Summary:
This is one of the darkest chapters, so please be warned.
Here I tried to imagine why Ward attempted suicide and how: I think that the death of Garrett would not be enough to induce him to commit suicide, so I put on the plate other factors that, very likely, could have pushed him.
I want to thank in particular skyewardfitzsimmonsphillinda, whose wonderful "Grant Ward: Out of Darkness" made me fall in love even more with Grant Ward! I took inspiration from it and took also some sensations and moods and expressions.
Comments are greatly appreciated: please, let me know what you think!
Chapter:
The next imageswere all wrapped in numbness: the killings he made under Shield orders; the mortal wounds he inflicted on the soldier that guarded the Guest House, under Coulson orders; the bullet in Thomas Nash, out of his own impulse; Victoria Hand and her soldiers' incredulity when he ruthlessly shot them to save Garrett; Koenig's suffering and chocking when he was strangling him; Skye's harsh words that expressed her tremendous sense of betrayal as an enamoured girl and as a friend; Fitz-Simmons' pleadings before he threw them into the ocean (to save them in a pod that was supposed to float); May's and Coulson's fury…
"He's having trouble speaking. I think I fractured his larynx."
"Oh, good! … Your attempt to cross off Fitz and Simmons failed, but Fitz may never be the same again. So I'm going to invent new ways to ruin the rest of your life. And we'll do whatever's necessary to get Hydra intel from you.
But your torture… That's gonna be internal."
"And a little bit external."
"Sure, some of that. But you devoted your entire life to a deranged narcissist who never gave a damn about anyone, and now he's dead."
The words crashed into him with absurdly terrifying finality, worse than anything else he had ever experienced.
"You've got the rest of your life to wrestle with the question: who are you without him?"
And he answered silently in his mind: "Nobody… Nothing."
The Beast in him was defeated, leaving him weak, pathetic, helpless … worthless.
The next image was about him in front of the entrance to the US Military Maximum Security Prison: when its walls closed around him he felt a grey despair swallowing him whole. In that moment only one thought sustained him, allowing him to still push one step after the other: if life there would become unbearable, the torture too much, if he needed a way out, he for sure knew how to die.
Why not? It was fitting: the killer killing himself… nothing returning to nothing…
They made him strip down completely, taking away all his personal belongings, then checked him thoroughfully for hidden nails or other similar tools. They didn't take care of his wounded foot, other than disinfecting it. They made him take a cold shower, gave him a prison overalls, walked him down a maze of corridors to the wing destined to the terrorists and put him in a small dark cell with dirty walls, no windows and an iron door with only a peephole and a passage for food.
His first impression was that down there, for sure, nobody could hear the prisoners' screams…
There they chained him with his wrists above his head and the ankles down by the wall, in a standing position, and left.
He was forced to stay there for two days, with no food or drink or bathroom breaks.
He remained there silent, alone with his dark thoughts, his deaf fear, his grief, his sorrow, and his longing, his mind painfully racing…
Whenever he thought of Garrett, he wanted to scream: he had lost the one that gave his life a meaning, the one who tamed the Beast inside of him, the one who made him become a man, the one who had always an answer to all his questions, his guide, his saviour, his friend … his father.
But he didn't lose him when Shield put him down, no.
He lost him when they injected him with the GH formula, when he finally managed to accomplish his mission after fifteen years.
He wanted to save his life, and he did, so the debt was paid back, but then Garrett became utterly insane.
How ironic… maddened by the same drug that saved his body…
If up above there was a God, he for sure mocked them and all their machinations!
At the end, anyway, the result for him was that he lost forever any chance for a normal, decent life. He wondered also if he ever really had a chance to that… He doubted. He was doomed from his very first day: this was the truth. So why struggle to carry on a life like that? Soon the "interrogators" would be here, and then they would drag him through hell.
He knew that with total clarity: they would slaughter him, no matter how much trained he was.
There were limits to human resistance.
At the end of those two days he was destroyed: all his body ached, especially his legs and his nailed left foot (thanks, May!); his head was unfocused and foggy; his wrists were bruised and his hands had almost totally lost sensibility, because they were the only thing that sustained his weight when he fell asleep; his overall suite was dirty with his pissing and he was terribly thirsty.
"John, like old times with you!" he thought.
Then the guards arrived and grabbed him for the interrogation.
The interrogators weren't from Shield, but from Talbot's intelligence network, and it meant they were merciless.
They did not receive their answers but only silence, even after several hours of applying "coercive" methods.
This happened not only because he couldn't speak, but also because he didn't know: Hydra was second to no one, as in compartmentalizing information.
So they decided to push past any pain level he had ever experienced. It would have been impossible not to scream under pain of that intensity, so he screamed, feeling his body splitting in two down the crack in his larynx, but it was the last day he parted his lips to make any sound at all.
And then, finally, he was engulfed in the mercy of unconsciousness that swallowed him.
He was kept mainly in isolation, in that little dark cell that he could pace three steps by two steps, but at least he was no more shackled to the wall and could lay down on the floor to sleep.
