Chapter Text
Epilogue
“Mum…Dad…do you really need to do all of this?”, whined the groom, his expression of annoyance quickly turning to one of surprise and awe as his father came forward with a box.
“Dad… is that, you know, the brooch? The same one that was passed down over the years?”, he asked, his eyes widening in recognition as his father opened the box and took out the brooch.
“Hold still, Robbie.”, Leo said with a smile as he carefully pinned the fly plaid onto his oldest son’s shoulder and adjusted the large silver brooch with the giant emerald on it.
“I’m almost done here…”, Jemma murmured as she frantically brushed off the lint from their son’s jacket.
Leo and Jemma stepped back and looked at their oldest son.
Robert had grown up to become the spitting image of Leo aside from his auburn hair and brown eyes. He had inherited those physical traits from his mother. He and Willow were geniuses just like Leo and Jemma, only they were mainly musically talented instead of scholastically talented.
Leo and Jemma’s other three children were named Iain, Elizabeth, and Johanna, respectively.
Needless to say, Leo and Jemma’s plans for not having any more children after the twins had been shot to hell when they realized how quickly the twins were growing up. Jemma had worked out a lot after the twins were born so she was in top shape and exercised throughout her other three pregnancies, even giving birth quicker and without as much pain. The receptionist at the hospital that first time had been correct, the first birth was the most difficult one, after that, it got relatively easier.
Robert looked at himself once more in the mirror before turning back to look at his parents.
“Well? How do I look?”, he asked.
Jemma rushed forward and embraced her son.
“You look just like your father did when we got married. Just as handsome… Abigail is very lucky…”
Jemma turned to Leo and smiled, creases forming near the corners of her eyes as she adjusted her glasses.
Jemma had aged gracefully; her auburn hair was now streaked with silver, laugh lines had formed from years of smiling, and she had a few scars on her body from a few lab accidents and surgeries. Leo had also aged; his hair was totally silver but it still formed those unruly curls, he also had his fair share of wrinkles and scars from accidents and his few surgeries, but his posture was still straight and his hands could still work wonders on complex machinery despite the onset of arthritis.
Jemma and Leo would both be turning sixty-one this year and they had just celebrated thirty years of marriage.
But today was Robert’s wedding day and in a little less than an hour, Leo and Jemma would welcome Abigail Albright into their family.
Leo hugged his oldest son.
“I wish that Grandmamma Fitz, Gran and Grandpa Simmons, and Uncle Phil and Aunt Mel could’ve seen this…”, Robert murmured quietly.
Both Leo’s mum and Jemma’s parents had passed away over the years as well as Phil and Melinda Coulson (who were married in a D.C. courthouse two weeks before Skye and Ward were married). Their deaths had been difficult to bear, but Leo knew that none of them would’ve wanted their memories to be marred by feelings of sadness or grief, and that was what helped him get through the dark days after they passed on.
He knew his mum was happy to finally be reunited with his dad and he knew that Jemma’s parents were happy to be able to always watch over them from heaven. He also knew that Phil and Melinda were glad to be able to finally rest in peace, goodness knows they deserved it after the busy and high-risk lives they led.
“They would’ve loved to see you…”, came a voice from the doorway.
Skye and Grant Ward entered the room with smiles on their faces and open arms, closely followed by Antoine and his wife Christine.
They exchanged their congratulations and then Grant, Antoine, and Skye started telling Robert about Leo and Jemma’s wedding day.
Willow poked her head in the door a little while later.
“Hate to break up the family reunion, but my brother here has to go get married.”, she said with a smile that was identical to Robert's.
Willow had grown into a beautiful young woman who was built along the same lines as Jemma but had Leo’s blue eyes and a mane of honey colored curls. She was currently single but had been engaged at one point (Leo hadn’t liked the man at all) but her fiancé broke it off with her because he wasn’t faithful. Poor Willow was heartbroken for ages and had actually moved back in with Leo and Jemma because she and her ex fiancé decided to move into his flat and when things went sour between them, Willow took her stuff and moved. Willow was now living in her own flat with her two cats and focusing on her work.
Robert had made Willow his “Best Woman” because she was his twin sister and his best friend, but Willow had played along and wore a black sheath dress with a length of the Fitz tartan pinned to one shoulder, that way she would at least look uniform with the rest of the wedding party.
Leo and Jemma took their places in the church after letting Robert and Willow go off to the groom’s lounge with Iain as Elizabeth and Johanna came out with the bridal party.
