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here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
She wrote a paper on it when they were in the Academy.
Or, more accurately, she wrote a paper on why it was a ridiculously illogical theory with limited scientific basis and supporting evidence so weak it couldn’t even hold a hypothesis, let alone a whole theory, on its shoulders.
There is, she wrote, no anecdotal evidence in the world strong enough that it could persuade the scientific community to verify the existence of soulmates. Without documented genetic testing, we have no tangible proof that two people could ever have a connection so deep that they can share one another’s pain.
Fitz beta-d the paper for her, his forehead creasing up as he read over the historical case studies of couples claiming to be able to transfer physical ailments between them at will, couples who were never alone in their agony because the other was feeling it right alongside them.
Couples who claimed that they shared a soul.
He agreed with her in the end that it was a ludicrous theory, and Jemma couldn’t help but feel a smug pang of satisfaction in that.
Even if the rest of the world persisted in clinging onto the belief that such a phenomenon as soulmates existed, it didn’t really matter.
She and Fitz, at least, knew the truth.
i.
The halls of the Playground are empty and quiet and Jemma has never hated them more than she does tonight.
She has hated the base ever since she first set foot in it just over a week ago and she cannot see that about to change any time soon. Everything about the place feels wrong: it is dark, it is draughty, the water comes out too cold in its creaking taps and she misses the steady thrum of the Bus’s engines underneath her feet, a sound that always seemed to Jemma to vibrate with life.
She misses feeling alive.
Sighing, Jemma shifts against the hard plastic of the chair she is sitting in and rubs at her neck. It is sore, as is her whole body from staying cramped up in the same position for so long, but after not sleeping for the past seventy two hours she doesn’t have the energy to get up and stretch. Besides, she has far more important things to worry about.
In her hands, her tablet has numerous internet tabs open chronicling the potential after-effects for a brain starved of oxygen. Jemma flicks through them methodically, occasionally pulling up a blank document that she is using to map out a plan for recovery from such a trauma, taking the therapy week by week, day by day. There are countless blogs and websites set up to give her a gage for how long such a recovery can take. Months, they are telling her.
Years.
The tablet starts to slip out of her shaking hands, and Jemma jumps for it a split second too late to stop it falling to the floor. The screen goes blank as it hits the ground, a spider’s web of cracks spiralling out from one corner to the middle, and for the first time in hours Jemma’s attention moves to the figure spread out in the hospital bed in front of her, her heart heavy in her mouth.
Lying in the bed, Fitz doesn’t move. Not even his eyelids, pulled stubbornly shut for the last week and two days, flutter at the sound of the tablet crashing onto tiled floor and the machines gathered around him continue their monotonous, taunting beeps that tell Jemma there is still no change in his condition.
Swallowing hard, she slumps back into her chair, leaving the broken tablet on the ground as tears begin to burn behind her eyes. The heaviness of her hope dies away as quickly as it had arrived.
It is hard for her to reconcile this motionless figure in front of her with the Fitz she knows – the Fitz who could never sit still, the Fitz who would scowl at her across the lab for hours when he was frustrated, the Fitz who could happily eat enough food for three people in one sitting and not feel ill after – and so, for the most part, Jemma doesn’t.
Instead, she allows the medical team to run their tests on him without objection and she gives them curt answers when they ask her questions. When they try to tell her gently that there is a chance that the Fitz in the bed might never wake up, she spends hours with her eyes trained on the tablet screen, formulation the perfect recovery for her Fitz, who will.
When she needs to cry, she locks herself in the furthest possible bathroom from the med bay and turns the taps on full blast, so that the too-cold water can muffle her sobs.
Jemma shuffles her chair forward over the broken tablet so she is sitting right next to the bed. From there, she takes him in: how pale his skin is, the pattern the faint blue veins across his eyelids make and the dark flecks of stubble across his face. She makes a mental note to shave him again in the morning.
It does not feel like Fitz in front of her. But it is.
Of course it is.
Taking a deep breath, Jemma sits forwards.
‘Amsterdam,’ she says, and her voice comes out in a croak after so many hours of silence. ‘You’ve always wanted to go, see the sights, ride a bike, and we never have. Wake up, and I’ll take you there.’
She waits, but the machines keep beeping and Fitz is still unmoving, so she tilts up her chin and tries again.
‘Pancakes,’ she continues, ‘thick scotch ones, just the way you like them. I’ll make them every morning and I won’t yell at you when you pour golden syrup over the butter. When we go to the zoo, I’ll let you stand in front of the monkey enclosure for as long as you want. I’ll buy us stools, so we can sit there for hours and when you tell me all the facts I already know, I’ll listen. I’ll let you win every rock, paper, scissors game we play. We won’t even have to play rock, paper, scissors because you’ll know you’re always going to win.’
On top of the standard issue green blanket, Jemma’s hand creeps out to take Fitz’s fingers in hers. It is the first time she has touched him since they were in the middle of the ocean and she is surprised to find that his skin is still warm to touch. Fitz had always had burning hot hands, even in the winter.
‘Your jumpers,’ she whispers, as the first tear rolls down her cheek. ‘All the jumpers and t-shirts and cardigans that I’ve stol- borrowed from you over the years. It annoys you so much I do that, because I never give them back, not even when you ask. But I will, this time, I promise. You don’t even have to ask; I’ll give you them all back. Even this one.’ She sniffs, and plucks at the sleeve of the deep blue cardigan she is wearing. ‘I’ve worn it every night, you know. It’s soft and, um, it still smells a little like you. But I’ll give it back. I’ll give them all back.’
Jemma exhales slowly, and squeezes lightly at his hand, bringing her head down to rest on the pillow next to his.
‘You just have to wake up.’
It begins with a tingling in her fingertips, a pins-and-needles prick, that slowly starts to move up her arm. It is gradual though, so gradual that Jemma barely takes note of it to start with, she is so tired. It is only once the tingling reaches her shoulder that she finally starts to pay attention and sits up, frowning.
