Don't Hurry, Don't Worry
It takes a moment to find bearings when it happens.
Her heart hammers in her chest, mouth fill with nonexistent water and she cannot scream out of fear of drowning. A few moves and she'll be up on the surface. Fitz's body is so heavy. And are these ceiling tiles instead of the blue sky?
Are these sheets tangled around her legs instead of cold water?
Jemma utters a strangled sob and sits up. She's shaking. She's cold and she feels wet but she's not. She can't breathe but she breathes, somehow. She wraps her arms around herself, even though she wants to wrap them around Fitz and make sure he's alive. No, not like this, not like he would want to wrap his arms around her. She doesn't love him.
But she loves him.
Her head is pounding.
Kitchen floor is cold against her bare feet. Jemma doesn't turn on the overhead light; the soft illumination from the corridor is quite enough to find the mug and the pot to heat up some milk. Only when she opens the fridge door and the light from the inside floods the kitchen, Jemma notices a figure hunched at the other end of the table.
Lance Hunter squints at her and waves his hand in a not-really-inviting gesture. But then she heats up her milk and pours it to the mug and she would maybe leave, even though she really wants to talk to someone (but Fitz has a plethora of his own issues and she would never dare to burden him with more; Skye's head seems to be in some other universe altogether and May and Coulson were never the people she would confide in. Ward was, but Ward is gone) when it is Hunter who speaks up.
"Having trouble sleeping?"
Jemma is with her back to him and she freezes, the mug half way off the counter. She has to make a conscious effort to relax her muscles, to exhale. Inhale. Exhale again, before she's able to fake a smile and turn to him.
"Yeah. Kind of. You?"
She notices he's nursing a glass with amber-colored liquid. Whiskey? It's not tea, not likely.
He nods.
"Dreams," he huffs out, takes a swig, exhales and gestures for her to sit down at the table.
Jemma pulls up the chair, plants herself next to the stranger, a mug of warm milk in front of her. Perhaps she should switch to something more effective too, she wonders.
She doesn't know Hunter, save from a couple of comments from Skye, an offhand mention, "Yes, I was married to him," from amused Bobbi and a curt "Hello" in the corridor once or twice. She's only been back forty hours after all. Thirty nine hours and forty seven minutes, give or take a few. They haven't had a chance to work together yet or even talk. Should she ask what his dreams are about?
"I dream of drowning," she says instead.
His hand, holding the bottle he pulled from under the table, hovers above the glass, immobilized for a heartbeat. Then he finishes pouring alcohol.
"That sucks. I dream of a car crash."
They sit in silence for a long while after that. Jemma is half way through her milk when Hunter speaks again.
"Sometimes it's better to tell about a bad dream. Makes it go away. Is what my ex used to say."
Jemma looks up at him, startled. Didn't Skye mention that he hated Bobbi? Now he looks almost wistful as he swirls the liquid in his glass, not taking his eyes from it. Suddenly he stops and glares at Jemma with a tight-lipped smirk.
"It's also good to talk to a person you don't know. Makes it simpler."
"You want me to tell you about my dream?"
"That, or about the thing it is about."
"It's complicated."
"I have all night."
Jemma wonders. She hasn't talked to anyone about it. After they were rescued all she worried about was Fitz and all everyone asked about was Fitz. She didn't even think about how she... she couldn't afford that. Only in the dreams...
"We were in that pod," she starts and hesitates. "You know why Fitz?..." she doesn't finish, but he apparently guesses what she means, because his brow un-furrows after a moment and he shakes his head. "Well, his brain was without oxygen when we blew up the window, because he gave the only oxygen bottle to me." Hunter's brow furrows again. "We blew up the window under water. Because the pod drowned. Fitz didn't know why..." She stops again, because now Hunter looks completely baffled, his brow high, forehead wrinkled, lips spread in a helpless smile. "I should start from the beginning."
"No. I mean yeah, it would be easier for me to understand. But you should do what suits you best."
"No. The beginning would suit me best. So, the beginning it is."
Only where's the beginning?
Jemma goes back to how the pod sank, but why were they inside the pod in the first place, why was it ejected from the plane. Who ejected it.
She finds herself looking straight into the face of her other nightmare. Sometimes she wakes up convinced that she's drowning, other times gazing straight at this stranger who wears a familiar face. Into the eyes she used to trust.
