hand. He recognizes that hand: it's Skye, and he squeezes tight.)

The day Rose is born, and Grant looks at her perfect face and promises he won't let their mother hurt her—not knowing then how often he'll fail to do so.

Now it's his first memory. He tracks dirt into the house and his mother yells at him, making him cry. So she yells at him to stop, and of course that doesn't help him calm down. He keeps crying, she keeps shouting, and finally to shut him up she grabs his arm and squeezes until it hurts.

And then it's over; his mind goes blissfully blank. "It's over," he calls out weakly. "I'm done." The machine switches off. And before anyone can say anything, he drops off to sleep.

. . . . . .

Grant Douglas Ward wakes in dim silence and soon realizes where he is: Vault D in the SHIELD base. Coulson does enjoy putting him there, doesn't he?

He doesn't remember how he got captured just now; actually his thoughts are a bit jumbled. He has the strangest feeling that he's been out for an incredibly long time: not hours or days, but months. What in the world is—

James Shaughnessy.

Ottavio's.

T.A.H.I.T.I.

He drops his head back on the pillow and sighs.

"You're awake," comes a voice to his left, and he looks over quickly to see Fitz standing there.

Happiness rises in his throat and he quashes it; the last time he was happy to see Fitz in his cell, the man tried to kill him. Fitz passes a granola bar through the barrier. "I figured you'd be hungry," he says.

"That's very kind of you," Grant says cautiously, coming forward to get the granola bar.

Fitz shrugs. "Well, James was a nice guy."

"I know," says Grant with a sigh. "I wish he'd been real."

And Fitz gives him an odd look as he leaves.

. . . . . .

No one comes down for the next few hours; Grant's not sure whether they're giving him time to recuperate or they all refuse to see him. So he sits on the edge of his bed, and sometimes he paces, as he tries to sort through everything in his head: making sure his memories are all back, and seeing them anew with the filter of James' experiences.

Despite Coulson's worries, it's not hard at all to keep the false memories separate from the real. Compared to Ward's memories, James' are shallow, lacking detail, like scenes from a movie with cheaply-made sets. Except for those months that he actually lived in New York; those are as bright as a flame, and he is continually drawn back to them: the cozy restaurant on the corner of the block. Gaohan and Luisa and Annie smiling at him from across the room. Warm light pouring from the windows on a cold night. He might have been an idiot for giving that up, he thinks more than once.

But then into his memories will walk Daisy, as he knew her then, and he'll change his mind. Because to remember Skye holding his hand, telling him about her travels, worrying for his safety, admitting that she could have had feelings for him: he doesn't want to lose that.

It is both better and worse to have James' memories as well as his own. Better, because James lived a much happier life than Ward, and he takes comfort in those memories, even though many of them are fake. Worse, in so many ways. The things that he did as Ward were sometimes terrible, but he was always able to do them because in the moment he did them, he felt justified. He was justified in being a mole inside SHIELD because SHIELD was a corrupt organization who would have let Garrett die. He was justified in killing his family because they made his childhood a nightmare. He was justified in torturing and nearly killing Bobbi because she'd led Hydra right to Kara and Kara deserved to hear Bobbi admit what she'd done. He was justified in restarting Hydra because SHIELD had taken away everything he cared about. They weren't good justifications, but he'd been buried so deep in his own anger that they felt right at the time. That's how he could stand before Bobbi with those needles in his hands, how he could point that gun at Victoria Hand, and not feel a thing. That's how he could betray May and Coulson, drop Fitzsimmons from that plane, protect the man who shot Skye, despite the voice in his head screaming Don't do this, what are you thinking?

But having lived as James, and then coming back to Grant Ward, feels like taking a step outside his own head and seeing his actions in a new light . . . finally seeing who was really to blame. SHIELD was not to blame for Garrett—he'd known going into that mission that there might not be an extraction for him and he went anyway. Bobbi was not to blame for Kara—it was part of a plan to dismantle Hydra, and she had no idea that Kara was at that safe house, and anyway when Kara joined SHIELD she'd agreed to the idea that her safety might need to be sacrificed to protect others. SHIELD was not to blame for Kara's death—she was the one who disguised herself as May and Ward is the one who shot her. (His parents and Christian are still guilty of exactly what he blamed them for, but he sees now that this doesn't give him the right to murder them.) To have all his justifications stripped away makes him feel naked, vulnerable—and regretful.

And yet, it reminds him of how he used to bathe when he lived in the woods. When he got too filthy, he'd go down to the stream near his camp. It flowed from the mountains and was cold as ice, summer or winter—so cold that his breath would catch and his muscles would all but stop working. He'd grab handfuls of sand from the bottom of the stream and scrub the filth right off of him. And then he'd lay on the bank, shivering and smarting and tingling. It hurt, plenty. But when it was done, he'd be clean. It was worth the pain, because he'd be clean.

