The double brandy went down surprisingly well. Maybe a little too well in May's opinion, but then she could hardly call Ward out on excessive drinking after he had been going dry for more than two months. She poured him a rather mild second serving while still savouring her first, which he had the good sense to be much more careful with. He nursed the glass, slumping onto the surface of the bar and pressing the heel of his palm over his eyes.
An unwanted memory pushed its way to the forefront of May's conscience. Not a memory, per se. More like a phantom feeling, a reminder of the way her body had felt in the months after Bahrain. She had not been wounded beyond the usual scrapes. The med bay doctors had held her for 24 hours, and that had been it. But she remembered feeling tired afterwards, stretched under the strain. She would go for a walk and find herself wishing for a bed twenty paces in, and she would come back to her mother's house and stubbornly avoid the sofa, because she knew by then that laying down wouldn't really help.
She rummaged under the bar and passed Ward a Tylenol. He looked like he was about to argue, but then slumped further and pressed both hands against his eyes.
"This is the worst headache I've ever had not coming from a head trauma," he muttered darkly. The pill went down with another generous gulp of alcohol. May didn't bat an eye. There was a good practical reason for these pills to share the space with the Bus selection of alcoholic beverages. For all she knew, Ward was a doing the only right thing for him to do. Sometimes a dark memory-less hole followed by a day of chocking on one's guts was much preferable to any of the alternatives.
"Lot of things happened today," she noted.
He grimaced, either at May's understatement or at her perceived reprimand. There was no trace of the anger he met Coulson´s meddling with, though. Maybe he was too tired to care.
"We will pair up for the next mission," she went on saying. "You need a break."
"Yeah, I do."
She had expected defiance and assurances the he was perfectly capable of carrying on by himself, and was prepared to make use of her status to wrangle him into teamwork with her whether he wanted it or not. She didn't quite know what to make out of his immediate acquiescence. He seemed to sense her confusion, because he sat up a little straighter.
"We both know that this will only work if I am useful to you. You won't be putting up with me if I unravel, so if I have to swallow my pride and ask for help, then so be it."
If May were a better person, she would have made an effort to argue. She would have known it to be pointless, but she would have done in on the very slim chance Ward was so out of it as to believe her a little. As it was, she did not argue with the obvious state of things.
"I warned you that this might happen. That you might not be able to go through with it."
He could have chosen prison. Probably should have. A military prison would probably have come with a psychologist who could talk him back to feeling human again. Now, he had to deal with all this by himself. "You could probably still…"
"No." Vehement and final. "If I am not this, then I am nothing. What else is there for people like us? Desk work?"
"I've been doing it for many years."
He wisely chose to ignore that one, and May was grateful. She could not in good conscience have gone on preaching on the healing properties of desk work. It had none. She had been hiding from life, and she knew it.
"You will have to talk to somebody, now that you have wiggled out of talking with Coulson," she added after a while. She had understood Ward's earlier outburst, and the trapped feeling of being forced to lay open one's insides for everyone to see while at one's lowest point. But Ward wasn't going to be able to sort this alone. It was becoming more and more clear that he wasn't coming from a couple of years of buddy-buddy evil shenanigans for the sake of power or glory or who knew what else. He was coming from a decade long attachment that began in his teen years. He was coming from a parental relationship with a charismatic, psychotic man that even Phil and Fury could not crack. Grant Ward had no chance of doing it on himself.
"OK."
She was about to call him on his passive bullshit and demand that he set a set of minimal conditions he would be comfortable with, but he surprised her by letting go of his drink and sitting up.
"There is one thing I cannot stand, just one. Everything else is fair game. I can sit through any amount of SHIELD corporative embellishment, been doing it for years. But Coulson talking shit about John? It just makes me so angry. And it's not like I don't realise that he wasn't a nice person. And it's not like I wasn't sometimes terrified of him, or that I didn't hate all the crap he made me go through. But then again, any number of perfectly nice people walked by and nobody ever stopped to take a second look, so forgive me for not quite caring about the labels. He helped me out when it mattered the most, and I will always be grateful for that. As long as I live, I will be grateful, because the simple fact that I am breathing is due to him. So if being happy that he is dead is somehow a prerequisite for this gig? I might as well give up now, because it's not going to happen."
"It's not," May said, because she saw no immediate harm in Ward being allowed to grieve the passing of someone he had been close to for half of his life. Denouncing that relationship was not a prerequisite to being a better person, just a happier and healthier one.
