A/N: Some answers at last, but I'll warn you now: this is a rough chapter.

Thank you Tree66, max2013, Dinogal95, twobrothers, Penny Blossom73, Guest, and SiouxAnne3 for reviewing! I'm glad you're all enjoying the story so much. And, Tree66, I'm betting you're right.


"F" is for Frayed

Colby'd learned to compartmentalize in his youth. He practiced it in the Army, refined it in Afghanistan. It's what allowed him to spy on the FBI for two years, what allowed him to be a mole for counterintelligence to bring down a Chinese spy ring for those same two years.

He fashioned a new use for it now, allowing him to tolerate more punishment than he should be capable of handling, forcing his captors to do even more to him to get a reaction. If he did it right, they'd kill him before they realized his condition was so dire. Or pushed him past the point they could pull him back.

Either worked for Colby. Death was his only way out of here.

If he could wrangle his frayed consciousness into remembering the endgame.

He groaned lowly as Franklin shoved a screwdriver into the trajectory the bullet had taken four weeks ago, widening the original wound, widening the original widening of it, digging the head in, tearing skin, muscle, and scar tissue and Colby sent most of his sentience into the first compartment he encountered, leaving him dimly feeling what they were doing to his body, as though from afar.

Time.

It'd been four weeks since his arrest; today marked the twenty-sixth day of his imprisonment. Colby thought if he tried hard enough, dug himself as deeply into the furthest reaches of his mind as Franklin dug into his arm, he could figure out the exact date. But this compartment was too shallow, his mind too close to what his body endured. Even for such simple math.

Most days he couldn't comprehend Charlie's equations. Now he couldn't even work out basic addition and subtraction.

Twenty-six days. It was July then, and Colby felt a surge of triumph for figuring even that much out.

Four weeks. Twenty-six days. How many hours? That was beyond him right now, the same as one of Fleinhart's lectures.

Franklin decided last week that Colby ought to know exactly how long he'd been here. Let the weight of passing time—with no end in sight because there was no end, no hope; just hours, days, weeks, months, years adding on—crush his resistance, crush his mind.

Like hell Colby would yield. He didn't have to withstand them forever, only until they killed him. With no reason to live (and a whole lot not to) and nobody who cared if he did … well, he could hold out that long.

He had the advantage in that Franklin didn't know how well Colby compartmentalized or how he utilized that skill now.

"What'd you discover about Sheila McHugh, boy? C'mon, Bright Eyes … tell me. Before you really piss me off."

Colby moaned, thrashing weakly in the handcuffs as a second screwdriver started jabbing through what had been the exit wound, the two tools burrowing to meet in the middle of his arm.

He dropped into another pocket, this one with frayed edges and only slightly more buried than the last. He wasn't surprised where he ended up.

Sheila McHugh.

Turned out Colby did know her … or at least of her: ADIC Phillip Wright's assistant, and Colby'd had all of three interactions with her in his three years with the FBI; they were introduced the first time and never again. She wasn't someone he saw, not being of the upper echelon; Don would've known exactly who they were asking about.

Colby knew her more from what he'd gathered on her while spying on the LA office. From the anomaly he found associated with her name, the discrepancies he ferreted out following columns and lines, tracing them to the BOP, to DHS, to the US Marshals. As it had nothing to do with the Chinese, he was ordered to leave it. He boxed it all up and sent it to Kirkland, though aptitude and CID training wanted to take it apart and see where it led.

But things were coming undone around him, and he'd let it go.

Had nobody checked Michael's possessions? Had they not found the files Colby sent him? He'd detailed what he found, laid out what needed to be done next to find what else she was hiding, what strings to pull to unravel it all.

The FBI hated to be made the fool—he was proof of that—so surely they wouldn't ignore his findings or recommendations simply because they came from him. Not when she was fleecing them, not with how elaborate, how brilliant, her scheme was.

Right?

But if Franklin was asking questions….

He choked back a cry, something like fire and lightning flaring from his arm, leaving him terribly close to blurting what was in this compartment, so he tumbled out of that space, frayed and drained, not caring where he landed because he'd be damned if he gave them a freaking thing.

The FBI.

He slammed that door shut and found another.

Violent Crimes Squad.

He would've bolted, but they were pulling him out of his head with what they were doing and he couldn't—wouldn't—give in, so he immersed himself in the buffeting, roiling emotions and thoughts that were his old team, anchoring him fully within to let them do whatever to without.

Since they didn't get to see his arrest in person, he wondered if they'd come, watch one of the interrogation sessions live rather than waiting for the recording. Would they participate in one? Would that video go to the top of their collection, to be watched fondly and often?

Colby blinked back unexpected tears, frayed enough to notice Franklin and Olsen putting on Tyvek coveralls over their clothes and donning rubber gloves. He didn't want to know and swallowed hard, retreating to the team.

The irony almost made him laugh. Or cry. Colby could go either way and wanted to do neither.

He wasn't angry at them, not anymore, or even bitter about how it all ended. How could he be? His family rejected him first so why shouldn't the team? Why would they want somebody around as tainted as Colby turned out to be? They shouldn't have to put up with it. Nobody should.

That's what he'd discovered in the twenty-six days of his captivity, as they drove him deeper into his head.

Colby fought the sideways slip, frayed and exhausted, and just managed to hold onto the team, proving to himself how pathetic and weak he truly was.

At least they weren't bad, not like he—

He fiercely held on to this pocket, resisting where his psyche seemed hellbent on sending him.

