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Fitz ignored the thought for as long as he could but this particular one was extra troublesome. His implant blocked out a large portion of the past three years meaning that sometimes no matter how hard he tried to organize his thoughts they would get jumbled up. As much as he was glad to keep a portion of his memory from his and Jemma’s moments frozen in time it was hard to overlook the gaps.
He truly wouldn’t be able to manage her absence at all if it weren’t for those stolen moments with the love of his life to look back upon but it was a double edged sword because he was acutely aware of the hours upon hours he was missing and sometimes, now more often than not, he wanted desperately to tear the thing out of his brain in order to deeply examine it all. This evening’s particularly worrying thought was scary not because he couldn’t remember a part of a moment, one of the most excruciating mental pains in his opinion, but because he felt like he shouldn’t be.
“Fitz?” Jemma breathed, hardly loud enough to hear even though her mouth was practically pressed against his ear. “Mmm,” he mumbled, eyes pressed closed, his headache making him intensely aware of the fact that it was the middle of the night and that he had spent the better part of four hours earlier the same day working on installing the new shielding for the upgraded Zephyr. “We need to talk,” Jemma nearly whimpered. All thoughts of exhaustion immediately shoved aside; he rolled over pulling her with him until their foreheads were pressed together breaths mingling.
“Tell me,” this time Fitz whispered almost tentatively, not sure if he wanted to know why Jemma had sounded so frightened to venture into this particular late night conversation. They’d been having them with quite a bit more frequency lately as the launch date got closer and closer and even if he pretended, at least to Enoch, that he was overjoyed they were ahead of schedule on the Zephyr upgrades and almost ready to pack it full of supplies for it’s journey through time, he was really more like terrified.
Fitz shook his head. Something was wrong. Why this memory, why this moment? He felt like he was getting dangerously close to remembering something mission crucial, a term he and Jemma had decided to use early on in order to signify the memories that they would need to design their pair of implants to keep at bay, but he couldn’t help himself from wanting his brain to supply him with more. Although he knew the tone was sad he hadn’t had this clear of a recollection of a moment with Jemma in a long time and he was getting desperate. Pulled slightly by desire and slightly by curiosity he leaned back in his metal desk chair and closed his eyes.
Fitz hated being scared while with Jemma. It was an entirely new experience for him because although they’d been torn apart what felt like thousands of times this was the first time ever they were choosing to do so and the build up to their inevitable separation was eating him up inside, hence the feeling of being terrified. But this wasn’t about his fears this was about Jemma so channeling his sudden burst of nervous energy in a direction he squeezed his arms around her tighter saying again, “tell me Jems, what’s on your mind?”
“It’s just the fact that they won’t know Fitz, they won’t know any of it, I won’t know any of it… YOU won’t know any of it” she whispered hoarsely her voice getting somehow even quieter, hardly noticeable over the whir of tech that they had crammed into their small living and working quarters-
That was it! That was the difference. Usually when Fitz was recalling his moments with Jemma late at night in their bed, longing for her small cold hands running over his skin, and thinking about their long, drawn out, “this is close to goodbye” kisses they were just that, moments. There was always very little context, no description of the rooms they were in and often no mention of anything about the team or the mission they were preparing for. Even now when Fitz was working himself to the bone trying to gain back their line of communication and solve problems popping up in a completely different era then his own the memories of his tech and the necessary information he would need to brainstorm and implement solutions came to him in the same way, moments.
This was different, this was real, this was tangible. He could hear the whir of computers running their necessary algorithms, feel the mattress shift slightly as Enoch continued to work through the night in the next room and, most bizarrely, he could picture the exact shape of the bed- no bunk, they were in and he had a clear image of the metal wall his back was pressed against. See? He knew it was a bunk not a bed and that just wasn’t right why would he need to know that he and Jemma had spent their nights in a bunk, and why for god’s sake was he remembering this now on one of the most stressful days he’d had without her since she left, picturing him and Jemma curled up together no matter the context was bound to be incredibly distracting.
