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She’ll blame it on being so downright exhausted, but Jemma barely even moves when her hotel room door clicks open and Grant Ward enters uninvited.
“You look rough, sweetheart,” she hears behind her after a moment.
She imagines she does. She’s lying on her stomach, nearly face down, chintzy duvet wrapped around her like a cocoon while the rest of her sheets are still cleanly tucked and tight. She was too tired to even undress, so her boots hang off the edge of the bed. Before he intruded, she had been giving herself a moment to slump into exhaustion before dragging herself up and getting ready for bed.
“It’s been a long day,” she mumbles.
“I’m sorry.” He sounds it. “Want a massage?”
She ignores him. “Why are you here?”
He’s been making a habit of showing up unannounced. Virtually any time she leaves the base, he makes some sort of appearance on the scene, always getting in between her and danger. He never truly interferes with their missions, just makes sure she is always bodily protected from harm.
His constant presence has been driving Coulson nuts. It's almost funny.
So it's not actually a surprise that he's shown up. She just didn't expect it to be in her hotel room.
“You know why I'm here.” He stresses the words in a familiar way, and she knows what he’s referring to. He’s brought up these issues in previous conversations, ridiculously, obscenely, while laying down cover fire or ushering her away from assailants.
She snorts. “Oh, do I?”
“Yup.”
“Because you want to be with me?” It's the only way she can phrase it without wanting to explode. What kind of man tells a woman he wants to start a relationship with her whilst holding an arms dealer by the neck? What kind of person wants to start a relationship with someone who has openly expressed wishes to end their pursuer’s life?
Ward’s kind.
“Yes,” he says tightly.
“Bullshit.”
“Jemma—”
“I genuinely don’t understand what you expect me to do or say in regards to that."
She may call him an idiot, but he's not genuinely stupid, so she’s expecting a rather well-crafted argument.
“Do you care about me?” he asks point-blank.
Oh.
She’s still face down in the mattress, and that gives her time. She’s never asked herself that question before.
Hive had been her kill. It wasn’t exactly decided that it should be that way, but once the team had Hive on the ropes, they stepped back and let her take over. It was personal for her. Losing Will, seeing Ward used against them in such a dehumanizing way – she deserved revenge for this.
So once they had incapacitated their villain, Jemma said a few choice words, plunged her needle into the body’s neck, and watched Hive suffer for his crimes.
She hadn’t, of course, expected Ward to wake up after.
By all of Coulson’s and Fitz’s descriptions, Grant Ward died before Hive even took his body. Coulson had stood over him on the cool grey sand and stole his breath, crushed his chest. He was never supposed to come back.
He was never supposed to come back.
But at Jemma’s insistence they carried him, slurring and half-conscious, away from HYDRA, away from Malick, and back to the Playground for observation.
Jemma saved him. Everyone else stared, but she saved him.
“Yes,” she says honestly. She does care about him, in some way at least.
He comes to lay down on the other side of the bed, on his back, hands behind his head, so he can regard the bit of her face peeking out from the covers.
“That makes me happy,” he says finally, smug and smiling.
“Well,” she bites, frustrated. “Good for you, Ward.”
He raises his eyebrows.
“But I am not happy. I’m confused, and I’m irritated.”
“I can sense that,” he says, slightly amused.
She groans into the bedspread before rolling a little bit in her blanket burrito to make her face more clear to him.
“I just don’t trust you. And you know I don’t trust you. So what are you getting out of this?”
This being his constant and earnest-seeming insistence that he cares for her. That he wants her. That he likes her.
“The hope that one day you might trust me,” he responds. “And the view’s not bad, either.”
She gives him a withering look. Today the ‘view’ is a drawn face surrounded by a bird’s nest of hair and a sore attitude.
“Okay, fine. Today you’re a little pathetic,” he says. “But you’re still cute.”
“Fuck off.”
"I'd love to, but we're taking things slow."
She raises her head to give him the angriest stare she possibly can. "Look at me," she says.
He's looking.
"I will never be HYDRA. Doesn't matter what you say, or what you feel, or what you think you're going to do with your dick—" He barks a laugh. "—I will never just decide to be HYDRA."
"I haven't asked you to switch sides, Jemma."
"But that's what's coming next!" she argues. There's no other logical purpose for this little seduction. Even if he did care for her, he's cunning. He'd want all of her.
Suddenly she feels ridiculous, so she pulls herself to her knees, still wrapped in the blanket, but now at his eye level.
"I'm not going to work for you. I'm not going to sow destruction and open the world up to chaos. I have a moral code!"
"Possibly your only flaw," he jabs.
"Stop with the quips." And she moves forward towards him on the bed, feeling desperately confused. "Just stop. If you could make me believe that that's not what you want from me, I'd kiss you right now. But you can't."
And she's sure of it. She's so sure. Until he opens his mouth again.
"I'm not HYDRA anymore."