Meals were delivered randomly: he hadn't access to the outside, so he couldn't grab the time passing by, but for sure he was becoming thinner and was always hungry and thirsty. And cold.
He shivered almost all the time, because he had to stay barefoot, his suit was thin and in the cell the air was humid and freezing like in a cellar.
Two or three times he was allowed to join the common room, where the other prisoners passed some hours together.
In one of those occasions, an old man spoke to him:
"You are a special convict, here, you know? I have seen others treated like you. Be careful: they give this free time to you to make you lower your guard. But you are going to be destroyed, both psychologically and physically; they will not leave you any way out. And nothing you can say them, no intel you will give them… nothing will make you avoid death."
He was right, Grant soon discovered.
The isolation became regular and torture continued on a daily basis, getting worse and worse: they also used drugs that prevented him from fainting, instead sharpening his senses, so he couldn't even hope to escape in swoon!
He felt he was quickly losing his mind… he couldn't afford to live like that for long… He tried all the techniques Garrett taught him about mental dissociation and torture enduring, but the drugs made his efforts almost useless.
Often the tortures were applied directly in the prisoners' cells, so he could hear the torturers approaching, through the other prisoners' screams getting nearer and nearer.
They were smart, he had to admit that: they knew how to build anticipation and make the terror and the panic grow minute by minute…
Other times the torture took place in a room full of mirrors, so that he could see himself tormented from every angle, wherever he looked.
It was true: they were trying to destroy him both psychologically and physically.
In the hours in which they left him in peace, he was haunted by his own mind, by his memories, by his grief… and thinking of his time on the Bus, and all the friendship and love he got there, was particularly painful, for the striking contrast with his current situation.
He tried to wrap himself in the illusion to be still there, with Simmons, Skye, Fitz… "He will never be the same again" and a pang always hit him in the stomach.
He tried to save them!
He tried to avoid Garrett horribly killing them!
But he knew that: nobody would ever believe him.
So many times he emerged from those thoughts finding himself crying.
Oh, he wanted to die!
He wanted to end all that!
He himself was a rotten apple, he was a danger for humanity; he didn't have any right to be alive!
So why couldn't he die?
Why couldn't they let him die?
One day, at the beginning of his third month there, they gave him a clean prison cloth with a thick shirt and a pair of pants: they had a button on the back… And he almost exulted in seeing that: he could finally die! He could avoid the next torture session, which was approaching!
He removed the button and started rubbing it on the rough floor. In ten minutes it became a perfectly sharp blade and he, taking a deep breath, cut deeply both his wrists, letting the blood spill out of them; he kept himself in motion, so that his quickened heartbeat made the blood pour faster.
When the torturers arrived in his cell, he was fainted on the floor, in a pool of blood.
Next time he woke up, he was still in his cell, on the floor, near all his own dried blood, its smell filling his nostrils; his wrists were mended up and he was dressed with a clean cloth, without any button, this time.
The isolation and torture continued, seamless, and despair was dragging him lower and lower, until he found a piece of paper. He folded it in the right way and once again cut his wrists.
This time they arrived quickly: probably he was monitored, and they avoided greater damage.
But when he was in the infirmary he started running at the walls, trying to smash his skull.
They had to sedate him, because he was furious and nobody could restrain him.
The next image was about when he woke up, after what felt like an eternity, surprisingly clearheaded.
He wasn't dead, apparently… and he wasn't anymore in that cell, too.
He was in a larger space, lying on a makeshift bed obtained on a table with a thin mattress on it… a mattress! He felt almost uncomfortable: he wasn't used anymore to such a comfy arrangement!
He looked at his wrists: they were carefully sewed and he had patches in his inner elbows. Probably two IVs had just been removed from his arms.
Three walls where covered with soft square pads, probably to prevent him to cause himself any more damage if he kept running against them, while the third wall was white.
He approached it and discovered it was a laser grid: he couldn't touch it without receiving an electric discharge.
He immediately averted from it: he had had enough of electricity flushing and burning his body, in the recent past!
He found on the floor a tray with a sandwich and a glass of milk. He couldn't believe his eyes! He threw himself over the food with animal voracity and finished everything in one minute, gobbling the sandwich and gulping down the milk. Then he felt the need to pee and was embarrassed about that, because someone for sure was watching him.
And he or she wasn't of the same kind like the ones he rubbed shoulders with, lately.
Something had radically changed, but he couldn't still understand were he was.
He explored more carefully this new cell and discovered a small bathroom behind a curtain. Thanks God for that! There were a toilet, a sink and a shower, so he could finally take care of his personal hygiene.
He had always had an inclination in being clean, tidy, it was almost natural to him, and those months in that inhuman captivity forced him to reach so a low level of dirtiness that he felt nauseated!
But when he saw himself reflected in the mirror… oh, God! He was the shadow of himself! He was emaciated, with a long beard, long hair, pale as death, and in his eyes such pain, such suffering that he himself was impressed. When he stripped down the spectacle he saw was even more tragic: all over his body there were wounds, bruises, burning marks, signs of blows and lashes. He hadn't bothered surveying the damage before, but now he had the possibility and could count all his ribs from how much he lost weight.
