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It starts with a tingling in his chest that seeps its way outwards. At first Fitz is afraid that he fell asleep at his desk again, since the stiffness that penetrates his body does little to suggest otherwise, and he fights to grasp some memory through his foggy mind. Jemma will probably be there soon with a cup of tea, ready to scold him for pushing himself too hard again. Then the thaw reaches his brain, and it all comes back in a rush.
Jemma is trapped a good seventy years in the future, as are his friends. He has to save them.
Every muscle in Fitz’s body clenches and he lets out a gasp. He forces his eyes open just as the last remnants of frost vanish.
Enoch’s face peers at him through the window. “Rise and shine, Mr. Fitz. It appears our journey has been cut short.”
He barely has a moment to process the words before the cryo-chamber has popped open and the ship’s sterile air assaults his clammy skin. Enoch disappears from view and with a groan, Fitz drags himself into a seated position. His legs cramp as he makes to stand, and he tumbles forward only to fall against a broad chest; one that certainly doesn’t belong to the Chronicon.
“Woah, Turbo. Just give it a minute.”
Fitz is no stranger to voices; his father’s jeers followed him throughout childhood, he hallucinated his best friend for several months, and only recently did he escaped from a prison cell with only the Doctor for company. Never has Alphonso Mackenzie been a product of his fractured mind. He squints at his friend and is met with a hesitant smile.
“Mack? I—what are you...”
Enoch returns and drapes a blanket across his shoulders, which helps fight the chill but does little to settle the goosebumps rising on his skin. He grasps at it, glancing wildly at the movement on his right. There’s Daisy, mouth set in a thin line but eyes glazed with emotion. And beside her…
His mouth falls open and her name falls from his mouth with little prompting.
“Jemma.”
Hair is falling out of her ponytail, strands of brown frame the dark bags beneath her eyes. She looks past the point of exhausted and Fitz hates that, but after six months she is the most beautiful thing he has ever seen.
Her shoulders are rigid and her hands twist anxiously in front of her, but his voice causes her to startle. Then they are tumbling forward and grasping each other so tightly that it is physically impossible to be any closer but that doesn’t keep them from trying anyway. The blanket slips from his back and falls to his feet. She’s whispering his name over and over again, cradling his face reverently as though she’s scared he’ll evaporate into thin air.
The feel of her against his skin draws the words he’s spent the last few months perfecting to the surface. He doesn’t know how she’s here, only that he’s not letting her slip away again without telling her. He is going to ask Jemma Anne Simmons to be his wife and for a brief moment everything is right.
Only, it’s not. Because then Jemma presses her face to his neck and sobs in a way he’s never heard before, as if someone has ripped her entire soul from her body. Fitz, more than anyone else in the universe, has seen her upset. But now she seems to be falling apart in his arms and he scrambles to push his confusion aside and hold her together the best he can.
“Jemma, what’s wrong?” he tries, but she just shakes her head. Fear crawls up his throat and nearly chokes him. Just how long had she been here? What could have possibly happened to create such a reaction?
He looks at his friends for clarification, but both Daisy and Mack have turned away. To give the two an illusion of privacy, probably. Enoch simply tilts his head to the side and watches the display curiously.
Fitz drops his head and presses a kiss to her hairline. “Hey, we’re going to figure this out,” he says. Then, despite the part of him that stands rigid in the belief that time is fixed, he adds, “I didn’t freeze myself for eighty years just to give up, okay? The universe didn’t pull us apart for nothing, because if it did, I would very much like a refund.” He feels a puff of air against his neck, which he hopes is Jemma laughing, and she pulls back to look at him. He swipes at one of her tears with his thumb and places one more kiss to her forehead. “If I’m going to be seventy-four years older than my girlfriend, I at least want something to show for it.”
“Hate to burst your bubble, Fitzy, but you’re still not the oldest—Mack’s got you beat by a few years.” Daisy is finally smiling at him, but her voice is strained and she still doesn’t quite meet his eyes. “The princess and her knights came to wake Sleeping Beauty early.”
“What? That doesn’t...what about–”
“The extinction-level event has been diverted; we are free to return to earth,” Enoch says. If Fitz didn’t know better, he would almost say a hint of disappointment colored the words. “While I already took the leisure to begin establishing your alias, it appears it won’t be needed. It is all for the best, I suppose; Geg-ku larvae are rather troubling to obtain.”
