grant ward + rose ward
mention of violence | complete
Rose heard a lot of weird things over the years, hell, she even was involved with some pretty weird shit, this Atlantis thing though took the cake. She was shocked to hear that her hydra brother was here and the information she managed to get was that he ran one of the teams here and was reformed or something along those lines. Rose had a lot of guilt over leaving behind her younger brothers and a lot of guilt over how they were raised, but she’d left, she’d changed her name and found a life of her own.
After getting all the crap, the people gave her after she arrived she was heading out of the base with the purpose of exploring Atlantis and seeing her brother. She’d been told he was alerted when she arrived. It shouldn’t surprise her, but it did a little when she saw her brother in the lobby of the base looking at the elevator as she came up.
Rose tried to decide if she should just flat out ignore him or approach him, she went with the latter. “Grant,” she greeted looking him up and down. “You look well.”
“Rosie…” he said still worried about what she must think of him. She’d gotten away. She’d clearly made a life for herself but who he’d become wasn’t exactly a secret from the world. HIs face had been plastered all over the news, as much a Hydra poster boy as Rumlow and his crazy vendetta. But unlike Rumlow, he’d never believed a word of the propaganda.
“So do you...I...they said you’d arrived. I assume you didn’t pick up a coin so...you’ll be sent back once it’s figured out. I mean, if you wanted.”
He had no idea what to say to her. She’d left them. And he understood why. He really did. He remembered how her parents had treated her, their little Princess. He remembered her coming out party and the stupid dress they’d made her wear. Their mothers constant pointed comments about weight and appearance and needing to make her family proud.
“I want you to know everything that happened. Once you know, you can hate me, if you want. I’ll stay away from you, and you’ll never have to see me again. But it wasn’t as clear-cut as signing up for the crazy Nazi bullshit. I promise you that.So, can I buy you a coffee or, can we take a walk? Something?”
"No coin for me," she confirmed, she took note of his comment about staying if she wanted to stay but she didn't respond to it or even hint that she'd taken that piece of information in.
Watching him carefully she could see her little brother in the man before her, the boy she'd grown up with, the good parts of him, but she also saw Hydra and what he became she wasn't okay with, even though in some ways she blamed herself.
"I think you can do a lot better than a cup of coffee, how about a beer," Rose wasn't going to admit it, but she could use a beer right about now and if she was going to hear her brothers tale she wanted something stronger than coffee. “Okay. Okay, that’s what we’ll do.”
He was taking note of everything he could think of. How she held herself. The stance was wary but not scared. Not even slightly She had her confidence back, at least more than she had before she left. But she did leave. He didn’t hate her for it, he was jealous more than anything but life was life, and there was no changing it.
“There’s a bar, called Dive, it...is what it sounds like it is but it’s somewhere we can talk over the beer that I absolutely owe you, and I’ll tell you everything, anything you want to know. I’m not going to hide anything from you.”
Rose nodded motioning for him to lead the way. As they started to walk towards the bar, Rose looked around carefully taking note of everything she possibly could as they continued.
“Why are so many people on edge?” She hadn’t had a chance to read up, and the person she’d talked to on arriving didn’t say much about it, and Rose didn’t push the power woman had looked exhausted, and Rose knew she could get the information herself.
“Are people normally like this?” She said catching sight of a woman who looked near tears.
He shook his head, impressed that she’d picked up on that. He had mostly been watching her and wondering exactly who she’d become now. But she’d asked about it and he hadn’t been kidding when he said he'd tell her all of it.
“We’ve had kidnappings. A couple of close friends of mine actually, we know COS are hurting them, we could see them on all our comm devices. They look hurt, really badly hurt. But there are teams in place to do what needs to be done.” he explained. “I lead one of the combat teams here, but we weren’t put on mission. So, I wait.”
He could be patient when he had to but not when his friends were in danger.
“Were you always this perceptive?”
Rose's eyes narrowed as she nodded at everything he was telling her. "I'm sorry about your friends," she really was too there was real emotion behind her words. People you cared about being kidnapped and not being able to do something about it was the worst. "Do you trust the people leading the teams looking for them?" She asked.
Shrugging she really wasn't sure if she was, she was always aware of where people were because she was always so worried as a kid, always worried she wouldn't be perfect enough.
"I guess I've picked it up over the years," she answered with a shrug. When they got to the bar, she let him pick where they'd sit. She did make sure that she was facing the door though when they sat down.
“I’ll be fine once we get them back,” he replied as he opened the door to the bar and got them seats. He noted once again she’d thought ahead and had made sure to sit facing the door. He hated that she was taking these precautions, but he wasn’t going to argue it.
“The teams are good, and yeah I do trust the people in charge, they’re willing to trust me after all, it’d be a bit insulting if I didn’t offer it in return. That and we’re fought together over a year now.”
Now they were here. Sitting opposite each other in the booth he found he didn’t know where to begin. So he went for the obvious.
“What are you drinking? I’ll get them?” he said standing back up and glancing over to the bar.
