Doors
Summary: In which Simmons is told what happened with her teammates during HYDRA's initial siege, and she realizes that she wasn't being the best friend Fitz needed her to be.
Disclaimer: Anything having to do with Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. or the Marvel Cinematic Universe does not belong to me.
A/N: This story follows after another of my stories called "Leo Fitz, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.," and you may need to read it to fully understand this one. But I think you can get away with not reading the prequel if you really don't want to. I dedicate this story to those who reviewed and asked for a continuation of that story. After they asked, I couldn't stop my mind from coming up with something. So here you go.
WARNING: SPOILERS for "Turn, turn, turn" and "Providence."
By the way, this is set before Ward went to Providence. And I thought this story up before "The Only Light in the Darkness" showed. So I guess it's AU.
Jemma Simmons was surprised that she had slept as long as she did. There was something about the bed she had slept on that kept her from immediately falling asleep, though she couldn't quite figure out what it was. However, once exhaustion won out, she had slept through the night and into a good part of the morning, as indicated by the '9:12 am' that was illuminated on her tablet screen. Part of her wondered why Fitz hadn't woken her up, but then the other part remembered that it was Fitz she was thinking about. He was probably still asleep.
Jemma took her time getting ready before heading out of her assigned room. She took one step into the hallway then did a complete stop as she saw the wide-opened door right in front of her. It was the door that led to Fitz's assigned room. And it was currently empty except for the furniture. She frowned when she noticed that not even his personal belongings were in there.
Glancing around, she noticed that most of the doors were wide open. In fact, the only door closed was the one to the right of hers—the one that led to Agent Triplett's room. With tentative steps, she made her way to each of her teammate's assigned room and peered inside. All of them looked as clean and untouched as Fitz's assigned room had been.
A sudden thought froze her and filled her with dread: Could they have gone and left me behind?
Adrenaline surged through her veins, and she found herself running. Her heart dropped when she saw the empty cafeteria.
"Morning, Simmons." Jemma spun around to see Skye standing behind the kitchen island working on her laptop. Relief flooded through her being and laced its way into her voice.
"Skye! You're still here!" The hacker stopped her typing and looked at her with a raised eyebrow.
"Yeah…." She gave Jemma a skeptical smile. "Where else would I be?"
At that moment, Jemma realized how silly she had been. Of course they wouldn't have left her. Fitz would have never allowed that to happen. She was suddenly embarrassed, and didn't want to admit to Skye what she had thought. But Skye was waiting for an answer. So Jemma did the last thing she should have done: Lied to cover up.
"No where!" She emphasized her answer with a scoff and an awkward smile. "What I meant by 'still here' was that…you…you're here…in the kitchen…but you're not eating—
"Simmons!" Jemma was actually glad for the interruption. She'd started to panic. Badly. "Seriously, Simmons? I thought you've gotten better at this. Just tell me the truth."
Jemma sighed and then bit her bottom lip before answering.
"I thought for a moment that…that you guys had gone and left me behind." Her embarrassment increased when Skye laughed out loud.
"Why would you think that?" Skye asked once she'd finally gotten a hold of herself.
"Your rooms were clean and your things were gone."
"Oh, that," Skye said nonchalantly and began working on her laptop again. "We moved our stuff back to the BUS late last night. Or it was more like early morning. We couldn't sleep in the rooms Koenig gave us." Jemma frowned.
"Fitz, too?" Skye continued her explanation without even looking up from her work.
"He was the first one on the BUS. When I finally thought of heading there, I was surprised to find him and May already in the cargo hold. Apparently, Fitz had beaten us there by a of couple hours. He'd been hard at work replacing the grounding wires."
"He replaced the grounding wires?" Without me? Jemma finished in her head.
"Yeah. But by then, he'd only gotten the left side done. Took him two hours to complete by himself. Then another two hours to replace the wiring on the right side. We tried to help him, but he said we were making it worse and slowing him down. That ungrateful monkey." Skye smiled fondly at the nickname she had given him.
"Why didn't he call me?" The hurt Jemma had been trying to hide must have shown because Skye finally looked back up at her looking apologetic.
"I'm sure he wanted to. But you were the only one of us who finally got to sleep. He was just being considerate and letting you get some rest." Jemma took a few seconds to analyze Skye's answer. Then she smiled as she accepted the plausibility of her words.
"Yes, Fitz is considerate like that. Where is he anyway?" Skye started typing again.
