Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

She awoke with a headache. Something that, unfortunately wasn't new to her. After all that had happened to her the past year, it was something that greeted her most mornings.

"So you're awake?" a voice asked. A voice she hated.

When she was finally able to focus, her eyes confirmed her worst fears.

Grant Ward.

And she was his prisoner.  

***

Coulson only realised his mistake afterwards. After she had went missing. He should have never have trusted Ward. Making a deal that seemed too good to be true.

"We'll do all we can Fitz," he said, setting down the files, "But you know funds, resources are limited."

Fitz let out a groan of frustration, his hand automatically going to rub the back of his neck. His eyes were still puffy and red, and tears were still glistening in them, threatening to spill. "Please," was all he could say.

Coulson nodded. "I'll try."

*** 

The rest of the team dealt with her disappearance in their own ways.

Bobbi took her anger out on the punch bag, threatening to release it from its hook.

Hunter turned to whiskey, choosing to forget what had happened. He hadn't been on that mission. But he wish he had been. Maybe then he could have prevented that bastard from taking her.

Mack went to the garage, hoping to take his mind of the matter by dealing with on of the many projects that the director had assigned him. 

May meanwhile had left base. She knew where Ward was. 

***

"Please," Jemma begged, her voice slurred. She must have been drugged. That would explain why her tongue felt so heavy in her mouth.

Ward only tightened the restraints around her wrists, binding her tighter to the table. 

The corners of Kara's mouth, however lifted. "What Bobbi did, sold me out. Gave me to HYDRA, had me tortured, she deserves to pay."

"But he's HYDRA," Jemma said, her face both mixed with fear and confusion. 

That earned her a slap from Ward, her face stinging from where his hand had made contact with her cheek. 

"But Bobbi is... She has been trained to deal with this."

Jemma's blood ran cold at this. She had had an idea of what was about to happen, but she has hoped she was wrong. She had prayed she was wrong.

"So, Dr Simmons," Ward began, sarcasm and venom dripping from his voice as he pulled up a chair. "You've two PhDs. You should know this. What's one of the worst places to get injured? What would hurt the most?"

Jemma swallowed. "Under the fingernails," she answered, her voice soft, broken.

Ward gave a wicked smile, gaining pleasure from her screams of pain.

***

Bobbi had did her proud, smuggling a tracker into Ward, quite literally. 

Before the Op, May had confided in Bobbi that she had felt that something was going to go wrong with the Op, that Ward was going to do something. So Bobbi had slipped a tracker into his drink, one that stayed in the body from 48 hours and was undetectable.

And she had been right.

Kara had knocked her out, locking her in her room and taking her face. Using that to win Jemma's trust on the mission, only to kidnap her. And allow Ward to do whatever he wanted to her.

May looked at the screen on the QuinnJet, showing her the location of Ward, and hopefully Jemma.

May let out a silent curse.

Bahrain.

***

Her breathing was laboured, and her body was in more pain that she had deemed possible.

"You shouldn't have made that threat Simmons." 

He had changed. He had changed so very very much.

He was no longer than man she knew.

The man he had pretended to be to gain her trust.

"And Bobbi shouldn't have turned Kara to HYDRA, to Whitehall, to Bakshi."

"Please," Jemma begged, her voice horse but Ward was no longer paying attention, he was on the phone, calling someone.

Her phone.

"Please," she begged again but it was no use. Ward was setting the phone, on loudspeaker, on the table in between them.

"Hello?"

Chapter Text

"Hello?"

Tears were streaming fast down Jemma's face and her lips were moving silently, begging Ward to stop whatever twisted idea that he had in mind.

"Fitzy," Ward said, causing the room temperature to drop. "How are you?" Ward was toying with him, playing with him.

But Fitz wasn't in the mood to play games. "Where's Jemma?"

"Ahhh," was Ward's reply as he lounged back in his chair, even going as far as to out his feet up on the table. "See, me and your Jems here are having some precious bonding time. A while back, a friend of hers, one Barbara Morse, hurt some one I love. Hurt someone that I care deeply about."