She's silent for a long moment.
"What?"
"I'm not HYDRA anymore," he repeats. He's quite serious.
Belatedly, Jemma realizes she just admitted she's willing to kiss him.
"Prove it," she challenges.
He gets up, opens the hotel room door and reveals an armed guard there waiting.
"This is Abbeley," Ward says, indicating towards the man. "Ask him whatever you want."
Even the guard looks surprised at that, giving his boss (coworker? friend?) a sidelong look.
"Hello," Jemma says awkwardly, letting the blanket drop and getting off the bed so she doesn't look so strange.
"Ma'am," Abbeley says, tipping his head.
But she turns back to Ward. "Why do you have an armed guard outside my room?"
He shrugs. "In case I need backup."
"With me?" she spits.
"No, dear," he mocks. "In case May comes by to check on you and finds me corrupting her precious protégé."
Jemma frowns. "You are not to harm my teammates," she tells Abbeley. Her eyes shift to Ward. "Tell him."
Ward follows instructions. "No lethal force."
"No force at all!"
"Jemma."
Jemma sighs, turns back to the guard. "What organization do you work for?" Jemma asks.
"I used to work for HYDRA's head," Abbeley claims, tipping his chin towards Ward. "But HYDRA was disbanded six weeks ago."
Fuck. It's true that HYDRA's been suspiciously quiet for the past two months, to the point where Coulson was starting to get even more anxious than usual.
"Why?"
"HYDRA's purpose—" Ward starts, but she cuts him off. She tries to do it as rudely as possible.
Abbeley answers: "Director said we have new goals, which means we need a new structure and a new name."
Jemma nods. "Ah. There it is."
"What?"
"You do want me to join HYDRA, you've just decided to call it something else."
"Once again, Jemma, I didn't ask you to join anything," he says. She supposes that's still true. "I'm just trying to tell you, HYDRA doesn't exist anymore."
She's stunned into silence again.
"I don't believe you," she says after a moment.
"I didn't expect you too."
"Why didn't you tell Coulson?"
"I'd rather talk to you," he replies.
"Do you just follow him around, breaking into women's hotel rooms?" she asks Abbeley.
"This is a first," the man responds dryly.
Ward rolls his eyes. "You're excused, Abbeley."
The guard retreats. Jemma calls after him, "Don't hurt my friends!"
And then they're alone again.
There is a long beat where they just look at each other.
"You dismantled HYDRA?" Jemma asks, still bewildered.
"As I was trying to say before," and he lets his fingers trail down her arm to take her hand. He pulls her to sit on the bed with him. "HYDRA's purpose for however many centuries was to serve Hive."
He pauses, so she raises an eyebrow.
"Sweetheart, you killed Hive." She ignores the pet name the best she can. "You killed HYDRA's purpose, and you saved my life in the process. HYDRA is finished because of you."
Her heart is pounding wildly, but outwardly she only cocks her head. "No, you dismantled HYDRA because you have a crush on me because I saved your life."
"Well first of all, I wouldn't call it a crush, but—"
"Why did you leave?" she asks suddenly.
He stares at her.
Ward had stayed for three days after Hive had been removed from him. His body was fine, as far as Jemma could tell; surely Hive had done something horrendous to repair the damage Coulson did, but he was whole again. For the first 18 hours or so, Ward was in and out of consciousness, sometimes blissfully asleep, sometimes staring over at her in dazed confusion. After the painkillers wore off, he stared straight forward, lost in thought.
She doesn’t know why he left. He's never mentioned it. He was locked in, of course, strapped to his hospital bed, on constant guard. When he got free he didn’t take anything, didn’t rain hell over them – just left without a word.
"Why did you leave the Playground?" she repeats.
"Why the fuck is it called the Playground?" he deflects.
"Ward."
"Classic SHIELD bullshit."
"Ward."
"Why did you save me?" he fires back finally, words exploding from his chest. "Jemma—" He looks genuinely bewildered. "You had the upper hand! I was dead, Malick was dead, and you had just killed Hive too. Why did you save me?"
"Because that's what I do."
"You save people," he says, resigned.
"No, I save you!"
He stares at her. Her mouth keeps moving.
"I saved you every time you'd get hurt on a mission, I saved you every time you hurt yourself in the Vault, and I saved you this time, too!" She gets quieter for a moment. "You don't know how to save yourself so I do it. I don’t know why, I just do."
He takes that in, disengages from the tension of their argument, sighs. "That's rich coming from you," he says lowly after a moment. "You have the self-preservation instinct of an infant."
"Obviously that's true, otherwise I would've shot you on sight," she mutters.
He almost smiles at that.
"It's okay. No one's going to hurt you again. Not as long as I'm around."
He's not looking at her while he says it, so she feels less disconcerted by the intensity of that statement.
"You know that's funny, considering you were the one torturing me a few months ago."
He winces, but then he plays along. "Well you did try to kill me a few months before that."