"We had a friend," she hears her voice, strained, laced with unshed tears. "We thought he was our friend. Sometimes I tell myself that we did, that we really had a friend and he died, was killed and then replaced by his evil twin. Just so I can mourn him, because I cared about him so much." She covers her lips and reins in those dangerous feelings that threaten to burst her chest right open. "But it is not true," she finally utters. "We had a wolf in our herd and he betrayed us. Fitz insisted that there must have been a reason, some explanation, but there wasn't. He betrayed us, because he never cared about us. He only cared about his mission and his Supervising Officer.
We were tracking him, me and Fitz. He stole our plane, our Bus. Garrett did, and Coulson told us to find it. And somehow... Somehow he knew we were there. He came for us. And he brought us in front of Garrett."
"Wait." Hunter reminds Jemma of his presence. "Garrett brought you in front of... Garrett? I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be rude."
"No." Jemma wipes her cheeks. She hasn't even realized she's been crying. "Wa... Our friend. Our former friend. He found us and brought us to his Supervising Officer, to Garrett. And Garrett had... Did you hear about Project Deathlock?" Hunter shakes his head. "Well, Cybertek, a company, they developed a technology that allowed for implantation of biomechanical parts into the human body. Replacing malfunctioning organs or severed limbs."
"Like cyborgs?"
"Like cyborgs. And Garrett had such biomechanical parts in him. Fitz had this small EMP device and when we came onboard the plane and were faced with Garrett, he short-circuited him. You should have seen how Ward freaked out." Jemma stops speaking. For a moment then, she remembers, she felt sorry for Ward. He seemed so genuinely distressed. Like he truly cared about his Supervising Officer, like he truly loved Garrett. Why, she wondered then, briefly and she wonders now, why didn't he bestow such affection on them, why he only pretended to be their friend, and instead gave this pure, noble feeling to the monster. They would have loved him right back, they did love him. Fitz thought he was giving him a way out, he believed Ward only needed a little pull.
Garrett was evil, there was no doubt about it. He was the Clairvoyant, he had Coulson tortured, had Skye shot. Fitz was so certain that Ward was aware of that, but maybe he was afraid, maybe blackmailed, maybe brainwashed. But given a chance to set himself free from the influence of the monster, Ward reacted in a completely irrational way. He did everything he could to save Garrett.
There could only be one explanation – Ward in reality agreed with everything Garrett was doing. He was on Garrett's side on his own volition.
"Simmons?" Hunter's quiet question brings Jemma back to reality. He hands her a tissue and she wipes angrily at her cheeks. They're wet like after a swim. She doesn't want to cry for Ward.
"What was I saying?"
"That your former friend-turned-traitor freaked out about his SO." Ah, yes. "Is he that guy you keep in the basement?" he asks matter-off-factly but suddenly Jemma feels like struck by a lightning.
She stops dead in her tracks. She turns to Hunter and she knows very well that she looks like a moron, mouth gaping, eyes wide, but she can't do anything about it, she doesn't have the force. All her senses are focused on the question.
The guy they keep in the basement. What?
"You didn't know?" Hunter furrows his brow
Didn't know about what? She doesn't think she manages to voice the question, she doesn't think she's even breathing right now.
"Simmons? Are you okay?"
"The... No. Guy? In a basement? Who?"
"I'm... sorry." Hunter lifts both his hands. "I probably shouldn't have said anything. I thought you knew he was there. Damn it. Sorry, Simmons. Don't think about it."
Right, like she can un-hear this sentence.
Her heart is pounding and she feels even more betrayed than ever before. Ward? Here? So close? When she dreams about him every other night and wakes up screaming and soaked in sweat? So near Fitz?
"Does Fitz know?"
"He didn't. For a long while. But your friend is smart, he figured it out and he... Well, he went to kind of visit that... guy. It wasn't nice."
"I bet," Jemma breathes out. She hides her face in her palms and she feels so very, very tired. So enormously tired. Her head is splintering and her eyes sting and she can't breathe but she forces the air in and out of her lungs.
She has to know one more thing.
"Did Fitz try to ask him why, again? Did he try to forgive him?"
Hunter shakes his head with a strange expression.
"Quite on the contrary," he whispers and Jemma's world crashes around her.
Fitz's good nature, his compassion, his will to always see the best in people is one more thing that got lost at the bottom of that ocean. It is one more thing that Ward has taken away from him.
And Jemma is going to make him pay.
t.b.c.
Thank you for reading. :)