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The first time that Agent Angela Dawkins hears the name of Jemma Simmons, she thinks somebody mumbled. Surely, that isn't a real first name. But yes, it turns out that it is. Angela soon learns that Jemma Simmons, not Jenna or Jenny or Jaime, is the one that's keeping Agent Fitz in the lab at all hours.
And, to be honest, she feels bad for the guy.
Because from the stories that the techs whisper behind his back, they were never actually a couple. They were lab partners and friends, but Hydra seems to have taken toll on their relationship, same as everybody else.
"I don't know why he can't just let go," mutters Carré over lunch, "it's been weeks. The footage shows her getting eaten by that rock. What does he think he's going to do about it?"
Dawkins watches Carré take a stab at her yogurt, and she decides that this is just a result of the tension that supposedly didn't exist in the lab before Agent Simmons disappeared.
It's not until she's in the lab late working on another cell analysis (not her specialty) that she actually gets within fifty feet of Leopold Fitz. She's seen him around, but this time he's not hiding in a corner. This time, he almost trips over her.
"Sorry," he mumbles, but she hears his sharp intake of breath as he backs away from her and into a desk corner.
"Are you alright?"
Her hands reach out for him before she can stop them, but she is able to prevent herself from actually making contact, hovering awkwardly over his torso instead. He clutches at his side with a hand and look up at her.
And if she stares for just a moment, it's only because she's never seen eyes that blue before.
"I'm fine," he says, standing upright. "Sorry, again."
Angela shrugs at him. "You must be tired if you're running into things."
He doesn't answer as much as he shakes his head and sighs at her, and he's about to return to his corner when she says, "Do you need help with anything?"
She's not even sure why she said it. It's like the words just shot out of their own accord. When he turns back and cocks his head at her, she feels herself flush.
"I mean, I'm almost done with this, if you need a hand," she says.
Fitz folds his arms and raises an eyebrow. "Do you know Hebrew?" he asks.
And, as a matter of fact, she does.
"Where'd you learn this, anyway?"
She turns to answer him and then there he is, looking over her shoulder. Her head whips back to the scroll she was translating, and he's close enough that she can feel his gaze on her. She's heard the stories of him and Simmons, how they were practically joined at the hip. He must be used to a certain lack of personal space.
"I, uh, I did a semester abroad in Jerusalem."
"Did you?"
There's something about the way he leans against her desk, and the laser-like focus he has on her. And when he asks her what it was like, she can't help but let the stories tumble from her lips, because she's traveled the world for SHIELD, but she actually got to experience this little corner of the world instead of catching glances from quinjet windows. He asks her questions about the people she met, and about the culture, and they're about fifteen minutes into the conversation before she realizes that he's not asking about her; he's planning to go there. Which is absolutely reckless, and she's sure Bobbi would agree, so why is she helping him? She feels sorry for him, she guesses. And Jemma, really. She knows the laws of thermodynamics as well as anyone in the lab, and Jemma's body has to be somewhere. If she's still alive, she's in danger, and it's a SHIELD agent's duty to help.
She likes helping Fitz, of course. But when she kneels at her bed for her nightly report to God, she asks Him if she's started herself on a wrong path.
She doesn't listen for an answer.
Weeks have turned to months, and Angela has learned that her favorite thing in the world is the triumph of making Fitz smile. It's because he's so severe, she decides. He's so tired and stern that the spark of light in his eyes is like striking a match in a cave. It's like fireworks. And if she finds excuses to be closer to him, to breathe in his musky scent and try out a new science pun, well, she's only human.
And she couldn't be more to him, even if she wanted to be. He's in love with someone else.
"They barely got along," said Carré one day. "She left him, you know. Right after the accident. And when all this Inhuman stuff started to happen, she thought Inhumans were a plague! He supported Daisy, of course."
She adds this to the long list of things that she knows about Jemma. Jemma met Fitz at SciTech, where she was the top of their class (but just barely); she jumped out of a plane to save her team; and Fitz almost died saving her from a watery death. Jemma's not a bad person, not by any means, but she didn't return Fitz's feelings. And that, to Angela, is unfathomable. Was she not enthralled by the way his brogue curled around her name? Was she never tempted to explore the softness of his curls? Jemma had years with him and saw nothing but a friend. Angela's spent a few months by his side and is completely besotted with him.
