Warnings (over whole story): Extensive discussion of abuse, including offenses against children, women, and animals. Genre-typical violence and death. Homophobia. Substance abuse. Casual discussion of suicide. Reference to statutory rape. Spoilers through the end of Season 4. Actually, just through the last episode with Ward in it, which I think is S4E19, but whatever.

Day 1

"I thought we were going to SHIELD," said Grant Ward, as the black SUV came to a stop in a very normal suburban driveway that led to a very normal, if rather small, suburban house, a pale brick cottage with a very normal dark green door. The yard was neatly mowed, excluding a few weeds and patches of crab grass. It was as though it had been deliberately landscaped to be neither noticeably well-manicured nor memorably decrepit. Grant eyed the house suspiciously. He was still dressed in burgundy elastic-waistband prison scrubs, and was having a hard time coming to terms with the fact that his sentence was somehow being commuted, that he was back in the real world with its plentiful windows and freely available dinner knives.

"What makes you think this isn't SHIELD?" asked the driver, turning the vehicle off. She had told Grant her name was Victoria Hand – he had no way of knowing if she had been telling the truth, about that or anything else. She was wearing a perfectly fitted grey pantsuit that was forgettable in every way. Hand herself was less forgettable, between the bright red streak in her hair and her constant, unnecessary inscrutability. So far, she had not provided a straight answer to a single one of Grant's queries.

"Are you going to answer everything with a question?"

"No," said Hand. Without elaborating, she got out of the SUV and retrieved her crutches from the back seat before she began hobbling toward the front door.

Grant lingered outdoors for a moment. On one level, he was savoring the open space, the absence of walls. On another, he was feeling choked by his freedom, as though the world was a bowl, rising up around him on all sides. On still another, perhaps more subconscious level, he knew that although there were no physical walls, he would almost certainly be stopped by someone, somehow, if he attempted to run. By all appearances, he could take Hand in a fight, but there had to be some kind of advanced weapon or tracker trained on him. He picked up a largish wood chip from the mulched flower bed and palmed it, acting on an instinct which told him to never stop pressing advantages, and then followed Hand into the house.

A very small part of Grant had expected that somehow the house was SHIELD headquarters, or perhaps it led to a secure elevator, followed by a series of unmappable tunnels, that lead to SHIELD headquarters. But no, it was just a house. There was some art on the walls – generic, like you'd find in a hotel – and a few cactuses baking on the various windowsills. (Cacti? Grant had never been good with the finer points of English grammar.)

Hand was busy settling down onto a sofa, elevating her leg.

"Did that happen-" began Grant. "Were you injured working for SHIELD?"

Hand grunted non-committally. "I don't usually do recruitment," she said, "but I wanted to stay useful while this," she waved dismissively at the lower half of her body, "sorts itself out."

That was information, although not actually the information Grant had requested. He was taking everything in, still not entirely clear on what was happening. He had been summoned from his cell to meet with a visitor. Just having a visitor was odd – family never came and his public defender hadn't spoken with him in over two years. He had always held out hope that a reporter would come digging into the story of the Ward's wayward middle son, and that he would be able to use the curiosity of the press to his advantage. Somehow. He had never had a clear mental image of exactly what that would look like. At any rate, his visitor hadn't been a reporter, but instead a severe-looking woman with a red streak in her dark hair. She had seemed impatient with their meeting, as if every word of conversation was putting her further and further behind schedule.

She had tipped her chin downward, as though she were peering at him over invisible glasses, and said, "Ward, arson, correct?" A string of words with no verbs in it, but still a clear sentence.

"I was convicted of arson," Grant had said, carefully admitting nothing.

The woman had tsked then. "I don't approve of putting children in adult prisons."

"I'm alm-" Grant had begun to protest that he was very nearly no longer a minor when he had remembered what day it was. "I'm eighteen."

"I know. Happy birthday. Is it a happy birthday, though? Finally out of solitary, but then of course entering general population."

Grant had said nothing. He had spent the last two and a half years debating the relative merits of solitary confinement and exposure to bigger, more dangerous men. He didn't need to discuss the issue with this woman.

"I'm Victoria Hand," she had said, "and if you're not stupid, you're getting out today."