"But why Jemma?" Fitz interrupted. Jemma's head tilted to one side, as much as it could from the position that she was in. "Why her?"

"Hurting Barbara wouldn't be good enough." Kara's voice broke into the conversation. She had moved from her position against the wall and was now standing with her hands on the table to talk to Fitz. "She was trained for this. She wouldn't give me or Ward the satisfaction that we need. The closure that I need."

"Take me then." Fitz's voice was defiant and strong. "Give her back and take me."

"No." Jemma finally spoke, her voice weak and broken. "Please, no."

"Jems, please don't do this to yourself," Fitz said, speaking directly now to Jemma. 

Wards's laugh broke through the phone. "Do you really think that I'd exchange her for you? Her use would be better. For whatever happens to her, you'd do anything for her. She's leverage. Nothing more than that." 

"Please Ward, just, just stop this. Please don't hurt her."

Ward gave another cruel laugh. "It's too late for that. Now tell me Leo, what did you fall in love with first... Her looks or her brains?"

***

Hearing Jemma Simmons scream in pure agony caused him pain like he had never know before, and he couldn't even help er. Save her from the pain.

Walking through the base, he had to hold his phone a certain distance from his ear, her screams too loud to have against his ear. "Jems," he reassured but he knew that it fell on death ears. 

When he bumped into Skye, he mouthed what was wrong to her, before speaking. "He has her. He has her."

A rush of emotions crossed Skye's face. She wanted to cry, and scream and she so wished that she had killed Ward earlier. That they didn't bring him on the mission.

But at that point in time, saving Jemma Simmons was her priority,

"Meet me in the briefing room in five," Skye said, before running off, not waiting for an answer.

She knew what the answer would be.

All she needed was her laptop. Coulson had enforced that all phones for S.H.I.E.L.D. be untraceable but Skye had the software on her laptop that allowed them to be traced if an agent were MIA, or in a situation.

She just hoped that they weren't too late.

***

"I know where she is."

Those five words from May should have be a relief for Bobbi but they weren't and May noticed that.

"What?"

"Ward phone Fitz."

A curse came from May. 

"And they're tracing the call. Coulson's calling a meeting in five. He's going to notice Hunter is drunk and that you're missing."

May didn't reply.

"I can get her in the next number of hours. Tell Coulson not to do anything stupid."

That was going to be hard.

***

She wanted to sleep, to let the blackness that remained at the edges of her vision to take her over. But it remained there. She didn't know what had been given to her but it kept her awake in this never ending pain.

She didn't even know when he had given it to her (or had it been Kara?). 

She just knew that she had been given something. 

Blood was running down her face, choking her.

She wanted to throw up, the taste of iron in her mouth making her ill.

Kara gave a smug smile as she set the scalpel down on the table.

The silver metal coated in the sticky red substance that was her blood.

There was a low rumbling near by, something that Jemma ignored, thinking that it was just her pounding headache.

The phone on the table still had the phone call running, but Fitz hadn't spoken in a time period that Jemma Simmons couldn't determine. 

Maybe he had left, unable to listen to her screaming.

Maybe he just didn't care.

Maybe she deserved this.

Maybe this was payment for everything she had done.

All the wrongs that she had caused. 

She was so lost in her own thoughts that she almost didn't register the electricity running though her body.

Almost.

***

"She's what?" Coulson was more than a bot annoyed that Bobbi hadn't told him what both she and May had done.

Bobbi simply nodded. "She didn't want to risk anyone else getting hurt. May can do this. She's did worse, she's faced worse."

Coulson had no reply. Bobbi was right. May had faced worse. 

But from what Fitz had said, based on the phone call, Coulson feared what May would be greeted with.

"She's there. In Bahrain."

Coulson nodded this time. "We give her an hour. If not, you Skye and Mack move in."

"Fitz?" Bobbi asked, knowing what Coulson would say about the Scot anyway.

