Archive of Our Own

TW: Character Death, Suicide
She has no idea how they got into their lab, has no idea how Grant Ward— agent extraordinaire— is being held back by two enormous men in front of their hologram projector, has no idea how Fitz is thrown over to stand beside him in a rush of bodies and limbs. It all happens so quickly, she doesn’t really have time to think about how it happened, just that it has. She doesn’t really have any time to react— no sharp gasp or frightened words— before men are filling her lab, men she doesn’t recognize and hasn’t a clue as to where they came from.
She’s holding a test tube in her right hand, a swab in the other and she feels glued to the floor, frozen in place.
It all happened so damn quickly.
Hands— enormous hands (are they human, she thinks)— wrap around her arms and shove her forcefully into the center of the lab, test tube and swab dropping to the floor in response to the tight grip on her biceps. It snaps her out of her reverie, like waking up from a horrible nightmare and she blinks slowly as she’s thrown around by a man twice her size, rough and angry, until he stills and twists her around to face an equally enormous man.
"Ah, Agent Simmons. It’s a pleasure to meet you."
His voice is smooth, baritone fluctuating only slightly on consonants. It’s meant to calm, to soothe nerves and make her pliant, but his eyes are dark and menacing, raw and calculating.

She only finds her voice when his right eyebrow raises slightly in response to her silence.
"Do I know you?" Her own voice sounds small, not frightened but it doesn’t take up the space in the air as his had. He shakes his head once.
"No, I don’t think you do. Shield is much too protective over their little geniuses to allow someone like me to corrupt them.” She’s not expecting the shiver that snakes up her spine at the word corrupt, the tone and emphasis an entirely new threat, one aimed at her, and it hits where it was suppose to. She’s frightened.
"But I know you, Jemma. Born and raised in Sheffield to average parents, recruited to Shield at fourteen, graduated three years early, assigned to this ungodly abomination of a team. But really, it’s what you’ve done here that interests me the most… Your Chitauri virus anti-serum, to be more exact.”
She hears her breathing in her ears, the thumping of her heart in her chest, her pulse jumping as his words sink in.
His arm extends out towards her, hand raised, and his fingers gently caress her cheek.
"Don’t. Touch. Her."
It’s Fitz, voice scathing and cold, but it sounds far away, as if she’s miles away from him instead of a few meters from him.
She see’s it coming, the way his arms pulls back, the twist of his body beneath the tactical suit, before she feels it.
But then she feels it: his hand connecting to her face with such force that it throws her entire body to the side, explosion of pain from where contact was made. She feels the ring on his finger digging in, slicing through the delicate skin stretched over her cheekbone.
The force of the backhanded slap sends her reeling, ribcage meeting the edge of the lab bench with a sickening thud and she sucks in a breath, her head throbbing and her ribs aching.
It hurts.
She can hear shouting, voices mingled in anger and horror, hears the sounds of scuffling but her head isn’t registering any of it to her consciousness.
“ENOUGH! A sound— a sound— out of either of you, and I will make sure she never walks again. Do you understand me?” This she registers, her head lifting from the lab bench painstakingly, eyes blurry but trying to focus on Ward and Fitz, who are both being restrained by their captors. Fitz looks at her, eyes going wide for a moment before his face turns a horrendous shade of red and his eyes narrow. Ward is glaring, chest heaving as he looks at her, eyes on her cheek and she can feel a slow trickle down the smooth contour. She didn’t know she was crying. She lifts a hand to wipe the tear away, but when her hand pulls back it’s not clear salty liquid at all. It’s blood, red and dark against her pale skin.
"You." She pulls her eyes from her hand and watches as her assailant makes his way back to her and she can’t squelch the flinch of her muscles. He grabs her arm, hefts her upright to look at him.
"The anti-serum. You’re going to re-purpose it. I know you’ve got the original sample here in this lab." Her brain is still a bit fuzzy but she thinks he just told her that he wants her to re-purpose the Chitauri virus.
"What?" She manages to get out of her mouth, despite the pain that it causes her cheek. She can feel it swelling.
"You’re going to re-purpose it. I know how the antiserum works, how it inactivates the charge of the virus. I know how the virus works, how the charge is the mode of transmission, the latency: how it can remain dormant. But what I don’t know— what you’re going to do for me— is make it so that I can initiate the charge biochemically.”
Initiate the charge… Initiate the infection. Oh god. Her eyes widen.
"You want me to make you a weapon of mass destruction?" Her voice is a horrified whisper.
"If you want to put it like that, yes."
His grip on her arm loosens a bit and she pulls away, rubbing the muscle.
"I won’t."
"Yes, you will. Because if you don’t, I am going to shoot every single member of your team in the head." Her eyes flicker to Ward, to Fitz, and she can barely look at them. She has no idea where May or Skye or Coulson are, but assumes they’d been detained as well.
"I don’t have the equipment to do that sort of DNA replication here. Even if I did it would take time— days—" She’s cut off by a low chuckle, the sound of a laughing baritone resonating through the lab in amusement.
"You assume I came unprepared." He nods to a group of men standing outside the lab and her stomach sinks as she watches them pull boxes from vehicles, stacking them in the doorway of the lab.
He can’t.
"You’ve got the equipment." He says as he pats the boxes, an almost proud look on his face.
"You just need an engineer to put it together."

He’s never claimed to be a brave man, that’s entirely Ward’s purview, so he’s unsure of what causes him to struggle against the behemoths that have him by the shoulders. What comes out of his mouth is entirely the fault of his hot Scottish temper.

“Don’t ye dare touch her! If ye touch her again, I swear t’ the Almighty tha’ ye’ll pay!”

He doesn’t stop to think about how ridiculous it sounds coming from a 5’8” slip of a man being held by mercenaries that look as if they could be finalists in the Mr. Universe competition. All he can focus on at the moment is the trickle of red coming from the gash the man’s ring had tore into her cheek. He earns a quick cuff against his jaw for his outburst, not enough to knock him out, but strong enough to make his vision swim. He tastes blood in his mouth, and defiantly spits it at the feet of the man who had hit him.
That particular maneuver results in both he and Ward being forced face first into a lab bench, pinned by strong hands between their shoulder blades. He only stops struggling when he hears the threat made against Simmons; he refuses to cause her any injury.

All he can do is close his eyes and listen as the man reveals what he wants. He’s going to force Simmons, a woman who loves discovery and thrives on finding new, living things, to create a biological weapon. His heart is breaking for her. His pain transforms into dread when he hears what the man says next, that he’s brought the appropriate equipment. He knows that a man this well prepared, who has an entire file on Simmons, knows damn well that he’s the brightest engineer that S.H.I.E.L.D. has produced in decades. There’s no way he couldn’t, since Fitz was recruited at the same time she was, and they’ve been a package deal from the start.

“Let him up.”

With that, the pressure between his shoulders eases and he can stand upright again. The first thing he looks for is her face. She’s projecting an air of calm, but he can see the fear hiding deep in her eyes. The brute behind him pushes him forward, toward his partner. He stumbles a bit before getting his legs under him, going to her and invading her personal space. He wants to block her from the mercenaries as much as he can. Without thinking, he catches her chin between his thumb and index finger, tilting her head to the side so he can have a better look at her wound.

It’s not deep, and the bleeding has become sluggish. Butterfly sutures should do it, and he knows they have those in the lab’s first aide kit. He looks the nearest man dead in the eye and barks out, “There’s a plastic box below tha’ bench there. Pass it t’ me.”

The man ignores him, moving on to other duties. His superior answers instead, saying, “What you need, Leopold Fitz, is to fetch your tools and begin building what she requires to repurpose the antiserum.” His voice sets Fitz’ teeth on edge.

“Ye’re abou’ t’ ask her t’ work wit’ biological material. She’s bleedin’. If she bleeds int’ the antiserum, th’ whole experimen’ is ruined. No’ t’ mention th’ risk o’ infection.”

He waits a beat, somehow managing to maintain eye contact with the man he’s come to think of as “Brutus.” Eventually, the larger man breaks first and jerks his head toward the cabinet Fitz had indicated. The mercenary quickly retrieves the first aide kit and places it on the workbench next to Fitz before walking away. His boss lingers to give one last command.

“Patch her up, Agent Fitz, then get to work. Her life depends on it.”

She doesn’t say a word when Fitz catches her face between his fingers, just holds eye contact for longer than either of them have previously allowed— needing to convey somehow, to let him know she’s okay.
She wasn’t. Not really. But she wanted him to think she was, for the sake of his sanity— both his and Wards.
She couldn’t possibly do it, can’t bring herself to create a weapon of mass destruction. She’d rather die— and she would. She’d let them kill her first before she ever created such a monstrosity, would rather be dead in the ground than be responsible for something so horrific.
But it wasn’t her life she was gambling with right now: it was his. And Ward. And May, Coulson, Skye… It made her stomach roll and if she hadn’t felt nauseous from the physical blow she’d taken, she certainly does now.
She can’t be responsible for their deaths, either.
She winces when Fitz cleans the cut on her cheek, the sting of antiseptic biting into her pores and he mutters an apology when her eyes water but presses forward, patching her up as he’d been instructed to.
"That’s good, Agent Fitz. Now: the machine. I suggest you get it pieced together and functioning properly. Every hour you delay, she’ll pay for."
The leader— the baritone voiced leviathan— is not only smirking at them, but watching them intently and she can see the cold calculations solving themselves as his gaze darts between her and Fitz.
It sets a coldness in her stomach.
Their partnership has never been a threat to either of them, never been something used to any advantage other than scientific discovery and progress.
It’s a threat now. It’s putting him at risk, in the line of fire, because she can already see the way this is going to go: either she will do what this man wants or Fitz will suffer. And either Fitz will do what’s asked of him, or she will suffer.
It’s not an original mode of manipulation, but it’s effective.
He hates the feel of the man’s eyes, not necessarily for how they skate over him, but for how they dance over Simmons. It’s a calculating look, one he’s seen men give her before, and it makes him deeply uncomfortable. He can’t stomach the idea that he’s weighing her, trying to discover the best way to keep her under his control. He grasps for her hands, and finding them, gives them a small squeeze.

“Chin high, Simmons,” he whispers. “Ye kno’ tha’ Coulson’ll have a plan.”

He moves quickly to arrange his workbench and direct his new lackeys as to where to place the boxes. When he’s all set, he gestures her over to him.

“Simmons, I’ll need ye t’ tell me how ye need this calibrated.”

He looks her dead in the eye, hoping she’ll take his meaning. He doesn’t need her at the moment, but he refuses to let her out of his sight; the closer he can keep her, the safer she’ll be until they can work out a way to get out of the lab. He kneels down next to the first crate and pulls her down along with him before rifling through its contents. A furtive glance tells him that aside from the two men guarding the door, the rest of the invading force has cleared out for the relative comfort of the lounge above. Brutus stands just outside the doors, leaning against Lola.

He hopes Coulson will get in a few extra hits for that.

“Ye remember wha; we used t’ do a’ the Academy?” he hisses at her, doing his best to keep his voice low. “Durin’ the silen’ partner drills?”

It was common practice at the Sci-Tech Academy to force cadets into working silently in pairs. The reasoning was that they would need to work in tandem in the field, where speaking aloud could get them killed. Most cadets got around not speaking to each other by writing everything down; Fitz had found that a cumbersome waste of time. Instead, he and Simmons had developed their own way of communicating.

They had tapped a Morse code shorthand into each other’s palms, a rather elegant solution for when electronics were down and paper and pen were useless. It was what led to them having the fastest solve times of their class, and helped cement them as Fitzsimmons to the rest of S.H.I.E.L.D.

However, grabbing her hand here would be far too obvious, so instead he surreptitiously slides his hand down his side to rest between where their legs are pressed against each other. He taps out the first message carefully, trying to find the rhythm of it after years of disuse.

Eventually, he manages a simple message.

Should I rig it to blow?

