Summary:

Ward gives a recap of the last months to Coulson and Mack.

Kudos and comments are greatly appreciated: please, let me know what you think!

Chapter:

Only a few days ago, Ward could have never foreseen that he would speak with Coulson so soon, so close to their encounter in that alley and the lunch he offered to both him and Mack.

But now he had to talk to someone inside Shield.

He settled back on the comfortable chair of the refined local in which he was sipping a glass of white wine, recalling to his mind the conversation he had with Coulson and Mack some time before.

…

That time they went in a bar, chosen by Coulson, which was famous for its fabulous sandwiches.

Mack was looking at Ward rather curiously, like he had desired for a while to meet him…

Ward remembered him vaguely, from some memory Hive grabbed from Daisy, and from that time when May and some others where dragging him in the flying module, after they had shot Daisy just in time to prevent her from ripping Mack's heart from his ribcage.

From what he knew, the guy had to be a really good person and Ward instinctively liked him.

"By the way, I'm Alphonso McKenzie, but everyone calls me Mack."

Mack offered his hand to Ward, who shook it.

"Nice to meet you. I'm Grant Ward.

And... I've been called many different names by a lot of people…"

"I know who you are.

Everybody knows who you are…

I think I have never heard so many stories about a single person like the ones I heard about you.

So now it's really weird to face you directly: you're practically a living legend."

"Unfortunately I'm known mainly for my bad actions…" Ward said, sadly.

"At the beginning, yes.

But at the end things changed a lot, right?

First one of Shield best Specialists, then undercover Hydra mole, then free lance vigilante, then torturer (I didn't forget what you did to Bobbi and Jemma!), then Hydra head, then Hive, then Inhuman, then savior of the Earth, and finally Daisy's savior…

I think this could be more than enough for a single person!

You could settle down, for a chance…

You have more facets than a disco ball!"

Ward chuckled and smiled tightly at him:

"By the way… I'm not proud of what I did to Bobbi… but there was a reason behind my actions, even if it doesn't justify what I did."

"I'm not sure I wanna know it…"

"So, Ward? I'm all ears!" interrupted Coulson, angrily, skipping the pleasantries and biting furiously his sandwich.

Ward took a deep breath before he started talking, because he had to keep calm for all the three of them.

"Look.

I know you're mad, but I want to assure you that now Skye is worlds apart safer than she was when she left Shield almost six months ago."

"I wouldn't bet on that.

Now she has revealed herself to the world and has both Shield and SAP on her heels!" Coulson retorted.

"But she perfectly knows how to avoid being found and captured!

Moreover, I watch constantly over her… and you know what my powers are…"

At that Coulson kept quiet.

"As I said, now she is safe, if we make the comparison with her situation six months ago" confirmed Ward.

"It seems you're itching to recount me what happened" challenged Coulson.

"I must warn you that it will be painful for you…

Do you really wanna know?" said cautiously Ward.

"I want to know everything that pertains Daisy and her wellbeing.

After all, she's the closest thing I have to a daughter, which reminds me that… honestly… I never thought in a million years I would ever have this kind of conversation just with you, Ward!"

Coulson was really mad, his fatherly jealousy bossily resurfacing.

"Of course…" Ward sighed.

And with that he started relating all that Skye had been through, from her loneliness and hopelessness, to her attraction to drugs, to Raoul and his attempted rape, to Daisy's father and his incredible affection for her, to her nihilism and then her desire to punish and destroy herself.

At that Coulson commented:

"I know that she was tainted by those kind of feelings… but I didn't know the situation was so serious.

She said to me that she deserved all the blame, that the security protocols to hold her should have been made permanent, because she belonged to the containment module, that she was a criminal, that she didn't deserve my forgiveness, or my pity, or my friendship…

I tried to tell her that she had been brainwashed, and she replied you had been too, and that you two made the perfect pair, implying that I was using different treatments with her than I did with you."

At that Ward looked intensely in his blue eyes, not denying the fact, rather increasing the dose:

"Evidently I'm not the closest thing you have to a son…"

Coulson continued, deadpanned, but with low eyes:

"She was convinced that there was something more than withdrawal, that she wasn't simply dope sick.

She said that she wanted to feel like that.

I was trying to explain that she would be going to feel better, with time... and distance.

But she was deaf on that ear: she said that she should wake up every morning and feel like that, remembering every drop of blood she spilled.

She wanted the memory machine to become her bed.

At that, I stopped the conversation.

That was enough.

We pulled the memory machine out of storage, but it wasn't for her."

"Yeah… it was for me… or, rather, for Hive.

I still remember Its anger when It perceived this thought in your mind, Coulson…

Anyway, you wouldn't be able to make It fall into the trap, because It had the power to read your minds undisturbed.