"No. He'd put the mission at risk. He cares about her, but he would risk anything for her in this mission, and I can't lose any more agents."

Bobbi nodded that she understood, and left his office, hoping that May would be able to save Jemma.

***

Ward was sick and twisted.

May had come to that conclusion when she had arrived in Bahrain. A place that she had never wanted to return to after... after last time.

And now she was here again.

And he had someone who was like a daughter to her.

Someone that she loved, and cared about.

Someone that she wanted to protect, no matter what.

And she might not be able to do that.

And if that were true, May was unsure of how she would cope.

But she was going to save Jemma Simmons.

There was no other option.

She wouldn't let any other course of action happen.

***

Kara walked back in the room, and whispered something in Ward's ear. Something about months being here.

Then Jemma realised that it wasn't the month of May that they were talking about but Melinda May.

So the rumbling she heard earlier must have been her rescue.

So that's why Ward had sent Kara out earlier.

Some things were starting to make sense for her.

But not everything.

Her nerves were still on fire from the electricity.

Ward moved quickly toward her, and whispered in her ear as he began untying her bonds. "It seems like your team are here now. And I had such a surprise for them planned."

He forced her to her feet, and her knees buckled from underneath her.

She didn't want to know just how much injuries she had.

"Move."

Ward's voice had taken a different turn and his boot met the back of her knees. She had to obey.

She had to.

Or she feared that he would hurt someone else.

***

Ward was waiting for her, she had expected nothing less.

However, she was expecting more theatrics from Ward, something bigger.

And what happened next, happened so quick that May almost didn't have time to register it.

The walls were quickly coated with blood. Jemma's blood.

May watched her slump down, the blood trailing from the back of her head.

Ward, in return, got three gunshot wounds in the thigh.

May had come here to kill him, but now didn't care what had happened.

Kara, meanwhile, had rushed to Ward, and was taking him from the room, and hopefully far far away from here (preferably to die, but May had her suspicions. Ward was a cockroach, impossible to kill."

"Jemma," she said, kneeling down next to the young woman. "Jemma."

Jemma wanted to turn her head to look at May, she could see it in her eyes, but she didn't have the strength to.

So May scooped her up, and rushed her back to the QuinnJet.

She had to get her back.

Now time was her enemy.

***

"I've got her."

Those three words filled Bobbi with relief but May's tone indicated something else.

"What do you need?" Bobbi asked, already taking long strides to the medical bay, getting ready for whatever may come her way.

"Surgery, specifically brain surgery"

Bobbi's breath caught in her throat and fire burnt her words. "What did he do?"

May explained how Ward has smashed her head against the wall and how, not only her skull was cracked, but there was swelling on the brain.

May was thankful for the medical monitoring equipment on the jet, but not when the long, monotonous beep went.

"Two hours," was all May said before hanging up.

Chapter Text

Bobbi was waiting for them, with a team of medical agents when May finally landed with her. Bobbi had made the informed decision not to let Fitz near her when she landed, not with the condition that she was currently in.

As May helped to rush Jemma into surgery, Bobbi rattled off what seemed like medical jargon to her, but some words made sense. Words that May never wanted to hear describe Jemma.

"Melinda!" the use of her first name by Bobbi removed May from her thoughts. "Did she code?"

May nodded. "Twice. First was when I was on the phone to you, second was just before we landed."

Bobbi nodded and all that May could do now was hope that they would be able to save Jemma.

***

Breaking the news to Fitz was hard. It was one of the hardest things that May had ever done. And she couldn't help but blame herself. That it had been her to cause all this pain.

She had invited them onto that Bus, which seemed so very far away now.

She hadn't killed Ward when she had had the chance.

She had allowed Kara and Ward to get Jemma on the mission.

But she pushed those thoughts aside, as hard as that was.

That was the past, something that she couldn't change.

She had to focus on the present. 

"Will she be OK?" Fitz asked the question that she didn't have the answer to. The answer that she wished she did.

