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Fitz believes in science. Science is predictable; you put two and two together and you get four, you plug two masses and a distance into some formula and you get gravitational force. Science is comforting; there’s something therapeutic in the knowledge that no matter what happens in your trivial existence, the grand universe still churns with a set of laws governing each quark and each galaxy.
Science, however, cannot explain why there’s a girl floating outside his window at three in the morning.
“Please open up!” the girl pleads, and Fitz does not respond, because he’s too busy staring at the way her feet are positively not touching the ground two stories below.
She knocks again, and – still dumbfounded – he relents without thinking. It’s only when she’s standing in front of him that his head begins to hurt.
“Did you – uhm – did you just fly to my window?” he manages to sputter out.
She blinks. “Well, yes. I need help, and yours is the only one with the light still on. Will you help me?”
“Sure, I help strangers with questionable background who can apparently fly at wee hours all the time.”
Her face lights up. “Really?”
“No,” he deadpans. “If you want my help, I’m gonna need an explanation first.”
“It’s a long one. Have you got time?”
He glances at the mess of crumpled-up sketches and unsolved equations on his desk. With a defeated sigh, he nods, “Yeah.”
——————————————————-
The girl’s name is Pan, but she prefers to be called Jemma (“Jemma, like the delicate and beautiful jewelry?” he asked, and she replied, “No. Jemma, like the stone forged in the heart of a planet.”). She was born in a land of eternal youth, and she stops aging at eighteen. Boundless time leads to boredom; she leaves her home through a wormhole to seek adventure. Now, the girl who never grows up is trapped in a world where the forests are concrete and adulthood is a dreaded inevitability.
“But you’re a fairytale,” he breathes.
“Look at me, Fitz,” she says, and she drags his hand to her cheek, the skin flushed with a desire to be touched, to be real. “Feel this warmth, this pulsing blood, and tell me that I’m a fairytale.”
He draws his hand back and makes a noise halfway between a sigh and a yelp. “Okay, okay, I get it. I will help you find the way home.”
“Thank you. I will see you again tomorrow, and we shall start looking.”
His eyes widen. “Wait, tomorrow? What are you gonna do until then?”
“I don’t know yet,” she answers honestly, fingers fiddling with the hem of her green shirt.
He looks at her, all downcast eyes and pouty lips, and he feels something akin to an itch at the back of his heart. So he pinches his nose and says, “You can stay the night if you want. Take my bed. I’ll be okay on the couch.”
She bounces to him to place a kiss on his cheek, and science can’t calculate the force that lifts his mouth up a little.
——————————————————-
“So have you found my home yet?” she asks him the next day, when he has just returned from his late afternoon class.
“Of course. I sifted through light years of space and found ten different traversable wormholes. Pick your route,” he drawls sourly, discarding his messenger bag and sinks into the couch with a yawn.
Her brows furrow, and she shakes his arm. “Is that a yes or a no? I can’t tell with you anymore.”
His expression softens. “It takes time, but we’ll get there. My doctoral advisor is doing his research on interdimensional travel with some secret government organization. If one of their probes finds something, he’ll let me know.”
“You’re only twenty-two, Fitz, and you’re already working towards your Ph. D. Why do you keep trying to get older?”
“Right. And look where eternal childhood has got you,” he mutters. “Unlike you, I am bound to a lump of flesh that decays the moment it starts existing. Might as well sharpen my mind so at least it can live on.”
They stare at each other, the silence punctuated only by the constant hum of a dusty fan in the corner. It is late spring in Florida, the air in his apartment stale and humid and heavy with his words, but she leaps to her feet, and he suspects she does have the spirit of a child.
“Come on,” she beams, motioning for him to follow. “You think like an old man. I’ll show you how to be young again.”
“Where are we going?” he asks, but he finds himself scrambling to stand up. There is something beckoning in her very presence.
“Nowhere. Everywhere. There’s no real destination once you know how to fly.” And she throws open the window, plunging downward.
He’s agape as she slowly ascends, hovering just by his potted plants on the windowsill. She digs into her pocket for a pouch, then sprinkles some glittery powder on his head. “Pixie dust,” she explains. “It’ll help you fly.”
