Biochemist and the Engineer

Chapter 2

2//When Belle's father didn't return, she knew something terrible had happened to him. Gaston came to Belle, trying to sway her into joining him for a life together, but she refused, and instead took off after her father.//

2//Jemma stood up from her chair, too nervous to be seated. Coulson's blood pressure and heart rate had been spiking for the past few hours, along with the levels of endorphins in his blood. Coulson was obviously in pain--a lot of pain.
He was in trouble and she knew it. What she didn't know is if she should risk going in after him. She had wanted to be the one going in to rescue Fitz, but Coulson was the more logical choice. He was combat trained, and would remember his mission.
Jemma Simmons always looked at things logically. Identify the problem, find a solution. She was a scientist, and always had been. But today, she couldn't think. She couldn't categorize everything out into logical and illogical. Her mind was on one thing: bringing Fitz home.
This single lapse in her logical processing caused her to make the most illogical decision she'd ever made. At that moment, in Jemma's mind, it seemed logical. But in truth, there was nothing logical about entering the Framework. She let the other agents know what she was about to do, and they tried to reason with her, but her mind was made up. She knew that somehow, someway, this was going to get Fitz home safely.
She would lose her memories. Once she entered, she wouldn't even know that the Framework wasn't real.
This was crazy.
This didn't make any logical sense. Her mind rebelled, listing off all the reasons that this was the worst possible solution. But her heart told her that this was right. This was how she would get to Fitz.
That is what gave her the courage to place the Framework headset on herself. That is what directed her to lay back, and close her eyes. Everything--logical and illogical--faded away. All was black and empty.
---
Agent Simmons stepped out of her black SUV, and her team of agents followed her lead. She moved around the vehicle to greet the other party, signalling for her team to stand back, but be ready. This was a tedious meeting.
A well-built man rounded his SUV, which also happened to be black. He smiled, but it was an evil mask of a smile. Everything he did was an act. She was familiar with his ways.
"Jemma Simmons." He marvelled, talking like they were the best of pals.
"Grant Ward." She greeted him matter-of-factly. This was business and she would have none of his sly speaking today. "I have an offer to make."
She saw something flicker across the Hydra agent's face. It was only there for a split second, but she'd seen it. She was far too experienced to mistake that flicker of fear for anything else. The fear that she knew something that he didn't. The fear that she had a weight to use against him. But the fear was only momentary, for Ward always had an angle to play at.
"How coincidental." He grinned, placing his hand on her shoulder. Simmons tensed, fighting the reflex to grab her gun. "I have a proposal for you as well."
She kept her face stone-cold, not giving him a single inch of what he wanted no matter how much he buttered his words. "By all means," she replied in a fake friendly tone, "you go first."
His smug grin flashed with annoyance. "Of course." His words were a bit sharper this time. Not sugar-coated.
Simmons had had enough sugar-coating throughout her life--especially from Ward. She preferred to hear things straight. By now, Ward had removed his hand from her shoulder, but he stood closer than was comfortable. She didn't relax a bit, but stood tall and motionless. "I propose," His grin was inches away from her icy face, "That you rejoin Hydra. Come back to the winning side. Come back to me." His eyebrow arched in question. "Let it go back to old times? The two of us. You know that's all you've wanted since you left."
Simmons sucked in a breath, resisting the urge to give Ward a hard blow to the face. She kept her face steady as her mind raced with responses to his inconceivable suggestion. She knew he couldn't possibly actually believe that's what she wanted.
After what he'd tried to pull with her? No way.
He may be a terrible person, but he wasn't stupid. He was just trying to get inside her head. And it was working. She muted the thoughts of her days with him. Her days killing innocent people. Her days as a Hydra agent who lived by the one rule: that "discovery requires experimentation", no matter what the cost was.
The cost had been countless lives. It wasn't until after Simmons had been required to dispose of lives that meant something to her that she had come to her wits about what Hydra was really doing. Ward had tried to talk her out of it, to reason with her about the unreasonable. That was when she became aware of how desensitized this man was. How could she ever have thought this man loved her when he didn't even have a heart? That was when things got bad. He had tried to force her to believe his truth. Force her to believe she couldn't leave him. He made her feel weak, incapable, small. He tried to trap her. He had said he was trying to protect her, that he knew she was just struggling with grief and she would come back to reality soon enough. But that was a lie. Because she hadn't truly known reality until that day.
Her eyes narrowed at the man standing before her.
"I'm willing to make a trade." She stared unblinkingly into Ward's eyes, standing tall and bold.
His lip turned up at the corner, and his eyebrow cocked up.
"If I come with you, Director Coulson gets released." She stated the deal simply.
Ward's smile faded into a head shake. "Jemma, I'm afraid I just can't do that." She grabbed for his gun before he had pulled it all the way out. He swung at her with his opposite hand, but she dodged easily, and instead caught the arm, using it to knock him off balance. She moved expertly, but so did he. Fists swung at each other, blocks were issued. They knew each other's fighting styles all too well, but Ward didn't know how much Simmons had improved since she had left Hydra. He got the handle of her gun smashed into his forehead, and before he could free a hand to block her, a second blow sent him to his knees, allowing Simmons just enough time to slip away from him.
"Let's go!" Simmons's voice rang out clearly to her team. A gunshot punctured Ward's right shoulder as he raised his own gun. By the time he grasped the gun with his other hand, Simmons had gathered her team into her SUV and was peeling away from the scene.
She smirked, wiping a bloody cut on her lip as she sped away. She had gotten all she needed. Ward didn't know that she hadn't actually needed to make a deal. She had just needed time. Enough time for her agents to hack into his feed and find out the location of Director Coulson. And she had succeeded.
Who was the winning team now, Ward?