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You don’t mean to zone out completely, but you do. The months float by but you don’t register them because it’s these kinds of things you’ve stopped caring about. Who cares what month it is when you’re stuck on a floating space station that’s drifting around somewhere you don’t know. You’ve stopped caring about that too. You could be on the moon or inside the sun and you’re not sure you could muster up the energy to give a crap about it. It’s too hard. You’ve stopped caring about things being hard or easy anymore. Everything’s hard now.
Months go by and you’re back on earth. You aren’t entirely sure how or why but you register touching down on a field in Houston and being ushered through some stark white buildings and then into big, bulky cars and blacked out windows and then finally, finally, a base that looks so much like the one you left but yet not at all. No rubble, no scorch marks, no debris, no loose pillars and chunks of concrete and sparking wires. It’s all fixed up. Sections have been rebuilt, walls repainted and wiring fixed. It’s been redecorated so it’s the same as before; everything’s been put back to its original place, painted its original colour. It looks the same. It looks good.
But it’s not. The cracks are still there, underneath the mask. Nothing’s been fixed at all.
You won’t lie. The comforting familiarity of your room is nice and you sink into the bed minutes after arriving and fall asleep. You don’t notice her coming in and sinking down beside you, but still oh so far away. These past few months haven’t fixed much. A little, but not much. You awake in the middle of the night and she’s mumbling to herself in her sleep. You don’t wake her up. You don’t hold her and whisper that everything will be alright in her ear. You told her that you’d never lie to her again.
She gets fed up of you after a while. She doesn’t tell you but it radiates off her. She says good morning to you when you wake up in the morning, her voice bright and cheery. You say morning back to her, but your voice is dull and lifeless. After a while she stops. She still calls good morning but it’s flat and accompanied with a sigh, almost as if she’s expecting to be disappointed. Often, when she doesn’t think you can hear and you’ve failed to meet another one of her imaginary milestones she’s set out for you, she sighs and says ‘Oh, what am I going to do with you, Fitz.”
You know she thought being back here would be good for you and that maybe it wouldn’t be so hard and you’d heal and you can see that she’s disappointed that you aren’t progressing as she hoped. You imagine that she has it mapped out on a chart in her brand new lab, your recovery charted in different coloured pens. You think that it’s probably in its fifth or sixth version, the milestones getting smaller and smaller and more and more simple until simply getting up in the morning gives you a highlighted square on her chart. Your heart breaks ever so slightly when you think about how disheartened she probably was when those previous versions remained steadfastly blank.
You can’t keep seeing her disappointed so you stay in your room and sleep or stare at the ceiling. It only makes her more disappointed, you know, but you couldn’t bear trying only to fail so it’s surely better not to try at all.
It might be days or even weeks after you’re back on Earth but eventually, she comes to you and stands in front of you at the foot of the bed, wringing her hands nervously. You lie against the headboard, turning over a phone in your hands. She got it for you when you returned from outer space, preloaded with challenging puzzles and brainteasers and even a couple of fun games that children who’re eleven or twelve might play. It’s something to do so you’ve played with it and didn’t miss the way her face had lit up and her eyes had seemed brighter. You heard her singing down the corridors. She hasn’t done that in such a long time.
“Erm, Fitz?” She begins, staring down at her hands. Her voice is shaky. “I’ve tried to help you, really I have, but I think we both know that I’m either not helping you at all or I’m making you worse… and the last thing I want to do in the world is make you worse.”
There’s this pain that starts in your chest and soon engulfs you. You know things aren’t right but you don’t want her to leave. Oh God, please don’t let her be leaving. This pitiful existence of yours is only slightly bearable with her here even though you may not show it. You would if you could. You’d hug her and kiss her and pull her close to you, but The Doctor is never far from your mind and every time you see her you see how you hurt her and you die a little more inside. Soon you’ll be nothing but decaying flesh.
If the fear shows on your face she doesn’t acknowledge it. Her own face looks fearful. She still looks down at her hands “I know that this is perhaps overstepping a boundary that’s somehow been created in the past few months but I don’t know how else to help, Fitz.”
She sounds how you feel; tired and old and in pain. She lifts her head to look at you and you properly look at her. She’s thinner, her collarbones jut more pronouncedly from beneath her t-shirt, and her face is pale and gaunt. Her hair lies flat against her head and her clothes hang too loose. Have you done this to her? Have you worried the woman you love to the bone? Maybe she should leave, for her sake. She deserves better than you.
“So I phoned your mum.”
The sentence is unexpected and she must mistake your quizzical look for one of anger because she hurriedly tries to explain herself.
“No,” you say, your voice raspy from disuse. “I’m glad you did.”
It’s not even a lie.
She lights up almost instantly. “Oh good,” she breathes. “She’s here now. I.. uh… wasn’t sure if you’d be happy or not so I didn’t tell you until just now. I’ll just go get her.”
Her cheeks are flushed with happiness. You did that, you tell yourself. You made her happy. You didn’t realise you could still do that.
