A huge thank you to my wonderful reviewers: 77Flarefox77, nedda-modena, Maddison1803 and icewitch73!
I know I said at the beginning that this story will only be about three chapters long. Well, there'll at least be another chapter. Too many things that I still want to address! :-) Sooo, there's definitely more to come!
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Skye woke up gasping.
There was a thought nagging in the back of her head, something that she should remember. The rhythmic pounding behind her eyes did not make thinking any easier. Beneath her, she could feel the softness of a mattress and when she looked around, she saw that she was in a small and simple bedroom. The walls were entirely made of wood and each and every one of the uneven planks hang askew. There was no single right angle to be found in the room. It looked like it had been built by someone who definitely was not a professional architect or house builder.
Skye tried to get up, but then immediately noticed that she was tied to the bed. What the hell...? The rush of adrenaline that followed this realization instantly brought her memories back.
Ward.
It was not so much fear or trepidation, but anger that filled her, when she thought about his latest treachery. When would she finally learn not to trust him? He had ICEd her in the car and now she was entirely at his mercy. Her team had no chance to ever find her, let alone help her out of this situation.
The avalanche of emotions that followed this realization made the small table beside her bed rattle. She had been so foolish to trust him! And here she was and all that was left was her stupid powers that only served to make the situation worse, but they would not help her get out of this mess. The fury and helplessness that crashed over her made it suddenly appear tempting to bring the house down, just because she could and because that would definitely piss off Ward. If she was lucky, he might be hit by a falling piece of wood or something.
"Ward!" she yelled lividly, tugging uselessly at her bonds while the room shook madly all around her. "Come here, you backstabbing bastard! At least have the decency to show yourself!"
There was a small pause in which she only heard the rattling of furniture and saw dust rippling down from the ceiling. Then, a moment later, the door opened.
"Jesus, girl, stop that," a mild voice told her and when Skye lifted her head, she saw that it was not the older but the younger Ward that had entered the room. "Grant isn't here right now. He told me you might be angry, which is why he left the ICEr with me. Even though I have no idea how to use it."
Thomas, now completely without flames, looked a bit forlornly at the ICEr in his hands, then back up at her. A small smile tugged at his lips and it enhanced the boyish air around him. Skye suddenly realized that he was probably only a year or two older than she was. He was not only younger than Ward, but also quite a bit smaller and definitely tended towards lanky. Now that he was not ablaze, there was nothing threatening to him.
"Please stop the shaking," he asked her, eyes turning big when an exceptionally forceful quake hit the room and he stretched out a hand against the wall to keep himself upright.
Skye realized that the shaking got slowly worse and the more she tried to keep it in check, the more it got out of hand. Her powers seemed to have a will of their own. Control slipped her grasp and made her frantic.
"I don't know how," she stuttered, looking desperately at Thomas.
"Okay, try and calm down," he instructed her evenly and freed her from her restraints with one clean cut of a knife. Skye struggled to get to a sitting position and more felt than saw Thomas sitting down beside her.
"I know it's terrifying when your powers take over," he told her slowly, but refrained from touching her. "The rage they put you in is horrible. For me, screaming sometimes helps. Try screaming, but scream with your voice and your body, not with your feelings and your powers or you'll definitely bring the house down!"
Skye stared at him out of big eyes. The rattling around her was so bad by now that one of the ceiling planks had come down. Without thinking, she started screaming, a high and shrill sound coming from the depth of her chest. She tried to head Thomas' advice, concentrating on the physical aspect of screaming. She screamed until there was no more air in her lungs and when she stopped to breathe, she noticed that the quake had lessened.
"Good," Thomas told her soothingly. "Now breathe. Get the rest of it out of your system, calmly."
They breathed silently for minutes and slowly the trembling stopped, leaving Skye feeling completely exhausted. At the same time, she could not help the small smile of triumph she felt bubbling up inside her. This was the first time she had been able to control her powers when they had evolved into full action. Without knocking herself out, that is. This meant that it was possible after all!
