"How long ago?" she asked, immediately hyper-aware even though she was more tired than she cared to let on. Coordinating missions was even worse than standing by and listening in. She needed to be in the thick of things, doing something useful, not talking about reasonable risks while others pulled the triggers.

"Twelve minutes. The Cube is on standby waiting for further contact, but so far there has been none."

Somebody in the Fridge was trying to communicate with the outside world, but was either unwilling or unable to elaborate further. It didn't escape May that the situation, regardless of this new development, was not much clearer now than it had been two weeks ago. An activated beacon could mean anything. Mainly, it meant that the main antenna on the Fridge had gone online after going dark after the raid by Hydra. Satellite reports had showed that there wasn't much structural damage on the outside, so the obvious conclusion was that something must have happened in the control center during the attack. And of course, nobody knew how extensive the damage inside the tower was. Would Ward even be able to repair it?

"You think it could be a trap."

"I think that we don't have enough data yet, May."

From the softness of the reply, she guessed Phil was trying to let her down gently. It wasn't necessary, though. Whatever Ward did or did not do, it was the same to her; she wouldn't try to influence Phil to proceed one way or another. And she could see all the potential problems of running to take a look at an unclear signal that wasn't even a standard SHIELD call sign. That one, Ward knew and could have used, and then the meaning of all this would be much clearer.

"We wait," he added just as gently. "If the equipment is malfunctioning, it could take a while to solve it".

Well, Ward was supposed to know how to disarm a nuclear bomb, so he could probably work out the basic functioning of a malfunctioning radio beacon.

Fifteen minutes later the beacon went offline without having emitted any kind of comprehensible message, and remained that way for a little over twenty minutes. By that time, everybody had gathered around the main table in the war room, while the communications specialist Agent Hollow from the Cube was reporting on the progress of the decryption. She had asked if a surveillance mission should be launched, but Coulson has ordered only a remote operated vehicle to remain on standby.

"I didn't know you guys had a mission to retake the Fridge going on," Skye said. "Think there's anything useful there after Hydra laid waste to the place?"

"This is not exactly a SHIELD mission," was Coulson's laconic reply.

The beacon came to life again, spluttering and sneezing like a wet kitten with a cold for some twenty seconds, then was off. The next time, the active phase went on for about a minute. From then on, the emission fluctuated, but the beacon never went completely offline anymore.

"It could - emphasis on could - be an audio feed," reported Agent Hollow. "Working on it now."

"But you have expected something like this to happen," guessed Skye when it became clear that no further information was coming her way.

She was fishing now, but she was typically good at guessing too, and May had expected her to join the dots by now. So far, the girl was not even remotely suspecting what was going on. It was too unlikely, all things considered. She had also not asked about Ward once since he had walked out, probably never expecting to see him again.

"Do you need me here, sir?" asked Simmons after the beacon flickered a couple dozen times without offering any further insight into the situation. It was a neutrally worded question, but the reason behind it was clear. Fitz had not joined them at the 'war table', as Skye had taken to call it, electing to shuffle cards on the sofa instead. He was carefully piling them up in a makeshift card house, working on the third level. It was an exercise to improve his fine motor skills, Simmons had explained briefly and then lingered on how she herself was never able to go beyond the second level.

"Not at all. Go back to your evening. I will let you know if something comes up".

Simmons nodded and went back to the living room, which basically meant she went around the sofa and a Plexiglas window and plopped on the sofa near Fitz.

On, off. On, off. Someone was playing with the switch, or else someone was trying to fix a broken contact somewhere. Or maybe the wind was moving a cable on the roof of the Fridge. The Cube has been listening to the Fridge since Ward's mission started, but nobody had been paying it any attention before. It could well be that the beacon has been doing the same for weeks and nobody even noticed.

Except of course it couldn't be. The first thing one learned as a specialist was that believing in coincidences would kill you just as surely as walking through a minefield. On, off. On, off. Hydra would be listening to these same sounds right now, of course. They had probably set up their own communications system, but it did not mean they would ignore the old one flaring up. And it stood to reason that they knew most of SHIELD's basic call signals, which could hardly have escaped Ward.