There hadn't been enough paperwork to justify anyone's release, let alone chopping twenty-two years off of his sentence. That was what was really strange. In Grant Ward's experience, the legal system ran on enormous quantities of paperwork. His case itself was plainly open-and-shut, and had nonetheless required three and a half inches of paper, of forms in triplicate and statements that had been photocopied to the point of illegibility. Appeals were more paperwork. Parole hearings were more paperwork. Hell, when he'd outgrown the cheap moccasins they gave him for shoes, there had been four separate forms required for him to get a new pair (he had aimed a size up, figuring he'd grow into them before they arrived).

But they had just walked, out, stopping first by his cell to collect his few possessions. Hand had shown the guards a badge and suggested they call their supervisors and the sequential gates that led to the outside world had opened.

Grant wondered where Hand's badge was now. It had looked rather bulky; she couldn't have just tucked it in a pocket.

"There's a cot for you in the basement," said Hand. "I'd tell you to get settled in, but you don't really have much to unpack. You can look around, get a feel for the place, but don't try to leave." There was something about the way she said try to that made clear attempts would not succeed.

"This isn't really your house," said Grant, more to himself than to anyone else. "If it was, you wouldn't let me explore." Because there was no reaction, he went further. "Your leg is broken," he said. "I could kill you. I could rape you."

Hand just yawned. "I'm going to take a nap before dinner. Wake me if you lose a finger."

And then Grant watched as she fell asleep almost immediately. It was actually rather impressive, the way she could plummet, rather than gently descend, into sleep. Still, he waited until her breathing evened before backing slowly out of the living room and into the entry corridor. The house was very small, really only four rooms. The living room, kitchen, bathroom, and master bedroom were all situated in a grid around the thin hallway that extended from the front door. There was a door in the living room that led to the basement – since Grant was apparently supposed to head down there, he decided it would be last on his self-guided tour. (His first impulse, of course, was to defy her by not searching the house, but he wasn't about to be manipulated by such basic reverse psychology.)

He went to the kitchen first, pocketing a paring knife and helping himself to some graham crackers. They were stale. There wasn't much fresh food in the kitchen. There were some canned goods, dried pasta, cereal, and a lot of freezer burned frozen pizzas. No milk for the cereal. No fresh fruit. No bread. Some eggs that didn't smell so hot. He looked at the row of little plastic spice containers. Curry was almost empty. Cardamom was full. The silverware drawer showed that whoever lived here regularly bent and unbent the tines of the forks, probably jamming them into the outdated dishwasher. Someone lived here. But maybe not full time. Maybe a vacation home, although a bland suburban neighborhood was a weird choice for a summer cabin. Grant went to see if he could open a window, but he couldn't find any sort of slider or latch. The glass seemed stuck in place.

He looked in the bathroom. It wasn't very interesting, although he noted that the door had no lock. He filed that information away. He didn't find Hand very attractive, but still, any port in a storm. There were simple hygiene products. Store brand soap and toothpaste. A women's safety razor. He thought about pocketing that as well, but it was strictly worse than the paring knife and far more likely to be noticed. There was a box of tampons under the sink. There was makeup. Didn't look like much to Grant, but he readily admitted to having no idea how much makeup counted as 'a lot'.

He moved to the bedroom. It was tidy, insofar as there was no dirty laundry on the floor or piles of junk in the corners, but it wasn't very clean. The carpet needed to be vacuumed, and the windows were streaky. That was true of the whole house, Grant realized. It wasn't cluttered, but it wasn't well-kept either. The bedside table had a single drawer which was either stuck or locked. There was a chest of drawers with a mirror on top. No photographs or china dolls or anything else personal. Grant was briefly tempted to open the drawers and steal a pair of Hand's panties. Again, not really his main sexual interest, but he'd been in solitary for a very long time, with only his imagination to keep him company. Still, he hadn't entirely ruled out joining SHIELD. Might as well keep his options open. There was a small stereo with a CD player and a single tape deck. Grant popped the CD player lid open. The disk was clearly home burnt and was labeled in Sharpie #1. He closed the lid and moved on to the closet. There was a lacrosse stick in there, too big to steal, but worth remembering in case of a fight. The closet was mostly empty, no more than twenty garments in total, all women's.

