Work Text:
It all happens so fast.
That’s what people always say, right? And maybe it doesn’t happen that fast, sometimes now he struggles a little with processing things, he can’t quite think as fast as he used to, doesn’t always work as well under pressure as he used to, he needs to practice first, that’s all, or he needs a moment to think, and then he’ll be okay, that’s what he’s learned, but if he doesn’t have that then sometimes things feel like they happen really fast, because by the time his brain is done processing it, it’ll already be over.
But it feels like it all happens so fast. One second, they’re all sitting around, a quiet moment after a mission, Fitz is holding a mug of tea that he isn’t drinking, and Skye is next to him, the bruises on her arms are finally getting better, and Jemma is across from them, doing something on a tablet and holding a mug of tea that she is drinking, and May and Coulson are off somewhere doing official things, and Bobbi and Mack are...somewhere. Fitz doesn’t know where, but that’s not so unusual lately, in the last few days since Hunter left. It’s quiet - always quiet since Tripp, that’s what no one says - but the quiet is the least awkward it has been in a while, like things are finally starting to get better.
That’s what he thinks. That maybe things are getting better.
And then the next second- The sound of feet running in the hallway. That’s how it starts. He almost doesn’t even notice it, except that it sounds like a lot of people, but he probably wouldn’t pay it any attention, if it wasn’t that-
The doors burst open. There are doors to his right, and behind him, and from the sound of it, both sets fly open; and there are people, more people than there ought to be, surely more than are even in the Playground right now- that’s what he thinks- and only then does he notice how they are dressed, all in black, in body armor, like they’re preparing for a riot-
And then his brain, already several confused seconds behind, sees the guns.
They aren’t Night Night Pistols. They’re real guns. But we rarely use real guns.
He drops his mug of tea. He automatically stands up. Jemma and Skye are already on their feet. Skye shouts, “What the hell-”
And the people, the strangers, they’re shouting too, but he must- he must be mishearing- this isn’t something that’s ever happened before, he doesn’t have any issues with his hearing, or is he hallucinating? He hasn’t done that in a while- and this is on a new scale, a much larger scale-
Because they’re shouting that they’re SHIELD, but that doesn’t make sense, because- we’re SHIELD.
He’s shaking.
The armored people surge around them, shouting, waving guns, “Hands up!” and somehow they do it because what else are they supposed to do; and the strangers are telling them they’re under arrest, that they won’t be hurt if they don’t resist, and roaring, “Move move move!” shoving them backward, toward the door behind his back, and he turns around, and coming through the door behind him, gun in his hand, pointed squarely at Fitz, is-
It can’t be true. Surely not. He won’t believe it, he won’t, it’s a misunderstanding, except, he’s dressed just like everyone else, in black body armor, and carrying a pistol, and his face is set hard and warlike.
Mack.
Hasn’t this happened already? It all feels so familiar. This has happened to him before.
“Mack, no,” he says blankly.
Mack looks stricken, for just a second, his gun wavering and arm falling, and he says, “Turbo, you-” And then Fitz stumbles a step closer, and his face hardens and the gun comes back up and he says, “Don’t make this harder than it has to be.”
When someone points a gun - a real gun - at you, you do what they say. Fitz can’t remember if that’s a SHIELD lesson or just plain common sense, and it doesn’t really matter either way; Mack - Mack - points a gun at him and growls, “Into the hall. No trouble now,” and they all do it, his brain buzzing blank with incomprehension, obeying blindly because he doesn’t know what else to do, because it’s all happening too fast. Until- They come to an intersection in the hallway, three different ways to turn, and Mack jerks his gun to indicate he and Jemma should go one way, and some of the armored strangers behind them suddenly grab Skye and tug her into a different direction-
The fear spikes, and anger, and he half remembers saying her name and he must try to pull away, or something; because next thing he knows he’s kneeling on the ground and his face hurts and the world is tilting - is the Bus taking off? but he can’t hear the engine - and there’s something wet and warm on his face and Jemma is saying his name in a horrified voice. Skye is gone. Wa- No, Mack, it’s Mack, it’s Mack, hauls him to his feet and shoves him forward and somehow, even though the world is still sort of spinning, he stumbles off down the hall, Mack’s gun pointed at his back.
They pass the Mockingbird in the hall, also dressed all in black, her face stony; she nods at Mack as they go by, and Jemma breathes, “Oh no.” And there’s Hunter, a bruise on his face, looking so utterly wretched that Fitz can’t even begin to guess which side he’s on. And there’s May, unconscious and bound, being carried by two more of the strangers in black.
