grant ward is kevlar (imkevlar) wrote in pastprologueic, @ 2015-07-29 19:45:00 |
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That the Director had given her reins on this was either a kindness or a ready helping of just desserts. Thing was, Bobbi wasn’t particularly feeling the former, and as for the latter? Grant Ward, specialist, by all appearances the consummate soloist in their line of work, had a knack for creating gaggles, whether of goons or of friends who would one day sorely regret their association with him -- who would one day become a line of angry people with grievances beyond the counting. And if she had been counting, Bobbi thought she would be placed somewhere further down the line, but perhaps it was her relative distance to the bulk of the nightmare the former agent had rained down on Coulson’s people that made her point-woman. Putting all her anger to the side, balling it up and placing out of reach, was an exercise that required a certain degree of falling back to the basics of SHIELD one-oh-one. But it meant that although she was smileless as she was let into the close little interview room they’d set him up in, she was also steady -- flinty-grey in expression, and balanced on her feet (Skye’s fingers truly were magical) and, she hoped, in her thoughts. She took the seat across the table, sat down. “Hi, Grant.” Ward hadn’t been surprised when he’d come to already stripped down, weapons removed, clothing replaced by the familiar set of scrubs, and hands bound with something far more useful than the set of standard cuffs which had been placed on him during his initial escape. It seemed as though Coulson had learned his lesson. The transfer from the Vault to the small interrogation room, once he’d come back to his senses, had been relatively painless, and while he’d been left waiting for several minutes presumably to let him stew in expectation, the person he was faced with when the door opened wasn’t especially surprising. Of course they’d have Bobbi do it. Distance from the worst of his crimes plus motivation from his most recent, combined with her skills as a manipulator, it was the perfect recipe to place on the other side of the table from someone who wasn’t going to break in the face of the same old tricks. When he’d said that they were alike, he’d meant it. He’d meant it in all of the very worst ways. They knew exactly what it meant to play with the lives of others in order to get the results they wanted. So he had absolutely no illusions about what this interrogation was going to consist of. So when he smiled in the face of her greeting, it was with an edge of hesitation that he was masking behind the bravado in his posture. He wasn’t entirely sure he was ready for it. “Morse. You’re looking well,” He said, tilting his head with a bit of feigned curiosity. “Knee not giving you any problems?” She hadn’t bothered bringing in her usual prop, the file with her subject’s life-story printed out in plain black and white. If she and Ward were truly cut from different ends of the same cloth, then he would be immune to the theatrics of paperwork, of the way she could flick a sheet and appear to parse out the one thing the person on the other side of the table didn’t want uttered aloud. He was beyond that sort of thing (and besides, it wasn’t as if she hadn’t had plenty of time to learn all about him). Her head tilted at his question, her posture hinting at reflecting his even as she settled into her seat. “Not as many as your trigger finger’s giving you.” There was a moment, the briefest moment of confusion, where Ward had absolutely no idea what she was trying to get at with that statement. And then it hit him. It was like being doused in ice cold water, where she was going with that, what she was poking at, what she had no right to poke at. And the snap of the metal bar firming his hands back in place as he strained against the cuffs that they’d locked him in was enough indication of her having an effect on him, even as he tried to smother his reaction in his features. “If I remember correctly, you and May were the ones who shot people during that encounter. I did little to nothing except implore mercy. Which you ignored. Of course,” Ward said with a little snort as he leaned against the table. “Unsurprising, really, given the patterns you’ve both demonstrated. God forbid anyone get a second chance at a life well lived.” It didn’t matter what words he chose, the accusations he hurled at her in this moment -- his initial reaction was all she needed; was all that mattered. A genuine representation of the truth in the slivers of time before Ward warped it with his half-lies and excuses, twisting it into something that could be hurled back at her. Bobbi’s smile was faint, but certainly there, and though it came far from touching her eyes, it certainly told a certain truth of its own. “Aorta, shredded. A single shot would have done it.” Which was to say: no agent of Ward’s calibre would have emptied their chamber like that unless they were firing blindly, in the heat of rage. He wanted to tell her to shut up. Scream at her. Bash her over the head with the cuffs that were binding him. Anything to get her to stop talking. But none of those were options, not when he was certain if he did anything violent, he wouldn’t be coming to again. So, instead, he swallowed hard on his feelings, stamped down on his desire to make her hurt for bringing this up, and inclined his head towards her. “She deserved more than that,” Ward said, a tightness in his voice. “I left Kara here so she could recover. Not get locked up and forgotten, treated like a criminal, and forced into a position where she didn’t have any options left but the ones she took. She deserved to suffer, to drown in her own blood, looking up at me and knowing that I was the one that made sure she suffered just like she’d made others…” He said, unable to help the slight tremble that was sinking into him as he spoke. “But she wasn’t