The tingling continues to move up her neck, stopping at the base of her skull where it lingers, growing heavier with every passing second. Jemma focuses on it, biting her lip as it turns into an ache and then a throbbing pain, and she watches as the frown on Fitz’s forehead gradually begins to fade and a little colour begins to return to his cheeks. As her pain grows deeper, it seems that his begins to lessen.
It is almost as if the two are a cause and effect reaction.
The realisation of it, mingling with the almost unbearable pain in her head, makes Jemma gasp and she sits forward, gripping Fitz’s hand tighter.
‘Alright,’ she says, blinking once and then twice to clear away her tears. ‘Alright. I’ll hold it. If that’s what it takes, then I’ll hold it for you. I promise.’
Jemma concentrates on the pain at the base of her neck, breathing in through her mouth and out through her nose. Carefully she begins to use her thumb to rub the skin of Fitz’s hand in small, comforting circles.
‘I’ll hold it.’
The next morning, he wakes up.
ii.
‘Fitz, I’m only trying to help.’
And she is. She’s trying, desperately so, and she has been for months.
Ever since he’d woken up, lost and scared and looking to her for answers, Jemma has been trying to help. She dug out her old paper from the Academy, swapping her research on hypoxia for the phenomena of soulmates. And this time, she isn’t just looking for the numbers.
Late at night, once Fitz is sleeping, Jemma takes out her research and reads over her old case studies. Most of them are word-of-mouth stories, old folk tales told over camp fires and written down decades after the soulmates’ deaths. There are very few first-hand accounts of claimants and there haven’t been any recorded incidents for over one hundred and fifty years. Jemma reads every single one, and she learns.
It appears that the effect of having a soulmate, being able to transfer pain between you, only manifests once you decide to let it. In other words, it’s a choice. You aren’t born having a soulmate, Jemma discovers. You choose to have one.
She also finds that not all soulmates have romantic relationships; sometimes, it’s purely platonic, sometimes even familial. She finds cases where people chose multiple soulmates, and went mad from an excess of pain. She finds that the connection, once established, is irreversible; finite. She finds a case where a man passed away and his soulmate literally died from a broken heart.
Sometimes, Jemma finds, your soulmate does not choose you back.
‘You left!’
Fitz’s expression is part way between accusatory and crestfallen, and it makes Jemma’s chest ache just to look at him. She wishes she could rewind, to when she’d been standing over him a moment ago with her hand hovering at his shoulder, wondering whether to ease some of the very obvious pain he was feeling. She had even begun to, focusing lightly on the crown of his head and feeling that familiar prick in her bloodstream as she tugged, before he’d turned away from her and she’d retracted her fingertips.
Now, she wishes she’d pulled as hard on that pain as she could.
‘I needed help!’ Fitz stares her down, his eyes wide and his hand shaking as he counts off on his fingers. ‘I needed help with the cloaking, I needed help with, um, lots of other things and someone to talk them through at least…’
Jemma bites down so hard on her lip that she tastes blood but when she opens her mouth to reply, Fitz looks up, his face hardened, and she watches him take a deep breath.
‘You gave up on me.’
The accusation feels like a punch to the throat, and Jemma sucks in a sharp breath. ‘I did no such thing!’
She gave up, yes. But not on him.
For the first few days, she’d tried to take his pain away as often as she could. She’d spend hours sitting beside him with her hand resting on his, quietly draining the pain into herself while she chatted mindlessly about things that did not matter. Then, she’d make an excuse and stagger down the corridor back to her bunk, praying that she would be able to make it to her bed before she collapsed. Once, she’d barely even shut her door behind her before blacking out.
Despite this, it had been weeks before Jemma had realised that what she was doing wasn’t working. She could take his pain away, but the effects of that only seemed to last for a few hours before Fitz was hurting again, even worse than he had been before. And on top of that he was noticing it too, noticing the sudden lapses in what he perceived as his progress and getting angry: angry with himself, angry with the people around them and, most of all, angry with her.
She wasn’t taking away his pain anymore. Jemma had realised this one awful afternoon after a disastrous trip to a restaurant, where Fitz had complained bitterly about everything throughout the whole meal and it had taken all her strength not to crumple into tears in front of him.
She wasn’t taking away his pain.
She was causing it.
‘You told me,’ Fitz says, ‘you were gonna go see your mum and your dad! And then you went off to…’ He begins to struggle, his words catching as he grows more upset. ‘For al- for all I know, something could have…you could have been killed!’
Jemma swallows hard, tears suddenly prickling at the back of her throat.
And because, what?’ Fitz shrugs helplessly, his shoulders slumping in defeat. ‘Because you think I’m useless?’
‘Of course I don’t.’ Jemma looks up to meet his eyes, knowing how desperately important it is he understand this, if nothing else. ‘That’s not why I left-‘
‘Well, then why?’ Fitz demands, turning to face her.
Jemma hesitates.
She thinks back, back to the morning Coulson had asked her into his office and slid the proposal for an undercover mission at Hydra across the desk towards her. He hadn’t said anything to her, nobody had, but Jemma had seen the pity written across his features as he handed her the pen.
‘Fitz…’
I can do better, she had said thickly, signing her name at the bottom of the document. I promise I can do better.
But, a traitorous voice in the back of her head whispers, you couldn’t, could you?
Jemma shakes her head, her tears threatening to fall.
‘I can’t do this,’ she whispers, and ducks away to leave the room.
As she moves past him, her arm brushes against the material of his shirt, even as he tries to side step her. Jemma inhales deeply, feeling a sudden, heady rush in her veins that quickly manifests into a nauseating ache low in her chest. She purses her lips together, concentrating on the pain of his grief as hard as she can to pull as much as possible into her own body before she steps out of the door.
When she does, reaching out for the doorframe to stop herself from stumbling, there is a weight in Jemma’s heart that feels as heavy as lead.
‘I’m sorry.’
iii.
