Author's note: This chapter isn't as long as the previous updates. It was actually going to be about three times as long as what I'm posting, but I decided to break it up so I could have a decent gap between scenes. I feel like a little bit of it is repetitive to a reader, but it's also simply the way the characters react. Now that the season has started up again, I think I might be slightly better with updating, but I'm also back in school. It's hard to go back and forth from writing science papers on the behavior of animals to psychological torture of fictional characters, sooo...I don't think I'm going to be as fast as I was when I had nothing to do but work on this while I was AT work. So, if any of you still read this, let me know how I did! Read and review! Special thanks to Spark17 and TheCockyUndead for helping out with this.
"What do you mean, you did?" Ward growled. There was a flicker of something in his dark eyes, something that Fitz hadn't seen for months. Anger. Rage. Betrayal.
"I-I panicked," Fitz tried to explain.
"What do you mean, you used me?" Ward snarled, his hand gripping Fitz's wrist with crushing force.
"I t-tried the only t-thing I could think of!" Fitz protested, prying at Ward's fingers, but he only tightened them further, digging his nails into Fitz's skin. He felt his face flush with the return of his stutter, something that hadn't been a problem since the early days of their imprisonment.
"You said they wanted a weapon, one that obeyed without orders," Ward pushed, voice oddly steady compared to the anger Fitz could see in every rigid muscle. "How did we escape, Fitz?"
"We did-didn't," Fitz said, trying to force himself not to flinch away, not to look guiltier than he already felt.
"They didn't find us in a cell, Fitz. We had to escape from somewhere. Why do I have memories of Thomas instead of you?"
Fitz could feel his heart in his throat as he tried to answer. He hadn't been the focus of Ward's rage before, and he'd seen what happened to the others who found themselves there. "You're hurting me."
Ward's grip only tightened in response. "That's the idea. I'll break it if you don't tell me soon. What did you mean by you pulled the trigger?"
Fitz glared balefully back, trying not to rise to Ward's anger. He tried to tell himself that this was what he expected, what he couldn't blame Ward for. He'd done the same thing as everyone else that he'd ever trusted, and had used him for his own purpose. It shouldn't matter that it was the only thing that saved them. That saved Ward from having a very, very different puppet master.
"I didn't think we would live," Fitz snarled. "I thought we were going to die. I didn't expect you to listen to me. I didn't think it would work. Nothing else had. But I decided I would rather die than help them, and if that meant taking you with me, then so be it. Did I guess wrong when I thought you would prefer to be dead than a slave?"
"It doesn't matter if you were right or wrong, the choice wasn't yours to make!" Ward snapped. "If it was a simple matter of dying free then why didn't you just shoot me as soon as you could get a gun?"
"What do you think I was trying to do when SHIELD found us?" Fitz shouted back. "I'm sorry killing you wasn't the first order of business, but I meant it when I said I would see you dead before you were back in HYDRA's hands!"
"Does that promise still hold true if you're the puppeteer?" Ward sneered. The eerie calm from before was rapidly evaporating, and Fitz could feel Ward's hand literally shaking with rage. "Or was that your end game all along? Were you really there by accident? Were you really blackmailed into helping them perfect the Faustus Device?"
Fitz wrenched his hand free of Ward's grasp, spinning away from him before angrily turning back, shoving the taller agent hard. The weaker leg wavered slightly as Ward stumbled back, but Ward remained standing. "I don't want to fight with you!"
"Then tell me not to!" Ward yelled. "That's what you did, isn't it? That's what you can do?"
"Have I ever told you to do anything?" Fitz protested. "Have I ever asked anything of you?"
"I don't know because I can't remember," Ward said, gesturing angrily to the old scars. "Thanks to you."
Fitz could feel the familiar burn in the back of his eyes, and he swiped a sleeve angrily across his face. He was not going to wind up crying like a little girl.
"All I wanted was for you to be real," Fitz said, and felt the blush creep back across his face. "I just wanted you to be real. I wanted to keep you as long as I could, because…because last time you pretended to be good long enough that you actually started to believe it yourself. But…" Fitz stumbled, looking for the words he needed.
"But what?" Ward growled.
"You've never done well as a good guy," Fitz said quietly. "I wanted you to have a chance this time. What if…what if when it wore off, you weren't the same anymore? What if you didn't remember any of it?"
"But I don't fucking remember a thing!" Ward shouted. "It's just a blank!"
"You trusted me," Fitz blurted out. "You trusted me, and you talked to me, and I wanted to keep hating you. I couldn't imagine any scenario where I would ever forgive you for what you did to me." Fitz could hear his voice cracking, but he didn't care. He'd kept everything bottled up for months and now that he'd started, he couldn't stop. "You tried to kill me, Ward. I don't care how you try to rationalize it, but it still comes down to the fact that when you had a chance to do something good, to do something right, you still chose to do something wrong. I wanted to hate you forever, because I couldn't understand. We were friends before. And then, in the middle of all that hate, all that…t-that suffering…I met the real you. And it wasn't some…some sociopathic serial killer. It was the person I was friends with before. And I found out I was willing to terrible things to try and save that part of you." Fitz paused just long enough to scrub a sleeve over his face. "C-can you blame me for wanting to keep it?"
