Archive of Our Own ^beta

Since they were in Mexico, Kara Palamas handed him a large wedge of lemon and the salt shaker. As expected, he shook his head. So she ignored him, licked the patch of salt off the back of her hand and downed her shot with a satisfied sigh. 

"Just because we're in Tijuana doesn't mean my drink order changes to tequila," Ward said, an edge of humour in his voice. He was scoping out the clientele and entrances now, clearly bothered that all the tables in the back were taken up. It was difficult to do surveillance from the front of a room, but as they both knew perfectly well, there were no threats to keep an eye on anyway.

"Loosen up. What is it with you and egress plans?" Kara said, rolling her eyes. Even on his good days, Agent Ward had an enormous stick up his ass. 

"Just a habit." Ward finally signaled the bartender for a whiskey. "It's nice to get time off, after yesterday."

Kara pulled her lips down in a grimace at the reminder. Yesterday comprised of their team tracking down a crazy hippie who had gotten her hands on an unsanctioned piece of neurotechnology. The aforementioned hippie had had no qualms using it and Kara was still trying to convince herself that everyone who wore black T-shirts did not in fact have a small herd of elephants tribal dancing in a circle around their heads - it had been a weird day. She tossed back another shot and slammed her glass down.

Ward was sipping his whiskey very slowly. He had removed his leather jacket and pushed the sleeves of his black pullover up to his forearms. The orange glow of the ambient lighting seemed to hollow out his cheeks, making his face appear more gaunt than usual. Sensing Palamas' gaze on him, he put more concentration into mixing a part of vermouth into his tumbler. He liked her well enough, but really wasn't in the mood to talk.

"You know, I wanted you gone when you transferred to our team." Kara was starting to feel warm and delightfully buzzed, and she came right out with what she wanted to say. "No way could we get behind Blake bringing a new guy onboard. I was too used to having my team."

"You felt that I was replacing Mockingbird."

Agent Roberta Morse, as far as Ward was concerned, was the agent discharged from duty after being hurled four storeys down the side of a building. He would probably have been reassigned to some administrative role in a secure basement, pushing a mouse for the rest of his days, if not for her accident and the ensuing vacancy on Blake's team.

Kara nodded and leaned closer, placing a hand on his arm. "For what it's worth, the cold shoulder in the beginning? Not personal. I'm not sure if I've told you but these days, I've got your back and I mean it."

Her fingers trailed slowly up his arm. Her fingernails were some shade of deep red and there was a ring on every finger except the fourth one. Ward fortified himself with another sip. "That's not saying much. You'd still plant a bomb in my backseat if I so much as borrowed your bike." 

Kara considered this. "Yep."

Ward laughed, briefly. Palamas and her goddamn motorcycle reminded him of his former officer's displeasure with any mechanic who touched his car. It even had a stupid name. Luna? Lola? He wondered vaguely what his old team was up to. May. Fitz and Simmons. Probably still handling missions from the same S.H.I.E.L.D. base a hundred and fifty miles out in the countryside west of Washington D.C.

He finished his drink and held up a finger to the bartender for a second glass. 

Kara was slurring her words and swaying slightly on her stool but she wasn't as drunk as she pretended to be. Rule one of hitting on a guy in a bar: appearing to be drunk made it easier to blame the alcohol.

She had long accepted that she liked Ward. He was attractive in a very tightly-wound, locked down kind of way. It helped that he didn't say stupid things, and was a good partner to have on a mission. The way he was glancing down the bottom of his glass now made the layer of warmth already imbued under her skin by the alcohol thrum with heat. 

"Grant," she said, leaning her head on his shoulder and wrapping an arm around his body to keep from losing her balance. He had to be pretty drunk because he didn't stiffen or move away, just absently smoothed the flyaway strands around her face and moved his hand down to the side of her neck. 

"Yeah," he said, and she could hear the way his breathing had turned heavy. Kara felt a distinct shakiness in her limbs as she reached for his other hand, her thumb tracing small, light circles against his fingers.