It’s hour ninety seven and Jemma has blisters bleeding on both her heels, cuts and scratches criss-crossing up her forearms and a throat that feels as dry and coarse as sandpaper. Her limbs are aching, the increased gravity is making it harder for her to breathe properly and she’s tired, she is so unbelievably tired.
Trudging over the endlessly empty landscape of her new desolate planet, Jemma finds herself wishing for the first time that somebody could hold her pain for once.
Almost instantly, she shakes the thought from her head.
No. That’s not fair.
Jemma sits down heavily on the ground, fighting for breath. ‘It’s not fair,’ she whispers to herself, and licks her chapped lips to wet them.
She wouldn’t wish this on anyone.
Squinting into the distance, Jemma sees another ridge about a mile in front of her, identical to the past ten she’s scaled. Over that next one there will be water, she is certain of it. She has to be certain, or else she is going to die.
But when she tries to rise to her feet, her legs are so shaky that she tumbles back down again, scraping the palms of her hands against the rocky ground. The cuts sting and Jemma hisses, balling her hands into fists as if she can contain the pain, as if she can stop herself from feeling it.
Maybe, she reasons dully, if she takes just a little while to rest then she’ll be able to climb the next ridge, no trouble.
Just for a little while, Jemma promises herself as she curls onto her side, hugging her knees to her chest. I’ll just rest for a little while and then I’ll get back up.
Automatically, she reaches into the back pocket of her jeans for her phone. She’s turned the brightness right down and switched off all data networks and bluetooth in the hope of preserving battery, but in moments like this Jemma cannot help herself from switching it on in a vain attempt at comfort.
She goes to her photo album first, scrolling through the documentation photographs she’d taken of the planet before the novelty had worn of and the terror had set in, to her photographs of her team. There are ones of Daisy and Mack, pulling funny faces and superhero poses. Bobbi and Hunter, their expressions caught half-way between love and exasperation. Coulson, cheerfully standing over the hob oven with a saucepan. May, sitting across the breakfast table from her with her lips pulled tight into what looks like a smile, if Jemma tilts her phone a little.
There are so many of Fitz that she could fill an entire gallery with them if she wanted to.
Jemma shifts on her side, worrying at her bottom lip, as she looks at one particular picture of him taken just a week ago in the lab. She’d cracked a timely joke and then managed to catch him mid laugh, his face a little out of focus.
She’d been thinking about telling him. Over the past few days, she’d contemplated pulling him to one side and telling him that they were both going to have to reconsider their academic positions on the existence of soulmates. She even made cue cards, words to help prompt her with the right thing to say when the moment came. It hadn’t, and Jemma has to wonder now why not. Sure, it would have changed everything once he knew but wasn’t that what they had both been ready for? For things to change between them?
Of course, Jemma thinks, staring bleakly out at the barren landscape in front of her, everything had changed now anyway. Just not in the way she’d wanted.
Her thumb lingers over the camera app on her phone and she purses her lips tightly together. Despite the stubborn mantra she’s been telling herself over and over again (fine, fine, it will all be fine, Fitz will find a way, we’re going to dinner), there is a tiny part of her that is starting, treacherously, to doubt.
There are too many variables for there to be certainty. As a scientist, she should know this. There might never be any water on this planet, no matter how many ridges she climbs. She might find other living things and not be fast enough, strong enough, enough, to get away from them. Something might happen on the other side, something she has no control over.
Quite simply, and most terrifying of all, nothing could happen.
She had already made one video message before she ran out of storage space. Just in case, she’d told herself firmly, just in case the phone is all they ever find. But now Jemma is wondering whether she should delete that message and make a new one to tell Fitz the truth.
What would that even say?
You’re my soulmate.
I can everything that you feel; I can make you feel nothing at all.
You’re my soulmate.
I chose you.
‘I chose you,’ Jemma says aloud, trying the words out on her lips and feeling her mouth quiver as she does so. Inside the emptiness of her surroundings, the words feel impossibly small.
Sighing, she reluctantly turns her phone off and pockets it again before rolling over onto her back. Up above her, there are endless constellations of stars, a sight so familiar that if she let herself she could pretend she is back on Earth, where she is supposed to be.
Home.
Closing her eyes, Jemma allows herself her greatest indulgence on this planet. She allows herself to imagine what must be happening back on the base, picturing the halls of the Playground in her mind and all the people living in them.
It is frustrating, to imagine them working on the other side trying to bring her back when all she can do to help them is keep herself alive. It’s almost unfair, that there is nothing she can do for them and it makes Jemma feel a little guilty.
She tries to imagine what Fitz must be doing right now. If her calculations are correct, it will be late night back home so theoretically he ought to be sleeping but Jemma has every doubt that that is what he is actually doing. After all, if their positions were reversed, sleep would be the very last thing on her mind.
Instead, she pictures him in his bunk with charts and data spread out around him in an arc of research like map fragments that, if he pieces them together right, will lead her home to him. The image is so clear in Jemma’s head that she can practically smell Fitz’s warm, homely scent as he scratches the back of his neck and feel the softness of the sheets underneath her as he falls back, frustrated, onto the mattress.
The ache to be there, to be safe with him, is so acute that Jemma finds her throat closing up and hot tears start to well behind her closed eyelids. Inside her, her empty stomach starts to churn with the strength of her want and burn with the force of her red-hot anger.
It is only then that she realises that it is not her own anger that is hurting her; she hasn’t had the energy to be angry for days. Instead, somehow, she is managing to draw on Fitz’s own anger from half the universe away.
With a little moan, Jemma extends her body against the ground, stretching herself out as wide as she can as if that will allow her to take on more of his pain. She can feel herself start to shake, her entire body trembling with fury as the anger hurts her, in her head and in her gut and in her heart.
It is the physical manifestation of how hard Fitz is working to find her.
‘Fine,’ she whispers to him, through gritted teeth. ‘Fine. I’ll hold it for you. But just for a little bit, mind. Just until you figure out a way to bring me home.’
The pain is almost blinding now, making her want to twist this way and that to try and escape it. Jemma can feel it building within her, growing from her stomach out, a despicable bubbling that she hates, that makes her want to hate.