Maybe that was it. The context. Fitz obviously had designed the implants to not allow them not to remember mission crucial details using an algorithm which he had now been forced to forget by design so the only possible way he would be having this clear of a memory was if it meant something. His own system was pushing it to the front of his mind and he knew himself, it had to be for a reason, it had to be relevant.
“I just can’t bring myself to accept that some part of me will know going into it that at the end of the mission the team won’t be the team we know anymore, that it’s our final mission, that we will truly be forever changed but most importantly that I can’t give them a single warning about it.” Jemma had maneuvered herself so that she could bury her head in Fitz’s chest and he could tell that it was to stop herself from sobbing. He took a moment to respond pondering Jemma’s words as he inhaled the scent of her hair and pressed gentle but hopefully reassuring kisses along her hairline.
After a few more silent moments Jemma looked up at him and he could see the tears at the corners of her eyes, wiping them with his thumb he started, “Jem… as much as you might feel awful now about knowing the outcome you have to know that it’s not your fault and that you’ll be just as much in the dark as the rest of the team,” he pulled her up so she was eye level with him again and he pressed a light kiss to her nose. “Obviously I wish I could tell you you’re wrong and that we will find a way to keep everything the same as it was but by now we’re both more then well enough aware of the whole concept behind Enoch’s “change the course of your lives forever thing” and I’m positive that we, the two greatest minds S.H.I.E.L.D has ever seen might I add,” Jemma giggled slightly at his joke which bolstered his spirits but it was much less brighter than Fitz preferred, “examined the whole situation over the last few years practically too deeply, there’s just no other way, and as much as it might hurt it’s the best possible outcome for everyone in the end.”
“Bloody hell,” Fitz muttered leaning his head forward bumping it lightly against the desk in front of him but then stopped himself remembering that if Jemma was there she’d be endlessly infuriated and concerned over the fact that he was beating himself up, whatever the reason. All this memory was doing for him at the moment regardless of how clear it might be was further reminding him of two things he didn’t like to think about.
One, that he was no longer sleeping in the same bed, let alone in the same year, as his wife, and two, that him and Jemma had done something drastic, had made a call that would alter the course of not only their own lives but the team, their found family’s lives, forever a phrase that had been rattling around his brain on repeat for the better part of, what felt to him, like three and a half years, ever since Enoch in disguise had told him and Jemma for the first time of many on a lower level of the lighthouse, right after he and Jemma had almost blown themselves to bits.
He shivered, this was a dangerous path to go down, a game he liked to call how many times have I and the person I love more than anything almost died and, how many times have I continued to put her life at stake these past few weeks that we’ve been apart. As much as he wanted to run away from his own mind and bury himself in work again to try and avoid the rest of this all too clear memory that would inevitably end in some horrific and frightening reveal about how something had shifted in their plan that caused him to need to refer to it he knew that it was there for a reason and it couldn’t be avoided.
Deciding that trying to continue working on the, “the whole team being stuck in a time loop and Fitz having no idea how to get them out of it” issue after this new and particularly painful mental strain would be futile, he rose from the uncomfortable metal chair he’d practically glued himself to and in a sort of exhausted daze maneuvered his way around stacks of books to his small cot in the corner of the room, on his way by an especially tall stack he stumbled and knocked the top four books to the ground, one of them, a beautifully crafted scrapbook and photo album by a certain Doctor Jemma Fitzsimmons titled “Our Universe”, slid under a nearby table. Too fed up to care Fitz collapsed onto his lumpy mattress and, knowing if he tried waiting any longer he would be attempting to avoid the inevitable, closed his eyes.