They were good agents, good people. Take him out of the equation and they were the kindest and fairest of people, the finest investigators with the most integrity and highest morals. David was patient and composed … if the situation didn't include Colby. Colby was the one who caused those negative reactions, caused all that anger. It was his fault.

Don was right … this was what was best for everyone. And if they wanted to watch—or participate in—his punishment, they had that right. They'd earned it.

He felt himself sliding to where he didn't want to go when someone jolted his arm, leaving a hot trail of agony, but Colby couldn't've been more grateful. That physical torment tipped that alcove in his head enough for him to keep clinging to his old team.

He made a desperate bid to stay with them.

Besides, it wouldn't be all bad. If they came—before they did what they were going to do—maybe he could tell them about McHugh. He was sure they'd check into it when they left. They were good agents. And his involvement would be over, so they'd do what they did best.

He knew it wouldn't exonerate him. He didn't deserve it.

Too frayed to stop it this time, Colby ricocheted off a wall and plummeted until he found himself in one of his oldest nooks, the door so frayed after all these years it may as well not have been there, allowing easy access to something he thought he'd put behind him nearly fifteen years ago.

No. Not again. Not anymore. Please.

His father's death.

Twenty miles of mountain road. A 50-yard stretch with no guardrail. And that was where James Granger's truck went over the edge. Bad luck. Or where he'd been aiming. Accident or suicide?

A fishing trip with a tragic conclusion.

Twenty years making tractor parts for a machine shop undone by one—one—mistake and just like that he'd been fired. Jim could never understand how one mistake counted more than a twenty-year absence of them and so took his life.

Accident or suicide?

Jim'd left behind a wife and daughter, a 15-year-old son who wondered, while trying to pick up the pieces. Children of divorcing couples … children of alcoholics … children of parents who committed suicide always, always had a deep-seated belief that somehow it was their fault, even if they never spoke of it. They wondered if they'd done something so wrong, if they were such a burden, if their existence was so reprehensible that they'd caused it. If they'd been better sons or daughters, if they'd been perfect, if they were deserving of love, they could've prevented the divorce … the alcoholism … the suicide. If they only could've been enough; enough of whatever their parents needed them to be. Just … enough.

Colby had felt that blame, although in his case, it'd been justified.

No. Goddammit, no.

He'd come to terms with it, made what peace he could with it, and put it in a box, shoving it into a corner of his mind where he'd built a nearly impregnable chamber around it; no frayed seams to pick here, save at the door. Colby rarely went there anymore, rarely examined it, even as he'd gotten older, even after everything he'd seen. He didn't want to now.

But they were never going to release him, never going to stop torturing him … unless he died. He needed them to end it. Only by sending his consciousness into these honeycombs could he trick them into doing the one thing besides letting him go that they didn't want to do: kill him. He had to lose himself in here, to force them to do more to his body out there.

No matter how much it hurt in here.

His family rejected him. This Colby knew. His old team rejected him. The FBI. The guards here despised him, Stewart from the Wilshire building; probably others he didn't know about.

Was there something inherently abhorrent in him, something corrupt or even evil that caused that reaction in others?

Had it been suicide?

Had his father been escaping Colby the only way he knew how? But wouldn't it have made more sense to kill Colby rather than himself? Maybe the man who could beat the shit out of his 12-year-old son to teach a lesson about honor couldn't commit the atrocity of killing his 15-year-old boy. So he killed himself rather than live a moment longer in the company of his kid.

Was it his fault his father died? Had he killed him?

Colby keened in his throat.

No. No.

Wait….

He found a little kernel of hope and clutched it for all he was worth.

If his mother had thought that—if she believed it was even a remote possibility—she would've told him so. She'd spared him nothing in that letter; she wouldn't've spared him this, not the child she didn't want, the child she threw away.

Unless….

Unless she was so invested in the accident theory, she couldn't see any other possibility; couldn't believe Jim'd purposefully left her, left their life together, their family. That invested because it was the only way to protect herself.

Couldn't even tell the son she hated what he'd done; not for Colby's sake, but her own.

With a silent, desolate cry, Colby fled the anguish in his head, seeking the agony of his body instead. He became fully aware just in time for Olsen to dump a white, coarse powder into the bloody open wound on his arm. Colby screamed. He wrenched himself away, an animalistic instinct to rip his arm from his body to escape that fire burning through skin to muscle and bone consuming him, animalistic sounds coming from his mouth.

He pulled frantically at the handcuffs, spinning, unable to break away. He was trapped. He cried out again, weaker this time, and threw his weight against the mutilated arm.

Franklin and Olsen were shouting, frayed and meaningless, and then a jet of icy water stabbed into his arm, rinsing the powder away, though pain remained. They sprayed Colby down thoroughly, sprayed into the wound itself, the cold shocking against the heat emanating from it, flushing it out. The damage had already been done.

His legs buckled, and his shoulders and wrists took his weight as he tried to find his footing on the wet concrete. He took quick, frayed breaths, working hard to force the air out and a tiny part of his mind wondered how long they'd had his arms suspended overhead this time. Finally, Colby locked his knees, standing, trembling, in place, easing the strain from his upper extremities and lungs.

He only took a glimpse of his arm—layers of skin red and irritated, a brown discoloration reminiscent of necrosis—before looking away. His gorge rose.

"I warned you not to piss me off, Bright Eyes," Franklin remarked conversationally.

He carefully positioned a stun gun with one of the probes over the original wound and one over part of the caustic burn. He smiled when he pulled the trigger.

Colby's world exploded in bright excruciation. And then, blessedly, he knew nothing.