I have a soulmate, Jemma finds herself thinking, the words feeling as if they are coming from far away. I chose my soulmate, and I can take his pain away from him even when we are on different planets.
The pain reaches her heart.
With tears streaming down her face, creating stripes on her dust-whipped cheeks, for the first time, Jemma allows feeling Fitz’s pain to make her scream.
iv.
She doesn’t want to let him out of her sight.
From the moment he steps out of the containment pod, covered in dust and blood and with the heaviness of guilt etched across his face, Jemma knows that she doesn’t ever want to lose sight of Fitz ever again.
And yet, within hours, she has.
The floor of Zephyr One feels unsteady under her feet as she pads down the corridors, one hand on kept on the wall for stability. There is a buzzing in her ears, and Jemma can’t tell whether it’s from the humming of the engines or the vacancy of her thoughts.
Everything about her feels just a little bit numb right now.
She opens the door to one of Zephyr’s many bedrooms; small, simple rooms with a sink and a set of bunk beds, perfectly designed to give an agent on a long mission a few brief moments of undisputed rest. She starts backwards when she finds Fitz sitting on the bottom bunk, pressing a wad of cotton wool to his skull, but she probably shouldn’t.
After all, when you have a connection with someone that can stretch half the way across the universe, you shouldn’t really be surprised to find them in the first place that you look.
Fitz jumps too, his eyes widening, and his hand falls away from his head instantly. Jemma shifts her weight from one foot to the other, her hand lingering on the door handle, her mouth hovering half open.
‘I’m sorry…’
‘It’s okay…’
‘I didn’t realise you were in here…’
Fitz gives her a half-hearted smile. ‘You were just looking for somewhere to be quiet for a while too, yeah?’
Jemma nods, unwilling to let him know that it was him she had been looking for. ‘Yeah. Something like that.’ Collecting herself again, she takes a step back, making to leave. ‘I’ll go see if there’s another room free…’
‘Jemma.’ She turns back at the sound of her name, and when she sees the poorly veiled fear in Fitz’s eyes she realises that maybe he doesn’t want to let her out of his sight either. ‘It’s okay to stay. What I mean is,’ he hesitates, ‘I think a lot of the other bunks are occupied, and there’s a spare one here, so…’
Fitz swallows and licks his lips. ‘It makes sense,’ he finishes.
Letting out a quiet huff of breath, Jemma nods and steps into the room, closing the door softly behind her. Fitz goes back to daubing at his forehead, slightly self-consciously, as she makes her way towards the bunk.
Before, in the hanger, she hadn’t really been looking at him. Or maybe she had; she just hadn’t seen him. She’d been so caught up in reassuring herself that he was there, alive, alive, he’s alive and he came back to me, that she hadn’t noticed the finger-length gash on his brow, or the bruises appearing on his neck and face or the myriad of cuts across both his palms. Now though, she does, and it makes her feel sick to her stomach that she didn’t see them earlier.
Jemma stops in front of him and clasps her hands lightly together. ‘Are you alright?’
Fitz stops dabbing his head again and looks up at her carefully. ‘I think I’m supposed to be the one saying that to you.’
Jemma is aware that her folded hands are resting over her abdomen, her shirt a thin barrier to the penetrated skin underneath with its angry masterpiece of bruises and cuts. ‘I feel fine.’
And it’s the truth. Right now, she does feel fine; the adrenaline coursing through her veins is still strong enough to stop her from feeling the pain she knows she ought to be feeling from the extent of her injuries. Biologically speaking, she is still in fight or flight, and Jemma is not quite ready to let that instinct go yet.
Fitz isn’t convinced – Jemma can read it in his features – and so she moves on quickly before he has the chance to argue with her.
She gestures towards him with one hand. ‘Can I have a look?’
He has never been able to refuse her before and he doesn’t start now. With a sigh, Fitz waves her forward, sitting further back on the bed. Jemma approaches, almost nervously, even though it was her idea, and puts her thumbs to the skin surrounding the cut. It’s deep, but doesn’t look infected or gritty.
Fitz winces as she presses down and Jemma immediately relaxes her fingers. The urge to tug at his discomfort, to pull it into herself, rises within her, so strong it is almost a compulsion, and she swallows it quickly.
‘You’ve done a great job cleaning it,’ she tells him quietly, moving so she is standing at his side. Her leg brushes against his thigh and Jemma has to take a deep breath before she continues. ‘But you are going to need to get stitches at some point, Fitz.’
‘I know,’ he says glumly. ‘But I figured it was going to have to wait until we got back to the base. Things got a little…busy in the lab just now.’
Jemma bites her bottom lip: it had gotten busy as he calls it because Bobbi had insisted on lifting up her shirt to treat her own injuries. Thinking back, she remembers Fitz being around before then, hovering nearby her, but the minute Bobbi had tentatively brought up giving her a medical exam, Jemma realises she can’t remember him being there anymore.
It must have been then that he had grabbed a kit from the shelf and disappeared from the room so he could clean his own wounds somewhere else. Somewhere where he wouldn’t have to see what Giyera had done to her.
Her fingers slide away from his head to hang uselessly by her side.
Fitz seems to notice this, and he tosses his bloody gauzes to one side to look up at her. ‘It’s okay,’ he says earnestly, almost apologetically, and there is a slight tremor to his voice that makes Jemma ache inside. ‘It’s okay to not be alright.’
Jemma nods, her eyes swimming with tears. ‘I know.’
But I have to be.
Fitz considers this answer, chewing at his lip with his brows furrowed. ‘Bobbi did check you out though, didn’t she?’ he asks eventually, with tentative concern.
Jemma nods again. ‘Yes. Like you, there’s not a lot that could be done before we get back to the Playground. The medical cupboard on here isn’t exactly well stocked. For now, she just said I needed to rest.’
‘Then that’s what you’ll do,’ Fitz says decidedly and tenderly. ‘What we’ll both do. For now.’
