So this is a bit angsty, and just a one-shot, I had it in a dream last night, and fit in perfectly with my One Night series. There will be an actual ending to After coming soon, so don't worry.
Um ... enjoy.
"Jemma," Skye almost laughed, had it not been completely wrong for the situation. "It'll be fine. She'll be fine. You'll be fine. Everyone will be fine."
"I know, but still..." It was rather amusing, watching the normally unflappable Simmons flit from her work bag to Skye and back again. "It's just it's the longest she'll be without either of her parents, and I ..."
"Simmons!" Skye did laugh this time - a short thing out of exasperation as opposed to amusement. "It's six hours. At most. You'll probably be back here in four, knowing you." She raised an eyebrow to stop the protest she knew was coming from the bio-chemist, unable to raise a hand to the infant girl in her arms. "Imogen will sleep for most of that - she won't even know you're gone. You're going to need to practise spending time away from each other, and you said you wanted to get out of the plane a little bit more."
Her resolve was breaking as she tried, "And if she wakes up?"
"Then we'll have some god-mother, god-daughter time, won't we Immy?" The five month old didn't even stir from her sleep in Skye's arm, "Now go and join your other half and do your science thing." Her laugh this time was one of amusement, as finally Jemma smiled, pressed a kiss to her daughter's head and went to join Fitz in the SUV.
"It's a few hours Jem. What's the worst that could happen?" He told her in a hushed voice, taking her hand in his regardless, and sharing a small smile.
It really was supposed to be just a few hours - clean up of a minor alien incursion in the middle of a forest in the middle of nowhere country, they were just the first responders, making sure there wasn't anything major in value of alien technology before the actual SHIELD clean up crew arrived the next morning - and the majority of that time was meant to be travel.
Too bad nothing quite turns out how its supposed to.
They swarmed quickly, a group of no more than six or seven, but they outnumbered the group of five, and had clearly planned this.
FitzSimmons moved out of the line of fire and into the trees both of them stumbling slightly at one point or another, until they reached a small clearing and a cave at the other end of it barely five hundred metres away from the site - out of sight and out of the rain that had decided to join them with the gun wielding maniacs.
Turning to Fitz, Jemma's smile at reaching safety slid away as she took him in properly. "Fitz?" Her voice was slow, hesitant, as if hoping that just this once her eyes were playing a trick on her.
He followed her line of sight to his chest, just at the point of the bottom of his rib cage, and felt his legs collapse underneath him, his arms scrabbling to keep him upright as the red spread quickly.
"Oh." He muttered. "I didn't ... I didn't ... " He looked up at Jemma, and for one moment, seemed no more than a scared child looking towards his mother, and it terrified her, more than she could ever say.
Her mind flew through every piece of medical knowledge she knew, every lecture she ever attended, every first aid course she ever took.
Stem the bleeding.
She fell to her knees beside him, her hands pressed against him, her fingers quickly becoming slick with the red liquid that she didn't want to look at, that she wasn't supposed to be able to look at, that was supposed to be inside him, safe and ... not pumping out onto the ground.
"Everything's going to be alright," It was her 'professional' voice, or at least an imitation of it, as if that would keep her from breaking in front of him. "Everything's going to be alright," she repeated quieter and to herself, just trying, trying, trying so hard to stem the bleeding.
"I was going to ask you to marry me," He blurted out, his mouth moving quickly, the words coming too fast, but Jemma heard each word clearly, and froze her hurried movements, her eyes meeting his. "I have the ring, and I had it all planned out, and ... " His voice was cut off with a gasp.
"I would have said yes," she couldn't stop the tears she wiped from her face, and her side just hurt, so bloody much, but she couldn't look down, couldn't draw attention to it, not when he was losing so much blood, and she couldn't do a thing to stop it. "When we get out of here, we'll get married - just me and you and Immy." A bloodstained hand brushed rain soaked hair out of his face leaving a trail of red across his forehead, dreadful and foreboding.
She rubbed at it with her sleeve, looking for something ... anything ... to press against the wound, to keep him alive and here just a little bit longer.
His eyes locked with her before fixing on a point just to her left, "If we get out." His voice was low but she heard it - she could never not hear it.
"When we get out Fitz," she corrected her eyes turning to her hands, because he couldn't give up, couldn't even think about giving up - Imogen needs her father, and she needs ... she needs her Fitz.
"I love you," he gasped, and it wasn't the first time he'd told her, not by a long way, but he truly believed it'd be the last. "I always have, since the Academy, since the first day we met ... " his words twisted within each other, and he couldn't speak over the pain emanating from within him.
"I know, I love you too, so much ... so much." Her hands were alternating between uselessly pressing against his wound and cradling his face, pressing kisses to his cheeks, his nose, his forehead, her tears intermingling with the rain drops that clung there.
A final kiss, pressing their lips together for one last time, sharing love and life and hope and everything they couldn't say, ad a future ... a future they would never get to have.
He gasped, one, two, three times, before releasing it slowly, his head lolling to the side, his eyes wide and blank and staring straight through Jemma.
"Fitz? Fitz. Leo, please!" Her voice shook uncontrollably, as her hands remained pressed down on his stomach, on a wound that no longer became wetter.
Blood doesn't flow from a dead body for long.
Her sobs quickly became hysterics as she pleaded, as she begged, shaking a motionless body, staring into unseeing eyes, her voice becomes hoarse and her eyes welling faster than her tears could fall, her vision blurring as she struggled to see, not letting go of him for a single moment - because she never planned for this.
