Summary: Grant Ward meets John Garrett. The experienced agent has an offer the young lost man cannot refuse.
A/N: I can't believe that Grant is inherently evil. I think he is an agent of Hydra for reasons he considers righteous.
This is the explanation I came up with.
The characters in this story are based both on MCU and the Marvel Comics.
When I Consider Life, It Is All a Cheat*
Memories of a child are often inaccurate, exaggerating irrelevant details and ignoring important words, events, people's names, faces and intents.
Thirteen years old Grant Ward was always going to remember this day as extremely windy and cold. He sat on the stairs of the front porch of their little house in shithole Maynard, Massachusetts, pressing Billy to his side with all the caring he had left. Neither of them wore any jackets, for they ran out of the house as they stood, in jeans and t-shirts. Billy was shivering and the way his bony elbow grind into Grant's side engraved into his memory more than Terry's wailing and begging to let him go, to leave him alone. The dry wind, pushing dirt between his teeth mattered more than the shadow of a man in a suit telling them to take care and that they would send someone later.
The door to the black SUV shut behind Terry with a sound like a discharge form a pistol. Grant and Billy sat on that porch long after three black cars rolled away, not yet able to believe that it was all over, Grant turning a card the shadowy man gave him in his fingers, without reading the letters, unable to understand words they formed.
They had to sedate Terry. The people that came had to shot their big brother full of tranquilizers, just so he would look like himself and not all those horrible, nightmarish things he would become when he got angry.
Because their brother was a monster.
Nobody had ever believed Grant when he'd said that Terry could be all those awful things. Teachers at school would say Grand and Billy had vivid imagination. Until last week, when mom saw Terry become a giant spider and she went crazy from it.
Grant couldn't remember the day they took her as vividly as he would always remember the day they took Terry. He couldn't even tell if it was him or Billy who called the ambulance, if mom was crying or screaming, or... He couldn't remember. Was Billy with him when the doctors came? What were they saying? It was all a blur. Somebody called that day, asked questions about Terry, but that Grant couldn't recall clearly either.
When they came for Terry, Grant thought at first they were going to take him and Billy to some orphanage. For a week he'd desperately tried to be a mom and a dad – because dad was never home – for Billy, even though he knew it wouldn't last. Someone would find out sooner or later.
But two men in suits wanted to see Terry. Grant caught a glimpse of some people heavily armed, like from spy movies, coming out of the SUVs that parked in their street. Then he turned just in time to see Terry morph into a tall man with bluish skin, crooked teeth and black eyes and one of the men go deathly pale. That's when the other man started shooting and then they were both shooting, Terry became himself, the men with guns charged in, tackled Terry, shackled him with some weird glowing cuffs and dragged him out of the house.
"What are they gonna do to him?" asked Billy in his small voice, standing barefoot on the porch and shivering. More from fright now than from the cold that they were only beginning to feel.
The man in a suit – the one who started shooting first – stopped at the bottom of the stairs and turned to look at them. He took off his dark sunglasses.
"What would you want them to do to him?" he replied with a question.
Billy didn't say anything, too stunned to open his mouth again, so Grant seethed for both of them.
"I want them to kill him."
The man snorted, turned to look over his shoulder at the two men trying to fit a slimy snake-like creature with Terry's head and hands – seemed that his power was abandoning him – into the SUV. Then he shook his head and looked back at Grant and Billy.
"Doubt they'll do that," he said. "Look, if you need anything, just call me." He handed Grant a card. Five minutes later all that was left of him and Terry and all the others, was the dust in the road.
Grant found out what happened to Terry five years later, when he joined S.H.I.E.L.D., an organization that was supposed to protect ordinary people from freaks like his brother. He believed in their goal, their mission. He wanted to protect innocent children like his brother and himself.
And he learned that Terrance Ward had become a respected member of the S.H.I.E.L.D.
He was told that Terry learned to control his abilities, that he used them to help people, fight for the good, all that yadda-yadda. Grant was one step away from bolting out of there, or maybe from killing everyone in the room. Good he didn't have any weapon.
John Garrett, the man who had given him his card all those years ago, and who guided him into the S.H.I.E.L.D later, took his arm and led him to the corridor, to help him calm down.
"Listen, Grant..." he started, but Grant was too amped up.
"You listen! Did you know this would happen? Back then, when you took him from our house?"
"I suspected it might."
"You lied to me!"
"I did not. I don't like it any more than you do, Grant. Listen to me!" Garrett grabbed both his arms and grounded him. Finally Grant listened.
"S.H.I.E.L.D. is weak. They want to protect people, but they are afraid to take measures it needs for the world to be truly safe. They are offering redemption, second chances, to people who don't deserve any. Grant, I know you have it in you to be the real protector of the unaware masses. To make a hard call when it needs to be made. Do you, Grant? Can I trust you?"
Grant slowly nodded. He would do anything to make sure innocent boys like Billy were safe.
"Good. I want you to join the organization within the organization. The real shield for the people. The Hydra."
#
.end
* the title is a quote by John Dryden.
I would like to know your opinions on this story, if you enjoyed it. :) Or if you didn't enjoy, I accept concrit too. ;)
But mostly, I want to talk about what happened in the last episode so bad!