He waits until she gives him a little smile in agreement, and then kicks off his shoes and stretches out along the bottom bunk, his eyes drifting shut so easily Jemma wonders how he’d been managing to hold them open for so long.
For a moment she stands still, breathing shallowly through her mouth as she stares at the narrow step ladder leading up to the top bunk because she doesn’t know how best to tell him that even if she does manage to climb up there, she won’t be able to get back down again when she needs to.
It is a full beat before Fitz shifts on his bunk, moving further over to the wall so there is a space for her to lie down next to him. Jemma exhales, the relief unknotting one of the tightly wound coils squeezing her stomach, and she gratefully lowers herself down onto the mattress, feeling its softness sink beneath her.
‘Thank you,’ she whispers, feeling tears spring to her eyes again.
‘You don’t have to do that, Jemma,’ Fitz whispers back hoarsely. ‘You don’t have to thank me for this.’
Oh, Jemma thinks, oh, but I do.
She chooses to stay flat on her back, keeping as much pressure off her middle as she can. As exhausted as she is, she’s a little reluctant to allow herself to sleep – the moment she lets her guard down, she knows the pain of her injuries will hit her full force. And, God forgive her, Fitz forgive her, Jemma is a little afraid of that.
Once she’s felt it, she’s going to have to admit that it happened.
To distract herself, Jemma turns towards Fitz. He has chosen exactly the same position as she has, on his back with his arms by his sides, his hands gently folded into fists as if even in sleep he is prepared for a fight. More than anything in the world, Jemma wants to reach out and take his fists, unfurling them until they are tangled with her own fingers, locking them together forever, more than they already are.
She can’t quite tell whether he’s asleep; his breathing is shallow but there is a small line across his forehead and his body is rigid, unrelaxed, despite his exhaustion. He is as tightly wound as she is and there is no way either of them are going to get any sleep like this.
Exhaling slowly, Jemma starts to pull.
She does it gradually, her control having greatly improved during the past year so that she can do it without Fitz even noticing, or if he does he will just think that he is falling asleep. Soon, she can feel the stinging of cuts on her forehead and her palms, and the throbbing of bruises on her skin, and as she watches, Fitz’s forehead smoothes out and his body falls slack, finally asleep.
Jemma sighs and rolls her head towards the ceiling, wincing as the ache in her abdomen grows, the pain from her own injuries catching up with her at last.
Well, she thinks grimly, if she is going to hurt then she might as well do it for the both of them.
v.
‘Now, I am going to need you to remain perfectly still…’
‘I am still. Very still. Still as a statue.’
‘…’
‘Fitz! You just moved! Again!’
‘Oh, well, pardon me for flinching when a woman comes at my neck with a pair of giant of tweezers!’
Jemma sighs and straightens up. When Fitz and Daisy had gotten back to the base an hour ago after leaving Mack at the closest medical facility, Fitz had immediately sought her out and sheepishly presented her with his neck, red raw and plastered with black gloop but thankfully no longer explosive. She had pulled him into the lab, which was always empty at this time of night, and was now standing in the gap between his legs as he sat on the counter, allowing her to tease the stuff out of his skin. This at least, Jemma thinks, is progress.
At least today he isn’t ashamed to show her he is hurt.
She folds the tweezers into her palm and rolls her eyes at him. ‘They’re hardly giant, Fitz.’
He eyes her doubtfully, one hand creeping up to his neck. ‘They’re bigger than those tiny things you use on your eyebrows, anyhow.’
Jemma slaps his hand away. ‘They aren’t! And besides, I wouldn’t be having to pluck pieces of crystallised nitramene from your skin in the first place if you’d been more careful.’
Her words aren’t accusatory, not exactly, but Fitz’s face softens anyway. ‘I was being careful.’
Jemma sniffs, and picks a small lump of crusty black gunk off her tweezers. ‘Hmm.’
Fitz reaches for her hand, drawing her up to look at him. ‘I was. I promise, Jemma.’
His eyes are wide and sincere and Jemma nods, swallowing hard before conceding. ‘I know,’ she says. ‘I know you were. I just wish you’d called me, that’s all.’
Fitz grimaces and leans back again, allowing her access to the affected part of his neck. Jemma has to push up onto her tiptoes to see properly and she is fighting not to notice how her body is practically flattened against his.
‘I did think about calling you,’ Fitz admits, one hand coming up absently to hold her at her waist, steadying her as she works. Jemma can feel every single one of his fingerprints through her shirt, warm on her skin, and it brings her out in goose pimples. ‘Once we were back onto Zephyr I almost did, but…’
‘But what?’ Jemma pulls a particularly large piece of nitramene from the corner of his burn and pulls a face.
‘But I didn’t want to worry you! And besides, by that point Daisy had the idea of nitrogen oxide and the danger had passed.’
‘One of the dangers.’
‘The most immediate danger had passed,’ Fitz amends. Jemma falls back onto the balls of her feet with a sigh and reaches for a cotton wool ball to dab at the edge of his burn. She can feel Fitz’s eyes follow her and when she looks back their eyes meet. ‘You can’t protect me from everything, you know.’
Bitter memories of stuttering fits and temper tantrums and the hollow feeling of helplessness flood Jemma’s mind and she purses her lips. ‘I know. But I can try. You understand that.’
‘Yeah,’ Fitz says quietly. ‘Yeah, I do.’
Jemma tries not to focus on the sadness in his voice and instead gives one final dab to his neck before stepping back to admire her handiwork. ‘There!’ she declares. ‘All clean.’
Fitz prods tentatively at his neck, before visibly relaxing. ‘That’s great. Thanks, Jemma.’
His immense relief at no longer having any remnants of explosive or alien compound on his skin is so obvious that she can’t help but grin at it.
‘Not a problem.’
‘Next time, though, you don’t need to numb me first.’
Instantly, the smile is wiped off of Jemma’s face. ‘I’m sorry?’
Fitz tilts his head at her, one eyebrow raised. ‘Jemma, I’m a grown man. I think I can cope with a little bit of discomfort without you having to slip me an anaesthetic first. I can handle it.’