"What did he do, for you to feel so strongly about it?"
She had to choose her words carefully, because as much as she wanted to know what exactly had Garrett saved him from, she did not want to press Ward into an answer. She had too much power over him and the last thing she wanted was to accidentally force him into oversharing something deeply personal. Whatever it was, it must have been horrible enough to completely strip Ward of will and personality and even perspective, for any of these things would have allowed him to know he was being manipulated to begin with.
"You know the feeling of drowning?" he asked in return, and May's heart sped up at the imagined implication, but he continued as if their little cage sessions had never been on his mind. "It's several things as once. Mostly suffocation, but also helplessness, and above all exhaustion. Imagine you spent your entire life drowning. It would just go on and on, and more often then not you'd think this is it, but you would keep treading water and somehow it would never quite be it, but there would never be a reprieve, either. I'm 30 years old now, and I've done all kinds of terrible things, and if you were to kill me I would be all for it. I wouldn't care. Because I have lived… admittedly not much, but I have… done stuff, slept with girls, gotten drunk, I don't know… been places. But I was 15 then, and the only thing I had been doing for all that time was drowning. There was literally nothing else to it. Only misery. And I might deserve it now, but nothing you or Coulson tell me will ever make me agree that I deserved it then. That I deserved to die like that. And I was going to. I was going to either quietly go out alone or take a bunch of people with me, but it was happening. So even if John only helped me to help himself? Well, he probably did – and I still don't care. He was still the only one to stop, and look, and teach me how to swim. And I will always be grateful for that."
"If he truly wanted to help you, he wouldn't have taught you how to swim. He would have taken you to the shore."
He smiled a little, visible amused. It was a light smile, for once sincere and all the more disturbing for it.
"Come on, May. People like us know that solid ground is only a children's story."
The worst part of it was that somehow Ward's words all made sense, in a wrapped way that probably had a scientific name May was unaware of. For all she knew his argument was wrong, she could not begin to take it apart, much less to argue with Ward against it. Maybe this was what Simmons had meant by her being the only one remotely qualified to take him on. And maybe he had a good point about them leaving this Garrett minefield alone.
"So, he truly took you in for entire 5 years that don't add up in your story. And you truly went with it. A stranger promising you cool toys and inviting you into his car to go somewhere?"
"I wasn't quite that naïve. I sat in that car and the entire ride to Wyoming I only thought about what I would do if he tried anything funny. It mostly happens to girls, but who the hell knows, right? I wondered if I could maybe break one of the CDs in two and use that for a knife, nick one of his arteries. But in the end I figured that I didn't need to care. Because if he tried something, I'd fight him off, and if I couldn't? He'd be sure to kill me. And then I wouldn't have to worry anymore. Except, he didn't try anything. He just told me that I was an idiot for thinking I was good enough for SHIELD, and that I had to learn to be a man first. And he was completely right. I needed it. I was terrified of almost everything there was to be terrified of: heights, water, darkness, being alone, being among unknown people. These 5 years? He beat all that stupidity the hell out of me. I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for him."
"Here, as in working off a life sentence for murder?"
"We're all murderers, May. That isn't what this is all about."
"What is it all about, then?"
"Orders. It's about orders, and about people who give them, and whether you… you… I don't even know anymore."
"You didn't like the orders you received from Garrett."
"I was never supposed to like them. The whole point of an order it to obey it, and if you take it upon yourself to mull over it, then… Then it stops making any sense. I used to be able to do that… I used to be able to close doors. Completely. And just go on, do whatever was needed. And now it's not that the doors aren't airtight anymore, it's that there aren't any doors. Some days, there aren't even any walls left. Everything gets jumbled and I get so angry it scares the hell out of me because I don't even know why. Or my thoughts start running in twenty different directions and I start second guessing everything I do. Or sometimes there is just… emptiness, and I have to make myself get out of bed and it feels like everything is in slow motion and everything is… useless and worthless and I have no idea what I am doing and why. I deal with it the best I can, but…" he physically squirmed at that, worrying the plastic coaster with his nails, splitting tiny pieces of it and letting them litter the table. "It's not getting better. The anger and the… emptiness… They're just getting worse."
There were words no person in their line of work ever said aloud. They learned to avoid all the red flags, all the expressions that would have a psych evaluator latch onto them and never let go. But sometimes, very rarely, a person would talk in circles long enough to drive the point home.
