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“Mum, it’s as I’ve already said - we weren’t allowed to tell you!”
Half-shouting across the kitchen table at his mother in the house he grew up in is a very strange feeling to Fitz, and even as he does it he feels as though he’s not fully in his own body, but rather standing at the side and watching it. There’s a sour feeling in his stomach, and for a second he feels like a naughty child who got a bit caught up in the temper tantrum. He braces himself for the backlash.
“And it’s as I’ve already said - I think you’re talking a load of shite!”
“Mum,” Fitz hisses, glancing through to the adjoined living room where Alya is engrossed in the television, making up for three cartoon-less years. “Jemma will murder me if Alya starts swearing about the place.”
“Not if I murder you first for keeping my granddaughter from me for over three years.” His mother sighs as if she still just can’t believe it. “But fine. I’ll watch my language.”
In all of his years on this earth (and even those he hasn’t been), he has never known his mother to watch her language. From parents’ evenings to graduations to lunches with Jemma’s family, she has never been afraid to brighten a room with her colourful words. Fitz wonders if now she might mellow out, set a good example for her new granddaughter. If she ever gets over the shock, that is.
They always knew it was going to be hard coming back after so long away from home. Even harder coming back with not only a child, but a three-year-old child. One of Jemma’s first reactions to the blood work confirming the pregnancy had been how will we tell our parents, Fitz? knowing that they wouldn’t be able to tell them for some time to come. He’ll never regret the time they took for themselves, but he doesn’t like the pain it’s causing now.
“It wasn’t like we didn’t want to tell you,” he says earnestly. “We just couldn’t.”
“The last time I heard from you – properly heard from you, mind – was you telling me that you and Jemma had just gotten together. Then I get the odd email, hardly anything much, and then you just disappear-” she snaps her fingers “-like that. I’m here telling myself that this is the job and that you warned me this would happen and I held my tongue and let you be, I did. But-” she points a finger at him accusingly “-I thought you would have had the bloody decency to let me know that you had a child.”
Fitz feels something poke him deep down in his chest “We let you know as soon as we could, Mum.”
“Which somehow doesn’t feel like soon enough,” she bites out, barely even pausing to take a sip from her tea before slamming her mug back down on the table. “And don’t even get me started on the way you told me that I was now a grandmother.”
He winces, knowing that her upset is justified on this one. Neither he or Jemma had wanted to just turn up on either of their parents’ doorsteps with their toddler in tow, but in hindsight that might have been a better idea. In all of the chaos that had come with moving back to the country he hadn’t lived in since he was sixteen years old, buying a house, decorating it, making sure that Alya legally existed (Daisy, thankfully, hadn’t lost her hacking skills), they’d decided to write a letter to each of their parents. Looking back now it wasn’t their finest moment, and he just supposes they were lucky that they hadn’t included their new address or phone numbers at the bottom of the letters.
When he’d phoned his mum barely a week after the letter was posted, she had sobbed at hearing his voice again, berated him for keeping this from her, and then sobbed some more. Floundering, he’d handed the phone to Jemma who had handled her own parents expertly, and while she’d narrowed her eyes at him and mouthed coward, she’d also soothed his mother and told her that Fitz would be down to visit as soon as he could and would bring Alya with him so she could meet her grandmother.
Fitz never supposed that he would be nervous to see his mum again, and while it might have felt like a long time for her, it’s been longer than that for him. The last time he saw her he would never have dreamed he would have the life he has now.
“I’m sorry,” he says, contrite. “We shouldn’t have told you like that. We just had a lot going on.”
“A lot going on?” His mum’s eyebrows nearly disappear into her hairline. When he was younger he would feel nervous at such a facial expression when he was getting told off. Now he just feels warm. So many things have changed, but his mum hasn’t, and he’s more relieved than he thought possible. “A lot going on, son, is when you email instead of phone. A lot going on is when you can’t come home for Christmas but you still send a card. A lot going on is not the same thing as complete silence for over three bloody years!”
No, he supposes it’s not. He’s forgotten how things work in the real world, not the SHIELD bubble he seems to have inhabited since the moment he and Jemma stepped foot on Coulson’s plane. It’s been three months since they’ve left, and even though he’s acclimatising to this new way of life, he still has a lot to learn. The world is no longer just limited to Jemma and Alya, even though to a part of him it always will be.
