Leopold Fitz couldn't breathe. The world had fallen from under his feet but time ceased to exist; he was was forever falling and there was nowhere to land.
The agent didn't stop speaking to Fitz. His mouth constantly opening and closing, pursing his lips to make the sounds he needed to convey the information he had needed to, but he shouldn't have bothered. Fitz wasn't listening.
Fitz's palms were pressed firmly against his desk, his breathing quick and light. Moments earlier, he'd been hard at work - turning blueprints from paper into reality - but not that ceased to matter to him. He couldn't breathe.
The agent hadn't moved. He had simply placed himself in the back corner of Fitz's lab, well away from Fitz himself, and recited those words Fitz had always dreaded hearing as if it were lines in a play. The words themselves lacked emotion, but held a calming quality. He spoke slowly and with assurance, ensuring that Fitz had understood every single word that he had said. But Fitz didn't hear the words. His ears were in flames and a noise and a piercingly high pitch was all that he was able to hear, but he didn't care. The first words the agent had said was enough, and now Fitz felt as if he'd been broken in two.
The agent - Agent Ward, Fitz thought he had said - told him how she'd saved her team from an alien virus she couldn't cure. How she had become infected herself and after various attempts of trying to find a cure - an antiserum she had insisted - she had eventually thrown herself from the plane in which she was stationed in order to save her team from the electrostatic pulse she would emit when she died. He said she was a hero, but Fitz already knew that. He'd known her better than anyone. He should've been with her.
Fitz rested his head on his desk, still not taking the weight off of his hands. Agent Ward had heard him muttering to himself, though he couldn't understand what he was saying. Frankly, he didn't want to understand. His hands clasped together behind his back, he ensured his expression was emotionless and unchanged, remaining professional at all despite his emotionless exterior, Grant Ward felt sick. He knew he shouldn't care - this was not his first time delivering such news - yet he couldn't help but watch intently as the man fell apart before his eyes.
Like most people, Grant Ward had known Leopold Fitz through his name and reputation, but he had never known the kid on his own. Everyone had known him as only half of a whole, the Fitz of the elusive duo, Fitzsimmons. The engineer and the biochemist; never one without the other. Ward had never understood why Fitz had left her, why he broke up the elusive duo, but no matter the reason Ward could see the repercussions all over Fitz's face.
Fitz continued to mutter, tears rolling down his face now. His head was still resting on his desk, but he couldn't stand that any longer. He lifted his head ever so slightly from its resting place and hit in on the desk. Slowly at first, but then harder and faster until he couldn't stand that any longer either. He lifted his head well away from the desk, standing straight. His hand rested on his head now and his eyes were darting all over the place. They focused on nothing in particular, they just moved along with the rest of his body in motions that in other circumstances couldn't been considered of ones of drunkenness.
Fitz didn't notice Grant Ward leave. He just looked over at the agent for a second, hoping that there was some way that this wasn't true, but he'd gone. The knot in Fitz's stomach grew tightened, rage bubbling to the surface. He snapped.
It took Fitz a while to realise what he'd done, but he cared very little about it. Glass covered the floor in shards as the equipment that had shortly filled his desk along with blueprints, parts and other papers had found their way on to the floor.
Fitz placed his shaking hand to his mouth, his face soaked and reddened, and sank to the ground as the sobs crept further and further up his throat. A microscope lay by his feet, broken into two parts. It'd been a present from Simmons. It wasn't much, she had said, but it was something. Especially to Fitz.
He looked away. He couldn't control the sobs any longer.
The funeral was a few days later. As he expected, people sobbed there too, but young Leopold didn't think he had another sob in him. He was just too empty to cry anymore.
He wore his best suit, the fitted black one that Jemma had once told him made him look 'handsome',but it didn't prepare him for how reality would somehow hit when he walked inside the small building.
Fitz felt as if a void had been violently torn from inside of him. For so many years, Jemma had been a part of his life. Practically joined at the hip, people would say. So in sync that they acted more like one person more than two, and within their first year at the Academy, they had been dubbed Fitzsimmons. They'd been called it since.
Fitz took a deep breath, digging his fingernails into his palm.
It was a small ceremony; her parents had insisted on organising it. They said it was the least they could do for their daughter. White lilies decorated the morbid in small bunches along each side of the room, next to each row of chairs. Fitz gave a small smile. Her favourite.