Yes, she had feared it - but in the way of a nightmare - something that was not actually real, couldn't actually happen, couldn't actually happen to them.
Because for all her forethought and all her plans, this was not one she had ever made, even if the privacy of her own mind, never planned to be left behind - she had always wanted him in her future, needed him in her future, hers and Imogen's.
Her hysterics faded slowly into shaky sobs, one hand clutching his blood stained shirt, the other clasping his slowly cooling hand, as she let her eyes close, her forehead coming to rest on his chest, sending a prayer to anyone, to everyone who could hear, anyone and everyone that she never believed in - that just this once she was mistaken.
That the team ... their team ... would find them before it was too late, that she had ... misdiagnosed Fitz's ... Fitz's ... Fitz's...
Her eyes drifted shut, firmly and finally, as her mind refused to finish the sentence.
Outside, the rain kept up its steady beating.
It was still raining when Ward found them, almost seven hours later, and in the semi-darkness he sighed - seeing just enough that he could make out their bodies draped over each other and, assuming they had fallen asleep, a smile crept onto his face as he swung the large light around to point at them.
He couldn't stop the intake of breath as his eyes took in the true entirety of the picture, their bodies wrapped around each other true, but the identical red circles on their shirts, each at least 30cm in diameter were not easy to ignore.
"Coulson!" He called over his shoulder, not even bothering to glance back as he took steps towards them, unable not to see their pale, clammy pallor - too sickly, too wrong to be them.
He released his sigh as Jemma's eyes fluttered open, far too slowly for his liking, but they opened and that was something.
Her eyes were hazy and unfocused they flicked across the small cave before coming to rest of Ward's face, terror and fear and ... hope, written across her face as he pulled her shirt aside to look better at her injury - and this was why he had never wanted to work as a team in the first place, because sooner or later something like ... this ... happens, and he could do nothing to stop it.
Or, even worse, he could have done something to stop it.
Her mouth opened and it took a few tries but she got a word out just as Coulson and May appeared at the entrance, "Immy?" Her voice was hoarse and unnatural, and she winced visibly every time he put his hands even near her wound.
"She's fine." It was Coulson who answered, "she's still with Skye. They never even went near the Bus." She smiled, a small half-smile that spoke a relief and a mother's worry, as her eyes flutter open and close too slowly to be blinking, too fast to be anything else, not even noticing May cross the small enclosure to Fitz's side, her fingers pressed against his gently cool skin.
The slight shake of May's head tells Coulson all he needs to know as Simmons threatens to fall back into the land of unconsciousness, her hand tightening around Fitz's without even realising it, the hand holding his shirt suddenly releasing and clasping Ward's wrist with sudden energy - energy that was fading quickly.
"Look after her," her voice was far too quiet - but it's not like there was any other noise. "Look after Immy."
"I won't need to." There wasn't a crack in his voice, nor a lump in his throat. Not that he'd admit anyway. "You're going to be okay, and can look after her yourself."
Coulson was bringing the SUV over and there was a medical kit in there, but it wasn't enough, and she knew it.
If only they had found them earlier, if only, if only...
"Please." It was as close as he'd ever heard her come to begging and he nodded silently.
He knew she saw it when her hand freed his wrist, when she turned away from him, and into Fitz by force of habit, searching for warmth she would never find there again, her eyes closing as blackness claimed her with a smile on her face.
Pushing a strand of brown hair behind her ear, she let herself take in the hospital she hadn't been fully ... able to comprehend earlier, the stark paleness of the walls and the floors and the ceiling, the sheets and the equipment identical to a hundred other rooms in the building.
It wasn't raining anymore - it hadn't been raining for a little while.
The sun shone outside the window, reflecting off the green of leaves and the murky top layer of a small pond. And it glinted off of a ring, on the fourth finger of her left hand, small and inconspicuous and ... them.
A whimper from her arms drew her attention down to the small baby in a pink blanket, the baby she refused to let out of her sight, even to put into her cot.
The door creaked slightly, and the woman smiled as a child - a little girl only six years poked her head around, trying so terribly hard to be subtle, and failing so amusingly.
"Auntie Skye?" She asked, her eyes big and blue and the image of her father's down to the twinkle of intelligence that glimmered from within. "Uncle Grant said I could see you and the baby."
"Did I?" Ward appeared at the door instantly behind her, an eyebrow raised as he fought to keep a smirk off of his face, sweeping the small girl off of the floor and into his arms, as she giggled and pretended to fight against him, until he placed her on the hospital bed next to Skye, and the elder woman knew she had to intervene before Imogen refused to speak to her uncle for another week.
Again.
"Immy, meet Jemma." She repositioned herself so she was in a more comfortable upright position, her sleeping daughter still undisturbed in her arms.
"That was my mum's name!" Her face split into a brilliant grin and she raised a finger as if to poke the small baby in the face. "She's tiny."
"I remember when you were that small," His voice was directed towards his god-daughter but his eyes never left his wife, his soft smile more full of love than he could have ever imagined even just a few scant years before.
"I was never that small." She indignantly, her mouth dropped open in horror, as she swapped from staring at Skye to Ward and back again.
"Yes you were," Skye retorted, "And your mum and dad were so proud of you, and ..." She couldn't finish, her eyes welling.
Exactly six years since their death, since the intel failed in such a spectacular way, and they still weren't completely ... gone, they still lingered on at the edges of their consciousness.
Exactly six years of a life they should have lived, of a daughter they should be able to see grow up, of minds taken far too soon from the world.
Exactly six years had passed, and they were still here.
Thank you for reading, and please review,
Mia