"Thanks," she muttered, still somewhat shakily. The smile that Thomas gave her in return was nothing short of brilliant and Skye could not help but wonder for a moment if his older brother had the capacity to smile like that as well.
"You're welcome," Thomas replied easily. "And I'm sorry I threatened you back in the warehouse. I was tired, hungry and scared and thought you might kill my brother. The fire and flames... whenever that starts, I become... different. The fire wakes up an urge in me to burn everything down and it's sometimes difficult not to follow that impulse."
He gave a slightly awkward, one-shouldered shrug and Skye had – for the first time in weeks – the feeling that someone actually knew what she was going through. Her powers had a life of their own, too. Yes, she could start the trembling willingly, but anger and panic usually took over so that she was unable to stop it again.
"You have your powers for a long time already?" she asked him quietly and noticed that he had placed the ICEr on the small nightstand beside her bed, in easy reach of her. That carelessness told her that there was definitely a difference between him and his brother. Skye thought about grabbing the ICEr and fleeing, but as long as Thomas did not make any move towards it, she could maybe get some long-desired answers.
"Since I was a kid," he replied evenly. "Though I used them only once before reaching adulthood, and it was such a disaster that I didn't use them in years. But now I know that it's definitely better to learn and control them than to repress them."
A million questions pushed themselves to the forefront of Skye's mind, making the headache she had from the ICEr worse. She brought a hand to her forehead and started rubbing gently.
"Headache?" Thomas asked quietly. "Grant told me you might have a headache. He said drinking a lot of water helps to get over it sooner."
"How considerate of him," Skye replied, her voice turning icy.
Thomas gave her a rueful look, then got up, before he said, "I know your history with my brother isn't the best. He hasn't told me much, but I have eyes and I can see that you're hurting each other." He stopped, then changed the topic and asked with a hopeful grin, "You want tea or water?"
Not for the first time in such a short time Skye found herself taken aback by the open and innocent nature of Thomas Ward. He was in this regard so very different from his brother that she somehow found herself trusting him, even though her mind told her again and again that this was a Ward. However, she could see that he was untrained and he moved carelessly to the door, the ICEr lying forgotten on her nightstand. When he turned his back to her, she quickly grabbed the ICEr and stuffed it in the back of her pants. There was no reason to be careless herself.
Nevertheless, she decided to follow him into the small kitchen that was just next to the room in which she had woken up. Only now she could see that this was some kind of cabin. There was one window and the only thing she could see outside was trees. If she had to guess, she would say that she was in the middle of nowhere.
"Tea or water?" Thomas asked again and motioned for her to sit down at the table.
"Tea would be great, thanks," she replied and hesitantly sat down on the chair. She watched Thomas busy himself with the water boiler and inconspicuously looked around the room. The door was made of wood, too, but there was no way to tell if it was locked or not.
"You're a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, aren't you?" he asked almost shyly and brought the kettle with the steaming tea to the table, then went to fetch two cups.
Skye felt herself frowning at that. Could it really be that Grant had kept his brother in the dark about her? Thomas might be lying. However, when Skye watched him intently, she could detect nothing that could indicate that he was playing a double game.
"Maybe," she finally replied slowly, still watching out for any telltale signs of lying or treachery. There were none. "What exactly do you know? Are you working for Hydra, too?"
"What?" Thomas asked, dumbfounded. "Me...? I... No! I don't even..." He forcefully stopped his ramblings, took a deep breath, then looked at her intently. "Look, I know my brother has been part of this whole spy-thing business and I know that he pissed off pretty much everyone around him. I found out about Hydra the way everyone else did: Through the news! I'm a bookseller, alright?"
Skye could tell that she made him nervous with her scrutinizing stare (thanks, May), but other than that, she could detect nothing suspicious in his behavior. Either he was really telling the truth or he was a pretty damn good spy himself.
"So you had no idea your brother is working for Hydra?" she questioned him with narrowed eyes.
