anywhere, i would've followed you,
by WickedSong.
Disclaimer/Note: I do not own AoS and I am super sorry for the sadness I am about to inflict upon you lovely folks! You can blame my friend Molly for it, she said she wanted the sad.
He wants to be all tough; macho man, super-secret agent Grant Ward style and all, act like it's rolling off his shoulder, but there's a bloody bullet stuck in him and it hurts. He's lying on the floor, bleeding out; now it's going to be more of a mess than usual and it'shisfault this time; as whatever super-powered psycho they were facing today runs off the BUS; Ward in pursuit. At least he thinks it's Ward; it could've been May or Coulson or even Skye. He can't really focus on anything right now apart from the bloody bullet in his side. He's smart; he knows what his lack of focus must mean.
He's never heard Simmons sound so forceful when he finally finds and grips onto her voice, thankful that she's okay and no other stray bullets hit her. When he thinks about it, he never thought she really could sound so in charge unless she was telling him off for something. She yells for help, for someone to grab this, to get her that, to move him there. He knows every fancy instrument in the world she can use, every method, but the fact that he can't really remember any of it right now tells him all he needs to know. And the fact that this plane doesn't seem to be stocked with much of it; why is it always when you damn well need it, he wonders, lets him know so much more.
"Jemma," he calls. It's so quiet and weak; the complete opposite of how he wanted to sound to her in the here and now. He didn't think this moment, when you count up your regrets and cringe looking back, would come until he was old and grey; peacefully drifting off. But this isn't the time. "Jemma."
The second time is when she stops running around looking for things chaotically and realises he's still lying there. She bends down beside him, checking over his side with her tools; pressing down on the bleeding, calmly humming to herself, wiping her eyes when she thinks he isn't looking, humming some more. She doesn't look him in the eye, doesn't take account of his shallow breaths or the fact that he keeps saying her name.
Until finally, and he doesn't know how, he manages to find her hand and clasps it in his own. They've never been much for touching one another. They don't really hug and when they do she's the one to initiate it. She's the one who'll hold his hand or kiss his cheek too. But for this moment, this comforts him and it's the one thing that manages to break her out of her whatever trance she's put herself in. He knows her too well, knows she's doing it so that she can focus on the task at hand.
"You're going to be fine," she says. She extracts the bullet and he realises that that's what she's been doing that entire time. He winces at the feeling and she does so too, as if feeling his discomfort as her own, but she quickly sets it aside and then continues trying to stem the bleeding. "See," she tells him, with that force in her voice once more, "everything's going to be fine."
"Jemma."
"Stop saying my name like you're," she begins to snap and then stops herself, aware of the word she doesn't want to say. He doesn't want her to say it either, it's hard to look your morality in the eye, "you're not going to, you know?"
He nods. It's laboured and his head hurts like hell but he makes the attempt fpr her, so she knows he's still there, still trying to hold on. She's pressing down on the bleeding again, looking around wildly, He wonders where everyone else is, but she explains that someone had to go after Ward and May and Skye were busy fixing a technical fault with the plane which meant they couldn't move and were still more or less sitting ducks. She tells him with such an air of calm around her, so fake and controlled, and so needed all at the same time. Her voice soothes him, takes an edge off the swift pain that's coursing through him right now.
He's still holding her hand when he gives a shaky breath in and out, as she instructs him to. "You're okay though?" he asks. He tries to give a small laugh, tries to make it seem less than it actually is, just like he's prone to do. "The bullet…I thought it was going to so I..."
"Why did you have to be so stupid?" she replies, not harshly, but desperately. The control that she's placed over herself is starting to break now and he wishes he could do something to make this easier for her. Trying to find any other solution to an event that's already occurred is childish, what ifs solve nothing and yet here she is. She's still pressing down on the wound, trying to keep him awake, and he shivers at the sensation every time. They're too far out from available medical help so a part of him thinks he's just on borrowed time right now. He sees her shake her head, as if she can read his thoughts (a part of him is sure she can). "Whatever you do, just don't close your eyes."
Clinical but caring, a bit like their relationship. Close enough that the sight of her jumping out of a plane at 30,000 feet still makes him jolt awake at night, but so far that he can only try to do something as simple as hold her hand without any fear when he's pretty sure he's dying. It's the first time he's thought about it that way; dying; and he clings to her tighter. He doesn't want to go.
"I'm sorry, guess I…guess I should have thought it through, eh?" he gives a weak laugh and she laughs too; sad and with tears in her eyes but a laugh nonetheless. But he stops laughing, and looks at her, trying to focus on her and only her, even when he can hear the others returning, and the plane lift off. "I…"
But he can't think of what to say at all. And it's getting harder to talk, and harder to think and harder to breathe. Ward asks how he is and Coulson's radioing orders. All he wants is to talk to Jemma, his Jemma, and just tell her everything he wouldn't, couldn't before.
Those regrets; like a slate you can't erase, pile on top of him once more.
His eyes almost slip close but a sharp reminder of, "Leo," brings him back. Jemma shakes her head at him, tries to stem the blood once more, asks Coulson how quickly they can get him on the ground and to a S.H.I.E.L.D. facility and does so without taking her eyes off him.
"Leo Alexander Fitz, don't you dare!" she chastises. If he really concentrates and doesn't think about how easy it would be to slip away right now, he can remember her telling him off for countless other things, none of them dying mind you but telling him off all the same. For the time he set up that prank when they were being 'haunted' by a dead man, for calling it a 'vaccine' instead of an 'antiserum', for constantly going on about getting a damn monkey.
"Leo, Leo," she calls once more. He clings to it; the call of his name from her lips is like a lifeline. He wants that to be the last thing he hears, he's sure. "We'll get you your bloody monkey, and you can call it whatever daft name you want. And we'll go visit your parents and mine and we don't ever have to go into the field again, just you and me together in our lab!" she pauses, and then slowly, quietly, she about musters, "I'm sorry, Leo."
"Not your fault," is all he can about manage to spit out. But he tells himself he has to keep his eyes open just one more moment, one more moment to tell her, to remind her. "I don't regret anything." He wants her to know that as long as he was with her it didn't matter; he would've moaned and whined about it but it wouldn't have mattered; anywhere she wanted to go he would've followed her because she was Simmons and he was Fitz and they didn't make sense without the other to stand beside.
The last thing he hears is his name, "Leo," and she cries it this time. Every last part of her that tried to be together, falls away and he tries and tries. But regrets and time and all he sees is black. He can only hope she knows; knows he didn't want to leave her, didn't want to make her feel upset or guilty. But most of all knows that he loves her.
And what he'll never know is that she did too.