What happened after...

Disclaimer: none of the characters are mine, but belong to Marvel™.

Grant Ward was hurting. Sure, in part this was because he had been shot; despite the armor beneath his jacket, he was still hurt – fair enough. But he had been shot before, and he knew that he was hurting so badly not because of the bullets.

He was hurting so badly because of Skye.

It all seemed so simple at first – he sold S.H.I.E.L.D. in favor of Hydra? Give them enough information to redeem himself...but that was not enough, and Coulson practically sold him out to his brother...a big mistake for everyone involved, as far as Grant was concerned, and the embers left behind from his brother's former estate just supported his theory.

That still left the issue of Skye. Grant wanted her, pure and simple...and he wanted to impress her...hence he decided to make her dream come true and introduce her to her father. Only, the latter clearly had crazy issues of his own (and Grant knew a bit about being crazy, let us be honest), and so it did not work. And Grant was shot. By Skye.

That was the meanest cut of all – Grant honestly thought that he was making an impression on Skye, that she understood what he was doing...apparently not. Or maybe she just did not care and wanted to kill him.

Then maybe we should kill her first, muttered a very familiar part of Grant's mind. Her, and Jemma Simmons too, while we are at it. In fact, let us go for Coulson and everyone else, too!

But that was the problem – Grant did not want to kill...Skye. About the others – especially Coulson – he was more ambiguous. But Skye...without Skye Grant's life would be meaningless, dust and ashes, so killing her...his heart was not in it.

"Sir, are you ok?" agent 33 – or Shirley – spoke from Grant's right side, even as she steered their Hydra vessel ever closer to the US (the state of Florida, if anyone was interested).

"You mean if I'm alive," Grant said with a sardonic smile. "Yes, I am."

"Then where we're going?"

"To appropriate yet another one of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s assets that they don't know that I do know about," Grant shook his head. "Hopefully. Otherwise it is going to get tricky."

"Yes sir," agent 33 nodded and continued to steer their boat.

/

"So, how is she?" Coulson asked May as the Bus flew through the night sky from Puerto Rico to the US.

"Skye? Fitz and Simmons are examining her...will be examining her and agent Mack once they wake up," May replied, before pausing. "They didn't want to wake them up...they wanted some quiet time of their own..."

"All hail the conquering heroes," Coulson said bitterly. "We've destroyed Hydra's plot to unleash mass extinction...only there was no mass extinction, just another madman stringing them up..."

"You're talking about Skye's father, aren't you?" May asked the obvious question.

"Yes. Skye's. Or Daisy's," Coulson replied in a particularly bitter tone of voice as he applied fresh bandages to his own bruises. "I don't know – that man makes Grant and Garrett look stable."

"Garrett is gone-"

"Hopefully so," Coulson shook his head. "But you know about Hydra – you cut-off one head, and two more will grow back." He paused. "At least we managed to kill Whitehall...unless he had some sort of a failsafe or back-up plan for just such an occasion."

"Phil..."

"Mel," Coulson shook his head. "We lost Tripp on top of everything else. Friendly fire, my ass." Coulson paused again. "It should've been me – I already got alien goop inside of me, so to speak-"

"That's unnecessary," May's own voice hardened, and noticeably so. "Skye did get Ward, so the operation wasn't a total failure even by our standards-"

"Maybe," Coulson shook his head. "But I'm not so sure. We are never this lucky, and Ward? When faced with a head-on challenge he can outfight the world. We'll just have to wait and see."

"For things to get better?"

"Or at least – not to get worse."

/

He awoke and was at first confused – who was he, where was he, and so on. Then – the realization hit, and the memories returned: he was the Absorbing Man, an agent of Hydra, and he was captured.

He stood up, he straightened up, and he looked around. The cell that he was currently in certainly looked rather flimsy – and so he began to break out of it.

End