Ward sat down heavily, leaning on the table for support, doing little else than staring blankly at the patterned plastic in front of him. May silently passed him the glass of water. He drank up greedily, eyes closed, desperate to get back enough liquid after the expended effort. The back of his shirt clung to him, his breath slowing down but shoulders still heaving. May herself was not quite there yet. She filled another glass for herself, took Ward's away from him to also refill it. Opening the bottom drawer, she found the bottle of mild sleeping pills Simmons had recommended Phil against his sleepwalking, stress induced insomnia (they had all noticed by now). She crushed two pills between her fingers, thought a little and then added other two. She made no effort to remain stealthy. There were traces of powder on the glass and little fragments floating at the bottom, but May sincerely doubted Ward would notice. And if he did, she would just instruct him to drink it anyway. Chances were on her side he'd comply. It was not a perfect solution, but she was not going to risk a repeat performance from earlier. The entire situation was a minefield of unknown dimensions.

She gave Ward his soundly drugged water, wondering if she had gone a little overboard with it. He looked like he would drop down on his own if just given enough time, but May knew that as long as there was a perceived danger around he would continuously fight the exhaustion. And she very much doubted that she could convince him that she was not a danger to him right now. All in all, she simply did not know what to do with him. There was no safe place to lock him up that would keep him neutralized. She supposed she could march him all the way down to the Bus and lock him in the holding cell, but that option felt like a setback now that he seemed to have taken the cooperative stand.

May was no shrink, but she was an expert in tai-chi, and she was good at keeping stress and stress related escalations of violence at bay. It was easy to know what to do next. She rummaged through the kitchen, coming up with the remains of some pasta with meat sauce that could be easily heated in the microwave. If Koenig had been documenting all his intake right, Ward was eating maybe half a sandwich a day, enough to know that he was not purposely starving himself to death but not enough to keep in a fighting kind of shape. He only ever ate anything in the mornings, hours before she came, so May guessed it was a toss between a tactical decision and a stress induced reaction. She figured he had to be really hungry now, but as she put the food in front of him and went searching for a short enough fork to trust him with Ward made no move to indicate he wanted to start eating. He was sitting quietly enough, hands on his lap, head bowed. He looked at the plate intently for a while, but then bowed his head again and loosely hugged himself instead of reaching for the fork.

What the hell was wrong with him? It was a plate of pasta, not a sell your soul kind of deal. That one had been closed and sealed by Ward a long time ago. He looked like he took it for a devil's test – one he had lost without even trying.

"Sao Paolo, Rua Allegre 721. Madrid, Castellana 233. Brussels, Saint Gilles Square…"
His voice had an unsteady, deeply shameful ring to it. "Singapore, Chancery Lane 1A. Melbourne, Surrey Hills, 12-C". He paused, took a breath, went on. The fingers of his left hand were closing slowly, leaving a red scratch on his right arm. "Cape Town, Brackenfell Boulevard, 7560. Bangkok..."

Some of them May could locate approximately, and they were centric city places, busy buildings on big avenues with all the anonymity of people coming and going at any time of day or night. Nothing as large as a proper base could be hidden there, it had to be personal safe houses, she could tell. As far as intel quality went, it was nothing to lose sleep about, and still Ward was behaving like it physically pained him to say the words, like it was the best kept secret in the universe and he the biggest traitor of the world.

"Hydra's hiding places?" She pressed.

"Garrett's and mine."

He gave some more addresses and then was silent for a while, going as far as looking up from the table to May when she offered no immediate reaction. The pasta was slowly getting cold in front of him, homey and delicious and obvious deeply uncomfortable. Ward seemed to have no clue about what to do with it, no training to fall back to when faced with offhand kindness. May could not help to wonder if things could have been different if she and Phil had indeed went through with their routine of good cop and bad cop. She had thought he had already finished - it certainly was a long and comprehensive emergency setup to have organized around the world - but Ward closed his eyes, literally dug his nails into the flesh of his arms and went on doggedly.