He crosses his arms. “No way. What if your magic makes me fall to my death?”
“Fitz, your magic is my science. It all depends on where you’re from. My people just happen to invent this before yours do. Now stop being so cynical of everything,” she twirls around once before coming to rest against the window frame, reaching one finger down to poke at his frown. “Think of happy things. It’s the same as having wings.”
There is a twinkle in her eyes that reminds him of summer days of years long past, with a swing set in a backyard that stretches from his heart to the horizon, and suddenly he yearns for two scraped knees and untiring feet. He dreams of a childhood when the dining table sat three: him with eyes like glass and Mum with arms like home and Dad with a heart that was still beating. It was certainly happier then.
Then she smiles at him, a hand extended like an invitation, and he can no longer feel the ground underneath. With her help, he slips past his window, into the waiting sky.
He’s holding on to her hand as she flies higher, higher still. The wind burns his eyes but he can see the city shrinking, one lonely block at a time, until there are only dollhouses below them and nothing above. They are but tiny splatters of paint lost on a blue canvas, but here, drifting in the air, he has never felt so grand.
She lets go of him to spin around. There’s a moment of panic following the loss of his anchor, but he thinks back to the Scotland of his memory, and the thought keeps him upright again.
“When was the last time you saw the sky at dusk?” she asks.
“I don’t remember,” he answers earnestly.
She looks as though he has just offended her parents. With a taunting finger, she arches her back and soars upward, graceful like the wind, and he huffs as he gives chase.
When he finally emerges, it is with both breathlessness and wonder. Fire from the sun has leaked, spilling across the sky and coloring clusters of clouds in a fierce orange. She plays a game of hide and seek amidst the haze, always disappearing and emerging when he least expects it. Vestiges of clouds cling to her hair, tumble down the length of her slender arms, and she laughs at the sensation in the music of birds, her figure haloed by an orange sky.
There is a fire always burning, he thinks idly as he watches her dance. That is why she lives forever.
————————————————-
“Are you looking for my home today?” Jemma questions over breakfast the next morning, dropping a sinful amount of sugar into the tea Fitz has just made.
“Not today. I have to work,” he replies. “And you’re coming with me.”
“Why?” she makes a face.
“Because you showed me how to be a child again, so now I will show you I don’t need to be one.”
She’s about to protest, but he holds a finger up. “Bah bah bah, no arguing. Now we need to make a few stops first. Can’t have you dress like that at my workplace.”
“Why? What’s wrong with my outfit?” she sulks, looking down at her bright green shirt and pine-colored leggings.
Hands on his hips, he beams. “You’ll see.”
“Okay, I’ll get a change of clothes,” she concurs, then, under her breath, she adds, “I may dress inappropriately, but I’m not the one who stands like a pregnant woman.”
He shoots her a withering look as he grabs a duffle bag and heads for the door.
————————————————
To Fitz, who is always Scottish at heart, Florida in the early days of May is tolerable at most. There is barely a breeze and the sun turns vicious halfway through the day. So he rolls the windows down to welcome in the wind, the trees in his peripheral vision receding in tandem with some soporific tune on the radio.
She squirms in the passenger seat, the clothes he bought too foreign on her body, the confine of his car too stifling. “Why couldn’t we just fly?” she complains.
“Patience, grasshopper.” Then, looking straight ahead, he announces, “We’re here.”
Before them, on a road that doesn’t seem to end, a gate rises, towering over palm trees, the flags on top etching their colors against the pale blue sky like a rainbow. She gapes at the sight, and a muscle along his jaw twitches. “Welcome to Disney World.”
————————————————-
“You’re impossible,” she grates, for what must be the tenth time in the past two hours. She’s leaning against a railing, under the shade of a tree, looking at him with eyes so sharp they can cut off a hand. “Honestly, capitalizing on the hopes and dreams of children?”
He pointedly ignores her, instead crouching down to let a little girl kiss his cheek goodbye. When she has skipped away, hand in hand with her mother, he finally stands up and checks to see if anyone is around, then whispers to her, “money may grow from a tree where you’re from, but not here. Playing Peter Pan is the only way I can afford grad school.”
“There is no money in the land of eternal youth.”
