grant ward is kevlar (imkevlar) wrote in pastprologueic, @ 2015-08-21 15:34:00 |
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Bobbi, Coulson, May. The big three were down and out of the way, having had their say on his current situation. Not that there was much to say for most of them. Wasn’t this what they expected for him, where they imagined he would end up eventually? Oh, sure, Coulson had other plans, ones that involved turning him into someone else entirely, but since that was never going to happen, this was what they were left with. Four walls and a cot. Well, three walls, a cot, and an impenetrable laser grid, but who was splitting hairs? He knew he was being isolated because of the threat of escape, that if there was anyone down here with him on the regular, he might be able to get himself into a position to disable their security, to get out of the Playground and back to freedom. They had to be well aware that he’d only stayed before because he’d wanted to, not because of any of the measures that they had in place. Every system had its weaknesses, after all, and Ward was no stranger to cracking them. But right now, he just didn’t have the energy or the desire. Seeing May had left him worked up only to come crashing back down, emotionally, once the swell of rage and bitterness and hurt had passed. Because at the core of it, even as much as he tried to shut out that part of himself that kept insisting he knew exactly why he hated her so much, it was the fact that she’d fallen so so far from the person that he’d respected and cared for at one point. They all had, in the worst ways, and it was disheartening to see these people that he loved so fragmented, broken, and hard. Particularly knowing he was at least partly to blame. Leaning back against the wall of the cell, having exhausted himself with pacing but still too wired to lay down, Ward tipped his gaze left and right, trying not to make it obvious that he knew exactly where to look for the camera. But he couldn’t help but wonder exactly how many of them had been watching this nonstop parade of visitors. Coulson could keep Skye busy running from one end of the country to another, hitting up leads and following dusty trails to index and ‘save’ the Inhumans whose presence was not so watched over by Afterlife anymore. Lincoln could be a strictly positive force in her life, helping her heal and hone her abilities within the same breath. But beneath the newly-forming power; beneath the uncrackable Agent there lay that same darkly vulnerable girl. And that was the one Grant Ward knew only too well. With less than 24 hours slated for their return to base, she’d made short work of packing herself off to ‘write up some files’ … in the chair placed directly in front of his cell. Maybe Coulson had his eyes on them. Or maybe her little waves and tremors interrupted the feeds long enough to make the image just this side of wavy. So you know it’s me. They’d been here before. God, they’d probably manage it again. I’d been there before. Of my own volition. Then, finally, her usual bright and cheery -- “Heya, Ward.” Good cop, bad cop? Was that the play here? No. It seemed unlikely that May would sanction such a play especially when she knew just how much he affected Skye. Or at least, had. He wasn’t so sure he had any influence left. Which was probably a good thing. Shifting his gaze to where Skye had appeared as the opaque wall dropped, arching a slow, curious eyebrow at her greeting, Ward pushed himself away from the wall and stepped towards the barrier, “Come to gloat? I can only assume, since Coulson & May have already given me the 3rd degree on top of what Morse laid down. So if you’re fishing for information, there’s not much left to get out of me.” “ … information? Gloating?” That falsely chirping greeting was the prelude to an eyeroll. Skye had allowed her walls to drop here. No more of the coldly calculating SHIELD agent with the Inhuman abilities. This was her. And it was also precisely why they’d probably all end up mad at her afterward. “I don’t know, Ward. Is that what you want?” “Isn’t what I want a moot point?” Ward asked, arms crossing over his chest as he tipped his head towards her. He wasn’t entirely sure what she was playing at right now, but it had to be something. He couldn’t imagine a situation where all she wanted to do was just talk. That ship had sailed… awhile ago. “Pretty sure the electrified laser grid is specifically designed to make sure what I want doesn’t happen.” "No. But --" she paused. "What would you do, Ward, if I took it down?" They'd been pawns in these sorts of thought experiments before. Usually, she had been on the other side of them, waiting for the truth to be revealed. But as much as the truth was inherently less desirable than the lie she had fed herself, as much as Cal enjoyed his new quiet life, she could trust it. And Skye also trusted her abilities to incapacitate him. But she could also bring down the entire building. "Nothing worthwhile." What would he do? What could he do? There was little chance that he could get past her, and even if he did manage it without