Chapter Text
Her eyes darting surreptitiously around the lab space, Jemma opened a Tumblr text post on her computer, hiding it among the spreadsheets of data and pages of half-formed graphs. She dug through her personal flash drive to find a single picture, grainy and blurred. Her father’s laughter nearly echoed off the screen when she looked at the image and Jemma smiled, mimicking the one her younger self wore. She uploaded the photo into the text box and typed.
Okay, there are two things I remember about my childhood (I just don’t remember it being this orange). First, I remember being with my dad. He would get these far-off looks in his eye and he would say, “Jemma, life doesn’t always turn out the way you plan.” I just wish I realized at the time he was talking about my life.
But that never stopped us from taking our adventures together. He would pack up our …sometimes-working car, and he would tell me amazing stories about strange and exotic lands as we headed off to exciting destinations like… Ramsgate. It’s amazing how exotic Kent… isn’t.
But my favorite memories were the stories that he would tell me about my mum. He would take me to the church in Islington where they got married and I’d beg him to tell me more about the ceremony and about my crazy Uncle Irwin who fell asleep in the afternoon tea. And I asked my dad when he knew that he truly loved my mum and he said to me, “Jemma, your mother gave me a special gift. She gave me the world.” Actually, it was a globe with a light inside, but for the romantic that he was, it might as well have been the world.
Well, the first time I saw him…
Jemma glanced across the lab at the laughing brown-haired man about her age who was perched, shirtless, on an exam table. He flirted easily with the nurses and his American accent brought to mind sensations of warm sweaters and the taste of caramel.
The first time I saw him, well, he didn’t exactly give me the world. It was two vials of blood and a urine sample, but I looked forward to it, every single study NASA had him do. He started coming by the lab every other day for a few weeks and he was just perfect. My Prince Charming.
She chewed her lip thoughtfully and peered over the screen of her lab computer to where he sat on the other side of the room.
We’ve never actually spoken… But I know someday we will. I know it. I just know it. And I know that someday I will find a way to introduce myself, and that’s going to be perfect. Just like my prince.
She smiled wistfully and posted the entry, exiting out of the browser window and opening her electronic lab notebook to record observations on the new set of slides she inserted into her microscope.
“Jemma, Jemma, Jemma!” Her boss sidled over with a smile.
Instantly suspicious, Jemma raised an eyebrow. “What can I do for you, Mack?”
With a practiced lean against her bench, Mack crossed his arms and looked over. “You know, if labs had awards, I’d nominate you for employee of the month.”
Not sparing him a glance from her microscope, Jemma switched between slides and said wryly, “Labs do have awards.”
“Humor me, Jemma.”
She made a noncommittal noise in the back of her throat, but let him continue.
Mack gestured with one hand as if dictating a newspaper headline. “Lab supervisor Alphonzo Mackenzie nominates Jemma Simmons for employee of the month. Jemma is never tardy, always works holidays even if she has worked the previous holiday… Just because she worked Thanksgiving, Jemma is willing to work Christmas too…?”
“Mack,” Jemma firmly replied. “I’m not coming in on Christmas.”
“Look, Violet is sick and Celeste can’t switch because she’s got some big family thing. I promised my kids I’d be there for them this year, and with all the compound screenings we’re doing in the next few months, we can’t afford to lose our cell samples over the holiday.”
Jemma sighed, her face twisting into a scowl as she pulled back from her microscope. “This stinks, Mack.”
“I know it’s not fair, and I can’t make you do it… but Jemma, you’re the only one--”
“Without family,” she finished bitterly.
Mack grimaced but nodded sheepishly.
Jemma sighed and stared dismally after him as he retreated across the lab with a grateful wave.
The lab at Christmas was hardly festive. Sure, strings of lights had been hung around the administrative areas, and snowflakes had been cut from parafilm and stuck to the lab windows, but the quiet that fell over the empty space was dismal at best. Jemma sat gloomily, legs crossed and head resting limply in her hand. She could imagine the holiday her coworkers were having-- full of family and noise and bustle and drama and food. Her Christmases with her father had been little adventures in themselves, but Mack had been right. Without her father around anymore, her holidays were small, solitary events. Likely she would have picked up a meal for one to heat up from the store and sat down with a bottle of wine and a stack of movies, trying not to remember the Christmases she’d spent as a kid, their house smelling of pudding and turkey.