He can feel a rant building up in response to the stubborn jut of her lower lip. Just then, someone tugs lightly on his shirt, and – like a reflex – the cheerful mask is slipped into place. He turns around with a grin to find a sheepish boy, about five or six years old.
“Well hello ther–” he stops mid-sentence, gasping at the kid’s appearance, all eye pad and bandana and cutlass. “Aah! A pirate? Now why would a pirate want anything to do with me?” he jumps back and flails his arms like he’s karate chopping. “I’ll have you know Captain Hook lost his hand because of me.”
It’s of course just a throwaway line, but the poor little kid looks so genuinely hurt, and Fitz feels his stomach drop. He’s about to comfort him, but there’s a hand on his shoulder.
“Now Peter, you can’t know that,” Jemma chides in a voice somehow even chirpier than usual. She even sneaks a discreet wink at him. “Do the smell check.”
So he does. The boy shrinks away at first, but Fitz is insistent. “Hm, I detect soap, with a hint of hotdog” he sniffs and wrinkles his nose. “Pirates don’t shower, and they certainly don’t eat hotdogs. You’re not a pirate; you’re a friend!”
The boy’s face lights up. “I am! See, I have a sword here,” he pats the plastic toy on his side, “but I will never hurt you Peter.”
“I know you won’t,” Fitz grins fondly and throws his arm around the boy’s tiny shoulders. “Now, what do you say we play a little game called shadow tag? It’s just like tag, but instead of touching each other, we’ll step on each other’s shadow. Come on, let’s go get Wendy and we can begin.”
The boy shakes his head. “I don’t need Wendy. I’ll play only if this lady plays with us,” he says, pointing a chubby finger towards Jemma.
Shite. I am so getting fired for this.
But – as it turns out – Fitz can’t quite ponder on his job security just yet, because Jemma, being Jemma, jumps right into the game. It takes no more than a second before his training kicks in and he starts chasing them both.
“I’ve almost got you!” he bellows as he lurches toward the boy’s shadow. The boy shrieks his little five-year-old head off, running into Jemma, who laughs and hugs him against her legs. The shadow is gone, but Fitz’s momentum still propels him forward, and he falls flat on his butt. She immediately draws the boy’s toy cutlass and uses it to poke at Fitz. Instead of retaliating, he just lies on the ground, one hand rubbing his bottom. There will positively be a bruise tomorrow.
“Do you admit your defeat to the Captain, Peter?” she drawls like she’s enjoying the unmanly sight in front of her a little too much. The little kid puffs out his chest and strokes his drawn-on beard.
He squints as he looks up. He sees the little boy, and he sees her, chestnut hair glowing a wild ruby red under the light of the sun, lips curling up just enough to look taunting, a hint of good-natured mischief glimmering in her eyes. Suddenly he is hit with a rare revelation that maybe what he said to her earlier is wrong. Maybe when you meet the person who makes you feel alive, sometimes you will feel the need to be a child again.
“Admit your defeat, Peter,” she repeats, each word punctuated by a light stab to his side.
He laughs, partly because it tickles and partly because he has never felt so absurd and joyous and free. “Alright, alright. I lost my shadow too busy chasing you.”
———————————————————-
A day later, he’s in the KSC lab shifting through data from the transdimensional probes to look for a wormhole that might lead her home, when he receives a call from his manager in Disney World.
“Hello Miss Morse,” he greets, but his insides are tumbling upside down. Bobbi Morse belongs to upper-level management; she rarely ever calls lowly face characters. And with a girl hovering around him all day yesterday, he’s pretty sure being laid off is entirely probable.
“Please, Fitz, call me Bobbi,” she says. Her tone is so casual it catches him off guard. “Anyway, forgive me for not beating around the bush. My on-site assistant manager, Lance Hunter, reported that you brought someone to work yesterday. Is that correct?”
“Ma’am I am so sorry,” he splutters. “But I guarantee you my job was in no way impeded and I promise it won’t –”
“Oh no,” Bobbi interrupts. “According to Hunter, the guests loved her. I’m just calling to ask you if she would like to audition for the role of Wendy. One of our Wendys just quit, so now we have a spot open.”
