A/N: Hello my lovelies. I'm sorry to start something new up once more, but it just occurred to me that I had to do it.

I recently wrote Behind Blue Eyes from Toby's perspective as a double agent.

Now I am writing this - what I aim to have be a series of one-shots based respectively on the rest of the episodes this season - that takes a different spin on things. Not necessarily evil!Toby, but most certainly a more disturbed, more vulnerable Toby that truly belongs on the A-Team.

Don't worry your pretty heads, however - There will be loads of ambivalence and mixed feelings to deal with.

So anywho, here is my first installment! Enjoy!

CHAPTER ONE

MISERY LOVES COMPANY (3x16)

...

But when I want sincerity
Tell me where else can I turn
Cause you're the one that I depend upon

Honesty is such a lonely word
Everyone is so untrue
Honesty is hardly ever heard
And mostly what I need from you

("Honesty" - Billy Joel)

He had said it was too soon. Had insisted that it was not the right time. But as always, what Mona wanted – Mona got. She had clearly taken matters into her own hands when Toby's version of "I'll take care of it" proved to be inadequate.

It was no coincidence that Spencer had so easily happened upon his Radley orderly ID when he had gone to great lengths to ensure that she wouldn't. It had been stashed carefully between his mattress and box spring for weeks. There was no way Spencer could have found it herself – Mona was the only explanation. She had to have known that he was taking his sweet ass time revealing himself, as they had planned to do. Had to have known that he was feeling ambivalent about the entire thing. Somehow, she knew. She always fucking knew.

It wasn't enough that he was struggling with a thousand emotions day in and day out. She had to test him. Just like she tested everyone. She just knew in that dark twisted mind of hers that he was uncertain about what he wanted. That he had been struggling with the implications of what was to come. That his loyalty was faltering.

On the one hand, he had wanted Spencer to know. The guilt that came with deceiving her had been overwhelming him for the better part of the year. It was better to do his job from a distance, without feeling like he was fooling a lovesick girl into thinking he was innocent. It was too heart-wrenching – too confusing.

But on the other hand…He had not been prepared for the way she had looked at him. Anger. Hurt. Betrayal. She and her friends may have been secretive and suspicious – maybe even manipulative to a certain degree – but she had actually loved him.

Nobody had ever loved him. The only person who had even come close was his mother – but even she couldn't have loved him all that much if she had chosen to take her own life eight years ago and leave her only child alone.

How could he rationalize breaking someone's heart the very same way that his had been broken? Especially when it was someone who had gone to great lengths to prove that she would never repeat the terrible pattern of disappointment he had endured all his life?

He was furious. With whom, he was not sure. About what, he was not sure. All he knew was that the blood boiling in his veins was precariously increasing with every moment – and he felt sorry for the person who would be the first to feel his wrath.

So when he slammed the door of his loft open, Mona's triumphant face staring at him from across the kitchen only fueled the fire more.

"What did you do?" he demanded through gritted teeth. He was peeling the black hoodie off of his body now, as though burned by everything it entailed.

"What needed to be done," she answered coolly, gesturing to the dining room table.

A candlelight dinner, complete with a bottle of wine and two unused glasses. It took him a moment to understand what this meant – that it was not something Mona had conjured – and when he did, he felt an inexplicable tug on his heartstrings.

"She was here all afternoon setting this up for your anniversary," Mona explained, taking a seat at one of the empty chairs. She began to calmly pour herself a generous helping of the red wine, coyly looking at him over the rim of her glass. "Poetic…isn't it?"

Toby could not put the pieces of the puzzle together fast enough. The wheels were turning rapidly in his brain, but he could hardly make sense of how things had possibly unfolded this way. Mona seemed to sense this, for she set her wine aside and stared at him expectantly, talking to him as though he were an insolent child.

"She didn't actually have an award dinner for her father, Toby. She was lying. Just like she always does – like they always do."

But it wasn't about those kinds of lies. It never had been. Those were different. They were innocent and well intentioned. But Mona had been so jaded for so very long that this distinction was anything but apparent to her.

"You planted the ID for her to find," he accused, taking a step closer to her. He was clenching the hoodie in his hand now, and it seemed to be pulsating with a life of its own. "I told you it was too soon."

"And I told you," Mona began loudly, slamming one hand on the table. Her eyes were flashing wildly. "YOU DON'T CALL THE SHOTS."

"Then who does?" Toby challenged, leaning against the table beside her to look her dead in the eyes.

Mona did not even flinch under his glare. She merely took another sip of her wine and quietly replied, "We've been over this a million times. But I suppose your thick Neanderthal brain needs to hear it on repeat for it to sink in."

