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They’re split up, which is terrifying, but Fitz takes comfort in the fact that he’s with the Berserker and Simmons is with the Cavalry. At least they’re not in want for muscle.
Ward has his firearm and Fitz has a device to discretely reroute all communications. The complex is under HYDRA control, too saturated with their agents to be trustworthy anymore. A microcosm of SHIELD as a whole, frankly. But they could still get some information. Some of the tech specs here didn’t get mixed in with the enormous intel dump from the Triskelion, and any of the info going out needed to be put into the right hands. Two lefts and a right into the comm control room, where they could—
have a ton of guns pointed at them. Fitz throws his hands up and backs away, tripping over himself and falling into Ward, who is coming in the door and manages to catch him.
There’s four of them with semi-automatics and one of Ward and goddamn these numbers are not adding up to be favorable, especially when Fitz sees Ward lower his weapon in his peripheral vision.
"Don’t say I never gave you anything." Ward’s voice sounds dead, and he shoves Fitz in the back to push him further into the room. Offers him up.
Fitz’s stomach knots up so fast he thinks he will vomit. No, wait, he’s definitely going to vomit. He makes a strangled sound of surprise in the back of his throat and looks at Ward with confusion. What is he doing?
Ward looks back at him calmly. Blankly.
Fitz feels faint.
"Do you have the biochemist?" Ward is looking at Fitz still, but not speaking to him. One of the HYDRA agents answers in the affirmative. "Keep her alive. Don’t hurt her at all if you don’t have to. He’ll do what you need him to if you hold a gun to her head."
Confusion slips into rage, and Fitz curls and uncurls his fingers helplessly, too aware of the guns pointed in his direction to run at Ward. Not that it would make any difference; he’d bounce right off. But he wants to hurt him. He’s aware he’s started to cry.
Ward finally turns his gaze from him, looks to one of the agents. Murmurs something to her quietly.
"Why?" Fitz can hear his voice crack, can hear it squeak.
Ward looks at him again, and Fitz doesn’t care that he’s shaking and that tears are running down his face and that his voice is shrill. “Why? I thought you were our friend.” Ward smirks.
"That was the point."
These HYDRA fucks are laughing at him, and Ward’s laughing at him, and oh god, they have Simmons. They have Jemma. They’ll hurt Jemma.
"The device, Fitz?" Ward holds his hand out, and a fuck you stings at the tip of Fitz’s tongue. He bites it back, and Ward knows why. Digs the knife deeper in Fitz’s hesitation. “Don’t make this harder on her.”
"Burn in hell, Ward," Fitz spits out as he digs it from a pouch and hands it over. It is small, and Ward pockets it before silently signaling the agents around him. He has rank, apparently. Selling them out must have gotten him so many gold stars at fucking HYDRA bonfires.
Fitz doesn’t resist when he’s grabbed roughly. He whimpers and lets himself get handcuffed and dragged from the room. It’s easier this way.
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She’s surprised they let him speak to her. He’s been crying, too, and his jaw clenches against a sob when he sees the bruising along the side of her face. She’s fine, she assures him, it is superficial and there’s no real damage done. She doesn’t know what they’ve done with May. He says he can guess.
Their sixty seconds is over too fast, and she yells to him as he’s yanked from her side, “Don’t do anything they say, Fitz! Don’t help them!” Her last word is cut off by her own shriek as a HYDRA thug jerks her head back by her hair and forces her to her knees. Tears burn her eyes and she sees him screw up his face through them. He looks like a child. He is a child. She is, too.
"Agent Fitz, you’re not gonna want to know what we do to her if you take that advice."
"Do what you have to; we won’t help you." Simmons tries to bark it out, tries to sound as defiant as possible, but she’s painfully aware of how her voice quivers. She’s not ready to die.
"I’m sorry, Jemma," Fitz calls to her as he’s being bodily taken from her tiny holding cell. "I’m sorry."
She wonders if it is because she’s going to suffer for his defiance or because the world will suffer for his obedience. Both terrify her.
