August 2013, Brooklyn

It was strange, Steve being in DC. Peggy had become so used to him being around again; waking up in his arms, running with him in the morning, sharing dinner in the evening.

The house seemed so much quieter without him there.

Not that they didn't speak, of course. They texted almost constantly, and spoke on the phone almost every day.

So far, nothing concrete had surfaced about any issues with SHIELD.

Peggy had spoken to Fury about it, but the director had been evasive, eventually telling her that he hadn't been able to pinpoint what was missing from the files Tony had 'borrowed', but that he couldn't find any evidence of anything else either.

In fact, Steve was fairly sure that Natasha was wrong about Fury's motives entirely - but then he was a soldier and she was a spy, and when it came to espionage, Peggy had more faith in Natasha's instincts than in Steve's (as much as she loved him).

Still, Peggy herself had almost decided that the whole thing was a culmination of an IT error, a misunderstanding, and paranoia, when she received a most unexpected visit.

Peggy did not get a lot of visitors at home; in fact, she could count the number on one hand nowadays, so the knock on the door was more than just a surprise - certainly Clint visited fairly often (less so now) but he never used the front door, let alone knocked.

She took a moment to do a quick sweep through the kitchen and living room on the way to the hall, to make sure there was nothing too incriminating lying around, before opening the door.

"Agent Ward?"

Grant Ward usually cut an imposing figure, but right now he looked completely out of his comfort zone. "I'm so sorry for dropping in unannounced, Agent Carter, but I really needed some advice, and … I wasn't sure who else to ask."

"Of course," Peggy said, quickly shaking off her surprise. "Come in, please. Can I get you a coffee or something?"

"If you're making one," Ward said, following her through to the kitchen. "Thank you."

Peggy busied herself with the coffee machine, watching Ward out of the corner of her eye. She had only worked with him once - the op in Syria that had gone south and left her concerned about Garrett's handling of his asset.

In fact, she wasn't even sure what he was doing in SHIELD nowadays.

"Do you still take it black?"

Ward looked surprised. "You remember?"

Peggy smiled. "I have an excellent memory, Agent Ward. Unless it's where I put my keys."

That broke a little of the tension, and he chuckled, taking the offered mug.

"Now," Peggy said, sitting down opposite him, "how can I help?"

"It's a bit complicated," Ward began.

"Let's assume there are things you can't tell me," Peggy said, because as far as Ward knew, she was Sharon, and therefore restricted by security clearance, "and go from there."

"Right." Ward was quiet for a few seconds, apparently gathering his thoughts. "I'm not working under Garrett at the moment; I'm part of a field team."

Peggy raised an eyebrow. "That's a change of pace for you."

"Yeah," Ward said. "I'm getting used to it."

"I'm surprised," Peggy said neutrally. "I thought you and Garrett were joined at the hip."

Ward shrugged. "Orders are orders. Anyway, without going into too much detail, we … recruited a hacker a few months back, from the Rising Tide."

Peggy snorted. "Whose bright idea was that? Never mind," she said hastily. "How's that going?"

"Better than I thought," Ward said. "She's had her issues, but she's pretty set on being a field agent. Her problems with SHIELD pre-dated the invasion."

"Oh?"

"She grew up in an orphanage," Ward said. "When she turned eighteen, she requested her file. It came from SHIELD so heavily redacted the only thing it actually confirms is her date of birth."

Peggy frowned. "What? That doesn't sound right."

"That's what I thought," Ward agreed. "We've said we'll help her find out what happened, but in the meantime … Well, I've somehow ended up as her SO."

"Aw, your first rookie!" Peggy said, grinning. "Look who's all grown up. Is that what the advice is for?"

"Yeah." Ward dropped his gaze, which was unusual. He was a specialist, highly trained and well disciplined; probably the best specialist they had after Natasha - bolstered by his ability to actually follow orders.

His choice to come to her was strange as well, given his strong bond with Garrett, and a team leader now as well.

"Your aunt founded SHIELD, right?"

Peggy raised an eyebrow. "Great-aunt. Yes. Why?"

"So you'd know the original training plans?" Ward asked.

Peggy took a sip of coffee to gather her thoughts. "She died before I was born. What exactly is your concern? I might be able to dig something out."

"I don't want to put Skye through the survival training," Ward said quickly, as though the words had fallen out without his consent.

"Survival training?" Peggy repeated. "I don't follow."

"She's not a field agent," Ward said. "She's a hacker. She can't shift the punching bag yet. She constantly mixes up the magazine release and the safety clip, and she says 'bang' every time she pulls the trigger."

