Notes:
I decided to write this fan fiction (my first and, probably, the last) the night of the AOS third season finale, to heal MY HEART from the pain the series had inflicted to me, and to give answers to MY MIND to all the unanswered questions, misleading teases, unspoken words and false hopes the show was full of.
I'm referring mainly to Ward and Skye/Ward.
The message the show gave is that Ward was unredeemable, so the only epilogue possible for him was death; that he was bound to the unfair destiny of a person whose moral and psychological infrastructure had been ruined, self esteem and mental sanity destroyed by childhood abuse and brainwashing; that he could only transform from the victim to the perpetrator; that he didn't deserve a second chance, or mercy, or forgiveness, or absolution; that nobody cared, nobody helped even when he tried, with difficulty, to become better: on the contrary, he deserved only to be pushed even deeper into the abyss.
By whom?
By Coulson, the "second chance my ass" man.
By Skye: a girl so sensitive and caring and emotionally rich, practically perfect! Do you remember her? …You can't? Me neither.
By Shield: the protector of both mankind and every single man… What? Where? When? I think I missed it...
A lot of people asked for Ward's redemption, and what did we get? A stupid, silly, inane death; but, even after Ward's death, hate for him continued, as much as verbal and physical violence, insults, shoots, mutilations, stabs, bone crushing… Evidently, slaughtering a dead man is considered morally acceptable, in Ward-the-devil's case. Now that they finally managed to blow him up into a million pieces, let's hope they leave him resting in peace!
A lot of people asked for Skye/Ward (because the show teased a lot about it!), and what did we get? First Skye's hate, merciless words and shoots; then indifference and silence, a hollow, insignificant, senseless silence; and finally a reunion between a tentacled monster and a drug-addicted person… Exactly what we all dreamed for!
But the more insulting thing of all was that some people wrote the sweetest and most touching stories about Skye/Ward children… and imagine what we got? Surprise, surprise… a bunch of monstrous primitives passed off as their kids! I felt my blood literally freezing at that!
I get the authors don't believe in family, but that scene (and Grant destroying his family; and Skye almost killed by and killing her mother, then witnessing her father doing that; and, in the fourth season, a sister killing her brother and Fitz brainwashed by an abusive father...) was way too much.
Grant Ward was redeemable, but they deliberately chose not to save him. I hoped for redemption till the last second during the finale, keeping faith against all hopes, but at the end I was disgusted… drained… and I felt really bad for several days consecutively, afterwards.
When I think how much the authors led me by the nose for three whole years, while distorting, twisting the original fantastic characters and their personalities, season after season, in a really unlikely way, till the point they are for the most part unrecognizable from what they were originally, I honestly feel I have wasted my time.
But my love for Grant Douglas Ward remains, and my longing for him, too.
Brett Dalton's interpretation struck a chord inside of me and I want to give his character a second chance.
I hope some of you will enjoy my effort.
I still don't know how the story will finish… but I am confident that a good inspiration will enlighten me...
Summary:
I'm trying to answer briefly some questions, here:
- What did May feel for Ward and Ward for May, during their relationship?
- Did Ward know about Thomas Nash not being the true Clairvoyant?
- Was the truth serum really a truth serum?
- What did Ward think that night in Dublin? And after Skye was shot?
- How did Ward's brainwashing work?
- How did Ward feel about Garrett vs. the team?
- Why did Ward decide to go on Maveth?
The scene takes place on Maveth, near the portal, during Coulson / Ward fight, but it is filled by flashbacks.
Comments are greatly appreciated: please, let me know what you think!
Chapter:
The battle was unequal: with a bullet in his shoulder, a shot in his arm, blood spilling everywhere, hands tied, several days sleep deprived and tired, tired of a life of troubles, he fought more out of habit than for real conviction...
It was all so strange... he was almost detached from what was happening. And almost amused by the irony of the situation: the last time he was involved in a reckoning hand to hand fight, it was against this man's most loyal warrior.
Melinda May…
The ice queen…
He slept with May and, at that time, undercover or not, he couldn't deny he enjoyed it: her body was strong, agile, tonic, flexible… and soft… The sensation he had touching her was of velvet-covered steel.
He had to admit it: at the time of their relationship, two years ago, he almost fell for her; otherwise, he wouldn't have felt that burning embarrassment when he discovered Coulson knew; nor would he have had any problem in saying the word "sex" to him; nor would he have felt sheer jealousy when he found the two of them so intimate, after Russo tortured her. He snapped, that time: he couldn't avoid it.
And it wasn't to keep straight his parsonage: it was real.