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They want him, right now. His weapons expertise. Jemma’s genius could be used for biological warfare: custom infections designed to attack certain genetic codes, and viruses the body can’t defend against. And she’s skilled enough with engineering to make a decent bomb, given the right tools. It’s all chemistry, when it comes down to it. After HYDRA wrestles control of all SHIELD resources from the lingering Fury loyalists, she can help them cull populations, and bring nations to their knees without a single shot fired.
And she’s a healer, which is something he doesn’t consider at first. Medicines. Vaccines. HYDRA agents must get sick and hurt, too. Eventually, he knows, they’ll find an assignment for her and he’ll be the bargaining chip. His wish is that she’s stronger than him; that she’ll let them do their worst to him. That she’ll save a million at his expense. He wants this choice out of his hands. He’d rather be dead.
But right now, it’s him they bring to lab and workshop. He works on designs—some stolen from him, even. Makes them bigger. More deadly. Perfects them. Sometimes simplifies them for mass production. He’s ashamed, and he works as slowly as he can, but he works.
Every couple of days, they’ll let him see her. She’s okay. Her face is thinner, her eyes are dark, but she’s only mildly battered. She’s never bleeding. He wishes they would let them talk to one another, but it’s always rushed. Just a quick view to prove that the other is alive; and that they still have the power to make it otherwise. They still have leverage.
He sees Ward often. He’s not the one in charge, but he’s not a grunt, either. He has authority, possibly more than anyone else in this complex. Especially over Fitz and Simmons. The other HYDRA defer to him when it comes to the captives. He escorts Fitz to and from his workshop, brings him things sometimes. A liaison with the prisoner. Fitz starts to get the impression that Ward is the one giving Fitz assignments; deciding what he works with. After a third project is finished, Fitz notices he gets better food when he’s accomplished something, and Ward doesn’t handcuff him on trips back to his cell.
He refuses to eat, then. He won’t accept a reward for this.
They don’t talk much—Fitz always thinks he’ll have a lot to say to Ward when he sees him, that he’ll shout and abuse, but he’s struck speechless in his actual presence. He doesn’t know him. He never knew him. What could he appeal to, when Ward doesn’t have a fucking soul?
They trusted him.
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He jumped out of a plane for her, parachute unfastened. He hurtled through the air thousands of miles above the ocean, knowing she was due to explode with electrostatic energy any second, and caught her. Held her head above the water when they hit, kept her from drowning even while the waves filled his own mouth with salt, until she’d woken up after the pulse. He’d laughed with her. He’d worked with her, praised her, needled her about finishing her combat training. Ha, and she bets he’s glad she never did.
He’d put in so much effort to make her love him. And she had. They all had. They were a family. And he lied.
He comes to see her a lot. Silently looks in on her. He brings someone with him, sometimes—Simmons thinks she might be a nurse. She checks to see if she’s healthy. If she’s been hurt too much. The guards know not to leave marks without reason, and Ward and this nurse make sure of it. Fitz must be doing what they say, because she’s taken care of. She hates it. She hates him.
She catches him once, the numb and blank expression slipping from his face to expose some pity. She doesn’t want it. She hopes he dies.
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"I want to talk to her."
Ward’s perpetual vacant expression actually shifts into surprise, then he sneers. “You can’t.”
"I want to talk to her, or I won’t do this anymore." He practiced this, in his head. He needs to stand his ground. They have more power over him emotionally, but he has more utility. And they value utility.
"Do you want to play this game, Fitz? Do you want her to hurt?" Ward’s voice is light, and he looks amused, but there’s a warning there. Fitz might be crazy, but he thinks maybe it really is more warning than threat. At least he does until Ward’s smile gets wider, and he adds "I’ll make you watch. And I’ll use one of your toys.”
Fitz pushes back. It’s been a week and a half. They’re still alive, and he’s bold. “You’re bluffing. I want to talk to her.”