She almost grins when he asks her if she remembers their silent partner drills.
Almost.
Her head is still aching and her ribs are sending a sharp pain every time she takes in a breath, but she can’t help but think with admiration: he’s bloody brilliant. Of course he’d figure out a way to communicate, it’s what he does— finds solutions for unsolvable equations.
But his tapped question sets her mind back in place, back to the situation at hand and she has to think about what’s he’s asked her, neurons firing a little slower than normal due to her recent injuries.
It would work. It would blow them out of the sky— all of them— but it would work. No one would ever know what had happened, no weapon of mass destruction created, no threat to humanity. But… That also meant no them. No Jemma, no Fitz, no Ward, no Coulson, no Skye, no May… What was she willing to risk?
The weight of the decision settled in on her, filling up the space between her and Fitz.
She’d called him pasty once, but this… Rigging a DNA replicator to explode on command was by far the least pasty thing she could think of. She hated that he’d even had to suggest it.
His words floated around her head— Coulson will have a plan— and she remembered Coulson: his eyes just a touch misty as he stared at her through thick glass, words catching in his throat while she’d begged him to tell her Dad first… “we’re not there yet”.
We’re not there yet. She takes in a deep, shaking breath, winces at the pain that spikes through her with the contraction and expansion of her ribs.
She knew then. She had to trust that Coulson— the team— would figure this out. If not, then she’d sabotage the DNA replication somehow; if these men killed her, so be it. But she couldn’t let Fitz and the others commit suicide, not when there might be another option.
No just do what he says.
She wanted him out of the equation, somewhat safe in place beside Ward, where he was less in the line of fire.
It was her they wanted anyways. Her and the virus.
She wonders for a brief second if she’s just made a horrible decision, wonders where exactly Coulson and May are— if they’re conscious and functioning… These men weren’t afraid to use physical means to get what they wanted, and though May was the cavalry, could she really take down such brutes as the ones standing in the lab? Jemma wasn’t sure.
She watched Fitz begin to assemble pieces, recognizing parts of the DNA replication machine as they slowly came together, eyes sliding over to Ward once or twice to ensure he was still present and coherent. He just stared at her, eyes cool and dark. She’d seen him in a rage before, had seen him take down men in the field, but this was an entirely different Ward. It was probably a Ward that was entirely different to him too; restrained and unable to do what he did best: the jack of all trades in the deck of cards they’d assembled here on the Bus.
“It’s been an hour Agent Fitz. I highly suggest you speed things along.”
Jemma starts at the sound of the voice, making her stomach twist, and the flinch on her face tugs at the butterfly suture on her cheek. Distracted by the twinge of pain, she doesn’t realize that anyone has come close to her until a hand lands with a heavy thud on her shoulder, making her ribs contract with the force of air out of her lungs at the impact.
“Come with me, Agent Simmons. We have some things to clarify before you begin your work.”
Her stomach drops with dread.
Divide and conquer, she thinks.
To say he’d felt on edge since the lab had been invaded would be an understatement. His rage had been ready to boil over from the start, but keeping calm for Simmons’ sake had been, by and large, his priority.
Having her out of sight now made him downright murderous, and he didn’t even bother to hide the fact that he was checking to see if she was headed back to the lab. His behavior did not go unnoticed, and soon the men left guarding himself and Ward were pestering him as he assembled the DNA replicator, trying to force him into something they could use as an excuse for punishment.
“What do you keep looking over there for? That won’t put the machine together any faster.”
“He misses his girlfriend. Hey, did you see? She was giving Mikey the eye earlier…”
“Mikey would be a better ride than his scrawny ass.”
“Maybe we can all have a shot later…”
They trailed into progressively more graphic descriptions of Simmons as he worked. Fitz felt his ears burning in rage as they described her body and what they’d like to do with her. His grip on the wrench tightened, and he calculated how many steps it would take for him to hit the man closest to him upside the head. His partner would likely shoot both himself and Ward dead, but he could take at least one of them out…
He shook off the thought and went to grab the next component he needed. Getting himself killed over something as trivial as words would do Simmons no favors. He was of more use to her here, where he could at least try to find a way to slow this whole thing down. He could always find a way to exact his revenge later, without her ever knowing what had been said while she was out.
He moved onto the final crate, and grunted as he attempted to move the main portion of the replicator; it refused to yield a single centimeter. Only then did he again turn his full attention to the two soldiers.
“Can one o’ ye move this int’ position. I cannae get it t’ budge.”
The men merely laughed and offered him taunts ranging from the ever-popular topic of Simmons to his physique.
They weren’t even terribly clever.
Fitz rolled his eyes. “Yea’, I’ve hear’ ‘em all before. Can ye a’ least’ adjus’ his bindin’s so he can help?” He nodded at Ward as he spoke; the older man had been watching everything with guarded eyes.
“Not a chance.”
He’d expected that.
“Then ye can tell yer boss why his precious replicator isnae up and runnin’ when he comes back.”
That got them, and with some grumbling they pulled Ward from his prone position and brought him over to where Fitz was working. They kept him bound, but loosened the ties so there was enough slack to give him some range of motion. With a last warning to finish the machine, they retreated to the far side of the lab. Ward moved the piece into place with relative ease, and held it there as Fitz tightened the appropriate bolts and began to solder the seams. They were scant centimeters from each other this way, providing a way to speak without being too suspicious.
“Does this mean you have a plan?”
“Get yer hands free an’ wait for Simmons.”
Ward gave a soft grunt as the weight shifted slightly.
“Better than nothing.”
She could barely walk, the ache in her body excruciating with every step back toward the lab. She didn’t know what to expect now, didn’t know how this particular set of occurrences played into the picture.
If they’d wanted to her to work in the lab, doing chemical preparations and biochemical processes, she didn’t know why they’d make it more difficult by using her as a punching bag.
The hand on her arm swung her forward, propelled her toward the staircase that lead to the cargo area, body protesting her movements.
She’d been injured before: smashed fingers in doors, broken wrist as a child, chemical burns in the lab… but she’d never sustained them like this: by physical force. Her face was swollen, cheeks blooming with pain on both sides now, and with every breath pulled into her lungs, her ribs flamed with pain from the kick she’d taken. She was quite positive at least one or two of them were broken, could feel the grind of bone against bone in her side as she was manhandled back down to the lab.
She didn’t want to go back down there. She didn’t want to do what they’d told her to do, didn’t want to face Ward and Fitz like this: no way of communicating with them due to the very clear instructions she’d just been given ("no interactions whatsoever, Agent Simmons”) that were punctuated by fists to her face and body.
She couldn’t tell them that she now knew where May and Skye were, bloodied and bruised but safe in the cage, or that she really truly had no clue as to where Coulson was now— and neither did anyone else.
It’d been part of what they’d wanted from her: to find out where Coulson might be. But she hadn’t known and apparently, neither had Skye or May.
The other part of what they’d wanted from her was motivation: particularly, motivation for Fitz. She didn’t know why, what they wanted from him, and it threw her for a loop because she’d thought they’d been after her the whole time. She’d barely had time to process the information before the means of motivation came flying toward her jawline, leaving a deep dark bruise and a rather nasty gash along her chin.
“I hate to damage such a pretty face… But I need Agent Fitz and Agent Ward willing to participate… And the easiest, the fastest way to ensure that is to threaten what they value.”
His name was Michael— his men called him Mikey— and though she’d thought he was the leader, he was not. Oh, he was in control of the situation here, but he was taking instructions via a discreet comms device. She’d watched his face working, smile spreading across his face when he must have been told to motivate Fitz and Ward by whatever means necessary.
There was a chain of command: the brutes down below deck were under him, and he was under whomever was on the other end of the comms device.
It complicated things: if they got out of this (and the if of the situation kept running around her head), would they be able to escape the repercussions? How far was this chain of command? What, exactly, was the plan here? A weapon of mass destruction was dangerous, yes, but only if one has the means to administer it…
She stopped short, feet coming to a halt before the winding staircase that would take her and the lackey who had her arm in a vice grip back down to the lab.
Jesus. Fitz.
That’s what they needed him for.
Her sudden lack of movement was counteracted by the forward motion of the body propelling hers and she flew forward, body hitting the metal floor with a sharp and loud thud.
Her vision tunneled, black spots appearing around the edges, her ribs screaming in pain.
Fitz. Oh, god. That’s exactly what they needed him for, what they needed to motivate him for.
“What the hell are you doing? Get up!” She was hauled up by her hair, and she couldn’t help the cry that pulled it’s way loose from her throat.
She stumbled and tripped over her own feet, body not accustomed to the many bruises and (suspected) broken bones it was now trying to function with. She got her feet under her in time to make her way down the staircase, knowing if she didn’t, she’d probably be thrown down it.
She wouldn’t let them force Fitz to make a viral dispersion mechanism.
She couldn’t. His inquiry before was a clear indication of how he felt about this:should I rig it to blow?
She shuddered as she was half forced, half stepped willingly through the swoosh of the lab doors and her eyes connected with blue ones, widening as they took her in and she almost flinched at the look that spread across her partners face.
Did she look as bad as she felt?
Fitz had only been partially focused on putting the finishing touches on the DNA replicator, as he had been waiting for any indication of Simmons’ return. The whoosh of the lab doors caused him to straighten, and he turned without thinking to see what was happening. He could feel his eyes go wide as he took in her face.
Any joy he could have had at her return turned to ash in his mouth when he caught sight of her.
The gash on her left cheek had reopened and was slowly weeping; it was joined by another line of bright red that marred her right jawline just past her chin, the color running halfway down her neck. Her right eye was rapidly swelling shut, and there were several small bruises dotting the pale expanse of her throat.
Someone had choked her.
Fitz saw red, quite literally. His focus narrowed to the man who had a death grip on her arm. He reached for the mallet he had been using and gripping it firmly, made to step forward when he felt Ward grab the back of his shirt.
“Fitz, wait,” the specialist hissed at him.
He stilled against his better judgement. He wanted to fly at the man, make him pay for the promise that had been broken. The agreement was simple: work, and no one is harmed. He had worked, putting together the equipment they wanted without even an attempt at sabotage, and Simmons had been returned to him a battered mess. The injustice welled inside of him, making him reckless.
The took a step forward, shaking off Ward, and thrusting the mallet at the man who held his partner.
“Wha’ th’ hell is this? Ye wanted a DNA replicator. I made ye one. Ye wan’ her t’ retro-engineer a virus for ye, an’ ye beat th’ hell ou’ o’ her? Gi’e me one good reason why I shouldnae take th’ damn thing apar’ this instant.”
The smirk the man gives him is so cruel, a shiver runs up Fitz’ spine and chills him to the bone. He can only watch as the man grips the hem of Simmons’ shirt and roughly yanks it upward, exposing a swath of skin from the waist of her pants to just below her bust. Instead of the pale skin that one might expect, her torso is covered by a black-and-blue canvas, with bright red spots breaking the pattern on her left side. It was only then that he noticed the hitch in her breathing and the slightly ragged sound of her exhale.
She must have been in incredible pain with at least two ribs broken. He was amazed she was moving under her own power at all.
He tore his eyes from her body to search her face, desperate to reassure both of them in any small way. Simmons wouldn’t hold his gaze, however, making his stomach clench and his heart race wildly. It’s the most helpless he’s felt in ages, and he can’t even begin to develop a plan to keep them all safe. Some genius he is.
He swallows audibly before turning his attention to the soldier.
“Wha’ d’ ye wan’?” He spits the question at him, unable and unwilling to keep the acidic tone from his voice.
“Is the replicator ready?”
“I’s finished, yea’,” he replies, unwilling to give more detail than that.
“Good. Here’s what’s going to happen now, Agent Fitz. Agent Simmons here,” he jerked her shirt down as he spoke, “is going to begin her work. You will not speak with her, or touch her, or attempt to communicate with her in anyway.”
Fitz felt his fingers twitch at that bit of news. He had expected to at least patch her up before she began. Aside from the antiseptic and bandages she needs, painkillers would also be in order. He hadn’t seen any evidence of her ribs poking through anything, so at least she wasn’t in mortal danger, but he still knew that she must be in terrible pain.
The man had noticed Fitz’ reaction, and his smile somehow became even more cruel as he walked SImmons toward him so she was standing next to him before the replicator. He captures her eyes with his own for a brief moment, hopes she can tell how sorry he is, and how he wishes he could trade places with her, spare her the torment of what is happening.
The moment is obliterated when the soldier releases his grip on her in order to grab Fitz by the collar, and drags him a few feet away. Suddenly, Fitz feels his knees give out as the man kicks him, forcing him into a kneeling position. He felt more than heard the safety being taken off a gun, and shivered at the sensation of cold gun metal being pushed into the nape of his neck.
“Get to work, Agent Simmons. If you delay, you’ll watch him die. Agent Ward, assist her with whatever she needs.”
Jemma can’t look at Fitz or Ward, can’t risk their safety by any means of communications. All she can do is pull on a pair of a black gloves and begin to lay out the chemical compounds she’ll need.
She can sense Fitz behind her, the weapon aimed at him with precise and clear intent. It’s enough to make tears prick the corners of her eyes.
Now is not the time, Simmons.
She has work to do, has to figure out a way to solve this. If only she knew where Coulson was…
She turns to her right, reaching for the alkaline base she needs and her knees nearly give out on her. She’s not accustomed to her ribs being this damaged and the level of pain she’s suffering from, just used to reaching and bending and doing what she’d always done in the lab.
She can feel how tense Ward is, every muscle contracted and tight as he stands to the side waiting for her in case she has need of him. His jaw is clenched tight, muscles working underneath the now scruffy skin on his face. It’s funny, she thinks as she creates a base for the viral weapon, because she’s never felt all that connected to Ward. If anything, he’s always seemed a bit put off by her— which, is probably because she’d shoved a cotton swab in his mouth the first time she’d met him— even after he’d jumped from the plane to catch her from free-fall. He’d been friendlier, loosened up a bit after that, but it was never the way it was with Fitz. Well, in all honesty she didn’t think she’d ever have that level comfortableness with anyone besides Fitz… Still, Ward was a hard read for her, if only because he was so different than her and Fitz. She could never gauge him, set him on a scale from one to ten where she could hypothesize and solve him. But now… She could feel him taking her in, watching her every movement, cataloging every twinge and hitch of pain in her lungs, making a roster of her injuries in his head. It almost felt protective, the way she imagined an older brother might react. It was comforting.
FItz, on the other hand, practically radiated heat and anger, much less used to having to reign in his responses. He was used to working with her and she was flexible, knew how he could be sometimes: snappy or grumpy without meaning to. It’s what made them good, made them compatible… She was the steady when he was moody, and he was the baseline when she was too excitable and giddy over things far too macabre for his tastes. This situation, one in which they were used against each other, in which one of them was threatened and injured, was not one that she’d ever thought they’d be in. It was maddening.
She set the base to spin and turned toward Ward, her eyes meeting his for a half second before chancing a glance at Fitz. The gun was still propped to his neck and it made her stomach clench, roll violently.
"Ward, in that storage compartment, there’s a vial— labeled CV1A. Could you please get it for me?" It was high, out of reach and she knew she wouldn’t be able to reach for it, not with her ribs in such a sorry state. He nodded and did as she asked, handing her the vial. His hand lingered on her fingers for a second, brushing his fingertips against the gloves she wore. He was trying, at least. She tried to give him a small smile, but she was certain it had only come out as a small grimace.
This was the difficult part. This was the part that would take hours of fixed concentration: the dividing and sequencing of chromosomes in order to make them pliable to control. This was the part she dreaded.
——————————————————-
Four bloody hours later, and she managed to separate the chromosomes, yielding the desired effect of electric shock infection upon remote activation. It was a feat of brilliance, but one that she hoped never saw the light of day outside this lab.
She was becoming unbalanced, movements swaying and unsteady on her feet. She didn’t know when she’d last eaten and the repercussion of her accumulated injuries were catching up to her. She could feel the shakiness in her system, her hands trembling now and any warmth that she’d had was now gone from her body, leaving her feeling cold and exhausted.
Other than the words she’d spoken to Ward much earlier, she’d kept her mouth shut, not willing to risk injury to Fitz. Now, her voice sounded small and quiet against the silence in the lab.
"I think this should work, if you want to test it."
The men who stood around the lab looked at one another, nodded and soon enough Michael was back in her lab, his presence eating up the quietness of the environment.
"Ah, Agent Simmons. You work fast. Let’s see this beauty, shall we?" His voice was honeyed and poisonous, but she lifted her chin— the one he’d bruised earlier and met his eyes as he made his way over to her and her lab bench. She heard Fitz take in a deep breath and felt Wards flex ripple through the air.
Michael just grinned at them over her shoulder and reached for her, fingertips pressed into her chin as he grabbed her jaw between his fingers and jerked her head closer to his.
"I hope, for Agent Fitzs sake, that this works." Her breath shuddered and for a moment, she doubted herself.
No. It would work. She’d managed to code the chromosomes to respond to only a specific set of antigens… The ones she carried. So while it would appear to work under the microscope— would make Michael think she’d created the weapon of mass destruction he’d asked for— it would never work on anyone but her and the antigens she carried.
He shoved her away from with a crushing force and she flew into the side of the lab bench with a gut twisting smack, the edge of the metal counter meeting her ribs.
She didn’t have the reflexes to catch herself and it caused her to twist to the ground, body crumpling under the intense pain and she found herself laying on the ground within arms reach of Fitz, blinking at the white spots in her vision and trying not to slip into unconsciousness.
His knees are numb by the time Simmons signals that the virus is ready to go, but his own discomfort is far from his mind. Not even the feeling of the ogre behind him, pressing into his personal space and forcing a gun on him, managed to distract him long enough to keep his eyes off her. Tracking her progress was the only thing helping him keep his rage contained.
As she moved about the lab, he realized exactly how injured she was; she asked Ward to fetch things she typically would have retrieved herself, and paused her work often to lean against the workbench in an attempt to manage her pain before pressing on. Around the third hour, he noticed the tremors start in her hands. She was going into shock, what with her injuries and the adrenaline rush of everything wearing off.
He’s sorely tempted to demand they treat her, but the threat of a bullet lodged in his brain stem keeps him from speaking.
He turns his attention inward, trying to get his anger under control so he can clear his head and find a way out of here for them. He’s busy mapping out the Bus’ vent system in his head when Simmons declares that she’s finished and Brutus comes in, the one he now realizes is the same “Mikey” the men had been talking about before. His skin involuntarily flushes in anger as he recalls all the suggestions they had made, and as he realizes when he grabs her chin that he’s likely the man who beat her so severely.
The red is back, tinting the edge of his vision as he watches him squeeze her jaw in a vice-like grip before thrusting her away from him. Fitz is powerless as he watches her slam into the lab table before she lands, sprawled before him on the cold, hard floor of the lab. The threat of being shot is forgotten and he stumbles forward on his knees, half collapsing over her as feeling floods back into his legs.
“Simmons!” It comes out as a wail as he leans over her, shielding her from the eyes of everyone else in the lab. He brings his right hand to cup her cheek, taking care to not jostle her too badly. Her eyes are screwed shut in obvious pain and she’s struggling to breathe. “C’mon, Jemma, stay wit’ me.”
He turns to glare at Mikey, who is hunched over the microscope. He sees that Ward is being held back, every line of him tense with indignation, his eyes fixed where Jemma lays. Fitz can no longer hold his tongue.
“Wha’ was tha’?! She made th’ damn virus f’r ye! Wha’s th’ poin’ o’ abusin’ her on top o’ all tha?”
His chest is heaving with every breath, and he can feel his hands trembling as his rage courses through him. The fact that the man only smirks at him in reply pushes him further into his sour mood.
“Agent Fitz, Agent Simmons has done a fine job with the virus. However, there is one, slight problem.”
Fitz’ heart stops. He already knows he won’t like what’s coming.
“I can only administer this one dose at a time in this form. Not very effective, is it? If only there was someone who could conceive of an elegant solution for spreading it over a large area, where it could come into contact with as many people as possible without losing any of its power.”
Fitz’s anger turns to fear in the space of a heartbeat, and settles as a knot of dread low in his stomach. Mikey had indeed been thorough in his research.
The man’s cold grin widens when he sees realization dawn on Fitz.
“Oh, yes, Agent Fitz, you know exactly what I’m-- What was that?”
The sound had been faint, seemingly coming from the vents, and vanished quickly. It was preternaturally quiet in the lab, setting everyone on edge. Fitz’ eyes darted to Ward, but the specialist betrayed nothing. He glanced back down to where Simmons lay prone next to him. She had managed to open her eyes, and they were blown wide in fear. He could feel her shaking against the palm of his hand, and a war waged inside of him. He could protect everyone, or he could protect her.
She won out.
He held her eyes with his, blue boring into honey, and he prayed she could see his intent. He licked his lips and began to speak.
“All righ’, ye’ll ge’ yer damn distribution mechanism,” he ground out, staring Brutus in the eye. “Bu’ Simmons stays here, in th’ lab wit’ me, an’ none o’ ye will touch her again. Tha’s th’ only way I’ll build th’ infernal thing.”
The tone with which Fitz speaks doesn’t go unnoticed and it’s not a breaths moment before she feels a hand wind into her hair and yank her upright, little heaves of air escaping her lungs as she’s pulled against Michael in a tight hold. She can feel every one of his muscles, every tendon, and if she’d been frightened before, she’s terrified now.
“I don’t think you’re in a position to negotiate, Agent Fitz. You’ll either build the damn machine, or I’ll break her neck; she’s of no use to me now… Well. Perhaps a little use." The hand that’s not in her hair slides from her arm to her waist, glides up her ribs… She can feel the reverberations of his voice through his chest, can make out the implication of what he’s said, and it causes her eyes to widen, realization dawning on her in horror.
If she’s no use to him then she has nothing to bargain with— no way of manipulating this situation outside of the work she’d done on the virus. She’s entirely at the mercy of Michael and his men— even at the mercy Fitz and Ward doing what’s demanded of them.
She’s not used to being this helpless, this inadequate. At least before she’d had a purpose— now she’s just simply the means of motivation for something horrible.
She’s barely looked at Fitz while in the lab, afraid that any eye contact or gesture would be taken as a means of communications, that it would put him in the line of fire. But now… She can’t look away, can’t pull her eyes from his because she’s shaken to the core, a panic winding it’s way through her chest at the liquid words Michael has just spoken, at the way it’s made Fitz tense up.
But it’s Ward that slices through palpable animosity in the air, words low and dark, pulled through clenched teeth as he stared at Michael.
"Build the fucking machine, Fitz." Jemma’s eyes widen, slide from Fitz to Ward and she see’s the way he’s shaken off the two men who were trying to restrain him.
"If you think you’re leaving this plane with it, you’re insane. But go ahead: make him build it. Keep beating the hell out of Simmons. You can try to walk out of here alive. I’d like to see you try, actually. But you won’t get past Coulson and you sure as hell won’t get past me."
He doesn’t try anything, doesn’t move an inch, just stands there looking at Michael with a calm rage that sends chills down her spine. She doesn’t think Michael was expecting Wards words because it gives him pause for a second, grip in her hair slacking just a bit and even though she knows she might lose a few strands, she takes advantage of the relaxation of his muscles and jerks her head away from him, forcing her body away from his in a sudden contraction of muscles and strength she didn’t know she had left in her.
Michael is certainly not expecting that and she goes flying from his arms, straight into Fitz, her body colliding with his, arms flying up to catch herself on his shoulders. His arms flail for a moment before steadying both of them and she grips his shoulders tight, clenching her fingers into the pliable flesh of his deltoid muscle, just for the sake of feeling him steady and strong under her fingers.
“Fitz.” She doesn’t really mean for it to come out so strangled, doesn’t really know why it sounds like a broken little gasp of his name until she realizes that she’s crying, hot tears spilling down her cheeks.
He catches her, his grip reflexively tightening before he remembers her ribs and relaxes his hold on her. She’s pressed against him from knee to hip to chest, and he can feel the tremors that are shaking her thin frame. Her tears are soaking his shirt, and he struggles to keep his own emotions in check. Simmons never cries, not in public at least, and rarely in front of him. She’s been broken well beyond the superficial veneer of good cheer she uses to hide from the world, and he’s at a loss as to how to press on. He wants to hide her from their hungry, prying eyes — he didn’t miss how they had followed the progress of their leader’s hand as it slinked up her ribs to rest just below her breast — but all he can manage is to hold her and whisper in her ear.
“Shh, Jemma, i’s goin’ t’ be all righ’. I’ve go’ ye.” He presses a lingering kiss to her temple, and his right hand begins making small circles on her lower back. He pulls back slightly, not enough to break her grip on him, but enough for him to get both his hands on her face so he can brush her hair back and make eye contact with her. “I’ll ge’ th’ thin’ up an’ runnin’, and it’ll all be over, yea’?” He whispers it into the scant space between them, and presses another kiss to her forehead as he sublimates his rage into a calm tone, trying to keep her stable. He’ll need her thinking clearly in a moment.
He looks up, catching Ward’s eye. No one has dared approach him, or made any kind of move to force him back into a more submissive posture. He’s locked in a staring contest with Mikey, and to Fitz’ surprise and great pleasure, seems to be winning. Ward, in that moment, reminds Fitz so powerfully of his eldest cousin, the one who had always ensured he arrived to school unmolested by the other boys in his year, that it gives him the confidence to move both Simmons and himself over to his workbench.
He sits her on his stool, and, still keeping his right hand on her elbow, quickly riffles through his drawers until he finds the bottle of Advil he keeps for emergencies. It’s nowhere near enough, but it may ease at least some of her pain. He places the bottle before her, and with an apology in his eyes, turns away from her to focus on the filing cabinet that holds all of his blueprints. He yanks open the bottom drawer, crouching over it as his fingers skim past dates. Eventually, he lands on his years with Simmons at the Academy, and he pauses to find exactly the right design.
He pulls the blue paper from the folder and gently spreads it across the space. He hears Simmons’ sharp intake of breath when she catches sight of the design, and he forces himself not to look at her. The design is an old one, from his earliest days at the Academy, and well before he met Simmons. It’s this design that gave him a way to distribute an antiserum suspended in a saline solution via electrostatic shock. Now, instead of using it to save people, he has to go back to the original purpose of the design: death and destruction, now on a much larger scale.
Fitz takes a deep breath and screws his eyes shut. He doesn’t want to go back to that headspace, that of an angry young man who was desperate for the approval of his professors and the envy of his peers, but he must if he’s to play any kind of role in saving them. Quickly, before he loses his resolve, he reaches for his sketch pad, fetches a fresh sheet of design paper, pulls a pencil from his drawer, and begins sketching the alterations he’ll need to make.
She’s twisting the top of the bottle off when she hears him digging through his old designs, swallows the painkillers without water before she glances over at what he’s pulled from his old files.
It makes her suck in a sharp breath, ribs protesting the sudden expansion of her lungs. She never thought she’d see that design again, didn’t want to see it again. She knew it was the plotting point for his antiserum distribution tech— had recognized the concept of a liquid converted into static energy at the time— but he hadn’t pulled out that design. She didn’t even know he’d kept it.
The significance of it went far beyond just the design. It went back before even her, before their time together and though he had told her some of it, she’d never heard the whole story— just that he was miserable and desperate when he’d designed it.
He didn’t know that she hadn’t really created a weapon of mass destruction… That the only person it would infect was her. She shivered, her already trembling body give a little tremor. She had to tell him, had to somehow convey to him that she’d never leave him in the position of choosing her or protecting others.
She glances at Ward to assess her options; he’s still radiating anger but he’s allowed himself to be restrained again. Michael has recovered from Ward’s outburst, however, and has made his way over to their bench to inspect what Fitz is doing, his hand startling her as it slides up her back to her shoulder in a touch that is reminiscent of old lovers and nothing like a mercenary forcing her to cooperate.
Her eyes snap to Fitz, hazel holding his blue. She doesn’t know what she’s trying to communicate to him but somehow knowing he’s watching her makes her feel more secure, even with another man’s hands on her.
"This is good, Agent Fitz. I see why SHIELD recruited you. Very brilliant." Michael pulls his hand from her shoulder and turns from them, nodding at his men once and making for the exit. He pauses, turns for a moment and looks at her.
"Don’t get too comfortable, Agent Simmons. I might yet have need of you." Her spine straightens as she watches him leave the lab, defiance settling in her bones at his words.
She turns back to Fitz, watches him stare at his blueprints with hands pulled into tight fists and she knows she has to tell him soon, before he does something rash. She slides off the stool carefully, wary of the eyes of Michael’s men on her and makes her way to stand beside Fitz, shoulder brushing his. She slips her hand down his right arm, over his clenched tight hand, her fingers spread between his knuckles and hold his.
They’ve never really had personal space between the two of them— there wasn’t much use for it when cramped in a lab trying to accomplish projects and assignments, bodies constantly in motion and sharing space. After years of working together it didn’t even register that they shouldn’t stand so close or whisper quietly to one another. But this was different… It was intimate in a comforting way, the pull of her cold trembling skin against his warm hands. She didn’t care if she’d pay for it— she was already more bruised and beaten than she had ever been.
"I don’t think you’ll need that design.” She said, tone hushed to almost a whisper, emphasis pointed and exaggerated in hopes he’d question it quietly.

Fitz hadn’t realized that he’d been shaking until she placed a trembling hand over his own, coming into his personal space and calming his racing heart.

The feel of her, pressed lightly against his right shoulder, eased some of the tension running through him. He felt his jaw unclench and eased his grip on the pencil so he was no longer as close to breaking it.

He had no idea how Jemma could be so outwardly relaxed. She’d been beaten, forced to engineer a biological weapon, and just threatened with sexual assault. The way that slime had touched her, so casually, had caused Fitz’ blood pressure to spike; only locking eyes with her, seeing her need for reassurance, had kept him calm. His eyes were squeezed tight as he willed himself to focus on her, her breathing, and the need to come up with something plausible, yet ineffective, when her words broke through.

What did she mean, he didn’t need that design? He turned quickly to meet her eyes, nearly bumping his nose against hers in the process. He hadn’t realized she’d been that close, and it startles him for half a heartbeat before he refocuses on the situation at hand. Her eyes betray no inner turmoil, but there’s a sadness there, a hint of concern, that troubles him. He knows in that moment that she’s taken solving this into her own hands.

“Jemma, wha’ did ye do?”

The words hang on his breath, barely audible to his own ears, although the heartbreak is still palpable. She looks away, bites her lower lip, and all Fitz can do is hang his head as he stares at the blueprints before him. Jemma’s done something, he knows that much, and he’ll disapprove of it, whatever it is, when he hears the details.

He forces the breath out of his lungs and begins looking for a way to render his new design useless without tipping off any of the men who have invaded the Bus. It’s then that he sees it, a minor design flaw he can insert in the power source. If he just happens to solder one particular circuit a little too long, it should produce the show they want with no actual effect.

He taps the part of the design he’s looking at with his left hand, unwilling to pull his right hand from her, and hopes she takes his meaning.

She leans in, hand tightening around his as his grip loosens from a fist and twines her fingers between his. She needs him right now and she’s never really been the needy type. It’s just that they’ve been working together for so long that the idea of her now being useless to him makes her feel odd, off kilter even more than when Michael had touched her.
She hears his tap against the lab bench and sneaks a glance down, seeing the tiny little mechanical flaw instantly. He’s brilliant, bloody brilliant, and it makes her heart clench because she knows how much it must be killing him to have it be exploited.
She’s about to respond to his question despite all the threats to their physical well being over any communication because he needs to know, when Michael’s men start a bit— jerking to upright positions, rigid and on alert. She glances over at them, realizing they must also have comms devices.
"Michael wants to see you upstairs, Agent Simmons." It’s said lasciviously, words slicking against her skin in a terrifying way and her eyes snap to Fitz and then to Ward.
She doesn’t want to go, doesn’t want to leave the lab to face whatever cruelty awaits her. Not now, not when she’d just gotten close to Fitz and felt safe again. She feels herself start trembling again, body jarring, feeling like she’s going to tremble right out of her skin.
"Now!" It’s loud and harsh, making her flinch.
Ward lets out a little growl at her being yelled at, rises to his feet. She makes a decision then: if she’s going to be assaulted, if she’s going to be raped and possibly beaten again, maybe even approaching her death, then she had to tell Fitz now about the virus… had to pretend that she would be okay even though she had a sinking feeling she wouldn’t. She can hear the heavy footsteps of Michaels men as they approach her and she moves quickly: presses lips to Fitz’s cheek and whispers quickly:
"It’s me, it’s my antigens. It can only infect me." Her fingers clench into his biceps tightly, hands gripping him strongly and she pulls her face back from his, eyes swimming as she stares at him. It’s not what she wants to leave him with and, as the realization dawns on his face, she leans forward and crosses all the lines of their long history to press her lips to his before she’s yanked away roughly and practically thrown across the lab toward the glass doors.
"I swear, if you lay a finger on her again, you will regret it. I know you can hear me! I know you can hear me!” Her head snaps around at Wards outburst, see’s him facing the camera in the corner of the lab used for the surveillance feed. Tears sting her eyes as it earns him a heavy handed blow to the ribs but before she can protest it, she’s tugged out of the lab and pushed up the stairs, toward Michael and whatever else waited for her.

For one small, blissful moment, Fitz' mind is blank.

He manages to forget the men and the threats hanging over them while Jemma's lips are pressed to his, and his chest swells with an impossibly giddy joy he didn't believe he'd ever feel. But, just as he’s about to press forward, reach an arm around to pull her closer, she’s yanked away, hurled back into danger.

The reality of the situation comes flooding back to him, deflating any happiness brought about by the truncated kiss.

They’re fighting for their lives. Jemma’s made a weapon that could only target herself. She’s been badly beaten, and given the salacious tone, is likely to be raped. His stomach threatens to revolt at that thought in particular.