A lot of Rose's cautiousness was partly due to her training and her lifestyle outside of being brought to another world.
"That's good," Rose meant it too, trust in the chain of command was extremely important to making sound choices and getting a job done.
"Whatever the local beer is," Rose knew there probably a few but given it was a dive bar, called Dive, she didn't think there would be too many options. As she waited for Grant to get back, she thanked him when the beer was placed in front of her.
"So," Rose started. "You were going to tell me everything."
He nodded as he sat down again taking a sip of the whiskey he’d decided upon and looked across to his sister. He could see changes in her but she was still Rose, and she deserved to know the truth. “You were gone before the fire. Before I wound up in Juvie for what they said was trying to kill Christian. He was in the house...But he demanded I was tried as an adult, and I would have been just another number in the system. Not worth a damn. But I...someone came to me. Offered me an out. He said he’d help me, help me overcome the weakness in me and he said he was with SHIELD. As you can imagine...he wasn’t. He didn’t tell me till years later, when he knew he had me. He made me a weapon ready to fire and he sent me into SHIELD. A double agent. For Hydra.”
He took another sip of the whiskey, the burn taking some of the fear away.
“I...things got complicated eventually, he sent me to a team lead by a man who had basically died during the attack in New York but came back. That team...they treated me like one of them, like part of a family like I hadn’t been since…”
He looked down, he couldn’t look at her.
“Since you left. And...I still betrayed them when I was told to. I had orders and I didn’t know how to say no to him. Never crossed my mind. He died...soon after. I hurt the people who had treated me like I was worth something and then John died and I had no...I didn’t know who I was or what happened. I tried...to end it, more than once.”
He paused, looking down again.
“There’s more, a lot more. But you wanted to know about Hydra, right? That’s why I was Hydra.”
Rose looked down wincing, she'd seen some news on it but had sworn to herself that she had to stay away, she couldn't go back, and part of her had believed what she'd seen. Christian though, she had a lot of issues with their elder brother, but he wasn't the focus right now. Nodding as he told her about the man who came to him, it didn't surprise her, he'd have been a good target for a long game strategy, but in truth it just made her feel guilty for not being there.
She wanted to ask him why he didn't fight, why he didn't turn down his mentor (there were a lot of other words Rose wanted to use for him). Rose looked down when he mentioned her leaving, the guilt hit her, but she did her best not to show too much of it.
"So, instead of what Christian wanted, you ended up being recruited," for lack of a better word, "by a guy who used you as a plant and that's how you became Hydra." She summarised it hit her at that moment that another bully just happened to use him as a tool again. She wasn't about to say that though.
Letting out a sigh she took a long drink of her beer before nodding. "And now you run your own team?"
“Yeah. That’s the start. I...got worse. Back home. But I was in another place, like this and they forgive me. They learned what happened and the team, they forgave me like they never did at home. At home, they handed me back to Christian. Or tried to, it didn’t work out so well. But in that other place, one of the team, Daisy Johnson, I kind of liked her, when I was undercover and I found out in this place that she liked me back, and she made me question everything. She and I fell in love. It didn’t work out, here, even when she remembered. There had been too much at home. I did some terrible things.”
As for the team.
“They put me on probation when I got here. It was the right call. If they hadn’t I’d probably have suggested it myself. But I worked through it, went to counselling. Did everything they wanted me to do, and I guess in the end they trusted me to lead. I barely trust me to lead but my team are good people. And they work for me. They trust me.”
"What do you mean you got worse?" That sounded really dangerous, and Rose wasn't completely sure she wanted the answers, but she needed to know, hell, she always wanted more information.
"Love's a great reason to change, but it can't be the only reason," Rose whispered, it wasn't wholly from experience, but it was something she fully believed. "Who the hell is dumb enough to trust Christian?" Rose knew the answer to that, but it was just another thing that upset her. She'd watched his political career, but she worked hard to stay off his radar and avoided anything that had to do with any politicians.
"So, this Daisy, she's here?" Rose wanted to confirm, between the back home, the other place, and here she wanted to be very clear she understood the different places.
She was glad this place was smart enough to do something about people who could be dangerous. "Do you trust yourself to lead now? After working with them? Because you don't want to lead if you don't trust yourself to do it."
“Got worse. I tried to make them trust me again, I thought...I was so messed up I thought I could just fit back in with them which obviously wasn’t ever gonna happen. But I’d made a promise to Daisy so I kept it. My methods were...not healthy. But eventually I came to my senses about her.”
He didn’t mention what Daisy had done, there was no point.
“Eventually I met someone, or...well, found her, she’d been conditioned by Hydra worse than I was. Brainwashed with a machine. I helped her find herself. I helped her remember and god help me I started to fall for her. But she died. She died and it was messed up how and I snapped. That’s when I was beyond saving. If not for my memories of that other place, I’d be that same monster.”
He nodded again, thinking about it all, and inevitably about Daisy.