"No!" he exclaimed, running a hand through his dark and longish hair. "Skye... can I call you Skye? Grant didn't tell me your last name."
"Skye's fine," she replied coolly.
"Alright, Skye," he tried again. "Until Grant was branded publicly as a Hydra traitor by my oldest brother Christian, I hadn't even known he had been working for S.H.I.E.L.D. Hell, I thought for years that he was dead! I last heard from him when he was fifteen. I only knew he was alive when I heard Christian talking in the news."
"You don't really talk much in your family, do you?" she stated, raising her eyebrows.
Thomas sighed, then ran a hand across his face. Skye could not help but notice that he stopped his motion shortly before reaching the ugly scar on the left side of his mouth and skin, as if that wound still pained him.
"No, we don't," he answered grimly. "And that's completely fine by me, thanks very much. The less they're in my life, the better. All they ever did was tear me down."
These words somehow rang familiar and it took a few seconds for her to remember that these were almost the same words that Grant spoke to her when he was still being kept in the basement of the Playground.
"There's one thing I don't get," Skye began slowly, fixing Thomas with another hard stare. "If you're just an unknowing, upright civilian that has no connection to Hydra at all and if you thought that your brother was dead for years, how can it be that you still trust him? For all you know he's a complete stranger to you now."
For the first time during this 'interrogation', Thomas met her gaze unflinchingly. There was even a small smile playing around his lips.
"Grant saved me," he explained simply. "More times than I can count. I wouldn't be here without him."
The conviction and adoration in his voice took Skye aback.
"What did he do?" she asked carefully. "You know, it's funny that you say he saved you, because he told me stories about you and your oldest brother. Grant told me he used to be the one beating you up. I don't know about you, but this doesn't count as saving in my eyes."
Thomas kept quiet for a moment, then replied, "That's true. Grant beat me up and I used to hate him for that. You know, I was mother's favorite. She used to call me her little angel. The more she pampered me, the worse got the beatings from my brothers and the angry silence from my sister. But only as I got older I realized that Grant was scared himself."
He paused for a moment and took a deep breath, before he continued, "Christian made him do it. He was a cruel and manipulative bastard and my parents weren't an inch better. Grant took the brunt of it all. At least I had my parents' protection. Grant, however, he didn't have anything, he was completely on his own. He was often beaten up himself and was forced by Christian to hurt me. So many times my parents caught him hitting me, and he didn't dare to tell them it was actually Christian behind all of it. My parents used to lock Grant in a room for days without any food or water as punishment."
Skye listened to Thomas telling his story. As it seemed, Grant had not lied about everything, back on the Bus. Though she told herself to be cautious, to not just believe everything she heard, she still found herself horrified, somewhere deep down. She had been sure for months that Grant had just made up that sob story about his family to win her trust. Seemed like this was not the case.
Thomas sighed, staring off into space. "Grant was scared himself, I realized that when I was about seven. Let's say that from that time we started to have some great moments when it was just the two of us. He started rebelling against Christian and it all culminated when Christian made him throw me into a well." Thomas paused again and scratched his chin, then continued, "After that, Grant started to change. He took the beatings from Christian, but he never lay another finger on me ever again. He started losing weight and..."
"Whoah, wait," Skye interrupted him, frowning. "Why would he lose weight?"
Thomas sheepishly looked at his hands, then up at her again.
"Hell, Grant will hate me for saying this, but... he was rather chubby as a kid."
Skye could not help herself. She was staring. Openmouthed.
"No way! You're making fun of me!"
Shaking his head slightly, Thomas replied seriously, "No, I'm not. He was that overweight kid who read all the time and was scared of pretty much everything. The dark, the woods, animals..."
That picture collided so sharply with everything she knew about Grant Ward that her mind could simply not accept what she heard.
"Come on, now you're pulling my leg," she tried again, but only half-heartedly. "Action figure Grant Ward was never chubby or afraid of the dark."
