A/N: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. have kind of dominated my thoughts for the last two-three weeks.

I must say I liked episodes 2, 4, 6 and 8 but the plot really picked up in episode fifteen. But because I like to see the good in everyone and I love BioSpecialist and Rose and the Doctor totally could have saved Ward, I had to write this. We all know Ward is somehow going to be redeemed, hopefully not immediately, but this is my version of it.

R&R!

'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'

The forest was quiet, as it always was when Garrett wasn't there.

Grant was slowly cooking his dinner, a rabbit he'd caught earlier that day with a snare. There were little herbs in the forest, and no salt or pepper to speak of, but he made due with what he could find. Though, mint wasn't particularly good with rabbit meat...

He fed the entrails to Buddy who wagged his tail before scarfing up his food. He could have eaten them himself, but he had no idea how to prepare them and he had to feed Buddy something, so it might as well be something he couldn't eat.

He thought he would soon have to wash his clothes again, as the smell was starting to make hiding from the prey animals hard, and it'd be cold soon. He had been lucky someone had been careless and hadn't known much about camping during the summer, leaving their winter tent unguarded so that he could steal it, but at least he had that prepared for winter.

He'd just turned the rabbit over again when he heard it.

A strange, wheezing sound that grew in volume.

On the other side of the small clearing a blue box, a little larger than a telephone booth, faded into view in front of Grant's wide eyes.

He may have not been the best student in school, but even he knew that was impossible. Buddy was barking at it, but stopped in confusion when the door opened and out stepped a young, five year old girl dressed in hiking gear. She was arguing with a slightly older boy about something as he followed her outside.

"...is better than Tony Stark! He can turn into Hulk!" he was saying.

"But his initial transformation was an accident! Tony Stark deliberately built his Iron Man armor, and the prototype was made in a cave with scraps!" she argued back

"Bruce Banner was trying to recreate the super soldier serum-"

"And instead got hit with a lethal amount of gamma radiation."

"But he didn't die from it, just got hulking big green anger issues. And he can't die."

The girl paused before nodding. "Point. But neither can Captain America from old age."

"Hulk spat out the bullet Banner put in his mouth. Even Thor wouldn't be able to do that. Even dad wouldn't be able to do that."

"What wouldn't your father be able to do?" asked a woman from the doors of the box, a picnic basket on her arm and a backpack on her back. Her voice was warm and her accent something Grant had only heard on TV.

"Spit out a bullet, Terminator style," the boy answered, looking up at her.

"No, he wouldn't," agreed the blond woman before looking around. She spotted Grant by his fire, staring at them with wide eyes and his jaw dropped. She smiled at him. "Oh, hello. I didn't see you there," she told him before sticking her head back inside the box. "Honey, I think we landed in front of a camper."

"The TARDIS is indicating humanitarian work rather than lethal danger," Grant heard a man shout from inside the box. "Ask him if he needs help. Or company."

The woman turned back to Grant, still smiling. "Emil, could you run back inside and get us all camp chairs, seems we'll be having dinner right here," she asked the boy who nodded and ran back to the box. "And Emily, could you get a cushion for the young man," she indicated to Grant and the stump he was sitting on. The girl nodded and followed her brother. Then the woman approached Grant and set the picnic basket down before taking off her backpack. "I'm Rose Tyler, by the way, those little rascals are Emil and Emily. What's your name?"

Grant discreetly pinched himself to make sure he wasn't dreaming before answering. "Grant Ward, ma'am."

"And so polite too," she beamed at him. "Would you mind terribly if we shared your fire? Don't worry, we have our own food that you're welcome to if you like."

Grant nodded dumbly. She was pretty, in her early thirties and smiling at him. It had been so long since anyone had smiled at him, much less someone pretty. If there had been women at the military school or in the juvie, they had been kept separate from the boys, and Garrett really wasn't much to look at.

The boy, Emil, came back with three camp chairs in his arms, that he dropped to the ground before his mother, beaming.

"And where's your father going to sit?" the woman asked.

"I'm not sitting on a camping chair," he declared, "I'm sitting on a log," he gestured to the other log not far on Grant's right. The one Garrett normally sat on.

Emily, who had just come back with two cushions, joined in. "I wanna sit on a log too!"

"But there's only one free log," Mrs. Rose pointed out patiently, a small smile on her lips.

Immediately Grant jumped up. "If they really want to sit on logs, I don't mind," he said, voice wavering only slightly.

Mrs. Rose smiled at him. "What do we say, kids?"

"Thank you Mister," the two said in unison, looking at him with smiles that reminded him a little of his little brother.

The boy stepped up to him, holding out his hand. "I'm Emil Tyler and I'm going to learn all the languages of the Universe."

A small smile stole on Grant's face as he shook the offered hand. "Grant Ward, not really anything important. But I can speak three languages."

