Fitz was back in his cell, having been escorted there by the pair of guards waiting down the hall, and suddenly feeling like maybe it was where he should be.

At least they'd left the wall down, allowing him to stare dully out at the interrogation room from where he lay curled up on his bed.

He wished he could stop crying, stop letting the world see how torn apart he was but he was hurting and he was scared and for the first time since he'd arrived he was beginning to have serious doubts as to whether or not he was what he thought he was.

If he wasn't Fitz, then why did it feel so much like he was? Why did he have his memories? Why was this the only life he knew? Why was Jemma etched into every cell of his body, every particle of him, his heart and soul and everything that came with them? How could he love her more than anything in the world, if this was the first time they'd met?

If he really wasn't Fitz then what was he? What kind of future did he have? How could he ever live in a world with the people he loved, with Jemma, if he was only going to hurt them? Where was he going to go?

Hesitant footsteps told him that someone was making their way down the staircase and he sat up, hastily wiping his face.

It was a woman, younger than him, or so it seemed. She stopped in front of the barrier, staring at him awkwardly and holding out a syringe.

Fitz sighed. "Another sample then?" he guessed, already holding out his arm as the barrier was lifted and she padded slowly inside.

She smiled apologetically. "Sorry, we just want to be extra sure 'cause…. well you know." She hovered beside him, motioning to the empty spot on the bed. "It might be easier if I sit down," she told him.

He nodded stiffly. "Yeah, whatever you need."

"I'm not very good at this," she admitted, nervously uncapping the end of the needle and grimacing at the pointed tip. "I've done it a few times but it isn't even in my field. I just volunteered because…" She bit her lip. "I'm the only one who isn't… invested, you know?"

"It's probably best that I stay away from them," Fitz agreed miserably.

She seemed unsure how to respond to that. "Well, umm, anyway… I'm Pao." She chucked nervously. "So, ha, if you have any complaints about your latest blood draw… you can… umm...complain about… me?"

Fitz was struck by the strangeness of her behaviour, not because she was flustered but because she was making an attempt to make him more comfortable. It saddened him that he had come to expect the opposite lately.

"Why are you being nice to me?" he wondered, watching as she probed for a vein.

She glanced up at him, surprised, before shrugging her shoulders. "I dunno, you seem pretty upset."

"Why does that matter?" he asked wretchedly.

Her mouth twitched but, once again, she seemed at a loss as for what to say.

He sucked in a sharp breath as the needle pierced his skin. She hadn't been joking about not being good at this but at least she seemed to have found a vein and he watched as his blood streamed into the vial, looking the same way it always had. If he hadn't been so miserable, he might have wondered who'd taught her.

There was a short pause in the conversation after that and Fitz found he missed her talking, having someone to talk to, and he fumbled to explain his earlier statement.

"I'm just a…a..." He heard Jemma's voice in his head, shouting, crying, and fresh waves of pain rolled over him. "I'm just a thing," he croaked.

That made her frown, confused. "What, like a table?"

'How is she not getting this?'

"Like a… like a thing," he clarified. She finished with his arm and he pulled his sleeve back down, his stomach a tumultuous sea beneath his burning throat. "Not… not a person."

"Do you feel like you're not a person?" she asked, curious.

He shook his head, sniffing at the strange question. "Well… no."

"I think that pretty much makes you a person then right?" She shot him a small smile as she put away the sample. "I think, therefore I am? That's Descartes right?"

'Why would SHIELD need a philosopher?' he wondered. 'Is she a psychologist? Is this some sort of test?"

She didn't look like a psychologist, she was too young, too… nervous. But then again what did he know? He wasn't a psychologist spotting expert (if those even existed) and SHIELD could be crafty. Perhaps that was all just a ruse to lull him into a false sense of security.

And then what? What did he have to hide from her? Or any of them for that matter? He was sad, that wasn't a secret (thanks to his hard working friend the not-so-hidden camera).

"What exactly is your area of expertise?" he asked, doing his best to hide his sudden suspicion.

"Electrical Engineering," she told him, bouncing back over to take the spot beside him. She didn't need to do that, she could have left. "You too right? You're an engineer?"

Not a psychologist then. His replacement maybe? He didn't really want to think about that and he decided that it didn't really matter what she was. Friendliness had become a rarity in his life and he wasn't up to being picky about who it came from. Besides he had nothing to hide.

"I used to be," he answered dully. "Or… I remember being one."

"But, I mean, you know how to do things still?" she pressed. "I hear you were good. Like, really good."

He sighed, shrugging his shoulders because he did. He remembered how to be an engineer… not that it did him any good now. "Yeah," he mumbled.

She grinned at him, looking suddenly much younger than he knew she was, like a child with a secret that she leaned forward to whisper excitedly between them.

"Have you ever heard of robo-battles?"

/-/-/

Every morning for the next few days Jemma watched him through the monitors, eating, doodling, toying with the robot Pao had given to him, unnerved by the familiarity of his posture and his movements… and the way they kept bringing her back.

That morning she'd arrived in the monitoring room to find him sleeping curled underneath the blanket they'd found him with. She didn't understand why he was clinging to it, keeping it close as if it were some sort of security blanket, why it was so important.

There was a lot she didn't understand about him.

She didn't understand how he could be so real, how his DNA, his teeth, even his fingerprints were a match to the man she'd buried. He couldn't possibly be human and yet there was nothing abnormal in any of his results. It was impossible.

And then there was the slime.

