Chapter Text
[Days Since Maveth: Three]
Three days after the return from Planet Hell, Bobbi finds her. It’s the middle of the night and Jemma’s sitting on the couch with arms wrapped around herself, staring blankly at a wall.
“Jemma,” Bobbi gasps in surprise. “You scared me. I didn’t see you there.”
Jemma jumps slightly. “Bobbi. Hello.”
One look at Jemma’s tear-stained face causes Bobbi to move closer. “Are you alright?”
“Oh, I’m fine,” Jemma attempts. She smiles bravely, Bobbi thinks, but it crumbles on the corners and Jemma has to look away quickly as the tears begin again.
“Of course you’re not fine,” Bobbi insists. “And because our therapist turned out to be a murderous Inhuman, I guess I’ll have to be the next best thing.“
Jemma flinches, hard, and Bobbi recoils as well as she thinks of the bodies littered around that castle. She’d meant it as a joke, but now she sees her mistake.
“All those people,” Jemma whispers. “I killed all those people.”
Bobbi shakes her head, reaching out to place her palm on Jemma’s shoulder. “Hey, don’t do this. You made the call. You wouldn’t have made it out alive if you hadn’t let Garner out of that box.”
Jemma laughs humorlessly. “And perhaps that would have been fitting, wouldn’t it? Letting the man I love back onto that hellish planet, releasing Lash, now he can hardly stand to look at me.”
Bobbi swallows. “He’s trying to give you space. To let you grieve.”
Jemma shuts her eyes. “I am grieving, of course I am. I loved Will. At least I think I did, and I may never—I may never understand, what those feelings were but I think that somewhere, deep down, I knew—“
Jemma’s voice breaks and she rubs one hand over her eyes.
“I knew that Will was dead. Intellectually, I needed to prove it. I needed to try and save him, to do what I couldn’t back on that planet…but I knew that he didn’t survive.”
Bobbi rubs her thumb in little circles. “I know that instinct. It’s when…you just know. I always know, intuitively, when Hunter is in trouble.”
Jemma nods wildly. “Yes, exactly. When I came to in Fitz’s arms, sitting in the rubble, I knew Will couldn’t have made it. It’s what allowed me to wait so long before I even tried to get him back, but after I had dinner with Fitz…I’ve already grieved him, in some ways. This is—this is more real. Now I know that he’s really gone, and that it was my fault, but that’s not even what I feel worst about.”
“Jemma, you held up under torture. You didn’t tell them it was Fitz who took you back through, Fitz did that himself. Most importantly, you can’t blame yourself for the things that others do to protect you,” Bobbi says softly. She lets go of the woman in front of her and slides the side of her t-shirt down, revealing her scar. “I did this for Hunter. Because I couldn’t stand to see him hurt.”
Bobbi chokes down a small sob of her own. The bullet hole has healed over, her leg is doing better, and what remains of her lung has proved itself time and time again that it is ready now, it is strong, but sometimes she still feels like she’s not.
“And Hunter, he blamed himself so much for what Ward did to me. That he wasn’t fast enough, or that I was willing to take this bullet for him, but I chose to do it. Not because he couldn’t handle it, but because I couldn’t handle it. I couldn’t handle losing him. And Fitz, he made the same choice. He couldn’t stand to lose you to that planet again, or worse.”
Jemma snorts. “There’s not much worse than that planet.”
Bobbi shrugs. “And I don’t think there’s anything worse than that warehouse. That’s the thing, Jemma, we all have the place where our nightmares live. And I know it must hurt, that Fitz went to yours, and he couldn’t bring Will home, but—“
“It’s got nothing to do with Will,” Jemma blurts out. Bobbi’s eyes widen and Jemma sucks in a sharp breath, as if to prepare herself for the backlash of what she needs to say. “Maybe it’s because I already felt, in my heart, that Will was gone. Maybe it’s just that I can’t imagine my life without him, but when that pod came through I hoped it would be Fitz.”
“You didn’t want Will to be dead,” Bobbi states, factually, just as a confirmation to Jemma that she knows what she means. Jemma shakes her head.
“No, of course I didn’t want that. Of course not. I wanted Will to come back, after all those years. I wanted to help him and I wanted him to get a chance to experience life again, not just survival, but…”
She trails off, eyes wandering toward the corner of the room, and Bobbi quickly picks it up for her.
“But you didn’t want to experience that with him,” Bobbi says gently. “You wanted something else.”
