Work Text:
Look at the stars
Look how they shine for you
-
“Fitz.”
A chill ran through him.
“Can you come out here, please?”
His mouth went dry. All he could think all of a sudden was that Jemma had been gone for twenty minutes. It had meant nothing until just now. She could have been helping cook or serve, or fixing her make-up, or even pulled aside for a moment so that her critical, ever-present work didn’t taint the others’ celebrations. But none of those things could have explained Coulson’s heavy presence in the doorway. Or his tone, soft and solemn. Or his face.
Fitz slowly looked around at the others. He wondered if Coulson looked as pale and haggard to them as he did to Fitz; if his quiet, professional strength was as frayed in reality as it was in Fitz’ now panic-addled mind. Judging by the way raucous tales trailed off, sparkling eyes faded, and lips turned up in smiles lost their curve, Fitz concluded that yes, Coulson did seem well and truly shaken.
It was something of a relief, to find he was not more worried than necessary, but the relief did not last. Next to Jemma’s empty seat, Daisy leaned forward, scrutinising Coulson’s body language for any more detail it might offer. The alarm bells in her mind had been set off, and Coulson’s clenched jaw and tired eyes spoke volumes. It was bad, something bad, and Daisy could only imagine that it was Jemma’s face or hands that had wrinkled Coulson’s collar. Crying? Daisy’s jaw slowly loosened with shock and concern, and watching her, Fitz felt his heart clench. Daisy could read Coulson better than almost anyone, and the strain of her fingers against the bottle in her hand suggested to Fitz that she knew something of the very particular blend of grief, sorrow and sympathy in Coulson’s frame that was tugging at his heartstrings in this very moment.
But there was nothing else for it, in the end, so Fitz stood, and checked that his knees were not trembling too much before he followed Coulson out into the hall. It couldn’t be that bad, surely, he told himself, as the hallway seemed to stretch out before them, endless. They’d been through worse - Jemma had been through worse than whatever this could possibly be. Then again, one tenth of what she’d been through would shatter the average person’s world.
“It’s Jemma,” Coulson breathed at last. Of course, Fitz had long since guessed as much, but the words seemed to steady him. “She’s in your room. She’s fine, but – shaken up. I’d best let her explain.”
Fitz nodded, straightened and gathered himself, and pushed the door open with solemnity. Behind him, Coulson retreated, and Fitz stepped uncertainly forward. The room was dark, with only one lamp on, as if visibility had been a second thought. It seemed inappropriate to turn the overhead on now, so Fitz just hovered a few steps inside the doorway, waiting for his eyes to adjust or for Jemma to invite him further in.
Jemma was sitting on the bed, her legs dangling over the side. Her hands were resting uneasily, scratching and twisting in her lap, and her shoulders were near collapse. She sniffed upon hearing Fitz enter, and wiped her cheeks. She looked toward him belatedly, her eyes shining with tears in the dim light, and her lip trembled uncertainly.
“Jemma?” Fitz murmured, shutting the door slowly behind him without looking back at it. He kept his eyes fixed on hers, and she on his. “What happened?”
Immediately, Jemma’s shoulders drooped again, and she gasped for air, fighting back a sob. She bit her lip and patted insistently at the empty space on the bed beside her, a thin, worn tissue crumbling in her hand as she did so. Fitz lowered himself into the space she offered, and wrapped his arms solidly around her shoulders. Jemma twisted into his arms, and pressed her wet cheek into his shirt as she nestled herself a place there. Fitz in turn adjusted his arms, wrapping them around her back instead, so that her body was cocooned against his, and he rested his cheek against the top of her head. For a few seconds, there was no sound but heavy, shuddering breaths and rapid, thudding hearts, and then Jemma explained haltingly -
“It’s my dad. He – Oh, Fitz, he – “
Fitz couldn’t quite make out the end of the sentence, as Jemma buried her face in his shirt again. She didn’t sob, or wail, just held her breath until she could breathe out again with some semblance of normalcy. Gradually, so gradually, Fitz felt her muscles relax, and though tears continued to stream slowly and steadily down her face, they sat in silence. Fitz kissed the top of her head gently, and stroked her hair.
“Oh, Jemma,” he murmured, because there was nothing else to say. “I’m so sorry.”