She sighed and stared forlornly down at the stacks of notebooks and protocols that littered the desk, her only companion this Christmas. There was nothing terribly urgent that needed to get done while she waited on her media to warm in the bead bath. She dully considered opening up Tumblr when footsteps in the outer concourse of the lab caught her attention. Then he strode in, in all his brown-haired, NASA perfection. His coat’s collar was turned up against the sleet outside and his hair was attractively mussed from the wind. Jemma sat up with a jerk, the pen in her hand dropping to the counter with a clatter. He saw she was the only one in the lab and approached, plastic bag in hand.
“Just bringing today’s samples by,” he said with a charming grin, handing her the bag filled with vials of blood. “Happy holidays.” She choked on whatever response she might have tried to make, too distracted by his smile. Without much of a glance back, he turned and retreated towards the door. Jemma tried to make her mouth move and force sounds to come out but nothing happened. Come on, Jemma. Say something! Happy Christmas! Nice coat. You’re beautiful. Will you marry me?
As he reached the door she gripped the plastic bag, still warm where he’d held it, and closed her eyes as she mentally kicked herself.
A bright blue-white light burned through her eyelids and she opened them in shock, just in time to see an arc of electricity spike past the storage cabinet and fridge, the latter of which immediately exploded. The concussive force of the blast struck Jemma across the chest, knocking her from her stool onto the cold floor. Ears ringing and eyes watering from the chemical fumes seeping into the air, Jemma pulled herself by the elbows across the floor to peer around the end of the bench at the flaming wreckage. Amidst the burning metal and chemicals, his body lay near the door. Flames licked across the coat from a puddle gathering beneath the acid and base cabinet. Jemma cried out, but the sound didn’t reach her ringing ears.
As quickly as she could with stinging, raw hands, Jemma crawled across the tile floor to where he lay and quickly dragged him away from the flames and chemicals, groaning at the effort and wincing at the pull of the muscles across her chest. She dashed for the fire blanket, skidding across the tile in her flimsy flats. As she did her best to smother the flames, she fumbled for her cell phone, hands shaking as dialed the building’s emergency number.
“Hello? Yes, there’s been an explosion in the lab. Fourth floor, umm section thi- thirty-two A. Someone’s injured; please send help!” Jemma dropped the phone to the floor, the call not yet disconnected as she resumed trying to smother out the flames trying to lick across his body with both hands. “Sir? Sir, are you okay? Can you hear me?” Her voice wavered and she looked up toward the hallway, yelling hoarsely, “Somebody help me! Please!”
“What’s his name?”
“Can we get a doctor over here?”
“I don’t--”
“Has someone been through to see these hands?”
“Where were you when the explosion occurred, Ms. Simmons?”
“I was… yes I’ve been seen.. a man was brought in; is he here?”
“I need to know his name. You don’t know his name?”
“He’s..” Jemma pushed the nurse’s hands away, preventing her from carefully sanitizing the scrapes on her palms. “He’s right there…” She lurched off the stool and tried to follow the gurney through a pair of glass doors, but a doctor stepped in front of her and held up his hands to ward her away.
“No, no, no; you can’t go in.”
“No, you don’t understand, I--” Jemma fumbled for words, attempting clumsily to pass by him.
“No, are you family? Family only,” the doctor said, his voice firm and a little unkind. “You wait there.”
“But I…”
The doctor had already disappeared through the glass doors, following the charred Prince Charming that her lab had done its best to destroy. Jemma held her stinging hands close to her chest and, with tears brimming in her smoke-stung eyes, murmured, “I was going to marry him…”
Inexplicably, not long after the nurse who had cleaned her palms ushered her rather emphatically into the hospital room where Will (she knew his name now, courtesy of his identification card and some context clues she’d picked up while talking with other nurses) lay, motionless and still. He had bandages wrapped across one wrist and she was sure there were more hidden beneath the blanket they had draped over his legs, but for the most-part he looked sound. The nurse gave Jemma a gentle nudge into the room and said encouragingly, “Let him hear your voice, honey.”
Flustered and a bit confused, Jemma walked forward to Will’s bedside, looking down on his still face. “Hi…” she murmured. “It’s going to be alright; you’ll see. It will all be alright.” She reached out with one finger and brushed the knuckles of his unwrapped hand.
At a brisk knock on the doorframe, Jemma turned to see an elderly doctor entering the room and extending his hand for her to shake. “I’m sorry to interrupt. I’m Dr. Rubin.”
Jemma took his hand and smiled shakily. “Hello, I’m Jemma Simmons.”
Before the doctor could continue, however, a commotion, the likes of which Jemma had never heard from a small group of people before, barreled down the hallway and into the room.
“Where the hell is he?”
“PC, you’re embarrassing all of us!”
