Fallen
Summary: "Ward used to wish Fitz would stop giving cutesy names to his creations. Now he wished he'd never made that first wish."
Disclaimer: Anything pertaining to Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. does not belong to me.
A/N: This story is part of the same headcanon as "Beliefs" and "Conscience." I want to say that you don't have to read those stories to understand this one, but my mind's been in this headcanon for the past several weeks that I'm not sure anymore if a person jumping into this third part of the series will get some of the references. Not so much with the first chapter, but later on. Prepare for some AU and some OOC-ness. I had to create/change the backstory of the characters to fit my needs.
Also, I dedicate this story to emmy-kent who asked for some SkyeWard. When I first thought of this concept, it was a solely FitzSimmons one-shot. But then I incorporated SkyeWard, which made this story longer. And next thing I knew, I was writing my first multi-chapter fic.
Chapter 1: Introduction
Grant Ward was a genius. Sure, he wasn't the typical type of genius that anyone—everyone—would first think about. But he didn't graduate at the top of his class at S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Academia of Operations because of his strong jaw and high cheekbones (though those did help during his training in espionage, subterfuge, and reconnaissance).
No, Grant Ward wasn't just a pretty face. His talents in hand-to-hand combat and weaponry were first noticed by S.H.I.E.L.D. when he was in basic training. (He'd signed up for the Marines straight out of high school hoping to finally escape his childhood home.) Add to that his courage and quick, strategic thinking; and before basic training was even over, he'd found himself a freshman at the S.H.I.E.L.D. academy. By his second year, he was one of a select few chosen to be trained as a Specialist. And though many envied him, he was a genuinely nice guy (when he wanted to be) and was, therefore, still generally well liked. In fact, he was one of the most popular cadets in Operations.
And his popularity among his peers grew when, during a particularly nasty stint in their rivalry against the Science and Technology division in his junior year, he'd become the only Operations cadet to successfully infiltrate SciTech's main building and steal their mascot. Well…it wasn't exactly a mascot. It was a bust of Howard Stark. But it was regarded highly important to those SciTech cadets. That one successful "mission" not only made him a legend to all cadets in all academic divisions of S.H.I.E.L.D., but it also impressed the S.H.I.E.L.D. Academia Board of Trustees so much that they graduated him a year early.
Even though it has been five years since he's been a cadet at the academy, he still held onto that pro-Ops attitude.
So it came as a disappointment when he found out that a promotion to Level 7 was contingent to joining a team (even though he'd been working as a solo operative for the past three years) that consisted of not one but two SciTech graduates. And not just any two SciTech graduates, but FitzSimmons.
Leopold Fitz and Jemma Simmons were as much a legend to the academies as he was. One year after Ward had graduated, a former instructor informed him that a pair of freshmen SciTech cadets had managed to infiltrate the Operations' base and vandalize their common room. And by vandalized, Ward meant that FitzSimmons had covered every square foot of their pristine and orderly common area with streamers depicting the Union Jack.
But a promotion to Level 7 was a pretty big deal, and he wasn't going to let two SciTech grads stop him from becoming the youngest Level 7 agent in S.H.I.E.L.D. Plus, though he'd never say it aloud, it was a bit of an ego boost to know that he was now privy to intel that not even the Avengers themselves were privy to (i.e. Coulson lives).
As much as he hated to admit it, being part of the team wasn't all that unappealing. For one, he was now working directly under Agent Phil Coulson. That in itself was enough to cause a spark of excitement to course through Ward's otherwise stoic self. But then to find out the Cavalry (a.k.a. Melinda May) was also part of the team…well, he was grateful his training had stopped him from jumping up and doing a fist pump in his elation.
Of course, there were a few setbacks during the infancy of the team's formation. First of which was that FitzSimmons were as pro-SciTech as he was pro-Ops. And they definitely knew his reputation as much as he knew theirs. He found that out during their first meeting when Fitz destroyed his brand new comm receiver with excessive and unnecessary brutality. Sure, it was probably true that the external receiver was no longer needed as long as he could identify the I.S. chip or whatever, like they'd claimed. But then, why did the swab Simmons forced into his mouth to supposedly collect a sample of his DNA to match to an embedded sensory neural set up have such an unpleasant, bitter taste to it? It had to have been a retaliation of some sort due to the rivalry. Of course, Ward had no proof that it was. And he was too busy forcing himself not to wipe the bitterness from his tongue that he couldn't think of his own revenge at the time.
Another setback, in Ward's opinion, was the presence of an untrained, civilian hacktivist named Skye. It was bad enough that he already had to play babysitter to FitzSimmons, who had not passed their field assessments. But at least they had gone through some sort of training at a S.H.I.E.L.D. academy. Skye was an unknown. Yet, Coulson took her on as a consultant. With two scientists unfit for combat, a civilian that could pose more of a liability than an asset, and a specialist who didn't even want to be there; Ward didn't have high hopes for Coulson's ragtag team.
But then the BUS was taken over, and their leader was taken hostage.
Suddenly, all their differences did not matter. They had a common goal…and a common enemy. For the first time, they started thinking and working together as a team. The outcome was their success in retaking the BUS, defeating the enemy, and freeing Coulson.
Over the weeks and months, with each passing mission or trial the team accomplished or overcame, Ward learned to trust his teammates more and more. As a result, he began to become less impassive around them. He even started regarding them as friends. And he had to admit—if only to himself—after years of caring only for the good of the agency and the success of his current mission, it was nice to have people to care about again. And even more so, it was nice to have people who cared about him as a person, not just as an agent. Somehow, the team he initially didn't want anything to do with had become his new family.
So when Coulson called the team together to inform them that Simmons had been drugged and kidnapped from her room at the New York City hotel hosting the Annual Review of Chemistry/Biochemistry seminar, it felt as if the BUS had gone into freefall and all happiness had been sucked dry from the plane's cabin.