"There is a piece of hunting land near High Peaks, Massachusetts. Pretty big, some thirty miles off the 87 interstate. It's a forest basically, nothing much there, just a cabin. There will be no directions there but you can probably find it easy enough through a satellite, knowing where to look. There is the spare hard reset mechanism for John's Deathlok device, the one that I kept. He sometimes worked from there, so there could be some data, though it's probably not much. Some fancy weaponry, a 190-V prototype I nicked when they were still in development."

"What exactly is that place?"

His lips formed a short word he jealously kept silent before shrugging sullenly.

"The main safe house. The rest are emergency lie low holes, most never even used. "

"It's not enough". It was not really a threat, it was just that Ward was their only lead on Hydra, and it simply wasn't.

"I was a sleeper, May", he said almost gently, like she was the one who was being too slow.

When the implication downed, it was with a feeling of cold vacuum below the sternum May had not felt since the night Mike Petersen had betrayed Coulson in exchange for his son. That time, it had been a whole collection of tiny details adding up to a disquieting feeling of walking right into a trap of their own creation, feeling clever and prepared for all eventualities right up until the working premise proved to be completely wrong. This time, she had not seen in coming.

"Need to know only, and that only after activation. Which only happened what, four days before the fall? I never had the time to get around all that much."

Garrett could basically move around as much as he wanted as a Level 8 agent. He was stationed at HQ, a part of high direction with proper authority and autonomy to match it. A highly active Level 6 such as Ward would spend about 80% of his life being monitored one way or another. Of course he did not assist to weekly Hydra meetings, did not travel from Hydra base to Hydra base.

Stupid. So very stupid, May. Ward was the final ace in the sleeve of his senior handler. Keeping him a literal dead end made perfect strategic sense. Such an obvious decision, why did nobody, not even Coulson, think of that? The answer was easy to understand. The takeover had made Hydra seem all powerful, all knowing, ever present. To think about Ward spending months among them on the plane still made May sick at night. Garrett and Ward had had the upper hand for so long, it had been unthinkable that Ward just did not have the keys to the entire Hydra kingdom in his head...

Goddamn it.

"Why did you not tell me this sooner? You kept clinging to a fairly useless info, you had to realize you made it look relevant to us."

"It was not useless to me."

And what the hell should that even mean? And she should stop this train of thought right there, least she begun to blame Ward for his own ongoing torture over inexistent information. That one was all on her. She had walked a very thin line and she had screwed up. At the least, she was perfectly willing to admit to it. Which brought her to…

"Why did you help me?"

"And why not?"

"I am your enemy."

"You were a risk variable, and therefore a potential target, but the mission is now over anyway."

The phrase was obviously way too long for him right now. He was acting a lot drowsier already, adrenaline crash and drugs and warmth conspiring against will and training. It was ever so cold there in the basement, remembered May. The temperature in the living quarters was at least five grades higher, and it showed. He had to realise that he was stumbling over the articulation, as he blinked slowly and self consciously, lifted up his hands and examined them for tremor (there was none), made them into fists and relaxed them slowly.

"What have you given me?"

"A sedative. It would work slower if you'd just eaten anything. Eat now".

The whole set up was way too close to Pavlov's dog conditioning for May's liking, but it worked beautifully and a quick result was exactly what was needed anyway. He did devour everything in less than two minutes as soon as there was an explicit go-ahead.

"Go shower. Make it quick. Leave the door open".

He nodded and was off unsteadily.

May had abandoned the shower in a hurry only this morning, so she knew there wasn't much that could be used as a weapon in there. She supposed Ward could think of something if he truly put his mind to it, but she would bet a lot on the fact that he just wouldn't. It was freakish, how quickly she was getting used to the calm amenability with which he followed her instructions, and how comfortable she was leaving him to his own devices to go into the war room, disable the attack alarms and issue the all clear code. If Koenig was hiding in the panic room somewhere, he would now know to come out. Phil would be also put at ease. Hopefully he had known to not hijack a means of transportation to get here in a hurry.