He’s vaguely aware that Ward is yelling, somehow coming off as imposing even with his hands tied before him, but all he can see is her, Jemma, as she’s being dragged away and herded back up the spiral stairs.

He recalls another time she was nearly taken from him, seethes at the thought of how she’s been used: as a punching bag, as an engineer of a biological weapon, as motivation, and now as a plaything. He snaps, and takes off for the glass doors.

“JEMMA! JEMMA, NO!”

He never sees the butt of the rifle. All he hears is the crack of his cheekbone breaking as one of the mercenaries brings his weapon across his face; he doesn’t even really feel it. He is only logically aware of what’s happened when the rich copper taste of his own blood fills his mouth, and he falls to one knee at the door. He manages to just catch sight of her feet as she disappears into the upper deck of the Bus, and it pulls a wail from his throat that doesn’t sound human in the least.

It’s Ward, not the soldiers, who helps him to his feet and guides him back to where his blueprints lay on the workbench.

“Fitz, you need to build this thing, whatever it is. Build it, and do it quickly. She needs you alive, and if you keep flying off the handle, you won’t make it one more hour. Let me worry about how to take care of them, alright?”

Fitz wants to tell him that no, it’s not alright, that his partner is putting herself on the line for the team, and that to top it all off she kissed him for some bloody unfathomable reason. He’s terribly confused, and can barely think straight for all of the worrying he’s done in the past six hours. He glares at Ward, only to be met with an equally steely gaze.

He turns back to the plans and begins to put together the battery pack it’ll need as Ward stalks off, apparently compliant with the men who have taken over their airplane. Fitz keeps glancing at him out of the corner of his eye, hoping to see him kung fu everybody to death. Eventually, he notices that Ward has worked both his hands free of the rope they used to bind him, and is now merely holding it taught so it appears that this hands are bound. He finds it oddly comforting, knowing that Ward is ready and capable of fighting, so Fitz turns back to his work feeling a little less uneasy.

He’s working on the first powercell, taking care to arrange everything properly, when the deck of the plane pitches violently below his feet and a small directional charge blows through the ventilation shaft near the back of the lab.

Fitz hits the deck without thinking as all hell breaks loose around him.

Jemma is fighting—fighting— with all her strength against the body pressed up against her, fingernails scraping down Michael’s face, elbows catching his ribs, knees jerking and kicking at whatever she can manage to strike, absolutely determined to not go into this hell without making a damn scene. Michael has his hands under her jumper, tugging at her layers and she can hear her clothes tearing— fabric splitting— as he shoves her against the wall of Coulson’s bunk with a grunt and a curse. It knocks her a little, ribs twinging and head ringing, giving him the advantage and he throws his arm over her face with inhuman force.
She’s biting down on his arm, teeth sinking into his flesh, blood pooling in her mouth when the plane shakes and pitches forward, sending both of them flying across Coulson’s bunk. Her hands fly out in front of her instinctively, trying to protect herself but her head cracks against the edge of Coulson’s desk with a sickening thud and everything goes white and fuzzy in her vision.
She can hear the shuffling of feet around her, the shout of stern voices as they float around her, feel the way the plane is seemingly rocking— pitching forward and jerking back… It’s utter chaos but she’s so removed from it, it feels like something from a nightmare. A hand snakes around her neck and she feels herself being dragged upward, lifted into the air as if she were weightless, making her head pulse in pain. Light begins to find itself way through her pupils again and she can see the change in tones, in the depth of darkness as it changes.
She’s being taken somewhere.
Suddenly it’s blinding, bright light flooding into her eyes and she whimpers, trying to block it out as she’s thrust on her own feet, swaying under her weight as a hand wraps around her neck and something cool rests along her neck.
"If you think threatening one of my agents is going to garner you any leniency, you are more stupid than SHIELD has given you credit for." She blinks, trying to get the blurriness of her vision to clear.
Coulson.
A flood of relief washes over her at his voice, knowing that somehow he’d get them out of this. Her eyes clear a little more as she blinks, can make out the familiar shapes and forms of lab equipment that she’s used almost every day for over a year.
She can also make out more clearly the feel of sharp metal pressed against her throat, a hand wrapped around her neck possessively, and the press of Michael behind her.
"If you think I want leniency, you’re more stupid than I’ve given you credit for. I want my virus. I’ll even let you have her for it." The knife at her throat digs in a little and she gasps, sharp intake of air and it pushes the remaining blurriness of her vision away.
Coulson, Ward, Fitz, Skye, and May— bruised and battered— are standing on the other side of the lab, staring at her and Michael. Each face reflects something different, a different emotion, but it’s all the same underneath: rage.
Jemma realizes they’re not alone; a squad of SHIELD soldiers, in full tactical gear, are standing behind Coulson and her team, guns raised and aimed at her. Her knees give a little tremble and her eyes seek out Fitz, vision suddenly tunneling in on him. He looks barely hanging on, enraged beyond anything she’s ever seen, eyes skimming over her and her ravaged clothing before meeting her eyes.
Oh, Fitz, no.
In a move that makes her head swirl with confusion, Coulson lowers his weapon and lifts his hands.
"Fine. Take what you want and give us Agent Simmons."

Simmons is bleeding again, not only from her previous injuries, but also from the delicate line of red left by the blade pressed to her throat. The thought of how sharp it must be chills Fitz, even as he inventories the rest of her.

She's favoring her left side even more heavily now, and he knows they've been back at it with the body blows. But it isn't the blood, or heavy breathing that catches his eye. It's her jumper, the one her mother sent for Christmas, the right seam rent where someone had tried to pull it from her body, and the way her blouse flaps open at the neck, buttons missing, that turns his heart to stone in his chest.

The bastard had actually done it, had actually put his hands on her.

He reaches for the Night-Night Gun that Ward had given him, tucked away in his waistband, but Jemma’s eyes give him pause, the mix of concern and affection confusing him just long enough for Coulson to speak.

When Fitz hears what their leader has to say, he bristles, his jaw clenching and hand tightening around the hilt of the pistol. It rankles him, the idea that they could just walk after all Simmons had been put through, and he regrets not working harder at field assessments; if he had, at this distance, he could probably hit Mikey between the eyes before anyone could move. He notices Ward giving the man the once over as well, and knows that he’s thinking the same thing.

The only response Coulson receives to his offer is a laugh as the mercenary tightens his grip on Jemma’s neck.

“You expect me to believe that you’ll let my men and I walk out of here, so long as we give you her?”

Fitz doesn’t like the way he looks at her, eyes lingering on her lips and neck, thumb pressing further into a rapidly-forming bruise, and cannot help the growl that escapes his throat. Without waiting for Coulson’s command, he stalks over to her workspace and gathers up the viral samples that rest there and quickly shoves them into a padded carrying case. He can hear Coulson speaking behind him as he works.

“Yes, I do. Fitz will hand your samples off to your man, and you’ll hand Simmons off to him. It’s that simple. No tricks, no trackers; we haven’t had that kind of time. It’s the only way you walk out of here alive.”

By the time Coulson’s finished speaking, Fitz has packed all of the vials, and so turns to face the man who’s caused Jemma so much pain and suffering. He approaches, feigning far more confidence than he feels, and tries to keep his gaze steely and locked on to the behemoth holding his partner. He avoids her gaze, knowing that if he meets her eyes, he’ll be lost, and the tears threatening to overwhelm him will fall.

Fitz holds the case to his side, in front of one of the henchmen that had invaded the Bus. He refuses to even glance at him, waiting to see Mikey nod his acceptance of the deal before turning his attention to Jemma. She’s shoved into his arms, and he catches her, wrapping his left arm around her waist to keep her from falling to the floor.

Fitz is vaguely aware of the box being snatched from his outstretched hand, Mikey and his men leaving, and Coulson barking out orders to the S.H.I.E.L.D. team, but his focus is reserved for Jemma alone. He sets her on her feet before skimming his hands over her shoulders and down her arms, checking for injury before tilting her chin upwards to get a better look at the wounds on her neck.

Only after he’s satisfied that her injuries are minor does he allow himself to meet her eyes, his hands falling back to his sides. He feels guilty as the honey pools stare up at him; he should have done a better job protecting her. He doesn’t want to ask the question that’s perched on the tip of his tongue, but he can’t stop himself.

“Jemma, did he…did he try t’...” He swallows heavily, unable to get the words out.

Luckily, Coulson saves him.

“Fitzsimmons, get patched up, then get to work finding that weapon. You made it, now we need you to recover it.”

Jemma physically winces at Coulsons words. It’s not as simple as just getting patched up; she’s certain at least two ribs are cracked, maybe a third broken, the bruises and cuts she’s sustained need to be cleaned properly to avoid infection and some of them might need stitches. The only person capable of providing that level of care other than Fitz is May but she’s battered and bruised too, cradling her right arm in her left.

Jemma doesn’t want to ask him.

Not with the broken look he’s giving her and the words he’d let stumble out a moment ago, but she doesn’t have a choice. She can’t work or function without getting cleaned up and Coulson was right: they had to get the virus back. As it was it would only infect her but if some other biochemist was able to study the DNA sequencing, they might be able to undo what she’d done.

In the end, she doesn’t have to ask Fitz.

“Fitz, see to her. I’ll get everyone cleared out of the lab so you can work.” Coulson’s voice is short and frustrated, but she knows it’s not aimed at either of them.

Fitz still hasn’t looked away from her, hasn’t moved really except when he’d ran his hands over her arms and inspected the thin laceration on her neck. Jemma realizes that her senses are moving slower due to her injuries, but it takes her a moment to realize that everyone has indeed cleared out of the lab-- even the team (Jemma hopes Coulson and Ward treating May and Skye)-- and it’s just her and Fitz now, left to stare at each other and take in what had occurred here.

“Are you… are you all right?” It comes out small, a little pained as she tries to get the words around the bruises on her jaw and the thin red line on her neck. It’s easier, safer to slip back into the familiar territory of being the Doctor she is and her eyes skim over him. He’s bruised, cuts scattered across his face, and there are blood stains on his button down… It’s odd, because she’s in pain, sharp pain every time she takes a single breath in and pushes it out, but somehow seeing his injuries up close is far more painful than anything she’s experiencing physically.

Fitz chuffs out a harsh, mirthless laugh when she asks him if he’s all right. Physically, he’s fine. His cheek is throbbing, yes, and his knees are still a bit stiff from being made to kneel for so long, but he’s young and he’ll heal well enough. What will take longer, what he’s struggling with now with her in front of him and them out of immediate danger, is how she’s been mistreated. His eyes skirt over her once more, and when his gaze lands on her torn sweater, he feels his blood begin to boil again.

He busies himself with getting the antiseptic ointment, bandages, and other things he’ll need from the first aide kit they keep in the lab in order to keep his tone even.

“I’m all righ’,” he tells her, meeting her eyes. He can tell that she doesn’t really believe him. “They dinnae ge’ me too badly. Cheek’s th’ wors’ o’ it, an’ once ye’re seen t’, ye can look a’ it for me.” He knows that should placate her, at least long enough for him to see to her injuries.

He turns to her, exam gloves in hand. He has to manage the question now, otherwise he could startle her badly if he just grabs for her. Still, he can’t bring himself to give voice to his fears.

“Simmons- Jemma- would ye rather May look a’ ye? I mean, if ye’re no’ comfortable wit’ a man touchin’ ye so soon after… well, after they…”

He trails off looking at her. He can feel tears forming at the corners of his eyes, and he cannot stop them from falling now, as his anger is replaced by grief.

“I- I’m so sorry, Jemma. I shouldnae ha’e le’ them take ye. I should ha’e defended ye, bu’ I dinnae, I couldnae…” a sob escapes his throat. “I’m sorry I le’ them do tha’ t’ ye. I failed ye, as a coworker an’ as a frien’.”

He turns away from her, unwilling to let her see him weep despite all they had been through that day.

She doesn’t stop to think about her injuries or the way her body is protesting any and all movements, she just closes the space between them with limping strides and wraps her arms around his, ribs screaming at her as they push against his back and spine.
“Oh Fitz, you didn’t fail me. He didn’t do anything… Do you think I’d go into that without a fight? I bit his arm… which probably explains why my teeth hurt, but it bloody well worked. And Coulson’s timing was impeccable.”
She pulled herself around to look at him, the cuts and scrapes he has on his face, fingers gently grazing over them to feel the degree of swelling. He’s still staring at her sweater, the way it’s damaged beyond repair, blood splattered over the fabric, and she knows he’ll be distracted by it until she can pull it off (she’ll have to in order for him to bandage up her ribs). But right now, she’s focused on him and his face, realizing that she’ll have to treat him first so that he can work unimpeded.
“Come here, you can’t do anything if you’re still a mess.” She pulls the gloves out of his hands and tugs them on, assessing the supplies he’d already accumulated. The first thing she reaches for is a cotton swab and antibiotic numbing ointment, knowing it’ll help with the pain of what she’s about to do. He doesn’t need stitches— thank god— but he’ll need good sturdy bandaging to his lip and cheek to keep them from splitting open again.
It takes a few minutes, full of everything but words, for her to properly clean and bandage the wounds. She’s gritting her teeth the entire time as her body twinges from pain and exhaustion with every twist and turn. Eventually she gives up on reaching for the bandages herself and asks him to hand them to her as she needs them. Her knees are trembling— a side effect of adrenaline letdown— from her own weight by the time she’s done.
She probably should have let him attend to her first, but she’d needed to prove a point to him: she was a mess, but she would be okay. They’d be okay. They’d find the virus and inactivate it. They’d be okay.
She pulls the gloves off and sets them on the counter, not caring to walk or move to the proper disposal bin. It’s too far and her legs feel too weak to carry her across the lab.
“You’re going to need more bandages, a wrap, and stitch scissors.” She knows she’s going to have to strip down to her bra in order for him to see to her ribs and the cuts she has on them from the kicks she’d taken, but she’s not sure she can do it herself and she doesn’t know how to ask him. She sets up a tray for him instead, finding it easier to focus on a task. Logically, she knows it’s Fitz but at the same time… after everything she’d just been through, whether she wants to admit it or not, she feels a little leery about being unclothed. It has to be done, there’s no way around it, and she trusts him implicitly but it doesn’t change the fact that not even an hour ago she’d been fighting off being raped and an hour before that, forced to create a weapon of mass destruction that was now in the hands of a terrorist.
She doesn’t have much else left to add to the tray of supplies she’s readied for him so she takes a deep breath and turns to him, eyes catching his in a tired stare.
“You’re going to have to wrap my ribs, but… I don’t think I can get out of my jumper and button down on my own right now.”

He freezes at her words, his hands midway into a fresh pair of exam gloves.

He trusts her opinion as a doctor, but the thought of having her undressed before him so shortly after she’d nearly been assaulted causes him to wince. Even though she’d fought them off, he knows that kind of trauma will stick, and Fitz weighs his options, busying himself with the tray she’s prepared while he decides his course of action. Finally, he finds his voice.

“There’s no use in havin’ ye half-naked an’ shiverin’ while I work on your face. Le’ me look a’ tha’ firs’, an’ then we can worry abou’ th’ jumper, yea’?”

He sits her on a stool and begins with the bruises and split lip, carefully cleaning each wound and either bandaging or stitching them as he’s directed before turning his attention to her neck. It’s not exactly mindless work, but it does give him time to think since neither of them seems particularly inclined to speak. First, he marvels at her, and the fact that after all she’s been through today she’s still standing, metaphorically speaking. Hell, he’d nearly collapsed earlier thinking about it. From there, his mind wanders over to the little things that had happened, the tiny moments of comfort he’d found in her hand around his or her weight pressed to his side.

And then there was the bloody kiss.

It’d been so brief, and entirely chaste, but it had stopped his heart all the same. But what bothers him, what’s driving him absolutely up the damn walls, is that Fitz cannot for the life of him figure out why she’d kiss him. Yes, it was true that he’d always wanted to kiss her, but in the middle of a life-and-death situation, with her about to be raped, certainly was not what he’d imagined.

Fitz sighs, clearing his head as he finishes working on her face and neck and begins to eye her tattered jumper. From what he’d seen earlier, she can’t lift her arms high enough to remove it herself, and he worries that if he tried to help her lift them he’d only end up hurting her. He reaches for the shears meant to cut people out of their clothing in extreme emergencies, and looks at her, an apology in his eyes.

“Jemma, I’m sorry, bu’ th’ jumper’s beyon’ repair.”

He sees the understanding pass across her face. Fitz cuts it away from her body, careful not to pull at her too roughly as what’s left of the fabric separates and falls to the floor. He gathers it up, giving himself a reason to look away as she manages the buttons on her shirt, and he only shifts his attention back to her when she needs his help maneuvering the fabric off her shoulders. It, too, is torn beyond repair and stained with blood, so he places it into the same bin as her now-useless jumper.

He can feel a blush rise in his cheeks as he takes her in, clad only in her bra before him. Her torso is a motley of deep blue and sickly green, spotted through with red where her ribs have been most severely impacted. Fitz recognizes the marks as boot prints, and his stomach nearly revolts as he brushes his fingers against the worst of the damage. He’s not the resident biologist, but his basic anatomy courses tell him that she has one broken rib, and two are cracked. He feels a fresh wave of loathing, and a longing to punch Michael repeatedly, but he manages to choke back his anger. Instead, he cleans the few lacerations that dot her torso and spreads ointment on the bruises, his eyes studiously avoiding her chest as he works.

She’s broken out in gooseflesh by the time he’s ready to wrap her ribs, and he works as quickly as he can so she can get dressed sooner rather than later. Setting her hands on his shoulders, he steps into her, weaving the cloth around her, careful not to pull it too tightly lest he inadvertently cause more damage. Despite the clinical necessity for their nearness, Fitz can’t shake the intimate feeling of the situation, with her being scant inches from him, her arms practically wrapped around his neck.

He finishes, and gives her a small, sad, shy smile before pulling away from her. He fetches the bottle of oxycodone they keep with their medical supplies and a bottle of water, taking care to leave them next to her before making his way to his locker in the cargo bay. He grabs the zip-up hoodie he keeps there for times when the lab is particularly cold and carries it back to her. Fitz helps her get her arm in the sleeves and zips it all the way to her neck before doling out a dose of pain medication. He steps back, lets her take the medicine before speaking again, his arms crossed over his chest as if to protect himself.

“Jemma, I kno’ now is no’ th’ time, but we are goin’ t’ ha’e t’ talk abou’ wha’ happened t’day, ‘fore ye were taken upstairs th’ las’ time.”

He leaves it at that, trusting her to pick up on what he means.

It’s not the way Jemma had wanted him to first see her mostly unclothed, not with the horrific bruises covering her pale skin and the way her ribs are swelling. Of everything that’s happened today, this is by far the most traumatizing to her. Because it should be safe, it should be fine. It’s Fitz.

But it’s not fine.

She tugs at his zip-up , the only clothing left to keep her protected from the chill in the lab and the shock in her system. His question-- statement-- makes her feel uneasy because she doesn’t have answer other than: I thought I was going to die. I thought I was going to be raped and murdered. She thinks it might be a valid enough answer but his posture is defensive, as if he’s trying to guard himself from her and it hurts. Her eyes water for the sting of it, and tears begin to make their way down her cheeks, stinging all of the freshly cleaned and bandaged cuts that have marred her face.

She’s been trying to keep it together, to stay strong and calm like she’d always imagined she would if she were ever in a situation like this-- wanting to be the one that is resilient and unbreakable. But the combination of the adrenaline let down, the painkillers now swirling in her system, and the gravity of everything that had happened all washes over her harshly, making her tremble.

“I thought… He was going to kill me. If it hadn’t been for Coulson and the tactical team bursting in, he was going to rape me and kill me. I saw it-- in his eyes, the way he looked at me. I didn’t want to die, not that way, without you knowing…”

She trails off, a nervous dread in her chest at his posture, making her feel like he’s somehow angry with her.

He’s next to her before he realizes that he’s moved, reaching for fresh, sterile bandages to wipe her tears. He moves carefully, making sure he doesn’t reopen the few unbandaged lacerations as he pats the salty tracks away; his hands, shaking after hearing her confession that she feared for her life, make his job that much more difficult, but he manages to get the job done.

“Jemma, please dinnae cry. I dinnae mean t’ make ye cry, lass. I’m no’ angry wit’ ye, I’m jus’ confused…” he trails off as her tears trickle to a stop. He reaches for the antibiotic ointment, reapplying it where it had been washed away. His mind replays her words, I didn’t want to die, not that way, without you knowing, and his gut clenches.

“Wha’ did ye need me t’ kno’, lass?” he whispers as he finishes applying the medicine to a small knick on her chin. He’s been purposely avoiding her eyes, afraid of what he’d see there, but now, he steels himself and forces himself to meet her gaze.

Any shred of resilience or strength she’d been clinging to is utterly demolished when he sets to reapplying the ointment to her wounds, his fingers gentle and tentative, as if he’s afraid of hurting even after the hell she’s already been through. She knows they have to make their way to the command center, knows that Coulson wants them to jump into getting the virus back, and while she agreed with him that it was of the utmost importance, so was this.
It’s not how she imagined having this conversation, with her lip split and her face battered, but she’s worried if they don’t do this now they never will. They’ve been so close before, on the cusp of confessions she knows both of them are holding back, but they’ve never delved in and said them because the heightened emotions always fall back and then she’s too afraid of risking anything to approach it. His fingers are still holding her chin lightly when his eyes meet hers and there’s something sadly hopeful in them, so she takes a breath in and decides: it doesn’t matter the circumstances. They’ll go find the bloody virus, they’ll go track down Michael and stop whatever horrid plan he had set out to do, and they’ll recover the tech that Fitz had begrudgingly pieced together.
After. They could do it after.
She holds his gaze, eyes dancing between his and he’s close enough that she can feel his breath on her face.
“Oh, Fitz, don’t you know?” It’s not at all romantic or the confession she’d planned on sharing, but it comes out nonetheless and it seems fitting because both of them know— have known— just haven’t been willing to acknowledge it.