“It’s…” He scratches his head, searching for anything that won’t rile his mum up further. “It complicated. You know all that secret spy stuff.
“Pft.” His mum is entirely unimpressed. “I actually don’t, which is just as well because it sounds like a lot of bloody nonsense to me.” She takes another angry sip. “I have half a mind to phone them up and let them know exactly what I think of it all. It wasn’t what I signed the forms for all those years ago.”
“You don’t have to do that,” he says, trying not to smile. “I’ve had my say.”
“That’s my boy.” She gives him a smile, the first smile directed at him since they arrived. Alya has received multiple – she has been gushed over and coddled and promised all the biscuits she wants in the world – and he wonders if it makes him a bad father to feel jealous of his mother’s affection.
His mum glances through to where Alya sits, utterly engrossed in whatever cartoon she’s watching. There’s a cup of juice in her hand and her stuffed monkey is tucked under her arm, and suddenly Fitz feels his eyes go a little misty. Sometimes he still can’t believe his luck.
“I love you,” his mum says, still looking at Alya, “but I could knock you stupid for this.”
He nods. “Yeah, I know.” Turning back to his mum he says, “I really am sorry, you know. We would’ve told you if we could.”
She turns back to him, making a face. “I believe Jemma would’ve. You, I’m not so sure.”
“Mum-”
“I’m kidding, I’m kidding.” She shrugs. “Well, mostly.”
He laughs and shakes his head, feeling at home in a way that he hasn’t felt since he was sixteen. His mum shakes her head and takes a much calmer sip of her tea and he uses the opportunity to just really, properly look at her. She really hasn’t changed, at least not in any disconcerting way. Her hair is still brown and curly, sitting on her shoulder the way it always has. There are still the dimples that appear at the first sign of any emotion, the ones that he now finds in his daughter. Her smile is still wide, and her hugs, as felt when she had first opened the door and saw them, still constrict his airways and make it so that he can barely breathe.
This lack of change, apart from a few more lines around the eyes and mouth, almost lessens the guilt. Some changes in his life he has loved, but if his mother had been so different than the woman he remembered… that’s a change he doesn’t think he could have borne.
“A child,” she sighs again. “A three-year-old child. I still can’t believe it.”
“Mum-”
“No, no just listen to me. You are my whole world, darling. The most precious thing in my life. And I didn’t see you for such a long time. Didn’t hear from you or anything.” With a shaky hand she points at Alya. “Now, imagine if your wee one through there just went away one day and didn’t come back, and you didn’t hear from her for years. Then one day she comes back, just like that, and you find out that in all the time she’s been away she’s had a baby of her own, and that baby is on her way to growing up. Imagine that.”
He looks away from his mum’s tear-filled eyes to his daughter’s widened ones. Even though the situation is purely imagined, even though he knows what his mum is doing, it has the desired effect. His heart squeezes painfully in his chest, and there’s a tell-tale sting at the back of his eyes that’s become familiar as the years have gone by.
Looking down, the Scottie dog-patterned tablecloth is suddenly fascinating. “Yeah,” he says, unable to say anything more profound. “I get it.”
He hears his mum inhale a wet breath. “I know it’s not always been easy for you, son. Everything you were into was just completely beyond me, and for the life of me I was never going to be able to understand it.”
She took him to the library and bought him his first proper toolkit. She took diligent notes when his teachers suggested extra courses, and she worked extra shifts to be able to afford them. He’d write down exactly the things he wanted for Christmas, specific pieces and parts that couldn’t just be bought in Argos, and she managed to find every single one. His dad left and it never mattered, because his mum was there and she was the only person in the world he cared about.
He didn’t need her to understand how it all worked. He just needed her to love him, to make him feel safe, and she did that and beyond.
“It didn’t matter,” he mumbles. “I didn’t care about that.”
“You did. You just wanted someone to understand you and what you were talking about. It’s why I told you to go.”