"You will have to surrender your weapon."
The coaster finally split in two under too much pressure, and Ward vacantly sucked on his finger where one of the parts had embedded itself under his nail. For him to have a personal gun somewhere in his quarters would be such an obvious transgression, May doubted Coulson even thought to warn him against it. She did not doubt that Ward had one, though. SHIELD weapons he took on missions were all painstakingly stocked and counted, but it didn't take a Level 7 specialist to steal one from an enemy and smuggle it inside. She would have been deeply disappointed if he hadn't. Being prepared went with the specialist mindset, even when there was officially nothing to be prepared for.
"Nothing is gonna happen," he muttered darkly.
"I know. It will just be for a little while."
Ward nodded wordlessly, and May breathed a little more easily knowing that she had made the right call. A "professional" would have called his behaviour an over-subtle call for help, but May was sure that any attempt at help on her part would be met with very violent opposition. She wasn't even scared for him, not truly. Ward was much stronger than that, but he had obviously needed to get it out there, if only for her to signal back that she understood.
The gun he had appropriated was a small one, sleek and tiny and begging the question where he got it in the first place. It was lying under his pillow, not even hidden under a mattress or a neatly stacked pile of clothes. Ward offered it to her handle first. May examined the gun, took out the clip – there were only 3 bullets in it, courtesy of its rather uncommon calibre. She debated telling him he wasn't allowed to have it, but then he had made a point of not choosing anything with an even remotely satisfying firepower, and that was a statement in itself.
Some people ate comfort food. Some kept comfort items. Finally, she simply offered the gun back.
"One condition. You think about it, you let me know."
He hesitated at that, but there wasn't much of a step between what she was asking and what he had already admitted to her, and finally he extended the hand and took back the weapon. He didn't say anything and he didn't nod, but May was fairly sure that he would remember this lesson.
The next morning started with awkward re-shuffling of the team's expectations about everything. Simmons appeared in the kitchen bleary eyed and jumpy, and wasted no time getting a hold of Skye and dragging her into the lab to discuss what May was sure was Phil's request about Ward's pacemaker. Retrospectively, it was terribly unfair to her. May was the one to instigate the change, but she freely admitted she had not quite thought out the consequences. She supposed that talking to the girl about the reasons behind it and the fact that she was much better suited for the task should have been her job, but Phil had taken over quite kindly.
May had offered him a short thanks when she realised he was set to do it. He just shook his head while pouring himself a glass of milk.
"You are doing a great job, May. Much bigger and better than I would have imagined."
"Somebody has to."
"But you are good at it. And it is good for you, too."
She let the comment slide. The fact that she had talked more to Ward in the past several weeks than during in all the escapades they had run together pre Hydra reveal was not lost on her, but she would not humour Phil by admitting that it felt good. It didn't. It was a chore and a minefield, and a vaguely clingy and not-quite-functional male was exactly what she had been trying to avoid her entire life. Not that Ward was all that clingy. His eyes just looked different when she was interacting with him then when he was completely left to his own devices.
He still wasn't willing to come close to the kitchen in the busy morning hours, but she knew he had already taken care of himself and was going through his usual morning routine. May put on her own training gear and went to stand at the corner of the mat.
"Assist," she instructed briefly.
They had done it before, more of a free fighting than training, but that was all in the long past. May was fairly sure that Ward would not be up to anything aggressive against her any time soon, and in turn did not feel that attacking him would come to her easily. She settled for a long string of telegraphed, slow attacking moves that he blocked beautifully, more of giving her an interactive target than a fighting opponent. It felt good. Safe enough for both of them, and absolutely glorious for May to train against. Ward was quick enough that her aim needed to be perfect.
"Good," she breathed after a short while.
"Boring," he informed her.
She sped up reflexively, planning to stop after her first solid landed kick. When she didn't quite manage it in the four sequences she started, she had to stand back and breathe. He did step off the mat a couple of times to get himself away from the trajectory of her fists, but he didn't lose his equilibrium once.
"Not bad."
He came back to stand before her, a look of utter concentration on his face. She knew it had to be hard for him, because the exercise required none of his strength and all of his swiftness. May grinned. She could almost admit that they should have trained like this more often when they were still partners, for both of their sakes. It had seemed a little too intimate for comfort, though, and May had been loath to offer after the first couple of rounds.
"This is going to be a usual occurrence from now on," she informed him, attacking again without preamble. "Twice weekly."