He feels something stir in his chest, an echoing of the sentiment in her eyes. He’s been hers for the past three years, at least, even without there being anything official between them, and she’s been his for nearly as long. They’d both been too afraid of what S.H.I.E.L.D. would do, so they’d kept quiet, living on little moments and going on with their day-to-day lives.
But she’d nearly been taken from him today, again, and she had been brave enough to at least give him a token of her affection, a ghost of her true intent, before being marched away. His nod is barely perceptible, and his eyes remain focused on hers; their honey depths are clear, yet betray a fear that he will not understand her meaning, or worse, will reject it.
It strengthens his resolve, and he shifts forward slightly, gently pressing his lips to hers. He keeps it gentle, barely brushing against her, for fear of frightening her. He can taste the coppery tang of her blood where her lip is split, serving as yet another reminder of what has just happened. He pulls away, and searches her face for any sign of panic or hurt.
"It may no’ be th’ time o’ th’ place, bu’ I dinnae regre’ doin’ tha."
If she can be brave about it, so can he.
She’s never had a split lip before, never felt the sting of it when her lips move or make any small pull. It’s a sharp, distinct sort of pain that travels from her lip to her jaw, setting in her teeth. His kiss, gentle as it is, sets off the pain and she hisses at the shock of it only because she can’t stop it from escaping her mouth. She tries not to flinch, doesn’t want him to think he’s hurt in any way, but her eyes water just a touch at the pain.
There’s not much else to say now, with the team waiting for them and the cameras in the lab spying on them. She doesn’t know how much he wants to reveal to SHIELD or anyone just yet, and she’s simply too bruised and battered to make any sort of decisions like that at the moment. She can easily slip into the familiar role of the resident Biochemist, but figuring out exactly what and how is between them will have to wait until this is over, until she can think properly.
That doesn’t mean she doesn’t want his warmth though. She’s bloody freezing, standing in the middle of the lab shivering in only his hoodie. The painkillers are slowly kicking in and she can feel the ache in her ribs easing as they pump through her blood. She reaches tentatively for him, not caring that his shirt is still splattered in blood droplets and that he’s staring at her with a worried look on his face. Her fingers grip the hem of his shirt and pull gently.
“Come here, please, I’m freezing.”
Someone is bound to come to looking for them, demand them to join everyone upstairs, but she doesn’t particularly care right now. She’s going to steal this moment for herself in the midst of all the chaos.

He allows her to tug him towards her, and gently wraps his arms around her shoulders as her own come around his middle. She feels small as she shivers against him, and the effect is enhanced by the fact that she’s practically swimming in his hoodie. He stays there, holding her and rocking them back and forth, for far longer than he should, what with Coulson and the team waiting on them.

But they need this. She needs to feel anchored, he needs the reassurance that she’s actually in one piece, and they both need the chance to return to equilibrium. He only pulls back once her tremors have subsided, placing a gentle kiss on an unbruised section of her forehead as he does so. He keeps a light grip on her shoulders, thumbs brushing gently over the edges of her collarbones as he looks her in the eye. He’s about to say that they should go get changed and see what Coulson needs from them, but she looks so tired that he can’t bring himself to suggest rushing into a team meeting.

“C’mon, Jemma, le’s go upstairs an’ ge’ changed. Then ye can take a nap; I’ll go t’ th’ meetin’ an’ see wha’ Coulson’s decided. They dinnae need us both t’ gi’e orders, yea’?”

Fitz gives her a small, encouraging smile as he takes her hand in his and coaxes her out of the lab, up the stairs, and towards her bunk. He stops outside of her door, opening it for her before standing back to let her through.

“I need t’ change ou’ o’ this shir’,” he needlessly explains, gesturing to his blood-spattered button down. “Bu’ if ye pick ou’ a few things, I can ask Skye o’ May t’ come help ye into wha’e’er ye like.” He steps back, hands in his pockets, as he waits for her response. In truth, he doesn’t mind helping her again, but it feels odd, overly intimate, to do so with the team so near, despite having just seen her nearly naked. In the end, they both know that he’ll do whatever she asks of him, without question, so he waits as she weighs her options.
The idea of having anyone else see her as vulnerable is horrifying, part of her already feeling small and broken about Fitz having to see her the way he had in the lab. And she’s pretty sure both May and Skye are dealing with their own injuries, might not be capable of helping her like he thinks.
Michael and his men had seen fit to beat all the women on the team to hell. She remembers the nasty gash across Skye’s forehead and the way May— stoic, snaps wrist to get out of cuffs May— had been cradling her arm against her. Even if May were capable of helping her change, she’s probably needed with the tactical team to assess what physical force will be required to chase down her virus before it can be made into an actual weapon.
She gives Fitz a weak but sincere smile.
“It’s okay, I think I can manage… But I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep anytime soon. I’ll just meet you at the command center.” She slips through her bunk door before he can say anything. She wants him to change too, the blood spatter on his clothes from when he’d been struck has been sending tremors through her chest every time she looks at it. He gives her a look that relays his doubt at her ability to actual do anything by herself in her condition so she reaches her hand across the small space between them and brushes her fingers across the back of his hand in reassurance.
“I’ll be fine. Go change.”
As soon as her bunk door slides shut, she collapses to her knees, a hand pressed over her mouth to stifle back the sobs so as to not alarm anyone and especially not Fitz, since she has the distinct feeling that he’s still standing outside her bunk trying to decide if he should go or stay. Her body wracks with the release of everything that had happened, the hand not wrapped around mouth pressed into the floor of her bunk to stop herself from crumbling. She hears the soft steps of Fitz making his way to his bunk and she curls up against her bunk door and lets herself cry, emotions breaking through the still surface she’s been trying to keep strong for everyone else.
There’s no one here now, just her. Just her and her broken ribs, bruised and battered face, and a feeling of utter horror at what could have happened to her in the span of hours. No one would have been able to stop her from being raped and murder. Not Fitz, not Ward, not Coulson, not May or the tactical team. It was just a luck of the draw that the opportunity for the response team to counter attack had occurred when it had.
A fresh sob and tremor shakes her to the bone as she remembers the feel of Michaels arm between her teeth, the rush of blood as she’d bitten down and hoped it’d be enough to get away. She hadn’t been frightened at the time, only determined to fight back, but now…. Now she was terrified, fear gripping her throat and chest.
None of this was okay. Not one single thing. And she had to go face Coulson and plan a strategy to get back a biological weapon she’d created. She didn’t know if she could. She wasn’t made for this, wasn’t cut out for this sort of thing. She didn’t know why she’d thought this was going to be good for her, for Fitz. They hadn’t passed their field tests, had barely left Sci-Ops and she’d dragged them, the both of them, onto this bloody Bus only to be exploited and beaten. None of this was okay.
The light rap of familiar long fingers on her bunk door startle her and she hears Fitz on the other side, his voice tired, even though he knows the passcode to her bunk and rarely knocked anymore.
“Jemma?”
More time must have gone by than she had thought while she sat crumpled on the floor but she can’t make herself move, can’t make herself stop crying now that she’s started.
“F-fitz?”

He hesitates outside her door, debating whether he should go back in after her. He knows beyond a doubt that she’s not actually fine, but sometimes Jemma just needs her space, needs to process what’s happened. The problem is, he’s really not sure if now is one of those times.

He glances down at what used to be his shirt, scowling at the blood dappling the front. Fitz had never realized he could bleed so much, and is suddenly overcome by the urge to rip the offending item from his body. He tears himself away from Jemma’s door, promising himself that he’ll change quickly and come back for her as he slips through his own door, toeing off the Chuck Taylors he’d been wearing.

His shirt, tie, and trousers all go into the rubbish bin; all are stained and torn well beyond repair, not that he’d even try. His boxers and socks quickly follow. Everything he’d worn just feels tarnished somehow, and Fitz doesn’t want to keep anything that could remind him of this day, not when he’d come so close to losing her yet again. He feels the beginning of tears at the corners of his eyes, and quickly brushes them away. He doesn’t have time to cry, to breakdown; he’s needed elsewhere, and once this is all over, then he can take the time to fully process it.

He tugs on new underthings, grabs the first pair of jeans he sees, and thrusts his arms through first a t-shirt then an old, ragged Academy hoodie. Stuffing his feet back into his trainers, he makes his way back to Jemma’s door. He’d tried to be quick, but fifteen minutes have still managed to elapse, and he worries he’s left her alone for too long.

His fears are confirmed when he hears her shaky, watery voice through the thin pane of glass that separates them, and he punches in her code without thinking twice. She can be mad at him later for the invasion of privacy; right now, he just needs to hold her, see her, and have her know that he’s there.

Fitz’ heart breaks when he sees her, huddled up against the doorframe of her bunk, one hand pressed hard against her mouth to keep from making too much noise. Gently, he stoops down and reaches for her, bringing his arm across her shoulders even as he slides her door shut, wanting to spare her the stares of their teammates. They would be sympathetic, of course, but she would be mortified if they saw her like this, battered, broken, and sobbing.

He rubs soft, random patterns of circles across her shoulders as he speaks to her, trying to keep his voice as calm and steady as he possibly can, even though he knows he’s failing miserably.

“Jemma, can ye look a’ me, please? Le’ me see ye, lass.”

She meets his eyes, and the pain he sees in her forces the air from his lungs. There’s no way he’s letting her go to a meeting, not like this. It can wait until she’s had time. There’s also no way he’s leaving her, unless she tells him to clear out.

“I think,” he begins, voice tentative, “tha’ ye’d be more comfor’able in bed, yea’? C’mon, up ye get.”

With that, he guides her to a standing position, letting her rest her weight on him as he steers her towards her bunk. Moving slowly, to avoid jostling her ribs anymore than is strictly necessary, he eases her to sit at the edge of the mattress, and crouches in front of her so he can better see her face. He brushes her hair off her face, pushing it gently behind her ears as her crying quiets some, his right thumb brushing against the curve of her jaw as his left hand moves to cover hers where they lie clasped in her lap.

“Jemma, I still think ye shoul’ skive off an’ stay here; I’ll stay wit’ ye, if ye’d like. Bu’ if ye really wan’ t’ be there, well, tell me wha’ ye wan’ t’ wear, an’ I’ll ge’ it.”

He works the fingers of his hand between hers, trying to give her an anchor as she decides her course of action, but fears he’s failing dismally.

Jemma shakes her head vigorously, eyes still red and wet as her tears streak down her face. She wasn’t going to let Michael win, couldn’t let him have that power over her. She’d just… She needed to get it out of her. She’d been teetering precariously on the edge of her emotions since the knife had pressed against her throat, but she had to show herself, had to show Fitz, had to prove to Coulson and the rest of the team that was capable. She wasn’t useless.

“No, no, I can go. I just… God, I almost died. Worse-- I’d rather be dead-- I was almost raped. And I can’t… Even if I’d bit him until my teeth fell out, I wouldn’t have been able to stop it. And that bloody virus-- what if someone figures out what I did and we can’t stop it in time?” The desperation in her voice is startling, even to herself. It sounds on the edge of panic, and there’s no stopping the way her hands reach for him and clench into his shirt with a twist. She doesn’t want to scare him but she’s traumatized and he’s the one person that she feels safe with, feels secure with enough to know he won’t question her resolve but won’t let her pretend to be strong when she’s breaking.

She doesn’t know what’s more traumatic to her: the brutality of the physical harm that had been done to her, what could have been-- what was almost-- done to her, or the fact that now a repurposed version of the Chitauri virus was in the hands of a lunatic that had somehow managed to both sneak onto a SHIELD top secret airplane and exit it in perfect health with exactly what he’d come for.

No. She knows what’s more traumatic. Her eyes search for Fitz’s, the panic becoming purposeful fear, resolute and adamant in her mind.

“We have to stop Michael. We have to.”

Fitz winces when she mentions what had nearly happened to her, that she’d rather be dead than live with that. He can understand the sentiment, but can’t stomach the idea, so he opts to focus on her in the here-and-now instead. Her fingers have knotted their way into the fabric of his hoodie, pulling him closer in a desperate bid to keep him before her, to make him understand that she's scared, but not broken. She's capable of going after Michael, and will keep pace with the team.

He never had any doubt she could.

He meets her eyes, knows his look must be grim, and forces himself to say what must be said: “Jemma, ye dinnae ha’e a thin’ t’ prove. Bu’ if ye really wan’ t’ go t’ this meetin’, we go t’ge’her.” He glances down at her pants; they’re far worse off than his had been, torn and stained where they had repeatedly battered her. He feels the beginnings of anger stir in his gut, even plots exactly where he’ll hit Michael and how when he gets the opportunity before clamping down on it yet again. “Ye shoul’ change,” he grits out, still fighting his emotions, “I kno’ it made me feel a bit better.”

When she gives a slight nod, he gently detaches her fingers from the fabric of his shirt, and goes to her chest of drawers to fetch a pair of sweatpants; he can’t imagine she’d want to wear anything form-fitting, not with the bruises she likely has on her legs as well. He opens another drawer, and on finding one of her old shirts, long-sleeved and soft from repeated washings, pulls it out as well. She can’t be comfortable wearing only her bra under the zip-up.

He returns to her, not saying a word, even as he helps her stand so she can change. He averts his eyes as she changes, letting her use him for balance as needed, and taking care to keep his touch gentle so as not to startle her. Although, he is surprised when, after helping her into the shirt he’d selected, she asks him to help her back into the zip-up. She looks smaller, almost childlike, dressed this way, but changing seems to have done her a bit of good. She no longer looks quite as panicked, her tears have dried, and her shoulders have picked up and squared off. Now, looking more like her usual self, Fitz actually believes she’s capable of making it through a meeting, although he’s sure they’ll both breakdown together later tonight, hidden safely away in one of their bunks.

He opens her door and stands to the side, gesturing for her to exit ahead of him. “After ye, Jemma. Le’s go get this son o’ a bitch.”

There’s simply too many bodies to fit into the command center and as they approach, Jemma is worried they’ll have to be filled in after the meeting. But as she slowly makes her way closer to the group, the members of the tactical team begin to turn, helmeted heads shifting slightly as they take in her face and the limping gait she’s walking with. A path is cleared before her and she realizes that they’re making way for her, a space for her be in the command center.

It’s odd. Odd but entirely humbling. These men and women, who were Operations, strong in physicality and the other side of SHIELD that she has no expertise in, are giving her a respect that she actually didn’t deserve. Her hand slides back a little, brushing her fingers against Fitz just to make sure he’s with her and makes for the table in the command center.

Coulson and May are already there, discussing something with two other men not in suits but the familiar tactical suit. Skye and Ward are nowhere to be found in the crowded room and Jemma swings her head around to search for them, her face obviously showing concern because Coulson looks at her then.

“Ward is helping Skye get cleaned up. The cut on her face was pretty deep.”

Jemma swallows.

“Does she need stitches, sir? I can do it quickly and come back.”

Coulson shakes his head.

“No, Ward has it handled. We need you here. You need to fill us in on what exactly Michael left with. We have agents tracking him as we speak, but we don’t want to send anyone in or alert him to our presence if he’s capable of unleashing a biological weapon.”

All eyes are on her and Fitz now. It’s a bit much. She feels a sudden wave of uncertainty wash over her at her appearance, the comfort of her clothes the easiest for her to manage but highly inappropriate for anything like this. Not to mention to her face, beaten back and blue. Nothing she can do about it now, though.

“It’s programmed to only respond to a specific set of antigens, sir. Mine. It can be activated remotely, I needed to give the allusion that I’d given him what he’d wanted. But because the virus was already in my system, had already been stopped in my immune system, it was the only way I could think of to foil whatever he’d been planning. The problem is, if anyone else gets their hands on it and assesses it, it will become clear rather quickly that I sequenced the viral DNA the way I did. It’s missing segments from the original-- and he has both the original and the one I created.”

The surprise on Coulson’s face is genuine and a small smile, one that rarely graces her face, pulls at May’s lips. The tactical team all shift on their feet behind her, adjusting weapons and checking ammunition. The two men standing next to Coulson and May glance at her before looking back at Coulson, and one of them-- the older of the two-- speaks up.

“Smart kid. Sounds like the faster we move in, the better our chances of stopping him before he can examine the damn thing. Less risk to my team too, which I’d appreciate.”

Fitz watches as she comes back to herself as she works, explaining what she’d done with her own antigens, and he’s glad that she hadn’t given in when he’d offered her the easy out of staying in her bunk. She belongs here, working, and if she broke down later, so be it. He’d be there, waiting to help her pick up the pieces.

He’s directed to a corner of the command center, given the tac team’s comm frequencies and access to their plans, and told to be their eyes and ears while they’re in the field. It makes him twitchy, being away from Simmons, but at least he can see her from where he’s stationed, just in case she needs him. She’s deep in conversation with Coulson and the tac team leader, a large, imposing man whose name he hadn’t bothered to catch, presumably telling them everything she can remember about Michael and his operation.

Fitz feels his fingers twitch when he thinks of that man, and it isn’t the first time that he wishes he’d paid closer attention to the self-defense and limited martial arts classes they’d been required to take at the Academy. He’d laughed them off at the time, assuming that he’d be working in a lab at the Fridge or the Sandbox, creating new things from alien technology, and wouldn’t need to know how to throw or dodge a punch, or how to throw a man twice his size. If he’d had even an inkling of what his future was going to be…

He shakes the thought off. It’s not productive, crying over spilt milk, and so he turns back to the screens before him, familiarizing himself with the resources the team will have available to them. They’ve got less than an hour before the mission’s set to start, and he wants to be sure he’s ready to play his part and end this thing.
Forty-five minutes later, two tactical teams bruised but successful, and Michael is sitting in the back of a unmarked SHIELD truck, ziptied hands and feet. They aren’t taking any risks, the tactical team explains over the comms, and Jemma feels the relief wash over her as she sits next to Fitz in the mobile command center.
Relief at the fact that the virus is currently being transported back to the Bus in a locked ice chest, relief at the fact that no one would have to experience the release of a weapon of mass destruction, and relief at the fact that it was over. She can literally feel her muscles loosen, her jaw unclench, and her eyes dim in exhaustion. Part of her wants to go pull open the truck door, look Michael in the face, just to show him that he hadn’t won— no matter how he’d beaten her or threatened her with sexual assault. But the other part of her— the wounded, exhausted part of her— tells her that it’s not worth it and to let SHIELD take care of doling out punishment.
It’d be swift and brutal, she was sure. SHIELD doesn’t do anything partially.
She glances at Fitz, can see the color spreading across his face, and the way he’s clenching his hands into his trousers. It’s a startling look on him. It’s something resembling threatening and she doesn’t like it, but before she can do or say anything Skye leans over the top of her laptop to look at him. Her face is badly bruised, the gash across it deep and still swelling, but bandaged well by Ward.
“Hey, it’s cool. We got him, Fitz.”
Fitz’s eyes skate across Skye, taking her in quickly before he looks back at Jemma. She reaches a hand out to him, fingers grazing his knuckles.
“She’s right.”
It seems to help, but she knows they’ll be feeling the aftershocks of this for the weeks to come. She’d seen Coulson keeping an eye on her out of the corner of his eye, and Ward had stuck close to both her and Skye until he’d had to join the tac team.
Michael had struck deep at a nerve within the team.

He takes Jemma’s hand, his thumb tracing idle patterns over the skin in attempt to calm himself down, but it doesn’t have the desired effect. Still, he manages to keep his grip on her gentle, even as his tone remains barbed.

“Ye’re beat t’ hell. So is May. Jemma was forced t’ create a biological weapon an’ was nearly raped. I’s anythin’ bu’ ‘cool,’ Skye.”

He wants to say more, to do more, to confront the other man, demand retribution… but the concern in Jemma’s eyes stops him from voicing those thoughts. She’s exhausted, both mentally and physically, and needs to rest if there’s any hope of recovery, not worry about him and whatever foolishness his pride may get him into. And she will worry about what he’ll do, there’s no doubt about that. With a sigh, he resolves to stay away from Michael, for Jemma’s sake.

He leans in closer to her to whisper in her ear, so Skye can’t hear, “I promise, I willnae do anythin’ rash. Bu’ dinnae expec’ me no’ t’ at leas’ think abou’ it.” With that he pulls back a bit and just observes what’s going on in the command center. Everything’s winding down, with agents packing up equipment and writing the last of their reports; they’re no longer needed. Maintaining his hold on her hand, Fitz gets to his feet, helping her up next to him.

“I dinnae abou’ ye, bu’ I coul’ sleep for a’ leas’ a week straigh’. I’m headin’ t’ my bunk for a nap, an’ then I’m askin’ Coulson for a week’s leave. I dinnae care where, I jus’ need t’ ge’ off this plane for a good, long while after th’ day we’ve had.”

Jemma nods her head in agreement, though a brief moment of concern winds through her that he didn’t mean for them to go anywhere together, her eyes catching his as he watches the command center be packed up.

It squelches any concern about what he’d meant.

She’s about to start moving, reaching for equipment, knowing she’d have to personally see that the virus made it’s way to the Fridge in order to have any rest about it when a gunshot slices through the air and everyone momentarily freezes. She doesn’t even have the opportunity to react, not the wherewithal in her to jump as she should but it’s okay because it’s sudden madness around her, tac team rushing toward the sound and Fitz’s hand on her arm, tugging her toward him and both of them against the wall of the rundown shipping warehouse they’d set up in.

Her ribs give a body shaking crunch, bone against bone, as Fitz presses in and hovers over her, shielding her. Her breath gives way to gasping, trying to get air in and out but failing just enough that it’s frightening.

It’s a tense 15 seconds that no one knows what has happened, voices shouting over one another. Jemma briefly wonders where Skye is, turns her head to the left and manages to see the hacker with May, having sought cover behind one of the desks they’d set up. It’s only one gunshot, a single bullet and it’s set them all on edge again.

"CLEAR OUT!"

It’s Ward’s voice, harsh and loud through the mingling voices and it breaks through the chaos. Fitz leans to the right, twists around and releases the press he’d had her in at Ward’s voice.

The two of them are rewarded with the loud thud of a body before them, Michael clenching his right thigh as he bleeds profusely and Jemma looks between Ward and Michael, shocked and not sure what’s happening.

"Tell her."

It’s ground out between Ward’s teeth.

Michaels looks up at her from the ground, face a motley mix of green and purple. It gives her a sense of satisfaction that chills her.

"I made copies of the DNA sequence. It sent to centipede before you got here."

Jemma’s knees nearly give out on her.

No.

They’d stopped this.
They’d caught him and there would be no viral infection.

She acts before she thinks, body lunging for his, hands flying for his face, wanting desperately to hit him. It’s not Fitz that stops her, but Skye, and she slams into her with such force Skye nearly topples over.

If centipede has the virus, had the sequencing, it would only be time before it was repurposed into the weapon she feared.

She’s out of his arms, diving at the downed man before he could even think to stop her. Or, maybe he didn’t want to stop her; Fitz would have found it resoundingly satisfying to watch her go after Michael, to witness her land a blow for each blow he’d landed on her, but his logical mind knows it’s for the best that Skye stopped her.

He meets Ward’s eyes over the girls’ heads, and sees an understanding there. He knows what what’ll come next.

“Skye, take Jemma back t’ th’ Shor’ Bus, yea’?”

He dimly recognizes the voice giving the command as his own, but the tone doesn’t register as any he’d ever used before. He feels the anger oozing over him, filling his chest and causing his skin to tingle in anticipation.

As soon as the girls are out of sight, Ward reaches down, and grabbing him by the collar, and drags Michael to a nearby pillar. With a few zip-ties, Ward has him trussed up, his back pressed to the pillar and his legs stretched in front of him. He steps away, giving Fitz a knowing look, and waits.