That's how he feels right now. To see his former actions in this new light is painful, but now that he understands the seriousness of what he's done, now that he knows where the blame really lies, now that he can properly apologize to the people he's hurt, he's going to be clean.

He comes up with a new mantra in those long thoughtful hours: he's been the recipient of violence all his life, but that doesn't give him carte blanche to perpetuate that violence. To think that having people do terrible things to you gives you the right to do terrible things to others is exactly what Garrett thought—that's why he felt justified in hurting and killing who knows how many people to save his own skin. And if there's one thing Grant's sure of, it's that he doesn't want to be anything like Garrett ever again.

. . . . . .

Coulson comes down with his lunch eventually. It's something steaming on a tray, which is new—the last time Grant was here, he didn't get warm meals. The director presses the control that lets him pass it through the barrier, and Grant takes it and goes back to his bed. But Coulson doesn't leave right away. "I thought I'd wait for the tray," he says, and Grant shrugs and starts wolfing down the stir fry; it feels like it's been a month since he ate last. He doesn't look at Coulson, though; memories of certain of their interactions have put the director on his bad list.

Coulson lets him get through the stir fry, and then he speaks up. "How are you feeling?"

"Fine," Grant shrugs. "No problems keeping the two sets of memories straight; it's obvious which ones are fake. So I'm fine."

Coulson nods. "And does having both sets change how you feel about . . . things?"

Grant fights the urge to roll his eyes. "You mean did living as James make me regret the things I did as Ward?"

"Yes, that."

Grant is silent a moment. Then, "Yes. But then I regretted a lot of them as I was doing them."

Coulson raises his eyebrows at this but doesn't respond. Grant finishes the fried rice and orange juice in silence, then walks up to the barrier. Coulson steps forward to take the tray, but Grant doesn't had it to him.

"I've got a bone to pick with you," he says finally, staring down at the empty tray. "After my suicide attempts when you had me in custody, I woke up from sedation and I'd had . . . an epiphany. I knew what I was, what I'd done, all the ways Garrett had gotten into my head and messed me up. And I wanted to change. I wanted to turn over a new leaf, get back some shred of self-respect by giving you intel to take down Hydra, then serve out my punishment and try to get my life in order. I told you this, more than once. And do you know how you responded?" He finally looks up at the director.

Coulson says nothing.

"You didn't care. You were too personally hurt by what I'd done, and it was more important to your wounded feelings that you saw me suffer than that you did the sensible thing—and the right thing. You ignored me, and you found out almost nothing of what I could have told you about Hydra. And then you tried to give me to my brother—the man who used to wake me up in the middle of the night with a knife at my throat and make me lie there while he told me all the things he could do to me with that knife. And I panicked—of course I panicked—and I went back to my old ways. I'd tried to put my trust in the system and the system responded by trying to hand me over to my abuser. Everything I did after that is my doing, I know that. But you had a chance to stop it, and to take down Hydra so much earlier than you did, and you didn't take it because you wanted to see me hurt. And if that's how you run SHIELD, it's a wonder it's running at all."

Coulson has been staring at him this whole time, saying nothing, and after a few moments, he takes the tray from Grant and walks away without a word. And Grant watches him go with a feeling of grim satisfaction. He doesn't hate Coulson, really; in fact, in a lotof ways he reluctantly respects the man. But he sees now that he's a blind spot for him—that the director makes bad decisions where Grant Ward is concerned. So why shouldn't Grant point this out? Coulson might learn something from it, and Grant's going to prison for life either way.

. . . . .

The Brick Wall—Grant vaguely remembers that his name is Mack—brings his dinner, and then his breakfast the next morning. Grant doesn't mind the guy, who doesn't say much but also doesn't look at him like he hates him, but he is curious why certain other people—a certain other person—don't visit. And finally, at breakfast, he decides to throw his pride to the wind; after all, he's never going to see any of these people again. "Is Skye around?"

Mack's expression doesn't change much, but in his eyes Grant sees sympathy. He doesn't much like being pitied, but at least the big man isn't mocking him. "She's been out on assignment since just after you passed out."

And Grant feels his heart lighten. This way, he can tell himself that she might have visited, if she were here. And who knows—it could even be true.

Not long after his breakfast is finished, Grant gets another visitor: a middle-aged man he vaguely recognizes as May's ex-husband. Dr. . . . Garner, he remembers. A psychiatrist or a therapist or something of the sort. He doesn't much want to be analyzed, and for a brief moment is tempted to hint at his and May's romantic history, just to make the man uncomfortable. But he doesn't, in the end; Ward might have enjoyed needling strangers, but Grant finds it doesn't sound that fun.

"Coulson asked me down here," Dr. Garner says. "He wants me to make sure that having these false memories isn't going to cause any problems."

And to make sure I don't restart Hydra while I'm in prison, Ward thinks. Of course the good doctor would neglect to mention that.

So he's shocked when Dr. Garner adds, "And to determine if you're likely to fall back into old patterns of criminal behavior."

