What should've been - 1
Disclaimer: none of the characters are mine, but belong to their respective owners.
Across the multiverse...
1.
Bobbi Morse. Grant is so unsure what to make of the latest member of Coulson's little circle (let's call it that, shall we?) At the best of time, when she'd been the Mockingbird of the old S.H.I.E.L.D., (unofficially, but in the old S.H.I.E.L.D. official and unofficial had been relative, let's be honest), she'd been ice - her words had been ice, her gaze had been ice, and she'd been one of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s, or perhaps even Fury's (but frankly the old spy had been a very different person from Coulson, much less interested in PR and appearances than some of his underlings, including Hill and Coulson were), pet performers, PR people, who did their best to present S.H.I.E.L.D. to the world as a people-friendly agency, right there alongside Hawkeye (and what is it with S.H.I.E.L.D. and birds?), also known as agent Barton...
These days are long past, nowadays S.H.I.E.L.D. is a very different entity, as is Ward himself - a revealed Hydra agent (or someone even worse). The same goes for agent Morse herself, (Barbara; agent Morse just isn't 'Bobbi'; no matter how hard she tries to pretend, she isn't one of the guys, and everyone, including Barbara Morse, knows it), and no matter how hard she tries to throw him off balance with that bright, cherry-colored top, (he can almost see her breasts, they are very round and symmetrical), he isn't fooled. He can see it, and he can see that she can see it.
"Agent Morse," he says with a grin: what does she want here? "What do you want here?"
"...It wasn't supposed to be this way," the blonde Amazon replies in a surprisingly thin and miserable tone of voice. "Me rescuing Jemma, agent Simmons? It was supposed to be enough."
"A-ah," Grant nods understandably. "Coulson - director Coulson and the others are giving you a hard time with their righteousness? Been there, felt that."
"But it's different - for you. You have supposed to deserve it - you do deserve it!" Bobbi snaps as she gets onto her feet, then sits back down, then gets back up and begins to walk around the armchair she'd been sitting it. "You should've-" she falls silent.
"Should've what?" Grant presses on, when it becomes clear that Bobbi Morse isn't pressing her point home. "Come on, let's have it, but I must warn you - Coulson, and May, and Skye - they already told me all of this, and more coherently than you are doing right now. Maybe you should re-work it all over again? The threads of your act are showing, and this isn't pretty."
"Answer me this," Morse meets his gaze directly, and there's steel in her voice now. "Where do you see yourself, Grant Douglas Ward? Are you S.H.I.E.L.D. or Hydra? For if you're S.H.I.E.L.D., then you have been making unforgivable mistakes for a long time now, and if you are not, then WTF are you doing here, anyways? This is a secret agency, not a stupid agency; you cannot play them for too long and you're at the end of your line. What do you want? S.H.I.E.L.D. and director Coulson are ready to cooperate and to offer you redemption-"
And that hits the nail on the head; Grant shifts, looks Morse further in the eye and replies:
2.
"All right."
Bobbi stares in the whiskey- or rum-colored eyes of her interlocutor. Back in the old days, when Fury's S.H.I.E.L.D. stood tall and strong and nothing seemed to be able to hurt it, Grant Ward had been little more than just another face in the crowd, an agent who was an agent because he didn't have anything better in store for him, because S.H.I.E.L.D. found him and gave him a reason to matter, because-
He's Hydra. It is, it would be good to know whether he was a Hydra agent from the start or not, got turned later, but this is academic, irrelevant. He was part of the enemy movement, the one that had reduced everything to a mockery; he himself was the enemy of S.H.I.E.L.D. (the new one) and its values; he was a fraud...
...and then he rescued Kara Palamas, the former agent 33, and restored her - physically, if not mentally, and destroyed the good will that Bobbi had been accumulating for the last few months, if not for most of her S.H.I.E.L.D. career life.
"I don't care," Grant's voice is firm, and Bobbi, for all of her training, just cannot read him - the man's a statue, marble or limestone, without any emotions and those stupid, stupid eyes, whiskey- or rum-colored. Who cares? Not Bobbi, who is already angry at the fact that Grant Ward seems to be channelling director Coulson (at his worst, but still), at her.
"Excuse me?"