Jemma has frozen in front of him, her heart thumping and the cotton ball crushed in her fist as, for the first time, she notices the throbbing pain at the base of her own neck where none had been before.
It has been four months since the last time she’d taken away his pain, four months since she’d promised herself she wouldn’t do it again until she’d told him. Part of the reason why she’d proposed their ‘fresh start’ in the first place was because she’d thought it might make it easier to tell him, but unfortunately Jemma was finding that it wasn’t quite that simple.
Every time she thinks about telling him, she falters, the words catching in her throat until she is forced to swallow them back down again. Next time, she tells herself, I’ll tell him next time.
But moments pass, time after time, and still she can’t quite bring herself to tell him, can’t quite bring herself to overcome that last fearful obstacle in her mind.
Sometimes, your soulmate does not choose you back.
It has been four months since the last time she’d allowed herself to exercise her soulmate bond.
Four months, and now her body is deciding to do it without her permission.
Fitz notices her clamming up, and his own smile fades too. ‘Jemma? What’s wrong?’
Quickly, Jemma shakes her head and turns away from him to dump the cotton ball in the bin so that he can’t see her face. ‘Nothing. I’m fine.’
She hears him slide off the counter and follow her, his footsteps half a beat behind hers.
‘Jemma…’
Squeezing her eyes tightly shut for a brief moment, Jemma turns back around to find Fitz watching her with careful concern written across his face. He reaches out, as if to touch at her shoulder, her face, before thinking again and drawing back to cross his arms over his chest with a frown.
‘I must have said something. Everything was fine and now suddenly you’re upset, and it must have been something I said. Please, just tell me what it is so I can fix it.’
Jemma looks up with a sigh, seeing Fitz’s eyes, blue and beseeching, scan her face for any clues as to what is upsetting her. Of course, he isn’t going to find any.
Now, she thinks, now, you should tell him now.
It is the perfect moment. They are alone, he is listening to her attentively, and she has his full attention and even a convenient manner of demonstration should it be required. If there is ever going to be a moment for her to tell him, it is now.
‘You said ‘next time’,’ Jemma blurts out.
Fitz does a double take. ‘What?’
‘You said ‘next time’. And I don’t want there to be a next time.’
‘Jemma, we’re SHIELD agents. We get into dangerous situations daily.’ Fitz sighs and his shoulders slump dejectedly. ‘I can’t promise you that there won’t be a next time, no matter how much I want to.’
‘I know that.’ Jemma licks her lips and bounces anxiously on the balls of her feet. ‘And that wasn’t really what I meant. I know that there’s going to be a next time you’re in danger, and I know that I’m always going to worry about it. But I don’t want there to be a next time that we don’t tell each other something important because we’re afraid of how the other will react.’
She watches Fitz’s forehead crease as he processes this, then he nods slowly. ‘Okay.’ He straightens up and nods again, more firmly this time. ‘Yeah, okay. I’ll work on that. I promise.’
‘Okay,’ Jemma says softly, feeling like a small weight had been lifted from the burden on her shoulders. She smiles up at him, the first, thin ray of sunlight promising a brighter tomorrow. ‘I will too.’
In the back of her mind, she is already trying to remember the last place she’d seen her cue cards.
(i.)
The blast is blinding, and the force behind it is so strong that Fitz is lifted off his feet and thrown backwards, his head slamming against the wall.
He hits the floor so hard that it knocks all the breath out of his body and in that split second he can think only two things: pain and Jemma.
She had been in front of him when the bomb went off, already two steps into the room towards Malik, and Fitz realises, with a sickening certainty, that her body must have protected him from the full force of the blast.
A human shield.
Coughing, he pushes himself up onto his elbows to scan the narrow corridor for her. The air is filled with a layer of dust and debris, so thick it looks like mist, and Fitz has to blink several times before his eyes clear enough for him to spot her.
Jemma is lying about ten feet away from him on the ground, her body crumpled. Her limbs are limp and lifeless, and just the sight of that is enough to make Fitz’s blood run frighteningly cold.
‘Jemma!’
He scrambles to his feet only to fall to his knees beside her, reaching out his hands to roll her towards him. When he does, he feels his stomach turn and he thinks he might be sick.
There is shrapnel caught in her hairline, in her shoulder, in her legs and, worst of all, in her abdomen. Pushing back his rising panic, Fitz eases her jumper up and sees that the worst injuries are laced on top of old ones, reopening up scars that have not yet had the time to heal.
The slight movement is enough to wake Jemma up and she moans, raising herself into a half sitting position before she winces and her body falls slack again.
Fitz manages to catch her before her head cracks onto the floor and he lowers her back down. Jemma’s eyes are open in slits and she is searching for him.
‘Hey.’ Quickly, he moves so he is in her line of sight and, despite his growing anxiety, tries to smile reassuringly at her. ‘Hey, it’s okay, it’s okay. I’m here.’
Jemma mumbles something he can’t make out and her hands come up to her middle, shaking. ‘We…need…to…stop…’
Immediately, Fitz understands. The bleeding. He needs to stop her bleeding.
The corridor around them is empty but he looks around desperately anyway for something he can use; taking Jemma’s jumper off her is out of the question and he’d left his own in the lab earlier this morning. Gritting his teeth, Fitz pulls his shirt out of his trousers and makes a tear at the hem to rip off a length of material, all the while wondering why the hell the corridor was still empty anyway; what was taking their team so long to get to them?
But now that his vision isn’t so tunnelled to Jemma, Jemma bleeding, Jemma hurting, Fitz finally notices the red lights cutting through the dust like knife edges and the way the rubble is built up around the closed doors. The explosion must have put the base’s security system into overdrive, cutting them off from the rest of the team. It is a problem Daisy can easily remedy but it could take several minutes; minutes, that Fitz realises now in horror, that Jemma might not have.