The rest of the conversation is a blur to him. His mind only holds two thoughts: he’s not unemployed, and he will likely have her as Wendy. His Wendy.
He tells her all of this at dinner, which consists mostly of Chinese takeout and mushy microwaved frozen vegetables, and she nearly spills her food in a fit of excitement.
“I’m sorry, I thought you were opposed to the capitalization of childhood dreams?” he teases
“Well, I was. But then I saw how happy the kids were to meet you. Fairytales are the blood of the soul, and I just want to keep it pumping. Plus –” her voice grows softer “– if I’m gonna stay here indefinitely until I can find a way back home, I might as well work to help you pay for rent and food.”
“Amazing,” he feigns surprise. “Did you just become adult-er?”
“Shut up,” she flicks peas at him, which prompts him to hurl a fortune cookie in her direction.
And that’s how they both end up with food in their hair at midnight, sprawling on the floor trying to clean up soy sauce on his carpet. On the windowsill, splinters of moonbeam sit, glistening like a whisper containing the secrets of stars.
——————————————————-
She gets the job. Of course she does. She’s tiny and adorable and so, so British; she’s just what Bobbi Morse is looking for. The locker room especially gets a kick out of it, not that anyone would say anything every time Lance Hunter passes by.
So now she’s stretched out like a cat on the sofa, while Fitz pulls up a link for the 1953 version of Peter Pan from one of his sketchy streaming sites.
“You watched this movie twice yesterday,” he comments as he hooks his laptop to the TV and settles down next to her. “Aren’t you sick of it?”
“Character study, Fitz,” says she, “is not something mastered in a day. You should know; this is an essential part of a face character’s training week.”
“What character study? You’re practically Peter Pan already.”
“Yes, but now I’m Wendy. In case you haven’t noticed, there’s a big difference,” she retorts, reaching for his bowl of pretzels, but he bats her hand away. She sticks out her tongue and whacks a pillow against his chest.
“So,” he munches on a pretzel while the intro plays, “you seem unfazed at how your life story coincides with one of the most popular children’s stories on Earth.”
“The concept of immortality isn’t exclusive to this world, Fitz. If there exists intelligent life, there exists a desire to be immortal,” she muses. “Once again, my people discovered the secret to eternal youth before yours do. It’s not magic; it’s science.”
He raises an eyebrow. “You never told me you believed in science. I just assume you walk straight out of a fairytale.”
“I may have the heart of a child, but don’t you dare think I know nothing. You’d be surprised how much knowledge you can gain when you have eternity at your disposal,” she huffs indignantly. “Now hush, the movie’s starting.”
They fall quiet, content to let the movie fill in the silence. About ten minutes in, she attempts to steal one of his pretzels again, and this time he lets her. There’s a crease on her forehead as she concentrates on mouthing the words along with Wendy, and somehow he’s overcome with a persistent urge to touch it and smooth it out.
Second star to the right and straight on till morning, Peter Pan says, pointing to the brightest star in the London skyline. Neverland.
He turns to her. “Do you miss home?” he asks, his voice so soft it might have been just another melody coming from the screen.
“No,” she shakes her head with a brave smile, but there’s a trace of sadness in her eyes that she can’t quite mask. “I think of this as an adventure.”
She keeps her gaze trained ahead after that, intent on not looking at him, and he heaves a sigh because the girl truly has no guile. Tenderly, he says, “I’ll find the traversable wormhole, Jemma, I promise. No matter what it takes, I will take you home. The universe is big, so big, ridiculously big. But even statistical improbability does happen, like monkeys smashing out the entirety of Shakespeare’s work or atoms drifting back together. And when it does, we call it a miracle.”
“You’ve always been so cynical. Do you honestly believe in miracles?”
He chances a glance at the girl who flew from another world to his window, before returning his attention back on screen. There is it again, that itch at the back of his heart. At last, he answers, “I do now.”
————————————————-
June comes with the blazing, humid heat of a Floridian summer, and suddenly they find themselves engulfed by the bubbly energy from overly excited children who have just been released from school, waddling their way around Disney World while their poor parents struggle to keep up.