So what had Grant learned? Not much. Hand – if this really was her house – was not a germaphobe, lived here only sporadically, and wasn't particularly appearance-conscious. Grant was no Sherlock Holmes. He couldn't make amazing deductive leaps. Grant impulsively grabbed another knife from the kitchen – this time a small steak knife that wouldn't be missed – and went down into the basement. It was less than half the size of the house, which made Grant wonder if there was more hidden behind a false wall. It was cinderblock and tile, clean and sterile. Across from the washer and dryer was a twin bed with a cheap little nightstand and lamp. Grant hid one knife under the mattress and the other in the nightstand. The bedsheets were clean. They didn't smell new, but they smelled like detergent, recently washed.

Grant was suddenly very tired. Even though he had spent the las two years of his life lying on a featureless bed in a featureless room, he felt irresistibly called to do just that.

"Let me give you a general sense of what's happening," said Hand. "You're scheduled for your intake evaluation at SHIELD in a little under two months, at which point you will be assessed – physically, mentally, and psychologically – for fitness to serve. Which means that I have fifty-three days to get you ready for that evaluation. I'm certainly not trying to fix all of…this." She waggled her fingers in his direction, palm down, the way one might indicate an unpleasant, if not precisely poisonous, patch of mold. "Just trying to get you to the point where you can enter the Academy. If you fail out once accepted, that's not my problem."

Hand took a bite of her dinner, frozen pizza reheated in the microwave, chewing and swallowing efficiently if not particularly delicately. "Now, for the time we're together, I can scrub you at any time for any reason, including no reason at all. If I get sick of you, if I don't think you're making enough progress, if I don't think you're showing me that you can become a SHIELD agent, I'll scrub you." She ate another bite of pizza. "That said, I consider myself fair-minded. I don't expect you to already be an agent. That's what the Academy is for. And I don't expect you to already be ready for intake. That's why I planned a lag between pulling you and running your intake assessment." Fifty-three days was actually the longest lag she had ever seen between recruitment and intake, and she was still worried it wasn't going to be enough.

"Why'd you pick me?" asked Grant. It was what he had been wondering virtually nonstop since he had left prison.

Hand tented her fingers together, considering. "Let's start with the most straightforward reason," she said. "I very much dislike your father, and-

"Wait, you know my dad?"

"I don't like his politics," she clarified. "He championed a bill that…impacted my life." She pursed her lips. "Although the further data I've gathered on him while considering you for recruitment certainly didn't improve my initial opinion of the man."

Grant laughed ruefully, the quiet half-laugh people produce in response to miserable irony.

"At any rate," said Hand, "the thought of recruiting you right out from under his nose, even though he will never know about it…" She smiled, just a little. "Well, that's one of the few perks that comes with a job like this."

Grant grimaced. He didn't like having any association with his family, and he certainly didn't want to be grateful to them. But still, if it got him out of prison. "If I get 'scrubbed'," he asked, "you take me out back and," he made a gun with his right hand and pointed it at his own head.

"No, no, we don't go around killing civilians without good cause." Hand laughed, a genuine throaty laugh. "Now, there is an argument to be made that you haven't paid your debt to society and should be returned to jail."

"Prison," corrected Grant.

"Whatever," said Hand dismissively. "Re-incarcerating you would create further problems, so if you don't continue into the program, you'll be given identity documents with a new name and dropped in a city relatively far from your old stomping grounds. Milwaukee comes to mind. We'd leave you with one month's rent prepaid on a room in a flop house. Long enough for you to get a crappy job – I'm thinking landscaping, but it's up to you – which would be enough to cover rent and food. We'd monitor you to ensure you don't return to your old habits, but otherwise you'd enter free society."

"If something sounds too good to be true," said Grant. Instead of finishing the adage, he waggled his fingers at Hand, mirroring the dismissive gesture she had used toward him when the conversation began.

"Mr. Ward," said Hand, "you are vastly underestimating how hard the next fifty-three days will be."

Grant was hand-washing the dishes. No point in using the dishwasher for two plates and a drinking glass. "Is this a SHIELD safehouse?" he asked.

"No," said Hand. "It's my house."

"Can't be," said Grant. "You'd have better security than just a deadbolt."

"How do you know I don't?"

Grant ignored her evasion. "And besides," he said, "whenever girls have a place, they decorate it. They put up photos."

Hand's voice was quiet and, although Grant did not yet realize it, dangerous. "Do they? What kinds of photos do girls put in their places?"

"Like, people mostly? Your family, your friends? You've got a wedding ring, so you must have pictures from your wedding."

