by an app ] [ ataraxion

[betrayed]

P L A Y E R I N F O R M A T I O N
Your Name: Christina
OOC Journal: lollobrigida
Under 18? If yes, what is your age?: Over 18.
Email + IM: lollobrigida (gmail) onlysayinghello (aim)
Characters Played at Ataraxion: Erica Reyes (Teen Wolf) | Hayley Marshall (TVD/Originals)

C H A R A C T E R I N F O R M A T I O N
Name: Grant Douglas Ward
Canon: Agents of Shield
Original or Alternate Universe: Original
Canon Point: During his transfer out of the Playground in 2x06
Number: RNG is fine

Setting: Agents of Shield Wikia
History:

Traumatic Backstory: UNLOCKED

Ward’s family history is a dark and shady one. Rather than just suffer at the hands of an abusive relative, instead he was pushed to the point of having to be the one doing the abuse. His older brother Christian was twisted enough to force Grant to abuse their youngest brother. Unfortunately in this situation, his parents turned a blind eye/occupied themselves with “important things" and according to Grant were even worse than his brother Christian. At some point in his youth, he is sent to a military school where he runs away from and opts to head back to the family home to set it on fire, unaware that his brother is still within the residence. This act pushes Christian, when he survives the fire, to push the courts/state to try Grant as an adult for all of his crimes.

Replacement Family: UNLOCKED

Before he’s tried as an adult, where his own family is trying to push for prison time, he’s being kept at a juvenile detention facility. It’s there that he’s approached by John Garrett. John informs him that he works for SHIELD and is trying to recruit Grant into the agency and his own agendas. A choice is offered - go with Garrett or go to prison. Grant opts for the only choice a teenage boy that’s been trapped by his own family would take - secret military organization.

In order to be fully recruited, Grant would need to endure an initiation of sorts from Garrett. Grant is abandoned in the wilderness, with his companion dog “Buddy”, and expected to survive on his own. What sets out to be a two month trek, turns into a six month journey into survival. When Garrett does return, he’s impressed with what he sees and continues to mold him into what he needs.

This training continues for five years, and at the end of it Grant is told the truth about Garrett and his loyalties. By this time, though, Grant is so focused on what he’s learned and what Garrett has offered him that he still takes on the assignment. He’s tasked to shoot his dog and according to stories he likes to tell - he did indeed kill his faithful companion to prove he has no attachments.

Mission Granted: UNLOCKED

Grant is given the task of infiltrating SHIELD. He works his way up through the ranks. He is assigned to a few high level operations and is vetted by Maria Hill. Maria gives him high praise in all categories, except his people skills. When the truth is revealed that Agent Phil Coulson was killed in combat and then miraculously alive again - Garrett, already seeking other options for his health situations, assigns Grant with the task to find out how Phil is alive. He’s granted Level 7 access and placed onto Phil’s team at Garrett’s recommendation.

Their first mission out puts them onto the path of Skye and bringing her onto the team as well. Though he objected to her being brought in, he is still willing to do the job assigned to him and Grant acts as Skye’s S.O. in order to train her to become field ready. While on Phil’s team, Grant operates as any other SHIELD agent would. He does not tip off or give any hints that his agenda might not align with that of his team.

Grant continues to work with the team through several missions and each time they all go out together, he grows closer to each member of the team hoping to ensure that they are unable to suspect him of any underhanded behavior. He even goes to extremes to rescue Jemma when she believes her survival is lost and she would risk infecting the rest of the team. She jumps out of the back of the Bus (large plane) and Grant goes after her. He gives her the cure during their free-fall and then pulls his chute so they both can survive. He operates on mission with Fitz and supports him and allows him to have his moment to shine. He becomes physically involved with Melinda May and builds a flirtatious banter with Skye.

Although, his relationship with Melinda was physical, the one that he develops with Skye is rooted a bit deeper and seems to have been built up more genuinely than something out of need for distraction from his cause. His interest in her seems to be the only thing that sways him from fully believing in Garrett’s mission and he grows frustrated when he realizes that Garrett would put her in danger in order to further his own cause.

Turn on everyone: UNLOCKED

Despite any inclination that Grant might be able to see that his team has become his family and not turn against them, this is not the case and he is still deeply loyal to John Garrett and his agenda. When the mysterious means in which Phil Coulson had been brought back to life unfold, John Garrett seeks to gain this information and use it for himself. Grant shoots a man that is believed to be the “Clairvoyant” because he knows that in truth the man is not at all who they are looking for. The Clairvoyant is really just John Garrett’s code-name for himself and all the intel that they’ve discovered on him has been attained through classified intel.