Soon enough, Fitz found himself blinking back his own tears. He’d only met Mr. Simmons himself a handful of times, and had received nothing but respect, kindness and intelligence from the man. Not to mention, the fondness with which Jemma spoke of him…it was a tragedy that a man so loved, and so loved by such a person as Jemma, could be lost to the world. Their little corner of it felt colder for the loss.
-
“I don’t have anything to wear! I don’t – there’s nothing in here that – “
Jemma combed furiously back and forward through her wardrobe, clacking hangers together and tossing her nicer dresses at the floor or the bed behind her. They were too bright, too flashy, or too short, or she had too many happy memories to make them seem fitting. They were beautiful, and each one a cruel reminder of the beauty that had been taken away from her.
“Jemma, it’s okay,” Fitz assured her. “We’re just getting a plane. One step at a time. Maybe we’ll find something better when we get there.”
“Better. Better?!”
Jemma bit her tongue, then raked her hand into her hair and pulled at a section, struggling to get herself back under control.
“I know, I know, I’m sorry,” she muttered, wiping her eyes. “Tears, always tears! Can’t seem to get the bloody things to stop!”
She shook her head, trying to laugh it off, and Fitz frowned.
“Look, Jemma, why don’t you go see how Daisy and Coulson are going with the tickets and I’ll finish packing.”
Jemma pouted, and slumped onto the bed. She lifted one of the abandoned dresses and laid it out, pressing it smooth.
“This one is lovely,” she admitted, and sighed. “Fitz, I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“There’s not really a handbook for it,” Fitz reasoned, sympathetic as he came to sit beside her.
“The worst part is – “ there were a lot of worst parts – “he’s been sick for ages! Years! I feel like I should’ve…I don’t know, like maybe I should’ve prepared? It seems awful to think about but…nothing’s ready! There’s no dress, no flowers, no funeral ready, he just has to sit there.”
“Hey, cut yourself some slack. Do you really think having a funeral dress hanging in your wardrobe waiting for this, would have been good for you? Or your mother?”
“No.”
“And do you think you could have stopped it from happening, if you were ready for it?”
It was one of Jemma’s favourite fallacies. She shook her head again.
“No.” Her voice was softer this time. “There’s nothing I could have done. There is nothing I could have done. It’s not my fault.”
“It’s not your fault,” Fitz repeated. He reached across to squeeze her hand, and rested his cheek against the top of her head for a moment, in lieu of a kiss. “Now, should I finish packing or are you?”
“I can,” Jemma decided. “I’ll bring a few and decide when…when I have to.”
Jemma sat a moment longer, checking that she was in control of herself as Fitz stood and moved away. Then, slowly, she began to gather up the dresses she had tossed aside, and as she did, she began to notice other things about them. One was midnight blue, like the sky her father had introduced to her. The next, bright yellow and pink: colours he had told her that her mother had been wearing when he’d first met her. Some were floral – a surprising number in fact, even to her. Tears sprung to her eyes again and this time she let them fall for a while as she hung the dresses back up, one by one, watching their colours flare and fall back into order.
As she turned back to her suitcase and set about balling socks, Fitz frowned at her from the bathroom, toiletries bag dangling from his hand.
“Are you alright?” he checked.
She smiled. “Fine. Just fine. They’re happy tears this time.”
-
Daisy, Coulson, Mack, and even May stepped up to hug Jemma as she and Fitz made their way out to the cars. Elena promised to pray for Jemma’s father, in response to which Jemma could only nod. She’d got a handle on her faucet of tears, but still didn’t quite trust herself to speak without giving way to a flood of unpredictable emotions.
She’d experienced the rawness of grief before, of course, but each time it was slightly different, and this time it was different again. Her grieving of Trip, for example, had been tainted with fear and helplessness, and of Will, with guilt and a sense of betrayal. Remembering her father didn’t command the same sharp, complicated responses, but still her feelings swallowed her up like tidal waves. She hadn’t thought all that much about him lately, but now that he was gone – or perhaps now that her mind was preoccupied with him, as a result of the loss – she kept remembering things about him. The colour of his eyes. His smile. His favourite song. Sometimes it was with great, heart-wrenching sorrow, and sometimes with such joy she beamed while she recounted the stories.
“We never did Santa at my house,” was one such story. Their cab had driven past an inflatable Santa Claus on the top of some store, and it had caught Jemma’s eye. Fitz, who had been drawing circles on her hand with his thumb, stopped to listen.
