"Fitz. It'll all be fine."
"I don't know, Jemma!"
A little girl, their little girl, whose eyes are the colour of coffee and deep with intelligence and whose hair is a light brown and curls at the bottom, watches, petrified. She's biting her lip, holding her hands over her ears, silently pleading with them to stop it.
It's another one of her father's relapses. One night before bed, she'd asked her mother what made him like that - all angry and unreasonable and volatile - when he's usually so kind and intelligent and logical, and her mum had tried her best to explain it to her. Oh, sweetie, it simply happens. There was something that happened, a good long while before you were born, and it changed him. It hurt his brain and made it difficult for him to communicate. It frustrates him, not having his words.
She always knows where to hide when he's having one of his fits. In a silly, absurd way, the thought almost makes her want to break into giggles. Because he's always having these fits and his name is Fitz. It's hers, too, of course, only hers is Fitz-Simmons (but secretly her parents have always spelt it FitzSimmons). These tantrums - or whatever she ought to call them - scare her. They're worse than the ghost stories her classmates always indulge in at bonfires. Because they're real. And they're hers.
She's always been a bit odd. Too bright for what everyone calls regular school (though it's really not), and too something else, too. Maybe it's the part of her that always messes up at simple spelling tests (because she's always spelt savour and centre that way and everyone always tells her that she's wrong, that spelt isn't a real word but that spelled is). Maybe it's the part that sounds funny when she speaks, because her accent isn't properly American; no, it's some strange mish-mash of Yorkshire, Glaswegian, and Midwest American instead.
But they're all gifts from her parents, all their oddities culminating in a single being. And, far from hating them for it, she loves them. When her dad and mum bring her along to the lab. When they complete each other's sentences. When they give each other the best ideas. Even when her father is screaming and throwing and stomping. Even when her mother is crying and soothing and compromising.
Because this is her family, and she'll always love them.