Everyone had gone to bed. Everyone except Ward, Coulson and Skye. They had been sat in the kitchen waiting for the others to turn in.
When they were sure they wouldn't be disturbed Skye pulled her laptop towards her. Ward pulled a weird looking object from a packet and plugged the USB end into Skye's laptop. Skye noticed that the other end looked like a giant needle.
"Are you two sure you want to see this file? It's pretty graphic." Ward asked them for the final time.
"Yes. Now where are you going to stick that needle?" Skye said
"Well, you remember the snake?"
"Yeah..."
"You remember it only had one eye?"
"Yeah..."
"The needle goes through the eye of the snake. It's the only way we could think to permanently mark the position where it needed to go."
"So that's why it only has one eye." Skye realised.
"That's why it's white ink too. Makes it harder to see!" Ward told her, taking the plastic sheath off the needle and pressing it against his skin. Skye closed her eyes as Ward pushed the needle through his skin and kept going. until it stopped.
"Coulson. I'm going to need you to hold this for a second while I find the file."
Coulson held the needle in place while Ward picked up Skye's laptop and typed in all of his security codes. He also muted the sound as he didn't really want to hear the video that was in the file. When he had found the file he needed he put the laptop back on the counter and took the needle off Coulson and held it in place himself.
It took Skye and Coulson slightly longer than normal to read the file on what happened to Ward in Bahrain. Coulson realised that there was more to it than what Ward had told him in his office, and Skye had realised why he had the nightmare about the scorpions. It had actually happened to him. He had been repeatedly stung by them and then given anti venom.
Ward and Skye finally made it to the video. They saw Hawkeye testing the camera. They could see that they were speaking but couldn't hear anything. Coulson realised that Ward had turned the sound off, so when Skye went to turn it on Coulson put his hand out to stop her, nodding to Ward as he did. She understood and went back to the video. They were surprised to see Fury on the video, armed to the eyeballs. They watched as he and Romanov (they knew it was her as Ward had already told them that she had saved him.)
They watched as Romanov and Fury spent an hour trying to find Ward and just as they were going to fast forward it they saw Romanov approach a door and look through the window. The clearly saw someone tied to a chair with a fabric sack over his head. They saw his captors tilt his chair back and pour water over his face. They could see his body convulsing and shaking as he tried not to choke on the water. They saw Romanov back away from the door so that Fury could kick it in. Romanov ran into the room and took out all of the men before they knew what had hit them. Coulson found that fairly interesting as he had often wondered what she could see when she went on the offensive. They could see in the corner of the camera screen that Fury had taken the sack off Ward's head and he put pressure on the chair to break it as Ward was handcuffed to it. They saw that Fury had pulled Ward to the side of the room and that he was unconscious. Romanov tied the captors together and piled them to the wall before kneeling down at Ward's side.
"He's dead." Fury said to her.
Skye didn't need to read lips to know that is what he said.
They immediately saw Romanov start CPR and they could see Fury's face as she cracked one or two of his ribs in the process. Skye looked at the video clock counter. She watched that rather than the CPR and out of the corner of her eye she saw water spilling out of Ward's mouth.
Six minutes thirty seconds.
She saw his eyes flutter open and grow wide. They saw Romanov's head snap around to look behind her. They didn't see her pick up the piece of chair until she had hit the guy creeping up behind her around the face with it. He fell to the floor and Fury tied him to the others.
They saw Romanov turn Ward onto his side and they saw him cough up more water and eventually foam. When he could breathe properly again Romanov helped him to sit up and then eventually get to his feet, when he promptly fell straight back to the floor. No one had noticed his bloody knee. Fury hauled him to his feet and Romanov set off for freedom. They could only guess that Fury was dragging Ward along behind her.
They watched them get out of the building without incident and they got back to their temporary base. That is when the camera cut out.
Coulson stepped back from the laptop and sank onto a chair. Skye looked like she was going to be sick.
"I did warn you it was graphic." Ward told them, his voice a little gritty and low.
"How do I close this?" Skye asked, mainly because she never wanted to see that ever again. She knew Ward would be able to remove all evidence of it off her laptop.
He took the laptop and closed the files and used his security codes to relock it before pulling the needle out of his knee and putting the cover back on it. He removed the USB end from Skye's laptop and put the whole needle device into the sink. He would clean it and put it away before he went to bed.
Ward looked at Skye and poured her and Coulson a generous glass of Scotch. He then got a band aid to cover the needle hole in the side of his knee. The less evidence he left lying around the easier it would be for them to accept.
Coulson didn't know what to say. He wouldn't even know where to start coming back from it. But Ward was here, albeit slightly pale, having lived through it and continuing to live it every day.
"Well that explains why you don't torture people anymore." Was all he could say to him.
"Yeah. It does." Ward agreed.
Skye had started to shake. She had never seen anything so horrific. Ward took her hand and pulled her towards him.
"I now know why you can't talk about it." She whispered, burying her face into his chest.