Sweaty and tired and pissed off at the abysmal weather as he is, Fitz is just glad he has Jemma for company, because without her, he thinks he might just one day set his disgruntled self loose on some poor little kid. They make a good Peter Pan and Wendy, he thinks, toying idly with the drawstrings on his shirt; he’s great with kids, knows when to make them laugh and when to tug at their tiny heartstrings, and she, well, she’s his fairytale girl. She can metamorphose from a friend to a sister to a mother, can joke or comfort or advise; she can be anyone and do anything for the kids, and for that, they adore her.
“Ice-cream, Wendy?” a little girl dressed like Snow White offers her a popsicle. “My mom says it really helps with the heat.”
“Thank you, Your Highness,” she crouches down to the kid’s level and grins. The mother gives a little nod, and Jemma receives her ice-cream.
“Hey, what about me, Your Highness?” Fitz bounces towards them, scratching his head. “Don’t I get some ice-cream too?”
The girl blinks at him. “You shouldn’t be petty, Peter. After all, she’s your girlfriend.”
Beside him, she nearly chokes on her ice-cream snickering. He blushes and turns to her, “I really shouldn’t. My apologies, Wendy.”
The kid beams like she has just resolved a global conflict. Jemma thrusts the popsicle in front of him. “Here. I don’t mind sharing,” she says, her tone sweet as the ice-cream itself, but he can tell she’s biting her lips to ward off laughter.
Those damn biteable lips, he thinks briefly but then has to remind himself there are children around them. Slipping on his cheerful Peter Pan mask, he accepts the offer, but not before sticking out a teasing tongue at her.
Incidents like that happen, and more often than not he chooses to brush them off, instead focusing on reminding himself they merely have good chemistry. For her part, she’s unperturbed, but then again she always has been. He would sometimes find himself perched on the railing at work, fingers absentmindedly stroking the red feather on his cap, to watch her interact with visitors. Her smile is warm and her heart warmer still, and he thinks this is what it must feel like to look at the sun, to have barriers around his guarded mind melted, to go blind yet still fall on his knees and thank the universe for this fleeting glimpse at such brilliance.
Months pass, the summer heat shimmers and ebbs away, but as he sits in the lab one autumn night poring over grainy images of intergalactic space, he begins to find it difficult to distinguish the line between their reality and their act.
My second star to the right, my girl of make-believes and fairytales, you are becoming real and why am I so terrified?
The panels light up with incoming signals from the probes, alerting him exotic matter has been detected. One of the probes travels along geodesics, not entirely crossing the wormhole, but he doesn’t need it to. This wormhole has the same properties as the one that appeared four months prior, the one that she crossed to get to this world. And on the other side of it is her home.
Why am I so terrified?
He looks on as the wormhole slowly takes shape on his panels, and suddenly he knows.
He knows.
“Did you find anything at the lab?” she asks when he gets home. She’s curled up by the window in one of his hoodies, an open book lying face-down on her lap. The lamp casts a golden hue on her lazy smile, etching her reflection on the glass, beyond which lies the tangled street black as midnight. In this light she is a tender kind of beautiful, and he’s aching for all the tomorrows that may never come.
“No,” he lies.
———————————————
They’re at Bobbi Morse’s Halloween party, and – broke as they are – they decide to go as Peter Pan and Wendy. Hunter complains, of course he does, to which Bobbi scorns, “Leave the kids alone.” To no one’s surprise, they fall into their usual bickering that ends with a very interesting resolve, one that Fitz accidentally walks in on and turns ten different shades of red. Unable to make eye contact with the host any longer, he drags Jemma out of the house to, as he puts it, “give his mind a thorough cleansing.”
“Hypothetically speaking,” Fitz begins. They are on the back porch overlooking a small meadow. “You can’t find the way back home. What would you do?”
“Hypothetically speaking only, right?” she questions.
“Yeah,” he agrees, but he averts his eyes.
She nods. “Then I suppose I wouldn’t work in Disney World forever. I would go to college, get a degree, find a proper job.”
“You sound like a grown-up,” he teases.
“That’s because I have to be one,” she sighs. “At some point a child has to realize no one will come to kiss away the pain on her scraped knee. At some point a child needs to stand up, wipe away stray tears, and keep on running.”