Grant has to admit, he's won over a bit by that piece of honestly . . . which is probably precisely why Dr. Garner did it. Still, the man gives off on an air of professionalism, like he takes his job very seriously. Grant gets the sense that the doctor will give him a fair shake. So he makes a split second decision: he'll cooperate.

The doctor asks him how he's feeling, is he having trouble with his memories, all about his life as James, and Grant answers honestly. Then it's his life as Ward, his life on the Bus, his life with Garrett, his childhood. Those questions are much harder, but to his surprise it's a comfort to talk about a lot of it. No one's ever asked before. When he was a kid, no one wanted to listen; no one believed that the Wards were capable of what Grant said they'd done. And once he was in SHIELD, no one paid much attention, not even during his psych evals; he was good at acting fine, and no one dug any deeper than that. So to bring all this stuff to the surface is good, in the end; difficult but . . . liberating.

When the questions finally come to a close, Grant asks, "So do I pass muster?" It's a little sarcastic, but it's not for Dr. Garner; it's for Coulson, in case he's listening.

Dr. Garner smiles. "Mr. Ward," he says, "I think you're going to be just fine."

. . . . . .

He spends the rest of the afternoon doing what resistance training he can in his cell; James was pretty good about going to the gym, but he did workouts suited to a restaurateur, not a man of action, and Grant's lost a lot of muscle mass that he intends to get back. And when dinner time rolls around, that's when Skye finally, finally walks into his cell.

Her posture and her expression are wary, but she's not angry or disgusted, and that's progress. She's brought him soup, which she passes through to him, and then they stand there across the barrier from each other, not looking the other in the face.

"I thought I'd wait until you were finished, rather than come back for the bowl," she says finally, and he takes that as a hint to sit down and eat.

"How are . . . things down here?" she asks, a bit awkwardly.

"Fine," he says, then amends, "Boring. I never thought I'd say this, but I'm almost looking forward to getting transferred. At least I'll be able to leave my cell sometimes and do things."

"Well," she says, "it's close. Coulson is still trying to decide which prison to choose—he wants to pick one with a good reputation for how it treats its prisoners—and I'm creating your new records in the meantime."

Silence falls between them until he thinks of a conversation topic. "Mack told me you were out on assignment. How did it go?"

"Really well," she says, and then there's silence again. But she doesn't seem like she's ignoring him, quite, more like she doesn't know how much she wants to say. So he decides to try again.

"I never found out—what happened with that guy in the alleyway? The one who shot lightning?"

"Reynolds," she confirms. "He . . . the three guys he was with are with us now. He lied to them about why SHIELD was looking for them; he said we wanted to arrest them. So that's why they were so defensive. But when we explained we just wanted to help them control their powers, and meet other people like them, they were totally into it. But Reynolds . . ." She sighs. "He wasn't willing to give up a life of crime. He'd been using his powers to rob stores and banks . . . He couldn't leave that behind." She seems downcast at the thought.

He gives her what he hopes is a sympathetic smile. "You can't save everyone. Some people won't let you."

There's an awkward silence after that; Grant wonders if she's thinking, like he is, of Coulson's dearly held belief that you could save anyone, if you get to them early enough. And he wishes, not for the first time, that Coulson had gotten to him before Garrett had. He still has mixed feelings about Coulson, but he sees that Coulson was to Skye what Garrett was to Ward . . . only Coulson didn't use fear. Coulson didn't use his fists. Coulson didn't make people shoot their dogs.

"Are you done?" Skye says finally. He wants to say no—if this is the last time he's going to see her, he wants to stretch it out as long as possible—but then she adds, "I've got comms shift, but I'll try to come by tomorrow."

And as he hands her his dishes, he thinks his little cell has never looked so bright.

. . . . . .

Mack brings his breakfast, but Skye brings him both his lunch and his dinner the next day, and then breakfast the day after. At first things are as awkward as that first meeting, but slowly they warm up to each other again. It's tough finding things to talk about; his past is a difficult subject, as is his future. But eventually they find the perfect conversation topic: his old missions for SHIELD (and occasionally Garrett). She seems endlessly amused by his stories, which she insists would make great Bond movies, and she listens in fascination as he tells her about impersonating Russian cab drivers and parachuting off the Burj Khalifa and the time he had to hide for two days in a barrell.

"No way," she laughs. "How big was the barrell?"

He shows her with his hands, and she laughs again. "No way. You're making that up, Ward."

He hesitates; he hasn't gotten around to bringing this up yet. But this feels like a good moment. "I've actually been thinking of going by Grant. The name Ward . . . has a lot of baggage tied to it. I don't want to be that guy anymore."

She looks at him a long moment, and then she smiles. "I think that sounds like a really good idea."

She stays for nearly a half-hour each time, and the talk between them flows nearly as easily as it did when he was James . . . or when he was Good Ward, her SO. When thoughts like those occur to him, he can't help it, he gets very down on himself, and sometimes even jokes half-seriously about this conversation being better if he were James instead. He sometimes doesn't even notice he's being self-deprecating until Skye sends him concerned looks.