Hand was very slightly pleased that the boy was at least minimally observant in noticing her ring, which tempered her response down from enraged to sardonic. "Are you stupid? Are you a moron? I'm a spy! Do you think I would document all of my vulnerabilities and then put them in frames for anyone to see?"

"No, ma'am." Grant looked chastened, with a little hint of defiance. "Sorry," he added, almost too quiet and indistinct to be understood. He was looking away, so when a candy bar suddenly entered his field of vision, he was briefly confused as to where it came from. "…the hell?"

"I'm using positive reinforcement to shape your behavior," said Hand. "You apologized. Didn't really sound like you meant it, but we'll get to that later. For now, this is good enough." She waved the candy at him again. Grant could now see that it was a mini package of M&Ms, the kind that people gave out on Halloween.

"I'm not a dog."

"If you were a dog, I wouldn't give you chocolate," answered Hand, sounding bored. She held the candy out for a few seconds more before tearing it open and pouring the whole thing into her own mouth. After chewing and swallowing, she shrugged. "Your loss."

Fucking great. Now Grant wanted those damn M&Ms more than anything.

Then there was no more talking. Hand had paperwork to do. She gave Grant free reign of the television, which he used to watch basketball until it seemed like time for him to go to bed. He could leave soon enough, but this woman was insane and there was no point running away without figuring out her capabilities first. And besides. He wasn't stupid enough to turn down a free ride.

From his cot in the basement, Grant could hear music. A plinking instrument, maybe a harp. He recognized the one-two-three rhythm as a waltz, but not a melody he'd ever heard at one of his parents' fancy galas. At first, he thought the song was just really, really long, but then he realized it was on repeat.

The damn house was a mindfuck. Grant went to sleep.

Day 2

When Grant was released from prison, his possessions at the time of his booking were returned to him: a cheap nylon wallet, half a pack of chewing gum, and – of course – his clothes. (His lighter had been retained as evidence.) The clothes didn't fit him in the slightest. He couldn't even get into the jeans. He could probably manage to drag the t-shirt over his head by tearing a few stitches, but it would have restricted his breathing and looked ridiculous.

So he was wearing prison scrubs. The same ones he wore yesterday and the same ones he wore to bed. They probably weren't stinking at this point, but he doubted that his clothes smelled fresh.

Which explained why Hand had told him to get in the car and driven him to the mall. They entered by the food court.

"I can't pay for new clothes," said Grant.

"There's an expense account," said Hand. "And you're just getting the basics. Sears. Not whatever trendy nonsense you used to wear when you were a rich kid."

Grant wanted to argue, but he realized that while he had no idea how much his family had spent on clothes, it was probably more than the prices at Sears. He kept his mouth shut. He was getting free stuff. No need to wreck it.

They walked past a pet store that had set up a wire enclosure out front so the rabbits could hop around. Grant lunged forward, closed hand out, and the rabbits scattered. Grant cursed.

Hand rolled her eyes. "They have eyes on the sides of their heads," she said. "That means they're prey animals. They need to see in all directions to scan for predators. You're giant, you ran at them, of course they hopped away. Come on, we're not here for this."

After they made it to Sears and found the men's department, they started with Hand selecting four slightly different pairs of pants and three slightly different shirts, directing Grant to try them on so as to determine his sizes. Once they had that, she grabbed three pairs of pants and five shirts. Occasionally she gave Grant a simple choice ("Grey or black?") but more often she didn't. Nothing fancy. No logos or writing. Simple stuff that would last. Then they backtracked to the other side of the store to grab socks, briefs, and undershirts.

Hand lingered over a rack of belts before selecting a thin black one.

"Don't kill yourself," she said, handing it over.

"Good advice," answered Grant. He furrowed his brow at the business clothes, unsure whether he wanted them or was disgusted by them.

Hand just shook her head. "You'll need a suit for your SHIELD intake if you make it that far. Let's see if you can make it through the first month before we bother with that."

Shoes were last. Simple off-brand white sneakers, but they fit, they had regular laces ("Again," said Hand, "I officially recommend against killing yourself."), and they were a hell of a lot more comfortable than the rubber sandals everyone wore in lockup.

"Can I get a watch?" asked Grant suddenly, eyeing a display. "A cheap one," he clarified.

"What for?"

"…so I know what time it is?"

Hand considered for a moment. "Sure. Find a digital one, less than ten dollars."

