He sorts through the words crashing through his mind; sorts them one by one by one, and then finds the right ones for the day and holds them in the fists he no longer uses for fighting.
Today: paper, roll, weapon.
Yesterday: Garrett, questions, answer.
There's buzzing in the background, dull and blanketed. He notices—as he's trained to—that the buzzing is people talking, but he can't bring himself to care. You cared about that kind of thing if you were bent on surviving.
He isn't.
Paper, roll, weapon.
It's the guards—three of them, bringing his food—who are talking, he realizes idly.
It doesn't matter.
Paper.
Roll.
Weapon.
The buzzing is louder now—the guards must be upset at something.
It doesn't matter.
Paper. Roll. Weapon.
The blood is seeping out onto the cold pavement, and Grant Ward's wrist feels odd.
It doesn't matter.
Paper. Roll. Weapon.
He wakes in a hospital bed surrounded by armed guards and a man whose face carries so much anger and so much sadness that Grant Ward cannot bear to look at it.
"Why?" Coulson asks, and Grant Ward stares at him.
He hasn't spoken in six months, though he supposes his larynx must be healed by now.
It doesn't matter.
Words are too much, anyway. Speaking. Knowledge. Words.
Paper. Roll. Weapon.
"Did you want my attention?" Coulson asks sharply. "Because you've got it, Ward. But not my sympathy."
Ward looks at him strangely.
Sympathy?
The word clatters around in his head, and he tries to focus on the words he held onto before the hospital run. Paper roll weapon paper roll weapon paper—
"We've made sure you won't have access to any more paper," Coulson says, gesturing to the jagged line on Ward's wrist.
Ward's eyes follow Coulson's hand idly, and it's then that Ward realizes his hands are shaking.
"We've made sure there are no more buttons," Coulson continues. "What are you trying to do?"
Trying? To? Do?
Ward stares at him, shakes his head.
(Follow orders?)
(Walk away?)
(Wake up?)
Nothing, sir.
It doesn't matter.
"Are you really trying to die?" Coulson asks, and he is right, there is no sympathy in his face, only something hard and fierce that Ward cannot name. "Or are you trying to punish yourself?"
Well, no one else is here to do it, he says, laughing, but his lips don't move and his eyes don't spark sarcastically and he lies there, immobile, and stares at Coulson with trembling hands.
"Fine," Coulson says, turning away. "If you don't want to talk, don't. I have interrogators I can send when we need information on Hydra."
He reaches the door, and Ward stares at him, wondering what it was like when Coulson visited a different hospital bed (wondering wondering wondering about a curly-haired scientist whose name he does not think).
What was it like, to be a son and not a prisoner?
Son.
The word echoes around in his head, dragging up other words and other memories and this is what he fears, this is why he compartmentalizes, this is why he cannot allow himself more than a few words to hold onto in a day—
Coulson is gone, and the guards are telling him to get up, but Ward lies still and silent, his hands shaking as if they will never stop as new words collide and rush over him:
Weakness.
Brother.
Fitz.