Prompt: Fitzward / awful traditions - requested by jxmma on tumblr
TRIGGER WARNING: This fic does include mentions of suicidal thoughs in part twelve ( XII. ) and is an exploration of the twelve most common signs of depression.

I.

It had been three days since they picked him up in the cab on the side of the road, and it had taken almost that long to work out an agreement between the three of them that included a somewhat strict list of rules. During the day, Fitz would work on trying to get Fury's toolbox open with either Kara or Ward hanging around the hotel room as a form of protection in case their location was ever discovered. Otherwise, the three of them would pass the time by playing card games or watching pay-per-view movies or something as dull as guessing with raindrop will reach the bottom of the window first.

This particular instance was in the middle of the afternoon, while Ward was flipping through channels and Fitz was struggling to get further than he already was on getting the box open. Between clips of sound from procedural cop shows and a lifetime movie, he slouched in his chair and fought a yawn. He'd only been awake for a few hours, so it wasn't logical that the scientist would be tired again yet, but that didn't stop it from being a fact. However, a nap wasn't anywhere in his near future, not if there was any chance of making progress before the week was up. With a groan, Leo shook his head and took a moment before making himself get to his feet and walk over to the couch, slumping down and staring blankly at the screen of the television.

"Aren't you supposed to be working?"

He gave only a grunt in reply to the question, shaking his head and lifting a hand to wave it off instead of giving a proper answer. Yes, he was definitely supposed to be working, but his fingers got stiff and refused to listen to the commands he tried to give them no matter how hard he worked at it. It had been weeks since Fitz had last had coordination problems that were this bad, and what he needed was a break, even if Ward thought he should be devoting more time to work.

After fifteen minutes of partially listening to a rerun of Castle, he decided that, maybe, a nap was in his near future after all.

II.

It was almost five in the morning when Ward spotted the streaming of artificial light under the door between the main room of the hotel and the back bedroom where he'd been sleeping. At this hour, he was the only one who was normally awake, which meant that something entirely abnormal, or at least unusual, was going on that very clearly involved the only lamp that would shine light at the right angle to make it into the room. The only lamp that would do that, unless things were moved, was the one by the table that Fitz usually worked at if someone wasn't actively eating.

Opening the door to investigate, he frowned when he saw exactly the sight he expected to see – the former SHIELD scientist was scribbling equations on a hotel notepad, lifting the black box in one hand and looking at it closer before returning his attention to his calculations. There was no telling how long he'd been sitting and working, but there was one way to find out.

"Why are you up so early?"

Ward watched while the younger man flinched at the sudden sound, scrambling to keep his train of thought going to finish what he was writing before turning to face the former agent in the doorway. "No, I'm only working for a few minutes, and then I'll go to bed. I told you that."

He'd been working since at least midnight, then, which couldn't be healthy even if he had made a bit of progress on getting the box open, which wasn't even a given no matter how much he'd gotten written down and calculated. No matter what progress had been made, it wasn't worth risking anyone's health for, especially not when they only had one person who might be able to get it open any time soon.

"Go to sleep, Fitz. You can work on this later once you have a clear head." The idea of quitting when he'd gotten that far wasn't going to go over well, anyone could say that much, but that didn't mean an effort couldn't be made. "While you sleep, I'll go out and get everything we need to make that sandwich you like so much."

"Haven't you done enough damage to my memories of that sandwich?" The question came out as a groan, but at least he was caving, even if it would only turn out to be a short nap on the couch until Kara made breakfast.

III.

Putting his head in his hands, Fitz tried to block out the sounds coming from the television only a few feet away, which consisted of too-loud fake gunshots and a few gibberish shouts from the video game that Ward had been playing for at least three hours. If he'd taken a break, his problem wouldn't be nearly as bad as it was, but getting the box open was the most important thing in their grand plan, and that was what he had to focus on. Of course, that was pretty difficult to do when his head was pounding and it didn't seem like it was going to stop any time soon.

