Not mine. They totally belong to AoS. Just having some fun with the what ifs out there.
A/N - So writing May and Ward post finale is hard because who knows what's gonna happen with Ward. I find him a much better bad guy than I ever did an agent, so I'm hoping he stays bad - especially because what makes him interesting is that we are as unsure as the AoS team what was real and what wasn't. So that's the idea behind this story.
It takes weeks for her to walk through the door.
In that time his throat has healed and he's been interrogated repeatedly, but Grant Ward has held strong. He knows that the scientists will get him next, the ones who can probe his brain against his will, and whoever gets assigned to him will come loaded with hate and disdain and a thirst for revenge.
What he did to Fitz will guarantee that.
But when Melinda May finally strides through the doors of the interrogation room, Ward is almost relieved. The wait for her has been the hard part, because he knew it was inevitable. She'd made it clear she wasn't done with him, her little quip about some his torture being "a little bit external" hard to ignore.
The anticipation of what that meant, of when she'd come, has been far more difficult to manage than any pain or fear induced by his other interrogators. Sure, fists have flown his way, a few drugs designed not just to gather intel but to inflict massive amounts of discomfort have flooded his veins. But he hasn't broken for them. Ward was defiant, sarcastic, bitter, and confident that eventually he'd escape his cell and at least go down fighting if not actually make it off the military base; to go where, though, he has no idea.
But he's worried about this day endlessly, and so seeing her, he gathers his reserves, steels himself for what's to come.
May sits a tablet down on the table and hits a button. A jumble of words spews forth, science jargon, lines meant to be laced with humor, all of it tinged with a familiar Scottish accent.
Fitz. Broken, confused Leo Fitz is responding to questions from Simmons, but his answers don't make sense. The words are out of order or tied to another question entirely, and when he tries to joke his way past his own frustration, the jumble grows worse, words fragmenting and his voice stammering.
Ward feels the pit of his stomach start churning and he fights the urge to close his eyes. He's also completely unsurprised that the first emotional response he's had since his capture is coming at this woman's hands.
May stops the playback and stares at him, eyes fixed. To most people that would seem like a stare or like she's waiting him out. But Ward knows better. She's looking for something, calculating things only she can see, and it unnerves him in a way a torturous medical instrument dangled in front of his face never could.
He doesn't want to think about Fitz and he doesn't want to talk about him either. So Ward decides to try his own luck at throwing the competition off kilter.
"You were standing between me and what I wanted. That's all it was."
He doesn't clarify whether he's talking about their relationship or their final showdown. He's hoping to put her focus on figuring it out.
Ward isn't shocked when his tactic fails completely.
She takes a step forward and he sees something he isn't expecting. Ward is ready for anger and pity and disappointment in her eyes. But the unyielding sadness that May isn't trying to conceal hits him with the same force as the blow she landed to end their fight back at Cybertek.
"You could have had everything you wanted. You just made the wrong choices."
"I owed Garrett my life."
"He didn't give you your life. He gave you his."
The truth of that is another punch landed but Ward fights to keep it hidden, burying everything the way he's learned how to over the years so that his enemies can't see it and use it against him.
"The help I offered, the trust FitzSimmons gave you, even the future you might have had with Skye... those things were there for you, but you chose Garrett."
"I couldn't turn on Garrett. Even if I'd wanted to..."
Ward trails off, unwilling to finish the thought because he can't let himself believe it's even possible. There is no way Garrett would have ever done that. But the weeks he's spent lying alone at night remembering how easily Garrett threatened his life time and time again make Ward's internal declaration less than convincing.
"I know how you think," May says, and he fights as long as he can before he lifts his eyes to her again because those blinds he talked about are open and she's not hiding from him and it hurts too much to see her looking at him like that. "You'll find a way to make them kill you or you'll escape. Those are the endings you can live with."
He isn't sure how she can know him so well. Yes, they were lovers, but Ward thought he'd kept her a safe distance away, he thought his secrets were safe. He had no idea that someone who had spent so much time in the darkness would recognize her own kind and see him so clearly.
"There's another choice," she offers, moving away from him then, turning her back. Ward sucks in a deep breath of air once he's free from her gaze.
"Not for me" he tells her, his voice rough and strained. "There's no redemption for the monster in this story. You and I both know that."
May turns to face him again and shakes her head.
"Find something you're willing to die for."
It's the last thing he expects to hear. The shock of it draws his eyes back to her and she's looking at him again as if she can see every broken and damaged piece inside him.
"That's why I was standing between you and what you wanted. It's why I will always stand between them and people like you."