Irritating as it was, maybe playing it safe was the way to go.

The decrypted readings were being fed to the Playground in real time. There was indeed an audio feed in there, May realized. Just as the communications officers in the Cube had promised, the whisper in the wind was becoming clearer. Another ten seconds, and everybody could tell without a doubt that it was indeed a human voice. The sound became even clearer...

Two people, talking tersely.

"Do you really... radio her? Have her… all the way back?"

"That is exactly what you need to do."

"Right. Because you boys have never seen Hand angry, have you."

It was unmistakably Ward's voice talking angrily over the waves, communicating with a third party, talking about Hand of all people. May's blood went cold with a feeling she could not easily put a name on. Hand had not been a friend, not even a superior officer - nothing more than a distant colleague - but May had always had the utmost respect for her. The woman was as ruthless as she was competent. Even though, May had never wondered about her exact fate beyond counting her among the victims of Ward and Garrett. And now a fragment of conversation featuring Ward's voice was talking about her in an utmost cold and callous manner. What was she supposed to make of that, apart of dealing with a hot and cold wave of indignation? It was almost enough to wonder if Hand was truly dead, except that she was the kind of person that would never be taken alive… or allow herself to stay alive for too long.

Still, May waited for more words. Ward was using a SHIELD channel for this, which meant he was either very stupid or very devious and eager to flounder it. There was a sudden sizzle of bullets hitting a firm surface, a muffled exclamation of "Hydra".

"Open the door!"

"It's against protocol!"

"I don't care about protocol, open the damn door, you are going to get us killed!"

That made no sense. May watched Coulson rub his face in bewilderment. But the conversation was not over. The sound of what unmistakably was a flying helicopter died down.

"Identify yourself and state your purpose."

"Agent Grant Ward. You know who this is. Hand called it in."

"We have specific orders not to let anyone in without Agent Hand present. So where is she?"

"Where do you think she is? She is heading to a meeting with every high ranking officer still out there. You really want me to radio her? Have her turn her plane around, fly all the way back?"

"It's a recording repeating itself," said Skye. "Going out on a limb, here."

A recording of Ward and Garrett lying their way into the compound. Coulson had acquired the satellite images Ward had erased in the Providence after his round of political manoeuvring, and SHIELD had been privy to the scene that had taken place on the roof of the tower. This had to be the security recording of that moment.

"You think it's meant for us?" asked Coulson doubtfully. It did seem an unnecessarily cheeky thing to do, coming from Ward, considering the enormity of the second chance they had given him.

"We've given him no actual call signs for SHIELD, and he cannot know who is listening," noted May. "And he is identifying himself in a way, is he not?"

"He's identifying himself as a traitorous lowlife, you mean," Skye jumped in. "Why did you let him go? Wait, was he a double agent all along and nobody told me? But he strangled Eric, he can't have been. How do you know this isn't a ruse?""We don't," said Coulson in perfect sync with May.

"Still, it would be a ruse about 10 times more elaborate than needed," she pointed out.

"Which is not unheard of, coming from Hydra."

"All they can hope for is us sending in an unmanned drone. If Ward has come through somehow… It's our fifth base, Phil. We don't have many of them left. It's worth a shot, at least."

"I'm sorry. 'Too elaborate' is just not good enough of an argument. I agree that this call is probably coming from him, but I want concrete proof that it's meant for our ears and that it's signalling the end of a successful mission. Until then, we remain on standby. "

He might be trying to radio for evacuation, May thought but did not say, because Coulson would have already thought it and obviously dismissed it. If he had truly done it, how many operatives did he have to lay low? Was he even standing? The equipment might be way too damaged to record a brand new message, hence forcing him to recycle bits that were already in the system. The message repeated itself once again, peppered with pauses as the emission would simple shut off and resume after a short while. Must be the antenna malfunctioning, then. Ward and Garrett had hidden right behind it, faking taking cover from the helicopter fire.

"May," said Fitz from behind her. When she did not acknowledge him, he repeated her name more forcefully. "May."

"What?"

"No… Not you. 'May.' It's what the message says. The second one that's being overlaid."

