grant ward is kevlar (imkevlar) wrote in pastprologueic, @ 2015-08-21 15:35:00 |
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Entry tags: | !type: log, character: grant ward, character: leopold fitz |
WHO: Grant Ward & Leo Fitz
WHAT: Ward's already been through a small parade of visitors, but Fitz is someone he never expected to come see him voluntarily.
WHEN:
WHERE: Vault D
RATING: PG
STATUS: Log; COMPLETE
It seemed like he was getting quite the parade. Ward hadn’t had many visitors the first time around. Wounds had been too raw, anger too deep. Coulson’s silent expectant vigil. Jemma’s reluctant trips to patch him back up after he’d hurt himself yet again. Skye’s quest for information. And Fitz’s one singular visit to drive a point home. Those had been the only moments when he’d actually seen people down in the cell, and yet now, it seemed like everyone wanted a piece of him. Bobbi, May, Skye. Honestly he was still relatively surprised that Jemma hadn’t made an appearance to undo all of the work that she’d put into sewing him up the first time he’d been here. He doubted her desire to see him dead had changed in the few weeks that it had been since her last attempt. And it probably wouldn’t be hard for her to disable the camera either. It’s what he would do, if someone he wanted dead was literally in a box just waiting to be picked off, and from what he’d already seen, it seemed like Jemma had taken some rather disturbing lessons from their time together. Disturbing… disappointing lessons. She was so much better than that, so much better than him. They all were. Made rather clear by the fact that he was still breathing right now and not somewhere in the middle of the desert buried in an unmarked six foot deep hole. Truth be told, Fitz had been beside himself with relief when he discovered that Jemma had failed in her attempt on Ward’s life. Not because Fitz himself wanted Ward to live so much a he did not want that blight upon Jemma’s soul… not that Bakshi had been that much better, but somehow he worked itself out as a saving grace in his mind. Perhaps because though damned now at the very least, Ward had been one of them. Rather, posing as one of them. Whatever the case, Fitz was now as he had been for the past two months, consumed by little else but his ongoing struggle to find a way to save Jemma. After this long he was fairly certain he as the only one who still believed she was alive, even if he could no more explain the how of it, much less any sort of resolution. All of which contributed to his reverting on much of the progress he had made in getting a handle of himself since his brain damage, so that in manner and in voice he was little better than when he first awoke from his coma. Fitz was angry and when he could not bring the words to his tongue to express his rage, he resorted to incoherent obscenities directed at the Monolith. Until now. For upon hearing that the team once again had Ward in custody Fitz had left the Monolith room and went straight toward the holding area, nearly tripping down the steps before finally coming into view of Ward. “It’s yours”, he stammered, “your ah.. ah… your fau-fault!” He’d been making quiet bets to himself who would appear next. Coulson had honestly been next on the list, but seeing Fitz appear had given Ward a momentary burst of hope. A burst of hope that was rather quickly dashed as he spotted Fitz’s anger just before the words lashed his way and shattered not only his desire for a positive conversation for a change but all of the pride that he’d developed in seeing the Fitz had improved as much as he had since their initial encounter. Now…. This? Something had to have happened to push him this far back into things. “You’re going to have to be more specific, Fitz,” Ward said, voice gentle, managing a very smile sad smile as he stood, moving over towards the forcefield that separated them. “There’s quite a bit that could be classed as ‘my fault’. What are we talking about this time?” There was no flippancy, no sarcasm, nothing that he’d wielded with the others in order to protect himself from their digs. Fitz was obviously angry, very angry, and the last thing Ward wanted to do was make it seem like he thought his anger was a joke. After all, whatever it was that Fitz was accusing him of, it was more than likely that the other man was right. There was, after all, quite a lot that was his fault. There had been a time back before Ward betrayed the team that Fitz had looked toward him as a brother figure. After all, Ward had once saved Jemma’s life and his mission with the man to South Ossetia had forged a bond that he thought would be all but unbreakable. It was because of those reasons that Fitz had held onto hope for Ward’s redemption the longest, right