Jemma nods, face crumbling with tears. The guilt practically radiates off of her in palpable waves. “I wanted to get him back so that he could live. So that I could live again, with Fitz. I just wanted to be with him and I couldn’t do that until I knew one way or another that Will was safe or that he was dead. And that doesn’t mean—I know it seems like—I didn’t—“
“It doesn’t mean you didn’t love him,” Bobbi reminds her. Her arms circle around Jemma’s shoulders and Jemma’s head falls to Bobbi’s collarbone as she sobs. “Shh, I know. You did. And you did everything you could, for both of them, Jemma. For Fitz and for Will.”
Jemma attempts to shake her head in disagreement but she can’t.
“What Fitz must think of me,” Jemma cries. “What everyone must think of me. I know what Hunter says—“
Bobbi squeezes her a bit tighter. “Hey. Hunter’s an idiot, and he’s projecting. Don’t even get me started on that guy’s jealousy. I never asked him to buy Clint a ticket from Phoenix…”
Bobbi bites down on her lip to keep herself from continuing her story. That’s not what this conversation is about and Jemma needs this, she needs this time with someone who can at least try to put her mind and heart at ease. Bobbi can’t imagine the crushing weight on her shoulders, but the least she can do is try.
“And Fitz? Fitz thinks you’re amazing. That you’re his best friend and that he loves you,” Bobbi explains. Jemma calms down into soft hiccupping cries.
“This just isn’t how I ever imagined things happening,” Jemma mumbles. “I wanted to have a chance, to explain. To explain to Will that he was right. Fitz is my favorite word and my favorite everything else and that I couldn’t have survived without Will but that I never would have been able to live on that planet, the way that he did, for all those years. With nothing but him. I was running around with my phone on me at all times even though at that point it was about as useful as a rock. It was dead weight but it was proof, that I had lived here. That Fitz existed, in some timeline, in some universe. That he was mine and I told myself that I let go of him but I don’t think I ever…”
Bobbi runs a comforting hand down Jemma’s arm and simply listens, allowing her to continue with her thought process. Bobbi is fairly certain that Jemma hasn’t even really thought this far ahead, that she’s talking through her feelings in real-time, and she would hate to interrupt.
“I wanted to explain that all to Fitz, too, but it felt…it felt cheap, to do any of that while Will was still out there in some other galaxy. Only he was dead, and he’d done that for me, so that I could keep living.”
“Maybe he knew, too. Maybe he knew that you never would have been able to live the way that he had, even with him as your company,” Bobbi tells her. “Maybe that’s why he did what he did for you.”
Jemma sniffles loudly for a long moment. “I think he did. He tried to talk to me, about Fitz and about the team, after I’d lost all hope of coming home and I refused. I couldn’t—I couldn’t bear to picture any of you, to talk about you all as if any of you belonged to the life I was going to live, there, on that planet. Least of all Fitz. I never wanted Fitz to be there.”
“But he did go, and he survived,” Bobbi reminds her. “He’s in one piece, just down the hallway there. Probably asleep, I’d think.”
Jemma nods, shakily removing herself from Bobbi’s hold. “He suffered a sever laceration to his temple. His shoulder was partially dislocated by Ward, he has abrasions on his torso from his fight with…with Maveth.”
“And you have two broken ribs,” Bobbi says. “A concussion that is only just about healed, and a bunch of other cuts and scrapes and bruises. You two have been through the ringer, and you deserve a break.”
“All I’ve done since returning from the planet is try to find a way back, to save Will, and now all I’ve managed to do is set an evil being loose on this planet. I don’t deserve a break. My work is just getting started.”
Bobbi sighs heavily. “Look, I’m obviously not a therapist. I’ve got a whole laundry list of my own issues, but I can tell you one thing that I know is true. You don’t have to go through this alone. As far as what happened to you in that castle, I’ve been where you were.”
Jemma’s eyes stray toward Bobbi’s knee, and the blonde smiles sadly.
“I was drowning in it all for a long time. I thought I’d never be the same, that I couldn’t ever do it. And that I’d never even want to be the way I was before, and maybe I’m not, but I think that I’m better. I’m less reckless. I started listening to what my heart wanted. I don’t even know that I realized how much I loved Hunter until there was a real, actual risk that I could lose him.”
Jemma nods pensively. “I certainly know a thing or two about that.”
“I know you do,” Bobbi says, squeezing her hand. “So, Simmons, my best advice for you is that you’ve got to swim back up from the bottom of the ocean. You’ve done it once, you can do it again.”
