A brief moment
Disclaimer: none of the characters are mine, but belong to Marvel™.
It's night now. It is dark.
Melinda May, an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. is walking through the Bus. One would assume that she would pilot it instead, but even she needed to sleep on occasion, and there was autopilot...and Coulson...but let us not go in this now. Right now, agent May was not going to her quarters on the Bus, but rather to the holding cell, where Grant Ward, a traitor to S.H.I.E.L.D. was, well, being held, under the watchful eye of agent Tripp.
"Came to relieve me?" the latter asked with a sort of brightness that did not fool anyone present in the immediate vicinity.
"No, not yet, but I did bring you sandwiches," Melinda said quietly, (not that she needed to speak loudly, not really), even as she handed them over to the man, along with a bottle of water.
"I can live with them," Tripp nodded and pointedly turned away from her and Ward.
Ward said nothing, but continued to eye carefully the unfolding scene. May did not say anything either, but rather began to deftly and quickly bandage his bruises, keeping a special eye over his throat.
"Expecting pain?" she asked her former teammate. "Make no mistake – there will be pain, but not here and not now, not on the Bus." A pause. "For now, though, I just want you to keep in mind that is all over now; your little operation is gone. You got nothing. No bridge remaining standing, no line that you have not burned. You have nothing left to bargain with, nobody who will mourn you if I would have killed you now. Think of it. And also think of the fact that if you had made the other choice, if would have stood up to Garrett just once, if you would have been stronger, you might have been upstairs, with your friends now. Think of that too."
...In all of the universes Ward does not reply – not immediately. He just watches Melinda with a gaze that reveals nothing (though in some universes there is a flicker of flame deep in his eyes, so brief that it is gone before even the Cavalry can notice it) and waits, until she is at the door of the holding cell, before he speaks.
And it is here that the flow diverges. In most of the universes what Grant Ward replies to his ex-friend (and simply ex) is this:
"Agent May, Cavalry, if I would have been strong enough, you all would be dead. I am not S.H.I.E.L.D., I am Hydra – always will be, always was. I have no friends and never had. Tell it to Coulson or leave it – I do not care. I do know where my loyalties lie, so keep it or leave it. Hail Hydra."
Melinda May will not respond to this diatribe, she will just leave. And it is too dark for Tripp to notice – he did not expect something like this, apparently – that she will falter for just a step, there will be a flash of white on her cheeks, and her eyes will widen into a very sad look, (especially for her), if only for a moment. And then she will be off, going back to the cockpit of the Bus.
Shortly afterwards, in a matter of hours, (days, at most), Ward's reply will be known – on the Bus, throughout S.H.I.E.L.D. – and that will be the end of it. No more carrot, not much of a stick, (Skye's presence, her disdainful presence, can actually count for both, in Ward's case), and no offers of redemption. Some doors, when they are closed, (on both sides), stay closed for good; some choices, when they are made, cannot be unmade: Grant Ward is a Hydra agent, and he will live and die as such when his time comes. He made his bed and he will lie in it – willingly, no matter how much he protests otherwise.
(The Cavalry, though, who was the last S.H.I.E.L.D. agent who offered him the palm branch of redemption, will never speak of this event again: she thought that she could not be hurt after Bahrain, but she was wrong – quite wrong - and some wounds, once re-opened, take even longer to heal than the first time around. Hail Hydra.)
...But there are other universes, it should be noted, when Ward says something else, something different, (though they are quite fewer in number). Sometimes he says something along the lines of "I know; I will regret it for the rest of my life, agent May"; sometimes it's something else, but it isn't defiance, it isn't rejection, it's something different – and so S.H.I.E.L.D.'s, the core team's approach to Ward is different in the following months, resulting in something different, something brighter, and with quite a few people not being dead – but it all rests down on a single, brief but defining moment.
End