Author's Note: You have no idea how many times I wrote, rewrote, and rewrote again on this chapter. It's another necessary chapter that hopefully won't leave you feeling like I've gone way too overboard on fluff. I really tried to work in Gonzalez and his cronies into this chapter, but it became too drawn out or abrupt, so it'll happen next chapter. Personally, I like this one.

Mini rant: most of you are fabulous. Scratch that. 99.9% of you are fabulous. I love your responses almost as much as I like writing this. However - please respect ANY writer for taking their time on something. I realize I said last chapter I was making an effort to WRITE every day. I said nothing about POSTING every day. And if I didn't care about quality, sure, I could do that. But I do, so I don't. Don't use a review to complain about timeliness.

"How did therapy go?" Fitz asked. He carefully handed Ward a bottle of aspirin and water. "You know, before you wound up in the MRI."

Ward huffed, wincing even as he did so. "One of these days, I would like to be able to function as a real human being again. These migraines are getting old. And so are the blackouts."

They were seated in the common area, lights dimmed to barely on so Ward could leave his sunglasses off indoors. Once they'd discovered the photophobia was pretty much omnipresent, Ward had taken to Fitz's habit of being up at night. It was quieter, it was darker, and he didn't have to worry about the constant avoiding of other SHIELD agents. The few times that he actually needed to up and about during daylight hours, Fitz had jokingly gotten him a pair of Stevie Wonder styled sunglasses.

"At least you're finally able to walk normally," Fitz pointed out helpfully. "One step closer to being out of this place?"

Ward smiled grimly as he tossed back the aspirin. "Yeah, Fitz. Where exactly do you think I'm going to be allowed to go? SHIELD isn't going to let me walk away. I don't think they have any plan for me outside of sending me back to the Vault."

"Who says you would ask permission to leave?" Fitz grinned. "I don't remember you asking last time, either."

This time the grin was genuine. "No, I didn't. But I was also already outside of the building about two hundred miles away when I told Coulson that I wasn't coming back."

"Maybe they'll let you do the same thing as Hunter?" Fitz asked hopefully. "He's still technically a mercenary, he's just got a long standing contract with SHIELD."

"Hunter isn't an agent?" Ward asked, somewhat surprised. SHIELD wasn't known for outsourcing, but then, they could ill afford not to after their ranks were decimated with the HYDRA uprising.

Fitz shook his head. "He said he's not big on strings. He's always got the option to leave, even though I doubt he'd ever take it, and SHIELD wouldn't pursue him."

"No one walks away like that," Ward protested.

Fitz shrugged again. "They do when it's Coulson in charge. He's big on the 'live and let live' thing. He didn't even put a contract out on you when you left last time, after he offered the TAHITI option. Actually…did they even tell you what was wrong with you?"

"That's a long list, Fitz. When? When Hunter was asking about Zola?" Ward asked.

Fitz nodded.

Ward didn't immediately answer, clenching and unclenching his jaw as his hands tightened around the now empty glass in his hands. "Yeah," he finally said. "They did. There's, uh, a leftover from when Zola had his hands inside my head. Apparently it was literal this time. They don't really know what it is, but they think it's why I can't remember anything. Guess that explains this." He gestured towards his head where the scar tissue was hidden in his hair.

Fitz didn't say anything. He didn't even look surprised, which was odd because Ward had sure as shit been surprised when they told him he basically had the equivalent of a shock collar in his head.

"You knew," Ward said, stating a fact rather that questioning.

The younger man glanced towards the door, which was shut, and then back at Ward, opening his mouth to speak, but paused. He looked doubtfully back at Ward, or namely, the space between them, before scooting back in the chair.

"You knew, and you know I'm going to be really, really angry when you explain it to me why you never said anything," Ward said flatly.

Fitz took a deep breath, held it for a second, and quickly nodded.

Ward's grip tightened on the glass in his hand. "Are you going to explain or are you just going to let me keep guessing?"

"I don't know if I can," Fitz said, grimacing slightly.

"Try," Ward growled.

"No, you idiot. I really don't know if I can," Fitz snapped. It was so much like the old Fitz that Ward felt a little of his anger dissipate. "I've avoided telling anyone anything about what happened not because I know that they won't understand or because I can't talk about it. I don't know how sensitive that implant is, and the last thing I wanted to do was hurt you more than I already did by accident."

