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Jemma woke, blinking up at a darkened, unfamiliar ceiling. She was still drowsy, sleep pulling at the corners of her consciousness, but something in her was fighting against it. She tried to remember where she was and why there was a rough, over-starched sheet she didn't recognize tucked around her.
"Fitz?" His name bubbled out of her before she could think and she squeezed her eyes shut, not sure how she could know he was here when she didn't even recall where she was.
"Jemma," came his answer, and just the syllables of her name passing through his roughened throat calmed her confusion enough for her to sit up, clearing the sleep from her eyes with a brush of her hand. "Sorry, I shouldn't have turned on that light. Knew it would wake you." She could hear the self-recrimination in his tone, easily recognizable to her after hearing it far too often recently.
She could finally make him out, a silhouette padding across the room, and he threw them into near-pitch darkness with a flip of a switch. The only light left came from the moonlight streaming through a crack in the heavy curtains, pulled shut over the sole window in the room.
"You should go back to sleep," he whispered, and she felt the edge of the bed shift as he sat down, too far for her to reach him. "We don't need to take turns staying on watch. I'll never be able to drop off, so one of us should get enough rest to be clear-headed in the morning."
She braced her thumbs on her cheeks, fingers massaging her temples as she registered the distant pounding of a headache. It was all coming back to her as she woke up—Mack stuffing them into the back of an SUV and the desperate run from the Playground, Fitz's hand in hers as they huddled together in the back seat.
"Have you heard from Coulson...May...anyone?" she asked, squinting to try to make him out in the shadows.
She could feel the bed move as he shook his head. "No, but they warned us, right? Zero contact unless we're sure we've been discovered, and then we contact them over the emergency channel."
"I still don't like this. We should have stayed with the team."
"We were endangering the team," he pointed out, and she remembered the two of them having the same argument hours ago, just after they'd found themselves standing in the parking lot of this sleazy motel in the middle of nowhere, a wad of cash shoved into Fitz's hands by Mack before he peeled away into the night. "We have to hope no one was able to track us here. Hive's made it clear It needs us, that It intends to..." He seemed to waver for a moment before he continued, "...absorb us, or whatever It does."
"What time is it?" She yawned, unable to help herself. It felt ungrateful, showing any sign of fatigue after Fitz had been awake all this time as she rested.
"Just gone four in the morning. Lie back down, all right?"
"No, Fitz," she said, letting her exasperation through. "We should have taken it in shifts. You haven't slept in over a day." She sat up, sliding across the bed to try to find him, her hands moving blindly in the shadows.
"I'm fine." The bed dipped again as he got up and she shot her hand out, closing around his wrist. He didn't try to pull away, but he just stood there, silent, as though he was waiting her out.
"I don't even remember going to sleep." She was trying to remember back, but her mind was blanking after they'd walked into the motel room.
"You were upset. As soon as the door shut behind us and we were alone, you were..." He stopped, but she could hear his labored breathing, as though she'd forced him to recall something terrible, something he'd wished he could bury.
The rest of the night came back to her and she swung her legs over the edge of the bed. She suddenly needed to get up, to pace, to keep moving, though she knew there was nowhere to go. She remembered raving to him, fragments of her memories of being stalked by It on the planet, of being tortured by Ward's henchman to leverage Fitz's help, of letting Lash free to save herself when Hydra was holding her hostage. It had ended with him holding her as she alternately collapsed against him and fought against him, and then everything went black.
"Panic attack," she whispered, recalling Dr. Garner, of all people, diagnosing them for her as part of the PTSD when he'd still been her therapist. "I'm so sorry, Fitz."
"You're sorry? Jemma, don't be...you don't have to be sorry. I wish I wasn't completely useless at helping you with this. I got you there," he said, gesturing to the bed, "when it looked like you were about to pass out. Should have left it there, but no, I had to go and wake you up with that bloody light because I thought it would help me keep watch on the door."
"Fitz," she breathed, snaking her fingers from his wrist to twine with his. "Come here." She tugged at him, sliding across the bed to make room, but he yanked himself back, trying to pull away.
"One of us needs to stay on—"
"Rubbish," she said, not even caring if he was right. "If It—that thing—is coming for us, an extra seven seconds with a pistol in your hands isn't going to save us from capture. If this works, it'll be because we're hidden, not because we're ready for an ambush."
"Jemma," he began, but she could hear the resignation in his tone. It wouldn't take much to convince him, not when he'd run out of counter-arguments.
"Please, Fitz. I need you here," she said, feeling bolder in the darkness, able to choke out the confession that had been trying to escape from her for months. She did need him, more than she'd ever needed anything before in her life. Nothing would change that, not having to run in the dead of night, not being threatened or pursued. She was tired of knowing they both felt this way with neither of them giving voice to it.