Fitz surveys the man, wondering if he should place his heel in his chest, cracking ribs in exchange for the ones he cracked on Jemma… but he finds that idea leaves an ashen taste in his mouth. Brute physical strength is Ward’s specialty, not his own; Fitz prefers to find slightly more elegant solutions to problems. His eyes drift to the bullet wound in Michael’s right thigh, and his mind lights on an idea. Stepping closer, he rests his work boot-clad foot just over the wound, not yet applying any pressure, content to let the threat linger.

He glances towards Ward, and when he sees the stern set of his teammate’s eyes, he presses downward, careful to not put his full weight into it. He wants him conscious. Michael, to his credit, doesn’t scream; the only indications of his discomfort are his shallow breathing and reddening face.

“Now,” Fitz begins, “tell us: where did ye sen’ th’ copies? Ye can tell us now, or ye can refuse, bu’ ye’ll tell us eventually.”

Michael spits at him, an ugly grin spreading across his mouth. “She was wonderful, you know, the way she squirmed against me, that little whore--”

Fitz slams his foot down, his whole weight behind it.

He enjoys Michael’s screams more than he’d care to admit.

Skye nearly has her to the short Bus when she hears the scream echo through the building, and though she knows it’s not Fitz or even Ward, her gut twists inside her and she wrenches free from Skye’s grasp to half run, half stumble back into the warehouse. It’s bloody painful, and literally bloody as some of the stitches across her face pull loose but it doesn’t stop her.

The moment she see’s Fitz, she knows they’ve gone too far. He’s not himself, red and shaking in anger, his foot digging into Michael’s thigh with a twist that elicits another scream from the man under his foot.

Jemma is at his side as fast as her injured body can carry her, hands pulling at his shoulder with all the strength she can manage until he looks at her, see’s that it’s her tugging him.

“Fitz! Fitz, stop! Don’t do this, look at me-- do not do this.” It’s probably the wrong choice of words, she realizes, because she can feel the slight trickle of moisture down her cheeks and she knows she’s not crying. Her eyes slide to Ward quickly and though she’s grateful for everything he’s done and said today, she can sense her gaze is almost accusatory. She lets it communicate what she doesn’t need to say and looks back at Fitz, voice dropped low between them.

“Come on. Let Ward take care of Michael.” She’s about to pull him, by force if necessary, away from the scene when a sharp cackle-- nothing like the deep, hearty laugh from before-- cuts through her words, Michael shifting behind her the best he can while ziptied.

“Stupid bitch.”

Her head snaps around in just enough time to catch Ward’s foot strike into Michael’s ribs with a crunch and her stomach rolls on her, fingers clenching into Fitz’s shirt.

As much as she’d wanted to hit Michael earlier, hearing the sound of bone against flesh is still not something she wants to be witness to, not after knowing what it felt like.

If it wasn’t for the grip she still had on his shoulder, he likely would have gone right back after Michael, and would have kept going until the man either passed out or his muscles quit on him, whichever happened to come first.

But it’s the look in her eyes that stops him, the one that says he’s scaring her more than a little bit, and his head clears enough for him to really take in her face.

She’d pulled her stitches yelling at him, leaving streaks of red across both her cheeks, and there’s a sharp catch each time she takes a breath that tells him her ribs will likely need to be tended to again. But those factors aren’t what causes him to finally stand down; what does him in is the way she flinches each time Ward lands another blow. His limbs loose then, and he’s got her turned around and headed back to the exit before he can even think through what it is he’s doing.

“Shite, Jemma, ye were supposed t’ be in th’ Shor’ Bus.”

He feels shame burn on his cheeks as he hustles her along. He’d never wanted her to see him out of control like that, but the anger that surged through him hearing Michael talk about her refused to be denied, and he’d snapped just the tiniest bit. Tears are forming in his eyes now, frustration that he’d been holding back for the better part of what was now going on 20-some odd hours finally showing through. He manages to get her settled in the car, tucked in next to Skye, before slamming the van door shut. He leans against the windowless door, palms pressed flat against the smooth metal surface as he struggles to get himself under control.

Still, it all becomes too much; their imprisonment, the attack on Jemma, the biological weapon that they’d been forced to create, his inability to do anything to save her, they’re all boiling just under the surface, and they finally spill over.

He slams the flat of his right hand against the van, once, twice, thrice, before he realizes that he’s likely frightening the girls and forces himself to stop and compose himself. They have to get back after Centipede, and he’s of no use to the team like this. He takes a few deep breaths to bring himself under control before opening the van door once more.

He’s met by two sets of wide, brown eyes, both understanding while remaining cautious.

“Le’s head back t’ th’ Bus. It’ll take Ward a bi’ t’... finish here. If we’re t’ be o’ any use, we need t’ res’.”

With that, he calmly shuts the door, walks around to the driver’s side, and climbs behind the wheel, intent on getting back to the Bus.

It’s a silent drive back to the Bus. Even Skye, who had seemed intent on acting like she was fine and being the one who brought back a semblance of normalcy earlier, has fallen into a heavy quietness. She’s trembling slightly as she sits next to Jemma, her hands gripped into her trousers as if they’re a lifeline and Jemma, without thinking of it, reaches for one of them and grips it tight in hers.

Her face hurts again, the painkillers lessening in effect, and her ribs feel like they’re burning, but she’s absolutely certain that there will be no time to readdress her injuries. They had to get the copies of the DNA sequencing and they had to get it quickly, before it was sent out to the entire entity that was Centipede.

Jemma watches Fitz as he drives: the line of his shoulders as he grips the steering wheel, the grip of his fingers around the metal of it, the cooled perspiration around the edges of his hairline. She knows all of it, knows him more thoroughly than anyone else, but it feels somehow foreign to her right now. It’s unsettling and she nearly jumps when her phone rings in her pocket, Skye starting and gripping her hand tighter.

“It’s just my phone.” She whispers to the brunette, though she’d nearly had the same reaction.

It’s Coulson.

She answers it on the third ring, unsure and nervous at what she’ll hear, catching Fitz’s eye in the rearview mirror.

“Sir?”

“Simmons. It was transmitted to a facility in Aalborg. We need schematics and a layout of the city as soon as possible. We’re working on Michael to get the specific site, but until then we need to try to narrow down ourselves. Tell Skye to start with public venues, places where a Centipede contact could be inconspicuous.”

“Yes, sir. But how do we know it wasn’t also sent somewhere el--” She’s cut off by the sound of screaming, not high pitched but deep and guttural and full of pain across the line and she grimaces.

“Trust me, Simmons: we’d know by now if it was sent anywhere else. We need to find the contact it was sent to.”

The line goes dead and she looks at her phone for a moment, equally grateful that Ward and Coulson are on her team but sickened at what measures they were taking to accomplish what they had to do. This was not SHIELD protocol, not the way they usually worked and it causes her to wonder if this entire scenario has pushed all of them outside of the confines of just a team built by SHIELD and into an entirely unique unit.
She looks at Skye, then Fitz through the rearview mirror.

“It’s in Aalborg. Coulson needs schematics of the city, blueprints most likely, to find the contact it was sent to. He said to focus on public places, places where a contact to retrieve that much data via public access without being noticed.”

Skye is already reaching for her laptop and Fitz nods once as he pulls into the Bus, parking the van haphazardly next to Lola and climbing out to walk around and pull the sliding door open to help both her and Skye from the short bus.

The guilt eats at him, not guilt over hurting Michael (never would he ever feel guilt over that, not after what he’d done to Jemma), but guilt over frightening her. And she’s still scared; he knows it from the wary way she watches him, tense, as if waiting for him to explode at the slightest provocation. What scares him a bit is that she isn’t wrong. He is ready to explode, to scream; he feels helpless and he hates it.

Leopold Fitz may have been a bit of a physical weakling, but he’d never been helpless. He’d always had his brain, had always had an escape plan, had always been able to pull something out of his bag of tricks that helped him out of whatever his predicament at the time. But now, with this, there were no tricks to be had. The only consolation was knowing that they had a city at least, a location for their target that they could attack.

As soon as he helps the girls out of the car, he grabs the equipment packs and carries them into the lab, intent on doing something, anything useful, as well as giving Jemma some space away from him. She was clearly nervous around him now, and he didn’t want to make it any worse than it already was. Allowing her to go off with Skye, presumably to get cleaned up before starting their research, seemed like the best possible option for all involved.

Fitz had intended to sleep once they’d gotten back to the Bus, but the truth of the matter is that he’s simply wound too tightly; all he’d do if he retired to his bunk is bounce off the walls. Instead, he settles for the quietness of the lab as he focuses on cleaning and stowing their equipment, allowing the familiar, mind-numbing work to ease some of the tension from his limbs. Once that was done, he turns to head upstairs in order to help Skye narrow the list of places Centipede could be hiding in Aalborg…

… only to be frozen in his tracks by the sight of Jemma standing in the doorway. He’s uncomfortable with the look she’s giving him, the one that says she isn’t quite sure who she’s looking at, or what he’ll do. They’ve said for years that they’ve known each other best, so it kills him to know that she’s so unsure of him now, when he most wants to be a source of comfort for her.

He isn’t sure if he should apologize for what he did, not when he’s not actually contrite; the fact of the matter is that if she put Michael in front of him here and now, he wouldn’t be able to be the bigger man and walk away, and he simply can’t resist the urge to tell her so.

“I’m not sorry for hurtin’, ‘im, Jemma. No’ after wha’ he did t’ ye. An’ if ye pu’ ‘im in fron’ o’ me another 100 times, I’d do it again an’ again an’ again, because he deserves it. I…” he falters, swallowing hard a few times as he tries to explain himself to her. “I’m yer partner, Jemma, an’ I shoul’ ha’e done more t’ protec’ ye, e’en before ye kissed me. An’ I migh’ no’ ha’e been able t’ do it then, but I can certainly do it now. Jus’ tell me wha’ ye wan’ me t’ do. If ye dinnae wan’ me t’ hit someone, I willnae, bu’ anythin’ else… everythin’ else ye coul’ wan’ me t’ do is on th’ table.”

It’s not what she wants to hear, his words that he isn’t sorry, but she swallows them down with the knowledge that they were simply truth. Fitz wouldn’t apologize if he didn’t mean it and he didn’t: he wasn’t sorry for what he’d done to Michael. And Jemma can understand that because a part of her had wanted to hurt him, too. She’d been about to before Skye stopped her. So, as much as it frightens her to accept his words, she does. She does and she lets them sink deep down into her heart because she also knows that she’s responsible for some of that reaction. It wasn’t her fault, not something that could be helped, but it was still at least somewhat because of her… Even Ward and Coulson, their reactions are somewhat because of her.

It’s what comes with being connected, with having a sense of family about them. It’s what comes with caring about one another and being forced to watch each other be used and abused. They’re not perfect, not a single one of them, and more than half the team is damaged in some way-- even before this particular incidence-- but when they’re together as a whole they carry each other, make up for one another’s weaknesses. Her and Fitz have long been that way but it’s the first time she’s realized how exactly deep the entire thread of cohesiveness ran through each of them individually, his words about their partnership settling between her lungs with a tight squeeze.

She sighs and makes her way over to him slowly, her body trying to keep up with what’s demanded of it and she rests her hands on each of his shoulders, eyes steady on him.

“Fitz, there was nothing you could have done. Nothing. If you were the size of Ward or as small as Skye, as skilled as May, or as in command as Coulson. There was still nothing you could have done. There was nothing to be done. We were outnumbered, unprepared, and threatened with death. If you’d tried to protect me you would have ended up with a bullet lodged somewhere and so would have I.”

She realizes she’s speaking as much to herself as him.

“Now, though, we can do something. We have to stop the sequencing from being sent anywhere else. Skye is already set up upstairs, trying to find out where it could be in Aalborg. She thinks she has it narrowed down to museums, where data transfers wouldn’t cause any attention. Come on, we can help her.”

Her ribs burn with every movement, but she leans up to brush a barely-there kiss on his lips, not caring about the security feed or that anyone might drive up the cargo hold at the moment. She wants him to know that she’s with him, that they can handle this how they’ve handled things in the past: together.

It’s brief and it’s chaste and it calms him, easing the last of the tension from his body and drawing a soft sigh from his mouth.

He might has frightened her, but he hadn’t scared her away. They weren’t all right, but they were together, and together they could solve anything. All right would come after, once they chased down the rest of Centipede and could actually take the time to sort everything out. He allows her to take his hand and lead him to the upper deck of the bus, where Skye is currently running security footage from what be nearly a dozen different museums through the Bus’ facial recognition program. If there’s anything to this, they should hopefully get a hit on a known Centipede associate.

Fitz regretfully releases Jemma’s hand and moves closer to the screens in the Bus’ briefing center, trying to see if he can detect anything just with his own eyes. He notices that Skye has narrowed her focus to museums that have any kind of a focus on sciences; a smart choice, he has to admit, given what they’re hunting and the fact that the sheer number of museums in a city like Aalborg could cause their search to go on for weeks instead of hours or days.

“Skye,” he queries, eyes flickering between the screens, “this may be a silly question, bu’ are ye checkin’ muesums attached t’ universities, too? Those will likely ha’e th’ research facilities needed t’ recreate an’ reproduce wha’ Jemma made.” He looks at Skye, confirming that she heard his question before looking to Jemma. “Is tha’ too obvious? Woul’ they avoid universities for tha’ very reason?”

Skye looks at Fitz with almost apprehension, focused and determined but still on edge after Fitz’s reaction earlier. Jemma scrunches her nose at the girl quickly while Fitz looks at Skye and he can’t see her, her lips tugging up a little on the left side and Skye’s shoulders visibly roll backward, relaxing herself as Fitz turns to Jemma and asks if it’s too obvious.

Jemma shakes her head.

“Not obvious, smart. It’s smart. The data won’t make much sense unless it can be interpreted correctly. Though some of the museums might have that capability, the uni’s are much more likely to have that sort of thing. In fact, I’d say it was more likely than anything else.”

Fitz gives her a smile and they begin to adjust the parameters of the software while Skye runs that face recognition technology.

It’s nearly an hour later-- an hour of Jemma trying to grit her teeth and get through the pain rolling over her in waves-- and Coulson calls her twice to see if they’ve made any progress before Jemma just can’t anymore. Her knees are shaking and with both Fitz and Skye completely absorbed in the task at hand, she slips out of the command center toward the lab for the painkillers she knew were down in the lab.

Halfway down the stairs, limping and gripping the handrail so she can give her ribs some sort of rest, she feels the cool of metal rest against the back of her neck and freezes mid-step, eyes sliding closed in resignation.

“I don’t want to hurt you.” It’s a whisper and it’s familiar.

Mike.

No. She bites the corner of her lip and raises her hands mid-air.

“They need you to translate the sequence.”

Jemma’s eyes pop open at his words, words hushed even though Fitz and Skye probably wouldn’t be able to hear either of them anyways and she whirls around to look at him.

“I already made them the bloody thing, now they want me to translate it?” It’s indignant and harsh as she takes him in, the way he’s changed since she’s seen him last. He lowers the gun in his hand, but his finger remains on the trigger and he looks at the space above her head.

“I don’t have a choice. They’ll kill me and my son. I’m sorry.”

Jemma shakes her head. It was horrible what they had done to him, but she can’t translate the data for him. She just has to find out how she can get it back into her hands before he realizes that he’ll have to kill her.

“They don’t have any scientists smart enough to translate it? That doesn’t sound like Centipede.” Mike sighs, eyes jumping to her and then back to the air above her head and she realizes that he’s trying to avoid giving them a view of her from the lens embedded in his eye.

“They do. But… They want you for some reason. I just take the orders. I don’t know the reasons behind it.”

Jemma swallows, a lump in her throat.

“So… you’re the contact, then? You have the data Michael sent?” Mike nods at her and waves the weapon in his hand toward the rest of the stairs.

“Come on, you have to hurry.”

She lets him follow her down to the lab, remembering the last time he’d been in her lab and how she’d been distracted the attractiveness of him. She nearly cringes at the thought now. Now all she felt for him was pity, remorse at what this team had put in the path of, and even a bit of fresh anger at him for forcing this on her… choosing life or death. She’s moving slower and slower, barely able to keep up with those around her and she looks at Mike.

“Is it okay if I take some pain medication? I have some cracked ribs… and you can see my face.” Mike nods once, his face inscrutable as she moves toward where Fitz had left the oxycodone, quickly swallowing it down without water and hoping it kicked in quick enough that however he would be forced to kill her wouldn’t be too painful. She eyes Fitz’s design paper still on the lab bench and contemplates scribbling out a quick note to him, to explain what had happened so that when he finds her down here he’ll understand but part of her thinks it will make it just all the more painful for him, so she doesn’t. Her eyes water at the thought of him and Skye looking for her, finding her down here on the cold lab floor…

There was nothing that could stop it though. Not now.

She takes a deep breath and moves back to Mike, eyeing him suspiciously.

“Do you have the data?” She asks, voice steady and low even though on the inside she’s nearly panicked.

“Yes. But I have my instructions: I handle the data, you interpret it. They don’t trust you to not erase it anymore, not after you coded it with your antigens and DNA.”

There goes that idea. She nods, trying to stifle her disappointment and makes her way over to the tech that she knew Fitz would rather see melted down than used by Centipede. She watches Mike pull out the thumb drive, attached it and it almost makes her sick how something so small could make such a huge impact on mankind. It was that way with the biology aspects of her field, the microbes and specimens, but she always on the end of stopping it not creating it. Her and Fitz were always meant to do good, not terrorize… Her eyes slide over to his lab bench, both wishing he was here and grateful he wasn’t. She spies the graph paper with his viral dispersion mechanism on it again and an idea forms in her head… It’d be risky, might blow the entire lab to pieces, but if it stopped the virus from being released it would be worth it.

She was already dead anyways.

Hands at her side, she instructs Mike on how to do the task before them, noting his look of remorse the entire time. Only when she tells him to step back to allow her to enter the command to begin transcribing the data does he speak again.

“I’m really sorry, Simmons. I really am. I never wanted this to happen.”

Her eyes water at his words, because they’re exactly what she’s thinking as she overwhelms the computer and tech while simultaneously shutting down the cooling and ventilation system with a code she’d never thought she’d have to use and waits for the entire system to blow on them.

She turns to Mike, eyes resolute and hands shaking.

“I’m sorry, too.”

The explosions rips through the lab, lifting her off her feet and through the air, propelling her toward the glass doors which she hits with such force that it cracks behind her and though it’s fading out on her, she can see the metal shrapnel flying through the air every which way, see’s the way Mike is pierced through the chest with a twisted section of the machine he’d just been standing in front of, before the world closes in and turns to darkness.

She’d stopped it.

“Skye, can ye zoom in on th’-”

His voice cuts out as the Bus’ tail section seems to lift off the tarmac, lifting both of them off their feet, and slams back to earth, sending them flying into the command center table.

Dread fills him instantaneously; he knows that with the plane on the ground, the most likely place for an explosion to occur is the lab. He looks for Jemma, wanting to make sure her ribs haven’t been damaged further…

Only to realize she’s gone.

He’s on his feet before he’s even aware he wants to be off the floor, ignoring his protesting midsection as he takes off running.

“JEMMA! JEMMA, WHERE ARE YE?!”

Fitz isn’t even sure why he asks the question other than he’s desperate to hear her voice, to be reassured she’s alive. He inexplicably knows exactly where she is, knows that she caused the explosion, and knows that he’s going to hate whatever it is that he finds.

Fitz hits the cargo bay’s observation deck, and his stomach drops out entirely. From his position he can see that one of the lab doors has been blown off entirely and is now embedded in the bonnet and windscreen of the Short Bus; there are bits of burning debris scattered about the floor, and even the parachutes closest to the lab are smoldering.

Her name is a chant rolling off his tongue now, keeping time with his feet as they pound down the metal staircase and he flings himself into the smoke-filled lab.

If he hadn’t been so focused on Simmons, he would have been surprised to see Mike Peterson sprawled on the floor of the lab, lifeless eyes staring at the ceiling and a jagged piece of metal jutting out of his chest. Fitz knows there’s no hope for him now, and turns his attention to the crumpled form of his partner. She’s cradled by the glass door that must have stopped her momentum, pale and unmoving.

The sight chills Fitz to the bone.

He’s on the floor next to her, fingers pressed to her neck looking for a pulse as he assesses the rest of the damage. There’s so much blood, from pulled stitches and new lacerations, and his fingers have trouble finding a purchase on her flesh so he can see if she’s still alive. Eventually he does find it, although it’s faint, thready against the tips of his fingers. He notices then that there’s a faint sucking sound with each shallow breath, realizes that that one of her ribs must have broken inward, and shouts for Skye even as he hears her clattering down the staircase.

“SKYE! GE’ S.H.I.E.L.D. MEDICAL, 9-1-1, ANYONE, RIGH’ NOW!”

That’s all the attention he spares for Skye, his attention riveted on Jemma as he brushes her hair out of her face and grips her lifeless hands with one of his own, his forehead lowering to rest against hers. It’s only when he sees his tears landing on her cheeks, creating small, pale furrows on the canvas of red, that he realizes he’s weeping.

“C’mon, lass, stay wit’ me. Please, Jemma, stay wit’ me. Who’ll yell a’ me t’ stop bein’ an arse if ye dinnae stay wit’ me?”

………….

It’s white light, bright behind her eyelids, and she can hear Fitz somewhere in the mix of the ringing in her ears.

………….

The pain is excruciating as a momentum she’s not doing under her own power lifts her from the glass she briefly remembers is beneath her.

…………..

She can feel the warmth of Fitz’s hand in hers, can hear the shouting from both Coulson and Ward from somewhere to the left of her, and the sharp intakes of feminine breaths that she thinks might be Skye’s. It begins to smell sterile in her olfactory senses, the cleanliness clinical and familiar to her.

…………..

She’s choking, swimming in fluid inside her lungs but someone must be suctioning it out as soon as it reaches a certain point because as she begins to recognize that she’s going to drown in whatever it was, she can breathe again and it starts all over again.

………….

And then, it’s nothing. It’s sleep and painless moments where her mind conjures up images of her family, Fitz, his family, the team, and Mike Peterson and his son. She’s floating, flying, resting on an induced sleep that is so much better than any sleep she’s ever had.

…………..

Three days.

Three days of a medically induced coma in a S.H.I.E.L.D. facility to give the machines time to do their work, to heal the damage done by the blast she’d created.

Of those 72 hours, Fitz has slept for perhaps six, but even that’s a generous estimate.

He hasn’t left her bedside, other than when the medical staff forced him out so they could strip and clean her before dressing her in a hospital gown, sliding her between sterile sheets, and sticking her with an IV. But since those first twenty minutes, he hasn’t moved, the beeping of her heart monitor lulling him into a dozing state that doesn’t last long.

Oddly enough, it’s Ward who takes care of him while he’s waiting for Jemma. The specialist brings him coffee periodically, shows up with meals for the two of them (watching to be sure that Fitz eats every last bite), and even manages to wrangle him into taking showers and changing clothes in the doctors’ locker room by blatantly telling him that he smells and that Jemma shouldn’t have to wake up to that.