He remembers that. Sixteen years old with a PhD and not a single friend in the world, achingly shy around anybody new, often too scared to try. SHIELD Academy had promised unlimited scientific discovery, but it also promised exponential change and he’d balked at it. His mum had gently held him but had very firmly given her opinion on the matter.
There’s nothing else here for you, Leo. Just a bunch of old ghosts that would haunt you forever, and you are deserving of so much better than that. It’s your decision, but I think you should go.
At the time it had felt like he was the one giving something up – he was the one moving country, leaving his family – but now he knows who it was that truly made the sacrifice. He’ll forever be grateful for it.
“Then you left, and that was you. You didn’t need me anymore.” She reaches over the table to take his hands in hers, and he looks up to find her looking at him with so much love shining through her tears. “There is so much of your life I haven’t been a part of. And I get why, sweetheart, I do. I just always thought that this, that you having your own family, was something that I would have been a part of.”
“Mum,” he breathes, but she taps his hands gently with her thumb.
“I would have helped,” she says quietly, and Fitz doesn’t know if these words are meant for him or for the universe. “I would’ve been there for the both of you. I would’ve loved it.”
She would have loved it. Maggie Fitz is nothing if not born to be a grandmother, and he knows she would have been wonderful, if wonderful to the point of doing his head in.
He squeezes her hands gently. “I know you would’ve.”
She says nothing but the continued presence of tears in her eyes unsettles him.
“I’m sorry for hurting you,” he says quietly, “and if it had been possible then we would’ve had you there, I promise. It just wasn’t. And keeping away like we did kept my family safe, and I can’t be sorry for that.”
She regards him for a long moment, and he’s afraid he’ll see indignance or reproach in her eyes, but instead there is only love. He shouldn’t be surprised. She is the person who showed him how, after all.
“No,” she says thickly, and pride shines on her face. “I’d never want you to be either. Your family’s your whole world – anyone with half an eye can see that.” She gives him a soft smile. “All I’ve ever wanted for you – more than the awards and the prizes and the like – was for you to be happy. And you are. I can see that.”
“I am,” he says, with a quick glance at Alya. “I’m really happy.”
The way she looks at him with that tender expression on her face almost oversets him, but he’s mindful of his own daughter sitting only feet away and he doesn’t want to worry her. A memory comes forth, from a time when he was the one who had missed out, and the words spoken then replay in his mind now.
“I know I can’t give you back the time you missed,” he tells his mum, “but I can give you me. I can give you us. We’re done now, so no more secrets.” He takes a deep breath, stomach churning away unsettlingly. “I can give you that, if you’ll have me?”
“Aw, sweetheart.” She disengages one of her hands and brings it to cup the side of his face. The gesture is familiar, an old source of comfort between the two of them. It still works, and though it’s been over twenty years since he’s actually felt it, he could swear it was only yesterday. “Of course,” she laughs tearfully. “Though you’re daft for even having to ask.”
He laughs through his own tear-filled eyes at that. One thing he has never been in doubt of, no matter what, is how much his mum loves him.
“Granny?”
There’s a little voice that calls out uncertainly from the kitchen door, and in an instant Fitz’s mother retracts her hands from him, tears magically drying up. She turns to Alya with a smile on her face. “Yes, my wee darling? What can I do for you?”
Alya has the stuffed monkey in her hand and she looks from him to her father and grandmother, chewing on her lip. “Can we have another biscuit?” She asks, and then adds a hurried, “Please.”
“Of course you can,” his mum exclaims, getting out of her seat to fetch the tin from the cupboard. “Take as many as you like.”
“Eh, I think only one just now, you cheeky monkey,” Fitz warns, thinking of the drive home with an Alya hyped up on sugar. “You’ve already had two.”
“Take no notice of him,” his mum stage-whispers, as she presses another chocolate Hobnob into Alya’s little starfish hands. “I’m in charge of him, and I say it’s okay.”
Alya flashes him a cheeky grin as she skips off with her two biscuits. He smiles in spite of himself, shaking his head as she goes. Jemma tells him all the time that Alya has him wrapped around her little finger, and every time he denies it, but he knows it’s true. She is exactly like her mother, and he is never able to deny either of them anything.
His mum comes to sit back down at the table, two biscuits in her own hand. One she slides across the table to him. His love of sweets he most definitely gets from her.