In that moment he heard a swishing noise and suddenly he was facing May!
"On your knees and hands behind you back!"
He obeyed immediately and she handcuffed tightly his wrists and his ankles. Then she made him stand and then sit down in a metal chair and took a razor and a pair of scissors.
At that sight Ward bolted up and jumped in the farer corner of the room, a haunted, terrified look in his eyes, and didn't stop staring at the blades.
May remained dumbfounded, but then, with less venom, said:
"Don't worry and stay calm. I just have to shave you and cut your hair. Coulson's orders."
He didn't move, so she reached for him, took one of his arms and led him back to the chair. He sat obediently with his head down, his shoulders bowed and his elbows on his knees, eyes looking at the ground. He was still shirtless and she noticed the geographical map that his chest and back had become.
"You had a bad time, huh? Good. You deserved all of it."
At those words, he raised slowly his head and glared at her with such a painful stare that she was forced to avert her eyes.
Was that shame, what he saw there?
She made him sit straight and started cutting his hair with the scissors. Black soft locks started to fall on his shoulders, on his chest, on the ground, and he felt her hands grabbing them, caressing his scalp, while she was concentrated in equalizing the length everywhere.
He closed his eyes lost in that sensation and sighed deeply: he hadn't been touched gently for so long!
When she was done with his hair, she started to cut his beard as short as she could with the scissors. Then she sprinkled his face with shaving cream and started working carefully with the razor: at that he languidly opened his eyes.
She had to stay very close in front of him and his eyes remained fixed on her face all the time, observing her nose, her eyebrows, her eyelashes, her eyes… her lips. It seamed to him like an eternity he didn't see a woman and suddenly he desired her.
She tried not to catch his burning look, because she felt uneasy, but once their stares met: yes, he was battered, destroyed, but his eyes were still beautiful, with a sorrow and an intensity he didn't ever show before.
She didn't speak anymore until she was finished.
"Now take a shower and rest. You need to regain some strength, because we need your intel."
She removed the handcuffs and moved to left, but then stopped:
"They said you never talked, during all your imprisonment, even under torture.
Is your larynx healed?"
He nodded.
"Then why didn't you talk? It could have spared you a lot of pain…"
- May, I couldn't speak because there is something else fractured in me, beside my larynx.
Can't you see that? -
"I admit that you are really a tough guy to have endured all that, but I cannot understand: what can have Hydra given to you to make you so loyal?"
- Oh, May! How can you be so blind?
How cannot you understand what I have been through?
Why doesn't anybody understand? -
"We discovered only three days ago what they were doing to you, and that it didn't achieve any result.
So we decided to stop it.
Even if you deserved all of that, we are not the kind of people who believe in torture and we don't want to become accomplices in that."
Again… What did Shield stand for? Protection? Even for a single man?
Didn't Coulson say: "Nobody is nobody"?
Didn't he say: "You can save someone from himself if you get there early enough"?
Didn't he say that anybody deserved a second chance?
And in that precise moment all their hypocrisy leapt before his eyes in all its rawness. And his lips remained sealed and his mouth shut.
After May, Coulson regularly went down to see him. He kept coming down for three and a half weeks straight, sitting some minutes on the metal chair behind the laser grid, talking and trying to make him say something, but always with that odious air of arrogance and superiority, that spite of those who feel righteous and upright while they look at you like you are a disgusting worm.
Ward was nauseated.
And he was becoming apathetic, detached from life itself.
He didn't care about anything anymore.
What the US Army and three months of torture couldn't obtain, Coulson accomplished in three weeks: destroying him psychologically.
It was like he wasn't anymore interested in living, until one day Coulson said him this:
"We are running very dangerous missions in these days.
And Skye has developed a lot under May's wing, so she is actively participating to all of them, on the field.
Any intel you may have could just save her life…"
At that he felt a forgotten longing burning in him…
Skye… the only that maybe could understand him… his only light in the darkness… the only one he ever wanted…
He couldn't allow her to be harmed! He had to protect her! He had to tell her what he discovered about her past, about her father!
And he felt the glue that kept sealed his lips for so long progressively melting:
"Skye…" he said with a harsh voice.
Coulson remained interdicted, but pricked up his ears, because Ward was barely intelligible.
"What? What have you just said?"
Ward tried to clear his voice, hoarse for not being used for so long, then again:
"Skye… I'll talk to Skye and her alone"
The next image was of Coulson commanding to raise his hands, while his brother's soldiers shackled him to bring him out for a public trial that would lead for sure to his death sentence and execution.
It was fitting: after all, he was only a bargain chip for Coulson to achieve a favourable treatment for Shield from the government.
After all, he was kept there while he was of use.
Now his brother was of more use. Weren't exactly those Coulson's words?
He called him a deluded son of a bitch.
And now that righteous man was handing him over to his abuser. Congratulations, great hypocrite!
But he was sure: he would keep his promise to Skye!