He's nineteen when he's approached by SHIELD. Agent Garrett is jovial and kind, if a little loud. Ward is nursing a drink when he comes to sit next to him. 'Large scotch.' he tells the bartender, and to Grant he says with a shake of his head and a genial laugh, "Had one hell of a day."

Grant doesn't answer, only nods back at him. He isn't one for small talk, for getting wasted with strangers. Even the way he sits, shoulders hunched, face sullen or blank, disinvites company. He's still got a little of his teenage awkwardness, but there's strength there too, muscles beginning to bulge in his upper arms, hands big enough to hold up the world. Garrett, however, seems to think that the world is his playing ground. He talks in a loud, easy voice, and Grant surmises that he's an army man from his stories—"so I emptied the clip into that sonuvabitch's chest and used the barrel to knock his partner out cold. I'm telling you, those bastards are gonna think twice before they try taking on the officially goddamn sanctioned operatives of the USA again."

They're not used to men like this here. The bar is supposed to be a place full of cigarette smoke hanging thick and grey under the low ceiling and men huddled together, shoulders hunched with the murmur of low conversation filling the room. Instead, cigarette's are stubbed out and voices are fading out like the embers into silence. Grant can see one of the mouthier kids across the bar getting increasingly pissed off at every too-loud word coming out of Garrett's mouth.

Maynard hasn't tried beating on him or his brother for nearly a month, so of course Grant ends up getting into a goddamned brawl.

Garrett surprises him with his violence, intensely precise and brutal—there's a smile on his face too, like he's having fun. Grant knows that look—he's felt it on his, on occasion. The first time Maynard went to hurt Jake and Grant was tall and strong enough to stop him. Sometime else, when Maynard thought he could make him cower and look on as he had as a child. Grant took the brunt of his anger after that. Jake will never know it again, of that he'll make sure.

Garrett is lethal and cruel but it's a week night and the bar is full. Grant takes a fist to his ribs and another to his face but when someone breaks a bottle over the counter top he breaks the bastard's ribs with a swift twist of his wrist and then, when he goes down, a hard kick to his chest. There's an audible crack. He ducks and takes another one down, and someone else who comes at him with their fists swinging. There's nothing to stop him and no one behind him, no one to protect. Only his rage.

Garrett comes up to him, pats him on the shoulder with a cocky grin and shortened breath. He gives him his card. "Kid, you didn't really think I worked with the military." he says.

It's two weeks later that Maynard goes for Jake again. Worse, this time—he's angry, and mean, and there's a madness in his eyes that makes him strong. But it makes Grant strong too and he takes him down, makes sure he stays down. At first he can hear his little brother shouting behind him but then he's alone with only his ragged breath breaking the silence and his fists connecting over and over again with the man who was supposed to do his best to protect them both; his eyes closed and his blood leaking out on to the floor. Grant can't really tell exactly where it's coming from, only that there's a lot of it.

There's real silence after, and Grant, out of breath and sliding down to sit on the floor, looks properly at his brother's bloody, messed up body. There's a glob of red sputum pooling at the edge of his bottom lip. Grant feels nothing at all.

There are police sirens in the distance. He finds Garrett's card in his jacket pocket and calls the number.

He's just Ward after that.

He finds that to be convincing you need to let your guard down. You need to let them see the cracks, the vulnerabilities, the things that make you you. He knows how he comes across, as the capable agent, overly precise and locked down and dull. He knows this because it's who he is without the part of himself that sat on the filthy carpet of their motel room, breathing too heavily with messed up hair and sweat clammy under his shirt, his hands covered in his brother's blood.

It's who he is without the part he barely put into words for twelve years even in the privacy of his own head, the part that's sunken and waiting in the deepest, quietest depths of his mind. The part that's HYDRA. Out of the shadows, and into the light.

Nobody trusts anyone, so when Simmons jumps, he sees it for the opportunity it is. Fitz finds him threatening so, when the opportunity arises, he lets him be the hero of his own story. When May, the coldest and most detached of the group, offers him an in, he takes it.

Skye isn't relevant, he tells himself at first. When Coulson unexpectedly ropes her in to join the crew, he finds a way to get close to her. She's not a threat, though he finds himself making her into one. He's unconcerned, though she wasn't part of the plan. She uses the cracks in his veneer that he allows himself to worm her way in and she trusts him. He tells himself that it's only the Ward that she knows, the great protector, who almost allows himself to trust her back.

But he's level headed Agent Ward, and when he shoots Thomas Nash in the stomach (the same way that monster had her, he thinks savagely) he knows he's lost control. He tries to justify it to himself afterwards, tells himself that what he did was the neutralization of a threat to the potentially useful 084, but all he can remember thinking is Skye, danger, rage. He's not good at lying to himself—and has never known any reason to question what he is. There's only Agent Grant Ward andWard, HYDRA, with no difference in between. There's no need for any justification. He's Garrett's creation, and he hasn't seen his brother for twelve, wearyingly long years.

Skye kisses him in the caretaker's closet, tugging his mouth down to hers with a small smile on her face when he pulls away, and for the first time in a long time he feels something—something bright and cold and clear.

fin.