Chapter Text
She sits by his bed for nine days. Nine days of not thinking about any bottom-of-the-ocean confession or how she feels about it. Nine days of reading and rereading his medical chart, of researching oxygen deprivation, potential prognoses, of creating recovery timelines based on any and all possible outcomes. Nine days of not crying, not even once.
When he finally wakes, she holds her breath for longer than she had when fighting for the surface. She knows she can save them both.
He blinks at her, sluggishly, his brilliant blue eyes dulled. He doesn’t say anything, and she still doesn’t cry.
++
Skye comes by with tea—not quite like Fitz would have made it, but Jemma finds herself comforted nonetheless.
“He’s started speaking, a bit,” Jemma tells her in a flat, professional tone, as if she’d been practicing.
“Do you know um, what… he’ll be like?” She knows that Skye is trying, she really is. Skye had cried by Fitz’s bedside one night, confessing that she was still heartbroken about Ward and she hated herself for it. Skye blames herself for too much, for everything. Jemma tries to reassure her, but she’s too cowardly to admit her own role in Fitz’s trauma. That knowledge is choking her.
Jemma sighs, sipping her tea and leaning back in the chair, exhaustion seeping through every pore. “The doctors aren’t sure yet. He hasn’t regained use of his arm. They think there’s some memory loss. It’s difficult to ascertain how much because of the aphasia.” There’s been a fear lodged in the back of her mind that she doesn’t allow herself to articulate to anyone yet. Jemma knows Fitz’s face better than she knows her own, but she has never seen this blank expression focused on her before.
When Fitz finally asks who she is, Jemma smiles stiffly. “I’m Dr. Jemma Simmons,” she says. “We worked… work together.”
“W-we-we’re…. fr-fr-fr…”
“Friends?” Jemma supplies, and he nods, forehead scrunched in frustration.
“Yes, we’re friends.” She tries to relax her face. He won’t believe her if she doesn’t attempt to look friendly.
That night in her bunk, for the first time in months, she cries. She doesn’t even feel sad; she is blindingly angry. You said I was more than that she screams into her pillow. How can you say that and then forget me?
Jemma prides herself on being logical, analytical. She has studied the brain, dissected it, measured tissue. She can be detached. But she can’t help the way his betrayal cuts through her. How much could he have possibly loved her, if 90 feet of water was enough to drown the best years of their lives together? Why can’t he just try harder?
She knows she’s being unfair. But she also knows, has known since he woke up and didn’t recognize her, that she’s in love with him. She’s always loved him but she still took the last breath and emerged unscathed. She knows that she could never have forgotten him, no matter what.
++
Trip and Mack help with Fitz’s physical therapy, while she compiles articles for him to read. He’s forgotten most of his post-doctorate schooling, but his brain is reworking connections fast enough. He is still easily frustrated, but he reads textbooks voraciously, his love of physics and engineering unharmed.
If Fitz truly remembered what a genius he was, if he had any idea of what he'd forgotten, Jemma thinks it wouldn’t be this easy to work with him. He’s not learning anywhere close to his pre-accident pace, but he’s still far faster than what a person with above-average intelligence could manage, and he seems increasingly confident in his abilities.
He still doesn’t remember any of them, and it’s painful and a little fascinating to watch him rebuild relationships.
Mostly it’s painful.
Without whatever had been going on before (looking back, after his confession, Jemma suspects jealousy), Fitz bonds quickly with Trip, and he adores Mack. She often finds them playing Xbox together after physical therapy sessions. Hunter is their strange tagalong brother who’s always encouraging them to unwind with beers after any mission. When she walks by the common room after late nights in the lab, she can hear them all drinking and laughing, Fitz occasionally chiming in with a sentence or two. She never joins them.
He’d never had a lot of male friends. He was awkward and shy and felt threatened because he was so much smaller than everyone else. Ward had actually been the first—but Jemma shuts down any thought of Ward as soon as it appears. She can't afford the additional torture.
Jemma should be so happy for Fitz. Aren’t people supposed to be selfless when they love someone? But she doesn’t feel happy; she feels hurt and jealous. When they had been partnered together in chem lab, they fell into friendship fast and easily. They were finishing each other’s sentences and staying up too late working on side projects or watching Doctor Who within weeks.
It’s been months, and he treats her like his doctor, not his friend. He says his goal is to be able to come back to the lab and work with her, but he doesn’t seem particularly interested in rekindling their friendship. She joined Mack, Trip, and Fitz for dinner one night but left halfway through, face burning and sick to her stomach. You didn’t even LIKE Trip, she wants to yell. You’d never even MET Mack. I’m trying so hard, and you just want to let me go.