But I appreciated the effort.

And your really had a good idea!"

"Yeah…

But It made us pay for that…

I still feel sick anytime I remember those horrible nightmares!"

"Me too" confirmed Mack.

"It's hard, when somebody controls your mind, isn't it?" Ward asked, rhetorically.

"Yeah…" Coulson had to admit, tight-lipped, and continued, changing immediately the subject:

"But let's not lose the focus: what happened to Skye that you repute so terrible?"

"After I made sure that she was happy with her father, I had to attend to a very important personal affair…"

Ward looked straight in Coulson's eyes and, at his interrogative stare, he decided to be open with him.

"I went to see my brother Thomas."

At that Coulson paled. He still felt bad at the memories of him and Hunter kidnapping Thomas, and terrorizing him with a death threat, just to find Ward.

And one of his sentences, too, that hunted him for a while, reemerged from the depths of his memory:

- Grant… he was my best friend, protected me from mum, and dad… and Christian… -

"How did it go?" asked Coulson.

"Much better than I expected.

We reconciled and now I have finally, again, a brother" Ward answered sincerely, with a smile in his eyes.

"But we will deal with that later.

When I was with him, after some days, I read on a newspaper about some strange localized earthquakes that destroyed a bank.

That was obviously Skye."

"Daisy" corrected Coulson.

"I'm not sure she still wants to be called Daisy…

Probably that name brings back to her mind too many bad memories, while 'Skye' reminds her of her true self, of the freedom and the carelessness she had in her early years…

At least, she didn't complain about me calling her 'Skye' when we got back in touch."

Ward avoided saying that he called her 'Skye' several times when he was devouring her with kisses, and when he had to restrain her passion when the two of them where in the car… but probably some of those destabilizing thoughts showed on his face, because Coulson asked immediately, with a strangely strangled and acute voice:

"So... you two got back in touch?!"

Ward realized that he had to restart working on his poker face: he couldn't allow his feelings to show up so easily…

He was also sensing some warmth ascending from his neck to his face…

But, on the other hand, anytime Skye was involved, he found it extremely difficult to hide his emotions.

He cleared his throat and resumed the relation:

"When I was back in town, I immediately went in search for her and discovered she didn't live anymore with her father.

So I had to sift the city, feeling the panic rising, because I couldn't find her anywhere!

I went even to the police to try to find her. I showed them a photo and one of the policemen seemed remembering her: he told me that she was a little thug, dedicated to theft in supermarkets, to scrape together some money for drugs. He also told me that, after Raoul's death, due to a localized earthquake, a lot of new dealers had flocked to the city, making a tremendous war against each other, and that now there were drugs available on the market that were extremely cheap, but also very dangerous.

From that conversation I deduced that Skye was the responsible for Raoul's death and that she became a drug addicted."

"Shit!" commented Coulson.

"After discovering those bad news, you would never imagine my surprise when, passing by chance in a street normally frequented by prostitutes, I saw just Skye on the sidewalk!

But she did not seem nearly as herself!

For a moment I even hoped that emaciated girl was not she at all!

She had become the shadow of herself: she was half-naked, with an extremely provocative red dress, and she had lost weight so much!

So I seized the moment to get her into the car."

"She became… a prostitute?!" Coulson was incredulous and disgusted.

"No.

Not yet, at least.

That was evidently her first time.

I saw her chase disgustedly away a few other 'customers', before me."

"How did you convince her to join you on the car?

The last time you saw each other she was pretty upset with you…" asked Coulson, relieved that his 'daughter' didn't yet descend down that slippery slope.

"I suppose she did not have much choice: all the others were slobbery old men full of money and with such lewd and dirty looks that she was evidently nauseated.

I, instead…

Well…" Ward couldn't finish his speech.

"You are, at least, a young handsome man not so obsessed by sex." Coulson finished for him.

Ward didn't comment, but went on:

"My first goal was to feed her, so I took her to a good restaurant not far from there.

It was obvious that she was starving, so she ate a lot.

But her speeches during the dinner were what scared me more: she was desperate, hopeless, devastated by nihilism; she detested herself and hated the world and her only wish was to die to expiate her sins, having some fun in the meantime.

This in a nutshell."

Coulson wasn't interrupting, but Ward, nevertheless, was reluctant to continue.

So Coulson encouraged him:

"So? What happened after the dinner?"

"Uhm… I brought her in the restaurant's patio and there… uhm… well… things started warming up…"

Ward didn't know where to look, while Coulson's face was turning all shades of colors, from green to red to purple…

Mack was observing this exchange and had to restrain himself from laughing!