I Wear the Chain I Forged in Life…

Ward was well aware of HYDRA's dirtiest tricks: if you can't make them comply, but still want something from them, break them. There were so many ways to do it: pain, starvation, sleep deprivation… Long, bitter torture. Nobody lasted forever – sooner or later everybody either gave up or died, but HYDRA had their methods to keep their prisoners alive for as long as they wanted.

There was no way out.

Still, he tried to approach the situation with good humor (if you can't defeat them, at least annoy them for as long as you can).

"I ask again, Mr. Ward," Whitehall said for the umpteenth time, leaning close to him, but not close enough so that he could spit on him. Damn chains. "Where may I find your old team?"

Ward let out a humorless chuckle.

"Rot in hell."

Of course Whitehall was alive; of course he had survived a bullet to the heart (monsters are hard to kill, after all); of course he had come after 33 and found them when Ward was still so weak he could barely stand on his own. Of course he had captured him, taken him back to his headquarters in the hope of making him talk; in the hope of making him confess where he'd find Skye.

Well, the joke was on him; Ward had no idea where she was.

"Mr. Ward, you'll accomplish nothing with his behavior," Whitehall said, his accent thickening in his veiled anger, making him sound like a snake. "Tell me what I want to know, and this," he gestured around his cell, which resembled a medieval dungeon, "can end."

Ward pulled at his chains just to hear them rattle.

"I wear the chain I forged in life," he said. "It's kind of ironic, don't you think?" He looked into Whitehall's eyes daringly. "I never would have thought I'd relate to old Marley's –" Whitehall backhanded him with a force that made his teeth clatter. He spit blood in front of Whitehall's shoes.

"So you won't talk," Whitehall stated, calm again.

"There's nothing to talk about."

"Good." Whitehall straightened his spine and brushed off his suit pants. "We'll what a couple more days will do to you." And with that, he left, leaving Ward in complete darkness.

Ward let himself collapse to the floor, as much as his chains let it.

There was no way out from here, not that it was news to him – all his life, he had never had a way out. But at least now he had the dark satisfaction of never giving Whitehall what he wanted.