He never once took his eyes off her. Say what you want about Grant Ward's allegiances, but the man had an exquisite work ethic.
She went at him with abandon, having correctly concluded that he was getting peeved at the light treatment. There had been a good reason for that. As much as May would have liked to pretend that she had been going easy for his sake, it was really for her own. She never dreamed about that time and she did not regret it, not consciously in any 'woe is me', 'my conscience is burdened now' way. But if he did cringe away from her now, she would call the entire exercise off, and it would be for her own sake foremost. May had not been quite aware of the point to which she was uncomfortable with touching him until she had landed a few dozen punches on various parts of his body and nothing bad came out of it. He did not choke and he did not flinch and he did not do that unfocused thousand miles off stare that she had seen on him in the cell down below. He just sidestepped and turned and blocked.
She hit and kicked, not telegraphing anymore and actually doing everything to get past his defences. He had a different style of fighting altogether, mostly taking her attacks on and sparing himself the time needed for feinting, then softening her blows by going with the movement. It was strategically sound and it threw May off, as an unexpected number of her punches seemed to be connecting but not doing any damage in the long run.
It was disconcerting. The good kind, the one she could learn something from. So she pressed a little, waiting for him to make a mistake, only to be promptly stopped by a heel of Ward's hand pressed against her solar plexus. Had he gone through with the attack, she would have all the wind knocked out of her. As it was, he only just touched her skin and stepped back swiftly, hands held wide and a question written on his face.
May grinned, wider than she could remember grinning since they got Coulson back from Raina and Po. Ward grinned right back. She nodded. He did too. What followed could only be described as carefully orchestrated brutality. She got him off his feet twice but failed to land the deciding blow before he rolled away. She also got a real scare when she suddenly found herself airborne in the middle of a feint designed to immobilise him. The landing had been unfortunate enough to wind her up, but she could appreciate the fact that he threw her directly into the middle of the mat as opposed as against the floor where they both had been standing.
He was the first to shake his head after a brief time out, both of them sweaty and panting hard and feeling somehow lighter. May started to put the mats away, while Ward wiped the sweat off the punching bag and gathered their water bottles.
"Skye is consistently placing her feet wrong when she is boxing. You should tell her before she muscle memorises the entire thing."
It was a complete non-sequitur, which only served to underline how long and hard he had been thinking about it bringing it up. May had been charged with training her, but the simple truth was that Skye was too old for any kind of in-depth martial arts training. May's techniques all relied on limberness, and while Skye was not a sack of stones by any measure and a very dedicated student to boot, some parts of her body simply weren't stretchable enough in her age to be able to execute a good high kick. Boxing was a good middle ground for her, as it build up a much necessary strength. So she had told Skye to keep up her previous routine and only added some new elements. The girl had been surprised to say at least and had not quite complied for a while. Now that Ward was back on the team or whatever his presence among them amounted to, she would train more regularly and sometimes even in the hours he could be expected in the gym.
It was no wonder that he had noticed, and it was no wonder that he didn't want to mention it directly. And May would be inclined to think that he was making the right call, had she not witnessed Skye cry after she had slapped her. The tears in her eyes weren't of pain or even anger. Powerlessness was the emotion that shone through. She was a caring, kind soul, infinitely more so than May. Of all the members of the team, she was the one who wanted to come through to Ward the most, and the one to be met with the most ironclad, unyielding refusal. He avoided others, too, but her he avoided religiously, and apart from invading his bunk Skye had no chance in hell to cross paths with him if he didn't want her to.
"Tell her yourself. It's high time you started talking to more people."
He visibly balked at that, and that was it as far as May was concerned. She wasn't going to press the issue. She was the first one to blink in astonishment when Phil called her to his office that same evening to show her footage of the training room: Skye was punching the bag with extreme prejudice, and Ward was patiently holding it in place.
Here, have some well deserved and long promised comfort. If you all behave (read: review) I might even shell out for some extra fluffiness. For reference observe this table:
Mayward-fluff: sparring, drinking, missions
Skyeward-fluff: first ever honest conversation
1 review amounts to 1 unit of May-fluff, or 0.2 units of Skye-fluff (come on, you know which one is more healing / heartwarming)
Nah. In all honesty, the story is already set. There will be bits of both, I promise. But I still hope you give me a token appreciation if you enjoy this, because it´s a b*tch to write and I am honestly a bit exhausted.