“But Robin’s drawings, she said…” Fitz glances once more at Jemma and finds some stability in her gaze, but the sadness it holds is rather unsettling. He grabs at his hair. “I was on my way to find you.”
She smiles at him, and it’s small, but genuine. “And you did, Fitz. You did.” She runs her own hand through his hair, entangling his fingers with hers and drawing them close to her chest. “Now I’ve found you, too.”
Mack gives a sympathetic smile and grasps at Fitz’s shoulder. “We have a lot to discuss, Turbo.”
“Alright, well,” Fitz squeezes his eyes shut and exhales slowly. “You better get talking then.”
They don’t tell him everything, but they tell him enough to fill in the gaps. And as if fighting with his own mind wasn’t bad enough, now he’s stuck with his warring emotions as well: relief that he was wrong and time can be changed, bitter sadness that a metal plaque and secondhand words are all he has left of one of the greatest men he’d ever known, anger because he married the love of his life and now he can’t even remember it, and fear because he hurt his friends and he has no idea how he can even begin to make up for that. Oh, and he apparently died, which prompts all sorts of emotions that Fitz can’t name but sick to his stomach is a good place to start.
Mostly, Fitz just feels lost.
He spends the next few days on the Zephyr stumbling behind Jemma (and when he’s not, it’s her turn to ghost behind him with concerned looks and a palpable fear that tightens his chest and makes it hard to breath). She’s always been his compass, but now she seems just as lost as him.
During simpler times, things had always seemed clearer when they were together, and in some ways that hasn’t changed. Feeling Jemma’s head pressed against his chest during the night hours still eases the chaotic twisting of his thoughts, and he doesn’t feel so unstable when they sequester themselves away from everyone else, hands entwined. But there are other times—like the first time he leans down to kiss her and she flinches away with an apologetic grimace—that he remembers things are never simple when it comes to them.
“It’s not you,” Jemma says, grasping his arm painfully. “I just...it’s an odd situation and I’m still trying to process. To come to terms with–,” her voice cracks and she freezes, starts again. “I know you and him are, technically, the same person. I’m just scared that...”
I’ll lose you again. Things will be too different now. Something else will happen and this time we won’t be able get past it.
He fights back the sting of her rejection and forces a smile to his face. “Of course. Just need a little time, yeah?” Her features collapse with relief at his understanding and it helps his teasing words come easier. “I’ve waited 74 years before, what’s a few more?”
She looks close to crying again, but before Fitz can scramble to find what upset her, she pulls him close and places her head against his chest, right over his heart.
When he hears her counting under her breath, the numbers lining up perfectly with his heartbeat, he doesn’t mention it. He just breathes slowly and tries to stop the tears before they can fall onto her head.
They are still about 300 hours out from Earth’s atmosphere, and Fitz is running out of hiding places. Jemma, sensing his need for space, becomes less hesitant to step away in order to examine the navigation chart or set the broken arm of an agent Fitz has yet to learn the name of. She’s never gone for long, which he finds to be a relief, but he does appreciate the brief moments of time he has to try to sort through things himself.
The rest of his team—with the exception of Daisy, who has taken to avoiding him as much as possible, which he sees as more than fair—isn’t as accepting of his alone-time. Mack, especially, seems to always be checking in on him in one form or another.
As happy as Fitz is to see his friend again, the guilt-filled glances that Mack keeps throwing his way begins to weigh heavily on him. Then there are the rest of the agents, who constantly glance at him with a combination of awe and apprehension. He’s nothing but a ghost wandering the halls of the Zephyr (which is now space-worthy, something Fitz would find more exciting were it not for the the Doctor’s incantations of weak weak weak in the back of his mind).
He finds himself visiting the cockpit more often. The view from the window is a nice change from the hallways and bunks that start to remind him a little too much of a cramped prison cell if he stays there for too long. Agent Davis also proves to be not the worst company, giving Fitz a brief nod before setting his attention back at the controls.
(It’s also some relief to see him alive. There is one name, at least, that Fitz can take off his ledger of red).
On his third visit, Davis breaks the comfortable silence and says, “Kate didn’t take it too well when I came back, either.”
Fitz blinks and pulls his gaze away from Coulson’s memorial. “What?”
“Kate, my wife. She’d spent the last five months thinking I was dead, and then there I was, standing on our porch at three in the morning with a cyborg standing sentry just up the road. I thought she was mad then, but that was nothing compared to when she found out I was staying with S.H.I.E.L.D.”