"I mean, I do care about redemption, salvation, damnation and that sort of thing - honest," Ward elaborates as he continues to look Bobbi straight in the face, ignoring her other assets (it's annoying. She has specialized in seduction, darn it! He had slept with the Cavalry, who's as womanly as...the director himself, for example, because he was a man). He shouldn't be so in control now, not if he's the sort of man that Kara Palamas had wrapped around her finger in just a few days. "I'm just not sure if S.H.I.E.L.D. is the right way for it, not anymore."
"And what is? Hydra?"
"Absolutely not," the answer is ready and automatic: clearly the man had thought long about it and thought hard. "I don't- I don't know what 'it' is, not anymore. Unlike you - and sometimes I envy, and other times I pity you - I got lines in the metaphorical sand, and ever since the FitzSimmons and the pod that didn't float, I've been sticking to them. You - you don't have any lines, do you? You just go with the flow - and Coulson had figured it out."
Bobbi takes a deep breath and replies:
3.
"Fuck you."
Grant doesn't back down. "No, thank you. This is more of Lance Hunter's thing than mine; pass."
Bobbi exhales. "You don't get to be judgemental; you're not Coulson; you're not better-"
"Agreed," Grant nods. "I'm not better than you are, but neither am I worse. We're just - different." A pause. "And you don't like this, do you? You were pro-Academy; you were from the Academy, where everything and everyone were the same, just from different pieces of plastic-"
"If you feel so strongly about S.H.I.E.L.D., then why are you here? Why bring Kara here? And don't drag the director into this - back then you could've told him to go away and he would've done that; there would've been Hell to pay if he won, but if he didn't-"
"This isn't about winning, or playing, or anything," Grant shakes his head. "I did awful things - but I've always done awful things - for S.H.I.E.L.D., Hydra, Garrett. There's blood on my hands - and there always will be. Coulson likes to believe that he's running Avengers - the more mundane edition - he is wrong, it will end badly, but at least he believes. You don't do that, not even what Coulson and the others have. You just go with the flow-"
"I believe in S.H.I.E.L.D.-"
"So do I," Grant shrugs. "S.H.I.E.L.D. doesn't believe in me, whereas you don't believe in it - not Coulson's version of it, anyhow. Coulson is different from Fury, and I'm not just talking about the obvious, eyepatch and all. We're all different. We're all humans. This is what Hydra tries to destroy, especially when Whitehall was in charge of it. This is what you allowed Kara to experience. This is your sin. You don't believe in the S.H.I.E.L.D. - just in some sort of an abstract."
"Perhaps. And you believe in S.H.I.E.L.D., but went against it anyways, all lines in sand regardless. Is it not your sin?"
"It is," Grant nods and walks to the snack table (they currently not in a vault but in a better, more civilized setting, complete with a snack table), where he rolls a pancake - with sugar and citron juice, (because S.H.I.E.L.D. snacks are high-maintenance this way). "Here. You look like you need it."
"Thank you," Bobbi chews on the rolled pancake, feeling oddly uncomfortable. This isn't how she expected her confrontation to go, but, honestly, a lot of her expections are being proven wrong by members of Coulson's S.H.I.E.L.D., even the reject (not that she is going to call Grant this - she isn't looking for a fight with him...and if he doesn't give her one after being called that, it would be worse for her).
It is how Lance and Kara find her - chewing on a rolled-up pancake - and Grant, sitting nearby, lookingly idly through a window.
"I knew that you were going to put something into your mouth, Bob," Lance says with genuine bitterness (he hadn't forgotten her attempts to suborn him from Coulson over to Gonzales). "Interrogating a prisoner? Yeah, right."
"Lance," Kara elbows the Englishman sharply into a side. "Don't start."
Lance gives Kara a glare, but it is half-hearted without any fire or ire behind it. "Fine. Look - Bob, Ward. Skye's old man and lady are starting a fight with S.H.I.E.L.D. after all - do you want to come and help?"
Ward gives the other man a look. "That's a yes," Kara explaines to Hunter. "Let's go."
And this is what they do, all 4 of them - take a break from each other and their messed-up relationships with each other, and go and help S.H.I.E.L.D. deal with the InHuman uprising - but that is another story.
End