They took their seats next to Skye and Grant and all their kids, both adopted and biological, and waited for the ceremony to begin.
Leo glanced at Jemma during the ceremony and she sniffled a little as Robert and Abigail had their hands fastened together, said their vows, exchanged their rings, and said their “I do’s”.
Leo clutched his wife’s hand as the minister pronounced Robert and Abigail husband and wife and in seconds, he saw the events of Robert’s life go by, from the moment he came into the world until now.
Suddenly, Leo was filled with sadness because he was no longer the young man he once was. His children had all grown up and had lives of their own. Their youngest daughter had just celebrated her twenty second birthday a few weeks ago and moved her possessions out of the house and into the new flat that she shared with her best friend.
Jemma was still there to support him as always, but he worried for her a lot (even more than he had before), especially because she had been in the hospital for a hip replacement and there had been a complication during the procedure which caused her heart to stop. It was by a stroke of luck that the doctors were able to quickly revive her, but the fact that she had come so close to leaving him was enough to shake him to his core. Jemma was no longer the young woman that she once was and he had to accept that. Even if his dying day was a few decades down the road, he still had to face the fact that he had lived a long and full life. All he could hope for was that the rest of his days would be spent with Jemma by his side, just like she had been for the past forty-something years.
He looked at his wife and realized that if it hadn’t been for the woman sitting beside him today, his Jemma, he wouldn’t have made it this far.
He tried to imagine where he would be today if he hadn’t run into her at the Academy orientation, if they hadn’t become friends in front of that fountain on that warm day in late summer in 2002.
He couldn’t.
Jemma was such an important part of him that now, just like in that pod where they were trapped below 90ft of water, he couldn’t live if she didn’t.
He may not have had the courage to tell her then, but he certainly did now, just as he had for the past thirty four years; ever since he woke up from that coma.
He leaned over and whispered, “I love you.”, into Jemma’s ear and watched her face light up with that timeless smile of hers and felt the warmth of her very soul overflowing as she whispered, “I love you too.”
They left the chapel and walked up the hill to the reception, hand in hand with smiles on their faces and love in their hearts.
Leo pressed a kiss to Jemma’s forehead and silently thanked the powers that be for giving him the life he had.
He promised her that he would spend eternity by her side.
And Leo Fitz-Simmons has always been a man of his word.
“Jemma, does it feel like the time has flown by?”, he asked softly.
“What do you mean?”, she asked.
“Sometimes it feels like it was only yesterday that I met you and it feels like I’ve watched my life go by in a haze.”
“It does feel like that sometimes…”, she began but her voice faded away before she could finish.
Then Leo noticed the colors around him begin to bleed together and become a blur.
Jemma kept talking but he couldn’t hear her and she remained normal while the world around him melted away. He vaguely became aware of a faint beeping that grew in volume as if it was coming from the back of his mind and moving towards the front with every passing second.
He tried to call out to her for help but no words came out of his mouth.
Then the colors faded into bright, blinding white.
Was this what death felt like?
Leo focused on Jemma as the beeping grew louder and tried to hold onto her and call her name in vain as she too faded to white. The last he saw of her was her ageless smile before she was gone.
The pain was real and he felt it in his chest, his head, and, for some strange reason, his left arm.
Soon the only things he had to keep him company was the steady beep that wouldn’t fade, the pain in his body, and the blinding white light that he couldn’t block out, even if he closed his eyes.
As suddenly as the blinding white light and the beeping started, those things began to fade away. The pain was reduced to a dull ache.
A wave of warmth spread through his body and he became aware that he was laying down.
The beeping grew softer and the whiteness became black.
He began to be able to feel his body again and that meant that he had the power to move, and if he had the power to move, that meant he could open his eyes and talk.
He tried to open his eyelids them but they must’ve weighed several tons each and something was in his throat and keeping him from speaking so he decided to settle for wiggling his fingers and toes.
Perhaps the sharp pain of his arthritis would prove that he was still alive.
Before he could wiggle them, he heard something new through the fog that was congesting his head and muffling the beeping noise.
His heart skipped a beat when he heard Melinda Coulson’s voice speaking softly through the haze, breaking through quickly.
But Melinda had been dead for nearly six years… so surely he was dead too…
Her voice became stronger and he could make out the words she was saying.
