InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "Think happy thoughts"

Peter Parker (itsallspandex) wrote in wariscoming,
@ 2014-09-22 22:22:00

Entry tags:

grant ward, peter parker/spider-man

Peter & Ward; Post-hunt musings and such
Sunday, September 21, 2014; A bar in Minnesota
TBD; In progress

Peter may have technically been too young to be drinking, but that didn't stop him from ducking into the bar with Ward anyway.

The ghoul that the pair had hunted down had been tricky, but in the end Peter and Ward pulled through. It was sort of in the job description. He had noticed the cold demeanor in his co-worker and fellow hunter, but Peter pushed it aside. There were plenty of things being said about the man on the boards, some behind filters, others decidedly not. But so far, Peter had no issues with him, personally. He didn't agree with what he'd done to Loki, but that was a situation he would not touch with a ten foot pole. Too many opinions flying around and no one needed that kind of thing.

Peter had taken the hunt only in part due to the "needed to be done" aspect of it all. Mostly, he'd just wanted to avoid thinking about the fact that one of the new arrivals looked identical to his dead girlfriend, save the fact her hair was red instead of blonde. Facetwins were usually a non-issue for him, he'd even had one for awhile once and he didn't really mind it. But this was different. This was Gwen. Or, rather, it distinctly wasn't, and he really wasn't sure what was worse. So, he decided to avoid the thoughts, throw himself entirely into this hunt, and it had been fine.

They were close enough to Lawrence that, even though it was just after five, the two decided they had some time for a beer before heading back. Peter may have technically been too young to be drinking, but that didn't stop him from ducking into the bar with Ward and having a beer anyway. "To a successfully completed hunt," he offered, raising his beer in Ward's general direction before taking a sip.

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notanazi
2014-09-22 03:17 pm UTC (link)

Ward still wasn't sure why he'd agreed to teamwork again. Maybe cause it was the only way Singer gave out hunts, maybe just cause he had gotten used to it. He might have been lying to coulson but he really did do better on his own. Less worried about what he could do to get the job done. Parker was a good kid, a good fighter but Ward knew the type. The kid was just the type that would wind up waiting in the wings to be an Avenger someday. He was pretty sure Cap would approve of him.

Parker's thoughts had been elsewhere for much of the hunt but he hadn't let it phase him. He got the job done, did it right. No showboating. No trying to be more than he was. He was good at what he did and Ward could tell he'd earned the reputation. He'd work with him again.

Also the web thing was useful. Much as he was sure Simmons would want to study him.

They'd stopped at a bar more for a destress than anything else. A couple days away from the return of that damn show and Ward really wanted to be anywhere but there. So bar it was, yeah the kid wasn't 21 but Ward didn't care. He was old enough to hunt, he was old enough to drink. Of course if he threw up in the car, kid was on his own.

Ward clinked the beer glass in return and took a drink of the beer he'd picked. "We did alright. Like to have gotten it quicker but it wasn't stupid."

He probably could have just taken the compliment, the success thing. But by now it seemed Grant Ward was hardwired to look for the negitives in what he'd done. Just a slip up, one slip up in the usual slightly cocky demeanor.

"But hey, dead ghoul means one less, right?" he tried

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itsallspandex
2014-09-22 07:08 pm UTC (link)

After he took his sip, Peter shook his head at that first comment from his partner. "Are you always this negative?" Because really, in the end, they'd gotten the job done, even if it was a little trickier than it initially seemed like it should have been.

"Exactly," He nodded, "one less monster to worry about, which is definitely not a bad thing." He was still curious about one thing, though. Something Ward had said after they set up leaving times. "You were pretty adamant about not wanting to be around on Tuesday. Reason for that?"

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notanazi
2014-09-23 09:48 am UTC (link)

Negative?

Ward thought about it for a moment. He supposed he was a little bit. "Didn't think about it like that, I just figured if we hadn't let it get the drop on us we could have done this in a night." he said, quieter than before, thinking about it he really had jumped to the negative. Assumed they'd failed when they'd done the opposite.

He decided to ignore it. Probably easier in the long run.

"Right, Tuesday." he said, figuring he should answer. He had been very insistant on not being back but here he was all the same. He'd face it, whatever happened. He wouldn't make himself the victim and he'd accept however much they hated him for whatever he did to Fitz. Locked in that cell, with nothing, they couldn't give him anything, nothing he could use as a weapon. Locking up a specialist wasn't an easy task. And with teh Fridge in HYDRA hands...

"The show's back. The one from my world. Things happened that I'm not sure of the outcome of. Not sure I want to know."

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itsallspandex
2014-09-23 04:05 pm UTC (link)

That was still such a negative view of it. Peter shrugged a little, "One night, two, five. Long as the job's done, that's the part that matters, right?" Of course, there was something to be said for effeciency, but that didn't always equate to quickness. Sometimes, to be truly efficient, it took more time.