She'd told him once after a long day at the Academy that lilies were he favourite not for their beauty, but more for their meaning: life and hope. He couldn't remember how exactly they'd gotten onto that topic, but what he could remember of that evening was sitting and watching her as she talked. How a little smile crept over corners of her lips as if it were to be a smirk, but it turned into something much more beautiful. It was such a subtle thing, but at the time it had made Fitz's heart flutter. She would glance over at him once or twice, but he knew that she never really looked at him. If she had looked, she would've bombarded him with questions as to why he was looking at her that way. He was glad. He could've never gotten enough of Jemma Simmons, especially when she looked the way she did that evening.
When Fitz finally took his seat, people began to share their stories of his best friend. One man, with greying hair and a gruff British accent, spoke about Jemma as a young girl. How, even at a young age, she used to be fascinated with making people better, and how that love wasn't limited to just people. He spoke of how she would often find wounded birds in the garden and bring them into the house, cracking open her sewing kit in order to fixed their wings when they'd been cut.
The man said that he'd been horrified when he'd first discovered what the young Jemma had been doing. She'd hidden it all in her bedroom so that no one could discover her secret operation, and when the discovery had been made the young girl was mortified, and her terrible lying didn't help her at all.
His sobs took over his speech, meaning he'd often pause for a while to compose himself before speaking himself. Fitz wasn't sure what the point of the man's story was, but he didn't think anyone minded. It was sweet.
Once he returned to his seat, he grabbed his wife's hand. Fitz looked over at the pair for a second, noticing that she had Jemma's hair and he her warm, intelligent eyes. Fitz hung his head.
The next person to speak was a rather tall man, definitely over six feet high. He was clean-shaven - unlike Fitz - and held a confident but compassionate composure. Fitz recognised the man as Agent Ward. Ward knew exactly the right words to say, and how to touch each and ever heart in the room, including Fitz's, with stories of the young scientist. He spoke of her intelligence, her odd little quirks and how she was so passionate about what she did. The people who proceeded him spoke of he the same way, only each using their own words and stories. Fitz had heard all the stories anyway. Simmons told them better.
When it was finally Fitz's turn to speak, he froze. His heart felt as if it was trying to escape from his chest, and he thought that if he shook any more he might collapse into shards on the floor. He was deathly aware of the coffin behind containing what was left of someone who was once vibrant and so full of life. The knot in his stomach allowed small bubbles of anger to rise, but Fitz didn't let them show. Simmons wouldn't have wanted that.
He looked down at the paper in his hands, not quite sure what to do with it. He'd prepared a small speech the day before, knowing that he wasn't going to be able to think once he was stood there. On it told the story of how the pair had been introduced to each other on their first day of the Academy by Agent Weaver, and how they'd been inseparable ever since. Fitz hung his head at the final thought, knowing that it wasn't true. Jemma knew it too, and now she was gone.
"It's all my fault," he stammered, screwing the piece of paper up in his hands. "I should of gone with her, I should've been there." His words quietened as he chocked back a sob. He took another deep breath. "It's all my fault. It's all my fault." Fitz didn't bother holding back the tears now. He was surprised more left in him. He tried to speak, to tell the world how he'd failed Jemma Simmons and how he could've saved her if he hadn't been a coward.
"Fitz, it's the most perfect opportunity for us to see the world," she'd told him, her face full of excitement. "We'd be fools to pass this one up!"
Fitz shook his head, "But we haven't even passed our field assessments for God's sake! We're not ready for this sort of thing, Jemma. It's too dangerous!" Simmons then proceeded to roll her eyes, giving a small sigh. Fitz hated it when she did that.
The spark ignited, and they argued and they argued. It felt like hours had passed when they'd come to a conclusion and Jemma had stormed out of the lab, slamming the door behind her. When she left, Fitz slumped in his chair, his face in his hands. They barely spoke after that.
He gritted his teeth, "I'm just so - so stupid!" He hunched over and took another breath, steadying himself. He glanced behind himself to where Jemma was laid. She was so pale, Fitz thought to himself. Too pale. But other than that, she was exactly the same. She was the Simmons to his Fitz, and he was the Fitz to her Simmons just like they had been for years. But Simmons was so different now; she wasn't herself anymore. She was just a corpse that happened to wear the face of Jemma Simmons.
Fitz's hands shook. His whole body shook. She looked so peaceful, so beautiful, he thought. It's all my fault.
"I'm so sorry, Jemma."