He sighed, sitting on the edge of the bed as she pulled at him again. He released her hand and she had to hold back a hurt gasp, but he bent over, pulling his shoes off one by one before he twisted toward her, swinging his legs onto the bed.
She curled her hand around his arm, moving closer to him, but stopped there. They were both frozen, her leaning toward him and levered up on a shaky arm, and him, reclined stiffly against the pillows askew behind him.
"I know this is odd. Everything's been odd for far too long," she began, not sure he'd even know what she meant. "Couldn't we just—"
"Yeah," he breathed, a deep sigh whooshing out of him as he settled into the bed, turning toward her and letting his hand fall on her shoulder. His fingers brushed against the fabric of her shirt, his thumb tracing a comforting circle against her collarbone.
Her heart swelled, and as fragile as she still felt, her mind raced to the discussion she'd been having in her own mind with imaginary-Fitz since Daisy'd been the recipient of a vision of the future. She'd wanted to bring it up a thousand times, to pull from him the reason behind the resignation he'd shown as they'd discussed the future.
"Spacetime, Fitz," she whispered, and he let out a surprised laugh in response.
"You want to debate the intricacies of quantum physics right now?"
"It would be inevitable if I did, wouldn't it?" His hand tightened on her shoulder as she invoked the word 'inevitable'. It called back memories of the risk she'd taken, using the term to describe the two of them that night as the ash rained down on them.
"What did you want to say about it?" he asked, his tone guarded.
"Your hypothetical fourth-dimensional being...how much pity do you think it looks down on us with? Imagine being able to take in time...infinity...and see it all as a whole? To comprehend the shape of things? How wrong do you suppose we have it, even as we struggle to find meaning in the slice of it our limited minds are able to process?" She shut her eyes, hearing herself begin with the detached, intellectual version of the discussion. This was the same method she'd used during their earliest days at the Academy, her attempt to entice him to spend time with her when she'd still feared he was merely tolerating her.
"It's comforting, in a way," he said, and she smiled at him in the dark when he slipped into place on his side of the conversation, always exactly what she needed when she was struggling with something. "If we passed a cone through a two-dimensional space, it would be the same to us at each point. Our perception of it, other than its position, wouldn't change. If it was meant to exist, if we were always meant to create it and move it through that space, it would happen."
"But for the two-dimensional beings—if there were any," she hedged, "it would change. Different in every moment as it passed through their world."
"A large circle appearing out of nowhere, gradually shrinking to a dot, then disappearing," he added. "But the cone would still exist. It would always exist...even if it passed into time, away from us. Everything we are, everything we were, everything we'll ever be. It's there, immutable. Forever."
"It's beautiful, Fitz. I wish we could see it more completely." She wanted, so badly, for forever to envelop them, to freeze this moment and allow her to spin through it for eternity. His hand on her shoulder, their breath mingling in the air between them.
"Maybe," he whispered, and he sounded so heartbroken that it stole the breath from her. She reached out, letting her hand play over his cheek, determinedly staying there even as he began to pull away a little.
"Why does it make you upset?"
"It's all set," he shrugged. "Every decision we'll make, every place we'll be, it's already there. We simply haven't flowed through the time that will allow us to experience it. The patterns are in motion. Our natures have already determined it."
"You think you know, don't you?" she guessed. "You're quite brilliant, Fitz. I suspect you fancy yourself able to peek into the fourth dimension."
"Always been good with patterns," he said, and she could hear him retreating, trying to joke it away. His voice was rough behind the attempt to brush her back, and she took a few moments while she decided if he wanted her to push him past it.
"You're rubbish at this one," she chanced, feeling him flinch under her hand. "You think we're all we'll ever be to each other, don't you? That we'll never be more than we are right now."
"Don't," he warned. "We went back, all right? We turned back the clock and things have been good. We've worked side-by-side again. Being in the same room with each other isn't painful and awkward. I promised myself I wouldn't do anything to jeopardize that, and I won't let you do it, either."
"But you can't stop me, Fitz," she said, shifting infinitesimally closer to him. "If I say this now, I've always said this now."
"Said what?" he croaked out, sounding broken.
"We're going to be more, Fitz. We're going to beat Hydra and destroy It...that thing, whatever it is. We're going to orbit each other into infinity, and what we are now is going to pale in comparison to what we'll be. I need you, Fitz. I'll always need you."
"Jemma, you're tired and you're overwhelmed after last night—"
"You're right, but none of that matters. It won't change a thing. Our path through time is going to lead us precisely where it was always going to lead us. To each other."
She leaned forward and pulled him into a gentle kiss, careful not to push too hard or take too much from him. He didn't believe her yet. She could accept that, because she knew that he would. It would just take time.