akela amador (killtheswitch) wrote in thedoorway, @ 2015-09-22 20:16:00 |
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Entry tags: | !log, akela amador, grant ward |
WHO: Amador & Ward
WHAT: getting drinks
WHEN: a day or so after the eel prank (backdated)
WHERE: random bar
WARNINGS: spy stuff?
Most days, it still took a lot of effort for Akela to sort through the interpersonal aspects of working with her team. It had gotten somewhat easier as she’d gotten to know her teammates better, and learned how to relate to them; it was one part honesty, one part imitation. Some of them required more honesty and depth from her than others.
Ward was one of those. Although she’d resented him at first, she’d been able to let it go almost immediately. A grudge was no use to her. He, on the other hand, was useful. And although she continued to hold a part of her mind back, analyzing him with distrust, it was no more (and no less) than she did with anyone else. Befriending him, even trusting him a little, gave the highest probability of keeping his loyalty -- to her, to the team, to SHIELD and its mission.
And as time went on, she’d discovered that she genuinely liked him as a person. It seemed like that might even be mutual.
He was dealing with his brother being so high profile, and she couldn’t tell if the eel prank had really helped anything. She was still dubious of the real point of pranks, aside from their worth in bonding with her teammates as fellow pranksters, and a little bit of amusement (which she supposed counted for more than she would have figured, once upon a time). But either way, what was done was done, and she’d taken credit for her part in it. At least they had gotten rid of the eels. And she’d decided to buy Ward a drink or two, because it seemed like he needed it.
She grabbed their drinks from the bar, and slid into the booth next to him, sliding his across the table. Wrapping her hands around her own cold beer, she closed her eyes briefly and turned her head slowly, taking in their surroundings through the backscatter imaging in her eye. Satisfied that their surroundings were clear, she opened her eyes again and looked at him.
“So,” she said, deciding to just bite the bullet -- so to speak. “Do I owe you an apology as well as a drink?”
--
Grant's head was spinning. In some ways it had been way simpler in solitary confinement. It had given him plenty of opportunities to think about things he'd had no interest in spending that much time thinking about, yes, but it had been relatively clear how Skye felt about him. It had been relatively clear what role he was likely to play in the near future. His family had been a distant thought he wasn't likely to consider again. It had been simpler.
But it hadn't been good. So in its own way this complication was to be desired. But now he had Natasha asking him his advice on his own brother, and Grant had no advice on his own brother. Christian Ward was a truly terrible human being - maybe it was something that ran in the family - and he was currently at the top of his terrible game. That Natasha was one of those being harmed by his brother's game - was something that had made Grant angrier than he'd anticipated. But for whatever reason Natasha seemed to believe he was capable of something more and that his life held value and that wasn't something that had happened frequently in Grant's life - perhaps it never had.
The eels, Skye, the fact that she'd believed him when he'd said it wasn't her, and that she'd allowed him to come over, and that she'd kissed him before he left - these were all ridiculously complicated questions that Grant hadn't really had time to struggle through. But he had got a kiss. Skye was speaking to him. And however much of a dick Jasper could be at times, Grant hadn't detected actual maliciousness underneath the poem and the basket of eels.
He shrugged with a bit of a smile and shook his head. "Nah. If Skye had decided to take delivered seafood as further reason to hate me, we might be having a different conversation, but she didn't, so you're off the hook. Was the poem your idea?"
--
There were times and places when people pretended they weren’t holding grudges. There were good reasons for it, especially in their line of work, and Akela had done it on multiple occasions herself. But she saw no sign of subterfuge in his answer, and it was true that she also hadn’t picked up any signals that Skye might have been genuinely angry about about her gift, so she took it at face value.
She hadn’t really seen the point of pranks before. But maybe Romanoff and Sitwell were onto something there.
“Working for HYDRA does make delivered seafood look tame by comparison,” she said lightly, with a hint of a smile at the corner of her mouth. “Yes. The poem was my idea.”
--
Grant allowed the wince to show just slightly. He could have hidden it and at one time he would have done so without thinking about it at all, but his life had a different look to it now. One where he was attempting to be more honest in his interactions at least with those few who seemed that they might be willing to care about his real thoughts not merely those that were offered in the act. He couldn't say that the memory of HYDRA was an easy one, it wasn't particularly when you factored in how angry Skye had been at him over it. But Akela wasn't wrong. And whatever Skye's end game - at the moment she was willing to talk to him and he'd take that.
If that made him a little bit desperate then he would just have to deal with it.
"Well, we both had a good laugh over it," he said aloud allowing himself a small smile. "Which, to be honest is probably the first time we've had a laugh together since HYDRA so - maybe I should even thank you."
--
Akela saw the wince, but she was expecting it. She was doing the honest thing, too -- and that meant that they weren’t going to tiptoe around the subject of HYDRA. She wouldn’t do it with her own past, and wasn’t going to do it with Ward. Not that she was going to remind him of it at every opportunity, or with the intention of hurting him. She just wasn’t going to avoid it when it came up, either -- not when there was no other reason to keep quiet, at least.
“Good,” she said. She’d gauged it to be funny and relatively harmless, but her calculations didn’t always account very well for human sentiments. Thoughtfully, she added, “Maybe there really is something about pranks that brings people together.”
--
Ward took a sip of his drink and shook his head, but there was a small smile. "I wouldn't have really thought so, but maybe there is something to it after all. There was the whole thing with Roger's apartment. For fairness though, I'm quite alright with us pranking other people in the future, like say Sitwell deserves a prank I'd wager."
But his tone was good natured, and he was more relaxed than he would have been several months ago. It was difficult to keep tension going long-term, and slowly he'd begun to believe the team wasn't going to stab him in the back - at least not right away. And Akela had even seemed to care. As had Natasha. and the fact that he was thinking of either of them on a first name basis was sign enough that something had changed a bit for him.