the one that came around that corner…” Poor tactical judgment. But Bobbi wasn't here to insult the dead, even if putting on the face of a woman her lover despised was certainly always going to be a disaster in a high octane combat zone. More interesting to her in this moment was the abject loathing Ward had for May. It bordered on the irrational (he had shot blindly). "And now you've fallen back to your old Nazi ways, mm? Finished with SHIELD for good, gone back to the fold." Of course she had to use that word. As if any of them believed what he’d been professing for so long, that he’d never been loyal to HYDRA, that it had only ever been Garrett who had garnered his devotion, to begin with, they certainly weren’t going to be convinced of it now when he was freeing captives and working with disenfranchised lackies with no one to report to anymore. The question was, was there even a point to explaining? They’d see it as another excuse, another bit of justification dreamt up by his deluded and deranged mind. Nobody here would recognize just how dangerous they had become, just how much they needed to be dismantled from the ground up, and none of them would understand utilizing resources from a shattered organization for your own ends without pleading yourself to their way of thinking. “SHIELD finished with me long before I did with it,” Ward said, tension in his voice as he peered across the table at Morse. They’d already done this once, and she’d obviously come away with a list of buttons to push at, probably even more informed by discussions with the others to just where the sore spots were at. “You lose any sense of loyalty you might have built when someone hands you over to be executed in a show trial.” Maybe he might not have gotten there, but that was beside the point. Coulson had made the decision, signed his life over to the one person that Ward had been more terrified of than anything or anyone else in the world, and while he had held onto hope that Coulson would be different to someone else, someone who deserved the second chance and the forgiveness that he didn’t, he’d only just proven himself in the worst possible way again. “And it seems any inkling I have to trust you people only blows up in my face.” "Some people here think loyalty sounds different when you say it." Without further comment, Bobbi edged her chair half a degree closer to the table so that she could place her hands across the featureless surface. By all appearances, her fingers were intact, with no mark upon them to show they had once been brutalised by the man now sitting across from her. "What's the end-game, Ward?" Because there had to be one past the easy return to the fold. Ward was unlike most HYDRA recruits in that way -- the words hail HYDRA didn't cross his lips, and he lacked that gleam of fanaticism. And he certainly did not appear to like the Nazi comment. “Organizational versus individual. I suppose if you were so wrapped up in SHIELD politics that you couldn’t recognize when someone who doesn’t trust easily considers you worthwhile, it would seem different,” Ward said, matching Morse’s lean, as he smiled at her last question. It wasn’t like his end-game was complicated or not particularly obvious, given some thought. But she still had to ask. She wanted clarification. They clearly wanted to know exactly what kind of threat he posed because, as always, none of them were smart enough to realize what he wanted. “I just want everyone safe, Morse,” Ward said, a soft contemplation in the words. “Too much damage has been done by people thinking they know best without understanding things beyond what they wish. And it’s only going to continue if someone doesn’t keep things in check. You, this whole outfit, if it can’t be better than what it was, it should have ended when the Captain said it should have. But I know none of you are going to go off quietly into that good night. So you need something to force your hand.” Ward, honestly, had absolutely no issue with telling them what he was up to, what he was planning. It wasn’t exactly going to be a secret nor was it something that they could prepare for. In the end, one person would succeed and one person would fail. And that’s all there was to it. A fair brow quirked up in a clear indicator of incredulity. It wasn't so much that what he was saying was so far-fetched as to be laughable -- after all, if someone would have told a hard-working SHIELD member that Captain America, standard-bearer and all around hero, was going to bring down the current iteration of SHIELD, they would have laughed and laughed, only to stare in horror as the impossible came to pass -- but that he had put himself in that position at all. Did he think himself a savior? No, Bobbi thought. Not possessed of a savior-complex. Something else. It would have been so easy to challenge him on this. What makes you suited to this? How do you know you're in the right? Why you, after all the wrongs you've committed? And even more personal: you couldn't even keep Kara safe. But instead, a faint smile. "Interesting theories, Ward." She pushed her chair back and stood up. "We're all looking forward to unwrapping them." She didn’t get it. It didn’t take a genius to recognize that. The slight lift of her eyebrow was all the evidence that Ward needed to realize that she thought that he’d gone well off the deep end, that he wasn’t making any sense, much less that his attitude was at all feasible. When she stood, tossing a dismissive comment his way, all Ward could do was smile in the face of it. “And I look forward to each of you coming to the quiet realization of just how much damage you’ve done over the past year all for the sake of keeping this stuttering behemoth lumbering on,” Ward said, a lightness in his voice that matched her smile. Anger would only lend her the upperhand in any further confrontations that they might have. “That is, if you even care anymore.” He’d be willing to wager that most of them didn’t. |