Five times Fitz couldn't find the words, and one time it didn't matter.
1.) I would jump out of a plane for you.
She couldn't hear him, not over the rush of air that pulled at her clothes, at her hair, and her tears. She was beautiful. He had always known it, had always known that he loved her too.
There were words leaving his throat, visceral, involuntary sounds. Her name, his denial, his pleading. She just had to wait. The rat was alive. They had found a cure, together. There was no reason for her to jump, to throw away everything and abandon them. Him. Their home.
But the wind ripped her away, out, over the sea of clouds. He saw her tumble. Felt his heart turn to barbed wire, molten rock, and ice, and then he knew with certainty that he was jumping after her.
Between the scramble for the cure and trying to wrench the parachute over his shoulders, his panic didn't leave room for any other thought until Ward was wrenching the parachute and cure out of his hands. "The anti-serum worked!" Fitz said, tried to explain, "but she jumped!"
Somehow he understood, and without hesitation Ward ran towards the rushing wind and jumped, wrenched away just like Jemma had been.
Fitz stumbled back and collapsed against the side of the bus. If he had another dose of the serum, he might have jumped as well, but that was it, their last chance. He was still dry heaving by the time May closed the cargo bay door. His stomach and lungs fought for priority.
She knelt in front of him, and he tried to focus on her calm voice, her impassive face. Somehow she calmed him down and got him back in the lab, searching for a way to find Ward and Jemma. Rescue took far too long, with Coulson looking angry and flustered all at once. People on comms, fighting about jurisdiction on the open ocean.
Fitz didn't believe she was safe until she was walking sheepishly back onboard, following in Ward's footsteps like a bedraggled duckling.
He wasn't a man to shout, or cry, or clap Ward on the shoulder. Not then at least.
He just stood there, seeing her about to jump again and again.
He closed his eyes, but that only made the vision vivid. The air was still, and all sound muted, as if he was back in his lab, reliving the worst moment he had ever had before.
She touched his arm and he opened his eyes. Jemma smiled tentatively at him, her own eyes filling with tears.
"Simmons," Coulson demanded their attention. "You and Ward. My office. Now."
She pulled away from him and he stuffed his hands back into his pockets. He nodded to himself, there would be time to talk later.
They sat next to each other. As close as they had ever been. Fitz hugged a pillow to his stomach, as if that could stop the fear from scraping him hollow and leaving him empty. He wondered if she could see his hands trembling.
He shifted restlessly. "I was going to do it."
"I know you were," she said.
"I had the anti-serum, the chute—everything , I just couldn't get the straps on—"
"Fitz, Fitz, please."
The lab had been so silent, but the wind had been like a physical force, pulling at Jemma. He had felt it through her, from her, and his legs sometimes went numb thinking about how close he came to losing her to it. "And you know, maybe I couldn't do the whole "James Bond thing in midair type thing," but—"
"Fitz, shut up! Stop, please, just—Ward did an amazing thing, yes, but…"
She kept speaking. All he wanted to do was close his eyes and listen. She was here.
###
2.) You mean more to me than breath.
The container was cold and warm at the same time. His skin crawled when he thought about it. Terror curled in his stomach. The tough choice had to be made, and he had made it a long, long time ago. She was going to live if it killed him.
"I couldn't find the courage to tell you, so please…" he nodded gently, and he had never been good with words. Why had it always been so difficult to tell her? Speaking with her had always been so easy, as easy as breathing, but this one thing, it was like a language he had never learned. Curses he had never thought to utter. I love you. "Let me show you."
"No," she said
I love you.
"No. No. No." she kissed him, and he let himself hold her one last time.
"Jemma," he said, trying to tear himself away. They needed to move now. Now.
"Jemma. Jemma. We have to hurry."
"No. No."
It was the only thing she seemed capable of saying. "Take it," he told her forcefully.
"No."
But he forced her hand to curl around the mask. He smiled, and memorized her face. Death wouldn't be so bad. It would be the same as before he was born. And maybe Jemma was right, maybe he's be part of something else. A supernova ten billion years from now.
And drowning wasn't so bad, as far as deaths went.
I love you.
Even now, he couldn't say it.
Before she could stop him, and she couldn't if she tried, he punched the button.
"No!"
I love you.
The explosion assaulted every one of his senses. He was disoriented before the water and pressure even hit him, but when it did, it took everything. Blinded, shocked to numbness by cold water, his first breath of ocean water was deep.
His lungs immediately seized, but there was nowhere for it to expel the liquid. He coughed, or tried to, only succeeding in drawing even more salt water into his lungs. This wasn't peaceful. This wasn't falling asleep.
This was hell.
The roar of sound in his head might have been his blood, might have been the aftershock of the explosion, and might have been completely made up by his subconscious, trying to shock him into survival mode.
But it was too late. He choked on more water and wondered dimly just how much more he could possibly take in. Every part of him was dying and thoughts shattered, exploded like fireworks.
He should…
There was…
Pain…
I love you.
###
3.) I need you.
His mind wouldn't work right. There was just a… disconnect between the words in his head and the meaning. It took only a second, a hesitation, and he would panic.
His mind had always been his strength, his shelter from the chaos in the world around him. There was no mess in numbers, in math. There was always, always, a right answer. A number, a solution.
When he had woken up, Jemma had been there. Brain damage, she had said, asphyxiation.
And he knew what she had said. But the words just would not come. At first he thought it was an emotional response. A psychosomatic reason he couldn't smile, couldn't reach out to take her hand and tell her it was going to be alright.
