Author's Note: Slight canon divergence. Assumes that the team was not captured in the diner.

"He woke from the worst nightmare of all: one in which he was the monster." –Jemma Simmons, The Return

"Fitz? Fitz, what are you doing?"

Leo Fitz's eyes shot open and he fell off the couch where he had been sleeping, his legs tangled in a blanket. He could not see anything in the gloom of the basement.

"Please, Fitz!" The voice cried out.

Jemma. She was calling for him.

Fitz reached for the lamp he knew was behind him on the bedside table and only succeeded in knocking into the ground. The sound of Jemma thrashing between the sheets in her bed made him silence his muttered curse.

"Mmmph," she groaned. "Please, no!"

She was having another nightmare.

His couch was only a meter away from the foot of her bed, but he still stumbled and tripped over his own feet making his way to her in the dark.

"Jemma?" He tried softly.

"Don't, Fitz!" She screamed. "Don't do this!"

Fitz broke out into a cold sweat and he froze next to her on the bed.

He was the monster in her nightmare, and from the sound of it, he had her frightened for her life.

"J-Jemma," he managed to croak. "Wake up."

The mattress dipped beneath him as she rolled over in her sleep, murmuring incoherently.

"Jemma," Fitz pleaded. "I won't—I won't hurt you. I promise. Just please wake up."

With blind eyes, he reached forward in the dark, searching for her. His hand made contact with her shoulder and she spun toward him with gasp.

"What—what are you doing?" She demanded.

"Are you awake?"

A pause followed. She swallowed audibly and her panicked breaths slowed and resumed their normal rhythm.

"Fitz?" She asked at last.

"It's me," he admitted.

He did not know what was worse: having a nightmare that your boyfriend was trying to kill you or waking up from that dream to find that the same murderer was sitting by your side.

Jemma reached past him and switched on a desk lamp that she had stacked on an upside-down cardboard box. The dim light did little to chase away the shadows in the corners of the basement room, but it was enough to illuminate her face.

With her eyes still adjusting to the light, Jemma squinted at him and ran a hand through her hair.

"What's wrong?" She asked. "What time is it?"

"Ehm…" Fitz glanced at his watch. "It's a little after 3 in the morning. You were having a nightmare."

Jemma scrunched up her face and collapsed against the pillows.

"Was I?" She asked. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to wake you."

If they had been on better terms with one another, he would have scoffed at the absurdity of her apology. Instead, he just looked down at his hands.

"You were screaming," he said. "It was me, wasn't it?"

"I don't remember, Leo," Jemma answered tiredly.

"I know it was," he insisted. "If having me sleeping in the same room is making you uncomfortable, I can bunk with Mack and Coulson."

"Don't be ridiculous," she demurred.

Jemma turned to him and gave him a weak smile. His hand jerked involuntarily when she reached down to squeeze it.

"I'm glad you're here," she assured him. "You don't have to sleep on the bloody couch, you know. There's plenty of room in the bed."

"I don't think that's the best idea," he answered.

It was a massive understatement.

He knew it was a horrible idea. If he had a choice in the matter, Fitz would have been as far away from her as possible.

Every time he looked at her, he saw his own sins reflected back at him in her eyes. Those eyes had seen him shoot an unarmed woman. They had begged him to believe that she loved him, even as he forced her to her knees at the barrel of a gun. The guilt he felt of each offence was compounded by the unfailing compassion and forgiveness she had demonstrated since they had returned.

It had been years since she had left his bedside in the hospital while he struggled to recover from their near-death experience on the ocean floor, but he finally understood why she had done it. You could love someone with all of your heart and still be tortured by their proximity.

Unfortunately for both of them, just like when she had taken that undercover assignment at Hydra, the feeling was not mutual. For whatever reason, she still wanted him here beside her.

"Fine," Jemma replied shortly. "See you in the morning."

She shut off the light and slid down beneath the sweat-drenched sheets, leaving him blinking in the dark.

He had been sitting in the kitchen staring at a cooling mug of tea for about half an hour when he heard the floorboards creak with the weight of approaching footsteps. Fitz swallowed a groan and continued to glare resolutely at the rising steam in his cup.

When the intruder brushed past him without a greeting, he knew who it was without having to look up.

"Good," he thought. "If anyone appreciates not wanting to be bothered, it's May."

He took a tentative sip of his tea and watched as she reached up for a mug of her own and moved to put the kettle on. Unlike the rest of them, May did not have to fumble around searching for anything in the kitchen. She knew it like it was her own.

It was her mother's house.