Frowning, he says, “How come when I was growing up it was only one biscuit at a time, but all of a sudden it’s now a free for all?”
His mum dunks her biscuit in her tea and takes a bite before answering. “Don’t tell me you’re jealous of your wee girl, son.”
“I’m not,” he says, but he says it a bit too earnestly for it to sound convincing. “Just interesting is all.”
She laughs as she polishes off her biscuit. “I remember you getting plenty of biscuits when you were younger, sweetheart. Besides, it’s different when you’re a grandparent.” She waves her hand indifferently. “I don’t have to teach her about that whole eating healthy thing. That’s up to you.”
Fitz winces. “Don’t let Jemma hear you say that.”
His mum seems to consider that a fair point. “Just our little secret,” she says, winking, fully aware that it’s not. “Where is she, anyway?”
“In town,” he says, fingers automatically playing with the ring on his hand at the mention of her. “She’ll be round in a bit. She just thought we should have some time to catch up first.”
His phone sits on the table next to his mug, and though it’ll light up when it receives a message from her he’s still unable to resist checking it. It’s an unconscious habit that he developed right as they came back and their life started in earnest. They’re rarely apart, and if they are then it’s never far, but there’s always this inherent feeling in his gut that he can’t escape, and he forever just wants to make sure that she’s alright.
“Good,” his mum nods. “I’ve missed her almost as much as I missed you.”
“Yeah, she’s missed you as well. She’s convinced you’re going to be the one that’ll spoil Alya rotten, though.”
Instead of looking affronted, Maggie Fitz looks rather proud of herself, and Fitz wonders if he’s made a mistake in letting her know.
“Och, I’m dead chuffed she thinks that, but her own parents are in the running for it.”
He narrows his eyes at her. Jemma’s parents have been nothing but lovely to him, but there’s no doubt about who grandparenthood comes more naturally to. “You sure about that?”
“Aye,” she says, that look in her eye that’s attributable to an irresistible piece of gossip. “Melissa phoned the other day – she and Stephen are looking at buying Alya a pony.”
“A pony?” His eyebrows shoot into his own hairline. “What the hell?”
“Leo,” his mum tuts. “Language.”
He rolls his eyes at her hypocrisy but then returns to the more pressing issue at hand. “There is no way we can have a pony! Where would we put the thing?” He pinches the bridge of his nose. “Oh, it’ll come in the house with us, won’t it? We’d have to convert the lab into some kind of indoor stable.”
His and Jemma’s precious lab that they’ve just this week finished building to their exact specifications… It’s the best lab he’s ever had, and a pony is not enough to make him part with it.
His mum nods sympathetically. “I know, son. I know. So see? At least I’m not that bad.”
“I suppose I should be grateful then,” he mumbles, but really he wonders whether potential childhood diabetes or a pony in his living room is worse.
“Speaking of your new house with your new fancy lab, when am I going to get to see it?”
Since the moment he stepped through the door he’s wondered when this was coming. The endless curiosity that saw him take the toaster apart when he was seven just to see how it all worked is something he gets from his mother, something that Alya now gets from both him and Jemma. They’ve been lucky though – they’ve gotten to explore the world and see things seven-year-old Fitz wouldn’t have dreamed possible. All three of them have. Most of the world is still a vast mystery for his mum, who has rarely left the city where she grew up.
“Soon,” he says now. “I promise. It’s just been a bit hectic with all the moving and unpacking. As soon as it’s finished then we’ll get you up.”
“Up in Perth so you are,” she says thoughtfully. “I’ve not been there in years.”
“It’s not in the city, it’s a bit out.”
He thinks of their house at the foot of the hills, and how easy it was to begin to call it home. A big old house with high ceilings and endless garden and a little lane that takes them down into the main village should they need to remind themselves it’s not only the three of them anymore. Alya thinks it’s delightful having so much room to roam about, but she doesn’t like her parents out of her sight for any length of time. She’ll go wandering around the house and the garden, but it’s never long before she’s running back to them, arms outstretched, needing the reassurance that they haven’t been spirited away in her absence.