"Can you turn that down, please? I'm already under enough pressure without my head threatening to explode."

Moments later, the sound on the television was muted entirely and the chair across from him was being pulled from its spot so that Ward could sit down. Maybe he was supposed to be working, but doing so would require a lot less pain than Fitz was currently suffering through, and considering they were technically in hiding, making a run for pain medication wasn't exactly possible until they needed another round of groceries, which wouldn't be for at least two days.

Even the sound of crunching pretzels was making just a coherent train of thought difficult, and the fact that his former friend and one of his new roommates decided it was snack time was the exact opposite of helpful. "Can you take a break? My head hurts, and I slept weird, and my neck has been bothering me all day – sound hurts."

There was a pause before the box was taken away from the table in front of him, and another second of silence passed while Ward got to his feet again. "Fitz, you need a break. Grab a controller, and I can kick your Scottish ass at Mario Kart. I'll even turn the sound off."

IV.

The television was on too loud again, and focusing on anything besides the laugh track from the sitcom that was playing louder than his thoughts was almost more than impossible. The fact that his headache was gone had nothing to do with how much he wanted the How I Met Your Mother rerun turned off – and it wasn't even a good episode. Still, it was common courtesy to stay quiet enough for other people in the room to focus on very important secret assignments.

"Bloody hell, if I have to hear Barney Stinson say something is legendary one more time, so help me, I will pack up everything and try to find Coulson so that he can just open this for us, and then I won't need your help."

Getting to his feet, Fitz shook his head with a frown and waved a hand in dismissal of anything Ward or Kara could say from the couch before they could even open their mouths to say anything. Maybe he wasn't sleeping enough, and maybe that made him a bit crankier than normal, but the fact that his own thoughts were impossible to understand was a bit ridiculous.

Taking the momentary silence as an opportunity, he stomped off to the back bedroom and closed the door rather loudly, likely disturbing the people in the suite next door. Based on the sound of the phone ringing that he could hear through the door a few minutes later, it was enough for them to complain to hotel management.

V.

The complaint made it necessary for them to relocate, which took two days of time that could have been used for working on opening the box and made it necessary to use it for apartment searching so all three of them weren't stuck sharing a single hotel room for the rest of their time together. Really, it would only be the three of them for a little while longer, especially with the progress Fitz had actually been making on the box front.

After the delay, the simplest way to put it would be to say his groove had been thrown off.

He'd spent five hours sitting in the small kitchen alternating between staring at the box, biting the grains of salt off of pretzels, doodling over pages he was supposed to be using for research, humming along to nonexistent music, and sitting in a way that made it possible to swing his legs back and forth in his chair. If Leo couldn't make himself focus soon, there would be no point in having the extra space at all.

"Are you humming the Psych theme song?"

With a sigh, Fitz lifted his head to look over at where Ward had been making sandwiches for lunch, fighting back the urge to groan in complaint. "You marathoned some of it this morning, and it's been stuck in my head, and I can't focus for more than a few seconds at a time." In the simplest of terms, he was frustrated, and the progress from before had come to a screeching halt with the time spent not working, which made doing anything but getting distracted extremely difficult.

The look he got for his comment was one of disbelieving confusion, along with a small shake of the former specialist's head while he put the last pieces of the sandwich together. "If it helps, I don't care what you do. The sooner you get that box open, the sooner we can get you back to Simmons and May."

VI.

"It doesn't matter how long I spend working on this – I need Coulson or Fury's DNA to get it open unless I can reprogram it, and I can't do that without help from someone. Preferably, help from Skye."

"We're trying to help you, Fitz, but we don't know where Skye is." Ward had spent the last ten minutes watching the younger man pace back and forth in the kitchen that had become more of a work area than anything else the past few days, and this was more than the irritation he'd gotten used to. "I can try to help, if you can talk me through it."