The strip of his shirt he’d pressed to the worst of her injuries is already soaked through with blood but he keeps holding it there anyway. Fitz is by no means a medical doctor, but even he knows that she is losing too much blood; no one so small could stand to lose this much blood in so little a time. Blinking back furious tears, he presses down harder.
The additional pressure makes Jemma moan again and her whole body shudders underneath his hands. Instantly, Fitz wants to let go but doing that would mean letting her bleed out and he won’t do that. He can’t do that.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says, shaking his head so she won’t see how close he is to tears. ‘I know it hurts and I am so, so sorry.’
Jemma exhales, and he can see how much it is hurting her even to breathe: her pupils are dilated, her skin is ashen and her face is contorted with pain.
‘It’s okay,’ she whispers, even though it isn’t, and the corners of her mouth tilt upwards as she tries to smile at him. On her abdomen, Fitz feels movement, and he looks down to see Jemma’s hands brushing against his own and he realises that she is stubbornly trying to help him stem her own bleeding, unwilling to let him be alone even in this.
Fitz feels his heart buckle under the weight of the realisation and he crouches lower over her, so that their foreheads are almost touching.
Jesus Christ, Jemma.
Between their clasped fingers, her blood blooms like ribbons of scarlet.
‘I’m so sorry,’ he repeats, his voice shaking. ‘If there was anything I could do to make it…make it stop hurting, I’d do it. I’d do it in a heartbeat.’
And he would. He’d do anything if it meant he didn’t have to lose her like this.
All of a sudden, Jemma gasps, as if she is remembering something important. She squeezes her eyes tightly shut and her lips purse together and Fitz almost thinks she is going to sob, like his words have hurt her more than all her injuries put together, and he is ready to scream to whoever is waiting outside the closed door that they need to get it open now.
But then Jemma opens her eyes into his and they are wide and wet and full of pain that he can hardly see for the apology. I’m so sorry, her eyes tell him, even as she opens her mouth and a small trickle of blood runs down her chin.
‘There is.’
For a brief moment, Fitz can only sit next to her, dumbfounded and slack, but then, slowly, all the pieces of the puzzle slot together and, finally, he understands.
Sniffing hard, he sits forward on his knees over her, all his fear suddenly lost to determination. He isn’t exactly sure what he has to do, but some root instinct at the base of his heart has him slide one hand underneath Jemma’s head, offering her a meagre pillow to the hardness of the ground, and let the other hover over her middle where it had been before.
Breathing in deeply through his nose, Fitz bites down hard on his bottom lip and concentrates.
It starts with a cramp in his fingers, which then slowly creeps up his arm to his shoulder. Fitz grimaces as he feels his entire body seize up, pain flaring in his head, his shoulder, his legs and, finally, his stomach, making him want to double over in agony. But he doesn’t, because it’s not him that matters right now. It’s Jemma.
Already, he can see that what he is doing is working. She has stopped shivering and the frown of pain on her forehead vanishes as she goes limp, her head lolling back into his hand. She gives a little sigh of relief and, spurned on, Fitz pulls harder.
His body feels like it is on fire and the pain is making his vision blur and his head spin, but still he pulls. The pain feels like it is turning him inside out and when his heart starts to hurt – a heavy ache, one that makes him feel sick and cold – Fitz begins to panic again; what kind of internal injuries had Jemma sustained to make her feel this kind of pain?
But then he begins to notice the hurt, notice the way it ebbs and flows, notice the way it fills him so it feels like he’s suffocating in it, and he realises that he isn’t just sharing Jemma’s pain from the accident anymore. Instead, he is sharing the heavy shroud of guilt wrapped around her heart.
Suddenly, Jemma’s eyes fly open and she gasps again.
‘No,’ she says fiercely. ‘No, I don’t want you to hold that.’
As she speaks, Fitz can feel the tightness in his chest loosen and the pain throughout his body start to ease, and he furrows his eyebrows as he concentrates on stopping her from pulling the hurt back into her own body.
‘I know,’ he says. ‘I know you don’t. But you don’t really have much of a choice, I’m afraid. I’m doing it whether you want me to or not.’
Jemma makes a strange strangled noise, caught somewhere between a laugh and a sob, and Fitz tugs back on her pain, feeling it flood into his bones again.
He has been holding it for so long now that he is starting to sway, black spots darting about his vision, but he doesn’t let go. If Jemma can hold onto the pain of her guilt for two years, then he can certainly manage to hold onto it for just a few minutes longer.
Gently, Fitz uses the hand he is holding behind her head to stroke her hair and almost immediately he feels Jemma’s fingers clasp his across her body, joining their hands together so tightly that it feels like they are two parts of the same being.
Two parts of the same soul.
Fitz isn’t sure how long they stay there, each of them quietly drawing strength from the other, before their team manages to open the door. All he knows is that one moment he and Jemma are alone and the next they are surrounded by people: Lincoln bending over Jemma to make an assessment of her wounds, Mack unzipping a medical kit, Daisy hurrying into the interrogation room to check on Malik.
Fitz feels hands on his shoulders, and he allows Coulson to pull him away from Jemma’s body, detangling their hands. He is saying something, practically shouting it in his ear, but Fitz can’t think to hear him.
Slumped back onto his heels and breathing deeply, the only thing Fitz can think about is how close he had come to losing his soulmate before he’d even known he had one.
The first thing Jemma notices on coming to is the smell. It is a sharp, chemical scent that she can feel at the very back of her throat, and it is a smell that tells her she is in the med bay.
She opens her eyes, blinking groggily in the brightness, to pale green walls, clear glass windows and Fitz, sitting on a chair next to her bed with his gaze trained familiarly on her as if he has been there for hours. For all Jemma knows, he probably has.
When he sees that she is awake, he manages a weak smile.
‘Hey.’
‘Hey,’ Jemma whispers, turning her head towards him on the pillow.
‘How are you feeling?’
‘Fine,’ she tells him, the answer coming out like a reflex. But when she takes the time to make a mental assessment of her body, searching for the pain of the injuries she knows she sustained, she is surprised to find out that it is true. ‘I…I feel fine.’