Once upon a time Alya was so small his hand cupped entirely around her head, and now whenever he holds her she loops her arms around his neck and presses her face into the crook of his neck. He doesn’t want to think about what comes next.
His mum nods. “No matter where it is, it’ll still never be as good as Glasgow.”
The pride in her voice, the almost silent dare for him to disagree, has him feeling brave. In a very casual tone, he tells her, “You know, a few years ago, there was this Scottish guy we worked with that said Glasgow wasn’t that big.”
It feels strange to describe Holden Radcliffe as ‘this guy’, but to call him anything else, to mention his connection to the city and how the knowledge came about, would threaten the peace he feels in being back in this house. His peace here is like a bubble, and there are so many sharp edges around that could burst it.
The momentary worry he feels vanishes in an instant at the multitude of emotions that flit across his mum’s face, morphing from anger to incredulity to disbelief and then back again.
“Who the f-”
“Mum!”
“Hell,” she corrects without a pause, “said that? It’s the biggest bloody city in the country!” She looks so outraged that Fitz has to laugh, but manages to cover it with a cough. With fire in her eyes she says, “Was he from Edinburgh? That would explain it. You know what they can be like over there. Just because they’re the capital they think it’s all about them.”
He thinks back to Radcliffe’s personnel file and almost doesn’t want to give his mum the answer. This bizarre city debate is still ongoing. Another thing that hasn’t changed. “Think he was from East Kilbride actually, Mum.”
The utter betrayal on her face at the thought of someone this close to her home describing it as anything but big and marvellous has Fitz feeling a little sorry for her.
“The bloody cheek of it,” she says, quietly fuming. “How typical, though. They go to America and all these places and forget exactly where they come from.” Then she looks at him, worried. “But not you though, son? You didn’t forget?”
“I didn’t,” he assures her. “Glasgow is still plenty big for me.”
She looks satisfied. “Aye, well that’s alright then. As long as you don’t forget it.” She gives him a smile. “Is that why you chose Perth?”
Fitz shrugs. “It wasn’t really me that thought about it.” Another memory comes to mind, this time of desert planets and grainy videos and let’s just watch the sunrise. “It was all Jemma.”
His mum raises an eyebrow. “Really?”
“Yeah.” He looks through to Alya, whose face is now covered in chocolate crumbs, and he taps on his phone to see his lock screen of Jemma and Alya reading together at bedtime one night. “As long as we’re all together then I’m not fussed.”
His mum stands up, taking his mug with her, automatically assuming he wants a refill with her. “Well I’m just glad you’re back and I got to meet this gorgeous granddaughter of mine before she turned twenty.” She reaches into the biscuit tin and brings out two more, offering both to him with a knowing look on her face. “What about you, sweetheart? You glad to be home?”
It’s something he’ll never be able to explain to his mum, who’s never been one for such abstract concepts. His home is not a building or a place, or even a country, and it hasn’t been in such a long time. His home is where his heart is, and his heart, for many, many years had belonged entirely to Jemma. Once upon a time he thought there wasn’t room for anyone else. Alya has proved him wrong, and he knows it won’t be the last time she does so.
Unable to resist, he glances at his daughter again. His beautiful, wonderful daughter who gazes up at the TV the way she once gazed at the stars outside their Zephyr home. Three months on Earth now, and her curiosity has yet to fade. Through her he has discovered how life can be wondrous again; how the stars are fascinating but there is a beauty too in the patterns on a fallen leaf when held up to the sunlight, the feeling of warm summer rain on his skin.
Just then his phone lights up with a text from Jemma. Be there in 10. He’d crawl across the world for her, or he would do it again, but he is ever so glad that now they get to just be. No more situations where they find themselves torn apart once again because that’s what the universe seems to favour for them. No more yearning for her so intensely that his heart aches from it. No more. Full stop.
They are together now in a life he once doubted they would have, and it’s nothing and everything like how he imagined it to be. When Alya falls asleep into his side as he reads her a bedtime story, when Jemma wakes him gently with a kiss in the morning, and in all the moments in between he is home in every sense of the word.
“Yeah,” he says simply now, because there aren’t any words he could find to describe it. He takes the biscuits she offers him with a smile. “I really am.”