Chapter Text
1. Ghost of a Good Thing
Days since Maveth: 23
"Hi, Fitz."
Fitz knew Jemma was coming back to the lab today, but the sound of her voice still made his heart stutter and his stomach flip. She'd spent the past three weeks very quietly, very politely avoiding him and the rest of the team, doing some work from her quarters and slipping into the lab in the dead of night to do what she couldn't from the solitude of her room. Somehow, she'd eaten and met with their superiors. No one had updated Fitz, and he hadn't asked.
Fitz's mouth dropped open and then closed again, giving way to an intense swell of self-loathing at not being able to return this simplest of greetings. Christ, he'd been able to do better the last time she came back to their lab, when it was a total surprise and he was still fighting tooth and nail through hypoxia-induced aphasia.
He knew what was different about this time, though - this time, he'd dove through a hole in the universe to save her. Twice. He'd told her in no uncertain terms that he loved her more than life itself. He'd kissed her, just feet from where they stood now, and she'd kissed him back.
"You said it'd be alright if I came back to the lab today, so -"
God, her voice alone was enough to undo him. He'd missed her proper British accent which had somehow become a touchstone for him, a comfort. "Yeah. Um, yeah. Just - your bench is just as you left it. Um...still. I've spoken with Hannah and Haroun, and they'll be on hand to assist you with whatever you might need. Passed on your briefing to them and everything."
Jemma had been working on a comprehensive indexing system for the ever-increasing number of Inhumans crossing S.H.I.E.L.D.'s path since the ancient Inhuman had been unleashed on the globe, combing the earth for his army. S.H.I.E.L.D. tried to reach the evil creature's potential soldiers first, and thanks to Daisy and Mack's efforts, they were succeeding much of the time. Jemma had been right to devise a system to quickly evaluate each Inhuman's field readiness on a scale from one to ten after averaging their scores on a number of factors.
Jemma's mouth twitched up in the ghost of a smile. "You learned their names."
Fitz dipped his head, half-hiding a small smile of his own. "Well, not all of 'em. Just my favorites. The least useless ones, you know."
"Your favorites? And you're lending them to me?" Jemma said, with what might possibly have been the lilt that came with the playful teasing she used to give him on the regular.
Fitz shrugged. "You told me to be nice. To the lab techs. I took it to heart."
Aside from pushing past his own guilt, with a lot of help from Bobbi, over his hand in Will's death, Fitz had been struggling with one thing more than any other - how he would know when Jemma was ready. Ready for what, exactly, he wouldn't have been able to put his finger on the day they first came back to the Playground, but he knew there would come a time when she was ready to come back to him. That was when he would know, he told himself, what "back to him" would look like. Either she would want to be friends, maybe best friends once again, even, but still friends. Just friends.
That, or that tiny spark of fascinated interest would turn out to be something more - the spark he'd seen in her eyes, felt in her lips as they touched his, sensed in her fingertips gently pressing into his cheek when she pulled them away after their one and only kiss.
He knew that she was mourning Will - someone she loved. She was entitled to that, he wanted her to have that. He also knew that her guilt over surviving that planet even as Will had given his life for her compounded that mourning to an unbearable degree.
What he didn't know was whether pushing himself into her space in an effort to be there for her would hurt or help. Because he had told her how he felt, because he had grabbed her and kissed her, she knew that her acute grief over losing Will was a double-edged sword - she knew that it hurt Fitz, too, and surely felt even more guilt over that.
Fitz didn't want her to see any more than she could imagine, so as much as he wanted to, he hadn't knocked on her door, hadn't offered his arms as a safe haven or his chest as a tether to a world in which she was loved, unconditionally.
"Oh, Fitz," she said with that kind, familiar smile and shake of her head. Instantly, they were 26 years old again, stepping onto the Bus the first time and solving their squabbles with a game of Roshambo. She stepped toward him and he froze when she reached an arm out. She squeezed his shoulder as she passed him on her way to her lab bench, and then got to work, just like that.
Just like old times.
Just like none of it had ever happened.
Over the course of the day, as he snuck glances over at her as she worked, Fitz's emotions warred within him. On the one hand, he was beyond relieved that Jemma was here, and alive, and okay, and for all intents and purposes, herself. On the other, it was uncanny to the point of being disturbing just how very much herself she was.
Fitz had only ever thought of 'pre-monolith Jemma' as a wistful memory, a beacon of hope during the darkest times after she'd gone missing. He never actually thought he would ever encounter that Jemma ever again. Yet, here she was - same tone and lilt to her voice, same patient yet authoritative directives to the lab techs, same bloody style of dress and swoop to her eyeliner.
It was like looking at a ghost.
Jemma wouldn't have seemed off at all to anyone who didn't know her as well as Fitz did. But he knew. He knew that there was a spark to her eyes that was a bit duller than usual, a halting hitch to her step every now and again that marred the confidence with which she'd once navigated their lab.
Most obviously, and perhaps worst of all, it was like someone had taken his Jemma and removed every word, every touch, every tear and every revelation that had passed between them in the past few months.
Which meant that the one thing he'd been waiting for, the one bit of knowledge that would set the rest of his life on course, wasn't going to happen. He wouldn't know how all those things had affected her. He wouldn't know whether they were friends or more. If she kept this up, this pre-monolith Jemma charade, he would live the rest of his life in limbo.
And that was the one thing, the only thing, Fitz just couldn't bear.
He stood hunched over his own bench, mired in this resignation from lunch to tea time, when Jemma infuriatingly brought him a mug of tea with a bit of milk and far too much sugar - exactly as he'd taken it ten months ago. (Since then, he'd drunk it black, not having time or energy to add anything, nor the fortitude to revisit the milk and sugar pots that he and Jemma had once used together.)
He tried to smile at her in his old way, but from her answering look, he knew that both of them could tell something was off.
Without taking a sip, Fitz walked out of the lab and toward the Playground's residential wing.