It's a start
Disclaimer: none of the characters are mine, but belong to their respective owners.
Grant Ward was bored. He and his mother were shopping in this fancy-ass store (that sold mainly on discount – nobody could say that while the Ward family was rich, it was not also cheap), and he had wandered off and away to observe a series of fancy-looking (maybe even gilded) Oriental knick-knacks – tubby Buddhas and lucky charms in shape of horses and/or cats.
It was one of the cats that caught Grant's attention for some reason. Like the other pieces, it was made mainly from a single piece of metal (well, that is how it looked to Grant's childish eyes), with a series of Oriental signs (letters or numbers – Grant did not care: they were not English characters, so he did not understand them at all) located on its body. The only part moving, made separately from the rest of the cat was its right front paw, which was swinging back and forth, like a pendulum, probably powered by some really small battery. The only thing different – at least to Grant's childish eyes – was the facial expression of the feline: it was profoundly miserable, maybe just as miserable as how Grant Ward was feeling on the inside.
Moved by this sudden understanding, as well as by sympathy that came with it, Grant decided to reach out and to touch the swinging paw.
"I wouldn't advise you to do this, young man," the store's owner suddenly spoke up from Grant's side, having appeared suddenly out of nowhere, ignored by everyone else in the store – namely Grant's mother and the store's clerk, who was trying to make a sale to her.
"Oh? Why?" Grant gave the old man a curious look.
"Because if you do, your life will be like this cat's – a pendulum of going back and forth, up and down, good and evil...until you'll make your choice and stick to it, no matter what comes your way."
"Okay," Grant blinked, for he was barely a teen at that moment and such – somewhat more naive than he would become in the future. "And if I don't touch the cat?"
"Then you'll have the life that your big brother would have otherwise," the old man still sounded calm and unshaken. "A life of power and privilege and prestige, just like your father's, actually."
"And if I touch the cat, I won't have it? Power and other p-things?" Grant blinked owlishly.
The old man looked oddly pensive as he looked over Grant: even though the latter was in his early teens, he was already taller than most other boys of his age were.
"Oh, you will have it," the old man admitted, "but it will be of a different kind – enabling you to survive, not to flourish: to flourish you will require the help of others-"
"Ok!" Grant nodded eagerly, interrupting his interlocutor. "That's good enough! I really do not like my family and the cat looks really miserable! I'll take it!" He turned back to the paw-swinging cat piece and touched the swinging paw, ignoring everything else. Immediately, as he did it, there was a flash of light, and...
...Just before the cat piece fell apart into small pieces of rusted metal Grant could swear that its metal muzzle switched expressions from absolute misery to complete gratitude and joy. But that did not matter – several days after the old man made a scandal in his store and forced Grant's mother to pay for the ruined merchandise, Grant would be shipped to a military school, from which he would emerge a changed person – just in time to have his first showdown with his big brother and start on his own path that would lead him both to S.H.I.E.L.D. and Hydra.
End