Jemma knew she had put him through a lot. She knew she had hurt him, again and again. She hadn't been there when he needed her. She hadn't noticed when he wanted her. And then she had gone off and had and extraterrestrial romance while he tried desperately to retrieve her. But this THIS. This was the worst punishment he could have dolled out to her in return.
This was torture. This was worse then the Asian guy with the magic powers hitting her with contracted tools. This power ripping her from within her very body had enough overwhelming force to topple a building. If she had had the information Hydra wanted, helicarriers would have shouted it out then and there. She would have thrown herself in front of the guns. She would have done anything, ANYTHING to stop him.
But she couldn't.
His mind was made up, and as she watched him disappear into the porthole she realized there was no more hope left for her. He had left her behind, on a planet overrun by evil. In a cave with the men of Hydra surrounding her, with the head itself looking down his fat nose at her. He had left her on a planet without him.
Pain. "The act of feeling pressure on the nerves" according to the Webster dictionary. By scientific standard the definition of pain could contain so many elements, go in so many directions that narrowing it down to an exact feeling, exact emotion, exact arrangement of words would be actually impossible.
We are told in the scientific world that nothing is impossible. In science, in philosophy, in life, everyone wants to comfort themselves with the thought that nothing is impossible. Everything is achievable through hard work. Humans used to live in a world lit by whale blubber. Now flipping a light switch is the easiest thing in world. People used to have to travel to far and distant places bumping around in the back of a covered wagon. Now we have aircraft carriers and helicarriers. With cloaking devices and all the top-notch gadgets and gizmos technology has to offer. Looking at this, the common eye would assume nothing is impossible. Nothing is, actually proven by scion to be impossible, right?
But Jemma knew some things were impossible. And her and Fitz were one of them. She loved him so much and she knew he loved her to the ends of the Earth. But she knew that them being together was impossible. And describing the pain she felt from that realization was equally impossible.
This pain was not new to her, believe it or not. Jemma sat back against the pole of the cell her captives had thrown her back into as she recalled the only other time she had felt this true pain before. The wind was rushing in her hair. Her hands were clammy, her eyes were red. Her skin was a sickly white.
She was standing in the cargo hold. She was ready to give it all up. She was ready to jump and fall, she was ready to end this. She had too. If it meant saving the lives of the ones she loved then it was worth it. Anything was worth it.
And there he was. The ever-present light in her mind. He was the only thing that strung her memories together, now that she thought of it. They had met so long ago, before any of this was a reality. Where the idea of fieldwork and magic monoliths would have been regarded as a joke. Something told down in the boiler room while the senior students got drunk and loud and the freshmen tried to pretend like they knew what they were talking about.
Such an ass he had been back then. She almost felt a smile come to her lips as she remembered their long-held rivalry. But that smile quickly faded as she reminisced of where it had lead them. To a plane, the bus. To an adventure beyond their wildest imaginations. To a new leader with a new team. One of which was a traitor.
But there was time to think on that later. Jemma didn't want to remember all the terrible things Ward had done, it would only lead her to more dispare as she thought of Fitz being stuck on that distant planet with him. And with that THING.
Jemma shuddered at the thought of that thing. The terrible inhuman who had wrecked havoc on that long-lost paradise. It was a parasite; feeding off the live hosts of the people on that planet. Off of their madness, their insanity. Of Will's, and her's, and his old teammates. And now it would be feeding off Fitz.
The thing was like a disease. It was everywhere, coming from all around and eating people up from the inside just like that electronically transmitted virus had tried to eat her up so long ago.
It had failed because Fitz was there to help her stop it. Just like he had always been. She had fallen off the plane, she had been swept up into the current and was plummeting down into the sea, and when she looked up she saw that monster fast approaching. She saw that face that she would grow to love, that evil smile that she would secretly have a crush on at times. Those cunning lips that masked his bastard mind.
It had been Ward coming to her rescue, but she had always imagined it was Fitz. Even before they knew that Ward was Hydra, Fitz had been the hero in her mind. He had worked tirelessly to fight for her to live; by her side every second, searching for a cure. Giving her hope. According to the others that day he had a parachute all ready and would have jumped out to save her.
But she didn't need others telling her for her to already be sure of it. He had been there to help her of course, and when she turned back, that last moment before she jumped, she had felt a moment of that true pain. While he screamed her name into the air, grasping desperately at the locked door; trying so hard to escape, to run to her; to save her.