“Shit, he’s so pale; look at him!”
A group of seven people, flocked by harassed-looking nurses and security guards, burst chaotically through the doorway. The doctor looked up with trepidation and asked the room in general, “What is this?”
“This is my son! How is he?” A man with an unnaturally cool and professional air behind a pair of boxy glasses and thinning hair sized up the doctor.
“He looks ruddy awful,” an unkempt Englishman murmured to a blonde woman beside him at the back of the herd.
Dr. Rubin tried again, his tone indignant. “You can’t come bursting into this unit!”
“He’ll be alright, right?” A wide, dark pair of eyes framed by a short spill of brown curls stepped forward and took Will’s hand possessively while staring at the doctor. Jemma shrunk towards the back of the room out of the way.
“What happened? What’s going on?” the blonde in the back asked firmly.
Frazzled, the doctor responded. “He’s in a coma.”
“Jesus.”
“On Christmas day?”
Once more, Dr. Rubin attempted to reassert control over the rapidly escaping situation. “His vitals are strong; his brain waves are good. I think he’s going to get through this.”
An otherwise silent woman who carried herself with quiet dignity and an unshakable strength spoke up from amidst the chaos. “Are you a specialist?” Despite her tone, the words cut through the din of constant conversation.
“How did this happen?” asked a dark-skinned young man with face inclined to smile. He tightened his arm firmly wrapped around the young, dark-haired woman’s shoulders.
Jemma cleared her throat softly and interjected, “Um, he was dropping off samples at the lab when there was an accidental explosion.”
The room fell silent as everyone turned to her. Jemma tried not to quail under the gaze of so many people at once.
“Who’s she?” the man in glasses asked of the doctor.
The nurse who had ushered Jemma into the room spoke up from the corner, defensively. “She’s his fiancée!” Everyone, including Jemma, turned to the nurse, dumbstruck.
The young woman clutching Will’s hand was the first to find words. “His fiancée?” The room once more erupted into conversation.
“Will’s engaged?”
“He would have told us, right?”
“Does NASA know about this?”
“No! Wait-” Jemma attempted to interject. “Hold on-”
“He should have told us!”
“Maybe he was busy!”
“Too busy to tell his own mother he’s getting married?” the man in glasses berated no one in particular.
“No, no, don’t yell at him!” the young, dark-haired woman said with a scowl.
“I’m not yelling at him--”
“If only Fitz were here--”
Jemma scowled as the younger doctor who had barred her way earlier charged into the (now very full) recovery room and glowered in her direction. “Doctor,” he hissed to Dr. Rubin, nodding in Jemma’s direction. “What is she doing in here? I told her she’s not allowed in.”
“Hey, pal,” a member of the security team that Jemma had spoken with earlier interjected. “She saved his life.”
The room turned as one in wonderment back to Jemma and the quiet, maternal woman spoke up again. “You saved his life?”
The man in glasses frowned, looking around for confirmation. “I thought you said he was in a lab accident.”
The security guard spoke up again. “She pulled him from the fire.”
Jemma flushed and nodded mutely.
“Doctor, it’s supposed to be family only!”
The man in glasses brushed past the cantankerous younger doctor and gestured dramatically toward Jemma. “She is family,” he announced dramatically.
“She’s the fiancée, you idiot,” Dr. Rubin hissed.
Jemma stumbled her way back to coherent words again. “Okay, look… I’m sorry.. You, you… you don’t understand-” But the family clustered around her and began to envelop her in smothering, bone-crushing hugs, muffling her words.
“I’m sorry; we haven’t seen him in so long so we didn’t know!” the young-haired dark woman swore.
The quiet woman slipped through the throng and stood before Jemma, watching her with dark, shrewd eyes. She smiled softly and murmured, “I always wanted him to find someone. I’m glad he found you.”
An hour later, Jemma had finally extricated herself from the embraces of the rather bizarre family and dragged the nurse outside of earshot. “Why did you say that?” she hissed quietly, ever conscious of the open door that divided her from her supposed future family-in-law.
“Say what?” The nurse, too, looked overwhelmed at the hubbub.
“I’m not his fiancée!”
“Then why did you tell me that you were?”
Jemma blinked and gestured back to the room housing her unconscious Prince Charming. “I’m not engaged. I’ve never even spoken to him!”
The nurse shook her head adamantly. “But downstairs! You said-- you said you were going to marry him!”
Jemma rubbed her temples and groaned. “Oh Lord, I was… I was talking to myself!”
“Well, next time you talk to yourself? Tell yourself you’re single and end the conversation.” The nurse crossed her arms defensively and was stared back at Jemma with thinly-veiled reproach.