She thinks she might hate him. If he had never said she was more than that, she wouldn’t be second-guessing their every interaction. She wouldn’t be trying to find any sign that he still felt the same way. He forced her into a broken heart. How could he do that? How can you treat someone you love like that?
Being in love with Fitz is a constant exercise in pain management. It’s an incurable condition, palliative treatment her only option.
++
Jemma barely sleeps. She works overtime for Coulson, trying to manage her job on top of Fitz’s, and her free time is spent tutoring Fitz or researching new possibilities for memory recovery.
She briefly flashes onto the memory machine, but instantly dismisses the thought. She had studied Fitz’s notes and thinks she can repair it, but she would never torture Fitz like that. Right now she hates him, but she will always love him.
She’s lost weight; it seems like Fitz is always in the kitchen with someone else and she can’t stand to be there. She should be happy that he’s laughing again, but he never laughs with her and it burns.
So it takes awhile before she notices that Skye and Fitz have been meeting for TV nights with increasing regularity. She's sure nothing is going on—Fitz had never been Skye’s type, anyway. But she hears them watching Doctor Who and thinks if there were ever anything in her stomach, she would lose it. Skye doesn’t even like Doctor Who. She’d made fun of them for watching it so many times.
That night, Jemma sobs into her pillow. It’s only the second time she’s broken down, but when she wakes up she decides that she needs to formulate a plan. This isn’t her; she’s stronger than this. She can’t keep letting him destroy her.
++
Skye knocks gently on her door. It’s a Saturday morning, which normally doesn’t mean anything but for once work has slowed down a bit, enabling Jemma to sleep much later than she’d anticipated.
“Come in,” she mutters groggily, shocked to see that it’s almost 10am.
Skye slips inside, holding up a cup of tea in offering. “Sorry to wake you,” she says apologetically. “I just wondered if we could talk?”
Jemma sits up and pats beside her on the bed, reaching for the cup gratefully.
“So…” Skye pauses and shifts, and Jemma narrows her eyes. She hasn’t seen her friend looking this uncomfortable in a long time. “Um, so Fitz kind of… asked me out last night?”
“Oh.” Jemma is fine. She is fine, she is fine, she is fine.
Skye is rambling now. “It was weird, I mean we’d been watching a movie and kind of, I mean we might have been drinking a bit. I mean we weren’t drunk, but yeah. We’d been having a good time. And he asked me and I said I wasn’t sure, it feels a bit weird since he doesn’t have any of his memories of us back. Then he kind of, um, kissed me.”
Jemma snorts out a laugh and Skye blinks at her, surprised. “No, it’s nothing. Go on.” It’s actually that Skye’s words punched her like the water when they’d blown the med pod’s window, and she’s annoyed at how ridiculously dramatic it is to think that way.
After all, she’s not dying this time. She’s not dying.
“I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have. The thing is, I’ve never felt like that about Fitz. I love him, he’s one of my best friends, but I just… don’t feel that way. But I feel so guilty about Ward and… Fitz is such a good guy. I should feel this way about him. Maybe if I had none of this would have happened. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
Skye is crying now and Jemma stares at her for a second before setting her mug down and reaching for her. It’s been awhile since she’s had human contact—she and Fitz had always been in each other’s personal space, but that ended with their friendship. She tries to quiet her mind, tries to pretend that being enveloped in someone else’s arms, comforting and being comforted, is the only thing that exists.
“Oh, Skye. There’s nothing wrong with you. None of this is your fault.”
Skye doesn’t respond, just hugs Jemma tighter, attempting to quiet her sobs.
“What happened then?” Jemma finally asks, and she’s proud of herself for her bravery, for the way her voice doesn’t waver.
“I told him it wasn’t a good idea. I said that we were just friends and I was feeling guilty about what happened to him, and that he doesn’t really feel that way about me.”
“I’m sure he loved that.”
Skye smiles sadly. “Yeah, he’s very touchy about being told how he feels. He thinks it’s unfair that we all remember and he doesn’t, and it’s true, we can’t help treating him differently. I think that’s why he’s so close to Mack, there’s no history there. But really, I don’t think he even feels that way about me now. I’m just… here.”
“I don’t know if that’s true,” Jemma says softly. “He did have a crush on you, when you first joined the team.”
