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They get married in their pajamas.
Mack’s phone is propped up against the adjacent wall, generously donated with a knowing smile and a promise at privacy. It sits comfortably level atop a pillow, just enough so they don’t have to look down and break the illusion. A lone light shines from the desk and outside the window stars shimmer amidst the inky void of space. The air is heavy with something akin to anticipation. It hums around them, pushing aside the sounds and sights and smells of the ship.
It is tinged and tainted with something sad. Sobering, yet hopeful.
They are alone.
They sit cross-legged atop their shared bed, knees banging together and hands held clasped together between the valley of their bodies. He strokes her skin with his thumb, taking in the new calluses he didn’t know had formed. She holds on tightly – as she has since he woke up in this new, strange future – tears gathering in the corner of her eyes.
Somehow, he knows they’re not all tears of joy.
There’s heartbreak in there. Grief for a man she hasn’t lost. He wonders, briefly, how that other man felt as he stood grasping her hands like he does now. Had he been nervous? Scared? Overwhelmed with the absolute love and adoration he had for this woman?
He must have been. They were the same person, after all, and he can’t imagine feeling anything else while about to marry the woman of his dreams. He strokes her skin again. He finds a scar he thinks must be new.
“I’m sorry I can’t give you a real wedding.”
They’re in space. Deep space. He’s only been up for a few days and travel back to Earth will take some time. They could wait. There’s no rush.
But they don’t want to wait. Not again. Not after everything they’ve had to endure.
Even still, he’s grateful that she makes no mention of the fact that he’s already given her a real wedding. It’s not her fault he wasn’t there to see it. Instead, she smiles. It’s a quivering thing. Joy, love, and elation mix with grief and mourning, as something like hysteria reaches her eyes – it’s as if she can’t think of a more hilariously bizarre situation, and he figures his own face must reflect the same thing if he can so easily see it in her’s.
How she must feel to be remarrying the same man she’s already married after he’s passed away. But, with a track record like theirs, neither one is willing to tempt the cosmos by delaying their nuptials for something as absurd as a little temporal displacement.
Her smile grows and the brightness of her dark eyes is replaced by something more internal and happy than restrained tears.
“That’s okay,” she says. “You’re here. That’s enough for me.”
He supposes it must be. They’ve lost each other enough times for that to be the only important factor, and it’s not like he’s the one with an image of her mutilated body cycling on repeat every night. Still, in the back of his head, he vows that once their lives reach some sort of semi-normality, he’s going to whisk her back to Britain for a proper wedding.
He’ll even wear a kilt.
But…for now, this works too.
“Okay. Ready, then?”
He squeezes her hands in askance and relishes in the feel of them squeezing back. They’re still little ice buckets, but he knows better than to make mention of it. She’s been holding onto him for days, murmuring around choked tears about how warm he is – how warm he is compared to his corpse. This is a happy moment and neither one wants it ruined by the conundrum that is their marriage.
She nods. “Ready.”
Quickly, so that he doesn’t lose nerve, he untangles one hand from her’s and reaches towards the phone, finger pressing gently against the button that will start the video.
“Dearly beloved, we are gather here today for a moment we all knew was coming, some of us even before these two did,” Phil Coulson’s voice resounds throughout the room, somehow louder and more encompassing than should be possible from an iPhone, and he struggles not to think about the man whose voice is so clear yet no longer with them. The pain is still too fresh, and he can already see the way her lower lip trembles and how her eyes close tightly shut.
He wonders if she’s reliving the moment and wishes he could do the same.
Coulson continues unabated. “And I think we can all agree that to wait even one second to do this is playing with fire. All in favor?”
There’s a choir of “ayes” from an attendance of guests that aren’t there, and laughter from a group of friends that have watched and waiting for this moment for years. He feels himself closing his eyes too, just so he can pretend for a moment that he’s there, in that forest, with her in a dress and a family ready to celebrate together.
He thinks it must have been wonderful.
“The ayes have it,” Coulson chuckles into the silence of their room. “So, all right. Time for the exchanging of the vows, I guess.”
He pries blue eyes open, knowing exactly when to pause the video from the countless times he’s watched, and is for the first time is struck to see May beaming behind Daisy, her face the utter picture of a proud mother giving away her children. It makes his heart clench for a moment, but then she’s there, squeezing his hand, and it’s the only thing that matters.
“I,” she pauses, her voice oddly jarring against the tinny of Coulson’s recording, and takes a deep breath. “I remember I wrote it down. All seems so silly in hindsight – that I would have needed to.” She lets out a breathy little sound that’s not quite laughter, but still manages to convey just how a mess she’s feeling right now. “Guess it’s my need for preparation.”
“You’re not very good at improvising,” he jests, and her smile glows even though she plays a valiant effort at feigning insult.
“I like to think I’ve improved.”
“Only a tad.” He grins, and it’s true. She’s much better than she was when they started this journey, but he knows her better than anyone and can spot all her tells a mile away. “We could always speak over what we – you – said before.” And it hurts to think that it was only her and not him, even though the groom very much was him, and if he never has to mess with temporal physics or space-time ever again it will be all too soon.