She wishes she could keep denying it, but she can't. He consumes her thoughts and floods her worries. And why shouldn't she fall for him? He's the kindest, bravest, smartest soul she's ever had the privilege to encounter. He has a nobility that she never thought she'd see in real life. He's perfect.
Perfect, of course, in the sense that he still has flaws. In the sense that he has a temper and he loves someone that never loved him back.
Somehow, she loves him all the more for it.
"You've got it all wrong," says Bobbi one day as they're going through inventory. "Simmons pulled Fitz up ninety feet of ocean on the one breath he gave her. She's a hero."
"Is it true, though," Angela asks, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear, "that she left right after she realized he was brain damaged?"
Angela is surprised when she sees anger flash across Bobbi's face, and she finds herself taking a step back.
"Look, I know you weren't there, but I was in charge of looking over Simmons when she was undercover. She was miserable. And she was even worse when she got back and found out that Fitz wouldn't let her back into his life. She pined after him for months."
Angela cocks her head at Bobbi. "Well, I heard that—"
"She's not great at expressing her feelings," Bobbi interjects. "Doesn't mean she doesn't have them. Doesn't mean she wouldn't do anything for him. That trip to Hydra? She thought she was helping him by getting out of his way. And wherever she is now, she's probably just as desperate to find him as he is to find her." Bobbi checks off the last of the items on her list and heads out the door.
Angela takes a second to breathe and collect herself. She's a scientist; she knows how to tell a good source from a bad one, and if she's honest, Angela knows that Carré's just bitter about the extra work that they've got. Maybe the story would be different if one department head was MIA, and the other one did more than just working enough to stay out of trouble.
If Jemma really does return Fitz's feelings, Angela has no right to get in the way. But what if she's dead? It's more of a surety with every hour that passes. Angela believes in miracles, of course, but would Fitz get his? The leads are only growing colder.
And she hates the way it wears on him, how it is getting harder and harder to make him smile. He acts like he doesn't have a friend in the world, but doesn't he see that she is spending almost all of her free time on him? That it's her expertise that's allowing them to track the monolith's origins? And Bobbi's there too, of course, covering his tracks and giving sisterly advice whenever he needs it. He has people who care about him, people who are fighting for him, but why isn't it enough? Is Jemma's hold on him that great? Is it impossible for him to truly live in a world that doesn't have Jemma in it?
And it's that night that she adds Jemma to her prayers.
She's supposed to pray for her enemies, after all.
"Why don't we take a break?"
She has to distract him, or he will break. He rests his hands on his lower back and glares at her.
"We have work to do."
"It's three AM," she counters, stifling a yawn. "We can barely think. Our brains will work subconsciously as we play."
He sighs, throwing himself in the chair like a petulant child.
"Play what?"
"Cards, of course. Don't you know that I always have a deck of cards on me?"
She's been carrying around a deck with stylized circuits on the back for just an opportunity such as this. She suggests they play Egyptian War, because it's active enough to wake him up a bit, and his hand is bound to brush against hers when they slap doubles.
It's pathetic, it's weak, and she knows it's a path straight to Hell, but she's been suffering too long, and she's going to win the heart of Leopold Fitz, no matter what anyone says. Somebody around here should have chance at getting what they want. So she smiles at him, laughs at jokes that might not be jokes, and when she compliments him on beating her, she swears she sees a blush.
Her only mistake is not catching her yawn when he suggests that they get back to work.
"Actually," he says, "you should sleep. I'll stay here, figure it out."
He's got this look on his face, and she knows him well enough to understand that she can't fight him on this. She takes it gracefully.
"She's lucky, you know," she says as she puts the cards away, "to have someone like you."
She hopes he'll blush again, but no, he looks at his feet and sucks in a breath.
"She's not lucky at all," he says.
Something shifts after that. He's harder to find because he's hardly around, always skipping off to one hostile country or another. Angela wonders if this is the part where his grief explodes before burning out. Maybe this just has to run its course.
Dear God, she prays, please help him find happiness. Please help him find whatever it is he needs to find. Help Jemma, too, wherever she is.
Help me to help them both.