It only took a few moments for him to realize that was one of the worst things he could have said in that moment, and that was because there was a very angry Scotsman shouting in his direction. "You can help? You can help me? You nearly killed me and Jemma less than a year ago, and the fact that I'm letting you even act as bodyguard for a few months while I figure this out is unbelievable! So, no, Ward, I don't need your help."

The next thing he fully registered was the sound of the door to one of the bedrooms slamming closed, and he found himself hoping they didn't have to pick up and move their base again.

VII.

Fitz pressed the buttons on the remote to flip through the channels for some sort of background noise so that he could try to focus. After a week of exactly no progress when it came to trying to reprogram the little black box's security, it would be an understatement to say that he was a little stressed out. And, since Ward had gone out to shop for groceries so that they could actually make dinner that night instead of getting take out, and Kara was in her room taking an afternoon nap, he was stuck trying to make a decision between watching some romcom that he couldn't name and trying to understand what was happening in the finale of the television series based off of some movie about time travel from the nineties.

Bouncing his leg to try to find some way to distract himself while flipping between the two channels, he tried to fight back the urge to groan whenever his gaze drifted over toward the box on the kitchen table. He knew he should be working, and that they only had so much time before the "real" SHIELD discovered that Jemma had made a fake box, if they hadn't already.

They were on a deadline, and it was approaching quickly, and the added pressure from it wasn't making getting into that box any easier.

VIII.

"I don't think I can get into it."

For the first time since they moved into the apartment weeks before, the television was turned off and all three of them were gathered in one room. Fitz was pacing again, just like he had been for over a week, and putting his only partially coherent thoughts into works for his two roommates to understand wasn't exactly the easiest thing he'd done in his life, even after he made them sit down on the couch while he could take a few minutes to think about what he wanted to say.

"I think… I think we need more help, because I can't do this on my own. I need Jemma or Skye or someonebecause I can't reprogram it on my own, and there's only so much I can do that doesn't include completely destroying it and possibly whatever's inside."

He tried to not let his tone convey how nervous he was about all of it, especially when they didn't have any way to contact Jemma or May on the inside to check in an see what kind of situation they were in, let alone what they could do to help with any of it.

"So… Yeah, I can't do it…"

IX.

It was almost two in the morning, and Fitz couldn't sleep. At least, while he wasn't working, the kitchen was far enough away from the short hallway to the bedrooms that he wasn't risking waking up Ward or Kara, or even attracting their attention unless one of them got up to go to the bathroom at any point. He took one of the bottles from the refrigerator, one of the last ones with the blue label from the door that he had been forbidden to look at for too long.

He got through the last five bottles of beer before one of the doors down the hall opened, and a quick glance at the clock told him that Ward had just woken up – without an alarm, as per usual – and there was a few moments before he was standing in the doorway with a very disappointed expression. "What the hell are you doing?"

Fitz didn't have time to properly react before the empty bottle was taken from his hand and set next to the sink, and he turned his head just in time to meet the very stern gaze of someone he had long since stopped calling a friend. "You're on prescription medication, and what will Simmons say if I send you back and you're even worse off than when she sent you out? She's already threatened me once."

Shaking his head, Ward stepped away enough to clear the rest of the empty beer bottles, rinsing them out with tap water from the sink and grumbling under his breath. "I agree to watch your back for a few months, and you pull this…"

X.

The plate was set down on the counter in front of him while Fitz turned the black box over in his hands for the millionth time, frowning at it and ignoring the sandwich that he was supposed to be eating. If he could make himself focus and figure out another way to get into the box that doesn't involve destruction or some elaborate computer program that they wouldn't be able to figure out without help from someone they had no leads on finding.

"Eat. I'll break all codes and rules we set in place two months ago, and I'll call Simmons if you don't."

Shaking his head, the scientist set the box down and redirected his frown to the sandwich on the plate, exhaling a sigh and the first excuse he could think of with it. "I'm not hungry."

