It doesn’t take Ward long to decide on the plan, and it takes him even less to figure out exactly how to go about it. He might be free now, his mind and his decisions finally his own, but this doesn’t mean that the memory of all the loops he’d been made to jump through are forgotten. He still remembers John Garrett waving the false promise of tacos in front of a dirty and exhausted teenager. He still retains the muscle memory of his hand pressing the button that sent Fitz and Simmons into the ocean. Worst of all, he still feels the aftershocks of torturing friends and foes alike in the back of his mind. The memories are perfidious, dirty, toxic. Knowing that he never chose to do those things of his own accord, that they were written in a script for an actor to perform doesn’t make anything better – in fact, it makes everything worse.
Worse than realising that John Garrett used him.
Worse than waking up after the night with Lorelei.
It’s filthy and sick, and he could set fire to the “it’s just entertainment, it’s not even real” rhetoric these people tried to push at him. He won’t, though. He isn’t a pyromaniac, never was, will never be. They could have written any number of hideous things about him, but now he’s free and they’ll never again have access to his soul.
Which is why Ward smiles grimly, powers up the PC and sits down to write a nobler script than the one that ruined his life. One could argue that it’s not easy, that he isn’t a writer and has no talent for this thing, but he’s been a spy. He can come up with a good story, or sell a bad one. As a side note, nothing on the show known to the real world as Agents of SHIELD has been making much sense in the last several years. As long as some shots get fired, some action is filmed and some pseudo science is uttered, characters can die meaningless gruesome deaths… or come to life through utterly illogical procedures.
He waits a week, roaming the streets of LA and wondering if his plan’s going to work. He doesn’t even know where exactly he should be looking. The mall he’d spawned into after dying in the TV land is too big to have under surveillance all the time, and Ward knows that any spy worth her name won’t call attention to herself, no matter how bewildered she will be in the beginning.
He gets the feeling that he’s being watched on the eighth day and tries to establish contact early next morning, but after waiting for long hours in an open and reasonably secure place he has to leave in disappointment. He thinks that he should just go home – the little, unimpressive hiding hole he’s put together more out of habit than out of any worry that someone could come looking for him with ill intentions. Nobody knows he even exists in this reality except for the assholes who created him, and these won’t say anything, ever.
The real reason is that nobody would ever believe them, but Ward likes to pretend that tiny part of it is white hot shame.
He doesn’t go home immediately, though, and wanders the night streets for several hours trying to convince himself that he isn’t upset about the failure of his plan. Feelings come easier to him now because they are organic and logical and not a plot point anymore, and he finds that grief actually feels like a heavy blanket settling over him and grounding him, instead of a white-hot ball of hatred and spite he’d been made act upon for more than a year.
His life isn’t a TV show anymore, Ward tells himself, but maybe some things never change. Maybe he’ll forever be alone, one way or another, in this new world or in his old one. He grits his teeth and tells himself he’ll soldier through this, and makes the resolution to get a legal day job as soon as possible. It’s a nice mindset, but maybe the Universe isn’t done playing with him and his life is still a show sometimes, because as soon as he opens the door to his tiny apartment he’s met with a very welcome sight of Kara Palamas levelling a gun at him.
Nine days and six hours after writing down the world’s wackiest retcon that explained her miraculous survival and gleefully shoving it at the showrunners (one year after they made him shoot her in the gut and hold her while she bled to death), they hug like their lives depend on it.
The path Kara had taken is very similar to the one Ward himself had gone through. She spawned completely confused inside a public place, hid, went underground, figured things out. He doesn’t ask how she found him – it’s enough that she did. Having explored the real world on her own for over a week, she’s over the initial shock already. All that’s left to do is explain the full story about how he brought her back to life. Having come from a show based around aliens and resurrections, she doesn’t as much as raise an eyebrow.
It’s a beautiful.
Her. Him. Everything around them. He missed her so much. Out of all horrible deeds he had committed (was forced to commit, he keeps reminding himself), killing the person he genuinely cared for and wanted to help so much – however briefly it was shown on screen, however misguided his intention was, however creepy it was intended to come off – had been the most horrifying. It was painstakingly designed to destroy him, body and soul, and it absolutely did.
(Sometimes he wonders why these responsible couldn’t be bothered to do an equally good job building him up afterwards. Why a story about misery and death and cruelty was deemed to be a better option than one about hope and healing and redemption).
He puts it all out of his mind now, because Kara is here and he saved her. He’d made her a real girl, and she’s so alive and happy and so whole, it never fails to warm his heart. They spend weeks exploring this new world together, laughing at the inexistence of SHIELD actually makes the whole world safer and fairer and brighter. They watch movies about aliens and Avengers and monsters, and munch popcorn instead of professionally plotting ways to either bring in or kill off the poor souls.