"What are you talking about?" asked Coulson a little bit more forcefully that was warranted, taking into account that Fitz had spoken up about something SHIELD related for the first time.

"The beacon itself is functioning in a bastardized Morse, so slow and uneven that the Cube algorithm is probably looking right through it. On and off phases are not even in their duration. It's the classic pattern. Dash dash, dot dash, dash dot dash dash. It's cycling for the fourth time in ten minutes. The next one will be a short dot."

The beacon went off again, and in the following silence all eyes remained fixed on Fitz. He was kneeling on the sofa and leaning on the headrest, looking for all the world like he had just said something completely obvious. By the time he had correctly predicted eight fluctuations in a row ("one chance out of a hundred and twenty-eight," piped in Simmons), it became clear that he was right. Skye smiled softly at the engineer, who was so engrossed into solving the puzzle that he had yet to notice that he was solving it. "I still do not understand. May what? Mayday? May I do something? May is a nice month?"

"It could be an acronym", added Simmons excitedly, having eyes only for her friend and none to the war table, where the Cube specialists have completely cleaned up the emission, that proved to be exactly what they thought it to be: a short fragment of the surveillance of the entrance to the Fridge taken on the day of the fall. She was never going to be safe in the field by her own, thought May affectionately. She wasn't even noticing the cleaned up video now playing on all screens, of a good enough quality to show Ward pushing a bound Garrett one way or another. "M.A.Y. Three letters are frequently acronyms, though I will admit to having a hard time coming up with a meaning for it. And there are a couple of people with that name, but nobody important enough. There is also a Cape May in New Jersey…."

May and Coulson shared a knowing look. It was either a done deal, or a genius trap.

"He's identified himself and the intended recipient of the message, and has hinted at the takedown, Phil," noted May. "The three things you wanted. It's worth a look, at the very least."

Coulson sighed. "Launch the drones. I want a full perimeter sweep first, then an in depth exploration, unmanned. Leave no stone unturned. You have one hour".

"Understood, sir."

The Cube went offline after a short while. There was nothing much to do now until the clean up party showed up, and it would take hours to sort out everything. Sure enough, the mission control informed them that the unmanned drone had picked up images of a man sitting on the parapet, waiting patiently with his hands carefully visible and no weapons in sight as the drone made a round around him. Curiously enough, there seemed to be a hole roughly the size of an helicopter in one of the walls of the compound, situated rather close to the ground. The helicopter was indeed half protruding from the inside. The preliminary report of the interior of the Fridge hinted at a big ass explosion having taken place inside before the drone lost contact amid all the concrete.

All in all, it did not clear as many questions as it raised.

"Send a clean up party." Coulson's jaw was set as he issued his next set of orders.

"At once, sir. Should we approach as friend or foe?"

"Anyone who does not surrender immediately, or stays inside the Fridge after you have landed, should be dealt with using lethal force on sight."

"Roger that. It looks like Ward doesn't plan to offer resistance. What should we do with him if he surrenders?"

They knew him, of course. Or of him, which was the same thing at this point. Phil had wanted to keep things at impersonal level, but there were far too few SHIELD agents left for that. They were a tight family now. And in tight families, people's likes and dislikes and loyalties had to be dealt with very carefully. May wondered if Phil was aware of that.

"Bring him to me."

They brought Ward in alive and walking under his own power, which considering all the emotions running high meant he had been on his best meek, wordless behaviour toward the Cube operatives. Still, the forceful dragging and the size of the escort party that showed up could fool anyone into thinking that he had run away and had then fought teeth and nail against being delivered to the headquarters. He looked like that, too. There was a streak of dried blood down the entire right side of his neck. Short as his hair was, it had turned wild, and May suspected it was because there was dried blood in it, too. His eyes were both over-bright and glassy, the telltale look of somebody who had spent way too long in overdrive. He was no longer wearing the white cotton T-shirt he had walked out in. In fact, he was clad in a fairly standard assault gear, or what was left of it after SHIELD guys had stripped off the Kevlar parts and bound him like Phil's personal Christmas present. Simmons gawked openly, caught by surprise by the commotion of it all, but quickly stepped aside when one of the guys dragging Ward knocked a bowl off the dining table. Fitz had gone back to the rehabilitation facility, citing exhaustion and curfews. He looked rather overwhelmed by everything, and nobody had the heart to press for more. Skye came running as well, from the gym by the looks of her, but was made to step back and allow space for the delivering committee. Ward was marched straight to the Coulson's office, looking directly forward the entire time—except when he lingered on May a second too long and earned himself a shove forward.