The thought that she could wake up at any moment is what has kept him going, kept him eating and doing the bare minimum for what passes as grooming himself, so he could be by her bedside when she does wake up. He finds ways to pass the time when the others aren’t there, either singing softly to her, or talking to her about Michael’s trial, Mike Peterson’s funeral, S.H.I.E.L.D.’s pending plans for her plans for the repurposed virus, he talks about any and everything to fill the vast silence of the room.

He hasn’t found the strength yet to call her parents and tell them what’s happened. He tells himself that it’s because he doesn’t want to worry them, make them catch a flight from Heathrow for nothing, but the longer she’s induced the more the guilt of not telling them weighs on him.

It’s during one of these moments of contemplation, his body bent forward in the uncomfortable hospital chair so his head can rest against her hip and above her hand, that it happens.

It’s so feather light at first, Fitz believes he’d dreamed it, but when it happens again, and the beeping on the heart monitor changes just the slightest bit, he sits up and takes notice.

Her fingers twitch where they lie in the blankets, causing Fitz to look to her face, just to be sure, and he’s met by the sight of her fluttering eyelids, working to open her eyes so they could take in the scene before them.

He spares a moment to whisper, “Jemma, thank God ye’re bac’!” and drop a light kiss to her forehead before jabbing the call button on her bed faster than he thought humanly possible and bolting out of the door to fetch the medical staff.

The first few minutes of consciousness for her are utterly terrifying, the world swirling and swaying in front of her as faces and voices she doesn’t recognize poke and prod at her. Something in her knows that it’s necessary so she tries to bite down the feeling only to realize they’ve had to intubate her and she can’t breathe on her own. That frightens her even more and soon she can feel the tears streaming down her cheeks.

One of the nurses notices, her own eyes soft with empathy, and gently wipes at the salty liquid with a gloved hand.

“It’s okay, sweetheart. We’re going to get the tubes out as soon as we know that your lungs can handle it. For now, just try to relax as much as you can… It will help the Tracheal tube feel less strange.” She wants to nod, to let the nurse know that she appreciated her words but she can’t.

She can’t move her head, her neck having been stabilized, and while her body is responsive to touch and the tests they’re conducting, she can feel the long delay between telling her muscles to do something and them actually accomplishing the motion. It’s probably the drugs and fluids they have her on but it’s still an odd feeling and once her eyes focus enough that she can clearly see objects farther away than directly in front of her, her eyes search for Fitz.

She knows he’s here. She can hear the familiar squeak of his shoes on the linoleum floor as he paces, or tries to stay out of the way of the Doctors and hospital staff, surrounding her bed. Her fingers flex, trying to reach for his but she can’t get them to go very far. As if he knows that she’s searching for him, his fingers somehow find hers and wrap around her hand, gripping hers so tightly his knuckles turn white.

“Okay, Jemma,” a young Doctor with dark hair and dark eyes says to her ”, we’re going to try to assess your lung capacity now. We’re going to turn off the ventilator, just for a few seconds and we need you to try to take a breath. The Tracheal tubing is going to make it difficult, and you might feel a burning sensation, but if your lungs are capable then we can take that out. Okay?”

Her eyes slide to the right, searching for Fitz’s face. He’s somewhere behind the two nurses and she can’t see him. Perhaps it’s for the best, she knows how this can look and sound from her own medical training. Fitz’s thumb brushes against the back of her hand and the Doctor moves to the ventilator, eyes on her.

“Okay, on the count of three: one, two… three.” The machine dims, the sound coming to a stop as the nurse unhooks the tubing from her neck and for a moment Jemma panics at the feeling of suffocation that hits her immediately but remembers: she has to breathe on her own. Trying to get past the panic of the feeling in her lungs and the tubes blocking most of her airway, she takes a deep breath in and feels her lung expand, burning as they balloon to fill.

It sets fresh tears to her face.

The machine comes on again, the nurse reattaches the tube, and Jemma feels an instant relief. The dark haired Doctor looks at the nurses standing next to her and shakes his head.

“We’re going to have to wean her. Every 4 hours, for longer and longer periods of time to build back up the strength of her lungs. I don’t want to damage the new tissue.”

Fitz has always hated hospitals.

He hates the too-bright lighting, the squeaky linoleum floors, the egg-shell white walls, and the sterile smell of disinfectant that barely covers the scent of decay and death. But what he hates most are the tired, broken faces of people visiting loved ones, skin sagging and barely-contained tears in their eyes.. Now he’s one of them, bags under his eyes and styrofoam coffee cup firmly in hand as he sits next to her bedside.

It doesn’t even look like Jemma beneath all the tubing and wires.

Jemma, his Jemma, is bright eyes and a quick smile, the thrill of discovering something new, of making something work for the first time. She’s a light flush on her cheeks when she’s upset with him, and a reassuring hand on his back when he’s hit a brick wall in their work.

This Jemma, still and pale with tear tracks trailing down her cheeks, in the stark white sheets of the hospital bed, doesn’t seem like her at all. He knows she’s there, knows that she’ll survive, but he’s still on edge, and knows he’ll remain that way, until she’s back on her feet and seems like his Jemma again.

That’s when he’ll get after her rigging an explosion that had no limits in place. If he had blown the lab when he’d first wanted to, at least he could have set a directional charge. She just blew the device, and had nearly killed herself in the process.

She’d nearly left him alone. Again.

That thought rattles around his brain, chilling him to the bone. He can’t function in a world without Jemma Simmons. It’s been too long, nearly ten years, since he’s had to learn to function with anyone else; even the team had been a stretch, and he’d only become comfortable with them because Jemma had coached him through the process.

And that was before she’d kissed him, and kept kissing him.

He was still having trouble processing that, the idea that she had kissed him and seemed to want to keep kissing him. That somehow made it worse that she had nearly died. He had learned to live with the ache of wanting her while accepting he’d never have her, but to have a taste only to have snatched away would have driven him insane. He would have spent the rest of his life wondering about what could have been, if she could have loved him the way he loved her…

He’s still chasing that melancholy thought when her eyes flutter open. She seems groggy from the drugs, but her eyes light up when she sees him, standing in for the smile that the tubes won’t allow. The smile he returns is small, and a little sad, and he slides his hand around her own, his fingers resting against her palm. He doesn’t want her to try speaking, doesn’t want her to tax herself, so he resorts to their old tricks, and taps a message onto clammy skin beneath his fingertips. He keeps it simple, unsure of what to say.

Hi, Jemma.

The drugs have her drifting in and out but they’re doing the job they’re suppose to: she can’t feel her ribs, the burn in her lungs, or the strangeness of the tracheal tubing down her throat. Her whole body feels weightless, sort of disconnected from her in a strange way. She hates it, but it’s better than being dead. Her eyes flutter as she remembers Mike and the piece of metal that had pierced his chest before she’d blacked out.

She’s lucky she wasn’t impaled herself.

She knows, even with the fog of the multiple narcotic painkillers, that she’ll be hearing about it for a good long while. Maybe the rest of her life. She could explain why she’d done it and while Fitz will understand, he likely won’t accept it. But she’d done what she’d had to do… And it had worked.

She wants to smile at his tapped out message, the useful little trick familiar and comforting against her palm and the slightly sluggish feeling in her brain, however the tubing and tape have made any movement nearly impossible. He looks exhausted and she wants to tell him to go back to the Bus, to sleep for days, to eat and take care of himself.

She twists her hand in his, intent on telling him just such that, but the look on his face gives her pause and the thought flees.

He’s not going anywhere.

I’m sorry. I had to.

Fitz can feel himself cringe as her message comes through. He understands why she felt the need to do it, and even understands why she went about it the way she did, despite how much he dislikes the results of her wayward experiment.

Please, don’t. We can talk more once you’re out of here.

He taps the message against her palm before curling his hand around hers, gratified by the feeling of her pulse there. Sure, he could have just looked at the machines, but there’s something about the tactile feedback of her pulse and the heat of her skin against his fingertips that reassures him that she is indeed alive. He skims his fingers over her palm, just enjoying knowing that she’s there with him before tapping out his next message.

Is there anything you want from your bunk? Blanket? Pillow? A book I could read to you?

The motion to her shake her head is entirely instinctual, years of habitual muscle memory in a simple way of saying no. But she hadn’t had Tracheal tubing down her throat nor a neck brace on for those years and the burning, painful sensation at her attempted movement makes her eyes water before she slams them closed to try to stymie the onslaught of it. Not even the painkillers they were feeding to her through her IV were strong enough to take it away and she feels her fingers wrapping around Fitz’s palm, gripping tightly in fear as well as pain.

It slowly ebbs away and she opens her eyes, having to blink repeatedly to get them to focus again. She’s not used to being on this end of care, feels entirely useless laying here in a hospital bed without the ability to help herself, or anyone else. It’s ingrained in her, so much of who she is, that she almost doesn’t know how she’s suppose to be a patient, how to let someone take care of her. The only person who’s ever taken care of her was Fitz, and he’s the only person she feels comfortable with enough to let him. These doctors, nurses, aids, she doesn’t know them, doesn’t know their credentials or history and it makes her nervous, adding a whole new fear to the plethora of feelings she’s wading through. But if there’s one thing she absolutely knows for certain: she trusts Fitz implicitly. If he was content with the level of care she was being given, then she knew she should too.

She still hasn’t technically responded to his question, but she thinks he knows the answer, having watched her the entire time and his fingers tightening around hers while her eyes had been closed. His hand is warm in hers, comforting and strong. She wishes she could tell him so, but she feels the pull of sleep tugging at her exhausted body and though she’s been asleep for days on end, the last few hours have taxed her. She doesn’t have the energy to twist her hand in his to tap anything into his palm, just enough to move her finger against his wrist where it rests. She doesn’t want to scare him or worry him, wants him to know that she’s just tired.

Sleepy.

Her touch is feather-light over his pulse, betraying how worn out she actually is, but her message comes through all the same. Fitz shifts to sit next to her on the bed, taking care to not pull at any of the various wires that have sprouted from her pale skin, a tangle of electronics that seem to have a life all their own. He hates seeing them there, and can’t wait until the doctors start removing them. It’ll mean that she’s healing, and can come back to him and the team and the yet-again rebuilt Bus.

There’s so much he wants to tell her: he’s not mad at her, he really does understand why she did it, he can’t wait for her to come home, that he loves her…

But it’ll all have to wait, that last one in particular, for another time when she’s not trapped in a hospital bed and neither of them are too busy trying to save the world. Again.

Her eyes are glazed over, and he can tell she’s fighting the effects of the drugs coursing through her veins. Moving gingerly, so as not to jostle her too badly, Fitz leans forward and presses a lingering kiss to her brow as he taps his fingers against her arm.

I’ll be right here. Go to sleep, Jemma. Sweet dreams.

Jemma drifts in and out for what feels like hours, could be days, she’s not sure as it all seems to blur together. It’s hard to keep track of time without the light of day and the constant interruption of the medical staff. The only good thing, the only thing she has clear distinct memories of is the slow weaning off the ventilator.

Every so often, the entire team who provided her care would assemble around her bed and watch as she struggled to breath on her own. The second time she’s able to take two deep breaths, the third time she lasts for a minute before the feeling of suffocating settles in on her, and by the time she’s interrupted from her sleep the eighth time the Doctors are nearly certain she’ll be able manage on her own.

It’s a strange experience when they pull the Tracheal tubes from her throat, the feel of plastic sliding from her lungs through her throat and out her mouth. For a moment, she’d worried they had put too much faith in the strength of her lungs, the panic of not being able to breath a horrid feeling. But she manages small gulps of air and though she’s told not to strain her voice, her throat, or her lungs, the ability to speak is so welcome that she can’t help but look at Fitz and grace him with a very tired, very small smile.

“Hi.”

It’s barely a whisper, her voice nearly inaudible but it makes him smile. He hasn’t left her side once since she’d first woken up, and she thinks she might have really given him a fright with the way she’d slid in and out of consciousness. But with the tubing gone and her lungs able to breathe for her again, they’ve lessened the dosage of the pain medications and she feels more herself, more alert. There’s still the haze of the drugs she’s on for her ribs and other injuries but they’re much less sleep inducing.

She reaches for his hand and tugs a little, wanting him close now that the medical staff has cleared out of her room and she’s finally self sufficient again.

Fitz allows her to tug him to her, incapable of controlling his own movements at the moment.

The fact that she’s able to breath on her own causes a wave of relief to flood through him; he’d spent days trying to maintain an external calm while his insides were churning with panic. Now he can finally let the tension go, and so he does. He can feel the sting of tears forming at the corners of his eyes and lets them fall, too thankful that she’s made this much progress to care who might see.

He eases himself onto the thin hospital mattress, careful not to jostle her as he takes a seat near her midsection. His hand moves as if of its own volition, easing beneath hers, and after twining their fingers together, Fitz brings it to his mouth to press a gentle kiss to her knuckles.

“Ye gave me a scare, Jem. All o’ us, really. Ye’ve go’ no idea how good it is t’ hear yer voice.”

He whispers it against the skin of her hand, speaking softly, as if raising his voice past a certain level will break the moment and snatch her away from him a second time.
Jemma winces at his words, at the tears making rivulets down his cheeks. She had known that the aftermath of the explosion would be catastrophic, not just in the physical damage to the Bus but to the team. She just hadn’t planned on being around to see it, to the see way it’s blown through Fitz just as much as her… She reaches with the hand that he’s not holding to wipe the moisture from his cheeks, and blinks back her own tears.

Her throat is still raw, hoarse, and scratchy, the after effects of being intubated and probably will be for the next few weeks but her focus in solely on Fitz right now, the whisper of her voice not even taking her by surprise.

“I’m sorry I scared you,” she swallows, willing her voice to continue on for just a moment, “but I had to. He wanted me to translate the sequence… the camera in his eye… if they’d seen…” Her voice gives out on her and there’s really nothing else for her to say anyway. She’d made a life altering--life ending-- decision in the span of mere seconds and followed through it. It was one thing to decide, to tell yourself you’re going to do it, but she’d actually done it.

She wouldn’t blame Fitz for being upset with her-- at her. If they were switched, if it had been him, she’d feel the same. She had felt the same: it’s why she’d told him not to rig it to blow.

He knows, logically speaking, that she’s right. It had been the most expedient course of action, and she’d done her duty as a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent when she blew the lab to hell.

But she’d nearly taken herself with it.

And that’s what ate at him now. It was bad enough she told him she had feelings for him via a kiss given under duress; he could forgive that, could work through it… but only if she were with him. And she’d nearly taken herself out of the equation.

He looks at her, even as he feels a fresh wave of tears form and fall, and he struggles with how to tell her what he’s feeling.

She’d been with him since his first semester at the Academy, unlikely lab partners becoming friendly rivals, developing professional respect for each other before they became friends. Eventually, they became roommates, and one day, while working at SciOps and living together, Leo Fitz had realized that Jemma Simmons was beautiful, and started to blush each time she brushed a kiss against his cheek. But, it was an incident like this one, not too long ago, that cemented his fate.

With one careless leap from the cargo bay, she’d forced him to recognize that he loved her. Not only that, but that he’d give his life for her.

If she had managed to destroy the repurposed antiserum at the cost of her own life, she would have taken his, too.

“Jem,” he gritted out through his tears, “d' ye no’ realize, lass, tha’ if ye had… if…” Fitz couldn’t get the words out, the bitter taste choking him. “If ye hadnae survived, I’m no’ sure I woul’ have, either. There isnae a Fitz wit’ou’ Simmons, Jemma. An’ while I understan’ why ye did it, tha’ doesnae make it fair.”

Jemma smiles at him sadly, her eyes going soft at the emotion in his voice and on his face. She has no voice now, can’t make any sound so she just pulls him close, tugging on his hand so that he leans toward her a bit more. She wipes his tears with the back of her free hand and even though she’s sure her lips are chapped and dry, her hair is a mess, and her cheeks are gaunt, she leans through the small space between them and brushes her lips against his nose.

-----------------------------------

It’s a long haul of recovery and strengthening her lungs again, on top of the side effects of having tubes forced down her throat. Her other injuries don’t help with the healing process but SHIELD has perfected the art of speeding up medical processes (she’s not entirely sure she wants to know how they managed it, either) and though she’s not back to perfect health, by three weeks she’s well enough that she can make it back to the Bus. Somehow, they’d managed to repair the plane even quicker than they had when they’d blown a hole in it the first time and Jemma has no idea how many crews it took, working night and day, but it feels wonderful to be going back to something familiar instead of new faces with each rotating shift, medical staff that came and went.

The constant through the entire process has been Fitz. Her family had come and gone, their concern eased when they’d seen her up and moving about, talking and smiling. Fitz had barely left her side since she’d woken, unless absolutely necessary. It was wonderful and she felt a bit guilty for being so pleased by his presence because the shadows under his eyes spoke to his weariness but his eyes were bright and light when they gazed at her, and that was wonderful too. It was a new look, one she’d never thought she would be graced with and though she wished it hadn’t come with broken ribs, split lips, and a punctured lung, she couldn’t find it in her to wish them away because it had finally brought them to this point.

Rising from the wheelchair that had carried her from her room at the hospital for the last time, she reaches for Fitz’s hand as she winces slightly. She was healing fast but that came with it’s own problems, like swelling and rapid sudden bruising along her ribcage, and she needed Fitz’s arm to stand up straight. She leans into him and slides her arm around his waist to brace herself, offering him an apologetic smile.

“Thank you. I’m sorry, I don’t think I’ll be able to do much on my own for a bit.”

She can hear their transport vehicle pulling up outside, here to take them back to the Bus, and wonders who’s driving them back-- Coulson or May or even Skye-- but it doesn’t really matter that much. All she’s focused on is Fitz, his eyes and the way he looks now that they’re finally leaving this bloody hospital.

The look she gives him as he helps her up make his heart flutter as a blush creeps up his neck to color his cheeks. Even after three weeks of being with her at the hospital, stealing small kisses when the staff and team didn’t seem to be looking and chatting quietly into the night, Fitz still can’t really believe this is finally happening, particularly when he thinks about how he’d nearly lost her. He leans into her as well, trying to banish the dark thought with the feeling of her nearness as he closes his eyes and breathes her in.

“I’s all righ’, Jem,” he murmurs in her ear, eyes opening as he hears the SUV approach. “Ye know I’m happy t’ help. Th’ rest o’ th’ team, too.”

He wants to kiss her, and hasn’t seemed to be able to stop touching her since the breathing tube had been removed, but refrains. They’re in public, and while Coulson is lenient, there’s no way he could ignore something that violated Section 17 so blatantly. He contents himself with pressing a kiss to the soft skin of her cheek as the SUV stops before them, and opens the back door so she can slide in. He glances at Ward, who’s seated behind the wheel, and gives him a nod of greeting before watching her carefully as she guides herself across the back bench. Once she’s situationed, he slides in himself and leans over to help her with the buckle, taking care that the strap doesn’t press too tightly across her ribs.

He feels a bit of the warm happiness seep out of him once he realizes it’ll be Ward driving them back to the Bus. He’d been hoping for Skye. The hacker would never say anything to Coulson if Fitz had cuddled up with Jemma in the backseat, but straight-arrow Ward would reprimand them in a heartbeat. So, with a heavy sigh, Fitz settles for holding her hand for the duration of the trip back to the Bus, his finger running gently along her knuckles as the scenery zooms by.

Fitz stole little glances at her as they approached the airfield, wondering what she was thinking, and if she was nervous about returning to their makeshift home. He’d had time to reacclimated to the plane, to get over the jumpiness that had seemed to have set into his very bones when it came to working in their lab. He worries now though that Jemma won’t be able to work or sleep on the plane because of nerves.

The little gasp she gives and the way her fingers tighten around his as the SUV climbs the cargo bay ramp confirms his suspicions. He returns the gentle pressure and leans towards her in a bid to ease her state of mind.

“I’s okay, lass. I’m here. Ward’s here. So’s Coulson an’ May an’ Skye. I made sure t’ up the security protocols wit’ the repairs. There’s no way they coul’ ge’ back in; trus’ me, ye’re safe. Ye’re protected here.”

She’s completely unprepared for the wave of emotions that seeing the Bus brings. She’d been happy to leave the hospital, to get somewhere familiar… Now she can feel the panic in her chest and the thudding of her heart in her chest as the memories of what had occurred in what had been their space… of what had almost happened.

Ward cuts the engine and she’s wrapped in silence, Fitz’s grip around her fingers the only thing keeping her sane. Her eyes dart over the cargo bay, to their lab, then back to Fitz and she can practically feel the fear radiating from them. Jemma swallows slowly, trying to bring herself back from the edge of whatever panic had just settled over her.

Tech. She could focus on tech. It was easier than remembering the beating she’d taken in the lab, the harsh sound of her skull meeting the edge of the lab counter…

“You upped the security protocols? What did you do?” Her voice is hushed and shaky, along with her hands, but she reaches for the latch and pushes open the car door with her free hand, wincing as her body protests the little twist that her torso had instinctually done.

Normal movements, normal things, get Fitz talking about his upgrades and less focused on her because the way he’s looking at her is making her want to hide away, his concern so blatant.

He rushes out his door and practically runs to the other side of the SUV, intent on helping her down so she doesn’t accidentally hurt herself trying to climb out of the vehicle.

“I’s jus’ a few new things,” he answers, his tone self-effacing. “Th’ biggest are th’ biometric scanners on each exit. If ye’re no’ part o’ th’ team, ye’re no’ gettin’ on th’ Bus. That’s a promise.” He knows his voice is too bright, too cheery, given where she’s been and why, but Fitz wants her to stay as calm as possible. He slings her bag over his shoulder, and after wrapping an arm about her waist, he keeps talking. He doesn’t stop talking to her as he leads her up the ramp, through the cargo bay, and up the spiral stairs to where their bunks are waiting.

“There are a few other tricks, lass,” he confides to her, his voice pitched low so no one can hear them. “I’ll tell ye about them later, after we have dinner wit’ th’ team. I promise.”

The truth is, he’d been ordered to tell no one other than Coulson about any upgrades he made to the Bus. Fitz knows it’s a security issue to tell her anything, but he can’t help it. She feels unsafe, and he’d do anything to take that feeling from her, including divulge classified information. He’s about to ignore the parameters he put on their deal and spill his guts then and there, when something makes him look toward the door.

Ward is standing there in the hall, expression oddly calm and detached, even for him.

“Was there somethin’ ye needed, Ward?” Fitz inquires, eager to get rid of the man so he can spend as much time with Jemma as possible before he has to share her with the team in a few hours.

“Just wanted to say that Skye says that dinner’ll be served at 5.” He gives them each a nod, and just as he was ready to leave, sticks his head back in the door. “Oh, and I’m glad you’re back, Jemma,” he declares, a small, friendly smile briefly splitting his face before wandering off in the direction of the commons.

