If you'd asked him what he'd felt like, the first time he saw Jemma Simmons after 'The Box Incident (as he liked to think of it), he'd say he felt nothing. Nothing, that is, that could be fully quantified into a neat little box which detailed a certain emotion. Even in that box he'd not been able to fully express his feelings so much in words. "Let me show you" He'd said instead, in a voice that at the time hadn't seemed to be entirely his own, but with actions that certainly were. Instead of kissing her, he'd give her his dying breath. He knew that he'd become dependent on Jemma, but that she could continue on without him. She was...Jemma. Even now, her name on his lips felt a little bit like relief, like the sound you made when you held your breathe for too long only to sigh out when you were certain your lungs were going to explode. Like the breath he'd given to her.

But here she was, and strangely, so was he. The two of them standing directly in front of each other, as though he was looking into a mirror except instead of seeing his own reflection, he saw her. Sluggishly, brow furrowed, he wondered if this was real, or whether this was just some pathetic way of his oxygen starved brain to give him one last looked at one of the people, the only person really, that had mattered to him in those final few moments. It was almost as if nothing else had happened. Shutting his eyes for a moment, he let out a breath, before snapping them back open, fixing his now focusing vision on her beatific face.

"Jemma," he croaked, eyes studying her frame, drinking in every detail as though he was a man dying of thirst (which was quite ironic when one thought about it). He couldn't believe it. They'd both made it out, despite the water pressure and the million other little factors that made this situation so wrong, somehow... He realised that he hadn't counted on Jemma to actually not do what they'd planned. A slow smile crossed his lips. Of course she wouldn't leave him. Of course.

Yet...something was wrong. Jemma wasn't smiling back at him. In fact, she looked scared and Jemma Simmons never looked scared, not unless it was life-threatening, if it was serious, if it was...to do with him. He watched her move a little, the light now catching her face and he noticed tears, or at least, glistening paths down her cheeks where tears had once been. He shook his head, ignoring the thumping pressure that now rose in it like a tidal wave. It was getting too much, and the pain overrode his vision until the woman he loved became nothing more than a blurry picture.

"Ngh, no, Jemma, please. Please," He managed to sputter out, the pain bringing him to his knees as he reached out to touch her form, but his hand hit glass. They were separated by glass, and he almost felt like laughing it was so stupid. Of course he hadn't survived this. He was dying and his brain was say the last fuck you. Yet he didn't know why it had to be so painful. Hadn't his heart broken and suffered enough when his world, his organisation, belief system and best friends, crumbled all before him?

He laughed.

-;-

"He's critical but stable. Memory loss is almost certain, if he wakes."

"When he wakes,"

"We don't know that Doctor Simmons. None of us do."

Clenching both her hands into fists, Jemma looked down at the floor. Tears tracked themselves down her face, as she refused to look through the glass and into the room that Fitz now lay in; wired up to so many machines she could hardly see his face. An angry sob bubbled past her lips, still fixing her gaze resolutely at the floor and not, not at the still (not lifeless, he couldn't be) figure of her best friend.

"I know Fitz, he wouldn't just...leave. He gave his life, but he still had a pulse when Fury found us. Oxygen starvation sometimes doesn't-"

"You know better than to deal in 'sometimes' and 'mights'. You're a Doctor, you deal in certainties."

In the pit of her stomach, Jemma knew the Doctor was right. Hauling herself up from her seat, she walked slowly over towards Fitz, wobbling slightly as she did so. Three hours spent in a decompression chamber on an airplane would do that to anyone. As she came to rest just outside the room, she placed her hand on the glass and peered in.

"He looks so peaceful, it's almost like he's sleeping." she said, her eyes tracing his limp form. His lips had returned to almost their normal colour, and it had seemed like only moments ago that he had spoken those words to her. "Yeah, and you're more than that." Did she love him? Those last few minutes now seemed like another time and another place, in which they were stuck in a realm of possibilities from where to go from that confession. Only they hadn't been. They'd been trapped in a life or death situation and Jemma might have had Fitz never say those things to her if it hadn't been for the world falling to pieces around them and, for a moment, she wished she'd clung on to Fitz a little bit tighter.

But she hadn't, and now, he was like this. She almost hated herself for it.

"I'm sorry, Fitz. I'm so so sorry, just please, don't go."

Everything was so fragile now. Her life, his life, the rest of her team and whatever happened after that. She knew she was strong enough to get through it, even if she felt as if her heart was now made of glass. It was ironic, the glass being something keeping her apart from Fitz, a barrier which she couldn't bring herself to cross just yet, but so easily breakable.

She wasn't quite sure if she wanted it to shatter just yet.