Coming back, she checked to see that he had indeed left the bathroom door wide open. Listening to the running water she went back to the lab. They had wanted to check for possible communicators or tracking devices hidden among his personal belonging, but all had seemed clean in there. His bag of clothes was the only personal possession of Ward on board; the contents testified to a truly Spartan list of priorities. Two black and two white T-shirts. Two long sleeved shirts, black. Two greyish hoodies and two pairs of training pants. A small tightly bundled collection of plain white underwear. The rest his wardrobe was typically SHIELD- issued depending on the operation, from suits to Ward's standard mission wear.

"You break it, you take it", had read the window sign of the little china shop on the corner of the street where she grew up. In the past, it had seemed terribly unfair to the young Melinda. Now, though... They said it was something impossible to fake, said the interrogator would always know when the right moment came, and they were obviously right.

By the time she had some clean clothes in her hands the water had stopped running. She was prepared to be generous with time, but Ward had needed less than five minutes all in all. He was now using her disposable lady razor, and they both froze a little when he caught her in the mirror.

"I meant to ask. You weren't there".

"Put these on."

She threw the bundle at him. By now his reactions were so off, he let half of it fall to the ground. May did not comment on it.

"Coulson will want to talk to you when he gets back. You will tell him everything, starting with the day Garrett recruited you to the day he died. No more funny crap from you; you will answer him fully and truthfully. Do you understand?"

"Yes."

"You will not get leniency for helping me today. I am not saying this to goad you, it's just a fair warning."

Coulson would overlook the way the fight had gone and proceed to have a fit over May allowing Ward to roam the main floor almost free. She could just see it. The young ones were his absolute priority, and Ward was a weapon more dangerous than a ticking bomb.

"I realise", he said. "You need not worry."

"Come." She took him to the furthest bunk room at the end of the long corridor. "You have a couple of hours. Sleep it off now."

He obeyed even that command, moving to sit deeper on the bunk, letting her cuff him to the bed frame, carefully manoeuvring to avoid twisting the handcuff while lying on his side. May wondered if there was at least some fight in him left, a limit after which he would push back. An idle question, anyway; she did not think she'd have the heart to test it.

Coulson and company come back three hours later, a whirlwind of too late and unnecessary stress and excessive weapon weaving. May had already disposed of the dead bodies. She had been pleased to see that Koenig had survived the assault, and quickly sent him to check the damaged entrance door. The three soldiers from the basements shot with icers were now in Ward's old cell with some extra toxin on their foreheads. After inspecting the lock May was no closer to knowing how had Ward managed to escape, but she was certain the actual prisoners would not exhibit the same prowess. They would become a problem shortly, that with knowing the location of the Playground. May felt a wave of anger every time she remembered that she had led them there.

There was a quick situation report in Coulson's office. Just as predicted, it ended rather brusquely when Coulson got wind of the actual degree of freedom she had allowed their guest.

"Really, May? You hurt him, and now you are starting to feel sorry for him. This is textbook emotional transfer, and I am sure he is betting on it."

"What the hell for? He could have hightailed out of here."

May guessed she could understand, but it smarted all the same. It was an insult to her judgement and her abilities.

"Maybe he could not. He probably figured by now he cannot take you on. More importantly, this man is Hydra. He has been living with us, eating with us, patiently playing pretend for months, and what for? A very minuscule chance he could overhear something. He is devious, and he has proven to be very patient. And now some strange guys turn up, he seemingly gets you out of a crossfire, and suddenly he has a comfy bed not ten meters away from the rest of the team sleeping quarters? Allow me to doubt your good judgement, May".

"You think I feel like I owe something to him?" Oh, she loved Phil with all her soul, but the man could be blind fool at times. "He waited for permission to eat something that was already in front of him. That is how dogs are trained to behave."

"I don't like it".

"You gave me free reign of Ward's interrogation, he has finally collaborated. You don't like it? Then take over. I will step back gladly. In fact, I insist on it".