There’s a soft knock on the door and an even softer, “Hello? Can I come in?” You’ve missed this voice so much with its accent that you’ve missed without even realising it.
“Mum,” you manage to croak out and she steps into the room and takes one look at you, gasps softly and comes over to hug you immediately. “Oh my boy,” she whispers into your hair as you fall into her embrace like you used to do so much as a child. “Oh, my beautiful wee boy. I have missed you so much.”
You start to cry and you aren’t even ashamed. This is your mum. She saw you when you had fallen from your bike when you were five and fell down a hill and you were covered in a combination of scratches and nettle stings and midge bites. She held you when Jack Baird pinched you under the table and kicked you and called you all the rude names he knew under his breath in Primary Three. She dried your eyes when your dad said you’d never be anything, that you were soft and a coward because you wanted to release a butterfly instead of killing it. She cleaned up your vomit and tucked you into bed when you got absolutely hammered with your cousin at his eighteenth birthday and you discovered that Buckfast was an absolute abomination and that drinking three bottles is a terrible idea. Your mum loves you, regardless of whether you’re a twenty-nine year old man and currently blubbering into her embrace.
You sob and sob and sob until your chest aches from heaving up and down so much. Your eyes are screwed tightly shut but your mum rocks you back and forth and says shh over and over until you begin to breathe again.
You look up at her and see the face that has expressed every emotion under the sun to you. “Oh, Leo. Been through the wars I see.”
She says it like it’s easy. Like you’ve simply tumbled while playing in the garden and she has to bandage your knee with a Thomas the Tank Engine plaster. You suddenly want to tell her everything. Everything. You want to tell her about the Framework and AIDA and your dad that wasn’t really your dad but still was in all the ways except that he said he was proud of you and he loved you because you don’t ever remember your dad saying that to you.
But you can’t. Because it’s classified. Because Linda Fitz doesn’t have clearance. Because of course, the first person who could actually save you is so close yet so far. Of course.
“Mum,” you whimper and she touches your hot cheek with her cool hand and smiles at you if a little worriedly.
“Yes, baby?”
“I love you.”
Her face crumples and she tries so very hard not to let it but it does anyway and it makes you think of Jemma. She pulls you back to her and says:
“Oh my wee baby boy, I love you too.”
Your mum stays with you until you fall asleep. You lie on the bed and your mum sits next to you, her cool hands stroking your back and shoulders. You wake up when she goes to move away but you don’t tell her, don’t make a sound and when the door gently clicks shut you hear her whispering outside to Jemma. Well, your mum tries to whisper but it’s never exactly been her strong point.
“How is he?” Jemma asks, and her worry is blatantly obvious.
“He’s sleeping, hen. Had a good wee cry and a hug and I think it did him the world of good.”
“Are you sure?” You imagine her standing there, arms crossed and worrying her bottom lip.
“Positive. You look like you should get a rest too, and a decent meal. When was the last time you ate?”
You hear soft footsteps and you just know that your mum is leading Jemma away to the kitchen to give her something to eat. You wonder if she brought food, perhaps Irn Bru, and you drift off into a totally dreamless sleep for the first time in months.
It’s empty and dark and utterly, utterly beautiful.
It doesn’t fix things right away, your mum being there, but the next again day you rise before Jemma does – the first time in a while – and look over to where she’s sleeping so close to the edge of the other side of the bed that she’s in danger of falling off. Your heart hurts but baby steps. You take a shower without being prompted or reminded to, for the first time in months also, and the hot water soothes your muscles in a way you’ve never noticed before. You emerge from the bathroom in just a towel, and startle just a smidge when you see Jemma half-dressed and also gaping at you before she snaps her mouth shut and just looks at you, infinitely cautious.
“I can get changed in the bathroom if you’d prefer?” She offers. It’s meek but sincere.
“No, it’s okay. Stay.” You attempt a half smile and she smiles completely. You imagine her going to the lab later on with her highlighter in hand and colouring in more squares on his chart. The image makes you laugh with fondness and she cocks her head at you quizzically but says nothing.
She leaves to have breakfast with the others but you stay and get dressed slowly and carefully. You play a few of the mind-numbing children’s games on the phone and fill in a Sudoku in three minutes. You twiddle it restlessly in your hands. You want to join them for breakfast and you don’t know how.
Your mum comes in with a tray loaded with food and two glasses of juice, Jemma trailing behind her.
“Sit,” She says, but not unkindly, and Jemma perches awkwardly on the end of the bed.
“Hen, it’s a bed no a bear trap. Sit on it properly so I can put this tray down. How’re you meant to eat if you sit on the edge like that? Leo, you sit up too. You cannae take up the entire bed stretching out like that. Your legs are no really the longest are they but still, this bed isnae the biggest. Hm, we’ll need to look into that.” Then she breaks off and smiles. “Ignore me. Enjoy your breakfast.”
She leaves and you laugh because this is your mum just as much as your mum is the woman who soothes your tears.
Jemma smiles. “I’m sorry, Fitz, but she did drag me here. I can just go if you’d prefer to be alone. I won’t let your mum bully you if you aren’t ready.”