No cavalry coming, then. No help at all, Fitz thinks blankly.
Mack makes them stop in front of a door, and the world has started to steady again but he’s confused for a second when Mack hauls the door open to reveal, not- the room he was expecting, but one of the silver, featureless cells they use to contain prisoners (and occasionally Skye). “Get in,” Mack growls.
Fitz doesn’t mean to be difficult when he says, “No.” It’s just that the room is very...small. Very small. As small as the room he was half expecting it to be, and far more featureless. Jemma’s face is as white and terrified as he feels.
“Get in there, Fitz, don’t make me do somethin’ we’ll both regret,” Mack says, hefting the gun.
“Fitz, let’s just-” Jemma says in a small voice, and looking as if she’s going to her execution, she slips past him into the room and tugs him after. He goes, of course. Because, even after everything, he’d go anywhere for Jemma.
But don’t shut the door. He can’t bear it if Mack shuts the door.
“Don’t do this,” Fitz says desperately, looking up into Mack’s face. His friend. “Mack-”
Mack shuts the door in Fitz’s face.
This can’t be happening again.
“Mack!” he screams, and flings himself at the door, hammering at it with his hands, “Don’t! Mack! Please!”
There’s the sound of feet walking away again.
“Mack!”
And- It’s all exactly the same, isn’t it? A friend, someone he trusted, pointing a gun at him. A tiny room. Jemma behind him. All his fault. His fault that Jemma is in danger. There’s even the feeling of a sudden lurch, the floor dropping away beneath him, although some small, somehow still logical, part of his brain knows that this time it is the Bus’s engine starting, the plane lifting off.
It even feels like there’s not enough oxygen. Like he can’t breathe.
He really can’t breathe.
“Fitz, just stop it!” Jemma says, pulling him away from the door. “You’re scaring me!”
“This is all my fault,” he says, whirling around and staring around wildly, wrapping his arms around himself, shaking fingers digging into his skin, the words stuttering out, like the bad days when he first woke up, when he couldn’t get a word out without stammering or forgetting something, oh, god, how is this happening again, “I trusted him- Again- I’m so s-stupid-”
Maybe there really isn’t enough oxygen, maybe they - whoever they is, how can they be SHIELD? - are somehow pulling the oxygen from this room, like he did to- to him- never mind that this isn’t a feature of these rooms- or maybe it is- he can’t think, he can’t think, he can’t think, he can’t breathe-
His knees buckle down and he sits abruptly on the floor and puts his hands over his face - there’s blood there - and can’t breathe.
“Fitz-” Jemma says, shocked - oh, this has never happened in front of her, has it, he’s done this, fallen apart like this, stopped breathing like this, in front of him and in front of Skye but never Jemma - and she’s in danger again, because of him, because he was stupid, because he trusted someone he shouldn’t have.
“I’m s-sorry,” he gasps, between the stuttering inhales, the hard thing in his chest, the tight, broken thing that wraps around his lungs so that every inhale comes short and shallow and hard, never enough, no oxygen, no oxygen for his already oxygen deprived brain, how is this happening again? “I’m so sorry, Jemma, I thought- I trusted him- I thought he was-” What’s the word, the word for what he thought he was, god, it’s such a small, simple word, how can he not remember, and he’s so busy trying to remember that he doesn’t hear himself saying, “I thought Ward was my- my friend-” and that’s the word, the word he was trying to remember, but, oh.
“Oh Fitz,” Jemma says, suddenly gentle, and she kneels down beside him and puts her arms around him.
He can’t remember the last time she touched him. All the memories he comes up with aren’t real, are hallucinations.
“It’s not Ward,” she says. “It’s not Ward this time. It’s okay. It’s okay. Breathe, Fitz, can you breathe for me?”
“I know, I know-” he chokes out.
“I know you do,” she says, and her voice takes on a lecturing tone that he remembers from study sessions back at the Academy, from working in the lab, from arguments where he bickered with her and admired how clever she was. “I know you do, so take a breath for me, okay, Fitz, inhale when I tell you.”
He manages to, somehow.
“Good, good, now...exhale. Good.”
It was horrible, not trusting her. It’s been horrible, these past few months, and especially with Skye, and now it turns out he was trusting the wrong person instead, so it’s a strange, painful relief to put his trust in Jemma again, and breathe when she tells him to.