Jemma looks up at her as Bobbi stands, eyes shining with something that Bobbi can’t quite place.
“I don’t think he’ll—I don’t think he’ll take me, anymore.”
Bobbi outright laughs. “You could do a hell of a lot of horrible things and he’d still love you.”
Jemma’s face falls with the guilt of it, because it’s true and she knows that.
“But hey,” Bobbi interrupts. “Don’t kid yourself, Jemma. Fitz risked the safety of the entire world for you. That was his choice, not yours, and in all honesty, it was a selfish one. And you still love him, don’t you?”
“Of course I do.”
Bobbi winks. “Of course you do.”
Jemma watches Bobbi walk away and there’s a heavy sense of relief settling into her bones. Just getting it out there, speaking the words, feels as though part of the weight weighing her down has been lifted. For a fleeting moment she contemplates doing the thing she’s wanted to do ever since she grabbed him on Zephyr One. She thinks about slipping into his door, crawling into bed beside him, and letting the gentle thrum of his heartbeat lull her to sleep.
But she still has to do the work, and she knows it. Sure, she’d known, somewhere deep down inside of her, that the chances of Will being alive were incredibly low. She’d made some semblance of peace with it but this is the real thing and it’s going to take a little more time.
***
[Days Since Maveth: Twenty-Four]
She makes it through three weeks of taking her space and thinking through her various emotions before she’s standing at his door, shifting nervously on her feet as she knocks anxiously. Her heart pounds fast in her chest as the seconds drag on. Feeling rather pathetic as she does so, she steps against the wood of the door and presses her ear, finding no indication of him moving around inside.
She knows there’s no possible way he’s sleeping yet, as he’s never been able to fall asleep before 10:30 in their more than 10 years of friendship. There’s only a couple of other places he could be, and she runs through them as she tries to calm her own panic.
She checks the garage first. Ever since his return from Maveth, he’s spent most of his time working there rather than the lab. It was a painful reminder of their time apart after the Pod. He had mumbled some excuse about less people and a quieter space when she’d attempted to ask him about it, but she hadn’t bought it for a second. Fitz had never required quiet to work; that was usually her problem. She hadn’t pressed the issue though. If he needed space from her, she would give it to him. If he never wanted to be near her again, she wouldn’t fight him on it.
The garage is dark and empty so she moves forward to the kitchen, where there is also no Fitz in sight. Taking a deep breath, she heads off toward the lab, socked feet making very little noise on the floor of the Playground. It’s always strange, to see the base so silent, but in the aftermath of their latest catastrophe the Playground has remained fairly quiet. The Science Division has been busy at work, trying to figure out what the gel suspension used by Hydra on the Inhumans is actually made out of, as well as trying to develop some sort of weapon that will allow Daisy’s team to incapacitate Lash without having to get too close.
She finds him, finally, hunched over a drafting table. Her heart drops with the thought that he’s working in the lab after hours just to avoid her. His leg bounces in irritation as he murmurs to himself. Jemma stands back and watches him for several long moments. It’s been weeks since she’d been able to properly lay eyes on him, and she can’t help but admire the curve of his shoulders and the dexterity of his hands as he fiddles with the specs in front of him.
She clears her throat and he jumps, knocking several of his instruments onto the floor. It’s a clumsiness she hasn’t seen from him in a long time and it’s both nostalgic and upsetting.
“Hi Fitz,” she says softly.
“Simmons,” he responds plainly. He bends down to gather his fallen objects. “What can I do for you?”
What can I do for you?
It’s a simple enough question and she’s sure he means it as one, but her rapidly cycling thoughts immediately twists it into an accusation. He’d done everything for her, to get her back, and everything for her afterward.
“Nothing,” she finally responds. She doesn’t want or need him to do anything for her. “Nothing at all.”
He doesn’t seem altogether sure what to do with this information, turning his attention back to the drafting table. “Ah, okay.”
“I just wanted to see you,” she blurts out, stepping further into the lab. He freezes but doesn’t look up at her, so she takes it as an invitation to continue. “I…well, it’s been so long since we actually got to talk, and—“
Fitz cuts her off with a heavy sigh, running one hand through his hair as he turns to look at her. Now that she’s closer she can see the dark circles under his eyes, the sunken appearance of his cheeks. One glance and she knows that he’s not sleeping, not properly eating, not taking care of himself, and it breaks her heart that it’s taken three weeks for her to notice.
