The pain didn't start right away, and at first it was only a dull pressure under his scalp, like diving too far in a swimming pool. However as he felt the tendrils slither further in, releasing images, emotions, sounds, thoughts which he was startled to find he had little control over, it began to ache. When a memory of his earliest days at the academy started playing itself before him, the scent of metal shavings and acetylene from his first step into the enormous workshop and an exciting fluttering beneath his breastbone, he had to concentrate to veer away from it and his effort turned the ache into a throb that beat in time with his heart.

"The things you try to hide can be just as telling as the things I see," the man warned tauntingly.

Fitz grit his teeth, glaring at him because he knew that already but he could see no way around it. He couldn't risk letting him catch a glimpse of something important but he didn't have the energy to keep him out of every memory.

The cat he'd grown up with, Cheerful, a great orange thing who thought he was a puppy and shed fur at Fitz's feet as he slept.

Call of Duty with Mack, the salty taste of pretzels on his tongue and the imprint of the plastic buttons on his thumbs.

Laying in a hospital bed, fighting to move his fingers, the scent of flowers, anger, frustration, fear-

He was jerked abruptly away from that one, an emotion that wasn't his finding it's way into his head but even though he knew it was one he'd felt before, it was alien to him, like seeing a sunset through a coloured filter and he struggled to comprehend it. Disgust? Annoyance?

He was on a swing, young though he couldn't remember the exact age, and he smelled the rain coming in, felt the drop in pressure and the cool wind on skin as he rose and fell, rose and fell.

The taste of beer, Hunter's voice, a story he didn't remember the words to about a hellbeast he would one day call his friend.

Ward twisting his shoulder, terrible pain-

Again the memory was cut short and this time the alien emotion was definitely annoyance.

The search moved on, tendrils squirming like burrowing worms, and Fitz was only dimly aware of the real world around him, the tape binding his wrists and the damp stinky air. He felt as if he'd been turned inside out and his thoughts were reality and reality a faded thought.

Jemma, sitting across from him, smiling as she held up her phone for a quick photo. The joyful rush of affection bursting in his chest when he glanced up so that his gaze met the camera just as it clicked.

Another alien emotion, one he hated even more than first, hunger, wanting, lust.

No.

"No?" the man, mocking again, and Fitz wasn't sure if he'd thought the word or spoken it but it had been his and he took note that for a brief second he'd been in control of his own mind. "Didn't that lovely woman who raised you teach to share? Your mother? You have her eyes."

The man didn't feel anything about his mother, much to his relief, not disgust or wanting, no intention of harm. He wanted to go back to Jemma, Fitz could feel it, and it was becoming more and more difficult to resist.

"Stubborn aren't you?" he mumbled, patient, his words unstrained, and Fitz could tell he felt none of the pain that was stabbing through him right now. "This doesn't have to hurt so much."

He grit his teeth, trying to ignore the painful consequence of resistance, trying to pull all his focus into redirecting his thoughts away from Jemma.

Her hand in his as they watched her sister walk down the aisle-

'Stop it!' The rage was all his. He didn't know why the man had fixated on Jemma, although he had an idea just out of reach that he knew he should be able grasp, but he knew that this man wanted something from her and that scared him enough to plow into the torture of attempting to flee from the memories.

"You're only making this harder for yourself," he scolded, words from the real world coming in through thick haze.

As hard as he fought, the man was stronger and when the throb burst into a quick pulse of head splitting agony it shocked him into letting go and to his horror he lost control once again.

Jemma's toes, cold against his skin. Her kiss on his nose.

"Please stop," he barely heard his own voice whispering, miles away.

His hand in hers again, the scent of grass and trees, sunshine on his face, happiness.

Her shouting at him, his heart aching as he realized how much pain he'd caused her-

Fitz was surprised when this memory was cut short, and the man scrambled to move on, digging backwards in time.

The wedding again. A slow song, swirling lights, the smell of her hair under his chin. Peace, belonging.

This one lingered and Fitz was growing weaker. Pulling away from the thought felt like trying to drag a car with a rope and the pain his efforts cost him was distracting enough to stall him each time he started. His head hurt all the time now and the alien emotions were invading. Excited, satisfied. It made his stomach lurch in disgust.

Further back now.

Sitting on the sofa at the base, listening to her talk. The words weren't clear but he knew what she was saying and it hit him like a punch to the gut. Anger, guilt for being angry, despair-

The memory was dropped, flung away as if the man had been scalded by it and in the brief moment in which he was distracted, Fitz found he could think clearly.

'He doesn't like it when it's difficult,' he realized. 'He doesn't like the memories that hurt.' If he weren't so hurt and exhausted he might have managed a smug grin. 'Maybe I can work with that.'

So this time, instead of pulling he pushed, pooling the last of his dwindling strength.

