Chapter Text
xx 168 hours
“I have one week, Fitz. One week. That’s seven days, one-hundred and sixty-eight hours, one thousand and eighty minutes. That’s how long I have to live. I know it sounds completely crazy, but I have a-a list. Of things I want to do. And-And I want you to come with me. If you will.”
This is how she tells him, breathlessly, standing huddled on the porch of his doorstep to avoid the rain.
Fitz takes it exactly how she expects him too: not well.
He shakes his head adamantly at her, opening his mouth and closing it like he’s suddenly forgotten how to breathe, like his world has just been pulled out from under his feet (and perhaps it has).
“That’s- That’s not funny, Jemma.”
“I’m not joking.” She tells this to him gently, somehow matter-of-factly. It’s not that she’s not afraid, more that she realises that she has to be strong for Fitz.
(Also, she’s all cried out.)
His eyes are pleading now, wild and watering with her favourite shade of blue, and she is painfully reminded of her love for Fitz. The fondness she feels for him has never been a new thing, but the butterfly feeling she has for him is. She notices the way his eyes glint when he gets excited, the small smile he reserves for the important people in his life, and the way he is quietly possessive over the few treasured friends he has. And for this she hates herself, because she hates that she’s become the kind of person who might potentially ruin the best thing in her life because she’s been greedy and she wants something more.
“Let me look at your timer,” he says thickly.
She fixes him with her gaze as warning. “Fitz..”
“Jemma.”
She doesn’t think she’ll ever be able to say no to that voice, so she lifts up her arm slowly and shows him the timer inked along her arm. These timers are the things that rule their lives. They count down the days you have left to live. Most go up to eighty years. For some lucky people, one hundred. The concept is scary but it really isn’t. Most people find comfort in knowing how long they have left to live, how long their bodies can sustain them.
Most people, because they have normal lifespans. Lifespans where they know they will live, perhaps happily, perhaps unhappily, but safe in the knowledge that they have the time to do so.
Then, there are the special cases. Cases like this, where something will happen at birth, in the uterus, just in the same way as one is born with a disability. Cases where timers will malfunction, short-circuit, decrease.
Jemma Simmons has always known that there was a chance this might happen, but to wake up one morning and find you have only a week left to live… well, it’s an eye-opener.
She tries to communicate all this to Fitz with her eyes, but he’s too distraught to pay attention. His fingers skim along her arm softly, like she is a priceless treasure, and she is not so blind as to ignore the shivers that travel up her spine.
“It’s not true,” he says finally, after the silence is too long to bear.
“It is.”
“It isn’t,” Fitz says again, and the intensity in his eyes is enough to make her mouth part. “Have you gone to the hospital? Mum has a friend who works there, I’m sure-”
“Fitz,” she cuts in softly, “if there was any hope, do you think I’d be here telling you this? I’ve tried everything already.” She’s crying now, and god, she hates it, because in her head she’d planned to be brave. Instead she’s here with tears streaming down her cheeks, but in some ways it’s okay, because Fitz is doing the same thing.
“Jemma..”
She’s smiling through her tears now, but it’s small and sad and quite frankly, pitiful, a weak strip of sunlight on a stormy day. “They always said this might happen, didn’t they?” she says unsteadily. “The doctors, I mean. It was a complicated birth, umbilical cord wrapped all around my head. They think that’s how the timer broke.”
Unexpectedly, she’s pulled into a hug, clinging tightly to this boy who smells of copper and sawdust, leaking tears into each other’s shirts, and she is reminded once again of why Fitz is her friend, why she has picked him, out of all the people, to begin (and now end) this journey with.
“I’m sorry,” he says, because really, what else can be said?
‘I love you’ she wants to return, but she doesn’t, because her hours are quickly dwindling and she doesn’t want to waste them by worrying, so instead she clings to him like he’s her only lifeline in the cruel world that is her ocean, and she says, “Me too.”
xx 167 hours
After she’s dried her tears, then cried in the kitchen with Mrs. Fitz, then redried her tears over warm chocolate-chip cookies, she sits on the couch with Fitz, intertwined so closely she’s not entirely sure where she ends and he begins.