That comes to a head at lunch. Skye gives him his sandwich and informs him she has a question. "We're almost done with the arrangements," she says, and then her expression changes. "You'll be transferred tomorrow."

Tomorrow? That's so soon. He hasn't made his apologies yet to the rest of the team. And he's not ready to say goodbye to Skye. To his immense surprise, she doesn't look entirely pleased either. Is it possible she'll be sorry to see him go? The thought takes some of the sting off the news of his transfer.

"I'm finishing up your papers today," she says, "and I wanted to ask your opinion—what name do you want to use? Your current one is . . . problematic, in some circles."

He knows she's right, but he's not quite ready to give all of it up. "Could I keep Grant, and just change the last name?"

She smiles at that. "Yeah, I think that'd be okay. Any preferences on the new last name?"

He doesn't have to think too hard about that. "How about Shaughnessy?"

"You really like that name, don't you? Or is it just that you like to make it hard for people to spell your name?"

He shrugs. "I liked James. He was a good guy."

Something about that makes her tilt her head and look at him consideringly. "Can we talk?" she says finally. "Like, seriously?"

"Sure," he says, surprised, and she responds by sitting cross-legged right there on the floor. He's startled, but he follows suit, and there they sit, facing each other across the barrier.

"There's something you've been doing that makes me concerned," she says. "Fitz says he noticed it too. You keep talking about James like he's this . . . other guy, someone totally separate from you, who's gone now. But the thing is . . ." She fiddles with the cuffs of her sleeves, looking deep in thought, as though trying to decide how to put this. "The T.A.H.I.T.I. protocol doesn't create personality."

He blinks.

"It creates memories, and those definitely affect how you react to stuff, but it itself doesn't control how you act and feel. So everything that made James good—his kindness, his humor, his instinct to protect people who can't protect themselves—that was you. It wouldn't have been in James if it hadn't been somewhere in Ward . . . at the least the potential for it."

He's actually never thought of it that way before.

"So if you're trying to reinvent yourself," she goes on, "if you don't want to be 'that guy' anymore . . . maybe be like James. You've done it before, you can do it again. Because all that good, it's in here." And she taps her chest, just above her heart. "If being James has taught you anything—if it's taught all of us anything—it should be that Grant Ward has the potential to be great."

No one's ever valued him for his potential to be kind before; no one's ever seen his deep-seated need to protect the vulnerable (the way he couldn't protect Thomas and Rose) and commended him for it. He's always been a tool for others to use, and his value was directly related to his ability to speak six languages and punch people really hard. But Skye thinks he has value beyond that. And his heart in that moment feels like a balloon, only instead of air, it's filled with her.

"I'll remember that," he says. "I'll . . . try." And then, quieter: "Thank you, Skye."

She looks at him, and he sees her hands tighten on her knees, and he lets himself imagine that she's staring at the barrier between them and wishing, just like he is right now, that she could reach out. It's just wishful thinking, surely, but it's a nice thought all the same.

. . . . . .

He's now officially only got one day left at the SHIELD base, so he recruits Skye's help for the last thing he wants to do: apologize, in person, to the people he's hurt. An apology doesn't fix things, but he's got to start somewhere, right?

Skye agrees readily to the plan and goes upstairs to tell everyone that Ward would like to see them, one by one, in person. And he waits and paces in his cell, going over and over the apologies he's been crafting since the day he got his memories back.

The first person to appear is, to his surprise, Melinda May. "I didn't think you'd come," he admits.

"I didn't want to," she says flatly. "But Coulson insisted, so I figured I might as well go now as later."

Not a promising start. But he takes a deep breath, and he apologizes: first for the general things, like betraying the team and causing all those problems with his neo-Hydra group, and second for the specifics. He apologizes for that fight with the table saw, and for giving her a concussion when they came to arrest him in that warehouse. He apologizes for letting her think that their brief liaison was simply a comfortable arrangement for both of them when really it was him manipulating her and making sure she wasn't a threat to his mission. And he apologizes for letting her down as an agent; she'd trusted him, as a fellow specialist, to have her back when it came to keeping Coulson and Fitzsimmons safe on the Bus, but really he'd been working against the team all along.

When he's finished, she looks at him a long time, and then a corner of her mouth turns up in a smirk and she says, "Good."

He is baffled. "Good?"

"Good," she repeats. "I'm not going to say I forgive you, because I don't forgive anyone; I've barely managed to forgive myself for . . . everything. But . . . it's good to hear. Thank you."

He can't help smiling a little. "That's honestly more than I expected from you."

She shrugs. "I've been spending a lot of time with Andrew. He's into all this feelings garbage." She hesitates, then adds, the smirk suddenly gone, "And I know what it's like to have orders." She nods at him, then goes upstairs. And Grant is left pleasantly surprised by how that went down.