her breaking every bone in his body with what she was now capable of doing, there would be the entire base between him and any exit. And while he might not be at as much of a disadvantage in that realm as he had been, what with now having a pretty decent mental map of the layout, that still meant getting past everyone, most of whom wouldn’t hesitate to shoot to kill. And where would he even go? The people he’d been working with had probably scattered at this point. Most HYDRA agents knew when to cut and run, and a full on SHIELD assault? Nothing screamed ‘cut and run’ more than coming up against one of those. “Probably just stand here,” Ward answered with a shrug. “Not much else I can do.” “Oh, I think that isn’t true.” Skye believed that the Grant Ward she knew was consistently looking for the weak point; somewhere, somehow he’d find it and exploit it, then he’d slip out again. She had no doubt that this would happen. “Some bad acting is just instinct after a while.” Just like me being here. Nothing good to come of sitting under his nose. Nothing positive to gain from watching him bake. But there was so much unresolved that she couldn’t help but be drawn along, hoping to bring the narrative to some kind of satisfying conclusion. Ward smiled, a slightly sarcastic expression as he stared down Skye, “Fine. There’s plenty of things I could do. But most of them would end with me either incapacitated or, knowing May, dead. So, for the moment, I am content right where I am. Should that change, I’ll let you know,” He said, a slight sneer in the words before he turned, walking over and sitting down on the cot. “What do you want, Skye? Or is this just my momentary reprieve before Coulson sends Morse back in?” That old Ward, the one who taught her and cajoled her, the one he swore was him despite the manifold reasons to distrust him -- that Ward had to be dead. Or buried beneath all these layers of trussed up violently wounded pride … “I’m sorry Kara died.” Ward tensed, posture going rigid as he tried to tamp down on the sudden burst of emotion that swelled in him. Part of him wanted to yell, that she didn’t care, that none of them cared, but ultimately, what happened hadn’t been Skye’s fault. She had no more control over Coulson or May’s actions than he did. Another part of him wanted to cry, but he wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of that, of seeing him brought low by the echoing memory of his… the result of May’s actions. “May knew what she was doing when she made that call,” Ward said, his voice dull, monotone. “She wanted her dead, probably just as much as she wants me dead now. Why not use me as the weapon to get it done? Saves anymore blood on her hands.” “You think she knew Kara would put her face on? Last time I checked, she hadn’t passed through any terrigen crystals, Ward. So …” Own your actions. “You can put a lot on May, but give yourself enough credit to recognize what happened.” All while Bobbi bled out in tandem. The stories were too parallel, too easy to read as text. She swallowed. “We’ve all got our shit, Ward. And it either becomes us or we … I dunno. I dunno what we do about it.” Ward gritted his teeth, looking up at Skye with a flash in his eyes, “She didn’t have to be able to predict the future, Skye. She’s a strategist. We’re taught to measure these outcomes, weigh the potential for what’s going to happen with each choice before making a move, and she knew how it was likely to play out, telling the men she was with not to do anything until they could see her face. She knew that Kara would want to take advantage of that, and that I was probably gunning for her at the same time. She knew what kind of collision she was setting up. She knew….” Ward’s voice broke, trailing off into silence as he slowly shifted, tucking his legs up underneath him as he pulled in on himself. “This is what she wanted,” Ward said softly, a certain measure in his voice that spoke to him having convinced himself of something rather than it being strictly the truth. “Kara dead. Me responsible. What better way to prove that I’m nothing more than a monster?” “Well, I can think of about a million different ways to prove people wrong but whatever. The die’s been cast, I see …” Ward’s fatalism could have been erased by TAHITI. But Coulson’s own single-minded quest to remember would eventually win the day for any of them under the influence of that technology. Even, probably, her father. But eventualities were not the topic of their discussion. “You want to be a monster.” She smiled. “That’s funny. Remember when we thought that was me?” “I don’t want to be a monster, Skye. I already am. I always have been,” Ward said. Even when he was younger, while Christian might have been calling the shots, he was the one that was carrying them out. It had just been a long steady slide downhill from there. “What I want doesn’t matter. Never has.” Ward paused, looking up at Skye with a thoughtful look, “They’re going to see you as one. Maybe not the team, but the rest of SHIELD. The people Coulson has assembled to help him. That’s all you’ll ever be to them. The useful freak and