Chapter 1
Grant Ward isn't having a good life lately. Between S.H.I.E.L.D., Hydra, and Kara's demise, there's nothing worth holding onto - not anymore. True, he may've taken over Hydra (to a point, it still has several older heads left, and from what he had heard from John, Bakshi, and few others, Hydra is more than what it seems, even to S.H.I.E.L.D. - not that he cares about that agency anymore), but this isn't what he had wanted - ever. He knows, in particular, how Kara would feel about that, the deserved disgust she would feel for him if she knew about this - and it doesn't do any wonders for his temper, (which is already badly frayed). He doesn't care - only he does. He is a man who could be anyone, can be anyone, actually - but he wants to be himself, whatever or whoever that is.
Only he cannot - not without S.H.I.E.L.D. breaking in through his door whenever they feel like it. Ever since he rejected their offer of T.A.H.I.T.I. (and how - but he was a fool, and now Kara is dead because of his stupidity), they have started to treat his continued existence as a challenge (Coulson in particular - fool me twice and all that hype), and they won't let him live in peace. That's ok, he had made his peace with this fact, he is going to die - eventually, (though probably sooner than even he had expected to), and he is just going to see if he cannot kill some of them in the process, starting perhaps with...
Grant blinks, as he examines the data. There are perks for being a head of Hydra - if one cares about such things. Grant most certainly does not. In fact, if there were any alternatives, he might just take any of them - this way, at least, when he meets Kara in the afterlife she won't be too disgusted with him.
This, however... um. This is all that Grant Ward can say when he learns about the Cavalry's daughter (and the only child, period). She is already under Hydra control (again, in a manner of speaking), so all that is left for Grant to do is to reach out and grasp her and-
Screw this. Grant isn't S.H.I.E.L.D., isn't Hydra, he honestly doesn't know what to do with the rest of his life, however short it may be, but being a true head of Hydra? No, just no. Grant Ward knows what he has to do, and so he does it.
He makes a call.
///
Melinda May loves her parents, both of them, though for now she is staying with her father. He needs her more, being stuck with a walker after a car accident. (Melinda cannot prove anything, the hit-and-run doesn't even look suspicious, but she doesn't care. Her father is hurt, and she is staying with him, at his home, to help him - but somehow her nerves are being stretched and frayed all the same. This sucks.) Regardless, she is finding herself missing S.H.I.E.L.D. and Coulson and Skye more and more daily. She wants to be a part of S.H.I.E.L.D., especially since Andrew had broken things off with her again, but...she honestly doesn't know if this is the right way to go either. She wants...she doesn't exactly know what she wants. It is annoying. Melinda May is a very precise person. An unknown variable, internal or otherwise, is not something that makes her happy. Her father's oh-so-helpful advice isn't helpful, not particularly, either.
The sudden knock on the door startles Melinda - if it was someone else, they could be described as frightened. There are very few people who can sneak up on her, and at least one of them is not her friend, nowhere near this. So naturally (for a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, that is), she grabs one of her kitchen knives (they are all interchangeable in her grip, so really, what's the difference?) and opens the door, doing her best to startle the intruder... she fails.
"Hey," Grant Ward speaks smugly, with a cocky smile that doesn't quite reach his eyes. The stiletto in his hand is much smaller than Melinda's knife, but judging by how easily he is handling it, Melinda really isn't putting much hope into her bigger blade; she just exhales and takes her fighting stance. Twice already she and Grant had fought each other, and each had won - once. Now, it seems, the third and final round is upon them.
...Or not, as Grant just gets up, the smug grin falling of his face, and there is something else deep in his eyes - disgust. Melinda knows it well, she had given it to Grant Ward herself several times in the past, ever since his true allegiance became known.
"Let's talk about your family," Grant beckons, and a couple of minions wheel a chair with a person, covered up, towards her. "You really care about your old man and lady, don't you?"
May blinks, once, and doesn't break her stance. Rather, she tenses and prepares to lunge.
"Pity that, apparently, you don't feel the same way towards your daughter," Grant continues in the same conversational tone, while gesturing towards the chair.
Something explodes in Melinda May's skull. "Naomi?!" she screeches all over the neighborhood, lunging towards the wheelchair. The knife is thrown away, discarded, and Melinda pulls down the covers. It is her daughter, her and Andrew's daughter, if you want to to get technical, and right now she looks as if she had been partying hard with Lindsay Lohan for the last few years of her life - in a bad way.
"What did you do to her, you monster?!" Melinda shrieks loudly enough to frighten away the local birds.
"I didn't do anything." The smugness is all gone, leaving behind a chill that would cause a polar bear to shiver. Melinda can probably fight off a polar bear, but the words cause her to shiver too. "You should really talk to your man instead. But just like the rest of S.H.I.E.L.D., starting with your dear director, you would rather chase enemies abroad than clean your own house. For the last 5 years and 9 months, it seems, your daughter was in a very bad place. Start doing something about it, Cavalry, or are you as hollow as you are rumored to be for the last 7 years?"