It wasn't every day she felt like this, enveloped in a snug, glowing bubble, feeling alive and hyper-aware and jolted right to her core. She couldn't even bring herself to care that the bartender was watching them almost make out from the other end of the counter. Instead, she set her hand definitively on Grant's knee and began to stroke upwards. When her hand had crept on to his thigh, he caught it in both his hands with an unreadable expression. Ward stared at the crimson fingernails, at the calluses on the knuckles and the silver rings on her fingers, and found that it hurt to look at it.

He dropped her hand, finished the rest of his drink and stood up. "Kara," he said slowly. "I don't think that this is a good idea."

The emptiness that plummeted into her stomach was cold and stunned. She pulled back and frowned - his face seemed to be shifting in and out of focus. Maybe she was more drunk than she thought. "There's nothing wrong if we can separate work and play, Ward. I can do that." It was all coming out thick and garbled. "Can't you?"

It was more of a plea than anything else. The constant missions and movements took an emotional toll, ate away at operatives until there was a gaping hole that couldn't be filled. It was a common stressor of the job, and Kara was no exception. The piercing loneliness that was there every day of her life felt as if it was physically seeping into every muscle and fiber of her being. She felt weary to the bone.

"It doesn't work like that," Ward answered. He set his glass down with measured precision, as if it could detonate. "I don't want you to think...I'm not that guy."

"Well, shit, then," she said, completely straight-faced. "It's the fucking tequila." Something about actually blaming the alcohol struck her as funny and she laughed. Once she started, she couldn't stop, and the laughter kept bubbling out of her in a slightly manic way. The Mexicans and their bloody fucking strong tequila. She didn't realize she was in tears until Ward guided her back to her seat.

He returned a moment later with another tumbler of whiskey for himself, a plastic cup of water for her and a handful of serviettes. She took the cup from him and gulped it down. The water tasted putrid, but at least it did not burn on the way down.

"Do you want to know why I was transferred to Blake's team?" Ward said, unexpectedly.

"Sure."

"You keep up with politics. Have you heard of the name Christian Ward?"

"The senator who died in a freak accident?"

"It wasn't an accident," Ward stated calmly. "I locked my brother inside his house and set the place on fire until the bastard burned to death."

Kara shrugged. The guy she liked had just turned her down and then admitted to being a sadistic murderer. What was she supposed to say to that? Cheers, I have a revolver in my purse and we both know I'm a quicker shot than you. It was possible that it was just the alcohol talking though. Finally, she said, "So why aren't you sentenced to life? A demotion from Coulson's dream team seems lenient. I've been stuck in Blake's doghouse for years, and I haven't even committed any crimes."

Ward wasn't sure why he was telling her this. He rolled the glass around in his hand, watching the amber liquid slop from side to side. "I had a girlfriend. I was her S.O. before we became partners on Coulson's team."

Her face fell slightly. "Oh."

He hadn't dredged up memories of Skye for months and the pain was still raw. He was almost surprised at the intensity of it, the way it still made his palms cold and his throat go tight inside, and he took a couple of deep breaths until his heart began beating almost normally again. He tried not to see her in Palamas' place, her long, wavy hair falling over one shoulder and lips set stubbornly. Kara's eyes were almost the same shape and shade as hers. If Skye was here, of course, she would be livid. Would probably have broken his jaw or punched him in the nose. 

He downed half the glass, wanting nothing more than the numbing effect to kick in. "Christian got on S.H.I.E.L.D's radar a couple years back for illegally funnelling weapons to Sarajevo during the war. I heard about it, but I had nothing to do with it. His case was being investigated by some other team, but it just so happened that Skye and I were working on the security situation in Bosnia at the time."

Kara was inebriated, but she was still a trained operative. "Is this classified? Are you cleared to share this information?"

"I'm not that drunk. Any Level Six agent has access to the file. You could read it yourself." For the first time since he had started talking, Ward seemed restless. He had begun tapping his fingers on the countertop in time with the brassy electronic music pounding in the background. "We were tracking down a major arms dealer, and the word was that Christian knew him well. Skye wanted to negotiate with Christian - the dealer's location in exchange for immunity for his crimes."

Kara slouched in her seat and clung to her plastic cup. She had a pounding headache.