“My father used to dress up as Santa,” Jemma explained. “I never really thought it was strange at the time, but it seems that way now, because we never did Santa at my house. My parents never tried to convince us that Santa was real. They figured it was cruel to teach kids a lie on purpose – especially one that the adults didn’t believe. You know? It’s like a big joke. I’m glad I wasn’t part of it.”
“What did you do, then?”
Jemma shrugged. “Same as Jesus.”
Fitz snorted.
“Same as Jesus?” he repeated. “Tell that to my mother’s face.”
“Well, not the same as Jesus, obviously.” She gave him the comedically exaggerated eyeroll he was looking for, and he smiled. “I just mean – you know, they taught me that it was a story people used to teach morals and things.”
Fitz frowned.
“What’s the moral of Santa? Christmas is all about the gifts?”
“Generosity,” Simmons corrected. “Generosity and belief. And the goodness of humanity.”
“And the suckiness of adulthood,” Fitz added, mimicking her slightly wistful tone. She elbowed him.
“Well I’m not wrong!” Fitz yelped defensively.
“I guess not.” She blinked, expecting more tears to fall, but instead a smile tugged at her lips. Playing with her hands in her lap, she confessed; “They did try to teach me to be respectful about it too. I wasn’t as good at that part.”
“Oh, no.” Fitz covered his mouth, already grinning with mirth.
“Oh, yes,” Jemma continued. “But again – not the same as Jesus. I tried telling a bunch of nine year olds Jesus wasn’t real and let me tell you. Nine year olds are vicious.”
“You went straight for ‘wasn’t real’?! That’s cold.”
“I was seven, okay? My understandings of real and not real were not very nuanced.”
“Not very-“ Fitz snorted, imagining a miniature Jemma getting into a fistfight with other miniature randoms over whether or not a man in a white robe and a beard did or did not actually sit in the clouds, watching over Earth and creating rainbows and floods at leisure.
“Needless to say my parents had a long talk with me after that about what was or was not appropriate to say and when and how.”
“And as of that moment you became a beacon of tact,” Fitz said, schooling his expression as much as possible despite the burning sarcasm.
Jemma gasped with mock offence.
“I am an angel!”
“Do you get to say that..? I mean, if Jesus wasn’t real…was any of it?”
Fitz gazed into the distance out the window, an overly dramatic pensive frown on his face. Jemma laughed and reached for his hand, and he held it in the space between them. They sat like that, quietly connected in a strangely salvaged moment, until they pulled up at the airport.
-
They spent most of Christmas Day on the plane, and mostly in silence. The festive atmosphere encouraged by the tinsel and trees littered about the airport and the little chocolate Santas on their meal trays left them alone in a bubble, the spirit of Christmas dangling in unfortunate exile. It didn’t seem right to celebrate life in the wake of a death, but at the same time there couldn’t be anything more fitting. It was a paradox better suited to the philosophical depth afforded by physical, temporal and emotional distance, so they left it be. Fortunately, many of their fellow passengers were in their own bubbles too; many tired, busy or cynical, or some combination thereof – hence travelling, rather than already being with family on Christmas Day. So it was not too much of a bubble to suffer, but still, both felt distinctly aware of how very differently this day could have – should have – gone.
As they made their way onto the plane and through the thin isles and milling people, toward their seats, the undeniable reality of the situation sucked Jemma down into a state of numbness. She trailed from Fitz’ hand like a balloon on a string, suddenly feeling dizzy, and like she could drift away at any moment. The knowledge that her father knew all the languages the announcements were made in, and enjoyed treating himself to one in-flight gin and tonic each time he flew over the Atlantic, did nothing to help the daunting knowledge that she was on her way to see him for the last time. She would not see his eyes sparkle, or his smile. He would not call her petal one last time or express his admiration for her work. He’d never know what she really did for a living, either, and she could have told him by now, since Shield was no longer a secret. He’d never know about her and Fitz, either. He’d always liked Fitz. He’d have been happy to know that they were together. But the time for telling and knowing and all that had passed and the life in him was gone now. She wasn’t going to see him, but his body. A corpse. Grey and lifeless, and dressed up by some poor soul to make his passing easier on the rest of them.
“Fitz,” she whimpered. “I feel sick.”
Without making a fuss, he uncapped a bottle of water and prepared a sick bag. Jemma’s head spun and her hand shook when she took the bottle. The whole balance of the world was off in this moment. Usually, Fitz was a sympathetic vomiter, and she was almost not one at all. Still, she was glad to have him, and to know that he would never breathe a word of this to anyone because sickness made her feel weak and insecure. If she couldn’t have strength, she’d take the illusion of it and build herself back up. Sometimes she needed a little help, though, and most of the time, Fitz seemed to get just how much.