Jemma smiles softly at the sentiment. It wasn’t often that Ward seemed congenial with them the way he was with Skye, and it was touching in an odd sort of way. Sliding her bunk door open, she steps inside and feels a sense of peace wash over her.

When they’d first started living on the Bus, it had been a hard adjustment-- even for her, and joining the team had been her idea. The bunks, although efficiently designed and fully furnished, were small and compact with only so much space. It was the only personal space each team member had been given and Jemma had been forced to acclimate. She was used to her shared space with Fitz in their flat, arranged the way they each liked it with respect to each others preferences and her room had been rather large, the larger of the bedrooms, and she’d taken up the space easily. She wasn’t messy or even cluttered but she had a vanity that she adored and bookshelves and small things she’d accumulated over the years of traveling and working on projects.

The bunks had literally no space for any of that and at first Jemma had thought it would never feel as comfortable as her room had, that it would never feel like her own but as she stands in the middle of the almost claustrophobic space while Fitz finds a spot for her bag she realizes that over the course of being on the team and all their experiences, this small space had become a refuge for her-- a safe place in the midst of all the happenings around them. She’s suddenly very grateful that Michael and his men had never invaded her bunk, that it felt untouched and unspoiled, safe and clean and like home.

Even if it smelled a little stale from her absence.

Taking a deep breath, she turns toward Fitz and places a hand on his arm to pull his attention. She didn’t care that her bunk door was open, that Coulson might walk by and see them, she shifts into his arms and wraps herself around him, resting her head on his shoulder.

Despite her earlier panic at the sight of the lab and being back on the Bus, Fitz’s rambling about the upped safety protocols and security measures had truly helped ease some of her worry. If anyone had the ability to design something unique and foolproof, it was Fitz. She trusted him now more than ever.

“Thank you. For the new security protocols.”

He folded his arms around her easily, heedless of the open door as he buried his nose in her hair and held her close. It felt unbelievably good to to be able to hold her like this, without a set of tubing or IV lines or nurse coming along to stop them. She felt a bit off in his arms, a little hesitant, almost as if she’d rather not be back on the Bus at all, but was doing her best to hide it.

Fitz couldn’t exactly blame her, as he didn’t want to be here either, not anymore. It simply didn’t feel safe, not yet, even with the increased security measures. It had also been lacking the feeling of home it had once had for Fitz, although now that Jemma was back, he anticipated that would change for the better soon enough.

“I’s nothin’, lass. I’m happy t’ do whatever I can t’ keep ye safe.”

He gave her an extra squeeze before he pulled back, giving her a small smile as he took her in. He was still a bit in shock that she was back on the Bus, and was still processing that everything could now get back to normal.

Well, as normal as it could be when you worked on a S.H.I.E.L.D. mobile command unit.

“I’m no’ sure ye’ll feel up t’ i’,” he began, tone cautious, “but there are a lo’ o’ changes t’ th’ security features in th’ lab. If ye’d like, I can show them t’ ye now, so we can jus’ relax before an’ after dinner.”

Fitz wasn’t sure she’d be up to going into the lab so soon after returning home, but she did need to know what new features there were. Hopefully, being with him would be enough to keep her anxiety at bay; if it wasn’t, they’d have a whole other set of circumstances to deal with, considering they worked nearly exclusively out of that space.

Jemma swallows down her hesitation with a soft smile and simple nod of her head. She wants to hold his hand, to slide her fingers between his, to feel him warm and real and alive between her knuckles as he guides her through the common area and down the stairs but there’s simply no way of doing it without being seen; there were cameras in nearly every corner now, Skye was busy about the kitchen, and who knew where Coulson was... So, instead she wraps her arms around her ribs, still stiff and bruised, and follows him silently as her eyes narrow to only his back and the steady sway of his shoulders.

Fitz was safe. Fitz was comfortable and familiar, even when their lab had been invaded and they’d been separated, the small touch of his fingers to hers or his arms around her to steady her had been safe and comforting. She could walk back into the lab, into their space, with him beside her.

It still gives her pause when she descends the stairs, Fitz’s hand resting on her elbow to help her down, when she sees the repaired glass and the pristine lab. It was like nothing had ever happened: like Michael had never invaded their space, like Mike had never held a gun to her head, like she’d never blown up half the lab…

Except she had.

A shiver sets through her and a hand slides to Fitz’s regardless of the cameras and whoever may be spying on them. She needed him.

He catches her hand as soon as she reaches for him, and pulls her in close, not giving a damn about the cameras or team or anything else. She needs him, and that’s all he needs to know.

“I’s all righ’, baby girl, I’ve go’ ye. I swear, no one’s gettin’ in here. No’ wit’ wha’ I’ve put in place.”

He leads her along, easing her through the doors of the lab to stand at her station. Fitz circles an arm around her waist as they stand there, wanting to keep her steady as he speaks, his voice a low hum in her ear. He had promised Coulson he wouldn’t tell another soul, after all.

“Look, I upped th’ grade on th’ doors an’ windows. I’ woul’ take a nuclear blast t’ knock them ou’ now. An’ I pu’ th’ similar bio-specs on th’ lab doors, too. So, even if someone manages t’ ge’ onto th’ Bus, they’ll have a struggle gettin’ into th’ lab. I’ shoul’ give us enough time t’ use th’ Mouse Hole t’ escape if we need t’.” He kisses her cheek, unable to resist with her so near him, and points to the floor. “Ye see tha’ tile? We’ve bot’ go’ one.” He taps at it with his foot, just to make sure she knows which one he’s talking about. “Tha’ one, if ye tap th’ righ’ sequence on i’, overrides wha’ever commands the video surveillance is currently under.”

He leans around her slightly, invading her space, as he attempts to get a good look at her face. He needs to be sure she understands him. He thinks she does, there’s a light in her eyes that makes him smile, since it means they’re on the same page, but he has to be sure.

“I’ means tha’ even if they’ve cut the feed, or think they’ve cut i’ or tried t’ loop i’, a copy of whatever’s going on here goes straigh’ t’ Coulson’s office. I rigged a separate harddrive t’ record i’ all. Tha’s one o’ the features I’m no’ supposed t’ share wit’ ye, so hush, yeah?”

He grins at her, trying to make her smile, his giddiness at having her near overriding any apprehension about their being seen via the very cameras he’s telling her about. He skims his hand down her arm to lace their fingers together, and holds them firm against her thigh.

“An’ the sequence ye need t’ tap shoul’ be easy enough t’ remember, lass. Here i’ is,” he whispers to her, his fingers tapping their code onto her thigh.

G-E-M.

They spend another few minutes like that, going over the new security features, before Fitz leads her back up the stairs and into her bunk. Fitz doesn’t even stop to be sure no one sees them slip into her bunk, nor does he care if they hear him lock the door behind them.

He figures they can think whatever they want; he’s been without her too long to give a damn, anyway.

Jemma’s worked with Fitz long enough that she shouldn’t still be surprised by his genius, but she is. The new security standards are amazing-- cutting edge-- and they make her appreciate Fitz all the more. She knew even without the shift in their relationship he’d still have done something like this; it was just how he was. Fitz could be snappy, a little grumpy with others, but he had always taken great care with her. Even their arguments and disagreements in the lab were based on a mutual respect. He hadn’t done any of the updates because of what was new between them, he had done it because of what was the same between them: years of friendship.

The tension inside her eases as he guides her through the lab to show her all the changes, his closeness calming her nerves. By the time they make it back to her bunk, she’s smiling a genuine smile and her eyes are watching him with a tender affection as she sits on her bed.

Placing a hand to her forehead, she looks at him apologetically.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t think I’d be as worn out as I am… Do you, would you mind if we just stayed here for a bit? Until dinner, maybe?”

She didn’t feel like she could sleep, but her body wasn’t used to all the movements and physical exertions she’d done today. Her lungs, though much better than they had been, were still healing and she felt like she needed to catch her breath, let her body calm down so that her breathing could even out to a steady pace.

Fitz kicks himself for not realizing that going up and down the stairs would tire her out so much. She’d just come home from the hospital, and he’d been in the car; he should know better. He gives her a small, apologetic smile and gestures for her to lie down.

“Tha’s fine, Jemma, go on an’ stretch ou’.”

He waits for her to get comfortable before shifting to perch at the edge of the bed, ready to move if she tells him to get lost. It was odd, but despite everything that’s happened, he’s shy about lying down next to her, despite hopelessly wanting to cuddle up to her. Instead, he takes up her hand, and twining their fingers together, lifts it to his lips, eyes locked on her the entire time. A tiny, irrational part of him is terrified that if he looks away, even for a second, she’ll be gone, vanished from the face of the earth and leaving him with no recompense.

The thought’s a silly one, and Fitz dismisses it as such before turning his full attention back to her.

“So, wha’ would ye like t’ do? I could ge’ my laptop an’ we could watch somethin’. Or we could jus’ relax, if ye’d like.”

Jemma tugs ever so gently at his hand in hers, her strength severely lacking but knowing he’ll get the point, and slides to the side so he can fit into the bed with her. Once he’s situated comfortably, she curls into him-- careful of her ribs and the bruising-- so that she can rest her head half on his shoulder, half on his chest.

At first they just lay comfortably, snuggling in silence, both just content to be with one another without the presence of medical staff and all the monitoring Jemma had been under. Jemma begins to tap her finger against his chest, the softest brush on each movement, telling him things in Morse code shorthand and wondering how quickly he’ll catch on.

I like this and why haven’t we done this before and you should kiss me.

The last one makes her blush, a tinge of rose colored pink on her cheeks because it’s quite forward and she doesn’t know if he even wants to right now. She lifts her chin to look at him, hazel eyes hopeful that she’ll find him awake for her own selfish reasons.

Fitz is rather sleepy and content with having her pressed against him, so it takes him a minute to realize just what it is she’s doing against his chest. He feels the corners of his mouth turn up as he makes out the last two phrases she’s tapped against his chest and drums his own message against her side.

Then get up here.

But he doesn’t wait for her to move, instead shifting his grip on her gently so she’s nearly centered on top of his chest, and his fingers find their way into her hair as he lightly tugs her down to meet his mouth.

He keeps the pressure soft at first, and takes care to not hold her too tightly, but before long he’s managed to urge her mouth open against his, tongue slipping past lips and teeth to tangle with hers until they’re both a little breathless. It’s only then that he allows his head to fall back against the pillows, his grin wide and well-pleased, as he takes in her slightly-dazed hazel eyes and swollen lips.

“I dinnae know why we havenae done tha’ sooner, lass,” he whispered up at her as he ghosted his fingertips over her cheek, daring a quick glance at the clock. “Bu’ we have a few more hours t’ try i’ again until they call us for dinner.”

Jemma gives him a pleased, small smile and leans down to catch his lips again. It’s slower than his had been, the gentle press of her lips against entirely assessing. She wants to memorize the way they curved around hers, the hint of his taste on the outer corners of his lips, and that one spot on his lips that’s more sensitive than the others. She has what feels like all the time in the world to do so: to just lazily kiss him and enjoy the press of his warm body against hers.

They spend the entire afternoon wrapped up in each other, the only interruption happening when Jemma needs a dose of her pain meds. It’s relaxing and, aside from the kisses, entirely familiar. It’s exactly what she needs to get back into the routine and the feel of being back on the Bus, to feel safe and home again.

Before long there’s a knock at the bunk door and Jemma glances at the clock. They’d managed to waste away the entire time together and she hadn’t even realized it. Skye’s voice drifts through the door.

“Guys, dinner is ready.”

Fitz groans, upset that their little bubble has been broken. He likes Skye, honestly, he does, but he would have been perfectly content if she had just trusted them to feed themselves when the time came. Still, he knows they can’t leave her there, standing at the door, and so it’s with regret that he shifts Jemma off to his side so he can stand and answer the door.

He should have stopped to consider his appearance, that much is obvious given Skye’s chortle and impish grin, and Fitz narrows his eyes in preparation for whatever quip she’s ready to unleash.

“Did I interrupt something?” she asks, her expression clearly showing that she knows she has.

“Yes, ye did.” Fitz keeps his own answer terse. As much as he likes Skye and has come to think of her as family, time alone with Jemma is what he’d been craving since the whole nightmarish ordeal had ended. He simply isn’t in the mood to be polite, and glares a bit, waiting for her response.

“Well, Fitz, Dorm Living 101: put a sock on the doorknob next time.” Skye reached out to ruffle his hair, her manner playful despite his clear annoyance, and he can’t resist cracking a small smile. “That a boy. Now, get dressed and come to the lounge. I made all of Simmons’ favorites.”

With that, she bounces back down the hall toward the dining area, leaving Fitz to slide the door closed behind him. Once he handles that, he turns to Jemma, an apologetic look on his face. “I’m sorry, lass, bu’ i’ seems tha’ we need t’ take a timeou’.” He takes the scant step toward the bed, and bends at the waist to kiss her once again before pulling away to give her a soft, loving smile. “Bu’ I promise, jus’ us after dinner, too, if ye wan’. An’ this time, I’ll make sure t’ pu’ a sock on th’ door.”

Jemma swats his arm lightly, a look of horror on her face.

“Leo Fitz, you will not do any such thing!” She shakes her head at him, but relaxes her features into an exasperated smile as he begins to tug on his jumper and she reaches-- slowly and cautiously-- for her shoes on the floor.

“Anwen used to tell me to tie pantyhose to the door handle when we had study nights at Sci-Ops,” she blushes and laughs at the memory, “and I had no idea what she meant. Don’t give me that look, I was 16! Why they placed me with her, I will never know. Thank goodness for her boyfriend in Biotech otherwise we would have had to fight over the common space.” Jemma shakes her head. They’d been so young and it felt like an entirely different life now.

She winces as she stands, her bruised ribs and the other rapidly healing injuries reminding her that they were still present enough to give her a little trouble. She reaches a hand for Fitz’s arm, steadying herself against him and leaning into him just for the sake of being near him.

“Ready?”

Fitz watches her tug her clothing back into place and do what she can to straighten her mussed hair, his heart filling with an emotion he can’t quite place. He knows at least part of it is physical attraction stemming from watching her slip out of the bunk they’d just shared, but there’s more there that he can’t put his finger on.

She’s beautiful in the most ordinary way, just Jemma with her laugh and smile and bright, honey-colored eyes looking at him like he meant everything and anything, and yet she’s nothing like he’d ever seen before or would ever come across again. He’s met his one in seven billion, not a perfect woman by any means, but absolutely perfect for him, and if he were the kind of man who believed in such things, he’d be absolutely convinced that some higher power had made them for each other as the very definition of soulmates.

Fitz can’t help but smile at the thought, and after she’s slipped her shoes back on her feet, he reaches out for her hand and with a gentle tug, careful of her lingering hurts and aches, presses her flush against him. He gives her a lopsided grin, and with their faces mere inches apart, he’s sorely tempted to kiss each and every one of her freckles, but resists giving in to the temptation. If he does, they’ll only end up staying here, and they both need to eat.

Instead, he sighs and brings up a hand to push the stray wisps of hair that have yet to be tamed behind her ears, fingers lingering so they can revel in her softness. He feels a sharp pull at his heart as he thinks yet again about how close to losing her he came; his head tilts forward to rest against hers reflexively, his eyes slipping shut as he soaks in one more moment of peace with her before plunging into the chaos that will be the team dinner.

“I wish we coul’ stay here,” he whispers to her, eyes sliding open. “Bu’ I know i’s selfish an’ tha’ they wan’ t’ see ye, too. So, c’mon. Th’ sooner we do this, th’ sooner we can ge’ back t’ cuddlin’.”

With that, he threads their fingers together and leads her out of the bunk and toward the table their team, their makeshift family, has gathered around, ready to celebrate Jemma’s recovery.

Fitz refuses to drop her hand the entire time, even once they’re seated, Section 17 be damned.

Jemma sees the way Coulson is eyeing their entwined hands but she doesn’t pull hers from his grip. After everything that had happened, she didn’t really give a damn about SHIELD policy anymore. She had the feeling that her and Fitz were valuable enough to both Coulson and SHIELD that they wouldn’t risk losing the two of them over something everyone had seen coming from a mile away… Even if it had taken them years to recognize it.

Jemma lets her gaze sweep across the table, taking in all the food and effort Skye had put into making this dinner. It was thoughtful, and sweet.

“Thank you, Skye. This looks amazing.”

From out of seemingly nowhere May sits silently in the chair to Jemma’s left and Jemma nearly jumps a little from the surprise but manages to squelch it down with a smile. She was almost accustomed to May’s silent movements… Almost. She hadn’t even heard May approaching whereas with Ward, she can hear his footsteps from the common area as he makes his way to the table with a little smile on his face. It only falters when his eyes take in the way Fitz is holding her hand, and even then it’s only a small twitch of his lips but Jemma notices.

Fitz is too busy watching Jemma react to the rest of the team to take much notice of Ward, and it isn’t until the specialist passes behind his chair and slaps him on the shoulder that he even looks up. The older man, usually so unreadable, is giving him a tight lipped smile, and Fitz can’t help but beam at him in return. Ward had told him, well before Michael had ever boarded the Bus, that if he never told Jemma how he felt, he’d regret it. Ward had been right, and Fitz takes a particular pride in the approval he sees in Ward’s gaze.

With everyone gathered around the table, they tuck in to the meal, dishes and silverware being passed back and forth amidst the lively chatter. It’s nice, and as normal as they’re capable of, and Fitz allows himself to get lost in the ebb and flow of the conversation, going back and forth with Skye about ideas for beefing up the plane’s systems, the both of them taking suggestions from Coulson as they conversed.

Still, despite the specs being batted about, Fitz keeps his attention focused on Jemma, his hand moving to rest on her knee so they can both eat more comfortably. He allows his fingers to brush against the inside of her knee, the motion soothing him even as it anchors him to her, and Fitz gives her a small grin that quickly grows even wider.
They’d always been a bit secretive, the two of them. They knew each other well enough to not need words to communicate; an arch of a brow or a quirk of a lip. But the grin spread across Fitz’s face at her is an entirely new one, secretive in new ways and pleasure at the corner of his lips.

If they weren’t sitting at the table with the entire team surrounding them, she’d kiss him.

Instead, she smiles back at him and blinks slowly at him, a dazed little expression she’s sure he’s never see on her before.

All in all, it’s an easy enjoyable dinner, nothing too taxing on her but by the time the plates are clear of food and the dessert has been served she’s feeling ready to escape back to the bunk in search for some rest. She’s not sure how she’ll manage her first night back on the Bus.

The slow, sleepy smile that Jemma gives him sends an overwhelming desire to get her alone through him, just to see if he’s right and that is the exact expression she’ll wear waking up next to him. Fitz’s eyes dart over to Skye, who’s cleaning up in the kitchenette, and then to Coulson who seems to be watching them rather closely. He shrugs off the older man’s eyes, refusing to allow him to dictate what he and Jemma will be; it’s for them, and them alone.

“Skye,” he calls, waiting for the former hacker to meet his eyes before going on. “D’ ye need help in th’ kitchen?” His tone makes it clear that he’s only asking to be polite, and he couldn’t care less about the damn dishes, but he doesn’t want anyone to call him out for shirking his duties. Skye smiles in response, clearly onto him.

“No, monkey, I don’t. I officially set you free.” Fitz nearly shoots out of his seat at her words, catching his chair just before he knocks it over entirely. He glances up when he hears both Skye and Jemma stifle giggles, a blush creeping up his cheeks. “It’s okay, Fitz,” Skye reassures him. “Just remember the sock this time, all right?”

Those words ringing in his ears, Fitz reaches down for Jemma’s hand, intent on hiding in her bunk until the morning, when suddenly Ward’s hand is wrapped around his upper arm. Fitz hadn’t even been aware that the specialist had come up behind him, and jumps a bit with the shock.

“Can I speak to you?”

Ward’s voice is low and rough, and causes Fitz’ brows to knit together in concern at the slight tinge of desperation he hears. He’s not used to hearing Ward sound anything but cool, calm, and collected, and he feels his own panic response begin to kick in.

“Does i’ have t’ be righ’ now?” he asks, his free hand reaching back to find Jemma’s fingers. “Are ye sure i’ cannae wait until mornin’?”

Ward looks between his hand, knotted together with Jemma’s, and Skye, his lips pressed into a hard line as he searches for a decision. Eventually, Skye breaks the silence, and forces Ward’s hand.

“C’mon, SO, it can wait. Simmons just got back. Let them go have their movie night or whatever. You can talk to him first thing in the morning.”

Ward nods slowly, repeating, “First thing in the morning,” as he looks at Fitz.

The Scot nods in agreement, muttering, “Yeah, firs’ thin’ in th’ mornin’, I’ll come an’ fin’ ye.”

As soon as Ward releases his arm, Fitz leads Jemma back to her bunk, eager to spend more time alone with her and to brush past the strangeness of what had just happened between him and the older agent.

Jemma watches Fitz from the corner of her eyes as they make their way back to their bunk. It wasn’t very often that Ward demanded Fitz’s attention and though it was strange timing, she felt a little guilty at being the source of attention. But it’s forgotten when they arrive at her bunk and she turns to him only to find his eyes on her.

Tilting her head to the right in a questioning look, she slips past him into her bunk and tugs him along with her.

“What’s that look for?”

Fitz starts, his mind still back in the kitchen with what had happened with Ward, and he shakes his head a bit before focusing back in on Jemma. She seems mildly concerned, which he doesn’t want in the least. He gives her a gentle smile, following her into the room and sliding the door shut behind them, checking to lock it this time, before explaining himself.

“A little while back, when we were all still a’ Providence, Ward gave me some advice…” He can feel the blush creeping up his neck, and ran a hand through his unruly curls in an attempt to ease some of his discomfort. “He tol’ me tha’ I should tell ye how I feel. Tha’ I needed t’ do i’ before everything went to utter shite.” Fitz gave a short, mirthless laugh at the memory; he’d royally screwed up on that suggestion, although, now he was getting a second chance. “I’m sure tha’s all he wanted t’ talk t’ me about, tha’, and maybe no’ bein’ so obvious about i’ while on th’ Bus.”

He crosses over to where Jemma is standing, watching him, and sits on the bed before gently tugging her down next to him. He presses a soft kiss to her lips, smiling against her mouth as he feels her relax into it, and pulls back to look her in the eyes once more.

“Lass, I dinnae care wha’ Ward or S.H.I.E.L.D. or anyone has t’ say about us. I’m no’ goin’ t’ give up th’ chance t’ kiss ye whenever I damn well please. I’ve nearly los’ ye, wha’, three times? I’ll no’ sit around an’ wait for somethin’ like tha’ again.”

Jemma presses into him, liking this new way of being together and feeling a touch lazy, as if she could stay here for a long while with him. Pressing a kiss to his lips, she smiles at him with an apologetic face.

