It comes in pieces.
Jemma's smile. Fitz's eyes. The way she laughs, the way he scrunches his nose. The way they both walk into the room, side by side.
It comes in pieces, and when he finally puts them together, heart thumping, palms sweating, Deke wonders if he's stupidest man in the universe.
"'Stupidest' isn't a word, Stupid." Daisy says, making him jump. It takes him a second to realize he's said it aloud. Deke tears his gaze from Fitz and Jemma to Daisy, who's smirking at him. "What makes you the stupidest man in the galaxy that I don't already know about?"
He paints on a sly smile. "I thought stupidest wasn't a word."
She laughs. "Wow. What a comeback. Seriously, that is so good. Who writes all your lines for you? I must—" But Deke is already out of his seat, leaving. He ignores her calling out to him, but he doesn't care.
He wants to know.
First he goes to Mack. He goes to Mack, which also means that he goes to Elena. Bringing her a couple of flowers he's wrapped, brought in from the outside, he sits down and scratches his beard.
(He remembers another piece. Fitz scratching his own beard in the same way that Deke scratches his own. He stops, and lowers his hand.)
"Sorry you couldn't go to the wedding, Elena."
She smiles. "Mack took a video for me." Elena turns to look at Mack. "It was very beautiful."
Mack smiles back, reaching out his hand across the bed only to pause, remember, make a fist and bring it back to his lap.
Deke clears his throat. "So, ah, how long have they been together?"
Mack and Elena exchange glances again, and they begin to laugh. Deke doesn't know what to do, so he just laughs with them, wondering what could possibly be so hilarious.
"How long you got?" Mack says.
They both tell him of robots and fake worlds, blue planets and blue aliens. They tell him about injuries, both physical, and mental. They tell him about the bottom of the sea.
They tell him as much as they know.
He squeezes his eyes shut, rubs them with open palms. "That's…" He leans back into his seat and lets out a breath. "That's a lot."
Mack nods. "Yeah it is."
Elena sighs. "Those two deserve a happy ending. I hope their wedding was the start."
(Deke doesn't correct her.)
"Wait." He shifts in his chair. "But what happened to them? In the pod, I mean. And before that? You both didn't know them until after."
Elena shakes her head. "If you want to know more, you should ask Daisy or Coulson. Maybe even May. They've all been together since the beginning."
Deke thanks them both, rising out of his seat.
And he leaves.
He walks down the hallway as he considers his options:
May? He sees the love in her eyes when she looks at her people, he isn't blind. But he isn't one of them. Not a chance. She scares the shit out of him.
Coulson? The man is dying. Also, Deke thinks, he locked him in his room.
Which leaves his final option. Daisy.
"Hey-"
"What do you want?" She doesn't even look up from the computers, her fingers dancing across the keys, blowing a stray piece of hair out of her face.
He sits down beside her, and tries to ignore the way she glances at him with the side of her eyes.
Tries.
"Why are you looking at me like that?"
"I don't know." Daisy narrows her eyes. "Because, maybe, I don't know, you sold me into slavery?"
He bites his lip, fighting the defensive reply that was already in his mind. "I already apologized for that like, a million times. But, excuses aside, I'm really, really sorry about that."
(And he means it. Every damn time. Knows he'll never be able to truly convince her, or himself, but won't stop trying, anyway.)
Daisy pauses, her hands hovering. She places them on her lap, swivels the chair around to face him.
"So…"
"I want to know something."
"What do you wanna know?"
He wants to know everything.
Daisy tells him of one breath, two lives. She tells him of finishing sentences and joint minds. She tells him of sacrifice, falling out of planes.
She tells him as much as she knows.
"That's when I knew."
"Knew what?"
"That for all Fitz had been flirting with me—horribly, by the way—that there was ever only Jemma. And when Jemma jumped to save us all, she was only really doing it for Fitz. They loved each other before they realized what it meant."
It's not enough. He wants to know more.
Daisy shrugs. "I don't get it, why you want more. But no one knows Jemma more than Fitz, and no one knows Fitz more than Jemma. If you want, ask them."
He thanks her, and leaves.
He's standing in the hallway near their door, waiting, when he catches a glimpse of himself on the wall. He takes a step closer. Sees his face, see's his mother's face. Sees Jemma's smile. Fitz's eyes.
He touches the metal, fingers trembling. Tries to keep his breath, his heart steady. Tries to remember his mom alive, tries to forget her, dead.
Tries to understand the fact that he's seen his own grandparents get married.
(He's put the pieces together, but it's just created a bigger hole inside.)
"Deke?"
He startles, turns around to face them.
"Hey… Jemma. Fitz." He musters, awkwardly leaning against the wall.
Fitz blinks, cocks his head to the side. "Were you looking for us? Daisy said that you wanted to ask us some thing."
Deke looks down, to where their hands are conjoined. Looks back up.
"Nah," He paints on another smile. Leans off the wall and forward, enthusiastically thumping Fitz on the arm a couple of times. "Just wanted to congratulate you guys on getting married! Haven't seen one of those, well, ever."
Deke keeps smiling, even as Fitz frowns, letting go of Jemma's hand to rub his arm.
"Yeah, well, thanks Deke." He grumbles.
Deke thinks he's gotten away with it.
Thinks.
Jemma steps towards Deke. "That's it? You just wanted to say congratulations? Are you sure?"
Deke makes sure his smile grows, hoping that it reaches his eyes. "Yep! That's it! Nothing else."
Jemma blinks, then smiles softly. "I used to be a terrible liar, Deke." She grabs Fitz's hand and begins to walk around Deke.
He moves out of the way, looking at her, looking at him.
Fitz looks back at Deke with his—his, his mother's, his—blue eyes.
"It seems that you are, too." Jemma says, and then they leave, leaving him behind.
It comes in pieces.
What he knows they've been through.
What he knows they'll go through.
It's not much, but he knows that by the time he's born both of them are gone, and they never knew him, and they never knew how their daughter died believing they would come back to save her and him and everyone in the world.
Right now, they don't even know she'll be born.
Those two deserve a happy ending, Elena had said.
He turns the other way, and he leaves.