All of the defiance and frustration drained out of Jemma at that one gesture. “What am I going to do?” she asked finally.
The nurse opened her mouth to answer but snapped it shut when the man with glasses emerged from the hospital room. “Excuse me, nurse, is there a pharmacy in the hospital?”
Jemma clamped her mouth shut with an audible snap, staring at the nurse with wide, pleading eyes.
“What do you need?” the nurse responded, turning from Jemma with a sympathetic glance.
“Insulin. My daughter--”
“Oh, she’s diabetic?”
“Type 1. I think with all the excitement this morning it’s thrown her levels off.” He turned to Jemma who felt herself shrink under his honest appraisal. However, he simply put his hands on her shoulders and said, “You know, losing Will would have destroyed Daisy. I think you saved her. In fact, I think you saved the whole family.” He gently squeezed her upper arms in a paternal gesture. He smiled at her, eyes twinkling behind his glasses. “Bless you.”
Seeing the panic in Jemma’s eyes, the nurse pulled the man away and directed him down the hallway. “Why don’t you come with me? I’ll take you down to our pharmacy.”
Jemma found herself clustered uncomfortably in the waiting room with Will’s family. For once, they sat quietly, though their eyes kept darting to Jemma and away again with indulgent and spirited smiles. Daisy, the younger woman with dark curls Jemma eventually identified, was fiddling absent-mindedly with her insulin pump, curled up in the protective arms of her boyfriend, the charismatic and easy-going man who Jemma had overheard called Trip. She wondered vaguely if it was a nickname or a family name.
The quiet, maternal figure of the odd family had been called Mama May repeatedly by Daisy and Trip, though Jemma had also caught the man with glasses (Coulson? Phil?) refer to her gently as Melinda. The blonde had an oddly masculine name that Jemma hadn’t caught, and her British counterpart was called Hunter, she thought, though both had wandered off in search of coffee a few minutes ago and were thus no longer taking part in the not-so-subtle observation of Jemma.
She squirmed on the couch. She felt like a fraud, a liar, and someone completely undeserving of this family’s rapturous attention, but a smaller and hungrier side of her craved the human contact and held the words back.
The silence of the group was clearly an unusual occurrence that no one felt comfortable with, yet no one seemed to know how to breach it. Thus they sat, exchanging polite, if somewhat awkward, smiles and looking hastily away from prolonged eye contact.
Finally, Daisy broke the tension with an awkward cough and a glance towards Jemma. “So. How did you meet Will?”
May spoke up quietly, “Daisy, perhaps she doesn’t want to talk about that right now. This is very distressing for her.” Jemma mentally agreed, though probably not for the reasons they thought.
“Why not?” Daisy rebutted indignantly. “We could all use a good story.”
Trip gave a low chuckle and added, “How do you know it was good?”
“Of course it was good. Why wouldn’t it be good?”
“What about that other girl?” Trip mused. “The one he met in the bar?”
Daisy looked annoyed to be receiving so much kickback from her question. “What does that have to do with anything?”
The man in glasses chuckled, his fingers intertwined in his lap as he leaned back, apparently relaxed, into the waiting room couch. “Raina Bartlett Bacon.”
May’s eyes flickered over to him and she murmured warningly, “Phil…”
The man (Phil, she could now confirm) held up his hands placating but smiled. “All I’m saying is she was pretty high and mighty for someone named after breakfast food.” The blonde and Hunter had returned and handed Phil a cup of coffee which he accepted with a murmur of thanks.
May shook her head imperceptibly, but a small smile graced her face. “Well, he has a nice young woman now,” she said, as if that closed the matter.
Trip looked at Jemma curiously. “Did you have to steal him from Raina?”
“I bet it was love at first sight, right?” Daisy interjected confidently. “I have a sense about these things.”
Trip nudged Daisy in the ribs. “Girl, let her tell it.”
“She is telling it. I bet he used one of those terrible opening lines he has about being an astronaut.”
The blonde woman, who perched gracefully on one of the arms of the couch joined in. “What was it that first struck you about Will?”
The family, for once, fell quiet and turned to Jemma, awaiting her answer. This at least she could answer honestly. “He was charming… his laugh and his smile.”
“Should be after all the money we put into his dentistry work…” Phil muttered over the lip of his cup of coffee. May swatted him on the arm to shush him.