Simmons wisely shied away from it all, taking refuge in the lab for the time being. Skye started following the committee into the aisle leading to the office, but finally had the insight to fall back.

"So you didn't let him go after all. Good to know you managed to catch him," she said, the look on her face positively gleeful. "I should've tried to stop him when he was walking out, I knew it. He had a gun, but I could have stopped him. He's a coward on top of everything else. What was he doing at the Fridge?"

"Coming through," May answered curtly.

Skye´s entire face fell with such quick and crumpling shame that it became instantly clear that none of her previous words had come from the bottom of her heart. May was stuck by the fact that the girl had been, most probably, trying to mirror her. The hate-fu, she'd called it before admitting that she wasn't any good at it-as if her ability to see the good in people was a weakness, something to be ashamed of.

If only she knew how much May still missed her own.

"Then why…?"

"Because even if he comes through his entire life, he can never make up for anything."

Skye forced another bitter smile, an ugly insincere expression put on a face where it didn't belong. The girl that had boarded the Bus one year ago would have protested vehemently, spewed some nonsense about good deeds balancing out the bad ones. She would still probably do so, for the likes of Mike Peterson. That was the thing about betrayal, though: it never came from enemies. The depth of the present burn was directly proportional to the depth of her past affection.

"Serves him right."

"He's betrayed a system that doesn't abide being betrayed, and he's been overrun by it. Trust me, he will never fully recover. Your anger is nothing compared to that. Do yourself a favour and don't feed it any more than you absolutely have to."

They both watched from afar as Ward was hurried into Coulson´s office. Skye's face was once again an exercise in misery, but at least that emotion was her own and not the indifferent mask she thought she should be wearing. There was only a quiet, soul deep sadness left, and that – that May could easily believe. If Ward had only let go of his conditioning once, just for a little bit, everything could have been very different. And the saddest thing was that May was beginning to truly believe that he had wanted to. Tried to, even. More than once. There had been something truly desolate in the way he counted himself accountable for failing two completely opposite missions, and he seemed to mourn harming the team almost as strongly as he was mourning having failed Garrett. But that wasn't how it all worked, was it?

"Thank you," she heard Coulson saying from the inside of the office. There were too many people there now, and May remained outside, waiting for her chance to come in. "You can leave now. Refuel here, Agent Koenig will help you with that. Debrief at your home base."

Everyone filed out, and May could once again see Ward sitting in the chair in front of Coulson´s desk. It was almost as if the last two weeks hadn't happened. She made a move to come inside, but was met with a hand gently raising and keeping her at bay.

"I will take care of this from now on," Phil announced.

May set her jaw. It was the punishment for her outburst earlier, and she couldn't really argue with it, not in good faith. She wondered if he was shouldering the responsibility because he truly wanted to, or because he still thought she was compromised.

"I know him better…" she pointed out.

"Yes, you do. And that's the problem, May. One that I mean to solve. Don't worry. Ward and I will have a long and hard talk, you have a good day."

It was a dismissal if she ever had heard one. May nodded and was off to write her own debrief on the Thailand operation. It was already half through despite the fact that she was half dead on her feet, having had no downtime since she flew the plane to the base herself. She had stayed fully alert waiting for Ward to be delivered back to them, thinking about everything that needed to be said and asked and the terms she would need to set up for further occasions – at the very least some emergency codes –, but apparently she was not in charge of his fate anymore. She guessed she ought to feel relieved. Grateful to Phil, even. She was not.

Still, the words weren't going to type themselves, and May went on to a concise description of the performance of all six agents under her command. Three of them had been rookies, one had been paired with Tripplett, and two (guy and girl) had been shadowing an older, bulky field operative formerly stationed at the Hub. Their performance was good enough, May thought. They had known when to stand by and when to lie low, which was the first important skill new, overeager field agents had to learn. All in all, it had been a somewhat awkward, but ultimately straightforward mission.