“I love you,” she whispered. The water soothed the nausea and she felt the world begin to right itself again.
“Love you, too,” Fitz murmured. “And you’ve been up for thirty hours and barely eaten. You’ll be fine once we sort you out.”
Jemma nodded. Then the very thought of how long she’d been awake gave rise to a heaviness that swept through her bones. She felt her eyelids droop.
“Go to sleep, Jemma,” Fitz encouraged. He kissed her hand, and set about rubbing gentle circles where he’d kissed. “It’s alright. Go to sleep.”
After their rollercoaster of a day – and a night – Fitz wouldn’t have minded going to sleep himself, but Jemma was so vulnerable right now, he couldn’t bear to disappear from consciousness on her. He clicked on a Christmas movie, light enough to keep his mind from the darker thoughts that loomed while Jemma slept, yet insignificant enough that he spent significant portions of it watching her, rather than the screen before him. She was so far gone so soon into her nap that he decided to save food for her instead of waking her up for it, but she only picked at it later, in the car.
“Can we put some music on?” she asked, as if the bite-sized packet of cheese and crackers had reminded her that such a thing existed.
“Sure,” Fitz agreed. “Whatever you like.”
Platitudes were all but bursting from his chest by now, but he kept his eyes on the road, and his hands stiffly on the wheel as Jemma reached forward and turned the radio on. It was playing Christmas carols, unsurprisingly – if Fitz was not mistaken, despite the low volume, the warbling of one Michael Bublé – and Jemma seemed neither satisfied nor entirely dissatisfied by this. She simply settled back in her seat, the music still barely audible, and twisted her fingers together anxiously. Fitz’ hands tensed and relaxed on the wheel, waiting for her to find whatever she apparently wanted to say. When she did, it was quiet. Hesitant. A confession.
“I forgot,” she whispered. “I – I forgot he was sick.”
She left it there, and when Fitz glanced to the side he saw her wide eyes on him; fearful, as if she expected him to turn the car around and declare that she didn’t deserve to see her father off after all. Instead, he sighed. He wished he could reach for her hand, but he was driving.
“You’re not a bad person,” he insisted, putting as much emotion behind the words as he could since neither physical nor eye contact was appropriate. “This is not your fault, and forgetting that your dad was sick isn’t a bad thing. It just means you both had good enough lives not to let it bring you down. That’s something, right?”
Jemma let her head fall back against the headrest, and closed her eyes. A deep breath in and out of her chest was the only reply Fitz received.
-
The reception at the Simmons house was a solemn affair. Everyone was polite – mostly too tired to be anything else – and happy, insofar as they could be under the circumstances. Happy that they could all gather together to farewell their beloved patriarch with something approaching the time, energy and resources he deserved, and happy that the rest of the family were well enough and happy of their own accords. Jemma seemed to find some solace, too, in taking Fitz around and introducing him to her rather extensive clan: there was her mother of course, three sets of aunts and uncles and at least four cousins of childbearing age and their partners and some of their children, and her grandparents. Three out of four were still alive, including Jemma’s grandmother on her father’s side. Fitz winced. He hadn’t thought much about having children, to be honest, but the thought of outliving one stung with a pain he knew he could not even hypothetically understand. Add to that having lost a spouse as well…his throat closed over and it took him a few seconds to manage:
“I’m sorry for your loss.” He said it for easily the tenth time that day and was still so sincere that the words burned his tongue. Seeing Grandma Simmons smile, he suddenly got an itching desire to call his own mother.
“Thank you, dear,” the old lady rasped, smiling gently, in a way that was painfully reminiscent of Jemma’s face when she’d rather suffer on her own. “Our Richard was a good man, you know. Very proud of all this, and of course his darling girl. You look after Jemma now, won’t you?”
“Of course I will, ma’am.”
Fitz’ lip quirked up at the thought, because it was true – of course it was, he’d crawl over a pit of snakes for her if he had to, and endure a thousand other tortures – but almost just the other day Jemma had stabbed a man in the eye with a needle and followed that up by shooting an ancient monster wearing the face of her would-be murderer and speaking with the voice of her ex-lover. He wondered if her grandmother had any idea just how well Jemma could protect herself these days. In response, or so it seemed, Grandma Simmons fixed him with a steady gaze oddly reminiscent of May, communicating on too many levels for him to be sure if half of them were intentional.