She never tells him to stop. Not when he goes to Morocco with a case of fake splinter bombs, not when he comes back worse than she's ever seen him. She lets Coulson tell him, and she ducks into a hallway as he does so, because he needs to hear it, but he'll never forgive the one who tells him.
But she sees the way he nods, and he is so tired. He has to let go of his burden somehow. She wants to run to him, to comfort him in any way she can, but this is is something he needs to do on his own. So she walks away, her path blurred by tears, giving him all the space he needs.
That's why she doesn't hear him scream, doesn't see him beat his hands against the monolith in an attempt to follow Jemma into the dark. That's why she's not the one who pulls him back into the land of the living, and why it isn't her thumbs that dry his tears. No, Bobbi has that privilege, and she only hears about it when Fitz hands her the sand and begs her to carbon date it for him. She tells him it's the only kind of dating that she's good at, and he looks at her like she's wasting his time.
And that's when she realizes that she is.
It's the sand that seals her fate, wearing her down the way it wore down the pyramids. Sand truly is a destructive force, seeping into the cracks and cutting where it's tender. This sand, she discovers, is older than dirt, literally older than the planet, so the only explanation is that it comes from another one. Her hands shake when she gives him the report, and there is no joy in his eyes, only doom. Whatever he thinks this means, he expects it to hurt. He expects it to kill him.
And she knows now that there's simply nothing she can do about it.
Maybe Fitz will raise the dead. Maybe he'll have to die to do it. Either way, it doesn't matter to him if she's there or not. Only Jemma matters. Angela doesn't belong here, and she never has.
She puts her duffel bag down and sighs. When she'd gone to Coulson to ask for a transfer, she didn't think she'd be standing in her new room at the Treehouse less than forty-eight hours later. Yet, here she is, ready for her new adventure and already pining after the man she never had. There are projects here, though, more mineral than animal. It should be enough to keep her mind occupied.
She's trying to figure out where to hang the picture of her and her dad at graduation when her phone buzzes. It's Bobbi.
They found her.
Bobbi doesn't tell her how or why, just sends her a picture of Fitz in what looks like a literal hole in the ground. He's sitting in a pile of rubble, but he's smiling wider than she's ever seen him. He's smiling at a woman who is looking at him like he's the only light she's ever seen.
It's a miracle, all right.
Angela drops to her knees right then, because she shouldn't be mad about this. Someone is alive today. Someone found the love they lost.
Someone found a love that loves them back.
She prays for forgiveness, mostly, because she sorely needs it. She prays for Jemma, too. And Fitz. She prays that Jemma knows how rare a man like Fitz is, and that she cherishes him.
She's been praying for a good, long time when her phone buzzes again. She dries her cheeks and opens the message, showing a picture of Jemma leaning on Fitz as Fitz kisses her forehead. She looks so weak and frail, but she's safe now.
Couldn't have done it without you, writes Bobbi.
She makes sure to set her phone gently on her side table. She wants to throw it. She wants to run. But she walks down the spiral staircase that leads to the big kitchen instead. She continues down a hallway and is almost blinded by the light that bounces off tree leaves to stream through the large windows. This is not the bunker she's used to, and she doesn't mind at all.
There's hardly a soul around, but she finds someone in the kitchen, a man with a five o'clock shadow who looks like he hasn't slept in weeks. He's playing solitaire at the table, though it mostly looks like he's flipping aimlessly through the deck.
"Hey," he says as she turns to leave, "you're the new agent, right?" He points to himself. "Greg Oestreich. Everyone calls me Grego. You?'
"Angela Dawkins," she answers.
He smiles at that, then sits taller in his chair, though he's still not straight. "Well, Angela Dawkins, I know we just met, but I've just had a terrible day. Do you mind . . . could you sit with me? Play a game?"
She rolls her eyes and sits next to him.
"Solitaire can't be played with two people."
"Okay," he says, already gathering the cards up. "Something else then?"
He looks up at her with inquisitive eyes that are big and brown, and she knows that he's actually looking at her. He's trying to figure her out. He's trying to know her.
It's been a while since anyone has actually noticed her.
"How about, uh . . ." She closes her eyes, then opens them. "Egyptian War?"
He chuckles, shuffling the deck. "Sure," he says, "I mean, that's not what I call it, but okay."