There were two concerned gazes on him in less than thirty seconds, and if Ward wasn't trained as well as he was, the bowl of incorrectly made pesto aioli would have ended up shattered on the floor. "You are not hungry? You went on and on about a sandwich for eight hours on that first mission together. You almost got us caught for that sandwich – we almost died for that sandwich, Fitz. And I don't think I've ever seen you go more than a few hours without a snack, and you didn't even eat pancakes this morning."

Not daring to look up and meet the gaze he used to be terrified of, Fitz shook his head again and got up from his chair, his eyes staying on the ground more than anywhere else. "I'm not hungry."

XI.

He was pacing again, which wasn't a surprise to anyone, but the mumbling to himself was new.

"We should go back to see if Gonzalez has figured anything out yet. Or maybe we should get further away so that we can hide." Ward had been watching Fitz pace for almost three hours, and he seemed to be going back and forth between the same few options. "Or we should stay here. I mean, obviously, we're doing well enough at hiding that we haven't been found yet, right? So, clearly, we're doing something right."

It was concerning, seeing his old friend in this state, but he'd tried talking him into sitting down and trying to relax and that hadn't done anything for anyone.

"Or we could try to find Skye. Or Coulson. We could try to find someone to help us so we can get this box open and then go on from there. Yeah, yeah, that might work…"

XII.

Fitz didn't want to stay in the apartment anymore, not when he could get some fresh air up on the roof of their building. He could be alone up there, and maybe probably think about something to do to get that box open. Alternatively, he noted that a simple shift of weight could drop him twelve stories to the ground below if he stopped swinging his legs long enough to put any effort into that. The thought crossed his mind that maybe he should, that there was no way for him to be properly useful anymore.

He couldn't get the box open.

He spent what was possibly the last day he had with Jemma fighting – even if it was an act.

He couldn't even execute their secret plan right.

He'd gotten abducted by Grant Ward before even making it to the airport.

And even Ward didn't want to put up with him anymore.

He shouldn't have even made it out of the ocean.

The sound of the door opening behind him made Fitz flinch, needing to put his hands on the cement on either side of him to keep from falling forward. Ward's voice carried toward him, though the wind from up this high made it difficult to hear unless he focused. "Fitz! We've been looking for you for two hours, and you've been up here the entire time?"

He sounded frustrated, and it occurred to Fitz, just for a moment, that that was all he had been for months – a frustration, a nuisance, an irritation. Even Jemma had left to infiltrate Hydra instead of staying to help him with all of the issues he had. The fact that Ward had gotten frustrated no less than ten times in the months they'd stayed together was just more evidence of what he was to everyone else. He was the reason they had to move out of a hotel room that was perfectly fine as a base of operations until he drew too much attention to them.

"Fitz? What are you doing?" There was concern in the older man's voice then, and hurried footsteps followed it the few yards between the two of them. He didn't register much of it, not until two hands were pulling him back away from the edge of the building and to his feet. "C'mon. Let's get you back inside."

Four flights of stairs later, Fitz finally registered the protective arm around his shoulders just as he was being guided into the apartment, the smell of pancakes from that morning serving as a reminder that he hadn't eaten in over a day. He wasn't hungry, but that was likely a good fact to know for future reference.

"Fitz, listen to me." Things blurred together – sounds and sights and smells – until he was seated on the couch and Ward was kneeling in front of him, watching him closely to make sure he was listening. "I'm going to ask you some questions, and I need you to answer me. Just nod your head yes or no. Were you going to jump?"

He couldn't make himself meet his gaze any longer than that, closing his eyes and forcing out an audible reply. "I thought about it." The only response the other man had time to give was a sigh before Fitz burst, words flowing out faster than he could stop them. "I wasn't supposed to make it out. I gave Jemma the oxygen. She was supposed to make it out of the water and let me die."

The only reason he stopped then was because he was cut off by the shift of the couch cushions and two arms curling around him as if they could stop him from falling apart.