“Good,” she said, still somehow cryptic, but she pressed her lips together and shuffled away just as Jemma came up to Fitz, and pressed a glass of wine into his hand.
“Are you sure you should be drinking?” he checked.
“Fitz. I’m upset, not off the rails. Plus, it’s from one of Dad’s old friend’s winery. It’s farewell wine.”
“Not trying to jump down your throat,” he reminded her, a little defensive. “Nobody makes the best decisions when they’re sad. And you’ve hardly eaten all day, remember?”
He was right, and his concern warranted, Jemma had to admit, but that didn’t stop her fixing him with a sarcastic glare as she swiped a piece of buttered bread from a nearby table and jammed half of it into her mouth. Her stomach grumbled. Fitz struggled not to smirk at the evidence of his victory, and Jemma’s glare narrowed into a pointed, accusing one.
“What are you smiling about?”
“Nothing,” he assured her. “Just…your grandma freaks me out. She’s so much like you. ‘Cept, you know, eighty.”
“Scared you, huh?”
“Little bit. Do you think she knows how to milk snakes? I have a feeling she’ll be coming after me if I hurt you.”
“Then just don’t hurt me and we won’t have a problem.”
Fitz snorted. “Wasn’t planning on it.”
Jemma’s smile broadened, and she flashed Fitz a cheeky look before reigning it in, hiding her lips behind her own wine, and remarking:
“As for milking snakes – she taught me everything I know.”
Fitz made a brief show of looking shocked and terrified. Truly, Jemma did know enough about milking snakes to have proven the story an amusing threat under other circumstances. Instead, here and now, he was mostly just impressed. These women – and they were mostly women, he noticed all of a sudden – seemed stronger in numbers. Alone, trying to prove themselves to the world, they had struggled, or at least Jemma had, but here with her family and the cousins and all she seemed to have fallen back on the joy of her father’s life. They had taken a refuge in each other that filled Fitz’ heart with warmth and joy. He didn’t know how to comfort Jemma over this, but as he watched her cousins laugh across the room over Silvia’s pregnant belly, he could see the family resemblance; the astoundingly optimistic and resilient stock from which Jemma had come.
Jemma, meanwhile, smiled a small, proud smile. Watching her grandmother move around with delicacy and strength, she couldn’t help it. She could see the struggle bleeding through – so could Fitz, and probably so could many of the others in the room – but they nobly ignored it and let her continue being as strong as she needed to be. As strong as Jemma had always wanted to be, right from that day she’d tried to pick up a Common Adder by the tip of its tail.
Lost in thought, Jemma almost jumped when she felt Fitz’ hand slip around her waist. He was passing behind her, and leaned over to whisper in her ear:
“Are you going to be alright here for a bit? I want to call Mum.”
“Yeah, of course.” Jemma nodded and waved him off, but he’d only been gone for a minute or so before she felt the hollowness sink in again. It wasn’t as bad this time – at least she had her family around her, and the knowledge that they were all okay. It didn’t feel like despair anymore. But still, she was tired and her soul ached. She didn’t feel like wine and finger food. She felt like going up to her childhood bedroom and bawling until something changed, even though she knew it never would.
“Hey, Ginger,” her father’s old friend, Uncle Pete – the owner of the vineyard – called out, using a childhood nickname he’d given her after Ginger Rogers, and smiling encouragingly. “Y’alright?”
“Sure,” Jemma assured him uncertainly. “I think I’m just going to go for a walk. Thank you for the wine, it’s lovely.”
He nodded understandingly, and Jemma didn’t feel so bad after that about leaving the glass on the table and making her way outside. She took a deep breath. Nothing was as she remembered it, no longer imbued with the soft golden light and warm, embellished scents and colours she had applied to her own memories. Still, the grounds were undeniably lovely. Her mother had an eye for statuary and a hand for gardening that clearly had not lost their keen edge.
One of her father’s old cars sat on the back drive at the bottom of the hill, too. They must have pulled it out to clean it. Maybe they wanted to use it in the ceremony. As she walked around it Jemma longed to run her hand along the gleaming black metal, but she dared not tarnish its perfect polish. She spent an extra, lingering moment admiring it, as she’d never taken much interest in it before except for the occasional engine repair or tyre replacement lesson. It was a lot more beautiful than she’d taken time to notice as a child. Its shape and odd, raised or detachable parts, which had seemed needlessly outdated at the time, were charming now.