Coulson is next, and Grant gives him the same generic apology he gave May, and then apologizes for breaking his trust, for endangering the team he put together, for all the headaches he's caused SHIELD.

Coulson listens to it all with a small smile on his face. "I'm working on moving past it," he says. "Thank you, Ward."

Grant hesitates. "Actually, I've decided to go by Grant. I'm kind of trying to put Ward behind me."

Coulson raises his eyebrows, but simply says, "I understand, Grant."

Bobbi and Lance won't come down, so he records a message for them instead. He tells them he genuinely thought it was the right thing for Kara, although he knows that doesn't excuse anything. He tells them he knows what he did was awful, and of all the things he's done that he's now horrified by, that one's high on the list. He tells them that he knows an apology won't fix it, but that he had to do something, and that if they can't forgive him he'll understand, but that he is more sorry than he can say. Then he sends it up with Skye, who promises she'll try to convince them to watch it.

After a long while, after dinner time has come and gone, Fitz and Simmons come together; he'd figured they would, and he's glad of it, because what he has to say applies to both of them. He notes with pleasure that they're gripping each other's hands, and though he's sorry he makes them nervous, the sight still makes him fight a smile. He used to hope those two would find their way to each other. And it looks like they have.

This is possibly the most difficult apology to make, besides Skye. What he did to May and Coulson was between operatives, between SHIELD and Hydra. But what he did to Fitzsimmons was between friends: a betrayal of the most personal and painful sort. He knows how fond they'd been of him; he knows Fitz, in particular, continued to believe in his innocence long after the rest of the team had faced the truth. So the words he speaks were chosen carefully.

First he gives them the general apology he's been giving everyone, and then he pauses. "Of everything I did," he says after a moment, "I might be most ashamed of what I did to you two. You were my friends. And by that I mean that I know you guys cared about me, but I also mean I cared about you. I know this doesn't fix what happened, but I honestly thought the pod would float, and that we were flying low enough that you wouldn't be too hurt. I knew I had to get you off the plane before Garrett sent someone who would just put a bullet in your heads, so I dropped you, and obviously it backfired. But I should have stood up to Garrett. I should have found another way. When I found out what happened to you, Fitz—" He breaks off, takes a moment to collect himself. "I'll be sorry about that until I die."

They're both staring at him, have been the whole time, and Simmons' mouth is tight and her eyes are skeptical. She finally loosens up enough to say, "You're right, it doesn't fix what happened. But . . ." And her expression softens a little. "It helps, to hear your reasons, from you. I do appreciate that." Another pause. "And I did see you, when you were in the theta brainwave frequency machine. I saw . . . how you reacted to that memory. I do believe you regret it. And it does help to know that."

He gives her a small smile, thanking her for that, and then he turns to Fitz. The engineer has said nothing yet, and his expression is conflicted. "I'm especially sorry to you," Grant says quietly. "I know you wanted to believe the best of me long after everyone else had realized what I really was." He hesitates. "And we were friends once." A smile touches his face. "Remember the world's most dangerous sandwich?"

And finally the tiniest smile crosses Fitz's face. "That was a good day to be a rat."

"There were dogs," Grant reminds him mildly.

"You could have let me take a bite first," Fitz retorts, and it's such a gloriously normal exchange that Grant wants to cheer.

Fitz examines him a moment longer, skeptically. "You are sorry?" he asks, finally.

"More than I can tell you," Grant confirms. "I'd promise to do anything you asked to prove it, but I'm going to prison tomorrow so I don't know how much I could do."

Another pause. "We were friends?"

A sad smile touches Grant's face. "Yeah, we were friends." He thinks a moment, and his smile becomes more genuine. "I kind of thought of you as my kid brother. Kind of a little pest, kind of a know-it-all, but . . ." And the smile falls from his face as he thinks of Thomas, his own kid brother, who at least grew up in the shelter of their mother's favor, but who now probably thinks of Grant as the horrible brother who hurt him as a child—who probably has no idea that Grant only ever wanted to protect him. And he reminds himself, as he has several times lately, to find out what Thomas and Rose are up to now; he kept track of them from a distance after joining SHIELD, but lost track after the Hydra uprising.

Fitz's brain has obviously gone down the same path, because he asks, "And by not shooting us on the plane—you were trying to protect us, they way you couldn't protect your own brother."

Grant's jaw tightens, quite involuntarily, and Fitz looks embarrassed. "Sorry, I'm probably not supposed to know about that."

Grant forces himself to relax. "No, it's fine."

And Fitz looks at him for a long, while both Grant and Simmons wait for his response. Then he says, quite matter-of-factly, "All right, I forgive you."

Both his companions are stunned into silence. "Really?" Simmons demands finally.

Fitz shrugs. "Life's too short. And holding onto that means giving way too much energy to something I want to put behind me. So, yeah, I forgive him."

And Grant finally breaks out of his stupor enough to give Fitz a half smile. "Thank you," he says quietly.