Low blow, but a well deserved one. If Phil wanted to use her as his metaphorical left hand in this, he should acknowledge her properly at least in private. "And for the record, he is heavily sedated, but should aware enough again in an hour or two."

Ward woke up earlier than that, sitting up with his back pressed to the wall when May checked on him.

"Time to go", she announced moving to cuff him properly this time. It was about forty meters from the cot to the Directors Office, and it wasn't like Ward would suddenly decide that it was the time to flee, but still. They were not alone in the Playground anymore.

Something in Ward's behaviour prompted her to pause and tell him to speak up, to which he requested permission for another bathroom break. She ended marching him into the bathroom, re-cuffing him so that his hands were held in front of him, and later cuff them again behind. It was the worst kind of hassle: the completely unneeded one. Still, it was protocol, and Coulson was not completely without a point.

Skye and Simmons had been politely requested to make themselves scarce. They knew there had been a tentative hostile takeover, and did not offer one word of protest. Phil was in his office, pretending to do some work, but May knew that he was eagerly waiting. May knocked twice, waited for him to allow entry. Just a week ago she would have entered first and knocked later, but he was SHIELD Director now, and other norms were starting to apply. She kind of hated it.

"Come in."

Ward was not resisting any, but she still took him by his arm and bodily propelled him in there. The more she thought about it, the more she was grudgingly forced to admit that Coulson was actually right. She was more upset by all this than she cared to admit. She could not calibrate her behaviour toward Ward properly. She had been kind to him earlier. It had felt right at that time, and it had worked out - she had retrieved some information. But now, looking back, she had trouble understanding where that kindness had come from. Ward was a traitor and a murderer, he had no right to sleep anywhere in the proximity of Simmons' bed. May guessed she indeed had some degree of enforcer's guilt, which actually meant Phil was right and she should take a giant step back.

Still, on the threshold, she made Ward stop and spun him around toward her.

"You answer him, and you answer truthfully. You will not get leniency for it, but you may get some self worth back. Do you understand me?"

She was happy to see him nod urgently. She was not without heart, and she wanted him to do well. Cooperate fully, acknowledge everything. There was a small measure of peace to be gained by doing it, and Ward could do with that instead of the promised internal torture. Coulson was standing at the head of his desk, looking idly at the selection of collectibles he had transferred to this place. During the entire time the Bus had been in enemy hands, his office and his collection there have remained untouched. Garrett was not the one to want a proper office, May supposed. More of a hands-on guy. She slid inside silently behind Ward, making herself scarce by keeping to the side. She did not know if Coulson truly counted her as compromised, but he would send her off if her truly did not want her in there.

"Sit." Coulson indicated the chair in front of his desk. Ward did, warily but without delay. "Have anything to say for yourself before we begin?"

"No, sir."

There was an audio feed on the desk, recording quietly. May guessed that there may also be a complementary video recording somewhere, but she was not sure if Coulson activated it. It was not to be a trial; they were weeks too late for that.

"Who recruited you into Hydra?"

"John Garrett."

"When?"
"October 1999."

If Phil stumbled at that date, he never showed it on his face. It was a powerful achievement; Fifteen years of treachery, who could have imagined that? They figured that Hydra roots had to go deep, to affect roughly the half of all senior agents, but not that far into the past.

"You were accepted into SHIELD's Operational division in 2004. You sought enrolment as an infiltration tactic?"

"Yes, sir".

See? May just knew Ward would possess useful information outside of his little safe houses list. He might not even think of as an intel, but for them? Knowing Hydra did not approach qualified agents to make them turn, but filled the Academy with all sorts of bad seeds was beyond significant. It showed just how far, how wide, how carefully thought out and prepared Hydra had been …

"Who were you reporting to during your years as a sleeper agent?"

"John Garrett."

"Who else?"

"Only him."

"And if you could not make contact with him?"

"I waited."

"If you had important information you felt the urge to share without delay…"

"I quelled that urge, remembering that being my CO and a higher positioned officer he would probably have the same information."

"How did you make contact?"