"He wasn't always like he is now," Thomas answered her somberly. "He was shy, withdrawn and gentle. What you see now is what my family made him to be. And a large part of that change took place because he tried to protect me. As I said, he started to work out, fought back, practiced throwing stones with a slingshot he made himself..."
Sighing internally, Skye listened to the change that Grant had undergone. There still was no way to tell if Thomas told the truth, but it all sounded very sincere. It was a different picture that the younger Ward presented of his brother. What if his childhood really messed him up so bad that he had finally been susceptible to joining Hydra?
That thought somehow nagged at her. Then again, what about his countless crimes? The old anger that was always luring just under the surface whenever she thought about Ward reared back up again. Yeah, maybe he had had a shitty childhood, but that was long in the past. He had had his chance to change, but had not taken it.
"Stop," she told Thomas harshly, who was still going on about his brother's so-called heroic deeds. "I've heard enough. You know what? I had a shitty childhood, too, I grew up in an orphanage and spent a good part of my adult years in a van. And you know what? I haven't joined a Nazi organization or betrayed my team and I haven't killed countless people. Thomas, you're brother is not a good man, no matter what good memories you have of him."
She paused and watched the younger Ward stare at her out of wide eyes, then a thought struck her and she added forcefully, "Wake up, Thomas! He isn't the innocent lamb you make him out to be. And hell, even you should know he wasn't like that back then, either. He burned down your damn house because he wanted to kill your brother!"
"That wasn't him!" Thomas suddenly yelled and Skye saw flames flicker alive on the back of his hands that gripped the table tightly. "It was me! I burned down that house! I wanted to kill Christian!"
Skye looked at him in shock. With every harsh rise of his chest, the flames on his hands grew bigger. She got up in one move and played with the idea of drawing her ICEr. But then this conversation was definitely over. There were still things about the nature of her powers that she had wanted to ask him, so she left her ICEr where it was.
"Calm down, Thomas," she said to him. "Calm down and tell me what you mean. You don't make any sense to me."
He sent her a wild look out of eyes that were almost completely black. His teeth were bared and he looked ready to throw himself at her at any moment now. The flames were still dancing on the back of his hands and Skye found herself astonished at the fact that the skin beneath the flames was undamaged. Thomas took a deep breath and closed his eyes, then the flames grew smaller under Skye's stunned gaze and then eventually went out.
"I burned the house down, with my powers," he began slowly and he buried his face in the hands that had just moments ago sprouted fire. "My powers were new back then and I was so very angry. Grant took the blame because he wanted to protect me. He was the only one who knew about my powers and he wanted to keep them a secret, so I wouldn't have to live as a freak. Don't you understand? He took the blame for me. He didn't do anything."
Skye listened with growing disbelief. This was definitely news to her and put everything in perspective again. Shortly after the fall of S.H.I.E.L.D. she had learned about Ward's time in juvie. Back then, it had all made sense. He was rotten to the core, since his youth. Trying to kill a member of his family was proving that. Now, she found herself hesitating. There was no reason why Thomas would be lying about something like that. What was the meaning of all of this?
The sound of the door opening made her whirl around.
"Well, well," Grant Ward drawled, door handle still in hand. "Look who's up. Hello Skye. I hope Tommy behaved himself."
Skye felt her eyes narrowing at him. He stepped into the room and behind him, a woman entered the small cabin. Her face was full of scars and Skye could tell from just one look that she was definitely not harmless. One hand of the scarred woman went to her jacket and Skye was pretty sure she was armed.
"Of course I behaved myself," Tommy said rather cheerfully and got up to give his older brother a quick hug. Skye could not help but notice the short wince on Grant's face. "We had a talk, Skye and me. I guess she's alright."
Somehow that small comment and the light tone with which he delivered it made it difficult for Skye to be angry with him, even though she had definitely missed her chance to get out of here because she had chatted too long with him.
Grant suddenly gave her a scrutinizing look, then sighed and turned to his brother. "Tommy, you let her get the ICEr."