Darkness, water, death. Saying goodbye to her. Terror of his own death, terror that even with his sacrifice she wouldn't make it either. Fear that she'd die alone and in pain as the pressure built in her veins atop the unforgiving waves-

Again the memory was violently rejected but Fitz had more, he had so many more.

She'd left him. She wasn't at her parents or if she was she wasn't coming back. She didn't want him anymore. Not as a lover, not even as a partner and a friend-

He was jerked away from the scene in his head but he had the next one ready.

A picture of another man with his arms around her. Anger, helplessness, the certainty that he'd never compare, never be good enough and the crushing wave of guilt that passed over him when that nearly made him hate the bearded face staring back at him. Guilt now, not a memory, because Will had been good, had saved someone he loved and Fitz hadn't been able to save him.

"What are you doing?" the man growled, frustrated.

Jemma returning from her mission to Hydra. Finding out where she'd been, hurt, a stone in his stomach because she could have died a thousand times and he'd had no idea. His whole body aching because he'd thought she'd gone to get away from him.

The tendrils twitched, reversing, moving backwards in their tunnels, and the minute relief in pain and pressure was like fresh air.

Jemma's face when he couldn't say the word monkey. The way her eyes dulled even as she tried to hide her pain. She wasn't good at lying yet, and her expression betrayed her. The fear, the disappointment. He hadn't know then how much self loathing there'd been as well but it hurt him now to think of her hating herself for even a second.

The man was trying to resist, pulling away from the stream of memories but he seemed to have less experience digging his way out of them than into them and Fitz could feel that he was struggling.

"Stop," he commanded.

'No," Fitz thought fiercely. 'Get out of my head.'

A cave on a faraway planet. Two beds pushed together, Ward's taunting voice in his ears.

Jemma's screams.

Fitz almost flinched away from this one too but he knew that he couldn't stop now that it was working and besides this wasn't real. He couldn't hurt her in his head, he could only hurt himself, so he played it through.

Helplessness, rage as if he were bursting out of his skin, fear like he'd never known it before. On and on in what seemed like an endless loop of wishing she'd stop screaming, that they'd stop hurting her, to wishing he could hear her again because in the silence he didn't know if she was dead or alive.

The tendrils slithered, retreating and the fog that had been keeping him in his head lifted although it left him with a headache that rivaled any hang-over he'd ever had.

"What is wrong with you?!" the man spat and Fitz didn't need their nervous systems connected to recognize his disgust. "You're broken, both of you."

"We're not… broken…," he gasped, feeling like he'd just run in a marathon. "We're just stronger… than you."

He wasn't listening, he'd risen to his feet to pace agitatedly back and forth between Fitz and the dusty yellow window that lit the room with strangled sunlight. As he took the time to catch his breath, doing his best not be distracted by the disturbing trickles of blood that ran down from the deep holes in both his temples, Fitz felt the throb settle back into an ache and he found his thoughts unfogging.

'He wanted to leach off my happy memories,' he realized, grasping on to the thing he'd forgotten while his mind was invaded. 'Coulson and Jemma were right, it's what he's after- and he wants it badly enough that it distracted him from interrogating me.'

Maybe he couldn't help it, maybe he craved it as if it were a drug. He certainly seemed agitated that he hadn't been able to get it from Fitz.

"I can fix this," the man said at last, nodding to himself as he spoke.

Fitz bristled. "I told you I'm not broken," he spat. "You're the one who's-"

"Shut up!" he shouted, rounding on him and raising a hand as if to hit him and Fitz flinched, remembering the blow he'd received when he'd first arrived. The man hissed in frustration but let his hand relax, sparing him further injury. "I can fix this," he muttered.

He moved away, to the table where he'd dumped the eclectic collection of items Fitz had been carrying in his pocket, lifting his cell phone and turning it on.

"What are you doing?" Fitz asked warily. "You can't get in, you'll need my password - and I'm not telling you anything!" he added adamantly.

The man sneered. "I know your password. And your birthday, where you were born, what you're afraid of…."

His heart sank. Of course he did, he knew everything now. The sense of victory he'd felt only seconds before snuffed out like a candle in a flood. "What are you going to do?" he growled.

His captor had paused once he'd unlocked the phone, eyes drifting greedily across the screen, Fitz's background picture, him and Jemma grinning outside the temple in Peru. The look on his face made him sick to his stomach.

"Hey, worm fingers!" he snapped, struggling futilely against his bonds, fury burning through him. "What are you going to do?!"

He regarded him the way someone would a fly ramming itself against a window, then he smiled smugly, tapping a button and pushing the phone against his ear. "I'm going to fix this."

/-/-/


Big thanks to notapepper for betaing this chapter :D

Fun fact, I think I mentioned it before in this fic maybe too, that memory and smell are very interlinked. I think that it has something to do with how close the areas of the brain concerning them are? Anyway that's why there's so much to do with scent in this chapter. And it's going to come up again in the next one in maybe a bit of an evil way ... bonus points if you figure out how :D