“I’m sorry I haven’t been there for you,” he murmurs quietly, eyes full of apology. “It just didn’t feel—appropriate for me to be the one to help you through this. I—I killed him, and—“
“You did no such thing!” Jemma exclaims. He seems as taken aback by this as he was by her appearance in the lab to begin with. “That Inhuman monster killed Will Daniels. You just made sure he wouldn’t have to be a vessel for It.”
Fitz gulps and shakes his head. “It doesn’t always feel like that.”
She moves with little thought, reaching for him on instinct. He backs away in a little shuffle that wounds her.
“Fitz…”
He licks his lips and pinches at the bridge of his nose. “Jemma, I’m so sorry. But I can’t…I want to be there for you so badly but everything…there’s too much. When I’m with you, you make me feel like…and Daisy made me promise that I wouldn’t…that I’d try to figure out how to be here for me and I’m trying, I really am, so—“
“So you want me to leave you alone,” she whimpers. She stumbles back with the weight of it and feels a temporary flash of anger at her friend.
What the hell does she know? Jemma thinks bitterly. Then she shakes herself. Daisy knows a hell of a lot, especially about grief and even about Fitz. She knows more than Jemma, about his life for those six months that she was on another planet.
Fitz opens his eyes to look at her and there’s tears in them. She can’t stand to see him feel guilty about this one gesture of emotional self-preservation.
“She’s right,” Jemma admits. “You shouldn’t deal with this. But we’re still…we’re still friends, right?”
Fitz lets out a ragged breath and nods, hands on his hips. “Of course. Of course we are, I’d never do that to you. I’m not trying to…to punish you, or anything, it’s not…”
“You need me to take my time,” she fills in. His eyes light up for a moment and she feels the corners of her mouth tick ever so slightly upward. Even after these distant weeks, she still knows him, can still follow his thought process as well as she can follow her own.
“Yes,” he breathes. “Yes, exactly.”
“Okay,” she says firmly. “I can do that. But I need to tell you now, so that you know it, that I want to be with you. In whatever way I can be, for the rest of my life, and I meant every word I ever said about our future, and Perthshire, and all of it. I’m devastated by what happened to Will, but if you hadn’t come back in that pod…”
Her voice drifts for a moment and her hands clench into fists at her sides.
“I would have been inconsolable. I certainly would not have been walking around like I am now. I doubt I’d be able to speak if you were gone forever and I know that because for those nine days, I—I got a taste of what that might be like.”
Fitz gulps, leaning slightly in her direction before he pulls himself back.
“So I need you to know that you never would have been my second choice. I needed to know if he was alive or dead, and I should have told you before that I wanted to be with you and not with him. I should have said it before we knew he was dead because then maybe you could believe me.”
Her voice cracks and now he really does move forward, as if to comfort her. She waves her hands wildly in front of her and steps further away. She doesn’t want that from him, not right now, especially after what he’d said about Daisy’s advice.
“I know you can’t shoulder this burden for me,” she presses on. “But please, if you need anything at all, let me shoulder a burden for you, okay? I know…I know more happened on that planet than you’ve told me and I can tell you’re not sleeping or eating and…I just want to help. If you want or need me to.”
Fitz nods, hardly trusting his voice. “Alright. I’ll um…I’ll keep that in mind.”
She manages a twisted little smile and then allows herself a moment of selfishness. She flings herself into his arms and squeezes him tightly, inhaling the scent of him for the first time in so long.
“I’ll see you around, Fitz.”
He gives her a watery little grin.
“See you around, Jemma.”
***
[Days Since Maveth: Twenty-Nine]
It’s not long after their tearful conversation in the lab before she’s throwing open the door to his bunk in the middle of the night and rushing to his bed.
“STOP!” he screams, head tossing from side to side on his sweat-soaked pillow. “I’LL DO WHATEVER YOU WANT, PLEASE!”
She swallows and kneels next to him, grabbing one of his flailing arms as gently as she can.
“Fitz? Fitz, wake up!” she says loudly but gently. “It’s just a dream. Fitz, wake up!”
“I’ll go,” he whimpers. “I’ll go, just don’t take her back there, please—“
Her heart stops entirely and she moves to sit on his bed. She grabs him by the shoulders and begins shaking him, but this only seems to make things worse. She vaguely hears someone in the doorway but she doesn’t turn to see who it is. Her focus is solely on his crumpled face, tears streaming off of her cheeks and onto the vest top that he sleeps in.