The rage was bubbling in his stomach now, so intense that he feared he would spontaneously combust. Furiously, he threw the hoodie at her, which she only barely caught.

"There's no one else. No one! Admit it – you're just as scared of us as you are of them. You act like there's someone above you – someone barking orders – so that you don't have to own up to anything you've done!"

If the manner in which he was hollering in her face gave her pause, she did not indicate it. Instead she leaned in as well, her face inches from his, to prove her own dominance.

"None of this is any of your concern. You're still on probation for that stunt you pulled last spring."

He squared his jaw, having already expected her to bring this up. She always brought it up.

Her eyes were burning daggers into him now, and he could not help but shrink slightly under her malevolent gaze. "Next time you start questioning your loyalty, it won't just be your arm that I break."

He wanted to say something – anything – to counter this threat. Perhaps take that glass of wine and shatter it across her face – shove the bottle down her throat until she choked and fell lifelessly to the floor. But there was nothing he could say, and nothing he could do. He was well aware that Mona did not throw her weight around lightly. If she wanted to hurt him, she would make it happen. And he would never see it coming.

So when he recoiled hesitantly into a standing position once more, she plastered a wicked, emotionless smile across her face, gently handing the hoodie back to him. After a moment he accepted it with some chagrin, his jaw still squared disapprovingly.

"What I need you to do now is take care of damage control with our favorite little hermaphrodite," she said softly, as though nothing had happened. "He's having difficulty keeping that mouth of his shut."

Toby inhaled sharply as he quietly pulled the hoodie back on. When it was in place once more, he found that he had calmed, but only in slight.

"I'll take care of it."

He spent the entire walk fuming. How dare she speak to him that way? What gave her the power, anyway? Wasn't that the point of this clandestine collaboration in the first place? To give a great big 'fuck you' to the mere concept of social hierarchies and entitled bitches that thought they could control everything and everyone they came across?

She was deviating more and more from their purpose each day. And it was going to come back to bite her in the ass, sooner or later. And Toby vowed to himself that he would be there to watch her crumble.

It wasn't hard to find Lucas. He was creeping suspiciously around the school, like he usually did. Dealing out test answers and taking money to change grades. Toby watched quietly from a distance as his latest customer took their leave, and then he closed in.

Lucas did not notice him in time. He cried out in alarm as Toby grabbed him roughly by the collar and pulled him into the shadows.

"What? What is it now?" Lucas demanded impatiently. There was a hint of fear etched on his baby-face features, but he was fighting tooth and nail to hold it in as much as humanly possible. "Come to finish what you started the other night with the SUV?"

Toby glowered. That was one of the many instances where he had obeyed Mona's orders in a half-assed manner. He could have easily run Lucas down – he was no match for him on that damn skateboard – but he was not – and never planned to be – a killer.

"Mona says you're running your mouth again," Toby accused darkly. He had Lucas pressed up against the side of the building, one single strong-arm against his chest to hold him there. "You know how much she hates that."

Lucas scoffed, but it came out sounding shuddery and somewhat frightened. "Don't worry," he muttered. "I didn't tell them anything about you."

This caught Toby by surprise. He backed away quickly, releasing Lucas in the process, as he thought this over.

"Why?" he demanded at last, suspiciously narrowing his eyes. In some ways, Lucas was no better than Mona. He knew how to outwit the both of them regularly – it was his strongest asset, and the primary reason he remained standing.

"Because," Lucas laughed bitterly. "This isn't the life you want to live, either. I get it, okay? I get it better than anyone."

A cold shiver ran down Toby's spine that had nothing to do with the temperature in the crisp night air.

"You don't know anything about me," he argued after a moment. He strived to come up with an additional dispute, but could think of nothing.

Lucas was rubbing the burgeoning bruise on his chest impatiently, shaking his head in Toby's direction. "But I do. I'm nothing like Mona – and neither are you. " He took a deep breath and let it out shakily. "I mean…don't you ever…you know…wish things were different?"

This statement all but paralyzed him. He thought of the look of complete despair on Spencer's face tonight. The frightened shrieks of Emily's girlfriend after finding out that her tire had been slashed. The fact that the day he'd had sex with Spencer was the most alive he had ever felt in his entire life. The longest he had ever been able to ignore the role he played in all of this. This inordinate chaos…this outrageously obsolete game.

Lucas's words somehow stung more than the welt Spencer had left on his cheek earlier. The physical discomfort of being slapped, he could deal with – but the undeniable way that Lucas had poked at his psyche was something else all together.

"All the time," he murmured at last, his eyes never leaving Lucas's face.