"Everyone's important," butted in Emily. "Even the temp from Chiswick. I'm Emily Tyler an' I'm gonna be a princess of a far away planet. The prince Kurm'at said so last week. You may kiss my hand." She said it with such serious face and offered her hand with her knuckles upwards that Grant, with a chuckle, obliged her and briefly bent over to press it to his lips.

"Well met, little lady," he grinned at her just in time before Emil tugged on her ginger hair, running of shouting Carrots, Emily hot on his heels, swearing bloody vengeance on him.

Meanwhile Mrs. Rose had set up the three camping chairs and held out the cushions for him. "Could you please set these on the logs? Better have them ready for when the kids grow too hungry," she told him as he took the offered cushions. "Thank you for indulging them. You seemed to be an old hand at it. Do you have younger siblings?"

Grant nodded but realized she couldn't see, both of them bent over with their tasks. "Yeah, a brother and a sister."

"I feel an and there."

"And an older brother who... wasn't much of one."

He turned to look at her, her face looking up from the picnic basket with a sympathetic scowl. "I am so sorry for that. Sometimes people just are like that. I know Jimmy Stone was like that. Is he the reason you're here in the woods, hunting your own dinner?"

Grant looked down at the ground. "Well..."

"You don't have to answer if you don't want to," she reassured him, laying a hand on his shoulder and he noticed he was at least a head taller than her. "I ran back to my mum when Jimmy started hittin' me. I knew when to cut my losses but the damage was already done. I'd quit school for 'im, see, and didn't get my A-levels. Ended up workin' in a shop that himself," she nodded back to the box where the mysterious man was still inside, "blew up to get rid of an alien infestation."

"Are you telling him how we met?" asked the man's voice from earlier and out stepped a tall man, just slightly shorter than Grant himself, but much skinnier, also dressed in hiking gear. "It's quite the story, you know, about living plastic, a shop girl finding out the Universe is much larger than she'd thought and explosions."

"Grant, this is my husband Doctor John Tyler. Doctor, this is Grant Ward," Mrs. Rose introduced them.

Doctor Tyler grinned. "That's a brilliant name. Grant Ward. Short and to the point. Very close to the nature. The great marsh. Or the great bard, depending on whether its Old English or Old Gaelic," he rambled happily.

Grant glanced at Mrs. Rose. "You call your husband Doctor?" he asked quietly so he wouldn't disturb the rambling man.

"It's his name," she told him as she started unpacking the picnic basket. Out came a bag of marshmallows, a thermos bottle, a plethora of sandwiches, bottles of different juices and water, chocolate milk, some kind of salad, crackers and chocolate. "Well, the name he chose. It was also a promise. Never cruel or cowardly. Never give up, never give in," she told him. "Also his real name is nigh unpronounceable. John is his human alias. Tyler's my name that he took when we married."

Grant looked up sharply. "His human alias? He's not human?"

Mrs. Rose laughed. "God no. I doubt the planet would be standing if he were human. He's of a species called the Time Lords. Well, Gallifreyan. Every Time Lord is Gallifreyan but not every Gallifreyan is a Time Lord. The blue box over there? It's his time and space ship called the TARDIS. It stands for Time And Relative Dimension In Space."

"So he can... travel in time," Grant said slowly, thinking over what Mrs. Rose had said.

"The TARDIS can. In fact... What year, is this, Grant? We just came from seeing my parents in 2013," she told him.

"September 1999," answered Grant. "I'm not sure of the exact date."

"Honey, anything I should know about year 1999?" Mrs. Rose asked the Doctor, interrupting his rambling.

He shrugged, not even perplexed at being interrupted. "There was some excitement in California during New Year, but that's it, I think. Why?"

"It's when we are," she answered matter-of-factly, in a way that would have had Grant's father hitting you for cheek.

But the Doctor instead grinned. "Great year! Euro was established, Star Wars: Episode One: The Phantom Menace is released, Napster is founded, Europol becomes operational and, believe it or not, I was almost killed by some uppity gangster in San Francisco. Of course that was mostly the operating doctor's fault for sedating me rather than letting me regenerate after removing the bullet, but what else can you expect form humans."

Mrs. Rose scowled and hit him on the arm lightly. "Your near death isn't something that makes a year great."

"Rose," he whined as he rubbed his arm, "it was great adventure, with the Master, Eye of Orion and Grace Holloway. And I regenerated to look like Mr. Darcy. It was a great regeneration up until the Time War."

"I know, honey," she smiled gently at him, like she knew what he was talking about.

Grant followed the interaction of the two in front of him and sat down on the free camping chair, feeling awkward standing around while they both sat. They were so very different from his parents. His parents would never have started talking to someone they met in the woods. Correction, his parents never would have even gone to the woods, much less camping or on a picnic. And they wouldn't have let him and his siblings run around chasing each other in a game of catch while they prepared the picnic.

Mrs. Rose and the Doctor flirted with each other, teased each other, helped each other. Watching them put out the picnic was like watching a dance with lots of bending and handing and taking and offering and smiling. It was warming to watch some positive interaction between human-ish beings and something clenched his heart.