Jemma cleared her throat. “Well.. he came into the lab for testing for NASA and we saw each other and he.. uh… he smiled.. and I knew that my life would never be the same.” She trailed off wistfully, thinking of all of her imagined conversations with him in which she introduced herself and he was swept away by her wit and charm. Around her, the family had taken her wistfulness as a haze of fond memories and all wore warm and happy smiles.
After the overwhelming social storm that was Will’s strange and nonsensical family, the lab seemed positively barren the next day. Jemma had thought that after all the strangeness and interaction that she would be wearied and seek solace in her lab, since most of her coworkers were still on vacation. However, as the evening hours trickled by and Jemma fought against her lack of motivation, she drew no comfort from the whir of the centrifuge and the click of her pipet tips. A feral, long-forgotten loneliness had awoken within her and it throbbed in her chest until she thought it might burst. Eventually abandoning all pretense of work, Jemma exchanged her lab coat for a winter jacket and braved the persistent sleet and wind outside to flag down a taxi.
Nothing about the hospital had changed in the last 24 hours. Variations on previous doctors and nurses had replaced their predecessors and the faces in the waiting room had changed, but the building still held the same quiet, somber tones intermingled with sharp, forced cheer in an effort to bring the holidays through the glass double doors. Jemma quietly slipped through the hallway to Will’s room, holding her coat in front of her to shield her from whomever might be waiting, but the room was empty of visitors. In this late hour, she was alone.
She shuffled out of her mittens and coat and settled into a chair next to his hospital bed. Will looked pale, serene, and still. His chest rose and fell in a gentle rhythm, but there was no other flicker of life across his face. Jemma sighed heavily and rested her chin on her hands, clenched on the bars of the bed’s railing. “Hi” she finally murmured. “I bet you’re wondering what I’m doing here in the middle of the night.” She sighed again and crinkled her nose. “Well, I thought it was a good idea to introduce myself… My name’s Jemma. Jemma Simmons. You should probably know your family thinks we’re engaged. I’ve never been engaged before, much less to a man in a coma. This is all very sudden for me.”
She absently trailed her fingers across his wrist where the IV was plugged in. “What… what I really came here to say was that… I didn’t-- I didn’t mean for this to happen…” Tears pricked at her eyelids and she blinked them back rapidly. The words stumbled out over each other; at least someone, whether he was conscious or not, could know and share the truth. She wouldn’t be alone in this. “I don’t know what to do. I mean…” She smoothed the creases in the sheet with nervous fingers as she spoke. “If you were conscious, I wouldn’t be in this particular situation--” She cut off mid-word, looking horrified. “Oh, god, not that I’m blaming you! I apologize.”
Jemma groaned and hung her head in her hands, staring dismally at the ground, unable or unwilling to even make one-sided eye contact with a man in a vegetative state. “It’s just that,” she started again, softly. “When I was a young girl, I always imagined what my life would be like, what I would be like or where I would be when I was older. And it was all fairly normal things… I’d have a family and a house and a job on the cutting edge of science and all that… Not, you know, not that I’m complaining or anything. I mean, working in my lab is an honor and the work we do… it’s important. Though I’m sure I don’t have to explain this to you,” she added quickly. “You’re a part of one of our programs with NASA.”
Glancing back up at Will’s still face, Jemma sighed softly and leaned against the railing of the bed. “I have an amazing job…” she trailed off. “And that’s about it.” She frowned, thoughtfully. “I have a cat. And the sole possession of a TV remote with which I can watch all the documentaries and Doctor Who that I want…”
After a moment of silence, filled only with the gentle and constant beep of his vital signs on the monitors and the murmur of constant activity in the adjacent hospital corridor, Jemma found words again. “I never thought I’d be alone.”
She stared at Will, considering. “Do you believe in love at first sight?” Her mouth twitched into a wry grin and she ducked her head bashfully. “Of course you don’t. You’re probably too sensible for that sort of thing.” Thoughtfully, she frowned as she tried to find words for the vague feelings at war in her chest. “Or have you ever, I don’t know, ever seen someone and you knew that if only that person truly knew you, they would, of course, dump the perfect specimen that they were with and… and they would realize that you were the one they wanted to grow old with.” Spoken aloud, it sounded frivolous and childish. Angry, aching tears brimmed at her eyelids and her vision swam as she tearfully mumbled, “Have you ever fallen in love with somebody you haven’t even talked to?”
The tears spilled over past her lids and trickled down her cheeks and she smiled, feeling the deep ache of emptiness and loneliness like a canyon in her chest. “Have you ever been so alone you spend the night confusing a man in a coma?” She took his hand, reassured by the warmth beneath his skin, and smiled sadly, resting her head against the edge of the bed.