"He took me out for drinks, if there was a long stretch without missions we could run together."

This one seemed to be a dead end to May, and Coulson was quickly coming to the same conclusion. No sense in establishing two different lines of communications for two double agents, if the same work could be done with one. He shifted in his place, checked something on his computer and set a completely different pace.

"I want details, year by year."

Ward sat a little straighter at that, visibly collecting memories. May was pleased to see that her warnings had been heeded; he was certainly doing his best to behave.

"2004, I was at the Academy trying to get in. 2005, had the mandatory deep undercover assignment. From then on to 2007 we run joined operations as an established pair, Garrett and I. We were on the lookout in case anything important happened, but it just didn't. Well, we got wind about all these expeditions to the Arctic, but it was not Operations driven, so in the end Garrett just passed the word on. 2009, I made level 5. Run some joint missions, clashed with a couple of other agents. John said it was a good opportunity. By 2010, I only run solo missions. Almost got sent to oversee Stark that year; it was a toss between me and Romanoff and someone in the brass figured Potts would take better to a male PA. John moved some strings to pull me out of that one. Said that Hydra would of course be very interested in Iron Man, but it would screw with our own agenda, would give me way too much spotlight. 2011, there was a lot of movement around the clean up missions after the visit from Thor, and I had to pass on all of that because instead of coming to join John on his team I crash-landed from seven stores high. There was that new age sect in Seoul making noises, their leader saw the footage of a guy flying in New Mexico and took it for a sign, figured they´d all be able to fly if they just jumped from a skyscraper. I broke six ribs and both clavicles, got a commotion, screwed John's plans whatever they were. He was so pissed, he did not speak to me for five month. 2012, we heard rumours of a Tesseract- based prototype being given out for field testing. I was all set to get to try one, but then the aliens came and the Chitauri technology became hot topic everywhere."

"I am not interested in your petty thefts, Ward. I want to know the leaks, and the fallen through missions."

"I never made a mission fall through, if it could be avoided. Mostly, John made sure to keep me away from any compromising stuff. Belgium 2012, I had to infiltrate an office that should not be infiltrated. He pulled all strings, got me another mission in Baghdad. Another time he did not pull me out, just warned in advance that I would not be able to do it. There were 30 guys waiting for me in there, I got shot even before I could properly aim my weapon. HQ then aborted the whole thing."

"So Garrett went to great lengths to make sure you kept your sparkly clean cover. Why?"

"I was to watch his back. If he was ever compromised, I was to get him out."

"And after you got yourself assigned to this team? You were to keep an eye on me".

"Yes, sir."

May sighed. Phil had thought he was assembling an elite independent team, and in reality there was no person on the Bus that wasn't stationed there to spy on him instead.
"So what did Centipede actually want with me? Make super soldiers primed for immortality?"

"Completely regenerate injuries instead of fusing metal prostheses with what was left of the flesh. The Deathlok project was started in the nineties by SHIELD, but only got shitty results. The injured agents had to undergo weekly maintenance, most were not good enough to go back into the field. So it was sold into private hands, converted into Centipede. Results were still not good enough, and the old prostheses were all failing. So when word got around that you have been all but resurrected... John was sure you of all people would know how. I was supposed to figure it out, but I went about it the long way. I guess he finally got tired of waiting, and it just all blew up from there..."

"Like my kidnapping? Skye's near death experience?"

"I did not realise how little time I had. I would have tried harder, had he told me. There were tons of leads I could have followed. I figured May had the encrypted line. Agent Hand knew, too, there was certain info in the Hub I could have used to infer the location of the TAHITI bunker. Thing was, I could not do any of these things without getting my SHIELD cover fully blown. I did not want to do that, so I waited. It was my fault. I figured if the situation was dire enough, I would get my orders, but John just went for something completely different instead."

May could see Coulson seethe quietly, the intricate detail of Ward's misdeeds setting him on edge. Ward himself either did not notice it, or paid it no heed. May did advise him to speak truthfully, and apparently he did. It was the truth seen from the point of view of an enemy, peppered with sincere regret at having failed his Hydra CO.