Like Garrett used to say, he had always been a tender heart.
When May broke definitively up with him, in the cockpit of the plane so much time ago, he was unable to elaborate on that. Lorelei called her "the beautiful warrior with the heart of ice"… but he hadn't yet understood if May was only extremely well trained in hiding her feelings or if it was really correct to define her an "ice queen"… At the time, it was beyond his comprehension how she could be so "next level", how she could manage to be so cold and unaffected, so detached from everybody and everything… even from himself, that certainly warmed her a lot!
It seemed to him she cared only about her orders: in fact, when Coulson needed information about Tahiti and when Skye's life was in peril and Coulson desperately needed to talk to Fury, May didn't do anything to help him get in touch with the Director. She would have had Coulson go mad and Skye die, rather than disobey Fury's orders and blow her cover.
But then the fight at Cybertech happened... and he remained awestruck by her sheer determination, by her red-hot anger, by how much it all seemed personal…
It wasn't normal… it wasn't logical… it was different from the time she beat up Ian Quinn… strangely different…
And then, during that furious fight, countless images and sensations of them together... of their entwined hands, caresses, kisses, whispers... of their passion... started implacably resurfacing in his messed up mind, a mind apparently no more able to compartmentalize... and her sentence in the cockpit echoed in his mind: "If what Lorelei said was true… you were more honest with her than you are with yourself."
And it clicked!
He realised, while dodging a punch and avoiding to be cut with a circular sew, that May must have fallen for him, otherwise she wouldn't have broken up after Lorelei! If their relationship was really merely physical, she would have put a lid on the past and would have continued it!
Instead it was not only sex.
He knew that at the beginning he appealed her because he was so damaged... But then, during their nights together, evidently something different and completely unpredictable happened: something about him must have reached her in the depth, partially melting the ice she carefully entrapped her heart in, to anesthetize it, to give it some rest from its suffering...
But the Lorelei affair destroyed everything in the bud: during their fight he remembered clearly how the red-haired beauty ruthlessly said:
"Oh, he told me who he desired before me. But, my dear… it wasn't you."
And he remembered also May's resentful look after that, like it was today.
He even used this discovery as a weapon during the fight, to provoke her:
"You said our thing was no strings attached. Looks to me like the ice queen had her feelings hurt".
Honestly... he could have spared her that, because that showing off only made her more furious, like a wounded animal that suddenly finds itself exposed in the open. But, on the other hand, the realization made him internally softer, less determined, even if the battle was hard and the adrenaline was pumping furiously in him…
He was almost flattered that the Cavalry in person had fallen for him! And amused! That made three out of three: all the female components of Coulson's team had been in love with him! No surprise about that: after all, he was 'anyone's type'.
When the battle was turning in his favour, the Cavalry lying on the floor, he was considering how to make her pass out without harming her too much, but his indecision proved to be fatal: she exploited it and nailed him to the ground, broke his larynx and knocked him down.
During that fight with May he had the same sensation of the present moment, on this God forsaken planet: he wasn't fighting against Coulson with whole conviction.
His heart wasn't there.
And now it was even worse than then...
Now his heart was fighting against him!
Instead, that time at the Hub, when he had to fight to save HER against a sea of soldiers allowed to use lethal force… that time had been a completely different story! There he really battled with all his might, throwing his heart beyond the pain, beyond the beats, beyond the impossibility of victory!
For her…
He would have willingly given his life to save hers.
And he would have welcomed death, too...
He felt he deserved it, because for the first time he killed an innocent man, Thomas Nash, in cold blood, out of his own free will and disobeying precise orders.
While Ward was undercover, he and Garrett couldn't exactly chat in the open, and even Garrett's secrets had secrets. So yeah, Garrett kept him in the dark, making him believe that Thomas Nash was the real Clairvoyant! Ward really believed Nash to be the instigator of Skye's murder, and couldn't bear to do nothing when he heard those terrible words: "A force beyond your comprehension is coming for her. She has something we want. And she will die giving it to us."
His shot finished Nash's miserable life.
Ward killed him because he felt too much.
He couldn't keep his emotions in check… these were too strong to be kept at bay.
At that time Ward's hands weren't so blood stained: like he said to Skye during the truth-serum interrogation (yes, it was a real and functioning Shield truth-serum!), when she asked if he ever killed anyone, he answered the truth:
"Yes, a few.
High-risk targets.
But they were terrible people… who were trying to murder nice people.
And I didn't feel good afterwards."
Nevertheless, in that closet he desired death, and not only for the guilt he felt.