“What’s this list?” Fitz asks, voice raspy. “The one you mentioned before, I mean.”
“I have a list of everything I want to do. Before I die," she says, and she's slipped into clinical Doctor mode without even meaning to.
He flinches. “And you really want to do this?”
“Yeah,” she tells him softly. “I do. And if you.. if you want, I'd like you to do it with me.”
Fitz nudges her foot with his own. “You don’t even need to ask.”
She takes a deep breath, because it feels as if a million weights have been lifted off her chest, and she smiles, because suddenly she feels more alive than ever, which is ironic, given that she is very close to dying.
“We start right away,” she warns.
Fitz nods, and then his hand stills from where he’s been tracing idle patterns on her ankle. “Did you come up with all of this right now? This list, I mean? Or..” he hesitates, “have you known all along?”
“I didn’t know,” she assures him, because this is him asking if she trusts him with all her heart. And she does, she does so much it physically hurts. “But there was.. there was always a thirty percent chance of this happening. And you know me. I…”
“Excel at preparation,” he finishes, and her smile is bittersweet.
xx 166 hours
When they’ve finally pulled themselves together, they arrange a meeting at Skye’s house, because hers is the biggest, and also the closest.
Her heart swells to see all her friends gathered together in one room, and it grows even more so when she reveals her news and there are tears from all around the room.
Skye is distraught, naturally, and not even hugs from Trip can quell her tears. Bobbi is sad but she has known enough loss to hold in her tears, and Mack pretends to be brave for everybody else’s sake. Surprisingly it is Hunter who cries, and she is deeply touched when the teasing, playful young man loses his bravado to pull her into a hug.
“I’ll miss you, Biochem,” he says.
“I’m not dead yet,” she replies, but the joke falls short.
Mack’s goodbye is curt, because they hadn’t known each other all too well, but she leans up into his ear right before he pulls away.
“You will, won’t you? Make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid?”
“Like I could stop Fitz from doing anything concerning you,” Mack grins, but the promise is there.
Trip gives her a little salute and a sunshine smile, although there are tears brimming at the corner of his eyes.
“The best things always end too soon,” is his input, and she rolls her eyes.
“There’s no need to glamorize me because I’m dying.”
“I’m not,” he says, and it’s genuine. “That’s the truth.”
Bobbi pulls her into an immediate hug, and that one action conveys more than any words ever could, between the two of them.
“Take care, Jemma,” she says.
“You too,” Jemma responds, and then it’s Skye who’s throwing herself into Jemma’s arms, her salty tears dampening Jemma’s clean white shirt.
“You can’t go,” Skye sobs over and over, like if she says it enough times it will come true.
(It won’t.)
“I’m not going to. I’ll always be here,” she says, no matter how cheesy it sounds, because she knows Skye needs it right now.
“Aren’t you scared?” Skye sniffles eventually.
Jemma is rather surprised by this question, but after careful consideration, decides that oddly enough, she isn’t. There’s no room for fear here, only an odd sense of numbness. She hasn’t even any strength to cry. “No, I’m not scared. Are you?”
“I’m scared for you,” Skye says, and this truth is so honest that Jemma’s world is suddenly spinning, and she feels the urge to sit down before she gets too faint.
xx 160 hours
Later, when they’re all cried out and everybody is asleep, draped over each other in Skye’s living room, the glow of the TV illuminating their faces and snacks strewn all across the room, Jemma carefully climbs out from the tangle of limbs and hugs her bare arms to herself as she stares at the sleeping faces of her friends.
They all look so astonishingly young, and she feels incredibly guilty that she is the reason they have tear tracks on their faces, so she walks around the room until she has made sure each person is tucked gently into a blanket. She turns the TV off and draws the blinds, and she turns on the night-light because she knows Hunter is afraid of the dark (even though he’ll never admit it).
She leaves the crisps and drinks scattered over the floor because she’s certain someone will get hungry and eat it in the morning, so it’s not long before she’s edging open the door and padding onto the balcony with her feet bare and a blanket draped over her shoulders.
The city is pretty at this time of the night. The breeze is cold but the lights shine golden, and instantly Jemma is reminded that this will be one of the last nights she will ever see. She’s just thinking this when the door behind her slides open, and Coulson joins her at the balcony, setting a plastic bag down on the table.