And Fitz smiles back.

Skye comes down after Fitzsimmons leaves. He'd thought she would be the hardest to apologize to; after all, they were . . . something, when he betrayed them. Almost. For about ten minutes.

But it turns out it's the easiest. "I'm sorry," he begins, and she interrupts him with a small smile.

"I know."

. . . . . .

When Grant wakes up on his last morning on the SHIELD base, Coulson is down to his cell so soon after that Grant suspects the director was monitoring the security video feed. He hands Grant a bagel and orange juice, and when he finishes Coulson asks, "Feeling awake and alert?"

A little confused by the question, Grant nods.

"Good," says Coulson. "It's important that you understand what I'm about to say."

Grant raises an eyebrow.

"I've been thinking a lot about incarceration," says the director in that conversational way of his. "What is it meant to accomplish—is it punishment, or just a way to keep someone from committing more crimes? And I've been thinking about mitigating circumstances. You're familiar with the term?"

Grant answers slowly, trying to figure out where this is going. "I believe it refers to circumstances that a court takes into consideration when deciding how much to punish a criminal. In the American legal system, I've most often heard it referred to in terms of deciding if a murderer gets the death penalty or just life in prison."

"Well, luckily for you I'm not the American legal system," says Coulson. "If I were, you'd probably be serving about a dozen life sentences."

That's true, Grant supposes.

"I've been talking a lot to Dr. Garner," Coulson continues. "He thinks you have a very high chance of full rehabilitation. And after observing you for the last few days, I agree."

Grant says nothing but his heart is starting to pound. Is Coulson saying what it sounds like he's saying?

"I don't think anyone's given you a second chance in your whole life. Including me. So I have a proposal: probation, instead. We put you on a tracking anklet—limited range, regular check-ins with SHIELD, that sort of thing. You choose somewhere to settle, get a normal job, rent an apartment. Only caveat: it's got to be somewhere that Dr. Garner can find you a good therapist nearby. And you spend at least the first six months in a halfway house, focusing solely on your recovery." He smiles. "If you're looking for a good place to move to, Dr. Garner has just accepted a job at Columbia. And if you thought you wanted to go back to New York, I just happen to know a businessman named Noel Roher who owns an Italian restaurant there. Maybe he could get you a job."

Grant knows his mouth is hanging open but he doesn't think he could close it to save his life.

"And after you've done that for at least a few years, we decide what to do next—although I should warn you, I imagine the tracking anklet will be around for a while." Coulson pauses. "What do you think?"

What does he think? He thinks it sounds like light when he was expecting darkness, like a hand of friendship when he was expecting to be struck. He thinks it's the best news he's heard in ages. He thinks it's a reason to actually try to turn his life around. But when he tries to speak, all he manages to say is "I think it's a great idea."

Coulson gives him that mild smile. "I thought you might," he says. "Skye's been up since five, redoing your background and your documents for the halfway house; she's just waiting for your choice of city."

Realizing that Coulson is waiting for an answer, Grant casts his mind over the options, only to realize there was never really a question. "New York."

"I thought you might say that." Coulson hesitates. "I'm sure I don't have to tell you, this is your last chance. Don't waste it."

"I won't," Grant reassures him.

"I'll be back in an hour," says Coulson, and leaves. And Grant's legs buckle and he sits down hard on the bed. He's not going away for good. He could have a life. He could have a real life.

Soon after, Fitz appears to fit the tracking anklet onto him. "If you go outside the set boundaries, we'll know," he explains. "If you tamper with it at all, we'll know. Even if you cut your leg off, we'll know."

"I'll remember not to cut my leg off," Grant says, and Fitz looks up at him and smiles quickly.

Some time after that, Mack and Coulson are leading him out of Vault D and through the halls of the base to the garage. People are watching him walk, and he thinks it should be embarrassing to be paraded around as a sort-of prisoner but it's not. He's too dazed and happy to be embarrassed.

And actually the people watching him go don't seem to be judging him at all. He passes May, whose smirk turns a little warmer until you could almost say it resembles a smile. He passes Bobbi, who hesitantly gives him a tiny nod. He passes Fitzsimmons, and Simmons gives him a tiny smile and a nod and Fitz actually steps forward and claps him on the shoulder.

There's one person he hasn't seen yet, and he's really hoping he doesn't miss her—and finally, yes, here she is, in the last bend of the hallway before they reach the garage. "Documents are done and posted," she tells Coulson, stepping out in front of the group so they have to stop walking. "Just thirty seconds ago."

"Thank you," says Coulson. His gaze flits from Skye to Grant and back again, and he seems to sigh a little before patiently looking away—tacit permission for them to take a moment for their goodbyes.

Overwhelmed with gratitude to the director, Grant looks at Skye, wondering what to say. But she, as usual, apparently knows exactly what she wants to do: she steps forward, grabs a handful of his shirt to pull him down to her height, and kisses him.