“…You just need to come back… I know I’m not one for emotion and that you still have some mixed feelings about me… after all, I did try to shoot you with the ICER… I’d be cautious too… but you need to wake up because I feel like this is my fault… I shouldn’t have sent you and Simmons to spy on the BUS without backup… Simmons is being very strong right now… I sent her to her room to eat, shower, and get some much-needed rest… She hasn’t left your side since you’ve been here… Poor girl, the last three weeks have been nothing but a waking nightmare for her…”, Melinda paused and let out a rare, sarcastic laugh, “I know how hard it is to watch from a distance as your best friend turns into the one you love and then watch as someone takes your place… that’s how it was for me when Coulson and Audrey were dating… I recognized jealousy in your actions every time you were around Tripp…”
“Jealousy?”, he thought to himself, “Why would I be jealous of Tripp? He and his wife have four amazing kids and Jemma and I are the godparents of two of them. Wait a second... Audrey Nathan? She was that cellist from Portland, the one we saved from Blackout… Coulson never mentioned her again after that except to say that he was moving on from her and that was years ago. Melinda knew that Jemma and I were married and had hyphenated our names...it's been years since she called Jemma by her maiden name alone...”
“But you need to wake up… Simmons… no, Jemma needs you to wake up… I know how you feel about her… I’ve known since she was infected with that Chitauri virus… she feels the same way about you which is why she needs you to wake up and be okay…”
He heard Melinda sigh and felt her hand squeeze his hand gently before her hand moved away.
“We all need you to wake up and be okay…”
He heard the sound of a water bottle being opened and then heard Melinda drinking from it before she was silent.
Now was the time to try to move his fingers and toes.
He focused all his power onto his fingers and toes and felt them move without a hint of the arthritis.
He heard the beeping pick up speed and he heard Melinda shift.
“Fitz? Can you hear me?”, she asked.
“Yes! I can hear you!”, he wanted to shout.
He wiggled his fingers again and this time the action was easier. His toes were moving too.
“Alright…now let’s try opening my eyes again…”, he thought and focused all his power on his eyelids, forcing them open and then screwing them shut against the garish bright lights, only catching a quick glimpse of a much younger (and very much alive) Melinda Coulson.
“Oh my God…”, Melinda murmured in amazement before he heard her run out of the room and yell for a nurse.
“Jesus… they have a call button for a reason…”, he cringed internally as the loud yell made his head hurt.
He heard the squeak of shoes on linoleum and there were suddenly the voices of many people speaking rapidly over one another, fighting to be heard, their voices growing in a maddening crescendo. He was too occupied with the splitting headache he had to realize that he was being triaged and only realized that he was being touched when he went to sit up and two pairs of hands pushed him back onto the mattress gently, and two voices instructed him to relax and remain still.
He obeyed and felt like he was going to be sick when he felt whatever was lodged in his throat being removed.
“That must have been a ventilator…”, he thought as he gagged and coughed, sending pain shooting through his ribs.
The people placed a nasal cannula in his nostrils and he inhaled deeply before coughing again because his throat was drier than the desert.
“Good, he’s breathing…”, one voice said.
“Blood pressure is stabilizing…”, came another.
“Prepping a new IV drip….”, stated another.
“For fuck’s sake can you get a water bottle for him or something, he’s probably parched! He’s gonna re-injure his ribs at this rate!”, Melinda yelled.
The beeping grew rapid, matching his heartbeat.
He was surprised to hear the usually calm and collected agent raise her voice and curse.
Soon he felt a straw at his lips and took slow sips of the cool water, feeling instant relief as the liquid ended his coughing spell.
The voices around him faded and people stopped prodding him and he heard people leave the room gradually before he heard three pairs of feet skid to a stop.
“May, what’s going on?”, Skye asked and he heard how young she was.
“Since when does anyone call Melinda by her maiden name? We all started calling her Mel shortly before Jemma and I got married…”, he thought.
He remembered that he was married to Jemma and then his left thumb moved to touch his left ring finger and the beeping picked up in tempo when he felt a cast on his left arm and then the beeping raced faster when he found that there wasn’t a wedding band on his ring finger.
Was nothing the way he remembered it being?
“His pulse is increasing…”, Tripp said, “Fitz, man, you have to calm down or those nurses will come back and give you some really strong pain meds to knock you out again…”
“Tripp! He sounds so young…”
Leo focused on steadying his breathing and the beeping slowed.
“May, did he open his eyes?”, Phil asked.
