Holes

Before he could move, she put her hand on his. He liked how it felt on his skin. She looked into his eyes and gave him a half smile.

“Please,” she said. Her puppy dog eyes made things worse. “I’m not going to judge you.”

“Are you sure about that,” he asked, sipping his drink. He drank so much the last 10 years it no longer burned going down. “I’ve done things I’m not proud of.”

Skye laughed. She could light up the room when she did. “You don’t want to hear some of the things I did. Besides, you know Miles.”

She had absolutely no idea how bad it was. Miles’ betrayal was nothing. He knew he couldn’t tell her his assignment. He had only hoped to find out what saved Coulson and leave the team. Garrett would get him transferred out without a fuss. This was supposed to zero contact but it wasn’t working. He already liked Simmons, Fitz and Skye. She was such a breath of fresh air. They were reaching out to him but he hated himself a little more when he reached back.

“Come on, Ward. Just a little bit of what you saw. I won’t bite.”

He couldn’t even do a little bit. He reflected back on seeing Thomas in the well and the hatred he felt for what he had done. No, she couldn’t handle it. She would think he was a heartless cowardly monster who tried to drown little boys. Better to just finish up this assignment and be done.

But she didn’t lift her hand. He wanted to get close to her. Sometimes he wanted to have friends, but that was a weakness. The mission was more important. He had to save Garrett’s life. Garrett told him if they ever found out about him, they wouldn’t understand.

“I can’t,” he admitted. “I just can’t. I’m—“ He paused for a long time. “I’m just not ready.” And he never would be. Soon he would learn the truth about Coulson and be gone from the team. Maybe once in a while they would see each other at the Hub or somewhere else. He wondered if he should tell Garrett that he was getting too close, but he didn’t want to show weakness.

Just do the mission, get the info, and get out.

She looked a little disappointed, but that was better than knowing the truth.

“I think I need some air,” he said. “And maybe a walk. Alone.”

She nodded and she pulled away her hand. She looked at him sympathetically. He almost wanted to stay and tell her everything. Instead he gulped down the rest of his drink. No burning. It never burned anymore. He got up and walked away. Making a straight beeline for the door. Glad that Fitz and Simmons had gone to their rooms and May was sharing a drink with Coulson at the opposite side of the bar.

He went outside into the cool air. He didn’t know which way to walk so he decided to go to where he knew the bus was parked. It was a good ten or so miles away but it would clear his head. He knew he could walk fifty in one go, so ten wasn’t such a big deal.

It wasn’t only Skye and getting close to the team that bothered him.

He kept flashing back to the memory of the well.

The staff had to be wrong.

It wasn’t the way he remembered. He remembered after pulling Thomas up but he didn’t remember Christian threatening to hurt him. After he pulled Thomas out, he remembered that his parents got told. They screamed at him too and his mother slapped him so hard across the face it stung. She ranted for an hour that his practical joke wasn’t funny and Thomas could have died. When his mother was around, Christian and he got all of her abuse. She always called him weak, lazy, stupid, and worthless, despite that he did exceptionally well in school. When she was gone, he and Thomas were at Christian’s mercy. Until he joined Christian to torment Thomas also.

But that’s not what the memory showed him. He didn’t remember Christian threatening him.

He walked to calm himself down. He outwardly showed everyone he was better but inside he still felt the hatred the staff had brought up in him. He wasn’t about to deal with this for decades. Like Garrett taught him, he needed to make a compartment and shove it in.

The bus was parked in an airfield. He figured he could walk to the bus and back to the hotel before sunrise. His adrenaline was still pumping so he needed to calm down. When Garrett had trained him, he had walked a lot around his land, creating maps to the different empty cabins. This was just walking through the streets. He didn’t worry about muggings. Even thought no one knew he could kill a man in more than hundred different ways, his height often was a deterrent.

He not only hated getting close to other people. He absolutely hated them getting close to him. He wished Skye had come to help him. Why didn’t she leave after his outburst in the medbay?

He didn’t want to think about Skye. Or even Fitz and Simmons who were sweet kids. When he walked off what the staff did to him, he had to work things a little better. He came here to get closer to Coulson. He still would have saved Simmons or Fitz. He didn’t like when people died, but he had hoped saving the younger agents would mean something to Coulson.

Even though Coulson said he trusted him, he was still standoffish. Not letting Ward in as a friend. May might be a better target. He worried she would figure out he was undercover but she might know what bought Coulson back. He wanted to try to get Coulson to talk because he knew Garrett was getting antsy and that if Ward didn’t finagle the info, the next step would be kidnapping him. He thought of the fear his team would have if anything happened to Coulson. The younger agents saw him as a father figure. He didn’t want to do that. But they needed to find out what bought Coulson back or Garrett would die. He couldn’t let that happened. He owed Garrett too much.