“Even with mortgage and bills and a life chained to the ground?”
“Yes, since I am hypothetically stuck with them, aren’t I?”
“You’re also hypothetically stuck with me,” quietly, he adds.
She laughs, and there’s a twinkle in her eyes that he isn’t quite sure if he has caught, “Being stuck with you isn’t so bad.”
“What if I grow up to be a grumpy old man who yells at pigeons in the park and chases the neighbor’s kids away, while you remain eighteen forever?” he jokes, trying to force a chuckle to drown out the roar of his heart. He’s not ready for this answer. He never will be.
“Oh, I will age,” she clarifies, and he blinks in confusion. “I told you, eternal youth is a matter of scientific advancement. Without the suitable environment and the necessary medications from my world, I will age just like everybody else on earth.”
He feels his throat constrict. “Are you scared?” he asks. Because I am. I am so scared, Jemma. I’m scared if you stay and you die. I’m scared if you leave and I won’t be able to live.
She’s quiet for a moment. Out of the corner of his eyes he can see glowing dots drifting on top of the knee-high grass.
“Fireflies!” she exclaims, her tone filled with relief, and he lets out a shaky breath. She doesn’t want to answer, and a part of him doesn’t want her to, either. “I thought they only came out around April.”
She’s amidst the meadow now, the hem of her dress sweeping the blades of grass that have turned silver under soft moonlight. “Come on, my Peter Pan. If we’re gonna die anyway, at least live a little. Let’s go catch some fireflies!” she urges.
They’re racing each other through the grass, chasing fireflies that are always just beyond their grasp, and between one breathless laugh and the next, he can’t help but feel, even just for a melancholic second, that he’s standing on a speck of dust trying vainly to reach for the stars.
————————————————-
Another week drifts by, the panels in the lab keep flaring with signals from the probes. He busies himself with some trivial data analysis to avoid looking at them, but their insistent beeping still drills a hole through his head. He closes his eyes and inhales sharply.
In the comfort of darkness, he can hear her childlike laughter, splintering like crystallized sunbeams and lodging in his chest. He can see her eyes, flecked with gold and sparkling as if their unfathomable depth holds starlight and universes. But life has a way of snaking its ugly fingers around everything to crush it, and soon enough even in his dream her smile grows cold, her stare empty like the aftermath of a cosmic implosion.
He can’t do this to her. The sun is most beautiful when it is in the sky, and it is selfish to think you can hold it in your hands and hide its light from the rest of the world. It’s time he let her shine.
“That wormhole is gonna collapse soon,” comes a monotonous voice from behind, and the blood freezes in his veins.
“Jemma,” he breathes. “What are you doing here?”
“I know you’re working late tonight, so I thought I would surprise you with a sandwich,” she dumps the paper bag in his lap, her gaze still trained on the flashing panels. “Based on the way light bends around its gravitational field, I’d say it’s a few weeks old at least, and it appears to be very unstable. It will only last five more days at most.”
He stares at her, aghast. “How did you know all this?”
“I told you, eternity is long, impossibly long. I have to do something to pass the time,” she replies. Her face is blank, her tone even. It reminds him of the ocean’s eerie stillness that precedes a tsunami. “How long have you known?”
“I was gonna tell you as soon as I get home,” he answers earnestly, but she just shakes her head.
“How long have you known?” she asks again.
He gulps. “Nearly a month.”
“Very well,” she nods. “I will start packing up tonight, and will be gone in the early morning. Now if you’ll excuse me.”
She turns and walks straight out of the lab. The resolute clicking of her shoes against the pristine floor tells him he should not – cannot – follow. He lets the tears flow backward and stares at the sandwich on his lap. Prosciutto and buffalo mozzarella, with her trademark homemade aioli, his favorite, but as the sound of her footsteps fades into the never-ending hallway, his mouth tastes salty like blood.
——————————————-
Fitz sits by her door until morning, for fear she will leave in the dead of night. He listens to her cry with his fists clenched tightly, sharp nails driving into flesh until blood drips out. It is crippling, this feeling of helplessness, and he holds his head in his bleeding palms like he’s trying to hold on to grains of sand, only to have them slipping through the cracks between his desperate fingers.