Most of it was mud. It had been composed mainly of rich soil and manure, scattered through with bits of plant matter. Mud from a farmer's field. There had also been high levels of hormones, prostoglandins and protein steroids, as well as nutrients, enzymes and even stem cells. She was assuming that those had come from whatever liquid he'd been covered in prior to his drop off in the field, the liquid he'd told them had been lodged in his throat when he'd woken up, but she didn't understand why it had been all over him. If someone had been attempting to dose him with the hormones, wouldn't it have been easier to do so intravenously? Surely they hadn't expected him to absorb the concoction through his skin?

Those were the questions her head asked, the ones the more rational side of her was urging her to pursue, but as she watched him, breathing softly with his guard completely down, she found that her heart was making her mind wander.

"It sleeps the same way," she murmured, causing Skye to turn another worried glance towards her, chewing on her lip as if she thought a storm was about to break.

Her friend had been there each day when she'd entered, waiting for her in the monitoring room as if she'd known that she was going to end up there.

"What do you mean?" Skye asked carefully.

"He needs his feet covered," she explained, her eyes never leaving him, caught on him as if they'd been snared in a trap, one she feared might be the end of her. "But he leaves his arms out and his hands…" His fingers flexed, a short, twitchy motion, and she tapped the screen. "Like that, they move. Sometimes his whole body does that… it used to wake me up until we redesigned the mattress…"

Skye sighed heavily, clearly getting the wrong impression. "Jemma…" she warned.

"I know," she said impatiently, waving a hand in dismissal. "I know, it's a trick. It's an illusion meant to… I have no idea, but I know it's only a copy." She paused, trying to ignore the way her heartbeat sped up when his fingers twitched again. "A very good one. I just need to figure out how it works… And why."

She caught sight of Skye out of the corner of her eye, looking at her with that all too familiar blend of pity and concern, and she set her jaw stubbornly, trying to ignore it.

"Are you sure you want to be the one to do it?" she questioned.

Gentle, always gentle. People walked on eggshells around her, even Skye, and she hated it. She wasn't fragile, she wasn't going to break if the wind blew the wrong way. She wasn't a china cup she was a thunderstorm, and their trepidation only fed the wind, sparked the lightning.

"I'm not letting someone else mess it up again," she shot back sourly, remembering the incomprehensible results from the autopsy with a scowl.

Skye didn't respond to the accusation, or relent in her careful sympathy. "I'm just worried that you're a little too close to this," she told her.

Close didn't begin to cover it, but she grunted in agreement, arms crossing. "Yes Skye, I am." She whipped her head to face her, blood roaring in her ears. "Those monsters took him away from me. They took everything away from him and then they had the nerve to send this…" She gestured furiously at the screen. "This thing, in his place." She shook her head, thick, sludge-like hatred bubbling in her stomach.. "No. They aren't getting away with this. I'm not letting them get away with this. I'm going to find out what this thing is, and who made it."

Her friend had gone quiet. Listening solemnly.

"And then what are you going to do?" she asked softly. "How is this going to end Jemma? This is a bad road, you know that. Don't you remember what happened last time?"

"I remember a mistake," she seethed. "I remember sparing a man I should have killed."

Skye tilted her head towards the video, her face carved from stone. "And are you going to kill him?"

Jemma's eyes were pulled back to him and she was plagued by an irrational sense of protectiveness.

A voice tickled the back of her mind, nagging her however much she tried to ignore it. 'What if you're wrong?' it whispered. 'What if it is him? What if he's been back all along and all you've done is hurt him?'

"No," she answered immediately. "No, he-... it's as confused as we are. It didn't do this."

'It,' she told herself sternly. 'It isn't him, it isn't your enemy but it isn't your friend either. It isn't anything. Don't you dare feel anything for it.'

"Are you sure about that?" Skye asked, watching him too now, eyes bright with pain.

'No,' Jemma thought. How could she be? She'd been living in a funhouse since the moment he'd arrived, mirrors creating mazes, stairs sliding in opposite directions, making her stumble, fall down. 'I don't know what's happening. How am I supposed to make sense of any of this?'

She remembered the footage from the night they'd received the results. She remembered him awake, curled up into himself to keep in the shudders that shook him as he wept, how alone he'd looked. How relieved he'd been that Pao had given him something to do, been kind to him. Perhaps she should have been kinder too. She understood loneliness and pain too well to turn a blind eye to his.

And she remembered before that, when he had reached out to her in the MRI room, trying to quell her pain. He was just as trapped in all this as she was, or at least it seemed that way. If it was a lie, it was a very good one, but the world was filled with very good liars, especially among spies.

If this was a lie and she allowed herself to believe it, even for a moment, she wasn't sure how she'd ever build herself back up again.

"No, I don't know that for sure." she admitted. Poison crept into her voice and her expression hardened in determination. " And if it did hurt him, if it's tricking us, then yes, I will kill it. If not… well at least we can send it back to wherever it came from."

Her doubt returned, a trapped moth fluttering frantically in her chest, but she grit her teeth and stilled it at once.

Whatever it was, it wasn't him, that was impossible. The same person could not exist twice. This was a copy and the sooner it accepted that, the better. There was a place in the Playground, in the world, in her heart, which had belonged to Fitz and, in a way, it was still his. The imitation sleeping soundly in the prison cell couldn't have it, not ever.

/-/-/

Thanks to notapepper for your help with this making this chapter fanfic ready :D

If you've figured out what that slime was... high five, but it might make it more confusing haha.

Also, from experience, twitchy people do wake you up at night. I twitch too though, so I can't really complain.