The silence settled between them for a moment, before Lucas spoke again.

"I would never tell anyone, Toby," he said quietly. It was almost a whisper. "Not when I know exactly what it feels like to hate yourself every time you look in the mirror."

If Toby thought that what Lucas said before had hurt, it was nothing compared to this.

This was not where he imagined he'd be a year and a half ago. But Mona had so cleverly wormed her way into his feeble, vulnerable mind after he returned to Rosewood…after Emily had looked at him like a monster at Homecoming and had refused to speak to him for days thereafter.

Mona had been expectantly waiting for him outside the school that night after the dance, her arms crossed diligently over her chest as she leaned against his motorcycle.

"Hurts," she had mumbled knowingly with a smirk, "doesn't it?"

He had not replied.

"I know how to make it go away," she had whispered cryptically.

He had fought her advances at first. Had insisted that he was changed – that he did not want to be the person he used to be.

"Oh, but Toby," she had insisted darkly, "you will always be that person. The person that people shrink away from while crossing the street. The person that makes their blood run cold in fear." She had tilted her head, then, thoughtfully gazing at him under the cloudy sky. "I can help you. I'm the only one who understands you."

Before he knew it, he was drinking the Kool-Aid and following orders. He barely had time to blink, it happened so fast. Mona deserved to go down in history as one of the most cunning, manipulative cult leaders of all time.

"It's too late for that," he muttered at last. Lucas lowered his eyebrows inquisitively. "Spencer knows."

Lucas said nothing. He merely diverted his gaze to the ground, suddenly quite interested in his own feet.

And then, something occurred to Toby. Something that he knew he would regret as soon as he said it. But he knew that he would have to do it – need to do it – if there was any hope of redemption for him.

"Go," he muttered at last. Lucas raised his eyes once more, looking somehow more terrified than he had all night.

"What?"

"Get out of here. Get out of Rosewood and don't look back."

Lucas was looking around surreptitiously now, his eyes shifting in every which direction, as if waiting for someone to jump him.

"It's not too late for you," Toby insisted, feeling suddenly and inexplicably choked up. "Go. Before I change my mind."

There was a moment in which he and Lucas shared an unspoken understanding. Lucas pitied him – that was nothing new. But it was something different – something…almost endearing. He looked at him for a minute, as though conveying silent gratitude and hopes for better things and better days to come. The promise of a new horizon and a chance to start over.

Hope for him.

And then, it was gone – and so was Lucas. He had hesitated at first, backing away slowly – then quickened his jog once he was far enough away and realized he would not be followed. Toby watched him disappear into the night, trying with all his might not to feel sorry for himself.

He would have given anything to be Lucas in that moment. To have the opportunity to run – to get away. Mona had never particularly believed in Lucas to start with, and therefore was more or less unfazed when he played his disappearing acts. Toby, however – she needed him. She had chosen him for a reason – he was of a very particular use to her. And she would be damned if she let him go that easily.

It was why she had loosened the scaffolding upon which he was working. It was why she severed his brake lines. Any time his conviction faltered, she was right there – waiting to cut him down once more and remind him of who was boss. Of who called the shots.

…Remind him that she was all he had.

He looked up at the sky as he walked quietly back to his loft. What he was looking for, he wasn't sure. A sign, maybe. Some kind of glaringly obvious signal about what to do – about what would come next for him.

And then, he stopped. In the middle of the street, he paused – slowly, silently, he pulled the hood away from his face. Something strange had occurred to him. Something that hadn't crossed his mind in a long, long time. Not since his mother had died.

He felt instantly foolish for doing it. But he did it anyway.

For the first time in eight years, he looked up at the sky and attempted to talk to the incorporeal, disembodied being that people had invested thousands of lifetimes of belief into.

"God," he whispered to himself. "If you can hear me…I – I need your help. Tell me what to do."

There was no response. He wasn't sure why he had expected one in the first place, to be honest. Praying had never worked for him as a child, and it stood to reason that it would not do so now.

Instead, all he felt was the vibrating in his pants pocket. Extracting his phone, he saw that it was Mona calling him.

It was always Mona. It would always be Mona. No matter where he turned. She would forevermore be the only person that would give him the answers he needed. The only person that would ever give him something to do – some sort of purpose to live by.

Sure, she was an insufferable bitch. And of course he wanted to throttle her half the time. But she was all he had now.

He took a deep breath to calm himself. To wipe away all of the useless emotions he had been feeling. This was who he was now. Questioning it only made his life more difficult. More confusing. And that was the last thing he needed.

Carefully, with one hand, he pulled the hood back over his head – where it belonged – and lifted the phone to his ear.