"So, just to sum it up, you were never SHIELD", said Coulson very steadily. "You got involved with Hydra when you were what, fifteen?"

"Almost sixteen."

"How did you ever do that? Answered to an ad looking for some nazis wannabes?"
"Garrett sprung me from the juvie. Said he'd give me one more chance at doing something right."

"You were there for arson. He was the one to bail you out? You got sent to a military academy after."

Ward hesitated a little, when he had not hesitated in anything he had previously said.
"I was there because I tried to kill somebody. I had already been at that academy for a year. I never went back, just stayed with him."

That was definitely not on Ward's file. Not even close. Hydra must have had a hell of record altering experts to erase something like this. Still, Coulson perked up visibly, finally having identified a thread he could pull on.

"Where were you trained? By whom? How many of you were there?"

"No, it wasn't a... I just went with John. We just went together."

"Garrett was a full time field agent. He had no time for training anybody on the side, and you have 5 years missing from you story."

"I needed that time. I had never been an outdoorsy kid, I could not climb, I wasn't very good even at the basic physical. We practiced survival skills, when I got better he showed how to handle the short weapons. And when I got that right, he got me a long range hunting rifle. He did not need to spend much time with me. I trained myself until he came back. And then there were the languages. I spent hours every day just listening to the cassettes."

It sounded too innocent to ever have been true. Too… reactive, like it was something that simply happened to him without any active input from his will, instead of it being something he had wanted. An unknown man would not simply take a teen along into the woods and expect him to stay there alone for years under the guise of survival training. Any kid would know to scream abuse and run. A hunting area was not a creepy windowless basement and Ward wasn't a little helpless girl who foolishly accepted a ride from a stranger. If he had been chosen, he must have done something to attract Garrett's attention. If he had stayed, he must have wanted to. Must have played along willingly. Must have allowed himself to be trained.

"Do you know what I miss in all this? What makes no whatsoever sense at all? You have told me a good story, but you have failed to give me a good motive". So Coulson was coming to the same conclusion as May. "Was there a reason for all this, Ward? Was it money? Was it conviction? Or was it simply fun? A little bodybuilding in the woods, firing guns at beer bottles, showing off for the girls at the local pub?"

There was an almost blank look on Ward's face; it was certainly difficult to know what he was feeling. Still, the pretence was not complete. There was gauntness in his eyes that rivalled the looks he gave May from inside his cell in the last days of his stay there.

"Why did you do it in the first place? Why did you keep doing? Tell me, why?"

There was a visible shudder, like Ward was fighting the desire to curl up. He did not answer, would not answer. May has come to read the little cues of him easily enough to know that this line of interrogation would end in nothing. If not in something worse. Less then twelve hours ago there was no living soul that could pull a word out of Ward, if Phil was not careful he would land them back there.

"And just so you know, I do not believe for a second that you were all alone in that Hydra boot camp. Sorry to burst your bubble, but you are just not special enough for Garrett to have been the only one."

"It wasn't…"

"Did you compete at who was the best at beating up some random homeless blokes?

"It wasn't like…"

"…that, I am sure of it. Believe me, I know how these thing work. The first thing is to desensitise you to the violence. I want the names of your fellow little friends, and I will get them."

"It wasn't what John taught me to do."

"Did he never suggest you hone your shooting skills by killing small furry animals at close distance?"

Ward was definitely shuddering now, tiny quick tremors of his shoulders born from the supreme effort at staying completely still. Somewhere between finishing his side of the story and Phil starting to get genuinely angry at him, he had lost the eye contact he had determinedly held with Phil and was now staring at his lap, jaw set with force. This was useless, she thought not for the first time. Phil wasn't even asking anymore, just venting. This was not the Director of SHIELD, it was a man betrayed several times in a span of a week. The fact that he was not venting at Garrett, whom he had known half of his life and who had been by large the brains of the betrayal, but at Ward, was a good measure of just how much he had been truly hurt by him.