Still acting as part of the team, even when it’s revealed that Garrett is part of HYDRA and also the Clairvoyant, he continues to work the current problem and gain access to Garrett (who is now captured and being transported to the Fridge) so that he might free him and enable him to finally find his “cure”. He’s allowed to attend the transport, feigning that he wants to be there to see his mentor finally given the justice he’s due, and Victoria Hand even offers Grant the chance to remove the problem. Instead, Grant shoots Victoria Hand and continues onward to free Raina and recruit her to their cause. However, despite having the hard drive with all the intel from Coulson’s team, and having raided the alien artifacts/weapons from the Fridge they still are missing the information that’s on the hard drive.

Return Home to do More Betraying = UNLOCKED

Still operating under the guise of being loyal to SHIELD, Grant returns to find Skye in hopes of getting her to crack the encryption on the hard drive that contains all the information they need about Project Deathlok. Due to the current HYDRA invasion/reveal, Phil’s team has gone to ground and found one of Fury’s secret bases. Ward contacts Skye, who informs him of their position and he returns to the team citing having killed Garrett in order to keep his cover.

After passing his lie detector test, by cheating with a pain tactic, he attempts to tell Skye that he’s not a good man. However, that’s proven as he ends up killing Agent Koenig in order to keep his secret. Skye finds this out and plays along with Ward while he tries to get her to decrypt the hard drive for him. They leave the compound and head to where they first encountered Skye. It’s there that she alerts the authorities to his presence along with the truth about who he is. They try to apprehend him, but he has backup with Deathlok and Skye’s escape is thwarted.

They return to the Bus (previously stolen) and Grant tries to get Skye to give them the data. He tries to explain that his feelings were real, but she isn’t receptive at all. When she refuses to help, Garrett uses a different tactic and tells Deathlok to shoot Grant with a special weapon that will induce a heart attack. Skye doesn’t want to see Grant die, so she reveals how to decrypt the drive and Grant is released from Deathlok’s control over his heart. He’s even given a “boost” to get him going a bit quicker after such a trying incident.

As they try to leave, Maria Hill tries to threaten them in order to stall. Coulson boards and rescues Skye, but that still allows Garrett and his team to continue on their plan. They return to Cuba, Raina does her part, and Ward is given intel on Skye’s parents based on stories that Raina had heard. Fitz and Simmons, still on board, are caught spying on the new plan and Garrett orders Grant to eliminate them. He chases them and they end up locked in a medical pod together. After the confrontation, Ward admits to having cared about all of them, but then twists it to reveal that it’s a weakness and then ejects the pod over the Atlantic.

Still on Garrett’s side, he sees the effects all of these new treatments are having on his mentor. He shares his concerns, but it doesn’t really help matters. He’s beginning to see how twisted Garrett is and his unshakable faith in the man is starting to diminish. As some people escape the compound, others invade it. Coulson’s team arrives to put an end to Garrett and his mad-cap antics. Ward for the first time struggles with what he should do and seeks guidance from is mentor, but instead is left with the ramblings of a man bent on power. He’s finally told to get Skye, which he tries to do, but that just allows Skye to stall for Melinda May to arrive and fight him.

It’s Too Late to Say Sorry = UNLOCKED

At the end of the fight, Ward is nailed to the floor and going to be held captive by Coulson’s team at the Playground (Another one of Fury’s secret bases). While in captivity Ward inflicts harm against himself through various means. Eventually, he relents to his situation and waits to speak to Skye. He holds out for weeks, not speaking to anyone. Skye finally comes to speak to him and uses him for intel for various reasons. Fitz, kept in the dark about his presence, learns about it and attempts to harm him by subjecting him to the same scenario that has injured him - by removing the oxygen out of his confinement area. Fitz allows him to live and Skye also returns to him for information.

Grant promises her that he’ll always tell her the truth, trying to make an offering after the entire beginning of their “relationship” had been built on a lie. He offers her information about her family and believes that he’s becoming an asset to the team again. Instead, the team has made arrangements to transfer him to the custody of his brother - a threat that is very real to Ward.

It’s during his transfer out of the Playground that he arrives on the Tranquility.