For the past week, the team had been crashing there while the US government searched for them and they planned their next move. They had not made much progress. With Talbot still in a coma and SHIELD's legitimacy in jeopardy, Fitz could not remember a time the future looked so bleak. Only three months ago, he'd been standing in the lab with Jemma, showing off the new Framework prototype. The worst thing they'd had to contend with then was a new boss.

If he could have gone back in time, he would have punched himself in the face for how ignorant he was, how foolishly self-assured. He had thought he was making the world a better place. All the while, he was building the tools for its potential destruction.

Had there ever been a time when he wasn't a monster? Maybe he had always been that person Jemma saw in her nightmares. He was just too blinded by hubris to see it.

The clink of a mug on marble and the scrape of a wooden stool alerted him to May's presence on his right.

They sat in silence, sipping their tea for a solid two minutes before May spoke. Had he not been so despondent, Fitz would have congratulated himself on being able to out-silent-treatment The Cavalry.

"Was it nightmares?" She asked.

"What?"

"Why you couldn't sleep," May clarified.

"Yeah, but not mine," he murmured into his mug. "Simmons was screaming. She thought I was trying to kill her. Or remembering, I suppose."

May hummed non-committedly.

For some reason, her lack of reaction annoyed him.

"The woman I love can't sleep without dreaming about me shooting her in the leg and holding a gun to her head," he spat. "And the worst part is, when she wakes up, she acts like she is fine. She still wants to be with me."

"They're just dreams, Fitz," May demurred. "We all have them."

"'Just dreams,'" he scoffed. "Have you ever had a recurring nightmare in which you were the monster?"

May set her mug down and stared right through him.

"Yes."

Fitz flushed, realizing too late the trap he had set for himself. Of course she knew what it was like to be the villain in her own head. But it wasn't the same!

"For God's sake, May!" He exploded. "Bahrain wasn't your fault! The Framework proved that! When are you going to let that go?"

If he wanted to provoke her into losing her cool, May disappointed him. Instead of snapping at him, she smiled mirthlessly.

"Everyone always thinks it's just Bahrain," she said softly.

"Wait, it's not?" Fitz asked. "What have you done that's so terrible that it still keeps you up at night?"

"How long have you got?" She asked rhetorically.

It was a subtle warning to let the subject drop, but Fitz refused to take the hint.

"I've got all night," he deadpanned.

She regarded him in silence. The loud ticking of the grandfather clock in the adjacent living room counted down the long, excruciating seconds until she spoke.

"I kill people for a living, Fitz," May said.

"Bad people," he countered.

"Mostly," she agreed. "I do what has to be done to protect people. I kill a few people so more don't die. I'm good at what I do. Or I thought I was."

"You…" Fitz cleared his throat. "You're very good at what you do, May."

She raised an eyebrow.

"Some of it's skill," she allowed. "A lot of it is luck. I take risks. I have to make judgement calls in seconds. That call determines whether someone lives or dies. One time I made a bad call. A little girl died. Then, I realized how lucky I had been.

Any one of the missions that came before Bahrain could have gone south just as easily. I could have been a second too late, the target could have gone left when I thought they were going right.

The only reason they were successes was luck."

Fitz shook his head in frustration. How could she be so thick?

"But it wasn't a bad call, May!" He argued. "You saw what happened if you didn't kill Katya Belyakov. It wasn't you! It was the situation. There was no 'right' decision! It was out of your control."

May smiled.

"My point exactly."

The tea in his stomach churned and he slumped in his chair. He did not know why he thought talking to her would him feel better. She could not relate to his situation. No one could.

"We're not monsters, Fitz," May said, interrupting his angry inner-tirade. "We do the best we can, but some things are out of our control. Sometimes, we're put in situations where there is no good choice. It's those times that make us believe the worst of ourselves."

The stool screeched against the tile as Fitz stood up. He could not stand to hear anymore.

"It's not like that for me," he barked. "It wasn't one split decision or one bad call that made me who I was in the Framework! It was a lifetime of horrible actions. 'Crimes against humanity,' Daisy called them. And she was right! You're not a monster, May. Not even close! I am. I don't deserve to—

"Stop."

The veneer of detached apathy evaporated and the tired woman wearing leggings and an oversized Captain America tee shirt transformed into the Agent he knew: calm, sincere, and commanding. May's stare made him shrink into himself.

"Don't talk about what you deserve," she said. "None of us gets what we deserve. Good men and women are persecuted, tortured, or killed. Bad people walk free. And people who make horrible, unforgivable mistakes are still loved by people who are too damn noble to know any better."

Hot tears stung his eyes and he had to look away.

"Fitz," May continued, her voice softening a fraction. "I was there in the Framework. I saw what your father did to you, what he made you into. I saw how AIDA manipulated you. You're right. It wasn't just one situation you couldn't control. It was a lifetime of things you couldn't control."

