Author's Note: Wee! Another update! I have a huge chunk of this in my head, which probably helps a fair amount. I just don't have a final scene. Oh well. We'll just see how it goes.

This is from Ward's point of view. It's meant to be muddled and confused (and hopefully I don't confuse the readers). On a sort of separate note, I was reading a lot of fairly angry responses to the fact that Ward is now the nemesis of SHIELD and people saying it's not fair to Brett Dalton or the characters on the show. I don't get that. Do you guys not watch any of Whedon's other stuff? In Buffy and Angel, Spike was a major bad guy. He killed people. And by the end of Angel, he was a major hero. Loki - starts off as a villain, and becomes the misunderstood pseudo hero in Dark World (yes, not Whedon directed, but the same universe). Even not using Whedon's work, look at Heroes. Sylar was a psychotic murderer who hacked open people's brains and killed half of the main characters in ONE EPISODE. How does he finish the series? As a reluctant good guy. If you are mad at the turn in the character, I don't think you really understand writing for a long term series. AoS is not a sappy Twilight teenaged love story between Skye and Ward (or any other characters). This is about espionage, good and evil and those pesky shades of gray. Interesting characters are not the ones who stay the same (people in real life that don't change are the same way). They are the ones who change, evolve and grow. Saying that the writers' are doing Dalton a disservice by making him a villain is just silly. They're letting him show us what he can really do. Also - to those who apparently thought he was going to be Hellfire...you know Hellfire DIES, right? As a traitor? I think I prefer Ward alive.

Ward had never been particularly fond of sleep. Even when he was a teenager, four hours was generally enough, and insomnia had followed him into adulthood. For him it had never been a refuge – it was always a vulnerability, but at least the actual sleep wasn't so bad.

Now it was a hated, horrible thing. He was no longer allowed to sleep on his own, it was at Zola's discretion. If he was tired, Zola pumped him full of adrenaline. If he wasn't tired, Zola swapped it out for sedatives. The few times he did manage to drift, nightmares plagued him, leaving him without a sense of time and place, unsure if he was awake or dreaming or dead and rotting in hell for his sins.

Which is why when he woke, it wasn't gradual, and he was immediately in fight or flight mode.

He wasn't even sure what woke him. The voices in his dreams didn't match events and Zola was running his fingers up his arm and suddenly he was awake and swinging – except he was tied down.

Again.

The lights were too bright and his mouth felt like cotton and the voices were telling him to calm down and no he was not going to calm down.

Except he couldn't move, either. His left arm was bound to his chest it what felt like a vice and his right leg felt like it weighed a thousand pounds.

And ow his head.

"Agent Ward?"

Zola lost his accent.

There was a shrill beeping in the background and he idly wondered if he was flat lining again. He would be surprised if Zola hadn't managed serious heart damage with as many times as he'd stopped it – purposely or otherwise.

"Agent Ward, I need you to calm down."

It took longer than it should've, but the voice was starting to register. Midwest. No inflection. Familiar.

"Boss?" his rasped, and realized he sounded like he'd swallowed glass and it felt like it too.

There was a moment of silence, and Ward blinked rapidly to clear his vision. It would help considerably if the lights were lower.

"It's been a while since you called me that."

The lights dimmed considerably and the world finally came into focus. He kind of wished it hadn't. Very familiar white and bullet proof glass walls greeted him. He could finally hear the familiar whir and click of machinery and lab equipment now that the heart monitor wasn't going berserk.

It was the medical bay onboard the Bus, and Coulson stood at his bedside, arms folded across his chest, frown creasing his forehead.

He was a prisoner. Again. And he wasn't sure this was a step up, given how he'd seen Simmons react to him last time. Though since he was clearly alive and she hadn't attached a splinter bomb to him, or poisoned him or otherwise murdered him, he supposed it was a step in the right direction.

"Sorry," he apologized, and struggled to sit upright. Fiery pain lanced through his shoulder, and he collapsed backwards, breathing hard.

Coulson looked nonplussed. "You did some fairly serious damage to yourself, Agent Ward. You broke your scapula and tore your rotator cuff to shreds. You didn't react well to going in to surgery. Care to explain that?"