Without waiting for Melinda's answer, Grant turns around and leaves (his minions are already long gone). Not that Cavalry misses him - her own father has appeared on the scene, and upon seeing his only grandchild's disastrous conditions, he shrieks even louder, perhaps, than Melinda herself did:
"Naomi?!"
///
The agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. arrived in record time. Between Melinda herself and both of her parents (naturally, her mother arrived ASAP as soon as Melinda called her about her daughter) they managed to convey to Coulson precisely and succinctly (cough) that this wasn't time to dawdle, so here they were.
"Where's Simmons?" May asked curtly of Bobbi Morse.
"Um," Bobbi twitched - right now Melinda looked even more intimidating than the usual. "After you left, an alien rock ate her? I'm taking over for her in the lab? As a field medic too-"
"Good," Melinda cut her off. "That is Naomi. She's in trouble. Hydra - or someone worse - did something to her, and we need to cure her. Please!"
"On it," Bobbi gulped. Between Melinda's tearful 'please' and her parents' patented May glares (even more improved due to their advanced age), 'no' wasn't really an option, even if a teenager's life wasn't on the line. "Got it. People, let's get her back to HQ medical bay, shall we?"
There were no arguments, but Skye did sidle to May.
"Yes?" the older woman gave the so-called 'hacktivist' a look. "What?"
"Where do you want us to start?" Skye countered instead.
May drummed her fingers. "With Andrew," she finally was able to reply to her friend's answer in a censored way. "I want to know where the- where the- where he was while something was happening to Naomi! She's his daughter too, you know!" She was - embarrassingly - about to break into tears, when she noticed someone outside the hospital's window (it was a small town hospital, not very tall or big, BTW), and she was quite confident that she knew who.
"Excuse me," she pulled Skye aside and went outside, jumping out of the second floor window and landing lightly on her feet, because she was the Cavalry, screw this, and she had enough.
"Grant! I know you're here! I owe you one! Now show yourself!"
"This is the most messed-up example of feminine logic that I have ever heard." The man is not Grant Ward, (though for a moment Melinda thought differently for some reason), but rather a gifted of some sort - well, not of some sort. He's gifted, period. He looks rather like a more humanoid version of Tolkien's balrogs, (unlike Lash, for example, who is more of a Tolkien troll or ogre, conversely), and is doing his best not to look threatening, short of a white flag of truce. "But I'm not Hydra. My name is Hudima. Or Hellfire, if you would prefer."
"Ok," Melinda is getting back into her Cavalry mode. It helps some. She didn't expect this. A bit. "Why are you here?"
"I am looking for a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent named Barbara Morse," the giant gifted replies, still trying to go for a disarming smile (and failing - sort of). "You see, me, I'm not an agent, I'm not one of you. But, but I used to work with her in regards to Index-related matters and I would like to speak to her - please?"
Melinda blinked. "Morse worked with Index-related matters?" she asked the first thing that came to her mind.
"Yes! She and her S.O., agent Victoria Hand. Can I speak to her - agent Morse, I mean? Agent Hand is in Australia-"
Melinda opened her mouth to correct her new 'friend', when the doors of the hospital opened. Skye and Hunter were in the lead, followed by Mack and Bobbi who were gently carrying Naomi out on a stretcher - and then they saw May and her new interlocutor and stiffened.
"Mmm... Ggg... H-Hudima," Bobbi managed to speak. "You're back."
"I never left. You know it," Hudima spoke in a rather choppy manner. "How are you? Buried anyone lately, mm?"
Bobbi went pale, her mouth opened and closed - soundlessly. This was the most scared May had seen the other woman since Morse had switched her allegiance from late Gonzales' over to Coulson, which wasn't a bad thing, right?
"May," Skye (well, apparently she began to call herself Daisy when Melinda herself had left S.H.I.E.L.D. for her time off) called, "who is this?"
"My name is Hudima, princess," the big gifted answered instead, trying once more to make himself look non-threatening, (and not quite succeeding). "Please! I mean no harm!"
"I'm no one's princess," Skye replied curtly, even as she is measured him up as a threat and didn't like what she saw. "Got it?"
"You're a daughter of Jiaying," Hudima raised one eyebrow. "Interesting. What are you, then?"
"An agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.," Skye snapped. "Got it?"
"Fair enough. Then tell me, agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., which one of your co-workers is in charge of the Index now? Agent Morse or someone else?"
"Um," Skye looked between Melinda and Mack. "Guys, senior agents?"
"Why don't we talk about it on our way to the HQ?" Melinda decided to take charge of the situation. "And then we'll talk."
"If this is Andrew Garner's daughter and you're his wife, then we must," the foreign accent of the gifted came and went, but it was there, apparently. "Please, lead on."
TBC