Surprise was written all over the younger Ward's face and he looked at her still empty hands, then back at Grant. Her ICEr was still stowed in the back of her pants and damn it, how did Ward know she had gotten hold of it?
"Did she?" Thomas asked back sheepishly.
Grant rubbed his temples. "Yes."
For a short moment Skye was remembered of the first few weeks on the bus. Back then he had been just Agent Grumpy and she had lost count of how many times she had seen him rubbing his temples and sighing in exasperation.
"But she hasn't shot me," Tommy replied rather cheerfully.
Grant looked at her before he replied evenly, "Maybe she waits until you have your back turned."
The confused look Thomas gave the both of them made Skye realize that the younger Ward had no idea that she had shot Grant. Well, at least that explained his rather friendly nature from earlier on.
"You're losing your manners, Grant," the unknown woman now put in and gave her a smile that pulled on her many scars. "I'm Kara."
Skye could not help but notice that the situation was surreal. What the hell should she do?
"I'm Skye," she then decided to answer, then narrowed her eyes at the other woman. "Do I know you from somewhere?"
"We fought, before," Kara just replied dryly.
Skye stared at her confusedly, then suddenly gasped, "You're Agent 33!"
Grant clapped his hands once, then announced, "Great, now that we all know each other, could we try and not kill each other until tonight?"
He looked at Skye pointedly when he said that, making her grind her teeth angrily.
"If you think for one moment that I'm just going to be your meek prisoner, you can..."
"You're not my prisoner, Skye," he told her, annoyance already creeping back into his voice. "You can leave whenever you want. I'll have to bind your eyes, because I'm rather sure you'll lead Coulson right here, but I'm not going to hold you against your will."
"Seriously?" she spat. "You ICEd me! And when I woke up I was tied to a bed!"
"Security measures," Grant replied smoothly. "You were a danger to my brother, Kara and myself."
Skye was fuming. There was something about him that made her want to lash out.
"If it's true that you're completely honest all of a sudden," she bit out between her teeth, "then let's go right now."
Grant sighed and carefully sat down on one of the chairs. Skye could see another short wince flitter across his face. There was something weary about him. His shoulders were slumped and she noticed again the dark circles around his eyes.
"If you really want to leave now," he replied slowly, rubbing his eyes. "We'll leave. But it's a risk. It would be safer to leave tonight under the cover of darkness, which was my plan all along."
Skye eyed him intently, before Kara added meaningfully, "And Grant could do well with another few hours of rest before we set out again. That last stunt in the warehouse was definitely a bit too much."
Grant scowled at her and tried to protest, when Thomas cut in worriedly, "You're worse again? Jeez, Grant, I told you we should let a doctor look at your side, it's..."
"It's fine," the older Ward interrupted. "I'm getting better, it just needs a bit more time to heal, that's all." He paused, then looked questioningly at Skye. "When do you want to leave?"
Her eyes flitted to Thomas, then to Kara and she could clearly make out the worry in both their faces. She finally looked back to Grant and bit her lips slightly. Her thoughts were all jumbled and she felt the need to somehow get her head straight. The conversation with Thomas had confused her and she needed to sort out what to make of the things he had told her. Then there was Kara and her obvious loyalty to Grant. Was she just one of his twisted minions? But he had never had any minions before... And last she thought of Grant himself. He seemed... different. He was clearly still recovering from the wounds she had inflicted. Maybe he was really offering some sort of truce, but it was so difficult to see, beneath his many masks.
All these thoughts made her dizzy and she felt another headache coming. She needed more time to sort out her head. This was not the time for a rash decision.
"You're bringing me back to my team tonight," she finally replied, meeting Ward's gaze evenly.
"Okay," he told her, giving her a tentative nod. "Tonight it is. Keep the ICEr until then."
Then he got up and disappeared in another room, pulling the door shut behind him.
-tbc-
Thoughts? Good? Bad? What did you think about Thomas?
I know there's not much Grant Ward in this chapter, but you'll see more of him in the next chapter(s).