He wanted to avoid facing everything else that soon would arise: the betrayal, the shame, all the murders that he knew were unavoidable, and her stare, her judgment and, for sure, her condemnation.
He would soon lose her, and the team, forever, and the thought was unbearable.
They, in a few months, had transformed from a bunch of extraneous to the thing nearest to a real family he ever experienced.
And Skye…
He knew that: if Skye treated that way Miles, without an ounce of mercy or understanding (she didn't care the guy was in love with her and did everything to give her a better future), then what would she do with him?
She was bound to hate him… a lot. Forever.
And he didn't want that!
He wanted her to see him as a hero!
He wanted her to look at him with the same relief and pride she had when he rescued her in Malta from Ian Quinn's bodyguards, with the same fondness she had that night in Dublin, when he had to tear his soul apart to dismiss her and walk away! Oh, how strong were his feelings then! How powerful was the need to embrace her, and kiss the breath out of her, and loose himself in her, and spill all his fears and secrets and weaknesses … stripping his soul naked (and not only that) in front of her!
But then his training… came in and he shut down…
There was only one other time he felt so strongly the need to talk, to confess everything: when he saw her in that cellar, in Italy, covered in blood with two in the gut, dying. The all-consuming rage and the disturbing suspect gnawing in the pit of his stomach that Garrett could be behind all that threatened to break the banks then, to make him betray HIM... oh, he was only inches apart from spilling everything to Coulson…
But then again his training (…brainwashing…) came in handy: numbness overwhelmed him, everything went blank and he felt nothing, nothing anymore…
That same numbness wrapped his mind when he was forced to kill Victoria Hand and her soldiers to save HIM…
He OWED him; he owed him everything, everything he was and everything he had! He HAD to do everything he did! How was possible that nobody could understand that?
John saved him from hell, from himself, from the Beast within himself, believed in him when nobody ever did, made him feel worthy, wanted, important, proud, capable of earning his place in life, capable to become THE BEST; he forged him through fire and pain, he made him become a man…
Himself, piece of shit kid, worthless, pathetic, weak, useless, unnecessary, unwanted, born by mistake not out of an act of love, but to fulfil the lust of a drunken, angry man who used to rape his wife!
He was born from two parents that hated one another with special passion: what better beginning, for a criminal?
The truth was that he loved John, like a child loves his strong and powerful father; like a soldier looks to his commander, with respect, esteem, trust, confidence, awe…
The truth was that he was trapped: he was caught between the anvil and the hammer.
So death was an easy escape route, really! Simply go out of the closet, fake a fight, and let all those soldiers beat the crap out of him… kill him.
"And if I die... maybe I deserve to..."
And death would follow, finally, to put an end to everything… to set him free…
How would that feel?
Silence, oblivion, and darkness... nothingness… no more being torn between two different needs, between two different persons pulling him in opposite directions.
The idea was dangerously attractive.
It was the whole solution.
And then... SHE HAD TO KISS HIM!
He was nursing peacefully his last instants, welcoming the idea of death… and SHE KISSED HIM, pushing life back with force inside of him, out of the blue, unexpectedly!
And he wanted to LIVE, then!
He felt such a surge of self-preserving instinct he felt invincible.
And he became invincible!
Again… why the hell was he here, on this God forsaken planet?
Malick's words resounded in his skull: "I want you to lead our men on the other side. … You are the only one that CAN do this! And if you cross over to the other side, you will finally see that your faith in Hydra was never misplaced. It's real! You will look IT in the eye…"
"And then?"
"And then? We'll be able to do whatever the hell we want!"
Skye's face popped in his mind.
He still desired her above anything else. And he unconsciously knew, from the first time he saw her on that van, that she would be the death of him… so beautiful, so fierce, with that heavenly smile, that voice, that mischievous glint in her eyes…
And a fathom of hope made him take the worst decision of his life.
- I came here because of you, Skye. I knew that I went too far, that nothing was anymore possible between us… because of me, because of my awful actions.
I wanted you, Skye.
You are the only one I ever wanted.
I wanted you back, I wanted back my rookie, my girl, whole, with all her problems, and pains, and fears, and solitude, and beauty, and grace, and love, and innocence, and goodness, and purity, and… childlike wonderment!
And my greatest regret is that I contributed in ruining you, more than anyone else, more than Coulson, more than May...
But I hoped that coming here, with the help of that creature… maybe I could make everything right again.
This is the reason I'm here: not for vengeance, not for revenge, not for power, not for control...
For you.
But you know what they say:
"The Devil promises one hundred, but gives one.
And at the end, as a payback, it eats your soul." -