At Ward's confused look, Fitz sighed, and ran a hand through his short curls. "If I tell you this, you have to swear you'll tell me if you feel another headache, or a spike, or anything that says the implant is about to get triggered. And I mean it. If you ignore it, and you wind up seizing on the floor again, I'm never going to bring this up again. Deal?"

Ward nodded mutely, looking curious and worried at the same time.

"And…try not to hate me too much, okay?"

That raised an eyebrow, but Ward still nodded and he took a deep breath.

"I know about it because it was one of the first things that Zola did to you. We weren't friends at the time. I don't even know that you'd remember it even if you didn't have that thing in your head. I didn't think it had anything to do with your memories until we got back to SHIELD and every time you started to recall anything in the lab, you'd blank and…and reset. Like you would just block out everything leading up to them asking you a question and you couldn't remember why you were upset. I thought it was symptoms of PTSD – especially when it happened because of the lights."

Fitz glanced up from where he was mindlessly picking at the cuticles on his fingers. Ward didn't look too angry just yet. And he didn't look too squinty either, like there was another headache coming on.

Maybe the implant only worked when Ward remembered on his own? Being told the events didn't count?

"But then the longer it went and the less other things set you off, I realized it had to do with whatever it is about you that makes you resistant to the Faustus Device. The more you tried to remember, the worse it got – I think Zola was just trying to punish you for eidetic memory, it just happened to work in his favor."

"Then why doesn't it work when I have nightmares about it? Wouldn't I be getting constantly electrocuted in my sleep then?" Ward asked.

Fitz shook his head. "Memories are a different part of your brain than the part that controls dreams. Besides, dreams aren't real, so maybe they aren't recognized by the implant. I don't know for sure. And I don't know if it's more like a conscious effort is what sets it off, or what. Zola designed it, and I was stuck mostly with Magnus."

"So what the hell was the point in making it impossible for me to remember being tortured? That's usually Zola's favorite part," Ward pointed out.

Fitz felt his heartbeat quicken, his mouth going dry and his palms starting to sweat. "He-" his throat constricted and he tried to clear it. "Th-that's not what he was trying to do. Magnus figured out a way to get the Faustus Device to work on you. If he could get you to not try, and stop resisting, he was going to make it so you couldn't tell the difference between suggestion and thought. Magnus…Magnus and I reworked device, and it was-" Fitz suddenly couldn't breathe. His hands shook even as he gripped the arms of the chair, white knuckled.

He could hear Ward slide closer, but he didn't dare look up. He couldn't look the older agent in the face and tell him his part in destroying him. Jesus, he didn't want Coulson offering to rewrite him happier memories, how the hell was he going to forgive him for creating nightmares?

"Fitz?" Ward asked quietly. "It's okay, just breathe-"

"I didn't want to hurt you," Fitz blurted out. He could hear his own teeth chattering even though he wasn't cold. "I didn't want to, and I refused. I didn't even like you, but I couldn't, I couldn't do what they wanted. But then they made it worse, and you were going to die and I couldn't…I couldn't let that happen. Help us hurt him or we'll hurt him worse…" He gulped in air like he was drowning, and he fought the urge to claw at the loose neck of his shirt.

"Fitz-" Ward tried again, but it was like a dam had broken loose.

"Every time I failed, they hurt you, every time I said no, they hurt you, and fucking Christ, I was watching you die. I tried…I tried to tell myself that being alive was better than being dead, and it wouldn't matter how, but then…then I saw what they did to you. What I was helping them do and I couldn't do it anymore. If we died, they were just going to find someone else to replace us. It was never going to be over unless…I…used the Device on…you," Fitz's breathe was coming so fast and sharp he could barely get out the last sentence.

"Fitz," Ward repeated, and this time, he put a cautious hand on Fitz's bouncing leg. "Fitz, open your eyes."

Fitz hadn't even realized he'd squeezed them shut. They popped open in surprise, and Ward was kneeling carefully on the floor next to the chair, one hand on his knee, smiling gently back at him.

"There – just breathe. What did I tell you at the beginning of all this?" Ward asked quietly.

"That I take things too personally," Fitz answered, surprised he even remembered that conversation when he'd first run into Ward.

