Maveth (part 2)
Disclaimer: none of the characters are mine, but belong to Marvel™.
Note: this chapter has some mature themes in it.
And so, the tenacious trio of...men set off to rescue private Ryan, or rather – astronaut Will, even though none of them were really into this. Leo – because of Jemma, Grant – because of Hydra and Phil Coulson...that was somewhat complicated.
Coulson had gone through the new portal to stop Grant Ward and rescue Leo Fitz (or Jemma Simmons), though not necessarily in this order. Will, the other (or the other other?) man in the question wasn't as important to him – he had been briefed, briefly, about Jemma's adventures on the alien planet, but nowhere as fully as Leo or even Bobbi Morse had been, and from what he had learned, he had his doubts about the man. Jemma's new friend sounded nice, but by now Coulson had become more cynical and doubting of such nice-sounding people, in no small part thanks to the actions of Grant Ward walking next to him, ironically.
Coulson hated to admit it, even to himself, but his plan to stop and get rid of Grant Ward had not been the most thought-through. Initially, he counted on his cybernetic arm to give him an edge – and it did, when put against Grant's Hydra soldiers, but then Leo Fitz acted up and threw him off.
Leo Fitz...Coulson had always considered the young scientist to be his friend, not just an ally and an underling (or an employee, though S.H.I.E.L.D. didn't really call its agents employees – it just seemed tasteless), but now, seeing how Leo acted just as, if not more, hostile to him than to Grant Ward, Coulson was beginning to have doubts.
S.H.I.E.L.D., the old S.H.I.E.L.D., had employed a large number of people with varied personalities in its ranks, but it tended to shy away from the overly cynical and the overly idealistic people – such as Leo Fitz. If Grant had been taken onto the Bus's team for being too anti-social (and yes, Coulson now realized the dramatic irony and did not like it at all), then Leo and Jemma were invited onboard for being, perhaps, too introvert, and also – almost too idealistic, even in light of their genius...
"Do you know what our problem, with each other, is, Leo?" Coulson spoke up to the youngest man in their group, pointedly ignoring their former ally (or trying to, anyways). "Is that you're an idealist-"
"He knows – I told him that, once," Grant answered instead, clearly intent on not being ignored, for reasons of his own. "He's a paladin, a knight. He thought, once, that so was I, but he was wrong. Garret was many things, once, but in the end, he was a fraud, and he made me into one too. Leo paid the price, just as Jemma did-"
"Shut up," Coulson snapped. "Stop acting all contrite and repenting! You are not fooling anyone! Not even Leo! But, he is playing along for reasons of his own!"
"Excuse me?" the other two stared at Coulson in stereo. "Say what?"
"When you confronted Grant and Garrett on the stolen bus," Coulson turned back to the scientist, "I was proud of your actions, but they were unnecessary – we still would've stopped Garrett, and your actions did inadvertently made him only stronger-"
"Oh no, he killed John, all right," Grant interrupted once more. "The thing that got onto its feet and walked around, wearing his face after Raina had injected her concoction into him wasn't John. It was some sort of a mad thing that was not really human, and you know what? So was Whitehall with his stolen alien organs and so's Malick, most likely, I could practically smell it on his breath."
"Yet here you are, doing his bidding," Coulson said acidly.
"No, I'm here to spend some time, thinking about what to do with Thomas," Grant shrugged. "So far I'm thinking of letting you and the rest of S.H.I.E.L.D. keep him. He is a weasel who likes to be useful – mom and dad used him to spy on me and our sister until we figured it out; you are a man who likes his people to be useful. Of course, once Thomas stops being useful, you'll probably just hand him over to me as you did with Christian and our parents, so I can be patient."
"Don't you dare talk to me about your family-"
"Oh, my sister and I, we have emancipated ourselves from them as soon as we came of age," Ward flashed a smile that was devoid of humour, "so that was just closure, nothing more. The reason why I am here, avoid Thomas? Because I thought that Thomas just might be saved, that he could be a normal, good person and not a Ward, but he seems to have become one anyways."
There was a pause that was broken by Leo's giggles that were semi-hysterical themselves and not really humorous. "You know," he spoke once the other two men turned back to him. "Daisy was right about Grant – he does care, perhaps truly too much so you try not to care at all. The problem is that the same goes for Coulson – he cares for you too, but he thinks that it is wrong, so he tries not to care at all. God, the two of you are alike, so looking at each other must be like looking through the mirror darkly for both of you!"
Coulson had always thought of himself as being a patient and understanding man, but the recent events had tested him enough already, and so he decided not to pull any punches with Leo either: "And do you know what I think when I look at you, Leo? I see a man who is loyal to S.H.I.E.L.D., you are no Grant Ward, but who is even more loyal to his own ideas and ideals. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but working in S.H.I.E.L.D. generally implies that you must be loyal to its ideas and ideals, and as time goes on, this does not seem to be the case – rather, the opposite. You were thrown out of the plane because you abandoned us and went to rescue Grant despite all evidence to the contrary – but you still put your beliefs first and foremost. With Gonzales...it was different, my own actions in handling the situation were not the best, the others have paid the price for me trusting Jiaying over our own-"
"Where did I hear something similar?" Leo said with a slight grin. "Oh, I believe it was from Grant over here."