“Okay, that’s definitely not right… they’re both dead!! Phil wouldn’t call his own wife, alive or not, by her maiden name…”
“Yes… Is Simmons--”, Melinda began before she stopped abruptly and Leo heard someone sprinting at full speed down the corridor and skidding to a stop in the room.
“I came…as fast as… I could…”, came the familiar sound of Jemma’s breathless voice, “Is he…okay?”
Leo’s heart soared when he heard his wife ask about him.
He slowly opened his eyes, squinting in the bright light until it was shielded by Jemma’s hand.
Even with the cannula, he could smell her herbal shampoo, something she hadn’t had in years since the company that made it went bankrupt.
“How can she smell like that when the company making it has been out of business for twenty years?”, he wondered.
He was getting very worried now.
He opened his eyes the rest of the way and came face-to-face with a much younger version of Jemma.
He gasped and flinched away in shock before his eyes adjusted and looked around at younger versions of Skye, Antoine, Phil, and Mel.
He looked back at Jemma before testing out his voice.
“Jemma?”, he whispered hoarsely before he coughed and she offered him his water and he sipped it carefully, his eyes darting around, lingering on his left hand and noticing the absence of a silver wedding band, wrinkles, scars, and years of calluses.
Nobody had wedding bands, yet all of them were supposed to be married.
“I’m supposed to be at my son’s wedding reception!”, he screamed internally.
“Take it easy Fitz…”, Jemma murmured, pushing an auburn lock of hair away from her face.
“Where am I?”, he rasped.
The group shared a look and Jemma replied, taking a seat, “You’re at a secret SHIELD base called the Playground…”
Leo looked at Mel and Phil.
“You mean I’m not dead?”, he asked, his voice gaining a little more power.
He sounded so young.
“No…”, Skye replied, “Why do you ask?”
“Well, nothing is as I remember it…”, he began, “Where’s Grant?”
Skye’s eyes welled up and she blinked the tears away quickly, her features hardening and she responded coldly.
“Grant Ward is in prison because he betrayed us all and almost killed you and Simmons…”, she stated before getting up and leaving the room.
“Grant’s in prison? For betraying us? There must be some mistake…he got out of prison for the Hydra mess in January of 2015...”
“Fitz… do you know what year it is?”, Phil asked.
“Well I woke up in 2014…”, he began.
Mel looked at Phil and then back at Leo and replied, “That’s the year and all, but why the usage of past tense? You’re waking up now… it is 2014…”
Leo looked at Jemma for some sign of truth in Mel’s words and she nodded.
“How old am I?”, He asked, as if to get some concept of time.
“You’re twenty-six years old.”, she replied with a worried tone in her voice.
“I know I was born on December 29th, 1987... I know where the Playground is…But I don’t understand…”, He replied.
“What don’t you understand?”, Jemma asked.
“Well, I don’t know how much sense this’ll make to the rest of you, but to me, 2014 was thirty-four years in the past…”, He replied, “I’m not twenty-six… I’m sixty… It’s supposed to be May 22nd, 2048 and I’m supposed to be at a wedding reception… I’ve already woken up thirty-four years ago and lived for thirty-four years… I’ve got gray hair and I’m old and I have arthritis in my hands... I’ve lived…”
He looked around and knew that he probably sounded insane by the looks that his friends were giving him.
“May I speak in private with Jemma?”, he asked after a tense beat of silence and Tripp, Phil and Mel left the room.
“Fitz, what do you mean when you say that you’ve lived for thirty-four years?”, she asked, “You’ve only been comatose for three weeks…”
Realization dawned on him and his heart shattered as he realized that he had only dreamed about living.
None of it had been real.
He never woke up to see Jemma lying beside him in that hospital bed. He never kissed her on the lips. He never proposed to her. He never married her or made love to her in that honeymoon suite on their wedding night at Dunrobin castle.
The house in Edinburgh was a product of his imagination.
He didn’t have five children with Jemma.
At least his mum was still alive.
The thing that hurt the most was knowing that Robert, Willow, Iain, Elizabeth, and Johanna weren’t real.
He never held his babies or watched them grow up.
Jemma had never been pregnant.
It was painful to think about and he didn’t even realize that he was crying as he thought about his whole life as a dream.
Jemma (the real Jemma) used a tissue to wipe his tears away.
“I dreamed it all up…”, he admitted, “I dreamed up thirty-four years of my own life…”
Leo shook his head and laughed in spite of himself.
