Author's Note: So, this is the fallout from Ward's display in the hanger, so pretend like they've been arguing for a while. I'm not sure how interested people are in having a super long story (this already wins NANO by a stretch) so reviews (even one liners) help me know if I should continue, or wrap it up and be done. Also...this is a very cyclical story line, and I do that on purpose. It's not because I forget what happened earlier, it's supposed to be a mirror effect for the characters. My goal is to point out the very little difference between HYDRA and SHIELD.

Also...RANT TIME: WHAT THE HELL WAS WITH THE MID SEASON FINALE?! IS WARD DEAD?! WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED?! HOW DID HE GO FROM A STRONG, INDEPENDENT CHARACTER TO SUDDENLY BEING A HYDRA DRONE?! ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGG! I was even made about their portrayal of Thomas! I was expecting SO MUCH MORE AND IT WAS JUST AWFUL.

Rant done. Read and review and let me know what you think! (Mid season finale or otherwise) Also - big shout out thank you to TheCockyUndead for her super awesome help.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" Coulson demanded, resisting the urge to punch his co-director in the face. "I leave for half an afternoon, and when I come back, you're trying to arrest one of my agents, you've worked one up to almost a nervous breakdown, my hangar bay looks like a dragon got loose in it, and suddenly there's at least twenty new agents I don't recognize and definitely didn't sign off on!"

Gonzalez sat back in his chair, folding his hands passively across his stomach. "Agent Weaver and I thought we should replenish the ranks, what with the amount of Inhumans we've been finding. You seemed otherwise occupied."

Coulson fought the urge to throw something, counted to ten, then fifteen when that didn't work, and slowly unclenched his hands. "So you what, went and raided HYDRA's survivors? Or is there some sort of mail order hired muscle magazine I don't know about?"

"Said the man who hand picked one of HYDRA's top operatives for his special team," Gonzalez said calmly.

"I didn't pick my team," Coulson said, but didn't finish the protest. Somehow, ending it with 'Fury and May did' didn't make it any better.

"Exactly. We're not in a position to be choosy, Coulson. I need people with experience dealing with enhanced people, Inhumans, and who the hell knows what else that might show up on our doorstep. I picked the best candidates that I could find. At least they obey orders," Gonzalez said. "Unlike some agents I could name..." He glanced meaningfully over the rim of his glasses, and Coulson had to remind himself again that punching people in the face was not a good diplomatic approach.

Abandoning the current hiring issue, Coulson pressed forwards. "What the hell did you do to Agent Ward?"

Gonzalez raised an eyebrow. "Oh. He's back to being an agent?" he said mildly. "Forgive me. It's hard to keep track of who's an operative and who's an escaped fugitive."

"Get off your goddamned high horse, Gonzalez. You know damn well the situation has changed," Coulson growled.

This time, the older man smiled. "Yes, it has. For the very first time, we have an actual weapon at our command that we can actually use."

"At our command?" Coulson echoed. "This is Grant Ward we're talking about. He's unreliable at best and unstable at worst. We don't even know what he is! I don't think even he does! And you want to throw him back into the field? He just literally exploded into flames and almost incinerated the hanger bay!"

Gonzalez waved a dismissive hand. "Keep Agent Fitz with him and we won't have an issue."

Fortunately, angry as he was, Coulson wasn't blinded by it and neatly sidestepped the insinuation that Fitz was anything more than a trusted ally to Ward. "Fitz isn't a field agent. He's gone out twice and it ended badly both times, and both times, it was Ward who got him out of it. And he's not exactly cleared for duty anyway. Putting two mentally unstable people into the field is out of the question."

"You have Skye out there actively recruiting. Daisy, Skye, Tremors...whatever the hell she goes by now, and you want to get picky about the two we at least know what's wrong with them?"

"And what exactly do you think they're going to do?" Coulson demanded. "Ward has no idea how to use his abilities, and I'm not even sure he can without causing himself damage. Did you see what happened down in the hanger? He burned up so much energy he collapsed. How is that any help in a fight? Unlike Daisy, he has pretty much zero people skills. He's a good actor, but even he couldn't fake empathy, so we can't even send him out with her trying to find Inhumans! Fitz can't even relate to his best friend anymore, and if you ask him anything more demanding than 'go get that' he's more likely to throw something at you than get whatever it is you asked him for."

Gonzalez shrugged indifferently. "I'm not suggesting we put them out tomorrow, Agent Coulson. I'm just saying we need to have some end goal for the two of them."

"A goal that apparently involves turning Ward into an Inhuman. How did you even know what would happen?"