Then her finger is on the tablet again and Fitz's broken voice fills the air. This time Ward can't fight it off. The guilt and horror over what he did grips his heart and twists it into knots. But he refuses to let her see it.
"Sorry wrong, Jemma. Sorry couldn't stop good in believe Ward."
The jumbling of the words doesn't hide their meaning.
Ward remembers the desperation in Fitz and Simmons' voices as he prepared to drop them into the ocean, the memory of his own torn heart pulling at him. But he made a choice. He chose Garrett.
He thinks of Skye's face when she called him weak and the utter disappointment that radiated off Coulson as Ward stood before him in handcuffs. Those things happened because he chose Garrett.
He thinks of May and all the things she tried to teach him while he was focused on neutralizing a threat. He didn't need her help. He had Garrett.
But now Garrett is dead and Coulson's words haunt him. He has no idea who Grant Ward is without Garrett reflecting back at him in a human mirror.
"If I tell you anything, what's left of HYDRA will kill me."
"Yes," May agrees. "They will. But whether you tell us anything or not, we're going after them. We won't stop until there's no longer a threat. Fitz, Simmons, Skye, Coulson, me... we won't stop."
She picks up the tablet and heads for the door.
"Every cover is born from truth. The man we believed in is part of who you are."
"That won't save me."
"No. But it might save someone else."
May and Coulson watch from the safety of his office on the Bus as Grant Ward escapes from custody two days after May's visit.
They did everything they could to minimize the risk. The guards had non-lethal weaponry on them and though they're volunteers who knew what the setup was, it still makes Melinda flinch when they're temporarily taken out with an icer.
"They'll be fine," Coulson says, stupidly feeling the need to reassure her. It's his own nerves getting to him. This is a dangerous game they've set in motion.
"You're sure this is the right play?"
He can't bite back the question even though he's asked more than once. To her credit, Melinda doesn't throw him one of her patented glares. She just sighs and leans back in her chair.
"It's our best option. He made the wrong choice because he always makes the wrong choice when it comes to right and wrong. But Ward needs someone pulling his strings to function. He won't be able to run solo for long. The only options he knows are Quinn and Raina."
Coulson glances at his tablet and sees a tracker beacon working perfectly. It follows the same course as Ward does as he hotwires a jeep and drives off the facility grounds, planted guards giving chase and making it hard so Ward doesn't realize they've planned his escape for him.
"You think he's still blind to the tracker?"
"Simmons injected it along with the interrogation drugs while he was unconscious. No reason for him to suspect. Fitz's recorded voice activated it as planned."
His phone buzzing startles Coulson a bit, but he reaches for it, giving just his name to answer. He can't get used to using the word "director" in relation to himself.
"Sir, the prisoner left a message on a wall in his cell. I'm sending an image now."
"Thank you."
Coulson hangs up and waits for the chime of his text alert. He pulls it up and sighs as he turns the screen to May to show her the etching on the cell wall.
"You can't help me."
Melinda's eyes close a moment and when they open, she's resigned. Coulson knows all of them held a small sliver of hope that maybe May's declaration was true, maybe some part of the man they thought Grant Ward to be was real.
But the way Grant fell for every step of Melinda's plan tells them otherwise.
What worries Coulson deeply is that he's watched the video of that exchange between them a half dozen times, and there's something there, a moment, when Ward's attempt to play May kicked in, where he took his own emotions and tried to turn them against her. And he knows Melinda saw it. Worse, he knows she felt it.
"Someday when it's just you and him again, I need you to do something for me."
Her gaze turns to him and Coulson can see what her expectations are. "Bring him in alive, remember the goal, be the agent I know you to be."
"Survive. Whatever it takes, however it ends... you survive him."
The emotions that cross her face, slight changes almost no one but Coulson would notice, touch him to the point that he's worried he'll show too much in return. Because she knows what he's not saying.
"I can lose you, but not to him. Please. Not to him."
She stands and shows Coulson that slight smile that's become a little more routine since Fitz is back at work and their team is on the mend.
"I'll consider it an order, sir."
She walks away before either of them can step too far over the line they've been toeing with one another. They aren't quite ready for that. And as Melinda leaves him alone, Coulson's eyes drop to the tablet and the tracker signal beaming out of Grant Ward.
It's a hard truth, but one Melinda made him face the day she came to him and said she knew how to get Ward to lead them to Quinn and Raina.
"You can't save everyone, Phil. Garrett ruined him before we had the chance. He's made his choice."
And so Coulson made his, putting his faith in his team as the plan came together. And if he can't save Grant Ward, then he'll make damn sure no one else suffers at the younger man's hands.
It's the only kind of help left to be given.