Ward turned his back, refusing to look Fitz in the face anymore. He kept one hand over his mouth as he angrily swiped the other through his hair. "You're acting like I'm two different people," he finally said, pulling his hand away from his face, only to clench it white knuckled at his side.
Ward was angry. Less for the reasons Fitz obviously thought he was, but that familiar well of rage and anger kept threatening to bubble up. Part of the reason why he'd put a sudden distance between the two of them was so he wouldn't punch Fitz in the face like a part of him really, really wanted to.
It wasn't so much that Fitz had hidden information. Ward had been a spy long enough to know the value of secrets and tactically, he could rationalize Fitz's decision. The kid took the term 'friends close and enemies closer' to an all new level. Realistically, Fitz didn't have much in the way of options. Assuming the younger agent meant it when he said he was trying to help, and misguided as Ward thought it was, it seemed to be the truth. If Fitz told anyone, even Hunter or Coulson, there was no guarantee that someone else wouldn't find out. There wasn't even much of an assurance that the Director himself wouldn't do something about it, and no scenario that Ward could imagine ended with Ward and Fitz outside of vault cells and Ward free of the controller.
It was self-preservation that kept Fitz silent, and Ward could hardly fault him for that.
What he could find fault with was that Fitz still seemed to think of him as two separate people. One that deserved saving, and one that didn't. And the one that didn't still needed to have a muzzle on it. Whether Fitz realized it or not, he'd effectively given Ward his own version of a conscience – one that if push came to shove, Ward wouldn't be able to ignore.
And that, to him, was no different than Coulson's offer of T.A.H.I.T.I, or Zola's promise of mind control.
"Am I wrong?" Fitz snapped back.
Ward's mouth twitched in a familiar halted smirk, but it was gone so fast Fitz barely noticed. "Only in every way that matters."
He grabbed a forgotten knife from the table behind him, probably left over from the last time someone actually sat down for food.
"What are you doing?" Fitz asked warily, eyes drifting to the knife.
"You said you'd never use the controller," Ward said, carelessly flipping the knife end over end in his open palm. "That you would never do that to me."
Fitz shook his head, taking a step back.
"Not even to save yourself?" Ward asked mildly. He paused his idle tossing, hilt firmly in his hand. He could hit Fitz easily from here, and the engineer knew it.
Fitz's eyes widened fractionally, but otherwise didn't move, remaining stoically in place.
"Hmm," he mused, quietly assessing Fitz's stance. Not really afraid, but not because he intended to tell Ward to stop – because the kid probably carried enough guilt with him to think he deserved it. "Maybe you wouldn't use it to save yourself."
He clenched his hand tighter, white knuckled grip across the hilt. "How about saving me from myself?"
Before Fitz could say anything, Ward stabbed the knife's point into his wrist, just below the start of his old scars, dragging it down towards his elbow.
"Ward, stop!" Fitz cried out, without thinking.
And Ward did.
He froze in place, knife tip still buried in his arm as bright red blood bubbled up from the newly torn veins. He couldn't move even if he wanted to, not to move the knife, or to stop the well of blood dripping down his arm and onto the floor.
He couldn't even look up to see Fitz's face as he heard him clap both hands over his mouth in horror.
"Shit! I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" Fitz cursed, and Ward could hear him scramble forwards.
A towel pressed itself against the open wound, and Fitz's cautious fingers pulled away the knife, tossing it behind Ward where it landed with a clatter on the table.
"I didn't mean to," Fitz said, pressing the rapidly soaking towel even tighter around the cut. "Why did you have to do that?"
Ward had only managed two or three inches before Fitz stopped him, just like Ward knew he would.
"To prove a point," Ward answered. That the road to Hell was paved with good intentions.
And to find out just how tight Fitz held the leash.
"And what point was that, Mr. Ward?"
They both started at the new voice, heads simultaneously snapping towards the source.
In the doorway, hand posed on the frame like he was about to knock, was Gonzalez.
The man had never concerned Ward before. They in fact had almost no interaction at all, save for the occasional updates brought to him by Hunter. Gonzalez apparently didn't think either of them were worthy of interest.
By the look on his face now, though, with that crafty sort of smile almost hidden by his moustache, Ward knew he'd seen enough to change his mind. They were definitely interesting now.
And Ward knew what it was like to be found interesting by men in power.
So I figured out how to get Gonzalez back into this. And I figured out a freak out for Fitz for the next chapter. Part of the delay with this is I finally wound up writing it backwards. I knew where I wanted to be when I finished, I just didn't know how to get there. And maybe some small part of me really didn't want to destroy the friendship between Ward and Fitz that I had been building since chapter three. I think I actually might wind up making a sequel to this, or this thing is going to be a monster length. Thoughts? Opinions? Like the turn it took? I've made a horrible mistake? Let me know if a review! (Or PM - cause I like talking to you guys).