They don’t run away to any islands. Kara confesses that she wants to, very much so, but can’t tell if it’s her free desire or an aftershock. They also never go past cuddling on the sofa night after night (they love watching the movies, but avoid all things TV), and it’s quite enough for both of them.
Four months later, their life is good. They keep a low profile. They have a house, a nice upgrade from the hidey hole of Ward’s. It’s sunny and cosy and has lots of plants (no cacti). Ward´s pretty sure it´d feel like home, if only he knew what home feels like. It mostly feels like the Bus used to feel, but a lot quieter and a bit empty. He doesn’t work any respectful jobs yet. Maybe he never will. The languages would probably come handy, but he still feels a bit too broken to talk with random civilians like he’s one of them, no torture, no abuse and no indoctrination in his backstory.
Kara is quite the opposite. She misses her mom (a memory without a face, because her mom was never important enough to appear on screen) and fills the void by keeping company to grannies in a community center. She also gets a dog. Ward´s a little envious of her, because he adores dogs but it never even occurred to him to get one. It hasn’t got a name yet.
She says that she’ll give it one when time is right.
(She has the same nightmares as Ward. She feels dirty and used just like he does. During the first months, he’s sure that they’ll never speak of it.)
And then they do. It’s a beautiful evening, too beautiful to spend it in the city, and they’re out of movie options and board games. They take a motorcycle and drive for a long while, until there is no sound around them except that of the wilderness. Wind whispers in the trees and earth is mouldy yet dry and warm under the settling sun. They sit down under a tree and hug, and just let the time pass in companionable silence.
“I used to feel like a puppet hanged to death, whose puppeteer berated it for getting tangled in its own strings so very clumsily,” Kara says after a while. “Even here, the first days I felt like I was the guilty one. The stupid one. The gullible, psychotic one. Like I deserved… everything that happened.
“It’s over now,” Ward says, and fights to stop the acrid aftertaste from flooding his brain. It’s really not worth it. The place is beautiful and claming and feels like aftermath of a long battle in a way. It’s a good thing - aftermath. It means they can relax. It means that they survived, and even if their wounds leave scars, it means they won.
“Of course it is,” Kara agrees and smiles. It’s weary, but also peaceful. Sad, but never devastated, and Ward remembers just how extraordinary strong a parson she is on her own. “We are free now. Dented, damaged a little, yes. But free.”
Ward shows her just how proud he is of her by sitting back and tightening his arms around Kara.
“It’s more than I’d ever dared to dream,” he confesses.
He kind of feels proud of his newfound enlightened mindset, but to his chagrin Kara simply sniggers. They connect beautifully, and he would not trade their bond for anything, but the truth is - she manages to read his mind way more often than Ward manages to read hers.
“Don’t be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling,” she purrs and yes, they might have seen that movie one too many times. It’s kind of related to their world skipping situation. “I know you miss them,” she than adds in a much softer tone.
“Who?”
“It’s perfectly OK. I do miss Mike and I’ve only talked to him once. You’ve spend a year being friends with all these people.”
“I looked up the actors,“ Ward quietly admits. He also circled the building where the actress for Skye lives. Once. Just once, before Kara came, and he’s been loath to bring up the topic since for fear of making her feel secondary or unwanted. “I don’t even miss… I mean, I do miss them, but not the present them. The way they were long ago. The Bus and board games, and… They were the only friends I ever had, you know? And I can wilfully forget a lot of things, but I cannot… I guess I want to just pretend that a small part of that false life was real.”
“It was,” Kara says after a while. “Your friendship was beautiful and real, and like so many other things it didn’t sizzle out – it got destroyed by a malicious hand. Fitzsimmons, Mike and Skye aren’t people to these monsters, Grant. They’re property. Puppets. Victims.”
“Well, they’re happy that way so…”
“Would they be, if they really knew?”
“No,” he mutters, mechanically at first and with more force later. Fitzsimmons´ inquisitive minds would never stand for living in a fake world. Skye´s love of freedom would make her balk at the very idea. And Petersen would just love to find out that his son being kept away from his father had one singe purpose - heightening the angst of a TV audience.
Kara’s hands press on his arms and they tighten the hug, and somehow they both know what the other is thinking without exchanging any words. Wind blows over their heads, earth is hot under their feet, and they dream bigger than they ever had before.
(Skye names the dog Origin and Kara and FitzSimmons gleefully agree. Mike bristles every time the mutt comes near, but Grant secretly suspects he´s the one who keeps feeding it hamburgers).