Like he expected, she is quick to reject it. “No. Those vows…they’re not – they’re not –” She cuts off, worrying her bottom lip in an attempt to put words to emotions he’s not sure she’s even allowed herself to feel yet.
It’s okay, though, because he hasn’t acknowledged them yet either. “They’re not enough,” he finally says, and it’s true. Those vows were made between two adults bloated by hubris and a sense of the shared notion that they were the good guys, and the good guys always win.
Only now they know how grey the line is between being a good person and one of the many threats they’ve faced in the past, and he isn’t sure he misses that old naiveté or is glad for the weight its shadow has placed over him. He likes to think he’s glad.
“Right,” she finally says. “They’re not enough. And I don’t know if I can even express just what enough is, but I will say this: you are everything to me, Leopold James Fitz. You’ve been my everything since we were sixteen and achingly shy. Through all we’ve been through and all we have yet to, I know this. When I called you my home, I meant every word of it. And whether I said it to you, or another you, doesn’t change that fact. I love every piece of you, in every timeline, every universe, and every reality. I love your compassion, your loyalty, your friendship and even the dark parts of you that can’t help but exist. I love your constant determination to do good and the willingness to make amends when you’ve failed. I love you for the good man that you are, and while I don’t know if I can make the promise anymore to never leave your side, I can promise that I will always return. Because while sometimes we have to leave home to help others, we always find our way back. That is my vow to you. No matter what the cosmos tries next, I will always find my way back to you.”
It’s mesmerizing to watch how her eyes mist with tears – happy ones, sad ones, mourning ones, and overjoyed ones – and if he wasn’t desperately trying to find his voice around the lump in his throat, he might have even teased her a bit. As it stands, he’s too enthralled by her anyway to risk it.
“Jemma,” and damn his words for sounding so waterlogged, “I don’t pretend to know what happened before. I don’t pretend to know what happened to you or me or us, but if there’s anything I know it’s that through all the crazy things we’ve encountered it’s that the cosmos can’t ever keep us apart. We’ve survived the bottom of the ocean, an alien planet, inhuman gods, corrupt virtual realities, and the apocalypse. We even found some way to cheat death,” and he pretends not to notice the way her fingers whiten against his or the uncomfortable pressure in his joints. “Whatever comes our way next will just be one more thing to conquer because just as you will always come back to me, I will always come back to you. And while as I am now I don’t know if I deserve you, I promise to work every day to make myself worthy of the love you’ve given me. Because you’re my home, too, Jemma Anne Simmons and nothing this bloody universe throws at us will keep me from finding you again. I love you. Every iteration of you. And no matter what happens, that will never change.”
“Oh Fitz,” and she’s just as choked up as he is, “you are worthy of all the love I can give you and more.”
“As are you. You’re my everything.”
She’s crying, but her smile is radiant enough to overshadow the stars. “As you are mine.”
Her expression is almost enough to make him reach over and kiss her now, but he restrains himself. This is still technically a wedding. Instead, he strokes her hand again with his thumb and waits until she nods before reaching to move the little dot forward to the correct time code. He presses play.
“Okay,” Coulson is once more in the room with them, and there’s something about it that no longer feels like an unwanted weight in his chest. “Let’s have the rings.”
There’s no one there to hand them their rings this time, so they just reach across to where they had placed them delicately beside the phone. “Quickly, please, before this forest collapses around us,” echoes out while they scramble, and the timing of it is almost enough to send both of them giggling. The fact that they’re in a barren bedroom aboard a spaceship does nothing to settle the hilarity of their situation. But it’s okay, in the end, because the rings are in their hands and the air doesn’t feel as heavy.
“Okay, Agent Fitz, repeat after me.” He takes in a deep breath and nods as if Coulson is actually here – as if he is actually speaking to him, here and now.
“With this ring…”
“With this ring…” and if his voice echoes in tandem with the voice on the recording that’s okay because they’re both him, and if marrying Jemma Simmons twice is the price he has to pay to be with her then that’s not such a bad price to pay. Not at all. He would marry her a million different times in a million different ways on a million different worlds if it meant keeping her in his life forever.
“…I thee wed.”
“…I thee wed.”
The ring slips onto her finger perfectly, as they both knew it would. It settles back onto her person as if it belongs there and for the first time Fitz can finally look at it and not feel the green monster tightening inside his chest.
Jemma repeats the process, her words echoing the ones she’d spoken in the past, and while a ghost may be sitting in the room with them as she places the band around his finger, it feels more like a passing of the torch than forgetting a specter of a possibility. It feels like…his. This ring is his.
“Now, by the powers vested in me by, well, by the two of you, I am so happy to pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss the bride.”
And if the sound of everyone clapping over the recording makes it feel as if their friends are really in the room with them, experiencing this with them all over again, then that’s just how it should be as Fitz pulls Simmons across the bed and into a kiss he never wants to break away from.
They have a lot to talk about, and a lot of things left unsaid. There are things Simmons experienced that Fitz never will. Actions taken and consequences felt. At some point, they don’t doubt they will be pulled apart again.
But as Fitz pulls Jemma in to further the kiss, he finds he can’t bring himself to care just yet. Right now, they will just be Leo Fitz: Husband, and Jemma Simmons: Wife. Together, as they should be, for as long as they both shall live.