Chapter Text
Jemma hated this. Hated it. It had been three days since she told Fitz the whole story of what happened on the alien planet – how she survived, how she tried and tried to get home, how she met Will… Of course it was that last point that was her problem. It was the majority of the reason that she had been so distant with everyone, even Fitz, since she had gotten home.
There were external things that were difficult too – the lights were too bright after living without the sun, the gravity was too weak as she walked, the noises were too sudden and too sharp around her – but, more than anything, it had been Will. She had left him behind, abandoned him on that planet. She didn’t even know if she would ever be able to fix the monolith and bring him back. While she’d been there, at least they’d had each other. Jemma couldn’t bear to think about Will back there alone.
But she hadn’t been able to say anything. How could she tell her best friend in the world that held her so tightly and dropped everything to help her that she, for one thing, had to go back to the planet he had worked so hard to save her from, but, even more important (and difficult to discuss), that the reason she had to go back was to rescue her… boyfriend? Jemma wasn’t sure what to call Will, especially now. They had been together in more ways than one for weeks, a month and a half really, Jemma had figured out, ever since that bottle shattered and Jemma had lost all hope of getting home. She didn’t have her phone. She didn’t have Fitz. It was just her, Will, and the an endless, sunless life together on an alien planet. It was just a way to deal with the situation. He was funny and kind and brave, and she trusted him with her life. Really, she trusted him more than she had trusted anyone, except Fitz. Will cared about her so much, and Jemma cared about him too. Jemma had fallen in love with him, and now Fitz knew.
That was why the past three days had been so terrible. Of course, Fitz had been beyond wonderful. That moment when he stood up without a word and walked into the lab had destroyed Jemma, but then he was pulling up the schematics and all six months worth of his monolith data and Jemma had been speechless. Fitz had looked at her and promised that they would get Will back, and Jemma knew that Fitz was completely serious and would do anything he could to help her. But it was the look in his eyes that crushed her. It was masked hurt and pain, covered up because Fitz was just so selfless that it didn’t matter to him.
Jemma didn’t deserve him… but now Jemma didn’t have him. He asked her questions about the other world and the portal. He explained things about the monolith. He brought in Sk-Daisy to figure out the frequency. But he wasn’t her Fitz. He was distancing himself for her purposefully, clearly trying to show her that he understood the choice she had made to be with Will and not with him.
But Jemma hadn’t made that choice, and that’s what was tearing her apart. She had chosen to be with Will when that was her only option, but regardless of how she felt about him, that didn’t mean anything was decided or that she didn’t want things to go back to normal with Fitz. She missed him. God, she had missed him. Charging her phone for the first time since she’d gotten home had been so difficult. She’d avoided all the messages she recorded for Fitz, the picture of him she had talked to, the video she had watched so many times. She’d gone back to some of the data she’d recorded and the pictures she’d taken, but anything about Fitz she’d left alone. It hurt too much to know that she couldn’t be completely honest with him, and now it hurt too much to know that he knew the truth and had decided that what he thought was her happiness meant more than his own.
She didn’t deserve him. How could she ever deserve him?
“Jemma.” Fitz’s voice pulled her away from her thoughts.
Jemma looked up from her station, putting on her best attempt at an normal expression. “Yeah, Fitz?”
“I think I’ve figured something out.”
Jemma quickly moved to stand next to him in front of the computer screen, momentarily forgetting how weird things were between them in her interest in what Fitz had discovered.
On the screen was a scan of the monolith, as well as a layout of all the current monolith pieces and their locations on the original monolith.
“You finished the whole analysis?” Jemma turned to Fitz, wide-eyed. Only yesterday had they finished sifting through data and turned to the pieces of the monolith they had left.
Fitz shrugged modestly. “Not too hard really. What will be tricky is piecing it back together like this. I think we might be able to get it to work again if we have all the pieces in their exact spots on the monolith.”
“What about all the gravel and dust?” Jemma asked worriedly.
Fitz shook his head. “My theory is that the portal doesn’t need the entire monolith, just some important pieces in the right spots. With any luck, the biggest pieces are the ones we need.”
“So we just need something to hold them together.”
Fitz nodded, furrowing his brow. “But it has to allow them to liquefy. It needs to mimic the conditions of the rock or even not exist entirely. If I could suspend them in midair…” Fitz trailed off.
Jemma stared at the pictures in front of her, deep in thought. “Well, before we do anything we need a-”
“model,” the said in unison, grinning at each other as they spoke.
“We could make a mold based on the pieces and see what happens when we stick them in,” Fitz said excitedly, his hands flying across the paper in front of him as he took down notes.
“And we can expose it to the frequency, just to make sure it works,” Jemma nodded along.