Ward looks genuinely disappointed in him. Shakes his head as Fitz stands looking at him defiantly, pushing the tools away from him off the worktable.
Fitz should have known better; they’ve played poker. Ward doesn’t bluff. He always has the cards. He does make him watch.
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She doesn’t know what to feel, besides pain. She aches for the moments when shifting or taking in a deep breath brings a new agonizing sting ripping through her, if only to distract her from the endless throb. What did they ask him to do, that after so long he’d finally refused? She’s proud of him, she thinks. She also hurts. She doesn’t want to blame him. Knows that’s exactly what they want. Turn them against each other. Push them further toward loyalty to them.
That’s how she thinks of them now, just as them. Not as HYDRA. That’s too big for her to conceive. And her world has been shrinking.
Ward is the one to bring her food, and a cool towel. She’s felt ill since the day before, but she’s too proud to take it from him. She just glares.
"Have anything you’d like to say to Fitz? You should know, he forced our hand for a stupid reason."
“You tortured me, not him,” she hisses.
Ward tilts his chin towards the tray. “There’s a few painkillers there. For the headache I’m sure you have.” Something’s off in the way he’s standing, but he turns to go.
"Grant?" she blurts out, hating herself for participating in whatever nonsense he’s trying to stir up. "Tell him to be brave."
Ward nods, and leaves.
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"I have a message from Jemma." Fitz has been quiet. Working better than he was before. Ward’s had no reason to talk to him—he’s been kind enough not to gloat, and without need to cajole or threaten, it’s been even more silent than before.
"She says to be brave." Fitz can’t help it. He laughs. Or sobs. He isn’t sure which.
Ward follows suit and scoffs. “Pointless. Cute, but pointless. Should I give her a return message, or tell her you were too overcome to speak?”
Fitz doesn’t want to do this; knows Ward is just toying with them. But he can’t pass up the opportunity. If Jemma’s message was real at all, he wants to let her know he’s listening. He’s still here. “Tell her—” he falters. “Tell her she knows everything I could say about what she means to me, and I promise I won’t let her suffer anymore.”
Ward nods, surprising solemn, before moving to close the door to Fitz’s little cell.
"I’m going to kill you someday, Grant."
There’s no snappy response. Ward just smiles at him and leaves.
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He’d continued the next day with the painkillers, and brought her Fitz’s message as well. Fitz was giving up. He was going to join up to keep her alive. As much as this was living. Thousands of people dead—their own colleagues, right now, those at war with HYDRA—dead with weapons that he’d built for them to pay for her life. Millions would follow, if HYDRA won this war. They’d exterminate entire populations without hesitation, when given the chance. Which is why, probably, she snaps.
A fork isn’t much of a weapon, but they were too trusting to give it to her anyway. She does a little damage to him through nothing but adrenaline-fueled blind rage before he wrestles her to the ground, and shushes her as she screams accusations at him.Traitor. Liar. Murderer.
This time, it’s her turn to watch. Fitz looks shocked when they come for him. He’d thought she was the damsel, she was the only one they’d use as incentive.
If they’d come to her, first, if she were the one they’d brought to the lab, they’d both be dead presently. She’s sure of it now. She might have doubted at first, but she wouldn’t have let it gone this far. If she gets the chance to fight back again, she will.
She watches him weep and cry out for mercy and she considers biting off her own tongue. They don’t check in on her enough to keep suicide watch. She could set them both free, in a sense. She feels crazed. This is not the kind of logic a scientist should pursue, but she’s locked in a cage with no resources, and she’s refused food for days.
She tentatively gnaws on her tongue and cheek that night, tries to convince herself this is the only way. She wishes they had taken May, who would dislocate all her bones and slip through the crack under the door. She cries herself to sleep, knowing it isn’t weakness to live but still feeling like she’s failed.
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Fitz should be more despondent, he knows. More deferent. Now he knows how it feels, now he knows how she felt. How she will feel. But she’s done something to piss them off. It’s more a message than be brave. It’s an imperative. Piss them off more.