Despite her confusion, Peggy couldn't help smiling. "She sounds like quite the character. Let me clarify my question: people join SHIELD in two ways - direct recruitment or through the Academy. The survival training happens within the Academy. She has been directly recruited, therefore she wouldn't be expected to do it." She picked up her coffee. "Although personally, I think a degree of survival training is good for an agent. But it's not solo training anyway; it's not like she'd be on her own out there."

"No, not the Academy training," Ward said. "The one before the Academy, in Montana."

Something nasty was creeping its way up Peggy's spine, causing the hair on the back of her neck to prickle. "The one before the Academy?"

Her tablet was still on the kitchen side after its role as a recipe book earlier in the evening, so she retrieved it, logging into the SHIELD servers and finding Ward's personnel file. "Did you do the training?"

Ward's brow furrowed. "Of course. Everyone has to, don't they?"

Peggy scanned his file. "You graduated military school at eighteen and joined the SHIELD Academy straight away."

"That's not right," Ward said. "Garrett …"

His mouth snapped shut.

The suspicions Peggy had forced herself to ignore all those years ago came back with a vengeance.

And if Garrett was a problem, he was already Level Eight, so telling Ward the truth was not going to make a difference.

"Grant," she said gently. "I wasn't entirely honest earlier. My great-aunt didn't found SHIELD. I did. I am Peggy Carter. And I can tell you now that there is no survival training that we put people through before the Academy."

Ward didn't respond, his gaze fixed on his coffee.

"I'd really like it if you could tell me more about that training," Peggy said. "I get the feeling that Garrett falsified your SHIELD file. Can you tell me the truth?"

"He told me everything was SHIELD SOP," Ward said. "You're telling me he lied?"

Peggy hesitated, considering the relationship between the two men. "It sounds like it," she said finally. "I'd need to know what happened to know for sure."

His whole body was tensed, like he was readying himself for a fight, and she could almost see the indecision warring in his mind.

It wasn't uncommon for assets to have one handler permanently assigned to them, but that tended to be more for paperwork purposes; they would often be assigned to other handlers for different ops, depending on the logistics.

There were only a few exceptions to that.

Clint was one. He had worked with Phil and Peggy, and his loyalty was to them - not to SHIELD..

Ward was another, and she had a feeling that his loyalty was to Garrett over anything or anyone else as well - but this was different.

Clint had two handlers because no other handlers had the patience for his quirks, so they didn't want to work with him.

A lot of handlers wanted to work with Ward - but Garrett guarded his asset with a possessive fervour that had always made Peggy uncomfortable.

She could only assume that something had made Garrett turn his asset loose on to a team, but that didn't undo fifteen or so years of what she suspected to be an unhealthy dependency.

And if Ward was as loyal to Garrett as Clint was to her - rightly or wrongly - he was going to be very reluctant to say or do anything that might get him into trouble.

"Can I see it?" He asked suddenly. "My file, I mean?"

Peggy raised an eyebrow, but gamely handed over the tablet so he could read it.

"Garrett said we weren't allowed to see our own files," Ward said, scrolling through it.

"You can see your own," Peggy said. "You shouldn't really see other people's unless you're their CO, but your file is yours; you don't need permission to read it."

Ward looked more and more troubled the further down the file he got. "Who fills this in?"

"HR," Peggy answered. "Anyone can contribute to it, but only HR can remove something."

Ward set the tablet down on the table and took a deep breath. "I didn't graduate from military school. They kicked me out when I was fifteen because I stole a car and set fire to my parents' house."

"I assume you had a reason for that," Peggy said.

"It was stupid," Ward said quietly. "I … It was my older brother."

"How many siblings do you have?" Peggy asked.

"Three," he answered. "Thomas and Rosie are younger than me, but Christian's about three years older."

"Christian Ward," Peggy said. "Not the senator?"

Ward pulled a face. "That's the one. He was my parents' favourite, and he had this … charisma."

"He's a nasty piece of work," Peggy said frankly. "I'm convinced he's on the take."

"Almost certainly," Ward said. "He bullied us constantly as children, but our parents never believed us. I mean, Garrett said it was normal when I told him about it, so maybe I was just sensitive, but …"

"What did he do?" Peggy asked.

"He used to beat us up pretty badly," Ward said, more to the mug than her. "Sometimes he threatened us into hurting each other. He once shoved Thomas down a well. He'd nearly drowned before he let me throw a rope down."

Peggy swallowed her horror, nearly choking on it. "Okay, well, I'm an only child, but I'm fairly certain that is not normal. That is full on assault, with a bit of attempted murder thrown in."

