Ward looked awful. Steve was growing increasingly concerned at his actions – Natasha being assassinated, well, they would see, she was a super-soldier after she was a super-spy, so she might have heard in advance. He had to hold out hope.

But when Ward said he was recruited into Hydra, Steve wanted to punch him in the jaw. Or rather, wanted to have the experience of punching him in the jaw like a normal human and not a vibranium, Extremis dosed super-soldier. "That's not funny," Steve said and he was sure his anger was showing through. They'd been sitting in this dank, strangely carpetted basement for nearly an hour. They didn't need to do this joking thing now. They were worried Nat was dead.

"It's not a joke," Ward said, rubbing his hand over his mouth as he sat down on the couch.

"Hydra?" Daisy asked, confused. "They've been dead since the forties."

Ward shook his head, "They went underground, infested SHIELD from the beginning. Operation Paperclip recruited Zola and Zola recruited from SHIELD's best agents."

God in heaven, Ward really believed what he was saying. He was a member of Hydra. Grant Ward, one of Steve's closest friends in the twenty first century, was a member of Hydra. Steve didn't like that at all. "Then what?" Steve put his hands folded his hands together so he wouldn't be able to flex his fist at Ward.

"Then, for a long time, nothing – We had a few extra missions, kept a few extra secrets, but mostly we were just SHIELD Agents," Ward said. Steve felt that was eliding a lot if Hydra was really responsible for SHIELD's worst excesses. But he didn't interrupt. "During the Attack on D.C., I was available, so I got dosed with the Super-Soldier Serum."

Steve sighed, what came next was obvious. Ward had the best espionage ranking since Nat, it made sense, it made perfect sense. It had been right there in the file and Steve had never thought, 'what if he's lying to me?' Steve felt like an idiot. "And they sent you to spy on me."

Ward at least had the decency to look guilty, "Yeah."

There was a heavy silence in the room. Steve looked over at Daisy who looked like she was struggling mightily not to quake Ward into a wall. Steve understood the impulse, but he reached over and grabbed her hand and shook his head. Daisy nodded, reluctantly, but she shook her hand free of his hand regardless. He understood. She stood up and started pacing the room.

"So besides Trent," Steve said, looking at Ward next to him on the couch. The President of the United States. Goddamnit. "Who's Hydra?"

"Garrett," Ward said, ticking off his fingers, "Jacobs," the present Director of SHIELD, "Rumlowe was but he's dead now. Probably a third of the Fireflies are active members and another third of them are associates – Uh, people who are assets to hydra without signing on to the mission."

"Wait, you signed on for the mission?!" Daisy said, "Killing the inferior races?"

"No!" Ward said and he was genuinely offended, "Modern Hydra is more about -" Ward paused and thought for a minute as if the question had never occurred to him in a demonstration of human depravity. "I guess they're just a society for mutual self-advancement? I mean, they're for them being in charge? There's a lot of talk but its basically, you know, we should be in charge because we know how the world really is and the people can't be trusted to see things clearly." Ward shrugged, "I was mostly in because of Garrett."

Steve was furious with Ward. This was despicable. Hydra was despicable. The scum of the earth. But they needed to focus on the important information if they were going to stop a conspiracy that contained the President of the United States. "Alright, let's skip to the reason you tucked us away here."

"Garrett came and asked if you would be in the open air," Ward said. "I knew you would be and I told him so, he's checked on you before, it wasn't weird." Another in the string of betrayals, each as big as the sun, as numberless as the stars. It was hard to concentrate when Ward was saying these terrible things like they were normal. "But there was talk about assignments on the helicarriers and he was being especially laudatory about my service, he's been a real ass for a few years now, and I just-" Ward paused.

"You knew he was going to kill me," Steve said. It was such an obvious endpoint to spying on him that Steve was surprised that Ward had waited so long to break off from it if he was going to do so at all. It bespoke a moral cowardice or lack of foresight that was yet another mark against the true Ward's character.

