Summary:
Hive's powers allow It to checkmate Shield.
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Chapter:
Jemma froze in seeing the scene, but after a moment of loss she awakened from slumber and ran to find a weapon to burn down Hive once It would emerge from the cocoon.
Coulson and May, all battered, joined her and they managed together to find grenades and some flamethrowers.
In the meanwhile, something was happening in the cocoon: they could see it cracking, and from the fissures they could see a strange red light emerging, something like… fire…
Yes, it was just fire…
But Hive couldn't have anything to do with that, for sure…
Hive feared fire!
The only mean Fitz could find to dislodge Hive from Will was fire…
So… where the hell did fire come from?
…
Unless…
…
No!
No way!
It wasn't possible!
Someone must be royally kidding them!
The cocoon exploded in a blast some instants later and there remained Ward, standing naked, screaming, and covered in fire, like a human torch!
The unbelievable happened!
Grant Douglas Ward: top agent of Shield, Hydra mole, Shield prisoner, kidnapper, independent contractor, torturer, second head of Hydra and finally Hive's carrier… that same Grant Douglas Ward... was an INHUMAN, too!
Incredible!
But unfortunately for him the transformation had not yet finished…
While the fire slowly extinguished and he fell kneeling on the ground, exhausted, battered, completely wore out... something started gushing out of his skin, like a mist, like a cloud...
They were the parasites!
After some instants he began to twitch horribly on the floor, screaming in pain, and something started exiting from his belly, progressively ripping it.
At the beginning they were only little thin tentacles, but after a while they begun thickening and multiplying, and at the end an entire monstrous body exited from poor Grant, while he cried and howled, mangled by that terrible pain!
Finally Hive managed to come out completely: it was a grey slimy humanoid form composed of tentacles, and muttering again and again, like a litany:
"I cannot inhabit inhumans… we cannot feed on our own kind".
It rose from the floor and started insecurely walking on sketchy legs, in search of a dead body as a new host.
Simmons, Coulson and May were having the occasion of a lifetime to kill It! But their thoughts started once again to be captured by Hive's telepathic powers, so they couldn't do anything more than remain still, merely observing the scene.
Coulson, nevertheless, tried concentrating to break free from Hive's mind control… but every time he started to plot something to kill It, numbness engulfed his mind and he found himself clouded, fogged.
It was really frightening not to be in charge of his own mind!
In that moment, who knows why, he wondered if brainwashing resembled what he was experiencing right now…
He wondered if also Ward experienced that torpor, that stupefaction…
May and Simmons were trying to react, too, but none of them could break free from Hive's control: it was like not being in charge of their own willpower anymore, like they lived and breathed only to serve Hive.
They loved Hive and would have sacrificed anything to It: each other, Coulson, all their friends, their colleagues, Shield itself!
They felt in themselves one single desire: save Hive.
It was Hive, of course, that was injecting in their minds all those thoughts.
But soon enough It started with more destructive ones.
It convinced them that they were all doomed, draining any hope and any fighting spirit that could have remained in them.
"Why fight the inevitable?
Why still trying to defeat a god?
It is pointless!
It is humanly impossible!
Instead, surrendering is so easy…
Surrendering to me is so easy...
Surrender...
Surrender to me..."
At the end they gave up definitely.
They bowed and kneeled in front of It.
There wasn't anybody else around that could help them.
Hive was dominating the scene.
Every hope was definitively lost.
They were defeated.
Shield was checkmated.
Earth was sentenced to death.
Coulson, now completely broken and humiliated, turned slowly his gaze on Ward, who lied gutted on the floor, in a sea of blood, eyes glassy, mouth half open, a still shocked expression on his face, his chest immobile…
And he sincerely pitied him... his once upon a time mortal enemy... for all the pain he had to endure during his life... for the forced brainwashing he had to endure all his life, that he was now able to understand... for the death he himself inflicted on him... for the months of forced cohabitation with a monster he had to bear... and for the second horrible death Hive made him suffer shortly before…
Having experimented what mind control meant made Coulson sympathetic with Ward for the first time ever...
Walking for a while in another man's shoes made him comprehend.
Finally!
It was all so wrong!
Fate had been so unfair to Ward!
And he himself never really tried to help him, too concerned about the wounds inflicted on his own pride, his wounded pride for never realising he had harboured a wolf in the chicken fence for months...
And then happened something Coulson would have never thought it could occur, in a million years: he felt towards Ward, in that extreme moment of complete loss, a strong feeling of brotherhood, of fraternity…
While a lump was tightening his throat, he pleaded, in a whisper:
"Please, forgive me."