For the first time, Fitz thoroughly examines the pilot. They’d worked together in S.H.I.E.L.D. for years, but as he regards the jagged scar on the agent’s face, Fitz realizes how little he knows about Davis. “Why did you come back?” he asks hesitantly.
Davis gives a thin smile. “I ask myself that every day. I think it’s because, back when I was 97% sure I was going to die, I kept thinking about how I had failed. I wasn’t able to protect the team, wasn’t able to save the world so Kate and our son would be safe. Then I didn’t die. I had a second chance to see it all through, to try again, and here I am.”
Fitz settles in the passenger seat and brushes off the unfamiliarity of Davis seated next to him rather than May. “How’d the wife take it?”
A sour look crosses Davis’ face, but it is slowly replaced by a wistful smile. “She called me insane, then threatened me with ‘a fate worse than death’ if I die again. Don’t question that—she will find a way. Then she said I have one more chance to show up at the house the proper way and I better not blow it. So, next time I’ll be taking off my shoes and bringing her a large bouquet of sunflowers.”
It isn’t until his fifth visit that Fitz hears the entire story of Davis’ survival, which leaves him open-jawed and unable to mutter anything more than “this job is bloody ridiculous.”
Davis nods and raises an invisible glass to the air. “I’ll toast to that.”
“You still have them.”
Jemma, who had been arranging the books under her bunk for the third time since his rescue (this time by date of publication), turns her head towards him so quickly that Fitz is afraid the sharp action may have hurt her. His concern doesn’t appear to carry over, as she is distracted by the empty box on his lap and necklace hanging delicately from his hand. The two wedding rings spin leisurely on the chain.
He can see her swallow hard. He himself is having a hard time breathing, and finds it difficult to take his eyes off the silver band that he’s previously only seen through a screen. Jemma had refused to watch the wedding video after the first time she showed it to him, smiling through her tears and telling him that she preferred to watch it in her memory. Fitz, meanwhile, had spent hours watching it again and again, as if it would help him transplant a memory into his mind that he didn’t remember but desperately wanted to.
“Of course I kept them, Fitz,” she scoffs, breaking him away from imagining the smaller ring on her finger. “That’s still something I want, someday. There was never a doubt in my mind.” Her smile wavers, and she looks down at the book in her lap. “Unless you’ve change your mind, of course. I wouldn’t want to assume–”
She gasps as he grabs her hands, rubbing them carefully with his brow furrowed. “Jemma, I…” he inhales to calm his nerves, and lets out a shaking breath. “I’ve been thinking.”
She nods, showing her support, and he continues before the unease in her eyes can grow. “And I’ve realized something. The universe—which obviously has something against us, there’s too much evidence to suggest otherwise—can’t stop us. ‘Cause we’ve crossed galaxies, we’ve traveled through time—hell, we’ve changed time—and we’ve survived the bottom of the Atlantic, just so we could be together.”
Jemma’s eyes begin to water, and Fitz is pretty sure his are too if the way her face begins to blur is any indication, but he presses on. “Now, a love like that—that’s stronger than any curse. And you and I—we are unstoppable together. There’s no guarantee that we won’t be separated again; we don’t exactly have the best track record for that. But the point is, I don’t want to live another day without you. So, Jemma Simmons…” He lowers the rings into her hands, and closes them so that they are sandwiched between his own. He trips over his words more than he would have liked, but for once his mind is at peace and he can only focus on her growing smile. “Nothing would make me happier than to marry you, one day. Again.”
Jemma stares at him for a few moments, before shaking her head and giving a watery laugh that leaves him laughing as well. It’s a strange feeling. “That certainly was more romantic than my proposal. But,” she leans in, and Fitz all but melts into her as she kisses him lightly. “You haven’t won yet. I won’t hold back with my vows this time around.”
“I wasn’t aware this was a competition.”
She rolls her eyes. “Please. You made it a competition the minute you put down my trip to the Seychelles.”
The competitive fire in her eyes is something he hasn’t seen in a while, and it seems to ignite something in Fitz as well. For the first time in a while, things seem like they might be okay.
The warmth is all but forgotten a few days later, with Fitz feeling more upset with each word that leaves his mouth but unable to stop himself from snapping. Daisy seems to tower over him, his own anger and hurt reflected on her face as she shouts. A simple question had unlocked a dam of pent-up emotion, and there was no turning back the tide.