“I should’ve known something wasn’t right from the off… there’s no way that life could ever be that good to someone…”
“This coma dream might have been a side effect of the pain medicine we gave you so your broken ribs wouldn’t hurt so much…”, Jemma took his hand and said, “And it felt like years when it was only a few weeks because that’s how dreams work. It’s like that one time at the Academy when I fell asleep over my notes and woke up a half hour later in full panic mode because I thought I was going to be late to class… Since you’ve accepted the fact that you were dreaming so well, I suppose we should talk about it then… to help you get over it…”
“Okay…”, he took a sip of his water and cleared his throat, “I s'pose that's for the best. I mean, you’re a big part of my dream after all…”
Jemma smiled and blushed, “I am?”
Leo nodded, “Yes, you are…”
“How big?”, she asked.
He thought about how to tell her just how big her part was.
“You were the first thing I saw when the dream began and the last thing I saw when it ended.”, he replied before meeting her gaze, “That’s how big…”
“In the dream, what am I? Am I your friend or something more?”, she asked, holding his hand.
He spoke boldly, holding nothing back.
“In the dream, you’re my best friend, my companion, my partner, the love of my life, my girlfriend, my fiancée, my wife, a daughter in law to my mum, the mother of my children, godmother and aunt to Skye and Grant’s kids, godmother to two of Tripp and his wife’s kids, aunt to the rest of them, my equal in our job at SHIELD, and a mother in law to our oldest son’s wife…”, he paused and looked at her surprised face.
“I never thought…”, she began and looked down, blushing profusely, before looking back at Leo and smiling widely before asking, “In your dream, we were married? How many children did I—did we—have?”
“Five.”, he replied easily.
She gasped and smiled, “Really?”.
He nodded fearlessly.
“What are their names?”, she asked, tears welling up in her eyes as her thumb caressed his hand.
“Their names are, in the order of their births: Robert Phillip, Willow Marie, Iain Alexander, Elizabeth Antoinette, and Johanna Helen. You were only pregnant four times… care to guess which two are twins?”, he asked and she smiled, blinking as a few happy tears trailed down her cheeks.
“Leo…”, she murmured and pressed her lips to the back of his hand, “I’m so relieved that you’re here and you’re alive…”, she inhaled sharply and continued, “If you hadn’t made it… I don’t know what I would have done…”
She broke down and cried, clutching his hand for dear life.
Leo soothed her by gently reminding her that he was alive and here.
“Jemma, I should’ve told you sooner about my feelings for you… I shouldn’t have waited until I felt for sure that I was going to die to show you how I felt about you… I can be a real coward sometimes…”, he said, but Jemma cut him off as she stood up and leaned over the bed.
In an instant, her lips were on his and although Leo’s mind told him that this wasn’t the first time she had ever kissed him on the lips, that she had done this loads of times in his dream, his heart and body knew that this was the first time she had actually kissed him.
He kissed her back, hoping that the emotion he exuded through the kiss would show her how much he loved her.
Jemma broke off the kiss first and smiled, her eyes even warmer in reality than in the dream.
Leo knew that he would have to give up comparing the dream to reality, no matter how hard it might be.
Hell, he had the courage to tell Jemma the truth about his feelings, all he needed now was the strength to let the dream go.
He opened his mouth to tell her that he loved her but Jemma beat him to it.
“I love you, Leo… do me a favor and never even so much as think about becoming a martyr so that I can live because I never want to have to wake up by your bedside with you in a coma after a night terror and have to be sedated because my half-conscious mind thought you were dead…”
He nodded and tried to remember something romantic he said to dream Jemma, but found that the dream was fading away in some spots as they tend to do, so he focused on Jemma, the real Jemma, and smiled instead. It would take some time to get used to having her around him like this as more than a friend, especially now that all of this was really happening and wasn’t just some side effect of a strong pain medicine.
“I love you too…”, he said and cupped Jemma’s jaw, tipping her head ever so slightly so that he could kiss her again.
Soon the two of them were sitting next to each other in Leo’s hospital bed, watching Doctor Who, and whispering their I love you’s in between kisses.
As time went on and Leo and Jemma’s relationship grew stronger, the dream faded to a shadow and there became certain parts he forgot altogether, but the dream didn’t matter that much to Leo anymore.
He had Jemma and she was what made his life worth living.
If Leo had to condense his life after the coma into three simple words, he wouldn’t hesitate to reply,
“Living the dream.”
~The End ~
Or is it....