Personality:

Having the ability to become the person that someone else needs in that moment can often be viewed as compassionate; in other people that same ability tends to lean toward sociopath. It’s a thin line that Grant Ward teeters around through his life and despite everything he’s endured, he’s still not sure who he really could be. Loyal to the end, calculated and manipulative, stoic and lacking in certain social graces; Grant Ward is a man still looking for his own purpose.

Being able to adapt to different situations can be useful and, even as a child, Grant developed a determination to cope with whatever was thrown at him. Christian, his older brother, was relentless with his abuse. While Grant could have easily endured a physical beating, Christian instead opted to use his hold over his younger brother to create an abuser in Grant. He forced Grant to harm their younger brother and his entire family seemed content to cover up any wrong-doings. Grant’s attempts for retribution were grand in scale, setting fire to the family home in an effort to remove those marks from his past. However, it only gave his family the fuel to insist that Grant needed far more than what the juvenile system could provide for structure. This sort of betrayal builds up distrust from a very early age. It took away anything that Grant could “return home to” as for him there was no family, no home for him to claim as his own. He had become someone without ties to anything.

This would be the ideal candidate for someone like John Garrett. Seeking out someone that was vulnerable and in desperate need of rescue. The survival traits that John saw in Grant also made him believe that he’d be able to endure the regime of training that he’d subject him to. It takes a lot to survive completely on your own for six months at such a young age. However, Grant excels at surviving. Rather than feel abandoned during this time, it’s probably the first time that Grant has felt a single taste of genuine freedom. Without family over his head, without the court systems threatening him with prison time Grant is able to simply live of his own rules and ways. For those six months, Grant is probably as close to himself as he’s ever seen.

It all gets scraped away by John Garrett though. The training that he’s given builds him up to be unattached and to a point cold. Without having a normal childhood or even a normal training experience in an actual academy (at this point) he’s not taught how to make friends or become an ally to someone else. Skye jokes about his lack of a bedside manner and refers to him as Tin Man/T1000. While a joke on the surface, it definitely is laid in with some heavy backstory about how he grew up without a core set of friends to joke around with. The team situation with Coulson is a unique experience for Grant as his previous missions have usually been solo or with very few other personnel accompanying him. Within SHIELD he had been given the operational parameter of Specialist, which is such a defining title for Grant. It’s exactly what he is: someone who fits themselves into whatever job is needed when no one else can make those difficult calls. It’s where emotions need to be checked at the door.

Despite (or perhaps because of) his usual M.O. of Specialist, he’s able to adapt to a team environment with little struggle. Even though he’s not the jovial guy that everyone just loves on the first meeting, he does what he’s been trained to do — become what they need him to be. For Melinda he’s the guy who has been on missions and understands the need to have a release and forget the horrors they might have left behind. With Fitz and Simmons he earns their trust by relying on their intelligence when he needs it. He makes them feel like valued members of the team, instead of just the people that make the things they use. It does help that he also risks his own life to save theirs. For Coulson he offers up a means to counterbalance, to talk things out, because he can see that Coulson doesn’t do things on a whim, but with a more long-term goal in mind. For Skye, it’s far more complicated than being one person to her - but more on that later. To this team, he’s the piece that they each believe fits perfectly with all the other pieces. He’s made himself into a dozen different people that they all see as the same person.

It’s not a difficult task for him to be this duplicitous, either. He’s been trained to follow the orders of one person and unfortunately for everyone on his team — it’s not Coulson. John Garrett is seen by Grant as a savior figure. He gave him purpose, gave him something to do that he was good at, and saw something in him that no one else had seen before: potential. Grant truly believes that if it hadn’t been for Garrett there is a chance he’d be in prison or worse. Owing John his loyalty felt like the smallest thing he could offer and through his actions it’s easy to see that he’s constantly giving to John Garrett. He kills for him, betrays what small family he’s been able to be involved with, and continues to seek guidance from him — even when he has doubts about what John is doing to himself and others.

Those doubts first come up with regards to Skye. Skye had started out as a threat to his mission. A hacker that was able to place herself into a team that he’d been sent to infiltrate. Concerns about her discovering the truth about his position there were present from day one. She wasn’t SHIELD trained and therefore an obstacle that he wasn’t sure how to overcome. All of his tactics that had been guided from his experience with the agency wouldn’t work and her casual mannerisms clashed considerably with his rigid expectations. The personal approach that Coulson recommends allows him to open up about himself. It’s this unseen honesty tangled within all of his lies that creates a bridge between the two of them. Their mutual lack of any true family gives Grant something to focus on that isn’t how he’s going to keep her off-balance so that she doesn’t find out the truth.