It is entirely too brief, and when she pulls away she's smiling. "You're disappearing into the wilds of New York and I have strict orders not to show up and distract you for those first six months," she explains, "so I figured, why not?"

He stares at her, and then a smile brighter than any sun starts to spread over his face.

"I'm not promising anything," she's quick to tell him. "Just . . . let's stay in touch. And in six months . . . . who knows?" And she grins.

He grins right back. "One more kiss for the road?"

The last thing he hears as she pulls him back in is Coulson saying admonishingly, "You two are going to make us late," and if anything else is said after that he barely notices because she is kissing him senseless and it's even better than he remembers. He thinks he could happily stand here doing this until he dies—

But now Coulson is clearing his throat and Mack is tapping him on the shoulder until he can't ignore it anymore. "Sorry, bud," Mack says when Grant reluctantly breaks away from Skye to look at him. "But we seriously have to go. The halfway house is expecting us soon."

Sighing, he looks back at Skye, who just smiles at him. "I'll be in touch," she promises, and he, unable to keep the grin from his face, allows himself to be led away, looking back at her until she disappears from view.

At the car, Coulson is puts his hand on his shoulder. "I think you can turn this around, Grant. Prove me right."

Grant nods back. "I'm going to."

. . . . . .

What follows is a strange, bittersweet, happy period of Grant's life.

Wearing the tracking anklet is a pain on occasion, but mostly it doesn't bother him and he doesn't mind not being able to leave his neighborhood, because why would he want to leave? It's got everything there.

The halfway house is a unique experience. It's run by the local Episcopalian church—"I thought James Shaughnessy would like that," Coulson grinned when Grant first saw the place—and he finds he enjoys attending services at the church next door. Sermons on the Ten Commandments, which inevitably include a bit on not killing, can make him a little uncomfortable, but he's pretty sure he's still allowed to try to turn his life around. Actually living at the house is hard to get used to at first—it's been awhile since he's been in such close quarters with so many people—but ultimately it's good to have people around who have also struggled, because they can support each other on their off days. The other residents are mostly all struggling with addictions, so Grant fits right in because his supposed crime, provided by Skye, was possession with the intent to distribute.

He lives at the halfway house for six months, seeing Dr. Garner several times a week. And it helps so much. Some days it's hard to let himself be that open and vulnerable with another person, and some days he hates dredging up old memories, but it helps. For the first time since . . . ever, he feels emotionally healthy, or at least on his way there.

He also gets and writes letters, which is his favorite thing. Skye writes him regularly, as promised; she can't say much about her work and he doesn't have much to say about what he's up to, so she writes silly, rambling, lovely, wise things, about watching rain fall outside her window and pondering on the immensity of the universe and wondering why are Pop Tarts so popular, they're not even good. And Fitz writes, though far less often, telling him in very vague terms about his latest work and what everyone on base is up to—also in vague terms, as these letters are all monitored by the house staff. Twice, Simmons even adds notes to these letters, and seeing her prim handwriting always fills him with joy.

After that first six months, he moves out of the halfway house, Dr. Garner cuts their sessions back to twice a week, and Grant hesitantly goes to Ottavio's. Lance Hunter, as Noel Roher, had written to Luisa and Gaohan to expect him, and they are thrilled beyond belief to see him. They think his supposed excursion to Barcelona was just the folly of youth and now he's back in town, broke and wiser. (They also don't question his announcement that he's going by Grant now; he tells them that it's his middle name and he decided to use it to honor his father, who he's named for. It's not true, but it's a good story.)

They are happy to offer him a hosting job; they happen to have an opening. It's less money than he made before he left, but it's enough to rent a studio apartment and get a membership at a boxing gym; he figures something a little more social than weight lifting could be good for him. Then, feeling like it's high time, he starts working toward his GED, with the intention of going on to get a hospitality or business degree (after all, he loved the industry when he was James).

In his first month back at Ottavio's, he slips into much of the old life he was used to as James: work, gym, books. He befriends some of the guys from the boxing gym, and they go to bars and movies; he and Gaohan renew their friendship and Gaohan decides to teach Grant to skateboard. He goes back to volunteering at the shelter. He finally gets himself a dog.

And one quiet evening, when the warm lights from the windows are pouring into the cool dark street, when the marinara smells delicious and Luisa is singing happily to herself in the kitchen, the door opens and into the restaurant walks the most beautiful girl he's ever seen. And she's smiling at him. "Table for one."

A breath he's been holding for seven months comes out all in a whoosh. "I was beginning to doubt I'd ever see you again."

"You could have called," she teases.

"You're not exactly in the phone book," he points out, then adds, "Skye. Or should I still call you Daisy?"

She tilts her head, then admits, "When I imagine you talking to me, I imagine you saying Skye."

He grins. "Skye," he agrees, and wonders why she'd imagine him talking to her. He wishes he still owned this restaurant; if he did, he'd give himself the rest of the night off to spend it all with her. But as it is he can only say, "Your usual table in the back is open, but let me check that no one has any need for it."