"Yeah," Ward said. They had come so close to killing both him and Daisy. Because of Ward! But Ward also the only reason they knew, even now, that Hydra existed. He was a part of the very system they now had to oppose, he had helped it, worked for it, for years, decades, without hesistation or remorse. But they still needed him. What Ward was doing was risky and Steve could at least respect that he was willing to take this risk to stop them. Even if it was very, very late.

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Steve looked over to Daisy, whose mind was clearly running along the same path because she looked like she had just scraped manure off her shoes but she didn't look ready to put him through the wall. "So why Natasha? Or Daisy, for that matter?"

"If they've got a chance to clear the tables," Ward said, "They'll want to do it clean – The obvious targets who are threats to Hydra. You, obviously, just as a political symbol of the old order. Daisy, because she's a superhero and a reporter. Natasha because she caught on to Strucker, got him killed by Fury. I don't know what excuse they've got cooked up – Might target the CfL leaders too if they can, might not. It all depends."

"So what'll they do?"

"Find a scapegoat, like Fury and SHIELD before now, they'll use them and then they'll dispose them." Ward said it all in a business like tone.

"Did Hydra torture my mom?" Daisy asked, her eyes narrowed, her body tense, pacing now in fury.

"I don't know for sure," Ward said, but then seemed to think better of the equivocation, "but it sounds like that's something they would do, yes. Especially if it gave them super-powers, Hydra has been really obsessed with enhancement recently."

Daisy did not put Ward through the wall, and honestly, Steve was impressed. Her hands were flexed to her side, though, like she might at at any moment, even as she paced. Ward could've delivered that news a lot better. "So we were part of a frame up." She slowed to a stop in front of Ward. "Coulson was right."

Ward seemed to have realized his earlier mistake and just nodded his head.

"I really want to break you in half right now," Daisy said, looking at him with something that Steve could only call hatred. "You were my friend," She was back to pacing furiously across the room, back and forth, stopping to punctuate her sentence, "I trusted you."

Ward held up his hands in surrender, "And I deserve that, I do." Good, better, Steve thought. "I betrayed you and I broke your trust and that's my fault." It was sounding less sincere the more he said it.

"How can we stop them?" Steve asked, trying to get back to a topic that didn't make him want to hit Ward in the face.

"Stop them?" Ward asked, surprised at the question. "We can't stop them, we need to hide. They're going to try to kill all of us. They have an army of Fireflies and control of the Presidency of the United States. Plus who knows how many other countries."

"The Authoritarian Wave is Hydra, isn't it?" Daisy said and Ward nodded. "Goddamnit Ward, you really waited till the last fucking second didn't you?"

The language didn't even bother Steve. It was true. This would all have been much, much better if Ward had scraped together the courage to do something three months ago, let alone three years ago. "Let's try to focus, here, Ward. They were going to kill us, that's not something they've tried before, why now?"

Ward shrugged, "I wasn't that high level, even after they put me over the Fireflies. But I think… I think they're moving towards controlling the Untied States. You two, the CfL, everyone was inconvenient to that."

"Inconvenient how?"

"You're America's Best Self, if you opposed something, that means it's bad, I know you've taken a popularity hit, but man, they were really mad when you started attending the CfL messages."

Steve looked at Daisy, "Daisy, can you get out a message?"

"Yeah, I can Steve," Daisy said, looking at him, her face transforming into something much warmer. "But I think Ward needs to explain where Bucky is, since obviously Hydra knows."

Steve felt like his throat had been slashed open. Of course. If Hydra had infiltrated SHIELD, if SHIELD had found Bucky, it would've been possible for them to twist him into something hideous. Steve didn't know how, but it was clear that Ward had been a part of it, in his own way.

"Steve, no." Ward said, "I don't know where he is, I would've told you."

"But you knew you didn't know," Steve said, staring at the man he had once believed was his friend.

"Yes, okay, I knew. I thought they were going to kill you, Steve."

"You could've told me that whenever you wanted."

Ward looked down. "I know, I know. But I was ashamed, you can understand why."

"Yeah, because you suck," Daisy said, crossing her arms. Steve didn't think that was helpful.

But it was true.