It is only then that Jemma notices the slight frown etched across Fitz’s forehead, and the memory of the explosion and its aftermath rushes back to her. Swallowing hard, she rolls her head back on the pillow as her throat begins to ache with tears. Almost instantly, she feels even the pain of start to seep away.
‘Fitz, you can stop doing it now.’
‘I don’t know if I can.’
Jemma huffs quietly. ‘Fitz, truly, I appreciate the gallant heroics, but…’
‘No, Jemma.’ The crack in his voice turns her head and she notices with a start how tired he looks. ‘Really, I don’t know if I can. I don’t know how.’
‘Oh.’ Immediately, she feels guilty, forcing herself to remember that to him, all of this is brand new. ‘You just, ah…you just have to let go.’
Fitz gives a long shuddering sigh and drops his head into his hands. Jemma closes her eyes and braces herself as the pain floods back into her body, more muted than it had been before and softened by medication. She breathes through it, feeling it settle back in where it belonged.
‘Thank you,’ she whispers.
Fitz doesn’t reply; after a momentary pause, she hears him get up and feels the mattress beneath her dip. When she opens her eyes again, he is sitting on the bed next to her, one hand barely brushing her fingertips. His mouth drifts open and closed, and this close, Jemma can see the red-rims around his eyes that tell her he has been crying.
‘How long?’ he asks. ‘How long have you known?’
With a small sigh, Jemma adjusts her head on the pillow. Concern lights up in Fitz’s face, and he leans over to help her but she brushes him away, not unkindly. As he pulls back again, she meets his eyes to answer the question she’d known was coming.
‘Ever since the pod.’
Fitz’s eyes widen in surprise, just as she’d expected they would.
‘How? No, wait…’ He scrunches his eyes shut and pinches the bridge of his nose. ‘Uh, I don’t mean how, not like that, I just…’
‘It’s okay,’ Jemma murmurs, and waits for him to catch his breath.
Fitz shakes his head and runs his hand down his face. ‘The pod was almost two years ago,’ he whispers. ‘How come you never told me?’
Jemma licks her lips, surprised to find them dry and cracked. ‘I…I suppose I was waiting for the appropriate moment,’ she admits. ‘But it never seemed to come. After the pod, there were far more important things to worry about, and then you were so angry with me, I couldn’t get the words out. And once I got back from the planet…’ Here, her voice quivers involuntarily. ‘Well, it would have felt like a slap in the face for you.’
Fitz ducks his head so she can no longer see his expression, and Jemma wonders what it is he wants to hide from her – anger, maybe; or frustration. Maybe even a little bit of shame.
‘What about after that?’ he asks. ‘It’s been…it’s been months since that happened.’
Jemma nods against the pillow. ‘I know. After that – and, actually, even before that – I think I was afraid.’
Fitz looks up at her again, his eyes wide and alarmed, and he moves so that he is leaning over her. ‘Why?’ he asks softly. ‘What were you afraid of?’
‘I did a lot of research,’ Jemma tells him, feeling the sting of tears behind her eyes. ‘After I first found out. I found out lots of things that I never did when I was studying it at the Academy, lots of things I never even thought to look for.’ She looks up and meets his eyes, feeling a twist in her gut at the sincerity she sees there. ‘Did…did you know that it’s a choice?’
Frowning, Fitz shakes his head.
‘It’s a choice. You aren’t born with a ready-made soulmate. You have to find them, and you have to choose them.’
Jemma watches as the subtlety of her insinuation flies right over the top of Fitz’s head, and she takes a deep, trembling breath.
‘I was so afraid,’ she whispers, ‘that you wouldn’t choose me back.’
Fitz lets out a huff of breath, one that almost sounds like it of disbelief, and against the bed clothes Jemma feels him take a hold of her hand, twisting their fingers together like he never wants to let go.
As he bends over her, his mouth parted as if he is fighting for the words he wants to say, Jemma can see the overwhelming amount of love shining in his eyes.
‘How can you not see?’ he says, his voice so low she can feel it thrum through her body. ‘I chose you a long, long time ago.’
Jemma barely has the time to register his words, to register what they mean, before Fitz is tipping his forehead towards hers and he is kissing her, their lips meeting together so naturally that it feels like coming home.
She feels her pulse start to race as she slides her lips over his to kiss him back, marvelling at the ease with which all their pieces fall into place, and at the gentle tenderness that she and Fitz are both giving to make sure they get there.
As Jemma reaches up to tug at Fitz’s collar to bring him in to deepen the kiss, she feels his free hand come up to cup her face, such a small gesture that makes her feel like every bone in her body has somehow become brighter because of it.
Here you are, she thinks, as their kiss becomes merely a meeting of her smile pressed against his. Here we are.
Finally, as if remembering where they are, Fitz pulls back, stopping to brush his thumb over her brow bone and his lips against hers one last time before he pushes himself up onto his elbow to smile down at her.
Jemma cannot help but smile back as their fingers twist together on the sheet, as if they are dancing some delicate, intricate dance they both know by heart. She can still feel pain, feel it in every part of her body but, somehow, it seems to matter just a little bit less now.
How can it not, when Fitz has chosen her too?
‘I found out a lot more about us too,’ she says.
‘Oh, yeah?’ Fitz kisses her again, lightly, and Jemma finds herself thinking about how chapped her lips must be against his, and how he does not seem to care.
‘Yeah.’ She lifts her hand, and his with it, so that she can see them pressed up against one another, the steady rhythm of his pulse exactly matching hers. ‘Lots of things. I found out things I had completely over looked at the Academy. Things I never even thought to look for at all. There are so many things,’ she says softly, ‘that I want to tell you.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah.’
Fitz grins, and bends down to let his lips fall over hers once more. The kiss is soft, and it is gentle, and it tastes like the promise of sharing a soul for a lifetime to come.
It feels, Jemma thinks, like the sealing of a covenant.
‘So, tell me.’
i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)
e.e. cummings