“I heard,” is all he says.
She smiles faintly, because she's not surprised, not really. “Skye?”
“They’re all upset, you know.”
“I know.” She nods towards the bag. “What’s in there?”
Coulson grins wryly. “That’s classified. But it may or may not involve snacks for the crew.”
“The crew.”
“The crew,” he confirms.
She likes the sound of that. The crew. By giving it a name, it’s like it’s been stapled into their lives, seared into her hearts, and Jemma knows for certain that she will carry this memory to the grave (and perhaps beyond, if she was the sort to believe in that kind of thing).
They stand there in comfortable silence for what seems like eternity. She sways as the wind buffets her blanket and her hair and her pasty legs, until eventually Coulson breaks the quiet.
“You’re amazing, Jemma. And if you need anything…”
She’s about to decline, because that’s what she does. She is polite, she is proper, but then, she is a lot of things right now, so she pauses before the words can spill out, and instead, she says, “Actually, may I borrow your phone?”
He says of course and after she’s made several phone calls and said goodnight to Coulson, she heads back inside, feeling thoroughly pleased with herself. She tries to ignore the faint green glow from her timer as she crawls back into the empty space beside Fitz.
She’s very careful but he stirs anyway, blinking blearily up at her, and she’s suddenly reminded of that adorable little boy she met all those years ago.
“Jemma?”
“Shh,” she says. “Go back to sleep.” And she allows herself to tenderly run her fingers through his curls until his breaths have turned into snores, for she has learned too late to enjoy the simple pleasures in life.
xx 154 hours
They all wake up at roughly the same time, and Hunter continues his ritual of complaining about the lac of sleep even though it’s a perfectly reasonable time in the morning. They break out the fruit and muesli bars that Coulson brought in last night, and Skye, Hunter and Fitz finish off last night’s snacks, much to everybody else's disapproval.
Eventually there’s a knock on the door, and Mack blinks in obvious surprise when he answers it. “May?”
Heads turn curiously, but Jemma is the only one who is unsurprised, rising to her feet with a small smile. “You came.”
“I did,” May says. She holds up a set of car keys and jangles them. “You have fifteen minutes to decide and get ready.”
Jemma takes a deep breath. “Okay.”
“I’m sorry, but what exactly is happening here?” asks Hunter.
“Is everything alright?” Bobbi asks more considerately.
“So, I have a Bucket List,” Jemma says so quickly she's not sure if she's imagining it or if her words are really blurring together, “and this is one of the first things on my list. I’m leaving in about half an hour to get on a plane. And I was.. I was hoping that you could come with me?”
It doesn’t take a genius to know who she’s talking to, and her heart pounds when Fitz agrees without hesitation.
“Okay.”
“Then we leave in five minutes,” May says without missing a beat.
It's as simple as that, and each member pulls Jemma and Fitz into a tight hug.
“Don’t do anything stupid, alright?” Skye orders fiercely.
“You’d better come back to say goodbye,” Trip adds, and Jemma nods and makes promises with her all heart, because she cannot imagine anywhere else she’d rather end.
And later, when they’ve finally said all their goodbyes, and they leave the team waving tearfully at them from the windows, Jemma slips her hand into Fitz’s, without hesitation. He blinks nervously at her but she’s beyond the point of being shy now, so she doesn’t let go and he doesn’t pull away.
“Where are we going?” he asks as they walk down the driveway. Their hands swing as they walk, and Jemma thinks, I could get used to this. May is sitting at the wheel of a smart black car, talking on the phone, and she gives Jemma a nod and a tiny smile when she catches her eye.
“It’s a secret,” she tells him, “but we’re taking a plane. We might not come back here for a little while.”
She pulls open the door and they both climb into the backseat. Shotgun seat is taken up by a simple black bag, but Jemma doesn’t think she would have left Fitz’s side anyway, even if she does get carsick occasionally.
“What about my things?” Fitz asks, pulling down his seatbelt.
“I’ve already got them,” May calls from the front, and Jemma smothers a laugh at Fitz’s shocked expression.