"With May in the hangar. She's training him."
"Training?"
"Yeah. Fitz asked to be trained in hand-to-hand combat. May was the best option." Jemma was confused.
"Why would Fitz want combat training? And why is he okay with training with May? Fitz said she took two shots at him, for goodness sake!" Jemma knew she was starting to get hysterical. But Skye simply ignored it. She didn't even bother looking up from her laptop.
"Simmons, it was just an ICER."
"I saw the lab doors before they were replaced, Skye. I saw the dendrotoxin marks, and I could put two and two together. Those marks lined up perfectly with his head and chest!"
"It was just a misunderstanding. A lot was going on. We were all accusing each other of being traitors. We had guns pointed at each other. Coulson shot May with an ICER—
"What?" Simmons all but yelled her question.
"You seriously missed a lot while you were down in the HUB," Skye said while shaking her head. "Anyways, May apologized to Fitz. She had orders from Fury, and icing him was her best option at the time. She didn't think there'd be side effects."
"Orders? Side effects?"
"Yeah. Apparently, she was keeping tabs on us and reporting to Fury in secret. Coulson is still pissed at her about that. But at least he's now being civil towards her because she's an ally. I know I should be mad at her too, but I've done the same thing when I was still with the Rising Tide. So who am I to judge? As for the side effects, the dendrotoxin gave her a huge headache once she woke up from being iced." Immediately, Jemma's scientific mind wanted to take over and ask how long the side effects lasted, the intensity of the headache, and so on. But she reined those thoughts in to focus on the matter at hand.
"May apologized? To Fitz, I mean." Whatever orders May got from Fury, Jemma didn't want to deal with right then. Fitz was more important.
"More like tried to apologize. There was an awkward moment when the four of us passed by the lab doors, and at the same time, we all just stopped and looked at spot where the marks used to be. May opened her mouth, but before she could even say anything, Fitz told her not to worry about it. And then he asked about Ward's ETA to change the subject. In truth, I think Fitz forgave her long before May even thought to say sorry."
"He said that?"
"He doesn't need to. That's just how Fitz is. He has the biggest heart out of all of us. And he's also the one who can't hide his emotions. Sure, he was mad at May at the time, and he kept shouting at her. But after letting out all that anger, he calmed down enough to think clearly again. He probably concluded that she had no choice since she was under orders. Of course, being who he is and how he is, he forgave her."
"That…makes sense," Jemma said slowly, not being able to completely understand how Fitz could forgive so quickly and easily. She herself still held a grudge against May for attempting to shoot her best friend, ICER or not.
"May really is sorry, though. Especially since Fitz saved her life." Jemma blinked.
"He did?" Skye looked up from her computer at that.
"You don't know?" She stood up straighter, her expression a mixture of disbelief and surprise. "How could you not know? Didn't Fitz tell you? Or better question: Have you even talked to Fitz at all—as in sat down and had a nice, long conversation with him—since you guys were reunited?" The guilt Jemma felt must have shown on her face because Skye suddenly exclaimed loudly, "Oh my god! Poor Fitz!"
"I just," Jemma began, trying to explain herself. "I've been preoccupied with—
"Oh, I know what you've been preoccupied with. Or should I say, 'who.'" It was the first time Skye's irritation was directed at her, and Jemma found that she really didn't like it at all. "I've seen you hanging around Triplett a lot lately. What the hell, Simmons? You're supposed to be Fitz's best friend. Been beside each other 'the whole damn time' and all that. How could you, of all people, allow some guy to come between your friendship with Fitz?"
Jemma looked down in shame after having been thoroughly scolded. She didn't bother making excuses. She had none.
Then something Skye exclaimed earlier finally registered, and Jemma looked up quickly. She walked closer to Skye until she was standing right across from her with the kitchen island between them.
"What did you mean by 'poor Fitz?' What happened?" Skye closed her eye, breathed in deeply, and then let out a long sigh. When she opened her eyes again, she looked more serious than Jemma's ever seen her.
"Look, Simmons, I don't believe it's my place to tell you this. But I'm going to anyway because Fitz already made peace with what happened, and I don't want you picking at old wounds and making things worse for him."
Jemma took offense at that statement. She could admit to herself that she'd deserved that sound scolding for not being a good friend to Fitz as of late. But she was immensely affronted at the mere suggestion that she'd purposely do something that would make things worse for her best friend. She opened her mouth to tell Skye just that, but her voice left her when she heard the hacker's next words.