Sometime between his restless dreams, he’s woken up by the sound of door opening. She’s standing in front of him in the clothes he first saw her in. Her green shirt is still streaked with pixie dust, still smells faintly of the open sky at sunset, and he has to look away.
“You lied to me,” she says. It’s not an accusation; she merely looks tired.
“I did.” He sees no use in denial.
“Why? Because you want me to stay?”
“I do.”
“Oh, Fitz, I would have,” she croaks. Her mask crumbles, and a single treacherous tear slides down her cheek. She is so young, no matter how long she’s lived, when she’s hurt she is still so young. “You know I would have.”
He pinches the bridge of his nose. He wants to beg for her forgiveness. He wants to beg her to stay. And he can’t do either. He’s selfish and cruel and he doesn’t deserve her light. So he throws his head back. It knocks against the wall with a resigned thud. “But not like this,” he murmurs.
She smiles through her tears. “No.”
He follows her to the window. She throws it open, and the cold wind of late autumn feels like lashes again skin. She leans in to brush her lips lightly against his cheek, “Thank you, Fitz. Have a good life.”
He nods, but there’s a searing pain in the hole in his chest when he watches her climb out of the window. At any moment now, she will take flight. His fairytale girl, returning to her fairytale world at last.
“Jemma!” he calls after her, a hand seizing her wrist, trying to hold on to everything at once.
“Yes, Fitz?”
Stay. Be my two a.m. stumble home from work and my lazy afternoon on our beat-up couch. Be the Friday alcohol in my bloodstream and the chicken soup when I’m tired. Be the reality that keeps me grounded and the fairytale that gives me wings. Be my today. Be my tomorrow. And let it be you.
“Take a jacket with you. It’s chilly outside,” he says instead.
———————————————
Time passes. Fitz wishes there would be some poetic description, some grandeur analogy for how time passes in regard to his hollowed-out bones, but there isn’t. Time just passes, because that’s what it does. It’s apathetic towards him and his trivial human feelings. What is he but a mere drop in the river of time?
With that in mind, he trudges on. He finishes his Ph.D. He quits his Disney World job. He spends his days locked up in the KSC lab, letting the hum of machines be the static that keeps his head busy.
Suddenly he’s twenty-seven and he finds himself in his tiny kitchen, the lonesome cup of tea growing cold on the countertop. It is three in the morning. The wind seeps in from his slightly ajar window, barely giving the curtains a flutter. He heaves a sigh. Late spring in Florida always makes him yearn for something a little more Scottish. So he bought an apartment overlooking the Atlantic. It’s bigger – after all, the job he has does pay rather handsomely – and it’s closer to work, and, well, it doesn’t have traces of her lingering in the very air.
The moving truck comes tomorrow morning, but he refuses to go to bed. Instead, he sits on the counter and stares out the window. The city is sound asleep and the sky shimmers with distant stars. He sips his lukewarm tea, and is overcome with the urge to once again have the city below and the sky above. He misses flying.
There’s a pouch of pixie dust sitting somewhere in one of his boxes. He carries it to the window, his steps no longer heavy with the weight of years long past. He’s twenty-seven with a job he likes and a mother he loves and friends he adores. He’s twenty-seven, a lost boy who has finally found his shadow amidst this ever-changing city. He’s twenty-seven, and he’s doing just fine.
He sprinkles some dust on his head and plunges out the window.
Orlando stretches out like a map underneath him, and if he squints, he likes to think he can see life happening beyond the windows that are still lit. What you’re doing at three in the morning is what truly defines you. Here the loved stirs in the arms of a lover. Here the lonely nurses a glass of wine. There the busy types away on a laptop with eyes at half-mast.
And he? He’s flying. He’s hovering above the world. The night breeze dances in his hair and sways the city back and forth, as though any moment now it will blow concrete buildings into the sea. He looks to the sky, at pale white dots that tear apart the darkness, blinking at him like an invitation, like a taunt.
Slowly, he breathes out the stoic ache.
He’s back on the rooftop of his old building now. From where he’s sitting, the second star to the right shines the brightest. He reaches out to touch it, but his hand closes around nothingness.
“Think of the happiest things. It’s the same as having wings,” he sings softly and drops his forlorn gaze.