"Yes," she says. "Because you tried to kill me a few months before that!"
"Listen, I never said it was going to be the healthiest of relationships," he jokes.
They're quiet for a long moment, both of them trying to calm themselves.
"You really ended HYDRA?" she asks.
He nods.
"What happens to everyone who worked there?"
"HYDRA has deep pockets, so we're still paying everyone, but we've ceased operations,” Ward explains. “At least until we can figure out what to do next."
"Some of the scientists I worked with there," Jemma starts, remembering. "They're not bad people. They weren't trying to kill anyone, they were just doing their work."
"Mmm, it's unbelievable that not everyone who works for HYDRA is a Nazi serial murderer who kicks puppies for fun."
"Shut up," she says, but there's no heat in it. She's still thinking.
"Speaking of which, I think we should get a dog," Ward says.
She stares. "We haven't even kissed, and you want to get a dog?"
"Well, maybe I'll get a dog. But I just need to know your feelings on them."
Jemma shrugs. "I like dogs."
"Good. That might've been a deal breaker for me, honestly."
She squints at him. "Glad we dodged that bullet."
"What are you thinking?" he asks, getting back to the point.
"We should merge," she says.
"Now you're talking."
"Again, shut up," she cuts. "SHIELD and what's left of HYDRA should merge."
"You remember that there was a little issue before about HYDRA being inside SHIELD."
She rolls her eyes. "That's because it was treason. This time we'd be welcoming them in."
"Jemma," he says, somewhat hesitant. "There's no way Coulson goes for that."
"We just have to figure out how to sell it," Jemma argues. "It's practical! All those good agents out of a job because we defeated HYDRA. They have intimate knowledge of HYDRA's operations that we can use to stop other groups from hurting people. We'd get a huge influx of money and manpower. And we'd all be on the same side again."
He's smiling at her fondly by the end. "It's a nice idea."
"Obviously Coulson would want to subject everyone to rigorous loyalty testing," she continues, lost in thought. "And we wouldn't take anyone who has a true desire for chaos."
"Just the morally ambivalent ones," Grant supplies, teasing her.
"Sure," she says. And she beams at him, shrugging. “I could make that work.”
He seems a little stunned, frowning. “What?”
“I could get Coulson to agree to that.”
He raises his eyebrows.
“Isn’t that what you want?” she asks expectantly.
“No,” he says. “I mean…” He looks genuinely surprised. “I mean that’s a good idea but that’s really not why I’m here.”
“I know that’s not why you’re here,” she says, and there’s some measure of relief on his face as she accepts that he is actually here for her. “But isn’t this what you hoped for when you broke up HYDRA?”
“No. I didn’t really think about it,” he says.
“You don’t hate us anymore, evidently, considering how many times you’ve interrupted our missions only to help rather than hurt,” Jemma reasons. “And if someone asks you why you ended HYDRA, you’re not going to say because my girlfriend wanted me to.”
“Girlfriend?”
“That was me pretending to be you,” she clarifies, and then gets back to the point. “You wouldn’t say that; you’d say you want to take HYDRA in a new direction.”
“SHIELD isn’t a new direction for HYDRA,” Ward points out.
“SHIELD and HYDRA being on the same page is.”
He blinks. Probably a little stunned from all the truths she just laid out on him, poor thing.
“You shouldn’t underestimate me,” she warns.
He sits finally, on the floor against the bed. “Trust me,” he says fondly. “I know.”
“Could you work with everyone again?” Jemma asks, sinking down to sit next to him on the carpet.
He thinks about it for a moment, letting his head tip back against the mattress.
“I’ve survived worse.”
She rolls her eyes. “These people are my family,” she reminds him.
He has no comment on that, and that’s more telling than anything he could’ve said out loud.
“I don’t want to work for Coulson again,” he says. “But I don’t really see a way around that, considering all of you follow him blindly.”
She chooses not to comment on that, out of the goodness of her heart. “You don’t have to work with him,” she lilts instead. “You could just live in my room.”
“Funny,” he bites. “But I wouldn’t make a good househusband.”
She smiles.
She realizes all at once that he’s hardly pushed her all night. Sure, they argued. They’ve always been prone to arguing, bringing out the best and worst in each other. But he hasn’t tried to usher her away from the team or use his body to stun her into silence. No intimidation, and probably only minimal manipulation.
Actually, all the times she’s seen him since she saved his life, he’s only talked to her. Not more than a hand at her back or on her arm. Perhaps he remembers how Hive approached her. Perhaps he’s being respectful in a way that he never would have bothered with before. Genuine distance for genuine feeling. Maybe he’s actually changed.
Tonight, he is content to go at her pace.
She leans her head back to gaze at him. Fuck.
“Okay,” she says finally – resigned, amused, and somehow satisfied. “Kiss me.”
She barely gets a glimpse of his pleased smile before his lips capture hers.