Gonzalez smiled. "Unlike you seem to believe, I actually look into the backgrounds of the people on our Most Wanted list. And on that list was Dieter Zola. I did a little digging, and I found the connection between Zola and Adaline Ward – the mother of one of our best specialists, Grant Ward, and one of HYDRA's top fugitives, Angela Ward. I knew what Zola's grandfather did, what his father did – and I knew what Adaline did before she retired. But people like that? Monsters like that? They don't just retire to the quiet life and become the Kennedys. I knew there had to be something else going on that somehow everyone else missed."

"We knew the connection between the two of them," Coulson pointed out. "I'm trying to figure out how the hell you knew what Ward could do."

Gonzalez shrugged. "I wasn't entirely positive, to be honest. All of Adaline's records show her conducted research on her children, but nothing concrete. All I could find was what she was intending. She confirmed nothing. Or, someone had the end results destroyed. Zola on the other hand, kept meticulous records. After you arrested him and SHIELD went through the HYDRA base's lab, I found his notes. Apparently, Adaline lay the groundwork for future experiments when she realized that the advances of her time were limited. If Ward hadn't killed her, and if HYDRA hadn't collapsed, Grant Ward would be right back under Zola's care. The only reason he wasn't at the time of collapse was because Garrett had gone off on his own little side plan that HYDRA didn't approve."

Coulson's jaw dropped in shock. Gonzalez knew what the Wards did to their children? "When did you discover this?" he asked, clenching his hands into fists so hard his nails bit into his palms.

"Around the time Ward was assigned to your team. Well, a little before that, actually. I knew Adaline worked for HYDRA in her youth, but SHIELD in it's less finer moments didn't much care about the company it kept. When I first started looking into the family was after the first time Grant set fire to his parents' house with his older brother still inside. I didn't really know what I was looking at – a sociopathic offspring of a HYDRA head? Or perhaps his hatred of his family was a reasonable recruitment speech." Gonzalez paused. "Sending Garrett was a poor choice, admittedly. But I didn't know about his extracurricular activity at the time, or I would've sent someone else."

Coulson's jaw ached where he was grinding his teeth together. "That still doesn't explain how you knew what Ward was capable of. Or why he was capable of it only now. I have to believe that if the Hellfire project was in use when he was recruited, we would've noticed something in his medical entrance exams."

"He's not an Inhuman, if that's what you're thinking. That's not how HYDRA does things. Terrigen is a newly discovered element, and considering the Wards' research in eugenics, I can tell you the likelihood of them having any unknowns in their pedigree is slim to none. Their tendencies ran more towards gene splicing and manipulation through science rather than magic aliens." Gonzalez stood, turning his back towards Coulson and looking out the window. "After we raided the laboratory where Agents Ward and Fitz were held, we found Zola half dead in the rubble. Apparently, your non-violent engineer shot him at almost point blank range while making their escape. I saw an opportunity and I took it – spare Zola's life, and he would tell me everything I wanted to know."

"Ward's abilities didn't show up until now because he didn't have them," Coulson breathed, realization dawning. "It was Zola's experiments that finally succeeded where his mother failed, wasn't it? That's why HYDRA had such an elaborate plan to capture him once he went rogue, isn't it?"

Gonzalez turned, smirking. "Science finally caught up to the vision of Adaline Ward."

Coulson sat down. Hard. How did no one but Gonzalez see any of this? Did Fury know? A dark thought crossed his mind – maybe that was exactly why Fury wanted Ward on his team. Why he wanted him in SHIELD in the first place. Maybe it was because he knew, knew what the Ward children went through, and decided to sit back and see how it developed.

Was it any harder to believe than the idea that Fury at one point agreed with Alexander Pierce's peace plan?

Or that using unknown alien technology and who knew what else to raise him from the dead was a good idea?

Coulson was beginning to understand Ward's reluctance to believe that HYDRA and SHIELD were different agencies.

"You recruited him out of prison so he would never wind up in HYDRA's ranks. You knew he had issues with authority, so you gave him one that was brutally honest in what he wanted and expected of him so he would have a handler right off the bat. You wanted the Hellfire project for yourself...but you needed a way to keep him that way. If Garrett hadn't turned out to be such a separatist nut job, it would've worked." Coulson gave a short, mirthless chuckle. "My God...that's brilliant."

And absolutely sick.

And totally, completely, never going to happen.

"What the hell do you plan on doing with him now?" Coulson asked incredulously. "He's more of an unknown now than before."

"He's unstable."

"No shit," Coulson said.

Gonzalez rolled his eyes at the comeback. "Not just psychologically, Coulson. Zola's drug therapies were effective, but he didn't get a chance to complete them. It's why Ward's Hellfire capabilities put a physical drain on him, why he can't truly control them or keep them from damaging himself, too."

"What's your point?"