Fitz grinned excitedly. “With any luck, we should have the pieces liquefying even if it’s not the whole thing.”
“That could even be enough to send a message through to the other side!” Jemma added, just as enthusiastic.
“Yeah!” Fitz said, jumping up. “That could work! We’d just need to write… a note… or you’d write a note.” Instantly, the wall had come back up between them. Just the thought of Will was enough to set Fitz back behind the line he had drawn for himself.
“Anyway,” Fitz said, sitting back down and talking very determinedly to the floor, “I’ll get that made up.”
Jemma merely nodded, not trusting herself to speak. A small tear slipped down her cheek.
“Could you work on the analysis for the smaller bits, just in case we need that?” Fitz barely looked at her as she offered a small sound in the affirmative.
There was a curt nod from Fitz in response and the lab was left in silence.
And that was how their days went. One moment they were rejoicing over a discovery, and the next there was an impassable gorge between them as though it was Fitz who was separated from Jemma in another world rather than Will.
It wasn’t as though Fitz was angry with her or was acting hurt. He seemed to be trying to remove anything even slightly nonplatonic from their relationship, letting her go now rather than waiting for Will to get back and make it official.
Jemma just wanted to know how Fitz felt, but he didn’t let that slip out besides flashes of hurt behind his eyes. She wished that Fitz would understand that she was horribly confused and just wanted everything to go back to normal. The whole situation made Jemma’s head hurt.
Almost worse was the reactions of the rest of the team. Jemma had given Bobbi permission to tell them what had happened, but Bobbi only knew the bare bones story – Jemma had survived on the planet with the help of an astronaut named Will Daniels, and she needed to go back through the portal to bring him back to Earth.
Coulson was extremely wary of the plan. He had promised Randolph that he would destroy the portal and the idea of bringing it back to life, regardless of how much better they understood it now, was not something he was particularly on board with. Mack was similarly opposed to the idea after what had happened to Jemma, what Fitz had gone through, and, most recently, how it had affected Daisy.
Daisy, for her part, was giving Jemma some space. She was definitely busy, but Jemma knew that she was keeping her distance. Some combination of Jemma’s focus on the monolith and the weird air between Jemma and Fitz definitely were bothering her Inhuman friend.
Bobbi was the only one that Jemma could really talk to. She didn’t ask questions, she just let Jemma talk about whatever she needed to. Jemma didn’t want to tell Bobbi that the reason Fitz was keeping his distance from her was that she and Will had been romantically involved, but she was certain that Bobbi had some suspicions. Every so often, Bobbi would suggest, hesitantly, that Jemma talk to Fitz, but Jemma would shut down and Bobbi would change the subject.
Bobbi and Fitz had gotten very close in her absence, Jemma had discovered, so Jemma was worried that Fitz would tell Bobbi everything, but, even after weeks, he hadn’t, to her knowledge, said a word about it to anyone. Jemma would have given anything to be able to see what he was thinking, but, with that not an option, she just had to try her hardest to keep things as normal as possible. Those were the moments Jemma loved most. The thrill of a new challenge, an unfamiliar phenomenon, the long awaited solution to a problem; that was how she and Fitz had started way back at the Academy. There was nothing they couldn’t do together, and no amount of time, no experiences, no sort-of-boyfriends from other planets could change that.
“Ugh, Fitz!” Jemma complained at the monitor displaying the results of all the material tests they had done to try to find an effective material to act as an addition to and extension of the monolith. Some extensive model building, modification of one of the S.H.I.E.L.D. vaults into a massive subwoofer, a la the castle in England, and numerous trials had resulted in a slight change in properties of the rocks, but not the formation of an actual portal, which proved that Fitz’s theory about placing the pieces back in the right places was correct, but also that the monolith needed more than just the main pieces.
Fitz looked up at her, eyebrows raised. “Yeah?”
“Oh,” Jemma started as she realized what she had said. It had become habit on the other planet for her to use Fitz’s name when she was frustrated, as though willing him to the desolate wasteland to help her solve the problem. “Just, um, I’m upset that we haven’t found a good medium yet.”
Fitz nodded his agreement, his eyes turning back to the screen he was looking at.
Before Jemma could turn back to her own work though, she saw Fitz’s eyes light up. “Jemma!”
Jemma was on her feet even before he finished saying her name.
“Here’s the answer!” He pointed to the screen at a very particular combination of chemicals and materials.
Jemma glanced through it quickly, a smile growing wider and wider across her face. This substance seemed to finally be consistent with all the data from the tests Fitz had run on the monolith.
“You did it, Fitz!” Jemma turned to him, her eyes wide with excitement.