Skye shrugs. “Yeah, but not for very long. To be honest, I always thought he was in love with you. Especially after the Chitauri virus, it just… sometimes he would say things, or the way he’d look at you. But both of you said you were just friends and there was nothing there. And it seemed like you didn’t feel the same way, so I never pushed it.”
Jemma doesn’t quite stop herself from stiffening and Skye freezes, wide-eyed. “Do… do you? Feel the same way?”
Jemma doesn’t say anything, just twists her fingers into her blanket and wonders what dying feels like. It’s living that she finds so excruciating lately.
Skye starts crying again and Jemma no longer has the strength to move. “I never would’ve, I had no idea. I asked you and you never—I’m so sorry, I ruined everything, please don’t hate me.”
“I don’t hate you, Skye,” Jemma reassures her. Skye would never intentionally hurt either of them, and she can’t be expected to understand her heart when Jemma had never understood it herself.
“We can fix this,” she says, grabbing Jemma’s hands and pleading with her. “He still loves you, I know he does.”
“There’s nothing to fix, Skye. He doesn’t remember us, and he doesn’t feel the way he used to.”
“But if you’d just try—”
“You think I’m not trying?”
“No, no, I don’t mean like that. I know you’re working so hard to help him, but he’s… he’s actually doing really well, you know? Not like the old Fitz, but he’s improving a lot and I think… maybe he just would like to be friends? He does talk about you a lot. He keeps telling me how brilliant you are, and how he's been reading a lot of scientific articles in his free time trying to catch up. But it’s like, he’s always trying to impress you and maybe it would help your relationship if you just talked to him like a friend and not like his doctor or teacher.”
Jemma knows Skye is only trying to help, but right now everything is falling apart around her. Fitz kissed Skye. He told me he loved me and then he kissed Skye.
“I think I’d just like to be alone right now, if that’s all right?” Jemma lays back down before Skye can answer, barely hears her apologies as she closes the door. Jemma doesn’t leave her bed until Monday morning.
++
“Were we really friends?” Fitz asks her, as he helps her prepare samples in the lab. He’s improved so much; his bad hand prevents him from working on some of the more delicate tasks, and he still gets frustrated, but he’s become an invaluable lab assistant. Her Fitz would probably be furious to find he’d been relegated to her assistant, but her Fitz died almost a year ago at the bottom of the ocean, and this one seems content with his progress and constantly in awe of the work they do for SHIELD.
“Why would you ask that?”
“Um, it’s j-just that… we w-work well with, with—together, but you don’t seem to… like me v-very much?”
Jemma bites down on her lip, surprised. She can’t imagine her Fitz broaching a topic like this. She knows it’s not healthy to think of her Fitz as someone separate from the man standing in front of her, and it’s not fair to him. But she needs to protect herself and that’s easier if she can believe her best friend isn’t the one consistently rejecting her.
“Of course I like you. Why do you say that?”
Fitz narrows his eyes, scrutinizing her face as if to gauge whether or not she’s lying, and she turns away, tired of being so exposed.
“You just n-never hang out with us. We invite you to watch mov-movies with us or have dinner, but you never do. Or you leave early. But you-you hang out with ev-every, with… other people, if I’m not there.”
Jemma huffs out a breath, trying to keep her anger in check. “I’m doing the job of two people right now,” she says. “More, really. I don’t have the time to play games.”
Fitz flinches. “I’m trying my-my best. To help in the—in the lab.”
Jemma nods but doesn’t say anything, not trusting herself to keep her secrets hidden.
“I’m… I’m sorry.”
“Fitz,” she sighs. “Do you even know what you’re sorry for?”
When he doesn’t answer, she snaps off her gloves and walks out of the lab.
“I’m sorry for forgetting you,” he says softly to her retreating figure. He hates that he’s not brave enough to say it to her face.
++
A week later, Jemma decides to follow Skye’s advice and make a different kind of effort. Maybe things would never be the same between them again, but she misses Fitz so much. Maybe she should let go of the idea of them being anything more than friends. They’d been best friends for a decade, and it had been enough at the time. It could be enough again. Once, she had begged the universe to just let Fitz wake up. Maybe she should have specified in what condition, but her wish had been granted and she’s squandering it.
Fitz smiles shyly at her when she joins them in the common room. Trip, Mack, and Skye are arguing about which movie to watch, and Hunter tosses her a beer. Hunter’s ex-wife/on-again girlfriend Bobbi is making popcorn in the kitchen and settles down next to Jemma when she returns.
