There were days when it was hard not to crumble. So far she was keeping it together, but it was getting more difficult. Regardless of the circumstances in which she found herself, the weight of the variables were becoming too much to bear. She was terrified this was an equation she couldn't solve, and that was unacceptable, as it was the most important one of her life.

The Fitz she was looking for was still her Fitz, but the one who died had been hers, too. The nightmare that had plagued her since the day they met had played out before her in real life this time, and if she took too much time to think about it she couldn't breathe.

His lifeless body before her, and her insistence to prep him for burial was a decision that was going to haunt her for the rest of her life. Sometimes she saw it in her sleep, mingled with the memories of their lives together. But she knew if she hadn't done it, and if she never found him again, she would hold that regret forever as well. It wasn't a choice she should have ever had to make, but when it came to caring for him there had been no choice. She had been caring for him nearly half their lives.

Jemma had never considered herself weak, but if this was the real end of them, she didn't know what she would do. If she truly had to go on with her life without him, it was unfathomable because so much of him was intertwined with her. She had never really believed anyone who had said they felt like they lost a part of themselves when someone died, but now she did. Every time she turned for his help, or said his name without thinking, she felt the sharp pang of loss. The phantom feeling of his arms around her while she slept at night, or the call of her name when he wasn't there were only synapses sparking in her brain, playing tricks on her.

The days were long and tedious, with most yielding no results. Mack made her sleep, eat, and drink, telling her she couldn't keep searching or be of help to anyone else if she didn't take care of herself first. She knew this, but sometimes it was hard to find an appetite. Sometimes it was hard to remember to stay hydrated when she was following every lead she could find to get to him.

She knew Mack felt guilty. She had tried to talk to him, but so far he had shrugged it off. She didn't have the energy to push him, but at the same time she wanted him to know that there was nothing he could have done. Fitz was the victim of a senseless accident; collateral damage in a battle they hadn't known how to win without it. Deep down she knew that it wasn't just that he couldn't save him, but about the events leading up to it. They had never been able to make peace, and she could tell by his concern for her that it was eating him alive inside.

She hadn't been anymore innocent in those events than Fitz, and she hoped that they could work up to talking about it sooner rather than later. They both knew better than anyone about waiting for later.

They were fighting with multiple issues on the new Zephyr, and trying to monitor how things were going with the Avengers' battle with Thanos. It only made them more anxious, because they weren't technically an agency that was publicly recognized anymore, and they hadn't been called into the fight. As far as anyone knew, they wouldn't be. Coulson had never revealed his status to any of the Avengers after he had come back from the "dead", and the only thing that he had instructed them to do before he left was to stay out of it if they could.

It hadn't turned out to be that simple.

Early one morning not long after they had started their mission, alarms went off in the Zephyr. Jemma thought something mechanical had gone wrong as they hovered above the earth.

She ran to the deck of the ship, and found her teammates frantic. "What is going on?" she asked Davis. He was staring at Piper's seat.

"She... she just disappeared, Agent Simmons," he said, seemingly in shock. "She just turned into dust and disappeared."

She turned and saw Mack run in, seemingly having heard that last part. "Mack, what do we do? Is everyone else here?"

They took a quick head count, and everyone was accounted for - except Piper.

"What the hell is this?" Elena said, stricken.

"Activate monitors," Daisy ordered, and a dozen holographic screens appeared, showing footage from sources around the world. Chaos. Reports of people disintegrating, their remains turned to nothing.

"I'm going to go ahead and guess the Avengers didn't win," Mack said darkly.

Jemma sat down heavily in the nearest seat, and rested her elbows on her thighs, head in her hands. This couldn't be happening. They couldn't deal with anything else right now. They had just saved the world from one disaster, and it had exacted a heavy price. How could they take anymore losses?

She felt Mack's big hand cover her shoulder. "Jemma?"