He goes back to the kitchen doors, only to be stopped by Gaohan and Luisa coming out of them. "See?" Gaohan is saying to Luisa, gesturing at the hosting station, "it's her. It's definitely her."

"Her?" Grant repeats.

"That girl you were so crazy about last year. That's her, right?"

And Grant, embarrassed, admits, "Yeah, that's her."

"Then what are you doing here talking to us?" Luisa demands.

"Checking if the back table is open," he retorts. "Trying to do my job."

"Well, stop trying to do your job, and go make out with her face," Gaohan commands. "You've been staring at her like she's made of solid gold since she walked through the door."

That effectively derails anything Grant had planned to say.

"I'm serious," says Gaohan. "You've earned a break; I'm giving you the rest of the night off. Go somewhere. Or if she's hungry, bring her back here and you two can eat together."

Luisa nods her agreement. "Tell her the tortellini is excellent tonight."

Grant stares at them both, and then he breaks down in a smile, immensely grateful to have such good friends. He returns to the front. "My manager is allowing me a break," he says. "Could I join you?"

Her smile is answer enough.

They eat tortellini and catch up on the last seven months: he talks about the halfway house and this job and the shelter, and she talks about her work. She went to Paris yet again and yet again neglected to visit the Eiffel Tower; Grant thinks that maybe she just needs someone to go with her to Europe and make sure she remembers to enjoy herself.

When the meal is done, Gaohan gives him a significant look and eyes the front door, and Grant takes the hint and asks Skye if she'd like to take a walk. And walk they do, through lamplit streets and silent avenues, still lightly talking about anything and everything that comes to mind. They always could talk easily. At some point their hands find each others', and in retrospect he thinks she might have initiated it.

In time they make it back around to Ottavio's and come to a halt under the lamp on the opposite corner. He's not ready to go back inside, not until he knows what's going on between them. But before he can figure out how to ask, she speaks first.

"You seem to be doing a good job being Grant," she says. "You know, not Ward, not James, but this new person."

He smiles, pleased and embarrassed. "I like this new person."

"So do I," she says.

He leans down and kisses the top of her head, quite shocked at his own forwardness, and it seems as though that's what finally prompts her to address the question that's been on his mind.

"You know," she says, "I do live in another state."

"I know, he says, a little nervously.

"I can't be here all that often. I mean, I can visit when I have time off, but that really doesn't happen much."

Ah, that sounds like she's letting him down easy. That's . . . heartbreaking. "I see."

She turns and takes his other hand, so now she's right in front of him, looking up with a smile. "So I'm saying I won't be around much. But if you want to try, I'm game."

He's so still he thinks he can hear his own blood pumping. He wants to be sure he's understanding her, so he repeats, "Try?"

"Try this," she says, and reaches up to plant a feather-light kiss on his mouth. "I . . . like you. You know. Romantically."

He finally finds his voice. "For real? Not just 'once for about ten minutes?"

She grins. "No, I haven't been able to get you out of my mind for seven months. I feel like that's probably a good sign." And while he looks for words, she waits, and when none are forthcoming she asks tentatively, "Anything you want to say to that?"

Talking is not exactly on his to-do list right now. Kissing her like their lives depend on it, however, is.

"So yes to the long-distance thing?" she grins when it finally ends, and he kisses her briefly in response.

"So if you wanted to be dramatic," she says, "you could say, 'I've known you now in three lifetimes—'"

He cuts in, quite seriously. "And I've loved you in each."

She looks at him quietly, then goes up on her toes. In the moment before she kisses him, she whispers, "Likewise."

. . . . . .

Things are not perfect after that; some days they feel impossible. Sometimes it's difficult for her to find time to come to New York, or even to call or e-mail; sometimes they bicker because they're both used to getting their way. Sometimes the smallest thing will trigger a memory of his past, and it will take a long while and lots of focus on the things around him that he loves in order to snap out of it. Sometimes he'll remember one of the awful things he did and shame will overwhelm him.

But most days it's perfect. Most days they call or text or write or, wonder of wonders, she actually has time to come visit. And Gaohan always lets him off early those days. Grant doesn't mind that he doesn't get to see her all the time; he wishes he did get to, but the time he does get is infinitely bigger and better than anything he ever expected to have with her. And the fact that she's sometimes away just makes him cherish the time she's there.

He has wondered a time or two about asking Dr. Garner to find him a doctor closer to the SHIELD base, and moving there to be close to Skye, but he likes Dr. Garner. He likes his apartment and his gym and his little dog Henry. He likes Ottavio's; he likes Luisa and Gaohan. So he's content to stay where he is for the foreseeable future.

For the first time in his life, Grant Douglas Ward, also known as James Grant Shaughnessy, is genuinely happy. And he has no intention of losing that, for as long as he lives.

. . . . . .

fin