The tears escaped and he wiped at his cheeks with an impatient brush of his hand.

"Fitz?"

He looked at her reluctantly and was surprised at the compassion he saw staring back at him.

"You are not that person here."

There was no room in her tone for argument. She believed it. Her conviction made him want to believe she was right. But wanting to believe was not enough.

"May, I—I don't know if that's true."

"Would you hurt Daisy or Yo-Yo because of what they are?" She asked.

"Of course not," he answered. The thought made him sick.

"Would you hurt or betray any one of us?"

He shook his head.

"No."

"Because you're not The Doctor here," May told him. "You're an Agent of SHIELD. One of the most loyal I've ever met. Those influences that shaped you into that monster in the Framework? They're gone. And so is the person that you were."

Fitz could not speak. The burning lump in his throat strangled any retort he could have made. She had given a voice to all of the rationales he tried and failed to convince himself of:

He was a product of a bad environment in the Framework. Here, he was the result of a good one.

"So who does that make us?" He finally managed to say. "Are we just empty containers, waiting to be filled with whatever influence that happens to be around?"

May's answering smirk was sardonic enough to remind him of who he was speaking to. May did not do philosophical "what-ifs?" She dealt with what was there in front of her.

"I don't know," she answered. "I just know that if you happen to be around people who are a good influence, you don't give that up.

And Fitz? It's not just about you."

His cheeks burned and opened his mouth to protest, when the full weight of her words sunk in. However much he wished otherwise, she was right. Jemma was hurting just as much as he was, if not more. And he was pushing her away, making the horror of the Framework all about himself.

With no reply left to give her, he nodded, grabbed his half-finished mug of tea, and carried it to the sink. He washed the cup with methodical deliberation before setting it on the rack to dry.

When he turned around to May again, she was staring off into space, leaving her own mug of tea untouched.

"Do they ever go away?" Fitz asked. "The nightmares?"

"For Simmons? Probably," she replied. "They've gone away before. After her time on that planet."

"It's different for you," he heard the unspoken implication. "What you feel is guilt, not trauma. That stays with you."

Fitz nodded again and shuffled to the kitchen door.

"Fitz?"

He paused and waited for her to continue.

"It's a small price to pay for the forgiveness of the people that you love."

Fitz turned to give her a smile of thanks, but she had already turned back to her tea.

"Goodnight, May," he muttered.

May listened to his retreating footsteps. Only when she was sure he was out of earshot did she release a sigh. There was no telling if she had been of any help to the poor kid. Daisy had not listened to her those months ago when she had given her a similar speech. Or maybe she had, and it just took her time to believe it. If there was one thing she had learned from all of the personal trauma over the last decade, it was that you could only help someone when they were ready to accept it.

"Hey."

She smiled into her mug in response to the voice behind her.

Coulson staggered into the kitchen on stiff legs and sat down hard on the stool next to her.

"You're up early," he said with a yawn. "Nightmares?"

"Yes," she answered. "But not mine."

Back in the dark of the basement, Fitz stood at the side of the bed where Jemma slept, listening to her the untroubled cadence of her breath.

"It's not just about you," he reminded himself.

With trembling hands and a knot in his gut, Fitz placed his palms on the mattress and eased himself down to lie on top of the sheets. He could feel the warmth of her skin inches from his own and took extra care not to accidentally brush her. As the worn mattress sagged with his weight, Jemma sighed and rolled over in her sleep, casually draping her arm over his chest.

Something inside of him broke at the simplicity of the action.

After all he had done, she still trusted him, instinctually and completely.

Tears tickled the fine hairs of his temples, flowing freely and with no sign of stopping. He had to hold his breath so as not to wake her by sniffling.

"Fitz?" Jemma muttered sleepily.

"I'm here, Jemma," he whispered.

He could feel her smile radiating in the dark as she held him tighter and rested her head on his chest.

"Jemma?" He murmured.

"Mmm?"

"I just—I just want you to know," he paused, licking his dry lips. "I'm not going to hurt you anymore."

It wasn't much of a promise, but it was one he vowed to keep. She had enough pain to cope with without him torturing them both with the memory of his ghosts.

"I know, Fitz," she mumbled. "Get some sleep."

He squeezed his eyes shut, feeling her touch both burn and heal him at the same time. He turned his head and pressed his lips to her temple. Whatever pain his guilt caused him, he resolved to bear it.

For her love, it was a small price to pay.

I was super-excited about writing a May and Fitz fic since they are both plagued with the problems of their past. We haven't really get to see them interact that closely on the show and I think it would be cool to see May give Fitz a "tough love" talk sometime next season. If they have any free time after being abducted by Men in Black...

Thanks for reading!