“You’re not Will,” he groans. “You’re not him.”
“FITZ! PLEASE!” Jemma shouts desperately. He shoots up, throwing her off of him.
“WE HAVE TO GO!”
Rather than scrambling away from him or remaining on the floor, she immediately jumps to her feet and sits beside him on the mattress. Her hands come up to rub up and down the lengths of his arms.
“Shh, Fitz,” she soothes. “It’s okay. It was a dream. I’m right here, okay? You’re alright.”
He blinks at her wildly, then stares past her at where Daisy leans in the doorway, arms crossed and brow furrowed.
“It didn’t work,” Fitz mumbles to himself, reaching onto his bedside table and pressing several buttons on a small black device. He throws it violently against the wall and it shatters.
“What didn’t work?” Jemma asks, feeling utterly disoriented.
“Soundproofing,” Daisy fills in. Fitz narrows his eyes at her in accusation but she presses on. “He built that to soundproof his bunk, so he wouldn’t wake anyone. I come by to check in every couple of hours, but…”
Jemma’s stomach turns over and she presses a hand to her mouth to keep herself from gasping or sobbing or worse.
“Can I please have a brief moment alone with Fitz?” Jemma asks Daisy, not even looking in her direction.
Daisy nods immediately. “Of course. Feel better, Fitz.”
She shuts and locks the door behind her, leaving them alone in the darkness and silence of his room. “Fitz, you can’t do this to yourself.”
“Do what to myself?”
“This!” she exclaims, gesturing at the broken pieces of the gadget, barely visible in the dark. “Please, let me help you. I know you can’t help me right now. I don’t want you to help me, but I want to help you, and I think that I can.”
“Jemma,” he groans. “Please, don’t…I didn’t want this to become an issue. That’s why I made the bloody soundproof device.”
One of her hands reaches up to cup his cheek and he immediately leans into her touch.
“I know that this isn’t one of those things that we can necessarily fix together,” she tells him. “But at least let me try to help you, okay?”
She can see his weary expression fade to acceptance and he slowly begins to nod his assent.
“Good. Now tell me what really happened on Maveth, Fitz. All you told me was about Will. What actually happened to Ward?”
Fitz collapses back into his pillows, scrubbing his hands over his eyes and clearing his throat before he begins. He sounds hoarse, from all the yelling he’d been doing, and she fetches him the water from his desk.
“It was Coulson,” he says. “He didn’t…he crushed Ward’s chest with his mechanical hand. He could’ve brought him back, put him in custody. Hell, even shooting him with a bullet would have been—“
He breaks off. “I don’t mean to say that I didn’t want him dead, Jemma. I tried to do it myself, that’s when he went for my arm.”
Her fingers ghost over his dislocated shoulder. “I know you didn’t want him to be a free man.”
“I saw something in Coulson,” Fitz admits. “Something in him that I’d seen in Ward before. It was like I was watching a completely different person. The same way that It possessed Will, almost.”
She’s surprised that she has no emotional reaction to the mention of Will’s name or to his fate. There’s a brief twinge at the thought but it doesn’t freeze her or distract her focus from the man in front of her.
“Like it wasn’t really him,” Jemma says. Fitz nods.
“Exactly. For a minute there I thought maybe It had taken over Coulson, but I think the body has to be dead already. I was so desperate to get him back through the portal that we nearly didn’t make it. He was so busy trying to murder Ward that he didn’t…he wasn’t even trying to come back.”
She shifts so that she sits beside him, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and tugging him against her so that his head falls between her neck and shoulder. He takes a shuddering breath and relaxes into her warmth.
“You would have died for him,” she says quietly. He nods.
“I didn’t want to leave him but I was so overwhelmed with everything that had just happened…”
One hand draws little circles on his shoulder, the way he always does when he hugs her, and the other reaches into his hair, dragging her nails lightly along his scalp. The dampness of his head doesn’t bother her in the slightest.
“Get some rest,” she tells him softly. “I’ll be right here, okay? You’re not alone.”
And she stays, long after he’s fallen asleep. She’s so tempted to slip beneath the sheets and remain beside him for the entire night, but she wants to abide by his wishes. Just as morning breaks, she untangles herself from him and slips out of the door.
She snatches a t-shirt off of his messy floor just as she’s leaving and stuffs it beneath the pillow in her room, ignoring how pathetic it feels to want him near her so badly.