There is oxygen, after all. The room is far, far, far too small, the walls close in on him as if there is all the weight of the ocean bowing them in, but there is oxygen, and he listens to Jemma and he breathes until he can do it on his own and she falls quiet, and they sit there, for a while, quiet, listening to the sound of the Bus’s engine and feet pounding up and down the hall, arms wrapped around each other, and he’s not sure when he started crying, but they both are.
“You must think I’m such an- such an idiot,” he says hoarsely.
“What? Fitz, no-”
“F-first I trusted Ward, even after we knew he was Hydra, even after you told me not to, and look where that got us- you were right, that whole time, he was just- just evil. And now, now Mack- I trusted him- And you never did, you never liked him, and you were right, he’s just the same, after all, and now w-we’re back in the same bloody mess and it’s my fault. I’m such an idiot.”
“I was just jealous,” she says, too fast.
“What?”
She pulls away from him enough to look him in the face and wipe away the tears from her eyes with her sleeve, and then she says, “Oh, Fitz, you’re still bleeding!”
It’s hard to tell where the blood stops and the tears start, so he just pulls off his whole cardigan and mops ineffectively at his face, and repeats, “What?”
There’s a single cot in the room, bare of any sheets as the Bus is not currently holding any prisoners, and Jemma stands up wearily and crosses over to sit down on it, patting the spot next to her. Fitz staggers a little when he stands, dizzy from bleeding and hyperventilating and crying, but it does feel better to sit on a bed than the floor.
“With Ward, you know,” Jemma says softly, staring down at her hands in her lap. “I- I don’t think it’s so much better that I didn’t believe in him, I just don’t have- your ability to believe in people. Maybe it’s naive sometimes, maybe it was naive with Ward but...with Skye. I should have. Like you.”
It’s the closest she’s come to apologizing for that. Somehow, instead of making him smug, like he normally would be when she admits he was right and she was wrong, he instead says, “Yeah, but I didn’t even give you a chance, I just assumed. I shouldn’t have lied to you.”
She smiles wanly and murmurs, “Maybe,” then continues, “And with Mack, it wasn’t that I somehow instinctively knew he wasn’t trustworthy, it was just- I left, and then I came back, and you were suddenly such good friends with him, and- and it’s horrid and selfish and I know I always told you you ought to be more friendly with people, but I suppose I was used to you- to you liking me best, and having you all to myself, and so I was jealous. Of Mack. That’s why I didn’t like him. I had- I really had no idea there was anything like this. Whatever this is.”
He stares at her. “Oh.”
“And it’s not your fault, and it wasn’t your fault with Ward either!” she bursts out with sudden passion. “You’re not the one that did anything wrong! They’re the ones that betrayed us!”
And it’s her turn to suddenly sob and shake, and his turn to put his arms around her and tell her it’ll be okay.
“What is this? What’s going on?” she asks despairingly.
He shakes his head - then regrets it when the cut on his face throbs - “I have no idea. They said they were SHIELD, but I don’t- I don’t understand how that can be...Unless they were some sort of...faction? That split off when SHIELD fell? But I don’t- I don’t understand. Even if they, why are they only showin’ themselves now? And why like this?”
She stiffens.
“Skye,” she whispers.
His eyes go wide. “You think...because of the- the, uh-” For once, Jemma doesn’t interrupt him, tell him the word, and he fumbles around in his mind and comes up with, “the thing that changed her. Because her...powers activated. You think that’s why?”
“Mack and Bobbi both seemed upset when it happened,” she says eagerly, and then falters, “Well, I was too...but perhaps, perhaps they did something about it.”
“And that’s why they’re here now,” he says, and the fear comes back, different now, no longer centered on himself. “Because we didn’t- trap her like a monster- they came to do it.”
“Fitz, we have to protect her,” she says urgently. “If that’s what’s going on, then our first priority, it must be to protect Skye.”
“You’re not-” He takes a deep breath. “You don’t think there’s something wrong with her, anymore?”
She looks him in the eye, and for a moment they just stay like that, looking at each other, reading each other, the way they used to, back when they were Fitzsimmons and people used to joke they had a psychic bond, back before such things were truly possible.
Jemma shakes her head slowly. “No. She’s just different now. She’s different, but she’s still Skye. Still our friend. Right?”
Inhale. Exhale. A moment to process. “Of course,” he agrees, and he takes Jemma’s hand tentatively in his, and they both look at the door, and wait.