"I don't know." The three words that she gave as a reply were honest. She saw no point lying to Fitz. Though his doctorate was nothing to do with the human body, he had spent more than enough time with Simmons to understand the human bodies, and the complication that is brain surgery.

"What are they doing?" he then asked.

May knew the answer to that question. "Her skull was cracked, but it can heal itself, which Bobbi is seeing as good. It's not causing any further damage to her brain..." She paused for a moment, to regain her thoughts. "They're preforming what's known as ventriculostomy, where they're draining the build up of fluids."

Fitz simply nodded before leaving the room.

***

There was a morbid silence that hung over the base whilst Jemma Simmons was in surgery, no one daring to speak, no one daring to even think. 

All they had wanted was for her to be save.

So when Bobbi finally exited the theatre, and said that she was showing promise, the base seemed to breath a collective sigh of relief.

And Fitz was the first one at her bedside, taking her bloodied hands in his. After what Ward had did to her, that was the last thing on anyone's mind.

And so Fitz sat there, by her beside for nine of the longest days of his life.

During those nine days, Fitz gained some understanding of what she had went through when their roles were reversed, just under a year ago.

It was on day nine that she was finally strong enough for the medically-induced coma to be lifted.

And that was only the start of the long journey that was her recovery.

***

She wouldn't speak for a week after what had happened and she was in and out of states of sleep. Sometimes she slept for a number of hours at a time, and others she barely managed an hour before some terror woke her up.

The beginning of the second week, she was finally able to get out of bed, and walk about her room.

Not that she did much of that. She spent the majority of that week buried under her blankets still. Crying.

Fitz remained by her side through the whole process and when he offered to bring in food from her local favourite take away, she finally snapped.

"Jemma," he began softly, lifting the blanket of her head so that he could look at her, talk to her.

But she wasn't up for it. She rolled over, and her knees were brought further up her chest.

"I don't deserve it!"

Fitz would have loved to have said that he wasn't expecting that but he was.

Jemma Simmons had a tendency to blame herself, and torture herself inwardly for everything that she did.

"Is this about you leaving for HYDRA? Because, Jems, I don't care any more. It's over it's passed."

Silence. And then, in a voice that was soft and broken, "You don't even know why I left."

That was true, Fitz had to give her that. She had never given her reasons, not to him at least. And did he want to know them? Part of him did, but the other didn't. Part of him feared the real reason.

"I left because I love you," she said, finally rolling over to face him. "I left because I love you and I hurt you. I was hurting you. No matter what I did, no matter how I tried to help you, I always hurt you. I was causing you so much pain, Leo."

The use of his first name hurt him more than he thought that it could. "Jems, I... that... it wasn't you fault. I locked you out."

"But it was my fault that we were there in the first place. In that situation."

He shook his head. Why did she always have to blame herself for everything? It wasn't healthy. She was trying to bear the weight of the world on her shoulders, and even when others offered to help, she refused to accept it. Believing that it was her sole responsibility.

"Jemma Simmons, it's not your fault, and it never was and never will be..." But he was unable to continue as her lips met his.

***

Between physical therapy, and scans and other medical tests, Jemma didn't have much time to herself but what ever time that she did, it was spent with Fitz. Once they had both found out that the love they had for the other was much more than just friendship, their relationship blossomed.

One night, when both were curled up on her hospital bed when May came in.

May hadn't yet seen her, while all the other team members had.

And Jemma was thankful that May hadn't brought her a bunch of flowers, there were only so many flowers that one person could have.

When Fitz saw May enter, he placed a kiss on Jemma's forehead, and whispered that he'd be back. 

"May," Jemma said, a smile across her face.

And May couldn't help but smile back at the young woman, pulling her into her arms.

Whatever Jemma was going to say was lost, but May knew it any way.

May knew that Jemma was going to thank her.

But Jemma didn't have to. May would do it again and again.

She would always protect her team.

After all, they were family. 

And isn't that what family's for?