The mission she had saddled Ward with was on the forefront of her mind, though. The enormity of the task she had made him undergo was becoming clear as she mentally went over the drone images. Even knowing what she knew now – that he had at some point crashed a helicopter into the building, and that the place had looked like it had exploded from the inside – she was no closer to guessing how he had done it.

Ward could apparently plan a solo multi-phase mission from the bottom up, including side missions to acquire external military resources, but he did not know how to say no to a full blown maniac. Or, worse still, how to say yes to himself.

There was a suspicious lack of noise coming from the office area. The first ten minutes May had been on high alert, fully prepared to storm back in if the situation escalated as it had done before. She had gradually relaxed, though. She was in the process of marking the performance of one Agent Libby Jones – a long haired, slim, tall and unusually pretty girl, formerly a communications officer from the Cube who had requested a field position after the fall, when there was a soft knock on her bunk door. It was almost completely closed, but not quite – May never closed any door completely if she could help it, because the false sense of security was not worth missing the approaching steps of an enemy.

"Come in."

Sure enough, Ward was standing outside, handcuffs-free but still as battered as he had been brought to the base. He smiled when she looked at him; a short, apprehensive expression. She must have betrayed her surprise at that, because it was off as quickly as it came, and Ward made sure to look down in the direction of her knees instead.

"Yes?"

She was startled to see that almost an hour had passed. Had Coulson been at it for that long? Ward seemed weary, now even more so than before, but there was no negative or positive context to it, no telling if he was happy or sad or something else entirely. He looked like he was just hanging there by what might or might not be a strong enough thread.

"Director Coulson wants to see you in his office," he said evenly. "You should bring Agent Simmons as well."

"Why?"

"To discuss my future status. He will allow me to run more missions. He'll be watching me."

And there it was. It was a generous offer; one May had hoped for, but hadn't actually expected Phil to make. It made sense for everyone involved. SHIELD could use a black-ops specialist that they could wash their hands of any time they wanted, and Ward… Their conversation from long ago in Ward's cell came to mind, with him repeatedly asking how long would his imprisonment go on and shutting up completely right after learning he would spend his life locked up. May understood him much better now, for better or for worse. There was literally no purpose to him in his own mind except to fight on behalf of others; he was not afraid of being locked up with no orders to carry out per se – but he was plainly unable to process it having to be his perpetual fate.

She knew better than to ask if Coulson had promised Ward anything in return – she knew he hadn't. Still, there was a question that needed to be asked, one May would have never thought of before, but knew better than to not ask now.

"Is that what you want?"

He nodded curtly after sending a fleeting look in her direction.

"Now once again, and this time truthfully."

He tensed up, obviously torn.

"Do you know what will happen if you don't?" He nodded again, but for once May knew better than to just assume. "Tell me."

"He said I would be transferred to a military prison. He said… said he'd testify that I've given you intel, and that I've helped you out twice."

That did sound fair. May was pleased to know that Phil had thought about it and had made a point to explain it to Ward. It looked like he had gotten his shit together in a rather remarkable way. Which left only one thing to be discussed.

"He killed Garrett, you know. Mike Peterson caved his face in while Coulson and Fury watched, and when he tried to revive himself with the Deathlok assembly line, Coulson shot him with the 084 from Peru."

And there it was. Ward had a very good control of his facial expressions and his overall posture, as long as he was paying enough attention to exercise said control over them. Which was almost always – more than a week of torture had gone on before May saw him drop any of it. Even now, he didn't move at all, but his body went rigid with tension. May could almost hear the metallic clang as a curtain fell over Ward's eyes, shutting out the slight brightness they had acquired while talking with her and leaving a blank canvass behind.

"You would have learned anyway, sooner or later," she chided him. People tended to think the worst of her, and Ward had every reason to, after everything she did to him. She wasn't trying to be cruel, though. "And you will work under him, not under me. I want to know that you will be able to take his orders, knowing that. And you yourself need to know it too, before you can make that choice." Ward's grip on the bunk door became tighter, his knuckles turning white. "You will also die much sooner and much more painfully if you stay with us, while on the other hand you might greatly benefit from a violence free environment. Do the time, however long it is, lose the hardwired killer mentality. Who knows, you might even get a shot at a normal life sometime down the road. You have to think hard about how you want this to work out for yourself, Ward."