“Take the path that moonbeam makes. If the moon is still awake, you’ll see him wink his eye,” another voice joins in.
He dares not turn around. She might have been the sun, but even when she’s gone her voice still illuminates his nebulous evenings, a crescent moon suspended in the sky that doesn’t conflagrate but merely shines. Now, he’s afraid that if he looks it will shatter across the street.
“Jemma?” he ventures.
“Hi, Fitz.”
There’s a hand on his shoulder. She’s real and she’s tangible and she’s here. That itch in his heart rises yet again. It’s been half a decade.
“You’re back,” he murmurs. Why? He wants to add, almost angrily. Why now? When I’m ready to move on and I can finally think about you without ripping a hole in my chest. Why return to this charred remnants of a heart to pour some more gasoline on it?
Why am I so prepared to be lit up again?
He turns to her. There’s no roundness of childhood in her cheeks, no long chestnut hair that almost touches her dimples of Venus. She’s aged, and it is with revered trepidation that he reaches out to touch her face, to make sure that she’s a corporeal being and not just a fairytale.
“You look…different,” he utters.
“I stopped taking my medications. I didn’t want to stay eighteen forever.”
“You do realize that you just made half the female population gasp in disgust, right?”
She chuckles, and he thinks it is what the birth of a star must sound like, if sound could be heard in space. “Immortality is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, Fitz. Imagine having to live on while – while –”
“While what?”
“– while the ones you care about wither and die,” she finishes, not looking at him. “Besides, what’s the point of living forever if you don’t have someone to spend forever with?”
“Is that why you came back? To look for that someone?”
“No,” she answers solemnly. “I came back to look for you.”
“But I lied to you. I was a selfish bastard. Why would you want to go back?” he argues, his voice shaky and almost mad. “You belong to the sky. You should be traveling the universe, not caged in, chained to a life you never wanted.”
She shakes her head. “Traveling is only great when you have a home to return to.”
“And that home isn’t Neverland?”
“Not anymore.”
He stares at his fidgety hands. The words slice his throat on the way out. “You still shouldn’t have come back. I don’t deserve this. I don’t deserve you.”
“Fitz, you were young. We both were. ”
“Says the girl who’s almost three hundred years old,” he interjects.
“Time is relative, Fitz,” she rolls her eyes. “My point is that we were not who we were five years ago, who we were yesterday, who we will be tomorrow. And that’s okay. That’s the beauty of humanity, don’t you think? We are a kaleidoscope that change as life collides with us. And I’m willing to take it all, all the colors, all the shapes, all that you were and all that you will be.”
“You honestly believe so?” he whispers.
She simply nods.
“You’re willing to leave your world, a world that is so scientifically advanced it stops the clock from ticking, for this meager Earth?”
“Has it ever occurred to you that while you are so busy wishing upon the stars, the stars also look at you to wait and to hope?”
Constellations in the sky blink at him, and he has to take a deep breath. My second star to the right, he thinks as the realization sets in. You’ve traded eternal youth for this. Does it mean what I think it means? Am I – by some miracle – your second star to the right?
“So now what, official adult Jemma? Are you going to have to find a job?” he asks after a moment of companionable silence, but he’s only half-joking. “You know, from what I’ve seen, with your knowledge of astrophysics, the people at KSC will take you in a heartbeat.”
She muses, her brows furrowing. He looks up as he waits, and suddenly he’s struck with a sense of just how infinite the night sky really is. This space, this immensity, and they’re a part of it all. They’re older now, yes, but they’re still young enough to believe this privilege of being alive calls for an existence outside of jobs and taxes and a plaguing fear of dying.
“Ah, you know what? Let’s not worry about tomorrow quite yet,” he says, before she can answer. “We’ve got the rest of our lives to grow up, so just for tonight, be young with me.”
“Alright. It’s late April right now, yeah?” she asks, and he nods. She holds out a waiting hand for him. “Let’s go catch fireflies. It’s the closest to chasing stars.”
“Oh, I don’t need to chase them anymore,” he declares, shaking his head
“Why?”
He just smiles and takes her hand instead. They dive headfirst into the dark and soar through the star-kissed night.