And of course now Natasha and the Avengers were being targeted by his brother and while Ward normally would have chosen to ignore anything that had to do with Christian, he found that he couldn't do that in this situation. Maybe it was because Natasha had bothered to care when no one else had. Maybe it was just that he was tired of wrongs being done. Not that he was even all that sure about what wrongs were - but it didn't feel like Captain America was supposed to be on the wrong side of things.
"How have you been, minus pranking and poem writing?" he asked instead, switching his mind back into the moment at hand and turning his attention to Akela.
--
“There’s plenty of science to suggest that laughter contributes to social bonding,” Akela said, thoughtfully. She was willing to give it that much credence, at least, even if she didn’t always see how something was funny. The prank on Steve Rogers hadn’t made much of an impression on her. Skye, however, was someone she knew more personally, and so was Ward. She wouldn’t have chosen eels if they hadn’t almost literally fallen into her lap, but the seafood had leant itself fairly well to puns and poems, and she’d found it funny. Thankfully, so had Skye and Ward. “So as long as it’s a funny prank, there’s something to it. The team that pranks together stays together.”
She smiled, genuinely, and there was even a little light of mischief in her eye. “Well, he did start it. Almost seems like he was asking for it.”
It had been her doing as well, of course, but not her idea. That said, at the rate things were going, it seemed likely that she would also be pranked soon enough. Although she couldn’t say she particularly relished the idea, neither was she particularly upset by it.
The question gave her a little bit of pause. How was she? About the same as she always was; she maintained a fairly even keel. Not much could get under her skin, at this point.
She shrugged. “Working,” she said. It barely even occurred to her that ‘working’ was what she was doing, and not how. It seemed to be one and the same. “Watching the news. Feeding the cats. I suppose I should try doing something a little more exciting.”
--
Grant couldn't help the smile that followed. And to be honest, there was no particular malice against Sitwell. He was reasonably certain Sitwell didn't like him much, and he couldn't say that he was overly fond of the other agent in return, but he had learned to work with him. He was part of the team, and he was a part of the team that Grant was increasingly realizing he wouldn't particularly want to have to hurt or be in a situation where he needed to make a call that would put Sitwell in a place where he could get hurt. It maybe wasn't much to go on, but it was something - a start - perhaps towards something more. Perhaps Natasha would be pleased. Or maybe it would just be what she was expecting. Sometimes it was difficult to say.
He tilted his head at Akela though. There was no particular clue as to the how in the statements she made - but what she was doing worked, for the moment. It wasn't that unlike what he was doing, except that right now everything he was doing was undergirded by the knowledge of what his brother was saying and calling for and the fact that it was his brother was perhaps underneath all of that. He didn't really know what to say, or how to help -- he just hated that Natasha was at the front of a shitstorm that Christian was helping to stir. It seemed appropriate though, because Christian had always had the ability to turn something that Grant cared about to ash.
He took a sip of his drink and nodded. "Well, there is that aforementioned prank idea, but we'll have to come up with something that qualifies for 'a little more exciting'. I'm pretty certain my barometer for 'exciting' is set wrong too. Like - with this job and my life, I might not know exciting if it came and bit me on the ass." He hesitated a moment before carefully adding: "The news is a bit like a train wreck recently."
--
Natasha was at the front of the shitstorm, but Akela was keenly aware of the fact that it might end up affecting her, too. The Avengers were the biggest headline right now, but the White Event affected types had also been under scrutiny, along with everyone else with superpowers. Thankfully, her power wasn’t flashy, didn’t cause swarms of butterflies or electrical surges, and when she used it, there were usually very few people around to observe her. In general, Akela kept a low profile. But she had been on the Ascension along with the others, and there was a record of that, including her arrest. And there was always the possibility that she might start to glow in the dark again…
It was more public for Natasha, and she didn’t like that, either. Even if Akela was still learning to trust anyone herself, Natasha had put a lot of trust in her, and she had given her back her purpose and her job. She had flown a quinjet and gone into space for Natasha. There wasn’t much else she wouldn’t do, if the situation called for it.
“I’m pretty sure everything we do qualifies as exciting,” she said lightly, even though her mind had turned to the other topic already. “And things are definitely getting even more heated, what with all the attention we’re getting. It’s a lot easier to do this job when we can work in the shadows, but sometimes we can’t really help it.” She glanced over at him, gauging whether or not to bring up any of the specific details. In the end, she didn’t. “If we can prevent a trainwreck, we will. Otherwise we’ll work around it.”
--
Grant considered the cup in front of him. It was easier to work in the shadows. Then again so much of what he'd done had been in the shadows. So much of what he still did was - really - because LEOPARD was its own thing and had a different structure even than normal SHIELD and SHIELD itself was different than it had been. Christian was reminding him that there was a cost to being public. Then again, maybe the shadows hadn't been so great for him either. He frowned and took a sip of the cup.
"Maybe we can prevent one. And maybe it's not so bad to shine light in places occasionally," he raised an eyebrow. "Which isn't to say that I like the idea particularly. I'm more comfortable in the shadows too. I sometimes wonder how Romanoff does what she does and continues to do what she does with so much of a spotlight on her. And sometimes I wonder how long before that spotlight catches one of us in it. But - we can work around that too I suspect."
Unless Christian was involved and then Grant wondered what his brother would have to say about him. Well, he knew - or he had a fair idea - and it wouldn't be anything good. Why people gave credence to the words politicians said was at times beyond him. Most politicians didn't know anything about what was really behind the scenes. And his brother had always liked hearing himself talk. What was annoying was that other people apparently enjoyed it too.
"Maybe if we do our work well then we'll get the spotlight to move on," he said softly lifting the glass. "Here's to the shadows."