Stay on Your Side of the Line
'Get your bearings, open your eyes. Two goals. Achieve both of them. Ready, go.' Grant Douglas Ward, traitor to S.H.I.E.L.D., double-agent for HYDRA, opened his eyes first and got his bearings only partially. 'Don't do the steps out of order. Establish a routine.' He did it over this time, got his bearings by rehearsing some lines over in his mind, then focusing on the firmness of the "bed" underneath him, the coolness of the cement wall when he reached up to touch it. These things were real. He gripped these mentally and breathed slowly until his pulse slowed. Then he opened his eyes again. This time, the light's harshness was bearable, and he could look at the tiny red dot that showed the cameras were recording. Next he had to roll out of bed -- follow the routine. After that, he had to exercise, counting the seconds meticulously so that each minute was accounted for and he didn't exceed his time limit, another thing he'd decided to do. After his exercises he folded his blanket and put it on top of the pillow, put his shirt back on, and sat on the floor, eyes shut, feeling the cold floor, the buzzing of electricity, the imagined shriek that came from the red dot on the security cameras, the imagined scraping noise that went back and forth whenever he pictured the yellow line dividing his prison cell's limit from the rest of the basement.
In through the nose, out through the mouth. There had to be better methods but this was the only one he could think of. He never used to feel so shaky, and he never used to get panic attacks. His life before he came to be inside this cell had been an interrupted internal scream, one that Garrett had only turned up louder and externalized. But to be fair, Garrett also taught him this one exercise, maybe just in case something like this ever happened. Garrett had been well-acquainted with loss of hope, and he got good at calling it out in others, Ward especially. Still, there were small moments when he could be kind. That was better than nothing. Give everyone their deserved credit; Ward believed that. Not everyone was completely heinous. Not everyone was entirely heroic. What people decided to do in moments of extreme pressure and crisis determined what they were better at being, bad or good, what they were attuned to. Ward didn't know he could do anything else with his life until it was too late. That was another time when he'd done the steps out of order and came out of it destroyed and abandoned, his mentor dead, his new team hating his guts, but they weren't his team anymore because they weren't in this cell with him. His old team stood on the other side of the yellow line that he pictured in his mind, and he understood why it was like this. 'Don't do the steps out of order. They keep you on your side of the line.' He nodded as he repeated this new saying inside his head.
Sitting at a bank of computer screens, May watched Ward as he nodded from where he sat on the floor. On impulse May zoomed in to see his face better and saw that Ward blinked his eyes in time to each of his nods. His lips moved like he was repeating a line, or studying something. She clicked out of the window and the feeds returned to normal. A new routine, then. Ward was trying to keep busy and not go insane. 'Again', she amended, and got up from the chair that she left to swivel in circles while she walked out of the room. On the screen, Ward still nodded. In Ward's head: 'Don't do the steps out of order. They keep you on your side of the line.'
Quickly the repetitions devolved into one word: 'Don't'.