"All right, Leo, I hope that I'm your friend, not just your superior, so please try to understand that I want the best for you when I say – snap out of it! You got captured not just because of Grant's plan, but because you rushed there, ignoring the reality around you, even though the experiences with Grant and Jiaying should've taught you otherwise, but you seem to be ignoring them-"
"In other words, S.H.I.E.L.D. isn't a place for individual heroics," Grant said, almost smirking, "at least on a regular basis. The director is being very nice and reasonable here – John had the heroics beaten out of me, literally," his smile dropped. "Bobbi Morse had accused me once of trying to reconcile myself, my actions, with my dreams of being a hero. She was dead wrong. I am no hero, there is too much blood on my hands, but I did want to help Kara Lynn. Bobbi Morse wants to be an S.H.I.E.L.D. agent – I cannot blame her – but did Kara Lynn's memories and life have to be the price? It was my fault, I agree, but in the afterlife? Bobbi won't get away scot-free either, I swear."
"Agent Morse is loyal to S.H.I.E.L.D.-" Coulson began, but Grant ignored him.
"Here," he told Leo instead, as he pulled out a pen and a notepad out of a pocket on his uniform, and wrote something down. "Have Skye search and dig this out, would you?" he told the smaller man. "It's information on John and me, Bobbi and her S.O. – Victoria Hand. Just try not to be distracted, as Bobbi begins to get around without any underwear – it was all part of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s seduction course, or so she told me."
Leo blinked and put the note away into one of his own pockets. He did love Jemma, but Bobbi without her underwear? That sounded interesting – all in the name of research, of course.
Coulson, for his own part, grew thought. "Barbara never told me that she knew you before the Bus," he admitted. "The part without underwear? This is a part of the old S.H.I.E.L.D.'s seduction course, but not one widely talked about, I only know about it from Melinda..." he grew thoughtful.
"There's a seduction course in S.H.I.E.L.D.?" Leo blinked, as he rather imagined both Bobbi and Melinda walk around without any underwear, joined by Jemma and Daisy. (Leo was a good man, but still a man.)
"There was, though it was mostly taken by field agents and mostly by women," Grant nodded. "Victoria Hand had passed it, though, and she was quite content with not being a field agent."
"Victoria Hand? The Victoria Hand? The one who ran the Hub?" Leo could not believe it.
"Yes. Under those stern business suits of hers she was even more voluptuous than Bobbi," Grant nodded, before catching himself. "I think that we've really went off topic here. Director, how far away are we-?"
"Actually, we're already here," Coulson confessed. "This is where I ended up at when I came out of the portal. I fell down there, and was getting up here, when I heard you and the Hydra soldiers walking past. I got up, caught up, and started killing," he flushed, aware that this was not the best way to tell a story – that did make him sound like Grant Ward, at least a little. "Leo, do any of the local landmarks sound familiar to you from Jemma's story?"
"Yes," Leo nodded, as he cautiously joined the other two men at the ravine's edge. "This is the lake with the carnivorous plant, where Jemma met up with this Will. We need to get down, I'm afraid."
"Don't be," Grant shrugged, as he pulled out a long piece of rope out of another one of his pockets, and began to tie it to the nearest rock. "Just attach Coulson's arm to the rest of him and we'll begin to go down."
"I can't," Leo confessed. "It broke."
"So?" Coulson actually did not get it any better than Grant. "It broke off where it was supposed to, right? Otherwise I would be in pain – a lot of it."
"Yes, it broke off in the right place, but incorrectly, so I can't attach it all the same," Leo confessed.
"Then why you were carrying it around?" Coulson blinked – he honestly had thought that Leo had done this to make a point to him.
"I don't want to leave it behind," Leo confessed. "This is an alien planet, if there's any native life around, I didn't want their first impression of us to be discarded prostheses, you know?"
"Of course there's native life," Grant pointed out, not unreasonably, as he finished tying down and securing the rope. "You just spoke yourself about a carnivorous plant?"
Leo blinked, fully realized what he had been talking about and shivered, not exactly from the cold.
"All right," Grant continued, not looking very happy himself. "If the hand's no good, then director, sir, I will have to carry you down on my back."
"What?"
"You cannot scale a rope up or down with just one arm and hand," Grant grimaced, "so I will have to carry you. Leo, you know how to climb down?"
"Yes," Leo nodded. "The basics, anyways."
"Maybe I'll just wait here," Coulson argued, but it seemed, (to Leo, anyways), that it was mostly for show.
"And if Malick's eldritch horror comes through, you think you'll be able to fight it off?" Grant flatly replied. "Director, you're a very good fight, but none of us know what exactly it is and how to fight it. Malick said that it was an InHuman of some sort, but for all we know, it is another carnivorous plant instead."
"Well, Jemma didn't think that it was plant, but she herself was quite blurry on how it looked," Leo agreed, reluctantly. "Sir, director Coulson, I agree – staying behind is a bad idea. Please, come along."
"Fine," Coulson grunted, "but if either of you tell this to anyone, I'll kill you both."
"That's fair," Grant nodded, as he took off his utility vest and put it onto Leo. Then, he lowered himself. "Sir, hope on."
'It's sir now, is it?' Phil Coulson thought, but kept his thought to himself. This was important, somehow, but he just was not sure how, so instead he did 'hope onto' Grant, grasping him firmly with his remaining arm.
If Coulson's grip bothered Grant, then the younger man did not show it. Rather, he straightened back up, and indicating to Leo with a gesture that the smaller man should follow him, he began his descent with the director 'on board'.
Looking very thoughtful himself, Leo followed them.
TBC