“Some things you can’t control, Fitz, no matter how brilliant you are. Though I don’t plan on having any more near death experiences… at least not until I’m properly healed from this one,” she winks at him to soften the serious words and nudges his shoulder with hers, “And I do like when you kiss me, so you can bend the rules on that whenever you see fit.”

Fitz feels his heart sink at her words, even though he knows she’s only joking. But it’s serious for him, and he fears in that moment that he hasn’t done enough to really get his point across. He’d done a lot of thinking while she’d been in recovery, had spent too many night watching her torn between thanking the universe she was still with him and fearing she’d be taken from him once more, and simply can’t joke about it.

Instead he brings his hand up to brush her hair behind her ear before leaning in to kiss her. He takes his time, keeping it light, well aware of her lingering hurts. He trails his mouth from her lips, over her cheeks and nose and forehead, leaving feather-light kisses everywhere he can, his heart near to bursting with emotion. He presses one final kiss to her lips before pulling back, needing to see her eyes for what he wants to say next.

“Please dinnae even joke about tha’, Jemma. I-” he stumbles over the words, his throat seemingly unable to work around the flood of things he wants, needs, to say to her. “I'm in love with ye, lass. I mean' I' when I told ye tha' I cannae live withou' ye. I wouldnae even know where t' begin tryin'."

Jemma can feel her eyes widen, the rush of noise in her ears, and her eyes focus solely on his lips, watching them as they move but only registering the single sentence.

I’m in love with you.

She’s long known she was in love with him, it’s never even been something she’d doubted. But she never thought he’d be the first to say the words, to break that barrier completely down.

Careful of her ribs, and the dull ache that’s been building in them since dinner, she lifts her arms and places her hands on his face as she drops tiny repetitive kisses to his nose and cheeks.

“Fitz. I love you too.”

She’s kissing him before the words have even had a chance to sit between them and she can feel the smile on both their faces, silly little expressions of joy.

Fitz fights the urge to give out a joyful whoop, well aware that they’re on the Bus and are expected to to behave like adults and not giddy children. Still, his excess emotion spills out of him in quiet laughter muffled by their lips, and he has to stop kissing her sooner than he’d like just to regain control of his breathing. He can’t stand to be too far from her, though, and tilts his head forward to lean against hers.

“Ye have no idea how happy ye make me, Jemma.” He leans in and kisses her again before rearranging himself on her bunk, his head pressed into her pillows and his legs stretched out before him. Fitz slips his hand around hers, and giving a gentle tug, encourages her lay atop him. He’s hoping that this way she can not only control their kisses, but can make sure that her ribs aren’t crushed, too.

He licks his lips in anticipation, feet jiggling in excitement as he waits for more of her kisses, happy to take them however Jemma’s willing to give them.

Jemma slides to him, wincing only once as her ribs give a sharp reminder that she needed to be careful, and she carefully arranges herself practically on top of him, lips searching for his with a tender affection.

There’s few words spoken the rest of the night, lips and teeth and gentle touches speaking for them, saying all the things that they aren’t. For the first time since their lab had been invaded, she feels safe. This is where she’s meant to be: beside Fitz. She’s been here for a long time, just filling a different role and she finds as his lips find hers again that she likes this one best.

Eventually, though, the long emotional day seems to catch up to both of them and Jemma can feel exhaustion settling into her body. Sighing a contented sigh, she places a kiss to Fitz’s forehead and tucks her head into his shoulder as he yawns.

“We should get some rest.” She says sleepily, eyes already slipping closed.

Fitz nods in agreement as he yawns yet again, his slowly dissipating euphoria at having her home and hearing her confession of love leaving him drained. It’s the happiest he’s ever felt about lacking energy, and he manages to press another set of sleepy, affectionate kisses to the top of her head before letting his head flop back onto the pillow. He kept his fingers circling gently on her lower back, the slow movement lulling them to sleep slowly but surely.

“Lass,” he rasps out, voice thick with impending sleep, “d’ ye wan’ me t’ fetch another dose o’ those pain killers? Jus’ so ye can sleep through th’ nigh’.” She’d been doing well weaning herself off the medication, but there were times she still had trouble and the pain would wake her. Fitz is comfortable, and forcing himself out of bed and away from her will be difficult, but he’ll do it if it means getting to hold her the rest of the night with no interruptions.

Jemma can feel the edges of sleep blurring as she realizes that he’s right: she would need them to get through the night. She was down to the lowest dose she could have without the pain overtaking her, and while she had a good grasp on it, she knew what missing a dose of her meds could do… her ribs would be aching for hours. Pulling her eyes open, she tilts her chin upward to look at Fitz, his lashes almost touching his cheeks as he rested and his breathing even. Smiling softly and pressing a kiss to his cheek, she sighs contentedly and pulls herself out from the warmth of his arms.

“It’s okay, love. I’ll get them. Go to sleep.”

She waits for his nod, any sign of acknowledgement of her words, but as his muscles relax even more, one or two twitching, she realizes he’s already asleep.

Silly Fitz.

She smiles at him, all affectionate tenderness, and reaches for the blanket at the foot of his bed, tugging it up and over him so he won’t catch chill in the short time she’s gone. Running her fingers through his hair and out of his face, she tugs her jumper closer to her and slides out of his bunk down to the lab.

The Bus is quiet, lights low and engine humming softly, as she pads down to the lab, socked feet soundless against the cold floor. Passing by Skye’s bunk, she’s tempted to knock and thank her for the dinner again since she was so drained after eating, but a glance at the digital clock in the kitchenette and she decides against it; Skye was likely asleep.

The lab is dark, no machines running in the wee hours of the night and she turns on only the side cabinet lights. She didn’t need much light to find her way around their space, she has it memorized by now. Fishing around in the far drawer, she find the bottle with the correct label and tucks it in her pocket.

“Jemma.”

“Ah!” She jumps, hands at her chest and face pulled tight as she whirls around. Her ribs twinge and all of her breath escapes her lungs with a relieved sigh at the sight of Ward in the back of the lab.

“Ward. You gave me a fright!” It’s the first they’ve really been alone together since the lab had been taken over, since she’d pulled Fitz away from beating Michael, since the explosion, and suddenly she feels a little shy.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

Jemma shakes her head, eager to assure him that she’s fine.

“No, no, it’s all right. You just startled me. I didn’t know anyone else was down here, it was dark when I came down. Did you need something-- were you looking for Fitz? He’s asleep, actually--”

“I wasn’t looking for Fitz. I was looking for you, actually.”

Jemma’s brow furrows as Ward gives her what looks like a small, almost sad smile.

“Oh?”

Ward nods and moves further into the lab, eyes darting to and from equipment, and though Jemma’s never been truly good with emotional intuitiveness she can see something is off, is strange about his movements. Perhaps he’d sustained some injuries when he’d beaten Michael? But surely they’d be healed by now.

“I really didn’t want to have to do this. I like you. Hell, I like Fitz. And it would have been much easier if you’d just translated the sequence instead of blowing the plane to shit.”

The color drains from Jemma’s face and her muscles tense.

No.

“Ward…” It’s choked, desperate, horrified.

No.

She stumbles backwards, slipping a touch on the floor in her socks, and backs her way to Fitz’s side of the lab as her mind scrambles to catch up to what’s happening, what she’s just been told.

Ward throws his hands in the air, palms forward and empty, face worried and dark eyes softening.

“Easy, easy. I’m not going to hurt you, Jemma. I’m not. I promise.”

Promise? Promise? Traitor! her mind screams from the dark corners. This was… is… impossible. Eyes watering and lips pressed together, she shakes her head as Ward settles his hands on her shoulders.

“Jemma. Relax. It’s okay, it’s going to be okay. Michael wasn’t suppose to do… any of this. And trust me, he paid for it,” something she’s never seen before flashes in his dark eyes and she shivers reflexively as her fingers dig into the edge of the counter, “You and Fitz, you’re too valuable for this.” His hands slide from her shoulders and back down to his side as he takes a wide step back from her, giving her space. She can feel her lower lip trembling, the truth of everything seeping into her very being and she’s suddenly cold, ice cold.

All this time… It’d been Ward. The whole time in the lab, the threats against Michael, letting Fitz beat Michael, how they’d managed to get onto the plane… It all suddenly made perfect, horrible sense. Dread, tingling and frightening, settles in the pit of her stomach as she comes to a cold harsh reality: she wasn’t escaping this. There was no way out, no escape from this, for her. Fitz’s voice from earlier, both excited and comforting rings softly in her ears, his familiar brogue drowning out Ward.

And the sequence you need to tap should be easy enough to remember: GEM.

Eyes watering, breath shaky, and limbs feeling unbearably weak, she lifts her eyes to Ward’s face and stares him dead in the eyes, everything there for him to see.

“How could you?” It’s terribly pathetic, small, feeble in many ways but it’s exactly what she’d need to distract him from her tapping foot, gentle enough to write off as shaking but strong enough tap out the sequence she’s only just remembered.

G-E-M.

Ward is too busy shaking his head to notice and she sets her shaking to a fine tremble to cover for herself. Now everyone would know, would see what he’s done… even if she wasn’t around to tell them.

“Jemma, it’s not… it’s not like that. Hydra, all that bullshit, it’s not really my thing,” heaving a hefty sigh that pulls at his shoulder, he tilts his head at her, “it’s difficult to explain.”

“No, Ward, it’s not. It’s simple, really: you’re a bloody traitor.” She spits the word out like venom, eyes flashing at him.

“I’m not! I’ve been loyal this entire time, just not to who you think. I’m no traitor. Look, Hydra has the resources we need to do the work we’re trying to accomplish. That’s it. It’s a matter of resources. Which, you and Fitz would have complete access to if you wanted.”

Jemma can feel her eyes widen.

“What?”

“You and Fitz, if you want him, would have full access to all of our resources. Extensive laboratories, unlimited funding, no restrictions on the experiments you could do. It would all be made available to you.”

Jemma shakes her head as his words fill up the lab, eyes darting around the lab she’s come to claim as both hers and Fitz’s. What he’s asking… She couldn’t… Fitz would never… They would never. Ward’s face is hopeful, almost boyish in his eagerness, but as her denial becomes evident the look drops slowly from his face, his eyes darkening a shade.

“I would never, Ward. Fitz wouldn’t. We’re not Hydra. Not now, not ever.”

Ward eyes her for a moment, staring her up and down, before scrubbing a hand over his face in apparent exasperation and fixing her with a steely gaze.

“Look: there’s no choice here. Garrett needs the virus you’re carrying, and I have orders to get it one way or another. I’d prefer, for your sake, to just do a blood draw and call it good, deliver it together. But… I will take it, by whatever means necessary.”

Ward takes a minute to meet her eyes across the lab bench, his shoulders tense as he considers her. Right now her expression offers him no quarter; she wouldn’t budge unless forced, and Garrett would never forgive him if he doesn’t bring both Fitz and Jemma in. He sighs, rolling his shoulders to relieve the built up tension as he speaks. “Just take tonight, think about my offer-- what you and Fitz could do with unlimited resources-- and have an answer for me tomorrow at 6. I will get that blood sample, either way.”

Ward turns to go, intent on holing up in his bunk for the next few hours, only to stop at the lab doors as something occurs to him. “Oh, and let’s keep this between the two of us,” he throws back at her, almost casually, as if he was asking when the latest updates to the ICERS would be finished. “Don’t make me regret being honest with you, Jemma.”

Jemma waits a good minute, just to make sure Ward is really gone, before her knees give out on her, body collapsing under it’s own weight as she shoves a hand to her mouth. Everything swamps in, the depth of where she’s found herself, what Garrett could do with her blood, what it means for her, what Fitz would say, how Coulson would try to come up with a solution…

Everything blurs behind her eyes until she has to close them tightly, trying to somehow think of a solution for this.

Minutes, long and silent other than her own shallow breathing, pass as she huddles on the lab floor, brain racing and pulse pumping. Peeling her eyes open, she looks at this space: it’s stainless steel counters and pristine equipment, a well blended visual representation of just how intertwined her work is with Fitz’s, how much they depended on one another...

A sob escapes her mouth, soft and broken.

There was only one way to stop this. Only one way they’d never get ahold of her blood, or her cells in any way. A deep ache grows in her chest, rolling through her and crashing upon her like waves. One way.

But Fitz…

Fitz was a hero. He was the hero. Not Ward, not Tripp. Leopold Fitz. Her Fitz, he was the hero.

So, she would be too. This one last time, she would be the hero.

She wouldn’t let them have access to her blood, or any bodily fluids that carried the virus. She would do her duty as a SHIELD agent. Everything else falls away as that one simple resolution takes the place of all her fear. She would be what Fitz would be. Wiping her face quickly, she stands on shaky legs and takes a deep breath.

It’s a particular sort of haze that settles over her as she works, mixing compounds that she’s never once mixed together. Sort of a dewy look over her eyes, the dull knowledge that she’s going to die. Death is so foreign until it’s not, she thinks, and has to sniffle back a fresh set of tears. She’s not ready to die, not yet. Not when she’s only just gotten better, only just found out that Fitz loved her (and that is a fresh, raw ache between her ribs), only just began her life. But these sorts of decisions aren’t up to her, she thinks. This one was made for her. By a man she’s never met, and a man she’d thought she knew. It’s almost poetic.

Reaching for the Sulphuric Acid, she fills the beaker, watching the liquid fill the clear glass with only partial interest. So simple and yet, so deadly: acidic, strong enough to burn off all the liquids… and the reactant she’s added will give it a slow burn, so that it burns through all her bodily fluids, not just her blood. No chance of scavenging the virus from her body. It’s so simple a solution that it’s nearly a terrifying that it was so deadly.

Ever the trained scientist, Jemma slides on a fresh clean pair of gloves and pulls a large syringe from the drawer on her left. Pumping the air in and out of the syringe to loosen it, she can see the way it swims before she even realizes that she’s crying, soft rapid tears falling down her face to her arms. All it will be is one dose, one draw of the solution she’s made, and a direct injection…

Filling the syringe with precise skill, she stares at it in her hand.

Do it, Jemma. Do it. It’s the only way.

“I can’t… I can’t!” She sets the syringe on the lab bench with a gentle, shaking hand, head falling forward as she sobs. It wasn’t fair. None of this was fair. Not to Fitz, not to her parents, not to the team, not to her…

Twisting away from the bench with her death on it, she makes her way to Fitz’s bench and pulls out his sketchbook, thumbing through for a blank page. Past old designs, random sketches of gearshifts, little reminder notes, a freehand of her face… Her hand freezes in place, eyes dancing over the pencil drawing of her. It was finely detailed, precise in a Fitz sort of way, but softer than his normal sketches, gentle curves around her cheeks and her lips, a gentle look on her face. Clutching at the drawing as if it can save her from what she has to do, fresh sobs wrack her body. She doesn’t want to leave him, doesn’t want to say goodbye. Pressing her lips to the drawing and running a finger over the indents from the pressure of his pencil, she flips to the next page, blank and fresh.

Her tears dampen the page as she writes, her last letter to Fitz- to anyone, ever. Folding it carefully, she tucks it into his toolbench where she knows he’ll spot it.

“I love you.”

There’s really no more time to spare and if she doesn’t do this now, if she waits until some comes down to the lab, she never will. Taking in a deep breath, she turns for the last time from Fitz’s lab bench and makes her way back to her side of the lab, rolling up her sleeve.

It wouldn’t be painless and it wouldn’t be fast. It would burn her up from the inside out, until her body couldn’t handle the acidity any longer.

Picking up the syringe carefully, she doesn’t bother to flick out the air bubbles-- it doesn’t matter anymore.

Deep breath in, slow release. Deep breath in.

Bevel up. Pull back a touch, a tinge of red in the barrel means vein accessed, and slow steady administration of lethal solution.

It burns.

~*~

Fitz tosses and turns, his usually easy sleep made less so by the strange bed. Even in his sleep, he knows the pillow he’s on isn’t his own; the texture is wrong, and the scent… the scent is gentle, an achingly familiar mix of honeysuckle and lilac… Jemma. It’s Jemma’s perfume he’s surrounded by, and the realization fills him with a sense of calm.

He grins as he wakes, drifting slowly toward consciousness as he remembers he’s in Jemma’s bed. He remembers the soft words and touches and kisses, too, the happy promises they made of what they’d do when she was feeling well again, and he reaches out to find her in the small bunk, only to have his eyes jerk fully open.

There is no Jemma in her bunk, even though he knows for a fact that he’s in her quarters.

Fitz sits up, yawning as he swipes at his eyes, hoping to clear their bleariness before glancing at the clock. He’s surprised to see that it’s nearly 2 am; they’d said good night at least three hours ago… where the hell could Jemma be? Just then, he spots the half-drunk bottle of water on her nightstand, and it dawns on him. She must have woken in the night and needed more pain medication. The foolish lass had been trying to wean herself off of it, and had done so a little too quickly for Fitz’ taste. With a small shake of his head, he grabs the water bottle and slips out of her bed, padding his way through the quiet Bus and down to the lab.

He glances around when he reaches the bottom of the stairs, a small grin stretching his lips as he searches for the love of his life, only to have it fall off when he doesn’t spot her. The lights are on, and the lab doors are open; clearly someone’s been here, and Fitz feels dread begin to work at his stomach. What if she’d pushed it too far without her meds, and the pain had caused her to pass out?

“Jemma?” he calls, voice pitched soft and low. He’s sure she’ll tell him he’s being a fusspot when he finds her, and doesn’t want to make things worse by waking the rest of the team. He can take care of Jemma, and will do it happily; the others deserve their rest. “Jem, where are ye, lass?”

The sense of dread takes hold more firmly, panic beginning to rise in his throat. Something was seriously wrong if she wasn’t answering him, and he crosses the threshold of their lab, intent on finding her.

“Jemma, this isnae funny, come ou’ righ’ now--” he freezes mid-sentence as he spots her, lying prone on the floor of the lab next to her work bench. Her body is bent at an awkward angle, her face contorted in pain as her limbs twitch just the slightest bit.

The sight rips an inhuman howl from his throat, the water bottle crashing to the floor, forgotten, as he rushes over to her.

“JEMMA! Jemma, wake up!” Fitz doesn’t remember falling to his knees, but he has, and he’s gathering her in his arms. He’s vaguely aware of a stinging sensation in his fingers, but ignores it. Jemma is his first priority, and he supports her weight against his chest as he brings his free hand up to cup her jaw, shaking gently. “Jem, baby girl, c’mon now, open yer eyes for me. Please? Jemma! Jemma, wake up! WAKE UP!”

“Oh, God, Simmons! Shit! COULSON! MAY! You’re needed in the lab! NOW!”

It’s only when he hears Skye’s voice, shaking with fear nearly as intense as his own, that manages to take his eyes from his partner’s form and looks around the lab. He desperately wishes he hadn’t. The beakers all bear tiny etchings, marks indicating their deadly nature, and it isn’t a far leap in logic to look at them and then the needle still tucked into the point of her inner elbow.

He wails again, his pleas devolving into wordless sobs as he lowers his face to the crook of her neck, rocking them both slowly as he peppers her face with small kisses. He can feel the burning now, realizes that whatever she’s used on herself is likely causing the sensation, but he can’t stand to let her go. It wasn’t fair, they hadn’t had any real time together, not the way he’d wanted…

His arms notch around her more snugly as he recalls their meeting at the Academy, their meticulously built partnership and how it became the only true friendship he’d ever known. His mind wanders over all of the little longing looks and touches, the times he tortured himself thinking he’d never be lucky enough to have her, and the cruel reality that as soon as they’d admitted to feeling more…

Fitz can’t finish the thought. Instead he renews his efforts to lay kisses about her face, as if those might wake her up. “I love ye, Jemma, please dinnae go. Please, please, please.” His body shakes with the force of his sobbing, his mantra of alternating “pleases” and “I love yous” and “Jemmas” lost in the scratchy, starched material of her lab coat.

He has no idea how long he stays there, face pressed to her neck, desperately searching for some small trace of her perfume to carry back with him, his hands and cheeks burning where he touches her. All he knows is that he can’t bring himself to stop, because he knows that when he stops, he’ll have to be separated from her. From his Jemma.

It isn’t until Melinda May digs her hands into his shoulders, the sudden pressure forcing him to loosen his hold on the love of his life, that his brain registers the pain in his hands and face. He glances down, and seeing the bright, shiny red skin staring back at him, that he realizes exactly what it was that Jemma had done to herself. He gives a small moan as the horror of it overtakes him, and with that, slips away from the waking world.

The last thought he remembers having is that he hopes he finds Jemma, wherever he’s going.

~*~

Unfortunately, all Fitz finds is bright hospital lights, and the soft, steady beeping of an electrocardiogram.

His glazed over eyes search for Jemma, certain she’ll be there with him, only to find May sitting stiffly in the chair next to his bedside. It comes back to him, as he glances down to see his bandaged hands and becomes aware of the sticky sensation of ointment on his face, what had happened in the lab. He allows his head to fall back on his pillow, face tilted upward, as tears begin to course down his cheeks anew.

May allows him his tears, refusing to embarrass him by acknowledging them in the slightest. Instead, she merely stands, silent as always, and slips a single, folded sheet of paper between his hand and the sheets. His fingers curl around it, almost instinctively, and he meets her eyes without thinking twice.

“Skye found that at your work station during the investigation. It was addressed to you. No one else has read it.” She looks down, coughing a bit to clear her throat, before steadying herself to meet his eyes once more. “I’ll be just outside if you need me.”

Fitz watches her go, waiting for the soft snick for the door shutting all the way before bringing the paper up into his line of sight. He recognizes the writing on it as Jemma’s, knows the exact way her hand would gently trace his name onto the paper. The thought causes a fresh, painful wave of grief, and it takes him a good fifteen minutes to calm his tears enough to open the note and read it.

Leo,

I’m so sorry I couldn’t tell you, there wasn’t time. But I didn’t want to leave you without a proper goodbye. When this letter finds you, I hope you’re aware that Ward is HYDRA. He was going to force me to join, one way or another, for my blood and the virus. You know I couldn’t let him do that.

Tell my parents what happened, but don’t tell them what I did… Please. My mum couldn’t take it. Tell Skye and Coulson I’m sorry that I couldn’t do more to help them with the research on the GH325. I’ve saved what I could gather on a hard drive, it’s hidden under the lab bench by your chair.

Go on that trip to Barcelona. Finish Project Delta. Take Lola for a joyride (but be careful, please). And for goodness sake, get the damn monkey.

I love you. I love you so much. I’m sorry it had to be like this, I wish we had more time.

I’ll always love you.

Jemma

He reads and rereads the letter, drinking in every last trace of her that he can, and then some. After the tenth time, he has it memorized, and can lean back, the letter clutched to his chest as he goes over it once more, Jemma’s voice reading along with him in his mind.

The only small solace he allows himself is that, with the letter memorized, the flow of his tears no longer get in the way of her words.