She woke abruptly several hours later, disoriented and confused, to the orchestra of the ICU in the morning. The cotton blanket covering Will’s bed had left grid-like imprints into the skin of Jemma’s forearms, and her neck was pinched from the uncomfortable (and unintended) night of sleep. Blearily, she tried to rub her eyes clear, regretting falling asleep with her contacts in. She ran a hand through her unruly brown hair, trying to tame it into some sort of a bun while she looked around for the time. Corralling her pile of winter clothing into her arms, she offered Will one last smile and whispered goodbye as she ducked hurriedly out the door--- and straight into Daisy, with the rest of the family in tow.
“Jemma!” the young woman said brightly. “We didn’t know you were here!”
Startled, Jemma clenched her scarf and mittens tightly, holding her coat in front of her like some sort of buffer. “Yes, hi, hello. Sorry.”
“Were you here all night?” May inquired softly, taking in Jemma’s general disheveled state. Jemma nodded, somewhat shamefully, a guilty blush rising on her cheeks. Flustered, she cleared her throat and offered, “Will has some more color today.”
“Oh?” May, Phil, and the others filed into the room to look for themselves, but Daisy remained behind, smiling brightly at Jemma.
“With everything that happened, well, we didn’t really get a chance to celebrate Christmas. We wanted you to be part of it, since you’re joining the family. Would you join us tonight?”
Jemma stammered, flushing even further. “I… I really can’t. I have work that I haven’t been doing in the lab, and I’m sure they need me…”
Daisy waved a hand as if to swat off the excuses. “Nonsense. From what I saw on the news, the lab’s been shut down while containment and cleanup crews secure the space.”
“Oh.” This hadn’t even occurred to Jemma. She winced at the thought of all the incident paperwork surely waiting and the backlog the lab would experience for months as a repercussion. The compound screening they had been planning for the other side of the holidays would be pushed back considerably.
Something akin to mischief flickered behind Daisy’s eyes and she leaned in, as if to say conspiratorially, “Plus, Fitz is going to be there, and I’ve heard from him that he’s never met you.”
Mildly stunned at the thought that this family could possibly have a member that she hadn’t met, Jemma fumbled for words. “No, I’m afraid I haven’t had the pleasure.”
At this, Daisy snorted. “Pleasure. Well, we’ll see about that. But regardless, he’s interested to meet you. So what do you say… will you come?”
Jemma fought weakly against the charisma of Daisy’s bright expression and enthusiasm. “I…”
“Here.” Daisy pulled out her cell phone and opened a new contact. “Give me your phone number so that Bobbi and I can text you later and talk you into it.”
Feebly, Jemma gave Daisy her phone number, and then added unconvincingly, “I’ll see if I can come.”
Daisy smiled broadly and pulled Jemma in for a quick hug before darting into the hospital room with the rest of her family, calling out, “See you later!” as she vanished.
Jemma quietly groaned and placed her phone back in her coat pocket, feeling it buzz with Daisy’s contact text. She skirted down the hallway to the elevator and shrugged herself into her coat, feeling groggy and extraordinarily out of place.
“Ma’am? Excuse me, ma’am?”
Jemma turned to the medical technician with a faint scowl. “What?”
The young man handed her a small file box with little flourish and said, “I’m sorry, Mrs. Daniels, but here are your husband’s things.”
Temper flaring, she spat, “He’s NOT my husband.”
He handed her the box anyway and said, with some hesitancy, “I’m sorry… your fiancée.”
Frustrated, Jemma took the box as the elevator opened and she fled towards her exit and towards a proper sleep.
“So what’s the big deal?”
Jemma pinned the phone between her ear and her shoulder as she pulled out milk to add to her tea. “What’s the big deal? Mack, they think I’m their future daughter-in-law! And the father, he said that I saved his daughter, too, and she’s diabetic, and she’s got this stress thing, and if I tell them the truth then she’s going to go into shock or something and die and that’s going to be hovering over me for the rest of my life.”
“Alright, first,” Mack said reasonably, “You’re a good enough scientist to know that’s not how diabetes works.”
She prickled at being described as a ‘good enough scientist’, but let him continue as she stirred a spoonful of sugar into her tea.
“Second, then you should just go along with it!”
Her heart jumped at that thought, at the prospect of feeling part of a whole family again, even if it was overwhelming and under false pretenses, but she shook her head and quickly answered. “I can’t do that; it’s not honest and I can’t be part of any bad-person shenanigans…”
“When Will comes out of the coma, the family will be so happy that they won’t even care that you lied to them, Jemma. They’ll probably even thank you for it.”