She took a second. She took a deep breath. She looked up, a fresh sheen of tears in her eyes. "Is it ever going to end?"

A lot had already ended, but he knew what she meant. "I don't know. I'm sorry."

A flood of emotions threatened to overwhelm her, but, as ever, there wasn't time for that. She decided to pluck anger to the forefront, and hope it would carry her onward.

The entire group stood in front of the monitors for at least an hour, trying to gather what they could. Daisy was already accessing information to which the media was not privy, hoping to get a faster grasp of what had happened. She could still hack into Homeland, even if they only existed to Homeland when it was convenient for them.

"What are we dealing with?" Mack asked.

Daisy sighed. "Too much." She explained the battle for the infinity stones, and a shocking amount had gone down in just a couple of days. They had saved the earth from being shattered, only to see literally half of the universe wiped out.

She brought it back around to the tesseract having killed Coulson the first time, something with which they were all familiar. "He has control of everything now. Time, space, minds, souls, reality, power - it all belongs to Thanos."

Jemma thought she was going to vomit. The implications of a universal event began to sink in, and she had to get off the deck and back to her room. The world was suddenly spinning, and she managed to stumble back to her bunk before her knees gave way.

A few moments later, someone knocked on her small compartment, and she managed to steady her voice long enough to say, "Come in." To her surprise, the face that peeked around her sliding door was Daisy's.

Daisy stepped inside, activating the door to close behind her. "You okay?" she asked tentatively.

"Define 'okay'."

Daisy sighed and sat down on the bed next to her friend. To say things had been rough would be the understatement of the century, but even after everything, Jemma was still her friend.

"What are we going to do, Daisy?" Jemma said miserably.

"Well, we're not going to give up, which is what it's kinda starting to sound like you're trying to do."

"Not giving up necessarily, but... I'm sorry. I just don't know which way is up anymore."

"I don't think any of us do. It seems like just when we have a million things on our plate, the universe goes, have a million more!"

Jemma huffed a laugh. "Fitz always thought the universe had it out for us. Maybe he was right all along."

"I don't know, but it's certainly starting to look bleak."

"Oh, I think the start was quite some time ago," Jemma countered.

Daisy stared at the floor for a few seconds before looking back up. "I know you're dealing with a lot right now."

"I could safely say we all are. I'm not special."

Daisy shook her head. "You lost Fitz, Jemma. I don't know that there's anything more special than what you guys had… have."

Jemma blinked back tears again. She felt it was all she ever did these days. "I haven't really had the chance to tell you with everything going on, but I'm sorry for what happened. Fitz was, too. I just don't know if in his state of mind… I don't know if he saw another way, and I couldn't bear what was happening, so maybe I just lost my mind, too, and it's no excuse for the things we did. I think he was coming back around, trying to reconcile himself to… when… when..." She had to stop, as she found herself rambling.

Daisy put her arm around her. "I know I told Fitz I would never forgive him for what he did, and I would be lying to you if I said I had. But the Fitz we're going to find is still our Fitz. We can help him before anything bad happens again. He was sick and we didn't know it, but we know it now. We're all going to help him." Her heart really did break for her, as she couldn't imagine ever being as close to another person as they had been to each other. But she did know the pain of losing someone she loved.

Jemma laid her head on Daisy's shoulder. "What a bloody mess this has all turned out to be."

"You're telling me. Remember when we were just kids out trying to save the world? Dorky and clueless, and always getting in the way of the grown ups?"

"It feels like a million years ago," Jemma said, wiping away tears. "Or at least I feel like I've aged a million years in five."

"I know exactly how you feel," Daisy agreed. She sat back and looked at Jemma, then reached over to the cubby at the head of her bunk and grabbed some tissues. "We need to get it together, Agent Simmons," she said, handing them over. "We have a lot more to do than we thought."

Jemma accepted her olive branch of sorts, righted her face as best she could with a final sniffle, and together they got up to face yet another possible end of the world.