"Christian and I..." he drew in a deep breath. "You know my family history. Skye and I had a - disagreement - over granting him immunity."

"You were willing to lose your dealer to see Christian behind bars," she summed up, thinking back to the stories she'd heard of Ward's abusive older brother. "And Skye's priority was cutting the weapons supply out of the war. You fought with her."

The drumming of his fingers sped up until it was almost feverish. "I was angry." His voice whipped out like a lash of wire, ragged and cruel. "I targeted her vulnerabilities." 

She glanced at him with surprise - she had never heard him speak like that before. 

In the small, muddy room, lit by sconces on the wall and swirling with the indistinct noises of glasses and chatter and radio, she tried to focus on him for the first time, really tried, though it was like trying to make someone out through a haze. 

He looked like he was a thousand miles away, his lips half-open, as though he was speaking to himself in the dark, articulating sentences more for his benefit than for her own. "I told her that the foster system was nothing compared to living with Christian. She said I was letting my feelings get in the way of the mission. She couldn't imagine anyone being pure evil, didn't understand why I was so damned hell-bent on putting Christian away. She never had family. On one hand, it was the mission, and on the other, she was trying, in some way, to mend something that couldn't be mended. I told her - " his voice broke, then resumed with merciless calm. "I told her to go to hell. The next morning, she packed up and left for Sarajevo."

Kara felt a chill rise along her arms. She suddenly had a terrible feeling about why the tribunal had released Ward with just a slap on the wrists.

"After she left, I spoke to the higher-ups. I thought we could double-cross Christian instead," Ward continued. Now he sounded like himself again, having crossed over into familiar turf. "S.H.I.E.L.D. cooperates sometimes with other agencies. We could offer immunity only from us, and then tip off a contact within wider law enforcement with the jurisdiction to take him in. ATF, FBI, whatever."

Kara was impressed in spite of herself. She'd heard that Ward had graduated with top marks in strategy. "So how did Christian get the drop on your girlfriend?"

He tipped what was left of the whiskey back in one long draught, the ice cubes clinking against the bottom of the glass. "Skye didn't know about the double-cross. I let her believe she was just going to offer him our terms of immunity."

Ward stopped speaking. He stared into space, eyes hard and glassy. She got up, ordered a water and replaced his glass with the plastic cup. That was what friends were for, and he seemed to appreciate it because he accepted it from her.

"We cooperated with the wrong agency," he said at last. "Christian's politics had influence there, and word got round that we were out to get him. He arranged to meet Skye at one of his properties in Sarajevo. He didn't show up but you know what did? Semtex, rigged to blow. All over the grounds."

"Oh my god." Kara didn't know what to say. To lose a partner like that was horrific. Agent Skye would have arrived there, unarmed and expecting a negotiation on neutral territory. "Did you get to say goodbye?"

"When medevac got her out, she had severe burns over eighty percent of her body. She was drifting in and out of consciousness." Ward sounded clinical, detached now. "I flew down to Sarajevo, got to be with her for three days. I don't know if she knew I was there."

Kara reached down to where his hands were braced against the counter and covered them with her own. He looked at her red fingernails and remembered the heat and stench of the makeshift hospital, the way Skye's hands had looked in his with the fingernails torn from the nailbeds, the dried brown blood between the cracks of her mauve nail polish. He scarcely recognized the rest of her.

"What was she like?" Palamas asked quietly, in lieu of saying that she was sorry.

"She was -" He had no words to explain Skye. How could he begin to describe the expression in her dark eyes when she was concentrating on a report, or the sparkling mischief in her smile just before she pulled his head down to kiss him? What he had left he wanted to keep for himself. He was still senselessly in love with her. 

He sighed, a heavy exhale that seemed to leave him just a bit lighter. Palamas' hand was still splayed out on top of his, and he could see the shiny silver rings on every finger except the bare fourth one. It reminded him of a time before Christian when he'd held Skye's hand at night and thought about what it would feel like to slip the ring in his sock drawer on her finger, if in a couple of days, she said yes.

Instead, the ring stayed in the drawer, they fought over negotiations, she left for Sarajevo and his entire world went to hell, just like he'd told it to.