Gonzalez turned around, now completely facing Coulson, and both hands supporting himself on his cane in front of him. "My point is Agent Ward is a survivor. We offer him that chance, in exchange for his services."

Coulson damn near hit the ceiling. "What?! Are you out of your fucking mind? Your plan is to blackmail a human fire storm into working for you? How? Getting Zola to tell you how to complete the treatment? Does he even know what he's doing? Or is your plan to just finger fuck your way through it and hope he doesn't die in the process? You honestly think he's going to willingly go right back to square one of this...this disaster? Once he finds out how much you had to do with this, you're going to be lucky if he doesn't set you on fire like his parents – you know, the last people who experimented on him."

Gonzalez stayed quiet for Coulson's tirade, waiting for him to take a breath before interjecting. "I think Ward would do anything for that lab monkey of yours. Including and not limited to agreeing to work for SHIELD again, in exchange for our help stabilizing his abilities. You have the best and brightest on your team, don't you?"

Coulson almost choked.

"You think Fitz is going to help?"

Gonzalez remained passive. "I think you're going to convince him it's in his best interests. And those of his friend. I think you're going to convince that lovely biologist of yours to help him in any way she can. I think you're going to make them believe that this is the best thing to do."

Coulson couldn't think of a decent response to that.

Why was SHIELD suddenly filled with delusional psychopaths with delusions of grandeur? He needed to talk to Hill about her screening process.

"And how do you propose I do that?" Coulson demanded.

"By telling them the truth."

"Which is what, exactly?"

Gonzalez leaned forwards on his cane, peering down his nose at Coulson like he was something on the bottom of his shoe. "That I have no need for unstable, physically or psychologically, turncoat agents. That if they don't agree to find a way to stabilize Ward, then I will simply have no choice but to deal with him by some other means. Not to be indelicate, but Ward has an awful lot of blood on his hands, and if he's not willing to try and work off some of his sins in the service of SHIELD...well, I know people who have been executed for less."

"So, Ward's options are volunteer as a lab experiment with the upside of only being a slave if it's successful, or be executed? And Fitz's is what, to take part in it or same thing?"

Gonzalez waved his hand. "Nothing so dramatic against Agent Fitz. But I don't believe he'll tell you no when you give him the option of helping Ward live, or letting him die. That boy has gone through far too much with Ward to simply give up now. Don't tell it to him like he's experimenting on his friend, explain it's trying to find a way to make sure his new found abilities don't kill him. Then it's not even a lie."

There weren't words in the English language to describe how Coulson currently felt.

Gonzalez wanted to put his two most broken agents right back to the place they found them in. Maybe not directly, but somehow that was worse. That he wanted to him to convince Ward and Fitz that they were being helped when really it was Gonzalez they were helping. And what happened if either one found out?

But on the other hand...Gonzalez didn't look like he was prepared to take no for an answer. If he told Fitz and Ward exactly what the other Director wanted to do, he had little doubt in his mind that instead of letting his friend try and fix the damage done by Zola and Ward's mother, Gonzalez wasn't above a work release program with Zola.

He shuddered inwardly at the thought.

And there was the problem of thanks to his obliviousness to Gonzalez's hiring behind his back, he and his team were vastly outnumbered. May, Bobbi, and Hunter were good, but not that good. He still couldn't be sure if they would side with helping Ward or helping Gonzalez, and that was too big a risk to take.

Subtlety was the key to this game.

"Fine," Coulson agreed. "But I do this my way, or I tell them everything. I don't think Ward is as much of a survivor as you think he is, and I'm not sure you want to take the chance he pulls a wild card and decides he'd rather be dead than your 'agent'."

Gonzalez studied Coulson's face, searching for deceit. Either he didn't see it, or decided it was worth the risk, because he agreed. "Fine. Do it your way. But don't think I won't have an eye on their progress. I have a vested interest in their success. One way...or another."

Coulson could swear he heard the Faust theme in the background and vowed to take a shower as soon as he was out of the office.

As he turned to leave, however, Gonzalez's desk phone rang, and he picked it up.

"This is Director Gonzalez," he said stiffly.

Something interesting must have been said, because suddenly he hit the speaker button.

"Repeat that?" Gonzalez ordered.

"I'm telling you, she looks like Jessica Jane Clement, and she's asking about the prisoners from HYDRA," the voice at the other end repeated. "Do I let her in?"

There was a second voice in the background, but Coulson couldn't quite make out what was being said. He could hear the guard hand over his phone, however, and this time a woman spoke.

Spoke wasn't even the right term. She sounded like a cat, practically purring over the line.

"Hello," she purred. "My name is Angela Ward. Invite me in. You have someone I would like to speak to."

Don't hate me. Or hate me. Let me know your feelings in a review! Last chance to cast your vote on the types of powers Thomas, Christian and Angela have!