up until he was dumped into the ocean along with Jemma. For a moment, Fitz just paced a line back and forth before the forcefield. His lack of bringing forth the right words was irritating, but the tone that Ward used with him that was vaguely parental simply made it maddening so that in the end what Fitz initially blurted out could have either been an answer or a string of obscenities. It was impossible to tell, until at last he took a breath, shook his head, and tried again. “M..ma...Me”, Fitz said in a hollow tone. “I am your fault. Because.. because of what you did to me, to Jemma.. I am like this, don’t you see?” Fitz knew he how he sounded right now but with Ward he could scarcey have cared less. He needed the man to know the full extent of his sins. “I finally told Jemma how I ah…” This time he paused, unsure whether or not he wanted Ward to know that part of it. He supposed it mattered little. “...feel. Felt. But I was awkward like now and she was working on the Monolith, and I was nervous! I wanted her to say yes and I was nervous and I opened the case.. and now, now she’s gone.. gone…” Ward was getting most of this. Even in Fitz’s frustration, the words not coming as easily as he clearly wanted them to, Ward was understanding what he was getting at. It was the same thing that he’d come down here to talk to him about before. That he’d done this damage to him, that he’d put him into this position and turned him from a genius into something broken. Except he wasn’t broken. He’d recovered, improved. Coulson wouldn’t have had him out in the field, even in the most dire of situations, if he wasn’t in the position to take care of himself out there. But as quickly as his understanding had came, it vanished as Fitz started talking about things that he didn’t quite grasp. Oh, he understood about his feelings. Ward can recognized how Fitz felt about Jemma long before, back when they had still considered him a friend, and with the knowledge that things were going to continue to come crashing down around them, had tried to encourage the other man to be open and honest about the way that he felt. Not that it had been advice that he’d taken in that moment, but now… “Gone? What do you mean gone?” Ward asked, the concern in his voice obvious even as his brow furrowed to try and figure out what sort of leaps Fitz had made that he didn’t have all of the answers to. “What’s a Monolith? Fitz, what happened?” As Ward asked his own questions, Fitz had himself resorted to furiously rubbing his temple as if the action would bestow upon him some sort of clarity. Some sort of focus. But it worked no better down here than it had before the Monolith and while Ward’s voice was the only sound at present, it was mostly just Jemma’s scream that he heard, at least for the most part. Fitz could tell mostly what Ward had asked by looking at the man and for a moment he considered keeping it to himself before he just broke, his shoulders seeming to somehow slump further than they had already. “Gone… The Monolith is some.. some alien rock, some sort of artifact and after I accidentally opened it and left Jemma alone to go…” Fitz decided not to mention that he was going to try to find a dating locale. “...it.. the Monolith.. it somehow… somehow…” He knew the word he wanted, could practically visualize it and yet it only came with a struggle. “...liquified and fell upon her.. drew her into itself.” His features paled as he played out the moment that he could recall to the most minute detail. And somehow in that nightmare he momentarily did find his voice. “That was two months ago. Everyone thinks she is dead and I… I am running out of explanations as to how she could still be alive… inside of a rock.” Tears formed in Fitz’s eyes and turned away sharply to wipe at them. “...And it all started at the bottom of the ocean…” “Well, that explains why she hasn’t come to finish the job,” Ward murmured, mostly to himself but it was almost certainly loud enough for Fitz to hear. He didn’t know whether or not Fitz knew about Jemma’s plans that she’d attempted to enact, but he was willing to bet that if anyone on the team had been aware, it was the man in front of him. So there likely wasn’t any concern in expressing the thought. Still. It wasn’t exactly the most important concern here. Jemma had been missing, disappeared and presumed dead through contact with an alien artifact, and while Fitz seemed to still be holding out hope, however tenuous it might be in the moment, there was only so long that an organization like SHIELD would humor such things. Particularly when it seemed to be affecting him in the way that it was. “Fitz. Breathe,” Ward said, his voice calm, even, an attempt to be reassuring even though he knew he was the least likely face to be