“That’s the thing, Fitz!” She huffs, throwing her hands into the air. “I am mad at you. Actually, mad doesn’t even begin to cover it. But I can’t be, because you technically didn’t do anything. Still, that doesn’t erase the fact that it happened!”
“I don’t know what you want me to do, Daisy,” Fitz growls in return, both hands clenched tightly, his bad one shoved against his thigh and trembling. “I’m sorry that it happened to you. Really, I am, and I know what I did was inexcusable. But...I can’t, I can’t even remember–” he cuts himself off sharply, slamming his eyes shut in an attempt to calm down.
He hears Daisy scoff, and by the time he’s opened his eyes all the fight has drained from her.
“I know,” she says, voice hoarse and a wave of self-loathing courses over Fitz to see her this way. She gives a bitter laugh. “None of this should have happened—we’re both screwed up and no one person is to blame for that, but,” she sighs and gives him a tired smile. “It sucks.”
He nods, forces his jaw to relax. “I still want to work this out, Daisy. I don’t want things to end this way.”
“They won’t,” she says. She hesitates, before reaching over rub his shoulder gingerly. “But I still... I still need to figure some things out.” She edges past him, disappearing through the small crowd of agents that had gathered.
He wants to scream, maybe punch something. Instead he pivots and strides in the opposite direction.
Ultimately, Fitz decides that the fear will never really go away. He’d failed to keep his Framework self in check once, and people—Jemma, Mack, Daisy —had gotten hurt. What was to say that it wouldn’t happen this time around, too?
“We didn’t know what you were going through, Fitz,” Jemma later whispers to him as they curl up on her bed. She shifts her head on his chest and plays with the sleeve of the cardigan she had packed for him. “You’re not alone this time around. We’re going to get help when we get back. Both of us.”
He wants to remind her that the Doctor is a part of him, a shadow that lurks in the fragments of his mind, and shadows can’t never truly be severed from their host. But if he’s the shadow then Jemma is his light, and she makes the Doctor not so loud, so he simply nods. He is lulled by the silence that settles, until she jerks up to meet his eyes. “Promise that you’ll tell me when you hear him, no matter what he says. Don’t hide it from me.” Her brown eyes are fierce and Fitz almost flinches from the intensity. “ Promise me, Fitz . ”
Her voice wavers, and it may as well be a scientific fact that Leopold Fitz can’t never say no to Jemma Simmons, because despite the fear of losing her to the monster in his mind, he pulls her closer and softly says, “Yeah, I promise.”
He waits patiently for her next words, but can’t mask his surprise when she murmurs, “When we get back, I want to leave S.H.E.I.L.D.”
He almost asks if she’s sure that’s what she wants, but he bites back on the words. He’s exhausted too. “Okay,” he says instead. “Where do you think we should go?”
In the dark, he senses more than sees Jemma perk up at the question. “I don’t much care, provided that it is as far away from space or desert planets or the bottom of the ocean as possible. And I still want that breakfast nook.”
He laughs and she smiles against his neck. “Oh, is that all?”
“Ugh, Fitz!”
Jemma smacks him lightly and he sits up, adjusting her so that she is on his lap. She wraps her arms around his neck. “Anything else?”
“For now, just you. The rest can come later. What do you want?”
“My better half,” he says instantly. Then, after a few moments of stroking her hair absentmindedly, he adds, “A monkey would be nice, too.”
Instead of rejecting the idea immediately, as expected, Jemma hums. “I’m not sure how I feel about having a primate with grabby little hands around my expensive lab equipment. But maybe a dog; they are good for emotional health.”
“Only if we can call it Monkey.”
“Deal, but that’s just so you don’t insist on naming our first child that.”
It sounds like another life, a fantasy where two weary and broken scientists who have saved the world a handful of times don’t exactly fit in. But they have defied time and physics again and again to make it to one another, so maybe the idea of a future where the earth isn’t falling apart every other day isn’t as ludicrous as it seems.
Davis used his second chance to return to S.H.I.E.L.D., maybe Fitz was given a second chance so he could leave it.
He cups her jaw and leans in, and when she tilts her head invitingly he kisses her, pouring as much love and hope into it as he can to make up for all that they have lost. Jemma returns it eagerly, and Fitz feels more whole then he has in a long time. He pulls away to rest his forehead against hers, not needing the light to admire the woman in front of him that he knows by heart.
“Sounds perfect to me.”