WHO: Steve Rogers & Grant Ward WHAT: Ward has some things he wants to say even if he's not sure how they're going to be taken. WHEN: after this WHERE: Ward's room RATING: TBD
This was potentially a horrible idea. He'd felt sick ever since he'd sent that message to the Captain, and having gotten a response that was almost entirely unsurprising, -- Coulson had assumed he was working an angle. Why wouldn't anyone else? -- he'd ended up feeling even more sick when he'd replied. The fact was, he just really needed to explain. His mind had been in turmoil for nearly the last year, something which he managed to keep a lid on well enough in most circumstances, but when Rogers had pushed him like that, everything had come roaring back to the surface and through whatever restraint he'd been able to muster back up. Even if it was a definite false restraint, a plaster over top of a geiser.
He'd taken to pacing, treading the length of the room and turning on his heel the second he reached the wall to start the process all over again, just to keep his mind off of just how badly this was all likely to go. Coulson hadn't cared. When he'd tried to explain what the Berserker Staff had done to him, the way that it had left him raw, open, and unpredictable, he hadn't given a damn. He'd just told him that his willingness to admit to his vulnerability just made him more trustworthy, a thought that would have been laughable in that moment if it hadn't been so distressing. And then he'd handed him a knife and told him to go and frighten their guest, something which he'd been more than delighted to do in the state that he'd been in.
It had mellowed since then, a burning rage ebbing into something more like a crackling of embers, embers that could be stoked given the right kindling, the right attentions. Embers that had been stoked during his encounter with Rogers. It was hard to say just how much good explaining would do. But he'd rather take the risk and have it blow up in his face than continue to seem the reactionary, irrational, violent mess that he, well, was, but not to the degree that it seemed.