"Our parents were convinced he could do no wrong," Ward said. "After the well incident, they sent me to military school to 'straighten me out'."

So far, any evidence of Christian Ward's dirty dealings had not been uncovered.

Peggy was going to make sure that changed.

"So what made you go back?"

"Rosie wrote to me," Ward answered softly. "She told me that Christian had been sneaking into her room at night, and … Well, you know."

Peggy did. "And you panicked?" She gently tugged the empty mug out of his hands and refilled it.

"I know it was a stupid thing to do," Ward said. "I just knew that no one would believe her, and he was going to keep doing it, and I figured if someone needed to investigate the fire, they'd find some kind of evidence about what he was doing."

Peggy nodded. "Well, I can understand the desperation. Not the smoothest way to go about it, no, but I can't blame you under the circumstances."

"Christian was at home," Ward said. "He wasn't hurt, but he knew what had happened. He convinced our parents to ask the police to press charges against me as an adult. That's when I met Garrett. He said that SHIELD could help me, if I joined them."

Peggy grimaced. "Well, if I was the one that had met you, I would have offered to help. Especially considering the context. But I wouldn't have put a condition on that. You were a child."

"Well, he got me out of it somehow," Ward said. "Never did find out what he did. Then he said that before I could go to the Academy, I needed to prove that I could hack it. So he took me to a forest in Montana. I was there for three years."

"Alone?" Peggy asked.

After years of espionage, she had become a master at keeping her voice steady no matter what she was hearing, but this was hard.

"I mean, I found a dog at one point," Ward said. "Garrett killed him."

Of course he did.

"Why?"

"He said I had to learn to rely on myself and no one else."

Suddenly, his previous reluctance to work as part of a team suddenly made sense. "But you could rely on Garrett?"

"He was the only one I could trust," Ward said. "He saved me. I still had to be useful."

"Did Garrett visit you out there often?" Peggy asked.

"He'd turn up every few months," Ward said. "If he thought I wasn't doing well, he'd toughen me up."

"And what did that consist of?" Peggy asked, dreading the answer. "Physical abuse?"

"Not abuse," Ward said. "Just … You know … It was to teach me how to defend myself, you know?"

"And did he teach you how to do that first?"

"No, I was supposed to figure it out myself."

Peggy gave up on keeping a neutral expression and put her head in her hands. "Jesus Christ. None of that is SHIELD SOP. Did this treatment continue after the Academy?"

"Only if I screwed up," Ward said. "How else was he supposed to discipline me?"

"If you'd actually screwed up, we have a system," Peggy said. "Disciplinary action does not - and has never - included physical punishment, Grant." She got up to retrieve a bottle of scotch from one of her cupboards to add a liberal amount to her coffee.

"This file says a lot of handlers requested me for various ops and Garrett turned them all down," he said. "Garrett said they never wanted to work with me."

"Are you kidding?" Peggy asked sardonically. "You're Romanov without the authority issues. I had to go over his head to Pierce then promise my firstborn before I could get you for Syria. I bet he didn't tell you about the commendations either, did he?"

Ward shook his head. He looked completely defeated, a broken man, and she tugged her chair around the table to sit beside him.

"None of this is your fault," she said gently. "You were a child in a terrible place and he took advantage of that."

And how many other Grant Wards were there in SHIELD that she didn't know about?

"Garrett's up to something," he said. "I don't know what it is, but he and some of the others are part of some kind of … I'm not sure what to call it, but they're not loyal to SHIELD. I didn't question it before, but all of this …"

If this was Clint, she would hug him, but it had taken her a while to get him used to that, and she figured that Grant would be no different, especially considering that his physical abuse had continued within SHIELD (something that made her blood boil), so she settled for a hand on his shoulder.

"It's okay that you didn't know."

It was confirmation that her suspicions had been right - there was something rotten in SHIELD.

It was tempting to drag Garrett in for questioning, but she had no proof except Grant's words, and she was not going to risk making his situation worse.

"You need to stop them," Grant said. "I don't know what they're planning, but they need to be stopped."

"I agree," Peggy said. "I will figure it out. In the meantime, if I give you a SHIELD-free burner phone, are you okay keeping me updated if you hear anything?"

That seemed to settle him a little, as though having a mission put him back on comfortable ground.

"Yeah, I can do that."

"Thank you," Peggy said. "I obviously do not have any hanging around; can you meet me in 48 hours?"

Grant thought for a second. "Yeah, we're stateside for a bit longer."

"Excellent," Peggy said. "And don't worry about your rookie. It sounds like you're doing fine."