"Not particularly," Ward said. His face itched, but as soon as he moved his hand to scratch at it, it came up short, handcuffs clanking loudly against the bed's side bar and images of being strapped down in Room Three came unbidden to the front of his mind. Zola and his goggles and the flush of ice and fire through his veins and the world melting in front of him and -

No. Not again. His mind slipped and blanked white and when it cleared, Coulson was inches in front of his face, looking thoroughly concerned and slightly terrified. He was holding Ward down with bruising force, though he carefully avoided touching his left shoulder and arm.

He could feel his heart thudding wildly in his chest, echoed by the near tachycardia rhythm on the monitor.

"What the hell was that?" he gasped. He felt light headed and the world seemed to spin like a gyroscope behind Coulson's head. His face felt damp and his useless brain failed to come up with a rationalization. "Am I crying?" he asked, without thinking.

Coulson's face went from concern to full blown worry. He didn't answer at first, his eyes scanning every inch of Ward's face, looking for the lie he undoubtedly suspected. Ward didn't blame him.

"Yeah," Coulson said quietly, disbelieving and almost to himself. "You are…" His brow furrowed even further and Ward's traitorous brain pointed out this was the most concern the Director had ever shown him.

"Why?" Ward felt panic bubble up and couldn't push it back down again. It felt like he was six years old again. His memory was terrifyingly blank and so vivid he felt himself flinch at a memory of his mother raising her hand to slap him across the face.

"Ward?" Coulson asked. He hadn't let up on his grip and Ward felt himself try and push himself further into the bed to get away from him.

"Let go," he gasped. He felt bile rise in the back of his throat. Pain be damned, he jackknifed upwards and twisted to the side over the bed railing just in time to throw up green bile all over Coulson's slacks and shoes. Agony seared through his shoulder and his head and completely forgetting about the handcuffs, he went to reach for his head again. Coulson's hand snaked out and grabbed his arm before the metal could pull taut again and Ward wondered how he'd forgotten that.

Coulson was talking, though he sounded like he was under water and Ward felt like he was drowning and suddenly he wasn't in the infirmary he was in the well and he was drowning. He coughed and sputtered, convinced that he could feel the oily black water that pervaded his nightmares slipping in his mouth and in his lungs and –

"WARD!" Coulson shouted, and this time shook him by his shoulders. White walls and plexi glass melted back into view and Ward couldn't remember what happened.

"How did I get here?" He meant to make it sound like a demand, but dammit if he didn't sound like he was a lost child in the woods.

Coulson looked just as lost as he was and it was far from comforting. Coulson was never lost.

Coulson kept his grip on Ward's arm and the fact that it was hard enough to bruise Ward found it oddly reassuring but didn't understand why. He didn't understand anything and the more he tried to think the less made sense.

"We found you and Fitz at HYDRA's science compound," Coulson said slowly, studying Ward's face for a reaction. "We had intel that was where Fitz had been taken but it took weeks to get it. We found you two together. Do you remember that?"

Ward tried and failed, shaking his head slowly. "I don't…Fitz?" He struggled to remember the face to the name and it came up vague and distorted, like trying to concentrate on a mirage.

"How hard did Mack hit you?" Coulson muttered. "What do you remember? What's the last thing that you can remember?"

Last thing? Ward cast his memory back and the first concrete thing he came up with that he knew wasn't a dream was a little girl, locked in a cell and crying for her mother. "A girl," he said, trying to remember details. He frowned, trying to think, but the action sent a dull ache through his skull. "Suzy?"

Coulson sat back on a nearby stool, and finally released Ward's arm. "Suzy Storm. Skye's new friend, Gordon the teleporter, got her out. Apparently he can sense Inhumans, which is how he found her and told us about the base. But he refused to go back for either of you because he said he couldn't tell where you were. We knew you were there because she told us about the man and his friend who tried to rescue her, and ID'd the two of you from pictures."

Overwhelming relief made Ward's entire body sag back into the pillow. His head ached and the lights were starting to form halos if he looked too closely. "She's alive?"