She paid for their purchases and allowed Grant to duck into a restroom to change. Even though he had turned the shirt inside out so the Massachusetts Department of Corrections stamp was no longer visible, he didn't want to walk around in the prison getup any longer than he had to. He could run, he realized. The mall wasn't crowded, but there were enough people, enough open shops that he could blend in and hide.

But he didn't do that. He left the bathroom dressed in normal civilian clothes and flagged down Hand, who was comparing prices on pocketbooks.

"Shall we try the rabbits again?" she asked.

"Uh," said Grant noncommittally.

But of course, they were walking in that direction anyway, since the pet store was in between Sears and their parking spot. As they rounded the walkway corner, Grant could see the wire enclosure was still out and he felt his chest clench, which was stupid. He wasn't afraid of rabbits and if they were afraid of him, that was just too damn bad.

"You don't have to," said Hand, almost bored, like it was some kind of challenge at which he could not possibly expect to succeed.

Grant sneered in her direction before stomping off toward the rabbit enclosure. Of course, stomping frightened the rabbits, who gathered at the far end. Grant growled in annoyance. He hadn't started yet. The way he walked up shouldn't count. The rabbits didn't seem to buy into this logic because no matter how gently Grant reached over the fence, they still hopped away.

The apathetic pet store clerk, sitting on a chair a few feet away, looked up from her magazine. "Quit harassing the bunnies."

"I wasn't-"

"Come on," said Hand.

"It's not my fault, I wasn't trying to-"

But Hand was already walking away.

They stopped at a park on the way home, one with a fairly flat paved walking path lined by squat bushes studded with purple flowers. The paved path, Grant assumed, was to accommodate Hand's leg. The flowers were just pointless. Grant felt like he should justify or defend his failure with the rabbits, but at the same time he felt indignant that anyone was judging his capacity to pet small mammals. They walked in silence.

After perhaps a quarter mile, Hand spoke. "At some point, we're going to have to discuss your index offense."

"Huh?"

"What you got sent to jail for."

"Prison," corrected Grant.

Hand ignored him. "They're going to ask you about it at your SHIELD assessment and you're going to need to give a good answer without getting too riled."

"I was convicted of arson," said Grant, stiffly.

"Yeah, that's exactly what you don't want to do. Lockdown, clench the jaw. Honestly, you look like you're plotting another felony right now."

Grant put on his widest rictus grin. "I was convicted of arson," he repeated. "Better?"

"God, you're such a shit," said Hand. She paused to readjust her crutches. "We have to get to it eventually, but we don't have to start there."

Another quarter mile of silence. Grant found the purple flowers so offensive, he began to wish that he were allergic so that he had a more legitimate reason to despise them.

"You said last night that you found stuff out about my dad."

"Amongst other things, we found records of a CPS investigation into your household. It was closed, deemed unfounded."

"CPS never investigated us. I would have remembered that."

"It was before you were born. Your brother Christian was three years old when he was taken to the emergency room with a radial fracture of his left arm. That's damage done by a twisting force, lots of little fissures. It can happen by accident, but it's a suspicious injury."

"That must've been my dad. Bad temper. Not very creative."

"The case was closed. No charges."

"Probably paid them off."

"Could be," acknowledged Hand. "Or they just couldn't get enough evidence to proceed. Happens a lot. You can't exactly have a preschooler testify. Or maybe it really was an accident."

"No, he threw things when he got angry, and when me and my brothers were little, he threw us. I can picture it, see exactly how it would make a…what did you call it, radial fracture? I was – I don't know – maybe six years old, so Thomas would have been about two. You could always tell when dad was getting angry. I tried to get in the way, but it didn't work. He grabbed Thomas by the arm and lifted him up. I was trying to hit him – my father, not Thomas – kicking at his legs and yelling and trying to get him to let Thomas go. It didn't work. There were these French doors with huge panes of glass. He threw Thomas at the doors. There was blood and there was glass everywhere."

"You eat a lot of frozen pizza," said Grant.

"Can you cook?" asked Hand.

Grant shook his head.

"Well," she said, "me neither."

Notes: (1) Yes, I will get back to my Cyclops fic eventually. Just not yet. (2) No, it's not going to go one day at a time for all 53 days. (3) This is a redemption fic, which means there's something to redeem. Grant starts out as a pretty bad guy, not just misunderstood. Also, he lies a lot. (4) Lettuce is the only vegetable that is only ever served fresh, never cooked, frozen, or canned.