potential threat.” “ -- Ward!” Both feet found the floor and Skye stood abruptly, coming to the edge of Ward’s cell. Though she didn’t reach out, she could feel the energy from the forcefield reach out as if to greet her. Hello the atoms seemed to say; seemed to remember her. And with wide eyes, she shook her head at him slowly. “Stop. It’s your choice. Stop. You choose monster or man.” Laughter bubbled out of him, a knee-jerk reaction even though he knew that he really shouldn’t laugh at her sincerity. It was nice to think that there was still that part of her left that clung to the simplest solutions to the problems of the world, that thought that reality allowed for things like the a choice to settle something far more complicated than that. “That’s not how the world works, Skye,” Ward said, a heaviness sinking into him as the laughter passed. “You can’t change what you’ve been made into, no matter how much you want to. I tried… I tried, and all it did was get people killed. If people are going to die because of me, I would rather it be the ones that I want…” Which was perhaps the worst way to put that, but it was also the most honest. “You are literally …” Skye chewed on the inside of her cheek, willing herself to remain calm, willing the atoms within the forcefield to quit reaching for her as she pressed her hands deep within her pockets. Ward tripped all the stupid triggers in the walls she’d so carefully constructed. A deep breath. “You couldn’t be more wrong. Letting people define you will just continue to mean your whole world is reduced to this box, your whole world is reduced to … everything you hate. It could be different. But I really think you don’t want it. I think you don’t want it because that would mean you were responsible for yourself.” And that was different than his entire existence… how? In all truth, Ward wasn’t really sure how to exist outside of someone else’s preconceived notions. He wanted to, strongly, even if there was a part of him that was afraid like she was implying, after of stepping outside of the confines because of what it might mean in the long run and how much more damage he would do that he didn’t at least have something else to rationalize it with in his mind no matter how much he understood his own responsibility in the results. But he wasn’t sure he even could. He’d been the problem child, the bad son, the mentally damaged delinquent, the child for whom nothing could be done. And he’d been the weakling, the throw away, the disappointment, the delicate little mama’s boy (Garrett had loved that one because of how much it had made him twitch) who would never amount to anything if he kept letting his heart lead rather than his head. And now he was the traitor, the psychopath, the deluded son of a bitch who didn’t care who he hurt as long as he got his way. And in all honesty, it wasn’t a great chasm between those three things. He’d been playing the same role most of his life. And stepping out of it, even when he’d tried to on his own, was terrifying. “Maybe,” Ward said, the word barely a whisper as he stared Skye down. “But maybe it’s not all as easy as that, either.” “Maybe,” she repeated, “you’ll never actually know.” Because Skye had been a monster, Skye had been complicit in a domestic tableau she hadn’t ever understood, she had been an orphan and everything she’d ever been defined as hadn’t been her. Not even Inhuman. She wasn’t sure that she was ever an actual SHIELD agent, even. But she knew Skye. “Because you aren’t willing to entertain anything different.” There was a prolonged silence, Ward shifting to cross his arms over his chest as he looked away from Skye, not wanting to confirm her statement but not able to full out deny it either. He wanted to be. He’d tried to be. But it was obvious that he didn’t have the means to be. So why should he continue trying and failing? What was the point? “I see Coulson’s taunt you the art of the guilt trip,” Ward half mumbled. “If you’re quite done?” “This isn’t a guilt trip and it isn’t Coulson.” She shrugged. “It’s all me.” Weeks on the road and dealing with the anger regarding her mother had given Skye a new center; she’d always been earnest, but now it had its own set of teeth. She took a step back. “I’ll see you later.” “I guess so,” Ward said, glancing back up at her as she stepped away from the cell. “Since I imagine I’m going to be here indefinitely. Or at least, until the new board comes to some sort of consensus on what to do with me.” “Probably. Could be worse, though.” Dead, in the midst of HYDRA, she could think of a million things but suddenly the TAHITI program was amongst the worst of them. And as her gaze fell, she turned from him to walk away. Ward’s own issues smacked too close to her own. They were two sides of the same coin. And on the other side of the door, she sagged, her cheek hitting the cool, thick metal. Ward would continue to exhaust her and she would continue to strive with him for as long as she could. Though there were no regrets -- for all the hurt, all the physical ramifications of what they did to one another -- she wasn’t giving up on him now. |