It’s also in this relationship that he builds that he finds something that interests him far more than what John is seeking. He finds someone that is just as desperate for a connection as he is. Learning what he can about Skye and her drive to find out the truth about her family puts him in an odd position of seeing himself as someone that can help her gain that information. It’s a secondary attachment that he builds up to a high level of importance for him. There are multiple occasions where Grant’s interest in Skye’s development as an agent and her survival take an unseen priority over Garrett’s long plan. When Skye is shot, Ward acts out with frustration and self-blame, because he knows that it was Garrett that put her in the line of danger. Hearing about her family from Raina gives him even more fuel to try and be someone that can be useful to her. When he’s sent back to the Bus to retrieve Skye, he maintains that cover not just to make things easier on himself, but to make sure that he doesn’t completely lose the one relationship he feels is the most genuine. The irony of this is that his genuine feelings for her are tangled up in a series of lies by omission. He’s constantly trying to balance what he wants to tell Skye and how far to try and bring her into the truth of his world and how not to put her at risk.

He does, however, constantly have to be aware of multiple things that exist within his mission. This need to multi-task and keep apprised of all options takes a lot of focus and drive. His calculated methods of maintaining his secrecy gives him a sometimes aloof appearance, as if he didn’t realize that’s what would have happened. He has to maintain his active agent status with Coulson’s team, so he needs to perform to expectations and maintain that team camaraderie. He is working for John Garrett (and HYDRA by extension) and so he needs to constantly be searching for things that might unlock the intel that John is looking for in regards to Coulson and his miraculous recovery. He’s also building relationships with people that he knows he’s going to betray and still tries to compartmentalize all of those aspects so that when he needs to get rid of them he can. However, that’s more complicated than any other aspect of his mission.

The problem with being able to become whoever someone needs him to be is that he never really knows who he is. Raina taps into this when she’s leaving him and Garrett after she’s done her part with the creation of the GH.325. She pinpoints his interest in Skye and at this point Skye knows all that he’s done - his betrayal, the death of Agent Koenig, Victoria Hand, and countless other things that he shouldn’t be forgiven for. However, Raina suggests that he’s not a monster, but only what Garrett had created him to be. He’s lived so long in the shadow of who John needed him to be that he’s lost sight of anything that might have ever truly been his own identity.

That struggle for a sense of self is a large part of who Grant Ward is. Even when he’s captured, he fights against this label of his betrayal and attempts countless moments of self-harm — even to the point of suicide. It isn’t a pure feeling of self-hate, but of what he’s been made into and that inability to reconcile which parts of it are truly part of him and which parts are simply there due to someone needing it to be there. Even later, when he is partnered up with Agent 33, he’s building himself up to be what she needs at that time - a point of revenge. His end game is hers and he doesn’t see any issue with that. It’s only when he loses that purpose that he finally realizes that he needs to start seeking out his own agendas and serve his own purpose.

Still, everything on the surface is covering up his need for belonging and acceptance. He wants to be in the right, wants to be top of his class, wants to be the best of whatever it is that he’s attempting to be. He wants to be the one that can feel the ounce of weight difference, that can get under the skin of someone else with something as little as a phrase. He wants to excel, to prove that he can be the best, because during those formative years his own family instilled the idea that he was not worth saving. So now, he needs to prove that he is worth saving - he is worth being there.

While being held captive by Coulson at the Playground, Grant believes that he’s proving that worth. He’s relaying intel in order to help them with certain aspects of their missions. He also uses this time to make Skye a promise that he’ll never lie to her. He offers her information about his father. It’s a moment of Grant trying to help someone rebuild a family that he never had the chance at. Even with the darkness that he knows Skye’s family holds, he feels that Skye deserves to know - however, it could be viewed that he understands that need for information on her family and is using that to leverage her. Still, his insistence that he’s helping seems genuine and it feels as if Grant truly believes he’s working his way back onto the team. The truth that they’re trading him off to his brother creates a moment of desperation in him that hasn’t been seen. It’s a crack in his usually unbreakable facade as he tries to reason with Coulson and insist that he’s been helping. He’s looking to protect the team from the manipulations of his own family. It’s another attempt at trying to rebuild part of the person he could actually like being, the good Agent Ward that had been part of Coulson’s team. The one that got along with Fitz and Simmons, and hadn’t jettisoned them off into the ocean. The one that had grown close with Melinda and cared for Skye. The one that Coulson could come to discuss anything. At this desperate point in his life, Grant still believes that he can be that person - he can be who they need him to be, they just have to let him.