“I haven’t been here in so long,” she murmured. It was not a particularly sad fact, just a fact. A surprising one, perhaps. She hadn’t been home for some years, and even then only to visit. Not to live. Not to be home or to soak up all she could. Not enough to remember the way things had changed, little by little, each time she’d come, or to stop herself being surprised when she pushed open the stable door and found her childhood horse tattered and bony instead of sleek and rippling the way he had once been. Jemma pouted.
“Hey, Reggie,” she greeted. “What are you doing in here, hm?”
She offered her fingers for him to sniff, and he whickered warmly.
“I suppose it’s a little cold out there, isn’t it,” she reasoned, glancing over her shoulder. The horse was over twenty years old by now, probably as arthritic as he was balding. An English winter night was the last thing his old bones needed. Still, something about being in here made him look sad. Lonely, maybe.
“Do you miss Richard? Hey?” Jemma crooned, scratching his forelock. “Yeah, you do. It’s okay. I do too. He’d be in here rugging you up by now, wouldn’t he?”
Jemma pressed her lips together. She wasn’t sure what or how much any of the horses in here were eating these days, but she was quite sure she still remembered how to rug a horse. For a few minutes, she disappeared into the tack room and dug around until she found a carrot, a decent brush, and Reggie’s rug and warmers. It was a struggle to carry them, and she ended up making two trips, but eventually she managed to set herself up a little grooming station and was humming to herself, Last Christmas and White Christmas and Walkin’ in a Winter Wonderland as she swayed to the slow, rocking rhythm of the brush. Occasionally, she talked to Reggie, sometimes asking him about his life as if he could answer back, and sometimes telling him about hers, since all her secrets were safe to spill.
“Now, don’t you die on me,” she said once, after a while. “There’s been quite enough of that this year, thank you very much.”
Reggie snorted. Jemma took that as a promise.
-
A somewhat frazzled Fitz found her a few hours later, asleep on an upturned milk crate in the corner of Reggie’s stall, sitting up with her head propped against the wall.
“Jemma! Bloody hell!” Fitz gasped, fumbling with the stall door as Jemma jumped awake with a start. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you!”
Reggie huffed, and booted Fitz away with his nose.
“Hey, don’t you start with me, Mister,” Fitz growled, pointing an accusatory finger at the horse. Jemma petted Reggie until he calmed down and Fitz kept his distance in the hall, breathing more heavily than he tried to let on.
“Sorry for disappearing,” Jemma said, easing her way out of the stall to join Fitz. “I must have fallen asleep.”
His eyes, sharp and enraged by worry, softened at her gentle condolence and she took his hand reassuringly. He sighed.
“Sorry for scaring your guardian there,” he apologised. “You know how I get.”
Jemma smiled. “His name is Reggie. He’s quite sweet really, but he can be a crotchety old man. He’s getting on a bit.”
Fitz nodded, and hesitantly reached out a hand for Reggie to sniff. The horse whuffed and snuffled and Jemma giggled.
“Here, he wants food.” She ducked into the tack room and returned with another carrot, and Fitz grimaced as Reggie seemed to rub as much of his lips as possible over Fitz’ hand in pursuit of the carrot.
“Bloody creatures,” Fitz hissed with disdain, rubbing his hand on his shirt, but there was something appealing about the glint of satisfaction in Reggie’s eye. He was a character, that one.
“So did you want me for a reason?” Jemma checked, “or are you just jealous of old Reginald here?”
Fitz blinked. “Oh. Right. Yeah. There’s a dinner on soon, right fancy one by the look of things. I thought you might want to get dressed.”
Jemma looked down. Tracksuit pants, a loose T and a cardigan. Fairly nice ones, for aeroplane clothes, but now dirtied with horse-hair and stink. She screwed up her nose.
“Yes, I suppose you’re right.”
“They put our things in your old room, I hope that’s alright.”
“Of course. Why wouldn’t it?”
Standing outside the doorway of her room, Jemma’s heart thudded loudly and she felt the reason for Fitz’ concern. Her emotions had begun to steady out now that she was cycling into the acceptance stage more properly, but standing outside that door she remembered so much, too much all at once for it to be anything specific. Running down the hallway, laughing. Shouting out the doorway for someone to be quiet or if they’d seen something she’d lost. Her father standing there, turning out the light. Love, love, love.
