There was of course a moments hesitation before he returned the handshake but Ward figured Cap for having more honor than that. Enough to hear him out at least before deciding what move to make next. He was being polite, willing to listen, Ward just wasn't sure he knew where to start, what he wanted to hear, which was an unusual situation for someone like him.
"What would be the point in not? You want to know my motives, want to know if there's an agenda. And sure, maybe back home I'd have been able to work a way around this but here, you can see my whole damn life story on the tv if you wanted."
He didn't think he'd ever stop resenting that, he didn't know if Cap had seen it, if it was something the man would do before meeting him. Know your enemy and all that. He didn't think so but then this guy was suprisingly hard to read. That or he actually meant this second chance thing.
"I didn't sign up out of SHIELD. I was always in SHIELD as a means to an end. But believe it or not that end wasn't HYDRA, not really. I was there for someone else, someone high up who didn't give a damn about their whole endgame, about Insight any of it, I didn't know about Insight till you blew it out of the sky. I'm not just another Nazi. I can promise you that."
Next would come the hard part. Explaining why he did it. Why he'd knowingly gone into SHIELD ready to betray, to kill at a moments notice. Explaining John Garrett meant explaining his past, his childhood. His brother.
"I was there on the order of a man who saved me from a life of nothing. Saved me from being a weak scared kid who'd grow up to be a pathetic lowlife. I owed him and he was dying. He was slowly falling apart because SHIELD left him to die after he'd served them half his life. Left him with nothing, no extraction, half dead. I was there to find a way to save that man. No matter the price."