The demeanor the other man took on at the mention of Tuesday was enough for Peter to know, whatever it was, was significantly less than awesome. "Oh," was the first thing that came out of his mouth upon the mention of the show. "yeah, that's probably one of the worst parts about this place." he admitted. Peter had never really liked the being fictional aspect of Lawrence. "Are you going to watch it?" he asked curiously. "I made that mistake once. Never again." Watching his Uncle die had been hard enough the first time, watching it on freaking tv, knowing people saw it for nothing more than a piece of entertainment and not someone's actual life was sickening. Peter had basically sworn off paying mind to it.

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notanazi
2014-09-24 08:24 am UTC (link)

The kid was pretty positive when it came to things. He supposed it wasn't a bad outlook on life but not one he'd ever really shared. He'd never felt optimistic about much but he supposed that was the life he lived. And it only looked to get worse.

He took another drink of the beer before answering, probably needing it all being told. "This one yeah. I don't know beyond that but this one I need to know some things. There's a lot going on back home." he said simply. It probably was a mistake. He could definitely understand Peter's point of view but there again he could hardly go all this time without knowing if there was any lasting damage to Fitz. If Skye really did hate him, if the Ward there felt anything like he did here. If SHIELD stood a chance. Because knowing what he knew, knowing just how powerful HYDRA had made itself, he wasn't sure.

"Do you know anything about it, about the team I mean?"

Did Parker know just who he'd wound up on a hunt with or did HYDRA even mean a damn in his life.

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itsallspandex
2014-09-24 02:37 pm UTC (link)

"I think you're setting yourself up for a trap," he admitted, "I mean, that's how it starts, right. Just this one episode. But then, they don't answer all of your questions, so just one more, and another, until you've tortured yourself through an entire season and only have half your questions answered anyway." He'd seen countless people do it. "Guess that's where I'm lucky at least mine's just movies and not an ongoing tv series." If that was even really a plus side, Peter wasn't sure. But he had a feeling he'd be far more tempted to watch a series than a film, truth be told.

Peter shook his head at that question, "Not really. I know about the Avengers? But SHIELD and HYDRA, that whole bit?" He shrugged. He wasn't really interested in the exact politics of it. He was probably one of the less judgy people in Lawrence, and if he was going to place judgment on someone, it'd be on their own merit, their actions here. Not word of mouth of others or something he saw on tv. He (...)

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	itsallspandex 2014-09-24 02:39 pm UTC (link)
	would take other people's opinions and experiences into account, but he made the judgment entirely on his own. To be honest, he largely avoided most of the fictional worlds represented in Lawrence. It just felt so invasive to people's lives to watch things like that. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

notanazi
2014-09-25 09:33 pm UTC (link)

"Can't promise I won't watch it again. Wish I could but its a mess of complicated. I need to know what I'm facing if I go back but mostly I have to know if Fitz is okay. There's a lot of things...I'm not in the best place back home."

That was possibly the understatement of the century but he'd go with it for now. Better that Parker not learn too much just yet. But an overview he could do. "SHIELD is basically defunct now. Just a couple of hundred maybe, if even. HYDRA, we were there all along, in the shadows of it, fighting for SHIELD, being agents, but with various agendas. And yeah...I had my own agenda. Long story. Doesn't matter now."

He drank more, practically finishing it.

"How about you, whats your story?"

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itsallspandex
2014-09-28 02:59 am UTC (link)

Peter could understand his reasoning, but really in the end it didn't matter. You didn't retain any of the information you learned in Lawrence when you were sent back. But he wasn't sure he needed to burst that bubble for Ward just yet. Let the man have his peace of knowing, even if Peter was pretty sure whatever he found out would be anything but peaceful. Investigations into the fictional never really were. "Just remember you can't change anything, you can't fix it." was the best advice he had, really. And whether he meant because they were stuck until the Seal gave up on them, or that there was no fixing things because everything was part of some fixed timeline that would play out the same no matter what, was completely up for debate.

"So, your typical double-crossing, spies on the inside, rogue agents kinda deal?" That all sounded so...Hollywood, phrasing it like that, but Peter supposed some things would always feel that way, even if they were actually parts of other people's lives. Sometimes, he (...)

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itsallspandex
2014-09-28 03:03 am UTC (link)

felt like his life was too much to actually be real. Or was that just being fictional getting to his head? Peter wasn't really sure.

"Me?" he shrugged a little, finishing off his beer. "I dunno, not not much to tell, I guess. My parents died when I was a kid...I just recently found out a lot I never knew about them. Try to balance school and girls and...just...life, in general with the whole...bitten by a radioactive spider and turned vigilante thing." The way he talked, it sounded normal, and thwas was probably because to him it was normal, but there was a part of Peter that realized how completely not normal it all sounded, too.