“We don’t know if it’s actually going to work,” Fitz cautioned. “It’s just a theory.”
“It’s going to work,” Jemma replied confidently. “How did you figure this out?”
Fitz shrugged. “I’ve been running a lot of simulations, stuff I’d tried to do back before. I guess I just got lucky.”
Jemma shook her head. “Not lucky. Brilliant, Fitz.” Without thinking, she threw her arms around him.
Fitz returned the hug for a moment, but then he stiffened and drew back.
Jemma dropped her arms to her sides, her face falling.
Fitz was avoiding her gaze. “I’ll get to work getting a mold made up, and then we can see if we can get your, uh, friend back.”
Jemma was pretty sure she hadn’t imagined the thickening of Fitz’s voice as he said “friend.”
“Oh, right,” Jemma replied, moving back from him.
Fitz inhaled and then moved away from his station. “I’ll be right back,” he called behind him, not sounding particularly convincing.
Jemma was left standing alone in the middle of the lab.
They had potentially just figured out a way for Jemma to get back to the planet and find Will, and Jemma was at a crossroads. She had put so much thought into figuring out how to get Will back from the planet that she hadn’t really thought about what was going to happen once they made it back to Earth.
Jemma had the sudden desire to go talk to Bobbi about everything. She’d been cooped up in her own head about Will for too long.
She left the lab and headed for the most likely place to find her, the small workout room that Bobbi had been using for her rehab.
Jemma was so focused on making it to her destination that she almost didn’t notice the object of her search standing in the kitchen, with none other than Fitz standing in front of her.
Jemma froze and stepped back so she was just out of sight of her friends, but still close enough to hear their conversation.
“Just tell me what’s going on, Fitz,” Bobbi said, her voice pleading in a way that Jemma had never heard before. “You haven’t been yourself for weeks, and now I come into the kitchen to find you having a break down in front of a pot of tea? Fitz, what’s wrong?”
Jemma sank to the ground silently at Bobbi’s words. Just the knowledge that she had upset Fitz so much made Jemma want to back to her room and scream into her pillow. In all her time with Fitz, she had never hurt him as much as she had the past couple years. Before they went into the field, they just had almost daily lab disputes, but even through them they were always on the same page. But then last year Fitz had been hurt and Jemma had left him to help him but he thought she’d abandoned him and they had only just finally, sort of, figured things out when this happened. The monolith had ruined the most important relationship in her entire life, and she had no idea how to fix it.
“It’s not-” Fitz choked out, clearly trying to keep his emotions in check. “It’s not anything to do with me.”
Jemma leaned her head into her knees.
“Hell it doesn’t have anything to do with you,” Bobbi fired back. “You’re a mess, Fitz. No one acts like this when something doesn’t have anything to do with them.”
“It’s not about me.” Fitz’s words were calmer now.
There was a pause, and Jemma wondered what was happening.
“So it’s about Jemma and this other guy then?” Bobbi’s words were much kinder now.
“Her boyfriend,” Fitz said, his words toneless.
“Boyfriend?” Bobbi asked, unsure.
“Yeah. She loves him.” Fitz’s words were empty.
Tears came to Jemma’s eyes, unbidden. How could she have caused so much pain to someone that she cared about so much?
“Oh, Fitz.” There was the sound of movement, and Jemma assumed Bobbi had pulled Fitz in for a hug. “She loves you too, you know.”
“Not like that.” Fitz took a deep breath. “But it’s fine, Bobbi, really. She and Will, they had this whole experience together, and it’s something that I’ll never be able to share with her. He kept her safe and they relied on each other, and he seems like a really great guy from what Jemma says. It’s been kind of tough to deal with, but Jemma’s moved on.” He laughed slightly, a hollow mirthless sound. “There was never actually anything between us anyway. Never had the chance for that.”
Jemma felt like her heart was shattering into a million pieces.
“Fitz-”
“Theoretically, we’ll be able to get Will back in a few days,” Fitz interrupted whatever Bobbi was going to say. “I’ll have to start getting used to this now, since he’ll probably be hanging around. He seems pretty tough. Coulson could probably use him once he gets acclimated to Earth. Poor guy’s been gone fourteen years. He’s missed a lot.”
Jemma stared straight ahead as tears dripped down her cheeks. Here was Fitz, crushed by Jemma falling in love with another man, now sorting through ways to help him, sympathizing with him, trying not to get in the way. Fitz was so good. How could she live with this?
Jemma stood up silently and made her way back to the lab, so Fitz and Bobbi wouldn’t see that she had been eavesdropping. She wiped the tears from her eyes and tried to think, but then Fitz returned and everything that wasn’t silence was a comment on the monolith.
Same old, same old.