Jemma nodded slowly taking in his words. “You’re right,” she said finally, causing Fitz to release a puff of air he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. Jemma giggled as the air tickled her nose and Fitz looked at her confused, “I am?” he accidentally asked out loud, causing her to giggle even more but when she saw the look of fear mixed with confusion on his face she grew serious, “yes Fitz of course you are, I just had a moment of sadness and premonition which we’re both bound to get with more frequency as the date gets closer and I think all I needed was your reassurance that we’ve taken our time and found the best possible solution.” This was not what Fitz had expected but he was eternally grateful for his absolutely brilliant and positive wife for taking his reassurances at even more than face value and for transforming his simple statement of the pure facts of their situation into something positive.
Jemma pushed her fingers up through the curls growing out at the nape of his neck and said, “I’m scared, you’re scared, that’s normal, we should be, but this time we’re going into this together, although I might end up blocked from remembering where in space and time you are, I’ll know that you’re still with me and even though I may have forgotten that for a moment it’s important that we both remember that we’ll be with each other, we’ll be connected, even if it’s by some invisible string, well memory implant, but you get the point.”
Fitz smiled, god he loved her, she couldn’t be more right they had made this choice and they had made this choice together and they would be together in spirit, but the science kind of spirit of course. He leaned forward so their heads were pressed together again and smirking slightly said, “I love you Jemma and time? Space? They’ve never stopped us before.” Jemma shoved him slightly and whisper shouted “I love you too but ugh, Fitz you’re insuffer-” he shut her up with a kiss that was meant to be short and sweet, allowing them to continue the conversation, but quickly began to heat up as Fitz could feel the intensity behind Jemma’s lips. He pulled her on top of him and she gripped his hair tighter pushing herself flat against him and with that his thoughts quickly lost all sense as he melted into his better half…
Fitz stared at the ceiling with his fingers resting on his lips feeling slightly stunned. He hadn’t had such a clear and recent memory with Jemma like this in who knows how long and as much as he was pleasantly surprised to find that the clear and sense filled memory included snogging Jemma with ferocity he was also incredibly confused. Rather than having questions answered by letting his thoughts continue he simply was gaining more and more.
What was the point of showing him this? Why on earth had his algorithm for the implant let it through? He refused to believe that there wasn’t a reason. He was so stuck on finding a way to help the team through the loop and he didn’t just want a solution to come out of this memory anomaly he needed one. That had to be the reason it had appeared tonight right? To help him find a solution? Nothing else made sense.
Unless… maybe it did give him the solution and he just wasn’t thinking about it in the right way, maybe he had designed the code to let this memory through when he was at his worst, to remind him that Jemma was the solution. She was the beginning of his story, the middle of it, and inevitably the end, he was certain of it. Regardless of how much or as little details as he could recall, she was always the answer. Although this whole new train of thought was rather cliche of him he supposed that focusing on Jemma’s part of this particular solution might work and maybe if the team allowed Jemma to remember something just for one time loop-
Fitz leaped out of his cot knocking over another few stacks of books as he rushed back to the set of complex equipment at his desk. He was suddenly desperate to code the thought to use Jemma’s mind for answers into Coulson’s mind. All exhaustion drained from him as the familiar rush of Engineer adrenaline kicked in, he was faced with a complex problem but this time he had the key to his solution, the one and only miracle of a woman Jemma Simmons, well Fitzsimmons now he supposed, and his excitement was back at full force.
A while later Fitz pushed himself up from his desk murmuring, “that was it.” Both bewildered and relieved he was now nearly positive that with this info Daisy and Coulson would be able to find whatever memories he and Jemma had hidden in their minds on how to break a time loop by temporarily removing her inhibitor which would ultimately save the team. The rush of adrenaline slipping away he walked back to his cot once again, this time picking up the scrapbook Jemma had spent weeks on making for each of them to have.
“Time, curious time” it was beginning to have less and less meaning to him, in fact nearly everything does when you’re frozen in it for what quite literally feels like a few years, but the thing that wasn’t fading was the thread practically made of gold he felt slowly nudging him back towards Jemma. As he lay in the dark he moved his fingers to his lips again smiling softly eternally grateful that the shift in memory he had initially been frightened of had ended up simply reminding him that regardless of the situation Jemma would almost always be the answer.