Ward shook his head. "No. After that. Everyone breaks, Fitz. That's the point of it. HYDRA has had decades to perfect it. I don't blame you for giving in, I can't. And you're the reason we're here right now, alive and trying to find our way back to normal."

"But what's your normal, Ward?" Fitz whispered.

Ward froze, looking stricken. And Fitz knew it suddenly clicked why Fitz had been so desperate not to tell him details, why he was so afraid that Ward would remember more than just what Zola did, or what Fitz helped him destroy.

Ward didn't have a normal. His whole life, everyone he'd ever known had tried to tell him who he was, what he was supposed to do, and none of it was pleasant. He'd only just started to figure out for himself what kind of a person he really was – was he a good man in spite of what he'd done, and what had been done to him? Or was he a bad one, because of everything?

"If you remember, if – if you go back to what you were…" Fitz bit his lip. "If you go back to how it used to be, they'll kill you. A-and I can't stand that. Because I'm hoping the real you is the one I saw back there. The one that even when you were in so much pain, you tried to protect me. The one who stood between me and the darkness because you thought you were already lost to it. I don't want to believe that version of you doesn't exist anymore, but I'm terrified that it only existed because of who you thought I was…"

Ward didn't answer, his dark eyes unreadable at the information Fitz just dropped on him. His grip was painfully tight on Fitz's knee, but he didn't say anything. Maybe it's what he deserved. He felt like he deserved so much worse.

"You were the reason I let them in, weren't you," Ward said finally. "You became the trigger." He paused, searching Fitz's face. For what, Fitz didn't know. "Is that why I keep remembering Thomas being there?"

Fitz was actually dumbfounded that Ward even remembered that, but it made sense that wasn't a trigger for the implant. They couldn't fry his brain every time he thought of Fitz as Thomas because that's what they'd been training him to do.

"They made me pretend," Fitz admitted quietly, unable to meet Ward's gaze. "At first I hated it. I felt like I was betraying your only happy memory. But then…I remembered what it was like when I still thought of you as my older brother…an as awful as it sounds, and as awful as I felt, I wanted that part of you back in any form I could."

"Fitz, look at me."

He couldn't. And Ward didn't try to make him.

"Fitz, you don't have to worry about me having to think of you as Thomas," Ward said, all traces of anger gone. "You're always going to be my little brother. I'm never going to do anything to hurt you, okay? We've moved past it, right?"

Fitz wanted that to be true more than anything.

"Why are you so afraid that if I remember everything, that won't be true?" Ward asked, voice still quiet, soothing.

Fitz was suddenly horribly reminded of Magnus, so much so that he physically recoiled, shoving back in his seat away from Ward who looked almost offended. "It's not you I'm worried about," Fitz snapped. "I'm worried about the others."

Specifically, Gonzalez. Weaver. Or any other Garrett, Zola, or Magnus in the world. In his more paranoid moments, he was even worried about what would happen if Coulson found out the true extent of his part in Ward's conditioning. If they wanted a weapon, they would have it. HYDRA's most prized agent, and unwavering loyalty.

"The others? Why? What do they have to do with it?" Ward asked, frowning.

SHIELD was about control. Containment. Classification and elimination. At some point, they'd gone from a shield to a sword, and Fitz could feel it about to come down on the back of his neck.

"They made you into a gun," Fitz said. "They wanted you as a weapon. One that wouldn't question, only obey. And they succeeded. Except they weren't the ones who could pull the trigger."

Fitz finally made himself look up, forced himself to meet Ward's gaze so he could see the truth in what he said, and fought the urge to physically brace himself for the reaction. "But I could. And I did."

Author's Note: So hopefully worth the wait? I realize half the challenge is getting the characters to discover or bring up things the readers already know without it sounding like I'm beating a dead horse. Remarkably more difficult than I originally would've thought.

Many have made the request of Fitz having another freak out and the end result being more than just hurt feelings or emotional damage. If someone would like to give me inspiration, I would love to do it, but I'm drawing a blank. I kind of want him to do it to Ward, because that would be terrible, and I am a terrible person...

Thoughts? Criticism? Tell me in a review or PM (by the way, I love that a few people have stopped mid story to tell me what a horrible person I am - makes me feel all warm and fuzzy).