Devoid: being without a usual, typical, or expected attribute or accompaniment – Merriam Webster
There is no grief like the grief that does not speak. -Henry Wordsworth
When they find him, he has been missing for three days, five hours, fifty-three minutes, and nine seconds.
When they find him, he is dead.
Jemma runs to him; she shakes him. He is cold and his familiar heartbeat no longer beats beneath her fingertips. It hasn't for a long time.
She starts compressions anyway.
Someone is screaming and screaming; why won't they shut up?
She thinks it might be her.
She is vaguely aware of Ward picking her up and carrying her away. She strikes out at him blindly, but he does not let go.
She thinks he is saying something, but nothing makes sense.
The screaming stops eventually and the sobs start. Ward tightens his arms around her. She buries her head against his chest, scrunching her fists against her eyes strongly enough for her vision to fade to black in flashes of light. It doesn't help. Fitz's dead body is still emblazoned on her eyelids.
She vaguely registers Ward sitting down, cradling her carefully against himself as he does so. He rocks her gently and strokes her hair. He doesn't say a word.
She cries until she falls asleep.
She wakes up aching and she's not sure why.
When she remembers, it feels like a freight train.
She does not cry, though; there are no tears left in her.
She pulls herself out of Ward's lap in silence, with every muscle screaming out in agony, every sinew straining to hold her body together. Every beat of her heart, every limb, every molecule of her body, right down to the subatomic particles, is crying out for Fitz.
In a daze, she walks to the bathroom. She has to get clean. She has to wash the feeling of his lifeless body—still, too still—off her hands. She suddenly feels as though she is suffocating. She tears at her clothes in panic, trying to pull them off. The fabric tears, but it doesn't matter; she'll never wear them again. She drops them to the floor and wishes it were that easy to shed her memories of this day.
She looks up at herself in the mirror—pale, hollow, empty, because the part of her that is Fitz is gone. With shaking hands, she turns the faucet on, and then pushes her hands under the cold water. The pressure and the temperature makes the water falling on her skin feel like nails driving into her hands. She ignores it. Her hands turn red, red as blood, and still she lets the water fall.
The water shuts off suddenly and she stares down at her hands in confusion. Someone's hands descend gently onto hers, lifting them up and wrapping them in a towel. The same person turns her towards them with the same gentleness and then she's looking at a familiar black shirt soaked with her tears. Ward.
She thinks he asks her if she needs anything, but it takes too much effort to really listen. Or to reply. She just stands still and stares at the tear stain for what could be seconds or a millenia. She is suddenly cold, down to her bones. She shivers, slowly at first, then she is shaking in a violent hum.
Ward yanks his shirt off and pulls it over her. Its warmth cannot touch her shivering. He pulls her close, holding her against his side as he leads them out of the bathroom. He finds blankets somewhere and wraps her in them.
Being cocooned in blankets used to make her feel safe; now it just serves to remind her that there are some things you cannot ever be safe from.
Her body wears itself out finally; the shakes fade to weak tremors and then disappear all together.
Ward is still holding her; she twists in his arms to look up at him. He looks back down at her sadly. She asks him the question she's been trying to avoid since she first found Fitz; maybe he'll know the answer because she certainly doesn't.
"What am I going to do?"
His voice cracks. "I don't know, Jemma. I don't know."
She can name every property of every element on the periodic table.
She can name every species in the plant and animal kingdoms, in their assorted phylums, classes, and orders.
But she can't live her life without Fitz.
She doesn't know how.
-finis-