He didn’t like hurting other people; he wanted to save Garrett. And he actually admired Coulson who gave his life to try to stop Loki. But the idea of losing his mentor who made him into a strong man and saved his from his family was too much. He would do anything to save him.

His thoughts went back to the memory. It didn’t make any sense to him.

He forgot a lot from his childhood. Remembering almost no good memories, but several of the bad ones. He remembered that Christian tormented him. He also remembered tormenting Thomas. Christian never got in trouble for hurting him, but Ward always got in trouble for hurting Thomas.

He remembered the well. It was the first time he hurt Thomas but he thought he did it on his own. The staff had shown him something different.

By the time he met Garrett, there had been nothing left in him but a monster, a vicious horrible monster that wanted to set the world on fire. Garrett had saved him. Undid the torment that Christian had done to him. Made him into someone who wasn’t weak and afraid all the time.

But the memory—

He didn’t remember Christian telling him to wait a little longer and then threatening to hurt him if he defied him. He didn’t remember the terror too, only that he hated himself for what he had done.

He always thought that bullying Thomas had been his own idea. He felt weirdly disconnected to that idea. Before the incident at the well, he spent time with Thomas. They watched TV together. He tolerated Thomas’s stuff animal parades. He remembered one time when Christian ripped the head off of one. Thomas had cried to his mother and Christian got in big trouble. After that Christian only picked on him and left Thomas alone.

Did Christian use him torment Thomas, so his parents would never suspect it was really Christian had been the culprit. And in the end, it had been Ward who had come out the monster?

And were there more memories buried like this one?

He hadn’t realized how fast he walked. Because he saw the sign for the base where the bus was park. He checked his watch: 1am. There was a guard on duty who thankfully said nothing to Ward after he showed him his ID. On shared bases, no one talked to the SHIELD people and that suited him fine.

The bus sat next to other planes. Ward lowered the ramp and headed inside. He kept trying to talk himself out of doing it. But that stupid memory gnawed on him. Besides this wouldn’t affect the mission. It meant that Garrett had rescued him from an even worse hell than he imagined. He paused for a moment thinking about Garrett. He owed the man everything. He saved Ward’s life, Ward had to save his.

But he had to deal with this first. He had to know the truth. Were their more memories that were incorrect in his mind?

The stuff they had collected was in the labs. When the mini-vacation was over, they would take all the items to the fridge and this would be his only chance for vindication. That he hadn’t completely been a monster that decided to torment Thomas on his own. He had been forced too.

He looked at the chest that it had been locked in. it had a lock but Garrett gave Ward the code to open things meant for level 8 or above and wouldn’t be tracked back to anyone.

It looked harmless: A three-piece staff with a pretty design. Ward knew he shouldn’t touch it. He remembered the anguish and the hatred it made him feel. Garrett said to never show weakness and he hated handing the stick over to May. Hated seeing her take it without suffering. He hated the feeling he had on the floor where Skye had to help him up because he couldn’t under his own power. It terrified him. That was why he couldn’t talk to her after. Being weak terrified him, but being close to Skye terrified him even more. That was what came out in the lab. Why he yelled at her. He wanted to stop feeling for her, stop feeling for any of them. He had to turn it off somehow but he never could completely. He still felt sympathy for the old dog he put down.

But he remembered what Dr. Randolph said about the staff shining a light on all the dark places. Still he wanted to take it in his hands to weed out everything, so he would never be weak again.

When he grabbed the first piece, no vision came. He felt the surge of energy flow through him. That never bothered him. He grabbed the second piece and a memory came.

But it wasn’t of Christian at all. It was him on the floor of a cabin. It was just a flash.

Curious, he put the two pieces together.

The memory came even stronger. He felt horrifically nauseous and used all his will to stop from vomiting. What the hell was he seeing?

He grabbed the third piece. He saw Buddy at his side, licking his hands until he yelled for the dog to go away. He couldn’t move as his stomach clenched in horrific spasms. He began to remember. Buddy had been trained to follow Garrett but it had taken some time to get to listen to Ward. Because he was so hungry, he had eaten these berries. They had been sweet so he assumed they weren’t poisonous. A few hours later, he was so ill he couldn’t move. He vomited everything in his gut and lay on the floor of a cabin that was missing half its roof, in agony as his stomach and entire digestive system revolted. Throwing up until his throat was raw and specs of blood were in his vomit. He thought he would die like that.

What did this mean?

He had no choice.

He completed the staff.

And nothing he saw made any sense.