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notanazi
2014-09-29 09:39 am UTC (link)

"SHIELD. Its spies, double crossing, all that, it was that before us. HYDRA were always on the inside. They just never figured it out until they came out of the shadows." Into the light. The whole thing was ridiculous, that HYDRA had hidden that long with all of their Hail Hydra cut off the head crap. But they had. Because mostly of people like Garrett, Alexander Pierce, and people on the ground like him and Rumlow. Even though the other guy was an idiot.

He wasn't quite sure what had happened to him after the Triskelion, no one was talking.

He laughed when Peter explained his story. Not cause it was shocking, but cause it wasn't. It was entirely believable.

"I wish I was shocked by Radioactive spider bite. But I've seen way too much to not consider that entirely possible. And let me guess, you use it to help people."

Like Peterson had wanted to do, like the Avengers did, all of it, it had gotten fairly commonplace. And even the kids age didn't phase him. Grant had been surrviving in the wilderness, learning to be strong. It was probably sad the only thing he didn't understand about Parker's story was missing his parents.

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itsallspandex
2014-09-29 07:37 pm UTC (link)

Peter nodded a little. It sounded about right. Agency like that, it was probably actually nearly impossible not to have people secretly back-stabbing in every direction. Sounded complicated and messy, no matter how you cut it. "Sounds like it was a mess from the start."

He wasn't offended by the laugh, he knew it sounded ridiculous, and yet at the same time completely normal. It was a weird thing. "I don't think much can shock me at this point," he admitted. Between home and Lawrence, he had seen a lot of things. "Yeah," he nodded at the comment about helping people. "I mean, I have this...gift? curse? Whatever you wanna call it, I may as well help people with it."

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notanazi
2014-09-30 11:48 am UTC (link)

"SHIELD was never what it was designed to be. But it doesn't matter, there's so little of it left and what they have, they don't have the numbers. They don't have enough to do it even if I do tell them anything, and when I got here, I hadn't decided yet if that's how it would go."

Heroes. It had happened again. Stark, Cap and now Parker, all of them definite save the world at their own expense types and he'd managed to befriend them. Garrett would have hated it, everything about it. This whole city was making him redefine who he was.

"Why? I mean you could do anything with power like that and you use it to save people and be the big hero? What made you chose that?"

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itsallspandex
2014-10-01 08:42 pm UTC (link)

"That's pretty unfortunate. I don't know a lot about it, but from what I understand, the foundational idea wasn't a bad one. But I guess it's not easy to keep things...uncorrupted." All a person had to do to see the proof of that was look at any group in any normal walk of life. High school kids who hooked themselves into the wrong crow, corrupted government officials, any number of areas and you could see just how easily a good idea could be burned to the ground in an instant.

Why. It was such a common, and loaded question. Why did he do what he did? Wasn't it just the obvious, right thing to do? "It's not about being a hero, that...wasn't really in the plans, like, ever. It was mostly just a side effect. But...why?" He shrugged a bit, "it's the right thing to do. Helping people, it's...fundamentally a good thing. Generally." Not that he could help everyone, solve every problem, save every life. And that was something that weighed on him, probably far more than it should for anyone, but especially someone no older than he was.

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notanazi
2014-10-02 08:05 pm UTC (link)

The founding idea of SHIELD. Protection. He'd heard it over and over and he hated it. Because it was a lie. Because every bit of it, it didn't matter. Because they'd protect you just fine, as long as you were somebody that they thought was worthy of it. "If you want to think of it like that, there were good people in SHIELD sure, but they were always gonna lose out to HYDRA, end of the day, they're willing to go that extra step." he said simply, he wasn't going to go into it any deeper than that.

Because uncorrupted, good, heroic. It wasn't a concept he thought about. Or wanted to.

"So you do it cause its good. Because you have that power and you think its what needs to happen. You know not everyone thinks like that, makes that leap. Some people go the other way. I'm curious why you think that is? Why'd you go one way and the people you probably fight, the other?"

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itsallspandex
2014-10-08 02:58 pm UTC (link)

"I guess." Peter didn't say anything else on the matter, though. He could tell it wasn't really something Ward wanted to get into and he wasn't going to press about it. What good would that do?

"Yeah, basically," His partner seemed to be asking all the hard questions today. Not that Peter minded, he was pretty sure Ward was just trying to understand things from the other perspective that he maybe didn't fully understand, but he'd never really been asked to put into words why he did, what he did. "And no, not everyone goes that way. But I mean, I guess, maybe that's because of who they are, you know, at their core. Or things they were put through that changed them so much that they'd go the other way. I mean, I've always kind of been that guy, you know, that helps people where I could. It's just now, I have a better means of being able to do that, so...I do."

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