He snaps at his escort. Shoves a guard who roughly grabs him. Breaks a tool that will be difficult to replace. They don’t react until heagain blatantly refuses to work.
Ward grips his arm hard enough to break it, pulls him from the workshop, and throws him into a small, empty, unused room. Fitz’s bravado melts away and he shrinks back, but his eyes never leave Ward’s.
"You’re going to get her killed."
"You can’t do that. You can’t work us against each other. Not forever."
"Work for each other. You idiot."
Fitz tries to smirk the way Ward does, that plastered on look of villainy, and Ward picks him up and slams him against the wall. He yelps.
"The only reason both of you are alive," he seethes through gritted teeth, "is because I told them that you’d cooperate for the sake of the other. If that stops being true, the liability stops being worth the risk. They only need one of you."
They stare at each other for a long time before Ward puts him down.
"Fine." Fitz shrugs. "Fine, she’s more useful in the long term. Kill me, Agent Ward." He’s not sure how much he’s being contrary for its own sake, and how much he means it. "And see where that gets you."
The punch sends him reeling, and he swears he’ll pass out. He’s so dizzy. He’s on the floor but he doesn’t remember falling.
He hit his head, because when he looks up at Ward, he sees sadness.
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"I hate you." She hasn’t said it to him yet. She needs him to know. She declares it matter-of-factly, fights the urge to shout it and be dismissed as a petulant child.
He avoids her gaze. Raises his eyebrows and gestures towards the door. Wordlessly calls for her to follow him. She stays seated, knees tucked up against her chest, curled up in the corner where her bunk meets the wall. He rolls his eyes in irritation. “You two might think defiance is cute, but it will get you killed.”
"Is that the best you have, Ward? After two weeks? That you’ll kill me?"
"Jemma."
"Go to hell." Tears spring to her eyes and her attempts to avoid a petulant tone fail. "Don’t you dare call me Jemma, don’t you dare act like it matters if I live or die—just cut my brain from my head, that’s all you need. Oh, wait, sorry, you need me to cry for you occasionally to motivate Fitz. I didn’t mean to underestimate my worth."
Her heart drops to her stomach as Ward comes towards her and picks her up, tossing her out of the bed and onto her feet. “Walk.” She hears the Berserker Staff in his voice.
The complex is enormous after two weeks in the same room, and the air tastes different.
"Two minutes," he says to her, and she looks at him in confusion before he opens a door and reveals Fitz.
She runs to him and they hug each other desperately, whispering apologies and reassurances and mixing up the two.
"Fitz, we have to stop this. We have to end this," she pleads with him, and he’s nodding, but she’s watching his resolve liquefy before her eyes. "Fitz, listen to me. Do not build anything for them. No more."
"Jemma…"
"Please, Fitz." She’s always been the stronger one.
"Okay." He’s lying. She can see it. She’s alive to him again, standing before him. For a few days she was abstracted, her safety was a tool and he bristled against their use of her. Now she’s solid and here and breathing, and he lacks the will to let that change.
Ward knew this. The goddamn snake. They’re so easy to read and he’s been reading them for months and months.
When their two minutes are up she kisses him on the cheek, and Ward leads her from the room with a shockingly gentle touch.
"Asshole," she swears at him on the walk back.
He smiles. “So bitter that I was smarter than you. I beat you. You forgot the most important rule of working with liars and spies.”
"And what is that?" she asks, exhaustion overcoming derision in her voice.
He presses her against the wall, dangerously close to her. “Do not trust what anyone says, ever. There’s always an angle, Simmons.”
Her eyes flick back and forth across his face, and she remembers rule number two. Someone is always watching.
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Fitz finishes another project. Non-lethal, which is unexpected for HYDRA, but enormous range. Could put a whole fortress to sleep. The night-night grenades that they’d built were a good start, but he’d built better.
He hates himself for it, and he resigns himself to the knowledge that Jemma will hate him for it, too. Eventually. It won’t matter that he did it for her, all that will matter is that he worked for them.