“Thank me for it?!” Jemma set down her spoon and rubbed at her temple. “And what if he doesn’t come out of his coma?”
“Well, then who’s to know?”
Jemma scowled into the phone.
“Look, Jemma. When my mother found out I was getting married to Elena, her intestines exploded. You tell them now, while this whole traumatic experience is fresh for them? You might as well shoot one of them.”
“You give terrible advice; did you know that?”
“I’ve been told.”
Jemma paced outside the well-lit house that had been listed in one of Daisy’s (many) persuasive text messages. The suburban street twinkled with Christmas lights and snow unmarred by the dirt of the city, sidewalks carefully cleared of ice and well-salted against the winter weather. From outside the house, she could already hear the faintly muffled sounds of music, conversation, and gentle laughter. She felt equally torn between a starving ache to be a part of it and the fear that she was intruding. As she worried her lip and turned on the sidewalk once more, she noticed Phil, looking curiously at her and pocketing his phone.
“Jemma!”
She grimaced, but it slipped out as a smile anyway. “Hello, Phil.”
“You made it!”
At this Jemma wrinkled her nose. “Yeah…”
Phil chuckled. “I watched you pace for a few minutes while I finished a phone call. Nervous?”
Jemma thought about lying, but finally admitted, “I’m still not sure I’m entirely here of my own free will.”
He laughed. “Yeah, Daisy can do that to you.” He gestured with one hand towards the front porch stairs. “Come on, keep me company for a while. I’m expecting another work call and I don’t like taking them in the house.”
Jemma perched on the step beside him, grateful for the thorough insulation of her coat and the break from the winter wind. She burrowed her mittened hands into her opposite sleeves and felt her breath mist on the scarf around her throat. Phil sat down with a groan and stretched out his legs on the lower stairs, seemingly unbothered by the cold. He glanced shrewdly over at Jemma who squirmed a bit under his gaze. “I’m sure you feel a little overwhelmed. Our family can do that to people.”
She nodded. “A little, yeah. It was… you all are a lot more than I was expecting.”
Phil chuckled again. “And probably quite a bit different than you were expecting. But such is the way with adopted families.”
“Oh.. are all of them..?”
“Adopted?” Phil gave a soft smile. “Yeah. Well, the ones that are our family anyway. I take no responsibility for their attachments.” He interlaced his bare hands together and stared out at the white-tipped lawn before them. “Melinda and I tried for a long time to have a child, but it seemed the cosmos had different plans for us. We adopted Will from foster care in Chicago first. Then Bobbi, who was practically an adult by the time she came to us. Fitz was younger when we adopted him and Daisy was the youngest still.”
Jemma sat, processing the work that brought this family together. “That must have been a challenge.”
Phil offered a dry smile in response. “Oh, it was. Don’t believe for a second that it was easy. The fostering system is a tough gig for a kid, and it’s not an easy adjustment to be part of a real family. It took a lot of coaxing, fighting and loving to make this something.” His expression sobered. “But we are still a real family. We put in all this work as a team, together.”
A fresh wave of guilt and longing swept over Jemma and she forced herself to smile and nod. “You all are quite lucky. It’s very important to have family around this time of year.”
“Are you, I mean, are your parents with you?” Phil asked frankly. His gaze was shrewd and knowing, but also fatherly. Jemma relaxed into it a bit.
“No,” she answered quickly. “My mum died when I was really young and… well…” She cleared her throat. “A couple of years ago, my dad got sick and we moved from England to a research hospital here in the city.”
Phil winced. “Research. A medical term for ‘very expensive’.”
Jemma nodded. “You have no idea. But through it all, he wouldn’t let me quit on my own goals. I transferred my graduate education over here to the States and continued studying right on through his treatments and procedures. Then, about--well, about a year ago, he decided he’d enough of research and he passed away.” Tears stung the back of her eyes and she carefully cleared her throat and blinked rapidly against the moisture.
“My first wife, Audrey, died shortly after we were married 26 years ago.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No, no, I just say that to say that I understand. It was a rough time for me.”
Jemma nodded.
Phil smiled softly again and nodded back towards the house. “But Melinda got me through it.”
She smiled. “You were friends?”
“The best of friends, and still were when we fell in love.” He hesitated, looking at Jemma with keen eyes. “Jemma… this family, they are everything I have and we mean everything to each other. I’d never let anyone hurt them.”
Jemma smiled softly. “Neither would I.” And it wasn’t a lie.
Phil paused a moment, considering. Finally, he nodded. “I believe you.”