That had been but a second of the real pain, but she supposed now that she had remembered wrong. Had she not felt that again just last year? When she had left him…turned her back away and gone undercover?
See there will always be differences between people, as there should be. The world would be so boring if we were all the same, if we didn't have those to shake it up a little. Then of course it would all descend into pure catastrophe if we didn't have those steady ones to keep the rest on track.
And you've heard the saying, I suppose, that opposites attract? Well this was the way with Fitz and Simmons. See while he was a true hero, always there with a plan and if not a plan then a determined spirit to make one, she was always there to break them. She always ran away when it got hard, she was impulsive and flighty. Fitz was her holdfast but she was his current, always pulling him away from his course.
And when he wouldn't come then she would go herself, out into the sea and leave him abound on his steady rock because the challenge was just to much for her.
She had been able to get through his coma. She had been able to sit by his side as he slowly recovered, went to therapy and regained his strength again. Watching him while he learned how to walk and re-learned how to read. She had been with him every step and she was ready to be with him until the very end. Until he had every bit of his memory back and was just as good as new.
But then he started getting those looks. Those ones that came with his memory. As he remembered what had happened, what he had said and what he felt. He would look at her with eyes that were full of hurt. A special kind of pain that she would never be able to understand and that he probably didn't understand himself.
It's like the kind of pain a young babe experiences when it is teething, or long before that when one of its favorite toys accidently drops on his head.
Its a pain without content or understanding. The babe cannot comprehend that it was just an accident; it cannot realize that the toy didn't really mean to hurt him. It cannot look at it from the tooth's point of view and realize that it is just doing its job.
All the baby knows is the pain. It knows it hurts, it wants it to stop and it can't understand why the people around; the ones who have always cared for him and kept him safe won't help him and make it all go away.
This is how Fitz had been. He had hated her. He had never said it of course but she could see it in his eyes; the hate simmering behind them was marred with the pain. The pain he couldn't fully understand and didn't want to comprehend. All he knew was the pain and incredibly vicious power inside of him that tore him apart every time he looked at her.
It was why she had had to leave. She couldn't bare it anymore. And those months apart were the longest either had ever gone without seeing each other since they had met. She knew it had been hard for him but it had hurt her too. She tried to push her feelings away but they had all come rushing back in that one moment;
the time that he had looked her in the eye when she returned, and said her name.
She tried to shake it off. To act like nothing was different, but EVERYTHING was. He looked different, he sounded different; the lab was different and their entire relationship would never be the same.
Jemma clutched her wrist tightly as she mulled that over. In that moment, the first time she had seen him in months, she had been certain they could not go back to how they were, and yet there they had been. That day in the lab when he had taken her up in his arms, pressed her against the desk and kissed her like he had wanted to for so long.
They were closer then they had ever been now but it was true, that moment in their past was monumental; it marked them as different. Jemma would always be the one getting herself into trouble, and Fitz would always be the one ready to rush in and help her, and ready to back out once she was safe.
It was now that Jemma noticed these couldn't possibly all have been the same type of pain. What about the moment she had realized Fitz didn't intend on saving himself down at the bottom of the ocean? What about the moment that she was sucked into the monolith? Or the moment that he brought her back?
All of these times had been so important to the course their lives would follow, and so many were filled with pain.
It was now that Jemma decided there were three kind of pain in life. There were two that were the same pain, it was merely in the amount that it was felt. That moment before she was swept off the bus, that had been this true pain. But it was only for a second. It didn't have time to grab hold and start eating her alive, although it desperately tried its best.
The second milestone of pain she realized, that moment when Fitz had looked at her with a hazy amount of recognition, that was a different kind of pain. It was one that lay in your stomach instead of spreading to your whole body. Your words were still completely cohesive, your mind was still clear, but in your stomach you could feel the turmoil and hurt. And the pain was bumping up against you and pulling you down.
The third type of pain was the same as the first. The element, the thoughts, the matter. The way it spread throughout your entire body and hurt so much you could hardly stand it. This was the pain she had felt once before, only now she was feeling it tenfold.
It ate her up in such an evil way now that the thought of death was quite appealing. Fitz had left her behind on Earth because he wanted to save her. He was ready to give up his life, once again, for her.
And there was nothing she could do to stop him.