“Yeah, Daisy’s here. We’re...I don’t know if we’re friends but she doesn’t hate me. And honestly that’s more than I deserve so I’ll take it. The guy that trusted Christian is too. Though I think he needed his political clout more than he trusted him. And I was a way to get it. SHIELD kept me because I was of use. Christian was of more use. That’s how agencies work. I tried to hate him for it but it...I guess it was tactical. As for why I lead, I trust people to tell me if I mess it up. And it feels good, to be trusted. It makes me think that I have a chance here when I can’t have it back home.”
"I'm sorry you lost her," Rose meant it too.
Rose knew a heck of a lot about leverage and how one person might be more important than another for an end goal, but she didn't say it or show just how much she knew about those kinds of things. She also didn't mention that sometimes those goals could be short-sighted. She didn't fully know the situation, so she didn't say anything about it, she just nodded. It was a lot to take in, listening to so much of her brother's life since she'd gone.
"It sounds like you found a life here." It did too, she knew there was a lot more to his past and his present, but at least he seemed more stable than what she'd heard about his past.
He just nodded to the sympathy. It still hurt to think about Kara.
“I have. But it’s up to you if you want to keep talking to me. I was Hydra. I was, and I did things that I can’t take back. But Rosie, I didn’t know if you were alive or dead, if you needed me, if…”
He’d missed her. He’d never told John. It was a weakness and he was scared, wherever he was he’d find her.
“If you want to tell me about your life, I’d like that. But I’d understand if you walk out of here now and go home as soon as you’re able to. But I’m glad we had this at least.”
It was hard knowing that her running had hurt her brother, that he didn't know anything about her. Heck, it'd been a long time since anyone had called her Rosie, no one did.
"I'm CIA," she said in an odd matter of fact kind of way. She wasn't completely sure if she should be telling him that, but at the same point, he was her little brother, and he did deserve to know she was fine, that she could take care of herself.
"Rose Ward, for all legal purposes doesn't exist anymore." She knew it probably wouldn't be easy to hear, but from what she could tell he was never going back to the real world and she didn't think he'd give her up even if he were.
He took a moment to process that.
And then a couple more moments.
“CIA” he said simply. Each letter seemed to take ages even though he knew it hadn’t. “How did...how?
There was a weird irony that they’d both wound up where they did but at least she worked for the good guys. Or at least the more good that Hydra and SHIELD guys.
“What do you do for them Rosie?” he asked, suddenly worried that she was more like him than he’d ever wanted for her. He didn’t want her to be a spy. She deserved a better life than that.
“You gave up your identity. Did you know Thomas did too? He didn’t want to be anything to do with us. With me...You um...I guess you heard they died. Mom, Dad and Christian.”
Rose smiled softly. "I'm an operative," that would give him everything he needed to know. She was a spy, but she didn't really think about herself being anything like some of the other organisations out there. Her life sure as hell wasn't SHIELD.
"I heard rumours, but when I left, I had to go fully, I had to get away, I was young, I didn't think there was any other way, if I could have, I would have brought you and Tommy with me, but..." She let the word trail off. She'd been so young and so desperate to get away and so scared that she just didn't think she had another option.
"It's hard not to miss those kinds of news stories, I didn't know at first, about our parents, I didn't read anything from home, but Christian, that was all over the news. I can't say I was surprised someone took him out." She knew the report said it was a murder-suicide but Rose just couldn't believe that. Rose wondered if it had been Grant, but the truth was, was that she could think of more than a few people who weren't fans of the senators.
“Right. I see. God, it’s ironic in a twisted kind of way. We could have run into each other back home if things had gone another way. It could have gone very wrong. But no, you couldn't have taken us with you. I know what it takes to disappear and you needed to go, staying...it would have killed you. You didn’t think I knew how hard it was on you but I did. I knew.”
When it came to their parents though. And Christian.
“...If you want to ask me, ask me. I won’t lie to you...even if you hate me at the end of this conversation. I won’t lie to you. I’ve done enough lying for ten lifetimes.”
Rose nodded with a sad smile, she appreciated his words, but she felt there still could have been more than she could have done. "Can't change the past." They couldn't change the past. It was what it was.
Rose leaned back considering it for a moment if she should ask or if she shouldn't. She took the time to decide.
"The past is the past." Rose decided. "Whatever happened, happened, and like I said, Christian being taken out wasn't a surprise."
She didn’t want to know. And he supposed that was a good move on her part. She’d certainly thought about her answer. He knew she’d always feel a little guilty for leaving him behind but he’d at least known she was out there. And not suffering in a home that expected too much of her.
“Okay. We can’t change the hell we come from. But you’ve made something of yourself. And you did that alone. For what it’s worth I’m proud of you. And for however long you’re here I’d like to get to know my sister. And to introduce you to my friends. If that’s okay with you?”
"I wouldn't mind getting to know my little brother and seeing his life here," she answered with a smile. Rose had no idea how long she'd be in Atlantis. She might as well take advantage of it. "I'd like that, meeting your friends. But first, another round." She didn't wait for him to answer, she jumped up ordering another round and sitting back across from him.