able to achieve that in this moment much less this situation. “We’ve run into worse things than this.” We’ve. They’ve. Maybe it wasn’t the smartest idea to include himself in an attempt as solidarity after everything, but if everyone else was so certain that Jemma was a goner, Fitz needed someone to tell him otherwise. Hope was the only thing he had left, and that, Ward already knew, was not something you took away from someone. You could break them if you did. “The Chitauri virus, the Berserker staff, the Overkill, Lorelei, the Diviners, none of those managed to get us down and out. We just had to figure out how to deal with them. That’s it. And that’s the roadblock here.” He said, moving slowly closer to the forcefield, quietly hating its presence. He understood what it was for. He was a danger. They couldn’t take any chances, but separated like this, he only ended up feeling figidity because there was nothing he could do to try and calm Fitz down. “And it’s not a rock,” Ward said, feeling oddly assured on something all science mumbojumbo-y. He might not know the specifics, geological composition and all of that, but he did know one thing. “Rocks don’t liquify. They’re solid. They don’t change shape much less eat people.” Ward paused, frowning to himself at Fitz’s last statement, a heaviness falling on his shoulders. The last time they’d done this, he’d tried to explain, tried to tell Fitz his rationale for dropping them, in the hopes that he’d see, understand why it had been the only option available, but now… With this, with all of this, Ward knew that his rationale wasn’t enough. “I’m sorry, Fitz. It should have worked. It should have worked right, but I don’t know why it didn’t. And you paid the price because I didn’t factor that in, didn’t consider that the pod might not realize you needed buoyancy more than air. It wasn’t like you guys were ejected into space….” Ward paused, the words probably not the right ones but setting off something else in his mind, “Did you check to see whether it reconfigured itself? After it closed up,” Ward asked softly. “To make room for her… I mean… We don’t exactly know how species other than the Asgardians get here, do we? It… could be some type of pod. Stasis for spaceflight…?” Okay, he was really just throwing things at the wall and hoping something stuck. Fitz let the comment about Jemma slide. There was no denying it was a logical thought for Ward to have, and he saw no use in trying to deny it. Particularly since he had the suspicion that Jemma had partially done it for him, which was also the reason he was glad that she had failed in the attempt. Not that Ward did not deserve it for his other crimes… For what it was worth, Fitz actually did take a breath as he listened. They really all had been through a lot, even before Ward’s turn and even more in the aftermath of it. He had seen things he had never dreamed of, and been a part of scientific processes he had never before fathomed. But the Monolith, it was something else entirely. An anomaly he could not figure out and he had no doubt a lot of it had to do with how personally attached he was to the task at hand. Whether or not Jemma would ever express or reciprocate his own feelings for her she remained his best friend in all the world, and without her he no longer felt whole. “Trip would have something to say about us getting down and out… if he was alive, that is”, Fitz lamented. He knew Ward meant well but he could not help his own tongue. He also thought about explaining that he knew it was not a rock, but thought better of it. Black hearted or not there was no use in insulting Ward now. Especially as the man was attempting to apologize to him once again. Perhaps.. perhaps if Ward had possessed the true scientific knowledge to guide his actions it could have ended differently. In that light he could almost bring himself to appreciate what Ward had tried to do instead of resorting to bullets. And in that vein, he could have almost forgiven him too… if not for the bullet he had put into Hand’s head and how he had tortured Bobbi, among other things. Fitz, having composed himself once more, looked at Ward and shook his head slowly in response to his suggestion and attempts at being helpful. “I could.. write a doctoral thesis on the myriad solutions I have come up with and those are among them.. ultimately the Monolith did reconfigure which means she is either beyond it, somehow still inside and thus making the structure denser or well….” He decided not to finish the rest of it as there was no need. Instead he turned toward Ward, inclining his head slightly to look the taller man in the eyes as he spoke. He had to get back to Jemma but if this proved to be his last time seeing Ward, he had something to get off his