She was fully prepared to press on until he gave a clear enough answer. May understood the generosity and the leap of faith that Phil had made for him; it stunned her that he would allow Ward anywhere close to Skye or Fitzsimmons. Precisely because of that, she just knew that he had worded the offer like a hard order, and "orders" and "Ward" did not work for the best.

"I'll do it. I'll stay here." It had come out quick and too eager. May did not trust it one bit, but she also had no way of disapproving of it. All in all, she had given Ward a fair chance. The decision did not surprise her in the slightest. "And you don't need to worry; I won't endanger the team. Simmons will install a kill switch."

"A what?"

"You don't need to worry about me getting any funny ideas," he repeated quickly, eager and almost pleading, as if he had taken her demand to choose his fate as a threat to kick him out for would-be bad behaviour. "Director Coulson will put me down instantly if I ever step out of line."

"He said that."

He did not. May knew Phil, she knew he would not utter these words, knew he was doing his best to walk a line so narrow it was invisible to most people to the best of his ability. Knew he had gotten over his anger long enough to consent to Ward getting his second chance, however harsh the conditions. He had not said these words – but they were exactly that words that Ward had heard. And now he was looking at May as solemnly as he could with his face and clothes covered in dried blood, beseeching her to believe not in him, but in the security that the `disconnect in case of malfunctioning` button provided.

May wondered is she would ever stop feeling sick, looking at him.

"He sent you to Simmons to talk about it?"

"No, he said you should find her and bring her to him. I am not to interact with anyone here unless directly addressed."

Oh, Phil. The conditions were fair – they would still be fair if he had made Ward sleep on the floor of his old cell, as he had done all the time he had been imprisoned there. The man was a cold blooded killer. And still there was something indisputably cruel in all this setup, cruel to absolutely everyone from Fitzsimmons to Ward to May herself. Agent Coulson did not do it as a way to give former Agent Ward a chance, she realized now. Director Coulson did it because SHIELD needed the heavy firepower.

May did not say anything in some time, mulling over the implications. Ward did not move from the threshold, going only as far as looking briefly up at her when he realised no words were coming.

"Well then, I'll tell Simmons to check your…"

"I'm not injured."

Spoken with the finality that rolled right over silly things like truths and lies to become the only reality that mattered. He would not go to Simmons for help, and May would not make him. She wondered if she could make Jemma do her part, if she voiced a protest. Probably not.

"Very well. Go shower and change. You may have the room you last slept in."

"Thank you."

It downed on May that he had probably been trying to get a read on her, looking for her approval or at least her opinion, all this time. After all, it had been her who he radioed after completing a mission she had sent him on. He had seen May and Coulson disagree, and now Coulson was literally holding his reins while May looked on. She wondered how long he had been waiting to hear something he could interpret as an order from her. Probably a while, as she had been dead set on forcing him to make his own choice. All of her good intentions from earlier suddenly seemed very naïve. It didn't work like that, did it? If it was easy, Ward would have done it himself. For Skye, at least. May was sure of it.

"Ward?" He was already off in the direction of the assigned bunk room, the furthest one at the far way of the corridor, but he stopped immediately and turned around to look at her. "I will want a report about how you did it, in the Fridge. Come find me after you are done. You don't need permission."

The smile he gave her was short and exhausted and stayed in his eyes without reaching the rest of his face, but it was real and full of relief. May could have sworn it was the same one he had given Garrett the only time she had witnessed the older man compliment his fighting skills.

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So, lovelies, here is another chapter! Things are brightening up slowly, even though it does not feel like it most of the time. But I did promise a redemption story, and I am here to deliver! I have a very important exam coming up, so the next two weeks will be slow. If you like this story enough to be upset about it, remember that feeding the author is a good way to ensure the quick delivery of the next chapter. Think of me as Ward if it helps, looking up at May with his sad eyes and waiting for a minimal sign of approval...