"Tell me something, Ward. But first do me the courtesy of looking at me." He tensed up even more at that, so much that even Coulson could not remain oblivious. He stood up, went around the table and sat on the edge in front of Ward. "None of these evading techniques from you, you slimy coward". When Ward did look up, stopping somewhere at the level of Coulson's lips, Phil inclined his head to one side and observed him with a curious, analyzing expression. His tone went from strangled with tightly controlled fury to contemplating and scornful. "After all that living in the woods Nazi routine, after all the dirt and the brainwashing, when you came to SHIELD… Went to orientation at the Academy, went to class, met all there dedicated people. Got the Wall of Honour tour. What did you think, if anything at all?"

Closed up silence. Coiled... something, some emotion desperately struggling to come free and at the same time being pushed down even more desperately. May could not read if it was anger, despair or fear, and she doubted Ward could have told her himself.

"I said look at me! After years of lying, of never confiding into a living soul, of always being dirty inside, you had the opportunity to interact with honest, noble people dedicated to a greater cause. I want to know if it ever, just one time in ten years, made you pause and question Hydra's goals. Or was following Garrett everything you ever dreamed of, Agent Ward? You lived ten years among decent people who were prepared to give their lives for SHIELD, who gave their damn best to protect the world..."

Definitely anger, now. The cornered up type, the most dangerous of all. May instinctively too a step forward to check the handcuffs; it was a good thing Coulson never got them off.

"I thought it was full of itself." Ward's words were low, but clear.

"Excuse me?"

For all Coulson had claimed to want an answer, the actual one seemingly startled him enough to make him lose him train of thought. Ward drew a little into himself, as if expecting a physical outburst, but went on steadily – and angrily – enough.

"I thought it told a pretty tale, and it knew how to sell itself really well. It dedicated more resources to cover up the consequences of its operations than it did to the ops themselves. It did not always med-evacuate its soldiers…"

"You dirty little Hydra ass-kisser bitch, how dare you..." Coulson had stood up, making Ward look up just to keep eye level with him. Which he had successfully done, testimony of the snapping that was having place right there. Detachedly, May thought that it was somewhat strange that Ward's tolerance of Coulson's rhetoric had proved much thinner than his tolerance of her physical mistreatment.

"…while allocating resources to all kinds of weirdoes as long as they claimed to have seen or dreamed anything unusual. It confiscated objects from all over the world and hoarded them in their own private vault, which is exactly what Hydra was also doing. It proudly stood watch against an enemy that had already had found its way inside, so actually Hydra wins there. But you think I care about them, or SHIELD? There are all the same, John said the main goal of any organization big enough would always end up being sustaining itself. And he was right. I was not doing it for Hydra, I was doing it for him, and you have no idea who he was, and what he did, and what he wanted. And I am not an idiot, I know exactly what I've done."

May moved to make him stand down, but a tumultuous look from Phil made it clear for her that this matter, he would handle himself. She belonged to the selected number of people who had had the dubious privilege of having seen Coulson truly angry. The worst of what she had witnessed had actually been directed at her - and fairly, as she had badly harmed his trust by reporting on him under the guise of being a friend. But Ward was attacking the entire agency, and the world did not know fury like that of a Director scorned.

"You have no idea of what you've done." he said very quietly, and the danger emanating from him would have been enough to make the most fearless agent back off.

"I screwed everything up, for everybody, on both sides. Is that what you wanted me to say? I was weak, I let myself get involved, I thought I would get to have my cake and eat it, and I ruined everything. I stalled my recon on your death, I failed to realize that John's implants were catastrophically failing, and I made him look elsewhere for a way out. We could have been cleanly out of your sight months ago, and instead I played freaking Scrabble on the Bus and made everyone on board into a target. You were kidnapped and Skye ended up shot, and Fitzsimmons almost died, all because I spent fifteen years failing to learn a single simple lesson. "

"You threw them to their death! Two not cleared for field agents!"