Everyone but her loudly mocks the movie as they watch it. When Fitz laughs at something Mack says, Jemma realizes that she hasn’t made him laugh like that since before the accident. She’s too many beers in, exhausted, and she can feel it going to her head. Suddenly, everything clarifies, her mind clicking into focus. It’s her. She’s the one making Fitz worse, making him uncomfortable. In the year that she’s spent working with him, trying desperately to make him remember her, to remember them, he’s learned to accept his current life. He’s re-formed relationships with everyone else but her, he’s friends with everyone but her.
She chokes on her next gulp of beer and Hunter grabs it from her hand, pounding her back. “That might be enough for you, love.”
She snatches it back angrily, sloshing bitter-smelling liquid all over his trousers.
“Hey, hey, calm down, sweetheart!”
“Don’t call me sweetheart,” she bites out, and she can’t even be mortified that tears are streaming down her face.
Bobbi not-so-subtlety hits Hunter’s shoulder as Skye leans in and whispers in her ear: “Are you okay, Jemma?”
“I’m fine,” she spits, much too loudly, and sees that the others are all staring at her in shock. Jemma has never felt so exposed and alone and misunderstood. She stumbles off the couch.
“I’m fine,” she says again. “Just…just leave me alone.”
She makes it back to her bunk, locking the door and sliding down to the floor, breathing heavily. This is ridiculous she thinks as she finishes her beer. This isn’t who she is. She remembers months ago Coulson recommending counseling, saying he felt she might be suffering from PTSD. She had promised to look into it, but she’d ignored his suggestion. She didn’t have PTSD. What did she even have to be traumatized about? The med pod that she’d escaped unharmed? A vague love-confession from her best friend? It’s not like they’d even gone on a date before he’d forgotten her. It’s not like he hadn’t survived. She was the one who had ruined all of her chances.
She’s being weak, and she doesn’t know how to stop this spiral of self-hatred.
When she thinks of a plan, part of her knows it’s the worst idea she’s ever had. But the rest of her is tired of feeling so defeated. Tired of being trapped in the worst version of her universe. Fitz forgot her and he seems the happiest he’s ever been. Why doesn’t she deserve the same comfort?
With alcohol-fueled bravery, she sneaks into the lab, past the doors that Coulson has coded, as if none of them were smart enough to work around it.
When her eyes adjust to the darkness and she sees the nightmarish machine, a sense of peace fills her for the first time since Ward sent her to die at the bottom of the ocean. She can do this, she knows she can.
She programs the machine, cockily proud of herself for being able to do this drunk. SHIELD would be crippled without her expertise, and she feels guilty about that, she really does. But she’s given everything she can and now she’s hollowed out. She misses who she used to be; she just wants a reset.
She lays down and takes a deep breath. Goodbye, she whispers. I love you, but I can’t do this anymore.
Then she turns the machine on and screams.
++
Bobbi is the first to reach Jemma; she throws herself over Jemma’s flailing body as she yells at the others to turn the machine off.
“I don’t know how!” Skye wails, hands trembling as she fumbles with the controls.
“Just shut the power off, it’s killing her,” Mack roars, almost drowned out by Jemma’s tortured screams.
“No!” Fitz shouts, startling the others. “It’s-it’s-it’s dangerous. Her br-brain, the p-p-power…” He hasn’t stumbled over his words this badly in a long time and his hand is jerking uncontrollably at his side.
“Can you shut it off?” Bobbi asks, grunting as Jemma’s spasms nearly throw her off.
Fitz looks like he might cry or be sick, but he stands next to Skye, directing her as best he can remember, praying that his best is good enough.
May and Coulson rush in as the machine finally powers down, the only sound everyone’s heavy breathing as they pull Jemma out and attempt to determine her condition. Fitz falls into a nearby chair and covers his face with his hands, willing the screams to stop echoing in his brain. The sound reverberates and unlocks something inside him. He sees a flash of her standing in front of him, holding an oxygen tank, tears streaming down her face. He had said something; he had felt calm but she had screamed and now it’s torturing him. Why couldn’t he remember?
“What the hell is going on here?” Coulson yells, vein throbbing in his forehead.
The team looks at him, shocked and voiceless, until faint hiccuping sobs make them turn back to Jemma, who is struggling to sit up.
“Hey, easy, Jemma, easy,” says Bobbi, reaching over to steady her.
Jemma looks at her and then at the rest of them, pupils blown wide. “Where am I? Who are you people?”