Ward looks relieved when Fitz announces his success. He shows him the designs, the diagnostics. “I’ll send it out,” he assures Fitz, as if that’s supposed to make him happy. He slaps him on the back, just like old times. Fitz gives him a withering look.
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Her stomach flips when Ward comes in.
"Up," he commands gruffly. This time, she listens. Follows him out the door. Follows him the way they went to visit Fitz the last time. "Two minutes again?"
"That’s all you’ll have."
She swallows.
The EMP goes off the second he opens the door for her, perfectly timed. A bomb on the other side of the building a fraction of a second later.
The hall goes black, and the quiet is broken by anxious shouting. She hears Ward pull his gun, and he presses something into her palm.
She grabs Fitz’s hand, unable to see his baffled face but able to imagine, and runs. With the blood pounding in her ears, she doesn’t even notice when Ward breaks away from them.
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Fitz has no fucking idea what is happening. Jemma’s hand is his lifeline right now, though he has a feeling she barely knows more than him.
"No, from inside! Sabotage! We got hit!"
She does know where to run, though. They’re going up stairs.
"Ward?" he hears her call, but there’s no response. She swears loudly. There’s rushing confusion, but it is all drawn elsewhere.
"Get Stosser on the radio, and get a team up top!"
Between the darkness and them ducking against walls and into alcoves, they remain undetected.
There’s another flight of stairs—the complex was built to withstand a riot, so the windows are thin, but light shines through, illuminating the top of the flight of steps invitingly like a fucking metaphor.
It’s the ground floor. They could escape.
"Alpha is pursuing, got the bastards."
Jemma notices the patrol before he does, a silhouette stomping towards them from the steps. They’re still in shadows, and she yanks him off to the side and ducks them down before they’re seen.
"He’s down, they’re not with him. Find them." Jemma squeezes his hand tighter while the HYDRA agent registers the radio notice and jogs off.
There’s a chopper when they sprint out the door. It doesn’t dawn on Fitz until 5 minutes after they take off who must have set it up.
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Skye tries to explain it for them, when they’re safe and fed and treated and showered. Tries to put all the pieces together, to justify everything. She was closer to him than anyone living, really. May understood him, but…he couldn’t save her, too.
The reroute, all the specs he’d taken from Fitz, picked up and sent to the good guys via the device. Installed after, when the control room wasn’t buzzing with HYDRA. The few messages they’d gotten from him. Encrypted all to hell and ninety percent unintelligible. He hadn’t known they’d be waiting, but Garrett had tried to recruit him a long time ago. Garrett was HYDRA, by the way. So he’d known to play along, and had his mentor vouching for him. Even in a broken message, he managed to fit an apology. They were watching him always. But he’d made it clear when to get them out.
Fitz doesn’t care, he tunes her out and gets surly. He feels angry because he’s confused and guilty because he’s angry. Jemma assures Skye she’ll sort it with him later. She still hasn’t sorted it herself.
The drive Ward had pressed into her palm had information on safe houses on it. Exclusively for HYDRA agents, so no SHIELD facility had carried that information. Coulson got it to Hand, and in the week following their freedom, there are strikes. Thousands arrested, and weapons seized. Simmons tells herself that it was worth it, and knows that Ward would agree. It should make it easier to swallow.
Coulson never asks Fitz to account for the work he’d done for HYDRA, not out loud. Simmons is grateful. The guilt is already twisting him up, so bodily painful that she can feel it coming off him like a fever.
He and Simmons hover around each other like satellites but barely look at one another in the eye. Fitz says to Skye while Simmons is in earshot that she would have done the same. It’s meant as esteem; it burns like an accusation. She is the one to bring the suggestion that they are only sent on separate missions to Coulson. Personnel is thin, and it won’t be possible most of the time, but she feels better getting it off her chest. Fitz looks at her with betrayal, but she knows eventually he’ll understand. They make each other dangerous. Better, but dangerous.