"Fitz killed a man."
Jemma's mind went blank. Literally went blank. It could not process the image or thought of Leo Fitz killing another human being. Sure he had said the expression "I'm going to kill him/her" under his breath when irritated. And there was that one time during Coulson's kidnapping when he stated that he didn't care if they'd dose the Centipede super-soldiers with a possibly deadly concentration of dendrotoxin. But she knew Fitz was just frustrated with their lack of progress in finding Coulson and with Agent Hand taking over their BUS. He hadn't meant those hateful words. Despite his sometimes blatant rudeness and quick temper, he was—to the very essence of his being—good.
"May told me that if he hadn't," Skye continued, "she would have been killed instead."
That made more sense to Jemma. The only reason Leo Fitz would choose to do something so evil as to kill a man was if it were to save a friend. But she was worried for him. Having done such an act would have taken a huge toll on Leo. He was not meant to cause harm to others. That's why he imagined the Night-Night gun and brought it to life in the first place. He'd wanted to build a gun that would incapacitate but not kill its victim.
"Fitz even helped Coulson out when Garrett was gaining the upper hand in their fight. Both Coulson and May owe Fitz their lives."'
Jemma felt a sense of pride mingle in with her worry at hearing those words.
"How is he, really?" she asked softly. Skye shrugged.
"He said he was okay."
"Do you believe him?" Skye paused briefly before answering.
"Honestly? Yes. I didn't push for more answers. I thought he talked things over with you." Jemma shook her head.
"He didn't," she said unnecessarily.
"He's keeping something from me, though. When I asked him and May last night if they couldn't sleep either, he looked like he wanted to say something. But then he thought better of it and said something else. Something about it being too quiet in here."
Jemma's mind was racing. It conjured up images of her best friend struggling alone with his guilt and nightmares in an empty, quiet room.
At that moment, Jemma Simmons truly hated herself.
"Then again," Skye's chipper tone brought her out of her thoughts. "Now that I think back on it, he and May did look pretty chummy when I saw them together at the cargo hold." Skye threw a sly smile at Jemma to punctuate her innuendo.
"What do you mean?" Jemma asked tentatively, uncertain if she really wanted to know the answer but at the same time yearning to know more.
"They weren't doing anything except talking. But when does Melinda May ever talk so freely? And if there's anyone in this bunker who could help Fitz deal with the aftermath of taking a person's life, it's May."
Jemma felt as if a weight had occupied the center of her chest and leaned heavily against her heart and lungs.
"I wonder if she's helping Fitz the same way she helped Ward deal with his Berserker rage," continued Skye, unaware of Jemma's struggle to take in full breaths.
"How did she help Ward?" Jemma was surprised that she'd managed to voice out the question without trembling.
"You really don't know? Seriously? They were being so obvious. And we all lived on the same freaken plane—"
"Skye!" A small part of Jemma felt bad at having rudely interrupted her friend. But the larger part of her needed an answer. "What don't I know?"
"May and Ward were sleeping together. Ward said it didn't mean anything to him. I doubt it meant anything to May either. And she'd ended it—whatever it was they shared—a while ago. I wonder if she's, you know, offering our resident engineer the same kind of comfort." Again, Skye made a mischievous smile. "Now I'm wondering exactly what type of hand-to-hand combat they're actually training in right now."
The weight in Jemma's chest grew heavier, crushing her heart and making it harder for her to breathe. When she felt prickling in her eyes, she quickly turned around before Skye could see the teardrops she was not able to contain.
"Hey, Simmons. You okay?" Skye asked in concern.
"I'm fine," Jemma answered immediately. "I just need to talk to Fitz." Then she quickly made her way out of the cafeteria before Skye could catch her in her lie.
A short while later, Jemma was back in her assigned room with her door closed and locked. And as she sat on her bed hugging a pillow closely to serve the dual purpose of muffling her sobs and absorbing her tears, she wondered why the thought of Fitz turning to someone else—some other woman—for help and comfort was hurting her so badly.
End...for now
A/N2: Before anyone asks: No, nothing like Skye is suggesting happened between Fitz and May. Even though I now have written two stories as part of a series that I unofficially refer to as the "Because I'm Annoyed at Simmons Right Now" series, I'm still very much a huge FitzSimmons shipper. Yet, depending on how the rest of the season goes, I may write even more stories that will be part of that series. :p