She pushed the door open, and breathed a sigh of relief. The room was not the same as it had been when she was seven, or ten, or fourteen. It was an adult’s room now. A guest room, almost, but with a few touches personal to her that might not have been to anyone who didn’t know that. And of course, her and Fitz’ suitcases - another new fixture in her life – and several of her favourite dresses, laid out, by Fitz presumably, on the bed.
“You said the blue one was lovely,” Fitz explained. “I thought –“
“Thank you. It’s perfect.”
Breathless, she admired it. The sky, the stars, the beginnings of the life she had built herself. Her loves, her career, her Shield family, even Fitz, she owed to that quiet night beneath the stars.
“It’s perfect,” she whispered again, and though she did not believe in such things she hoped, for a moment, that somewhere her father could hear her or feel her appreciation for all that he had, both directly and indirectly, helped her become.
On the other side of the bed, Fitz was pulling on the jacket of his suit as Jemma finally began changing into the dress. He checked the lines in the mirror on her dresser, and noticed a bright brass spyglass near her jewellery box. Unable to resist, he picked it up carefully and studied it. It must have been a good two hundred years old, and beautifully crafted.
“It was my dad’s,” Jemma explained, and Fitz was suddenly grateful for a lifetime of training himself not to drop things when shocked. He turned to find Jemma, dressed, with tears in her eyes once again as she approached him and gently took the spyglass.
“Well, I mean, it’s mine,“ she explained. “He gave it to me when I was a little girl. I was really disappointed at the time because it couldn’t see the stars but then Dad told me they used it for seeing across the ocean instead. Heroes and soldiers and pirates, all that. I didn’t get to see the ocean much, of course, though, so I had to play pretend. I used to climb trees and all sorts with it. Pretend I was an ‘intrepid explorer!’, you know, but I…”
She trailed off, and sighed, and gazed sadly down at it.
“I broke it. Years ago. I climbed a tree and fell out and mum and dad were so worried about me they didn’t notice. I was too afraid to tell them because it was really precious to Dad, but that means I could never ask him to fix it.”
“I’m sorry,” Fitz said. Jemma hummed noncommittally, still looking down at it, until something seemed to click in her brain.
“Do you think you could fix it?” she asked, looking up, with hope shining brightly in her teary eyes. “I would try, but I’m afraid I’ll only make it worse and I couldn’t… ah, I know it’s silly but it feels like I couldn’t bear it if I did that to him. Not now. This is the last thing I have of him, and if I can’t bring it back…if I can’t fix it…”
Her breath hitched and she gave up on speaking. Fitz passed her a handkerchief and she let him pull her to the bed, where they sat while she gathered herself. Fitz took guardianship of the spyglass, holding it protectively but gently while his attention was on her.
“It doesn’t have to last forever, Jemma,” Fitz pointed out. “Things don’t. People don’t. That’s the way of the universe.”
Jemma nodded, wiping her eyes.
“Can you pass me those earrings, please?” she asked. Fitz stood briefly and brought the whole jewellery stand down from the dresser with him.
“It’s like you said at the bottom of the ocean, remember?” he continued as he did so, unfazed. “No energy is created and none is destroyed. The universe is constantly feeding off itself. One day, your dad’s gonna become a star. Think about that.”
Jemma did, and her breathing eased. She pressed her earrings in with a tight smile.
“He’d like that,” she agreed.
“You won’t be able to see him with this thing, of course,” Fitz jested, “but he’s going to be watching over you. Just like he has been this whole time. And he doesn’t care if you broke his spyglass or not, I’m sure he appreciates that you knew how much he cared about it. And he doesn’t mind if you cry or not, Jemma. You can cry if you want to.”
Jemma bit her lip.
“No, I’m – I’m okay.” She nodded.
“Even if I can’t fix the spyglass, you’re going to be okay?”
She nodded again, and Fitz pulled her into a hug.
“You’re a brave, brilliant, beautiful woman, and he’d be so proud of you,” Fitz breathed. Jemma hugged him back fiercely, filling herself with the strength of stars until eventually, she jested back –
“But you can fix it, right?”
“Of course,” Fitz assured her, puffing out his chest. She slapped it teasingly.
“Then get off me and let me do my make-up, you massive sap!”
She kissed him before she stood, and her lips were smiling.