You don’t think you are quite ready, but the thought of Jemma squaring up with your mum scares you so you smile a measured smile and say that it’s not a problem and that this looks lovely to which she smiles a little brighter and says that she’s been trying pancakes recently.
It’s so very easy to make her smile, and you wonder how much you’ve done to her that agreeing to have breakfast with her on a tray on a bed with a carefully measured distance between you too has her practically beaming.
Breakfast is nice, lovely in fact, and you make nice if not slightly mundane conversation with your favourite person in the entire universe. Your mum comes back an hour later to see the food gone and the glasses empty and she looks almost as proud as the day she did when you showed her an early prototype of a robot you’d programmed to make the bed.
But all the socialising tires you out, and you can’t find it within you to do it for the rest of the day. Nobody seems to mind though, and when Jemma comes in she has a slight bounce to her step. When you wake in the middle of the night you notice she isn’t mumbling in her sleep and she sleeps just a fraction of an inch closer to you. In the morning, when she calls ‘good morning’ to you, it sounds cheerful once more and it doesn’t take as much effort as you thought it would to call it back over to her. It’s not quite as cheerful as her voice and is a bit too high pitched but she looks over, surprised, and smiles slowly as if you’ve given her a piece of the moon.
Things do get better. It starts off slow –you have breakfast with Jemma in the morning and you venture out of your room late evening when the base is a little quieter and not as overwhelming. You show your mum around, and she ooos and ahhhs at everything and says things like, “And you’d never know it was here, would you? So discreet. They could have them all over the shot. Though I couldnae exactly imagine one under Glasgow Queen Street Station.”
And then you have dinner in your room with Jemma and your mum and the conversation gets a little less guarded and measured and soon it’s easy and natural and reminds you of the time you were seventeen and took your best-friend home to meet your mum for the first time.
After that, you take a short trip to the lab and get your hands some of your new equipment. The old you would have salivated over it but the new you is cautious and wary. You don’t jump right back into the pool but stay paddling around the edges until you feel comfortable again. However, one day you get a bit too confident and it’s all too much and suddenly you’re The Doctor again and you’re a man of evil with your instruments of death and oh how scared you feel of yourself. Jemma finds you huddled in the corner, confused and scared and she leads you gently but confidently back to your room with barely a word. She tucks you into bed and kisses you on the forehead and sleeps further away that night
You don’t come out for a few days after that and you do nothing but lie and stare at the ceiling. On the third day you suddenly find this boring, for the first time, and so you venture out even though it’s 2pm and it’s quite busy. People look at you a little funny, but not in a bad way and you find that it actually doesn’t bother you as much as you feared it would. They look for a few seconds too long and then turn their heads away, getting back to business. They are not afraid of you, so you don’t allow yourself to be either.
Then things are back on the up and one night you decide to screw it and you come out of your room for dinner. Your friends are there, laughing and smiling with your mum. She’s the first one that notices you, standing there in the doorway, shuffling awkwardly.
“Aww, honey, good timing. Was just about to bring you your food. Come sit.” At your hesitation she frowns a smidge. “Leo, come and sit down and stop standing there like a goldfish.”
Embarrassed at being told off, you drop your eyes and shuffle over to the vacant seat that’s between Jemma and Daisy. The round table is covered with bowls of chicken and vegetables and salsa and you recognise the scent of your mum’s fajitas.
The dinner’s a little awkward at first, but you expected that and it’s not as bad as you thought it would be. It takes maybe ten or fifteen minutes but someone makes a joke and soon everyone is laughing and smiling. Your mum dishes out embarrassing childhood stories for you to cringe at. You embrace it because this moment, although embarrassing, may be your favourite from the past few months. You eat the food and it’s delicious. You nod when people ask if you’re alright. You laugh when your mum brings out the Irn Bru and Mack splutters and asks what the hell is it, while Daisy says mm and says that she thinks she could totally get used to it.
It’s nice and it’s comfortable and it’s where you belong. They’re your family and they love you. Things will get better, you realise that now, and not all at once but as long as they do. That’s all you need, the promise of a better tomorrow.
You eat with them, joke with them, and then you walk back to your room holding Jemma’s hand. It’s small and fits in yours like it’s meant to be there and you don’t know how you haven’t noticed this before.
In your room you get ready for bed and you notice how utterly beautiful her smile is. You both get into the bed and, without speaking, lie so close to each other that you can feel her body heat. Oh, how you’ve missed this. You’re comfortable and sleepy and you begin to drift off into a sleep that you just know will rest your weary soul.
However, right before you’re gone, you hear Jemma say, “I love you, Fitz.”
You’re safe. You’re home. She loves you. Everything is right again. So you turn and face her and look into her eyes and see all the love she feels for you. Your voice is clear and bright as you speak a truth that is the most honest thing you have ever said and will ever say. It’s a truth that you can never be swayed from and it lets you know that you’re you. You’ve broken the rules of the universe and threatened the survival of the human race and, most importantly, sacrificed yourself for it. It’s the truest thing you will ever know.
“Oh, Jemma, I love you too.”