Grant isn’t that person though. He’s not anyone at all and it’s difficult to see where the lie ends and the real man begins, but those few times we see it spark through are often plagued with the needs and agendas of others - and it’s lost all too quickly. He’s a survivalist and he can become whatever is needed to ensure that he’s left standing in the end. He takes risks, big and small, and doesn’t look back to see who he’s left behind. Grant Ward is looking for his purpose, but he’s still assuming that it’s just easier to keep up with someone else instead of lead.


Abilities, Weaknesses and Power Limitations:

Grant is a Field Trained Specialist for S.H.I.E.L.D.
He has combat and weaponry skills, speaks several languages fluently, and is capable of training another agent to become field ready.
He is skilled at deception and is capable of defeating the highest level of lie detector tests.
He is not able to work the holotable.
He has no super/metahuman abilities, however he has undergone years of abuse as a child and is able to withstand a great deal of pain.
He is skilled in torture and pharmaceutical drugs that are used in combat/torture.


Inventory:

+ 1 electric shaving kit
+ 1 pr dark grey draw-string pants
+ 1 dark grey shirt
+ 1 duffel bag with 1 pr dark jeans, 1 white t-shirt, 1 pr socks, 1 pr motorcycle boots


Appearance:

the b e f o r e


the a f t e r


Age: 32

AU Clarification: N/A

S A M P L E S
Log Sample:

He remembers them coming for him. The heavy footsteps of retrieval team sent in to get the package and deliver it to his brother. He wouldn’t let Christian win, though. There was something far darker at hand here and even for everything Grant had done against Coulson and his team, he couldn’t let his brother win. Not this time. Not after everything he’d done to distance himself from his past.

Then he remembers a shock of pain to his hip. The gelatinous fluid sloughing off his skin and pouring through the grates that he’d landed on. The stale air that was only secondary to the buzz of noise around him. He knew that there had been talks of advancing holding facilities, but this seemed far beyond the range of what SHIELD would do, beyond what HYRDA would even consider.

The shock is wearing off, but his sense of awareness of where he is still feels hazy. Rising to his feet he can pick up on conversations, overhear words about where he is — how he’s gotten here. It seems that it could be Chitauri tech or even something from Asgard that allows someone to be instantly pulled from one world to another. He’s trying to find the ability to believe that no one knows how it happens, but someone always knows.

Showered, shaved, and dressed he moves like the rest of the herd toward the lifts. Alert and watching for familiar faces, for anything that he might have recognized from the Fridge. Garrett might be dead, but he doesn’t believe that he’d be left in the cold. He’s too good at what he does, too valued a player to HYDRA. Sure, he didn’t really sign on to their cause, but he’s willing to make an adjustment if it means getting off this rig and out of whatever his brother had in mind. No doubt there would be the entire trial, televised in order to outline all the ways that Christian Ward had survived through such a harrowing childhood of abuse at the hand of his own family. It would be all he needs to gain that edge. He’s always seen the angles.

Now, all Grant can see is cold steel and vacant hope. If what they say is true, if he’s really trapped here until someone decides to let him go, if it’s just another prison cell — at least he knows he can survive it.

Comms Sample:

[It’s a definite risk showing his face, but he knows from overheard conversations that there’s a chance things don’t line up — there’s a chance no one here knows the truth. He could continue on like he had been before. Agent Grant Ward. The good guy.

He attempts a smile, though it’s not as relaxed as he’d like it to be. Blame it on environment. Everyone has just been through a jump and it happens every month. You can’t get used to it overnight.]

Does anyone have a timeline on when I can expect all the ailments that have been plaguing most of the population here? I’ve heard a lot of chatter about bleeding and comas [He pauses, trying to sound a bit more concerned about more than his own well-being.] and if there’s any way that tracking someone new can help — I’m willing to do that.

[He figures offering himself up is the best way to gain good faith, in the off-chance that someone he knows shows up — or is already here.]