"I know that! You think I don't know that? I was there! Why the hell am I even still alive?"

"SHIELD does not execute its prisoners".

"Then just give me a pistol with one bullet and look the other way. Give me a suicide mission. Tell me what you want and I will do it. I will do anything to make it right."

"You killed people. You mangled Fitz. You cannot ever make it right! Did you think of that, pulling that lever? Or did you think that having orders was enough? There is no right for you, there is no coming back from that."

"Then give me the damn gun!"

"Death would be too good for you. You will rot in prison for the rest of your miserable life. And every time you get funny ideas about taking a shortcut, think about Fitz and about how much a coward you were, and still are..."

"ENOUGH!" May walked in between them both, using her body to push Coulson away from Ward. "I've had enough, from both of you."

"Agent May, stand down!" Coulson said, tone just as seething as when directed at Ward. "You are disrupting the interrogation."

"The screaming match, I think. Stand back and listen to yourself. You are supposed to be the SHIELD's Director."

"Agent May, remove yourself from this office immediately."

Steel in his voice, so eerily similar to Fury's when he was acting all determined and leader-like. May adored him so much, it would someday probably lead to her ruin. A time would come when Coulson would not consent to be saved from himself. She turned her back to him, paying no heed. Whatever consequences this may bring, she would deal with them later.

"You want a way out, Ward? Fair enough", she bodily made him stand up and turn around, gripping his wrists tightly and elevating them. A turn of key and he was uncuffed, and May was swinging him around facing her again and offering her weapon to him, grip first. "Here is a gun, full magazine, good working condition. Go retake the Fridge for us, seeing as how you ruined it."

"Agent May, this is your last warning, there will not be a third."

Good thing about Phil was, he was a professional first and would never dream of physically forcing May as long as she held the weapon. Ward, for his part, did not move at all, just eyed them both and the gun wearily.

"Not another word from you, Phillip. Ward, what are you waiting for? You have just got yourself an order. Of course, you can also turn tail and run. Be our guest; nobody will care enough to pursue you."

"Right now?" God, did he sound lost.

"You want an official briefing?"

He made a kind of aborted movement that signalled that he indeed wanted to take the gun very much, but in the end stayed motionless. All his attention was suddenly on May, ignoring Coulson as if he wasn't even there.

"You will get in trouble", he reminded her in a low voice, ready and eager but checking himself in order to clarify a not quite precise order.

"What did I say about coddling me?"

"Never to."

"Then off you go".

His fingers closed around the gun. A short nod, and he was walking through the door toward the entrance to the station.

"Agent Melinda May, you are relieved of your active status..."

She ruthlessly tuned Phil out. He'd talk himself into putting her into Ward's handcuffs if she let him. She walked into the bathroom instead, knowing Coulson would follow, and wordlessly pointed at the mirror in there.

"Take a good look. You have been screaming abuse at a prisoner, and why? Because he told you some uncomfortable truths about SHIELD?"

"That's not..."

"Should I remind you what has been going on in the basement for days on end?"

"Damn, May! You still cannot let him free!"

"What are you afraid of? That he will run, or that he will not? Or maybe that he will die trying? We are building a new SHIELD and the hard truth is, the old one was destroyed because it was not good at all. You have a responsibility to do this right, and he is not..." She closed her eyes, thought about everything that Ward had done for Garrett with no hesitation, and the simple fact that had she ordered him to attack Phil he would have doubtlessly done so, and amended herself. "This is not worth our souls."

AN: This chapter marks a huge change in the story, as I am sure everyone can tell. What maybe not everyone can tell is that it was a complete b*tch to write. I have tried to get a sort of balance between Ward's objective responsibility for his deeds in Coulson's POV and his subjective feeling of responsibility for both harming the team and failing his primary directive to serve Garrett in his own POV. If you have made it this far, I would greatly appreciate you input (small as it may be) on this particular chapter. I am totally welcoming constructive criticism , in fact I am very open to discuss this point and will accept suggestions if they prove fair. Thank you in advance.