Behind them, there was a rush of warm air, hearty scents, and loud, cheerful music as the front door burst open and Daisy emerged, wearing an apron that had only half succeeded at keeping her clothing free of flour. “Jemma? I knew you would come!”
“Girl, what are you doing with that door open?” Trip emerged into the front hallway after Daisy, a bowl and a whisk in his hand.
Jemma found herself hauled to her feet and pulled inside as Daisy exclaimed, “Come inside! It’s freezing out there. I don’t know why PC likes to hang out on the porch in December.” Behind her, Jemma caught a glimpse of Phil chuckling and shaking his head, but he followed along into the house. As they entered the foyer, a cacophony of voices greeted them enthusiastically, taking her coat, putting a mug of mulled wine into her hand, and ushering her towards the fire. Instantly, she was swept up in the whirlwind of activity and love that was this family.
Many hours later, Jemma found herself dozing off in the darkened living room, lit only by Christmas lights and the remains of the fire. Along the way, someone had insisted that she stay the night and take a morning train back into the city, so she was curled into the couch enveloped by a knobby knitted blanket. She felt full—of warmth, of wine, of community, and of love. She could almost let herself forget that she wasn’t meant to be here.
Though most members of the household had retired to bed, the two young couples-- Daisy and Trip, Bobbi and Hunter-- had moved back to the kitchen. Jemma could hear the rise and fall of their voices and laughter echoing through the household. Eventually, a gentle tinkling and the thud informed her that someone had come in through the back door. There was a small squeal of excitement from Daisy that was soon muffled, presumably in an embrace, and a general welcome and clasping of hands from the others. In the excitement, Jemma could clearly hear what was said.
“Fitz! Mate! What the hell took you so long!”
“Hey, man, want a beer?” There was a hiss and a pop as someone opened a bottle.
“You said you were going to be here hours ago; May and Phil are so pissed!” Daisy exclaimed quietly.
“Yeah, well, the traffic was shite, now, wasn’t it?” A new voice joined the others; a rough, tumbling brogue of a Scottish twang that made Jemma feel infinitesimally heartsick for a moment. “And what’s this parade of texts telling me to come in the back door?”
“We didn’t want you to wake Jemma,” Daisy scolded.
“Jemma? Will’s fiancée?”
A warm flush spread across Jemma’s face when he said her name, and she tried not to squirm under the blanket, hoping not to draw their attention from down the hall. Word got around fast, apparently. Was there anyone Daisy hadn’t talked to about Jemma?
“Yeah, she’s sleeping on the couch.”
“What, you didn’t want to offer your room?” Fitz asked sarcastically.
“Funny,” Daisy intoned dryly. “But I did and she refused. Besides, both Trip and I couldn’t fit on the couch.”
“Fair enough.”
Bobbi spoke, some of what she said obscured by a crackle in the fire as embers settled. “—haven’t met her yet?”
“No.”
“Well, she’s wonderful,” Daisy said decisively. “You’re going to love her.”
There was a beat and then a round of laughter, presumably at the look on Fitz’s face. “Well, we’ve all been ordered, so yes ma’am.”
The house was finally quiet in the morning when Jemma woke and carefully gathered her things to leave. She had just wrapped herself in her coat (and left a thank you note on the fridge) and was reaching for the door when a cough behind her made her yelp and spin on the spot.
“Good morning.” A bright blue pair of eyes under a wash of golden brown hair regarded her curiously, a coffee cup raised halfway to his lips, a stack of stapled papers in his other hand.
“Lord, you frightened me!” Jemma hissed, trying not to wake the rest of the household. She took a moment to compose herself. “Good morning, Fitz.”
Fitz set aside the papers onto the step he sat on and said frankly, “I guess I don’t remember meeting you.”
Jemma wrinkled her nose and curtseyed a little where she stood. “That’s probably because we’ve never met.”
A wry smile slipped across his face and Jemma could feel herself blush. “That might have something to do with it.”
Taking a step backwards, Jemma fumbled behind her for the doorknob, unable to tear her eyes away from Fitz’s smile. “Um… yes… well… I have to go... it was very nice to meet you.”
Fitz stood up in his stocking feet and held up a hand to stop her, “Jemma--”
Her nerves cracked. “Alright, look I know that--”
“I was just trying to say--”
“Hmm?”
“What?”
Jemma shook her head. “No, it’s alright; you go.”
Fitz leaned against the door frame, shuffling somewhat awkwardly. “I just wanted to say... welcome to the family.”
“Oh.” Jemma snapped her mouth shut. “Um... thank you.”
Then she turned and fled, her face bright red.