Disclaimer: I don't own Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Note 1: Once again, unbeta'd. If this little series is going to be a habit, I should probably consider getting one for it though.

Note 2: Like with the last idea, this one basically just came to me.

Note 3: For the interested, I sort of envision Eve Myles as this Rose Ward – I saw a picture set on google once (no idea who made it) that was an AoS rule 63 AU and they'd cast Eve Myles as 'Grace Ward' – she really does look the part, and it's stuck with me since – especially since Rose Ward in this fic is more or less just as dangerous as her brother (and that set had her looking pretty damn dangerous) and I really wanted them to have a strong family resemblance in this fic.

Late Night Death Threats

By Alkeni

Hotel Room, Paris, France

March 5th, 2016

Why Skye was awoken at o-dark thirty in the morning by the ringing of the burner phone she'd used to set up that... 'productive' meeting with Ward, she assumed that it was him. She really didn't want to talk to him, but Coulson had given her the job, and Lash needed to go down. As long as Ward was going to keep recruiting 'NuHumans' (as the new Inhumans on her team had taken to calling themselves), then he was going to be putting himself up against Lash anyway.

I say just let the two of them duke it out and take out whoever is left. But Coulson was also right – Lash was worse. Much worse. At least for the time being, Ward was the lesser of a whole host of evils.

When she'd first heard from Coulson months ago that Ward had resurfaced with a team behind him, she'd assumed – with good reason, dammit – that he'd done it by like, bombing a public event or something. Something commensurate to how much of an evil bastard he was, at least. But nope. Ward and his team – which had two of the NuHumans she'd gone looking for but hadn't found – had surfaced 'liberating' a collection of rare art from a Mexican Drug Lord's fancy-ass estate... which was in ruins by the time they were done with it. But Ward had gone on to sell all that art on the black market, so it wasn't as if he was trying to do some sort of Indiana Jones 'It Belongs in a Museum' thing.

It was only when Skye learned a few days later, after digging into said drug lord that she learned another fun little detail – that the man in question had had a half-dozen major financial dealing with John Garrett and Cybertek in the year and change leading up to the fall of S.H.I.E.L.D.

The pattern had mostly held after that – Ward wasn't attacking Hydra, but instead attacking people who worked with it – bought their weapons, provided them funds, cut deals with them, and more. And then pocketing their money. While he was obviously using the money to fund his efforts, Skye couldn't believe that's where all of it was going, which meant Ward either was spending it on something else in secret, or he was amassing some kind of warchest. That was a fun thought. What the hell is his endgame. There's a reason he isn't attacking Hydra directly – and he's got something he's aiming to do with all that money.

His attacks were infrequent, interspersed with him being a player in the mad scramble to find and 'acquire' powered people, NuHuman and otherwise. Skye could only guess what kind of lies or worse he'd told and done to get people to work for him.

I guess I can't be surprised that his sister would be evil enough to work for him. It seems to run in the family. Even Thomas was a criminal – though drugs and some no-injury thefts hardly matched up to Christian's very, very extensive corruption and malfeasance – discovered after the man's death – or Ward and whatever his sister had done and were up to.

But it wasn't Ward who was on the other end of the line, as it turned out.

"Ward." Skye muttered into the phone as she searched through the dark for the lamp's switch. She flicked it on and blinked against the sudden light. "Couldn't you have waited until a fucking reasonable hour to call me?"

"Oh, he will be." A distinctly female voice on the other end of the line said. "But I'm calling you now because I'm not the slightest bit concerned about your sleep cycle."

Skye blinked again, took the burner phone away from her face and looked at it, then brought it back, shaking her head to speed up the waking up process – the downside of a comfortable hotel bed was that it was... well, comfortable. She hadn't done comfortable bed that often in the last few months.

"And you're...?"

"Rose Ward." The woman – Rose – said tersely.

"Nice to finally put a voice to the face." Skye muttered sarcastically. "What do you want?"

"What I want is for you to not be messing with Grant's head. He shouldn't have arranged that fucking meeting in the first place, and definitely not without me there to watch his back!"

"Don't worry, next time I shoot Grant, it'll be from the front. Happy?" Skye replied, uninterested in the woman's hate.

"Short of dropping dead, there's not much you could do that would make me happy. But you can pass a message up on the line to your precious boss: If you even think about backing out on your promise to get Thomas out of prison, or even think about double-crossing us, I will end you. You can count on it." Skye would have rolled her eyes – and she did a little – but the threat seemed pretty genuine. As far as she knew, the Director had no intention of turning on Ward or on not getting Thomas out of prison if Ward kept up his end of the deal.

That wasn't what Skye was going to tell this woman, who had decided it was absolutely vital that she give someone else some late night death threats.

"Calling someone up at," Skye looked at the digitdal clock on the beside table, "2:45 in the morning to give them some death threats isn't exactly the best way to make someone like you. I'm thinking I was right to call you a bitch."

"Oh, yea, you're definitely right to call me a bitch." Rose agreed harshly. "And unlike you and your agency, I've never pretended I'm 'good' or 'better' than everyone else. I'm not a good person – it seems to come with the territory of being a Ward. Being a good person isn't really in our genetic makeup, it would seem." I could have told you that. "The only difference between us is that Grant and I never actually claimed to be 'good people', you and yours go around telling yourself 'we're the good guys, we're the good guys', as if saying it over and over again will make it true."

Skye bit her lip. Did S.H.I.E.L.D. have to cross some lines. Yes – it was the only way to protect people, to fight Hydra. No, it wasn't perfect, and Skye wasn't happy about it. But S.H.I.E.L.D. was still good, and I'm not a bad person!

"Well, you're right about one thing. You're not a good person – and it's true, it does seem to come with the territory of your family." Skye delivered the words in a flat tone. "I'm going to guess Ward's agreed to the deal?"

"We agreed to the deal." Rose clarified. "But I wanted to make sure a few things were clear before Grant gave you a call. Now they are. So have a bad night, and terrible nightmares to you." There was a click, then the call was done.

Well. Fun. She'd really been hoping Ward was going to say no – and instead she was going to have to deal with him on a regular basis and probably his homicidal sister too.

Who did I piss off to have to deal with this shit?