Coulson didn't immediately answer. "What were you doing there?"

"Where?"

"At the compound," Coulson clarified. "What were you doing with Suzy?"

The pounding in his head was getting harder to ignore and he really just wanted the lights off, but he answered. "Her brother asked me to find her and bring her home. So I did." He paused. No. Wait. That wasn't right. "I tried," he amended. "How is she?"

"At the sanctuary, back with her family," Coulson answered. "What happened to you at the compound?"

There was a roar of blood in his ears and the lights exploded behind his eyes and there were needles and wires and unwanted hands and lightning in his head and –

The whiteness faded from his vision and he was curled face first into the mattress, panting like he'd run a marathon and the taste of copper on his tongue. He ran his tongue experimentally along his cheek and winced when he came across the bite missing from the inside. When did that happen?

"Jesus Ward," Coulson breathed, and Ward felt gentle hands on his curved in shoulders. He shuddered, closing his eyes against the unwanted touch. "What the hell happened to you?"

He sniffed, and realized his cheeks felt damp. "Am I crying?"

Coulson looked sick. "Yeah…"

"Why?"

Coulson just shook his head, and shrugged helplessly. "I don't know."

That somehow made it worse. Coulson always knew.

He tried not to think about it. His head pounded and his shoulder felt like it was on fire but what suddenly occurred to him was he couldn't feel his right leg below his hip. Panic gripped him as he struggled to sit up again, ignoring the pain in his shoulder even as Coulson moved to help him.

"What the hell is that thing?" he demanded. His right leg, from knee down was encompassed in a circular metal contraption that looked like a medieval torture device. Thin metal spikes from every side held his lower leg suspended between the three metal circles that spanned from just blow he knee to a few inches above his ankle. A nasty, jagged and raw looking wound sliced through the skin on his shin, stitched neatly closed with fine black needlework split the skin like something had burst through it front underneath.

"You had a severe compound fracture of your tibia. Because the bones twisted and tore so much of the muscle underneath, they couldn't put a plaster cast on it in case there was an infection, which would've been higher if it had been enclosed," Coulson explained. He sounded grateful Ward finally asked a question he could answer.

"Why can't I feel it?" It looked like it should hurt like hell, but instead it just felt…numb and detached.

"Local anesthetic," Coulson said. "It was a serious injury and the medical staff wasn't a fan of introducing anything else to your system until they could identify what was already in it."

Ward stared at his leg. All he could see was a dozen needles fixed in his leg and he needed them out. His vision tunneled, and he could feel his heart start to pound. He needed them out, he needed them out, outoutoutout. He lunged forwards . desperate to yank them out, feeling something tear in his shoulder and not caring. Hands grabbed him, pushing him back onto the bed where he was staring up at the bright lights again and suddenly it wasn't a bed it was a gurney, he could smell antiseptic and blood and the air tasted wrong.

There was shouting and more hands pushing him back onto the bed, forcing him to look up at the lights that blinded his vision and he wanted to slap them away but his hands were bound. Metal bit into his wrist as he yanked on the restraints and more hands were on his arms. They were shouting and they were trying to be soothing and it made it so much worse and he just wanted them out.

Something cold flushed through his veins and he choked back a sob, unheeding of the hot tears down his cheeks and he felt like screaming. He wanted Thomas and -

When the lights faded, his thoughts felt muddled and foggy and his mouth tasted like copper and iron. His cheeks felt damp.

Coulson was standing over him, his tie crooked and his collar undone. There were others in the room that he could see and hear but somehow didn't register.

"Am I crying?" he asked, and the world dimmed.

Coulson didn't answer, but he nodded.

"Why?"

The hushed, horrified words "I don't know" followed him into the dark.

Sooo...what do you think? How does Coulson sound? He's obnoxiously difficult to write...Let me know if you like it, hate it, want to see something happen...you guys inspire me!

Also - someone requested that this not be Skyward. And it won't. It adds too many distractions to the story line and honestly, I am not a fan of that ship. First season - okay. Now? Skye is waaaay too angry and one sided for me to convincingly write her as changing her mind.