chest. “Before I go there is ah.. there is one more thing I want you to know…” Trip. It had taken Ward a moment to sort out why he’d been absent when he’d arrived at the Playground on Coulson’s orders. It had seemed like a rather massive omission, that Trip wasn’t arriving in the halls to glare at him and throw a few barbs his way. They’d had a friendly rivalry… before. Before things had all went to hell, and it was was one of the reasons Ward was sure Trip had been excessively silent about so much of what had gone down in the aftermath, even when he’d had the opportunity to speak up. Because he’d known Ward knew exactly what he had to say anyway. Golden Boy turned out to not be so golden. He’d been expecting to hear it when they landed, along with a few sharp threats and an offhanded joke about letting wolves back into the flock or something else as corny but on the nose. It wasn’t until May and Coulson had lead him and Kara deeper into the base, allowing him a good look at their full compliment, that he’d realized what had to have happened. He hadn’t voiced the realization, though. It hadn’t been his place or the proper time. Instead, he’d swallowed it down, pushed it deep into his gut with everything else, and gotten on with the mission at hand. It had helped that everyone’s distrust of him provided a distraction, a reason to be flippant and push the boundaries given that they needed him then. Now, though? Not so much. “Trip probably would have had a lot to say… and been more helpful overall,” Ward said, a heaviness in his words. “More so than a trigger jockey whose only knowledge is tactical and lethal… and is trapped behind a laser grid anyway.” Ward went silent, listening to Fitz’s explanation, nodding along and frowning as he trailed off. He knew what Fitz meant, what he wasn’t willing to say, and he couldn’t blame him for that. The sudden shift, though, moved Ward’s attention, worry sinking into his features. “If it’s how much you hate me, I already gathered that much during the Antarctic mission,” Ward said softly. Fitz had felt something of a rivalry with Trip as well although for entirely different reasons. For him it had not been a one up so much as a distinct jealousy he had felt when Jemma was around and more than once Fitz had feared that the man would speak the words to her that he had tried and failed to speak so often himself. But in the end Fitz had been as disheartened as the rest by Trip’s loss. The man had been loyal, kind, and brave. Attributes that Fitz used to like to attach to Ward himself. “We all have our… uses”, Fitz said. Ward trying to suggest ideas Fitz had not thought of regarding the Monolith may have been comparable to Fitz giving him advice on infiltrating an enemy installation but the man could not be faulted for trying to be helpful. When he seemed to really get Ward’s attention, his one time team mate almost looked a little unrecognizable behind the worried expression as it was not one that Fitz had often seen him wear even in the most dire of circumstances. Fitz drew in a breath, not wanting to muddle his words when he spoke them and waved a hand dismissively at Ward’s assumption before he began. “I want you to know that.. that I loved you. Like a brother. That it broke my heart when you betrayed us and…” His voice wavered a bit but somehow he managed not to stutter. “I hope you can one day begin to accept responsibility for your actions… and stop blaming everyone else…” Fitz turned to leave but paused mid-step as he considered his own advice. “I… I forgive you.. for the ocean.. but I can’t forgive you for everything else you have done to us. I wish I could.” That… was not what Ward had been expecting at all. And of all the things he’d braced himself to hear in the split second between Fitz’s initial words and the ones that followed, that was so much better and so much worse at the exact same time than anything that had crossed his mind. He was stunned, knocked silent as he watched Fitz turn to leave. There was so much he wanted to say, so many things warring for dominance in his head when there was only time to say one thing, if that. And while there was a part of him that wanted to insist, again, that he had accepted responsibility, that he just wanted them to see and understand how much of an effect his family and Garrett had had on his behavior and the poor choices that he made, there was no sense in wasting this moment on that. “Some people don’t deserve forgiveness, Fitz,” Ward said, turning himself, since there wasn’t much more that he could do, and settling down on the edge of the cot, hands gripping the side and knuckles going white as he tried to keep himself together until the other man left. “Especially when they have no idea how to be better than what they are.” |