Author's Note: So I didn't actually like Agents of SHIELD until the whole fall of SHIELD and rise of HYDRA and the fallout from the events of Winter Soldier. The characters finally got some dimension, especially Ward, who up until that point was pretty much a cookie cutter pretty face and ninja skills. I much prefer him as the way he is now, an agent of chaos. I started writing this before he escaped en route to being turned over to his brother. Read and review!

Running Up That Hill

You don't want to hurt me
But see how deep the bullet lies
Unaware I'm tearing you asunder
Oh there is thunder in our hearts, baby
Is there so much hate for the ones we love
Tell me we both matter don't we
You...
You and me
You and me, you won't be unhappy

~ Running Up That Hill, Placebo

They always assume that we don't know what happened to us. That we don't know how far we've fallen. That we knew what we were doing the entire time.

They're not wrong.

They're not right, either.

There's some of us who believe in the Cause. It consumes us, it becomes us, and it is all that remains even after we do not.

And there's some of us who don't believe in at all, but we try to pretend because we don't believe in anything.

I have really no excuse. I started life hating it. My oldest brother tortured my younger brother and me, and used me as the instrument of his hatred. Mom and dad weren't any better. Some crusaders believe that my home life was the beginning of my spiral downwards. That I can't be blamed for what I did or how I behaved because I was raised believing hate was all there was in the world. They think there's something salvageable about me.

There's a reason why they have a saying about old dogs and new tricks.

I'd never found a reason to turn against Garrett. Scratch that – there were a lot of reasons to go against him. But there wasn't anything to feel that gap. With Garrett, I had a mission. I had a purpose. More importantly, it was a purpose that I seemed uniquely suited to. I was very, very good at being bad. Garrett, Coulson, Fury…it didn't really matter who I worked for because the end result was the same – to do as I was told. More often than not, I was told to do some pretty awful things. Blame HYDRA all you want, but no one noticed that SHIELD was being slowly taken over by the enemy, and if the Director can't tell the difference between the bad guys and the good, why would us poor foot soldiers notice?

Working for Garrett wasn't exactly what I would call fun. He wasn't the nicest guy, and failure was not an option. I saw what happened to those who failed, and while I may not be particularly fond of my life, I preferred it over being dead. Compared to a lot of HYDRA agents, I had a relative amount of freedom. At least I wasn't cryogenically frozen until they needed me in the field. Singling down my loyalty to one person made life considerably easier. Some people ask WWJD – I had my own version.

If HYDRA hadn't gotten so ambitious, I might've gone down with the ship, Hail HYDRA as my dying words. But they did. And they sent me to work for Coulson. A man that was supposed to be dead offered me the chance at life.

Real life.

I'd never had one before.

I didn't know what to do with it.

Coulson's team made it easy. They were so trusting, so open, so…human. I didn't realize that's what made them dangerous.

They start to make you question. They start to make you care.

They start to make you change.

I don't handle change well. Never have. Probably never will. And I don't mean change jobs, pick up and move across the world on a whim, I mean change who I am. I have never cared about people. Never. I don't love my family. I didn't follow Garrett out of some misplaced sense of paternal loyalty and affection. I don't believe in HYDRA, I don't believe in SHIELD.

I believe in nothing.

Nothing matters. Nothing is what I owe my loyalty to. Alliances are bought and sold, love is won and lost, and justice is as fictional as American Dream of freedom.

People are deluded to think otherwise.

But then Coulson brought me in. There were Fitz and Simmons and May and Skye. They drove me crazy with their act of friendship and loyalty and how they were working for a better world, a higher purpose. They couldn't possibly believe that, could they? How naïve could they be? I didn't understand who they were trying to convince, me or themselves.

In the end, it didn't matter. Because I started to believe in them. That maybe not everyone was an act. Not everyone was filled with the same terrible nothing that I was. Their opinion started to matter. My opinion started to matter. And I found myself stumbling over the knowledge of everything I knew, everything I had ever done, compared to their idyllic views. They weren't faking their beliefs. That innate goodness was a part of them, a part of all of them.

And the more I was around it, the more I was around them, the more I realized there was a terrible hollowness in my very soul. I was the darkness in their world. I saw the way Skye started to look at me. I started to feel the same. I didn't want to be a better man because of Coulson. I wanted to be the man she thought I was. I tried to warn her. I tried to tell her I wasn't a good man.

But she didn't believe I was bad. She believed I was good. And I had seen the power of her beliefs. They could change the world. They could change me.

How did a good man live with the terrible actions of a bad one?

Answer: they don't.

Bad men kill good men, and that was exactly what I did.

I've never felt guilty about my actions, except where my younger brother was concerned. And I don't know if that's guilt so much as anger.

I felt guilty about Fitz. I felt guilty about Simmons and May and Coulson.

And I was nearly undone by Skye.

When Coulson killed Garrett, I don't think he realized the relief I felt. I was unburdened of any sense of loyalty I had to HYDRA after Garrett was dead. For the first time in my life, I felt free. I was free to do as I wanted, to be what I wanted.

And I realized all I wanted was to be the man Skye believed I was before.

May and Coulson held up their promise after they took me into custody. There was torture. There was pain. There was blood, broken bones, and chemicals that lit up my brain like a Christmas tree on fire. They made it very clear I was free to make choices, but I was not free from the consequences of those choices.

I took it all. I wanted to be the man Skye thought I was all along. It was what kept me alive in the end, despite the many times I wanted to die.

Up until they agreed to turn me over to Christian.

I have been tortured my whole life – my mother, my brother, behind enemy lines and in the service of my country and by my mentor.

None of them have haunted me the way my older brother did. It was the one truth about my life I ever shared with Coulson's team – with Skye. They knew what he did. They knew what he made me do.

And there were still willing to hand me over for the sake of making a political alliance.

Any sense of loyalty, or what I thought was desire to earn their respect, evaporated.

You want me to be the bad guy? Fine. I'll be the bad guy.

Everyone who ever had a hand in deciding who I was, what I was, was eliminated. My mentor was already dead, thanks to Coulson. In the end I suppose I still owe Coulson a thank you. It was his decision that set me on this path. It was what set me free.

My parents and my older brother followed.

I am not a puppet or a weapon.

I am not a good man or a bad one.

I am myself for the first time in my life.

I am free.

I am.

So after much consideration, I finally finished this. Ward is one of my favorite characters on Agents of SHIELD because he is so wonderfully crafted. He's an agent of chaos, and the writers have put so much more effort into him than I think any other character. His bizarre co-dependent personality that is so completely at odds with the incredible strength of will is fascinating to me. And when you see him go from someone who actually needs someone to latch on to, to be told what to do and how to do it to being someone who is just now figuring out who and what he as an adult in his thirties is awesome. No, I don't think he's a good guy with a bad history, I think he is one of the very few characters who now has everything that he is defined by himself and himself alone. He owes a loyalty to nothing and no one. I think he has the potential to be the best character to come out of Agents. As always, read, review, and feel free to argue! Agree with this portrayal? Think Grant is a Sally Sobstory with terrible luck, or a malicious psychopath that will manipulate and lie to get what he wants?