But his lips stumbled on the first word, his tongue was in the way, trying to form some other syllable. He frowned, tried to start again, and then that sequence started, the one that would soon become so familiar to him.
The stumble, the hesitation, the panic,the rage.
There was one word he could recall perfectly, the one that had wiped away all the others.
Ward.
After weeks and weeks of sitting by his bedside, losing hope, something had to change. He could feel it in the way she clenched his fingers in hers, the way she had gradually stopped looking at his scans, at his blood, at him.
"I'm going," she said.
The words were right there, in his head. Everything he needed to ask her to stay, to beg her. To convince her. The right words in the right sequence would communicate this new, fresh wound: Her betrayal.
"I… I d…" deep breath.
He lined up the syllables, tried to get them out in single file, the way they said would make it easier. But his throat had closed. A physical response for once, but she couldn't tell the difference.
She spoke right through him. "I'm just going to see my parents. After everything, I need to see them. It'll be good for me. For you too."
She smiled tentatively, and looked into his eyes like she was searching for him. As if he was locked away, at some great distance.
I'm right here. I'm right here, Jemma. Why don't you bloody see that?
How could she possibly think her leaving could help him? The water rushed over him again, forcing the words down and his thoughts away. She had given up.
"Thank… n-ple—" His stupid, traitorous mouth.
He stood there with his hands trembling at his side, his heart racing, and tears of shame or anger burning at his eyes. She was crying too, but when she moved to hug him, he jerked himself away, shaking his head.
And suddenly the words were there, crystalline and perfect in his head.
"You should go," he said.
###
She left. And it was May who wrestled the syringe out of his hand that night. Efficient and without mercy, she tied his hands down, picked up a book and sat at his bedside, all night. If she followed any of his stuttering, stammering, or mumbling, she didn't respond.
He tried to explain to her. His head was all wrong.
What was the point of him without his mind?
What was the point of him without Jemma? She had left him. Hadn't cared enough to stay. She had to know what this would do to him, how helpless he would feel when his identity, his mind had been ripped away.
In his dreams, the fear had become second to the crippling, aching memory of who he had once been.
I love you.
But she had never loved him, she had stayed with him because they worked so well together, because together they could solve anything. But not anymore, he was dead weight, and it was better she cut ties quickly.
Coulson came in the morning, he looked tired. Worn and weighed down. May hadn't left his side, couldn't have told their boss about last night's desperate attempt at freedom, and she had untied his hands so he could feed himself with exaggerated, clumsy movements because his hands didn't work now either.
"I need you working on this," Coulson said, setting down a sheaf of papers on his lap.
Fitz slid the folder open, and he was looking down at sketches, numbers, data collection and hastily written hypotheses.
"Sa—Si—s….s—" they waited patiently until his mind locked in on the word he needed. "Cloaking?"
"We have no resources," Coulson said. "You think you can sort through this? Find out how it works, if we can fix the one we have, or replicate it?"
"Y—It…"
It was torturous finding his tongue, thinking past the cotton wool wall in his head. "Lab," he finally managed.
Coulson measured him up bleakly. "We'll get you there."
###
4.) I have been dreaming about your death for months, but now I think I'll just torture you into a helpless existence. I'll ruin your life like you ruined mine. I am going to cripple you the way you crippled me. No. It's going to be worse. I'm going to see you wearing adult diapers for the rest of your life, and drooling into the mush you'll eat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner you meaningless, pathetic, drone.
Seeing Grant Ward just twisted everything up again, pulled at everything he had managed to build. He remembered again the water, the fear, the panic. He remembered Jemma leaving, and May's sad, cold eyes. He remembered before that, when Ward had jumped to save Jemma-had pretended so cruelly to care.
He felt more helpless now, holding the life of Grant Ward in his hands, than he ever had before.
###
5.) I won't live without you.
Punching the monolith accomplished nothing, he slapped his palms against it over and over again, daring it, begging it to do something. Jemma wasn't dead, he knew it in his bones. The rest of the team just didn't understand.
She would be lost. Alone. She would be expecting him to find her. He screamed his frustration out against the rock. She needed him, and he had nothing.
By the time Mack had pulled him out of the cage, and the team had separated him from the monolith, he had calmed down. He was working his way to catatonia when he realized that Bobbi had brushed dust from his face. Impossible dust.
And then work. Before food, before rest, he had to work. Finally a lead, finally a way to get her back, and of course now that he was making progress, the doubts had resurfaced. What if he was wrong? What if he was chasing a ghost?
No. He would know.
Except all the empirical data pointed that way. Three months, the time had not passed slowly for him, he could only imagine how long the hours must have felt to her. Had she given up hope? No. That wasn't Jemma. If there was one thing in this universe he could count on, it was her unbreakable spirit.
He didn't even hesitate to jump through the portal when they opened it a second time. If Jemma survived it, so would he. And if she hadn't? Well, then they'd be together anyway.
"Jemma!"
Sand, and darkness. After the bright chamber he had left behind, he was completely blind. The wind cut into him, and sand scraped at his skin. That Impossible dust, this explained why such a recognizable amount had filtered through the portal in the first place.
"Jemma!"
How would she have survived? Was there any life on this planet? There was something strange about this storm—a prickle of fear that had nothing to do with the mission was starting to gather on the back of his neck. He felt watched.
"Jemma!" he cried out again into the wind and sand and darkness.
"—itz!" Her voice, he would recognize it anywhere.
"Jemma?!"
"Fitz!"
"Jemma!"
And he found her. Could even see the cold shadows on her face, the wind-chapped skin. She was beautiful, and she was so close. The belt that tethered him to their world was cutting into his stomach. He had barely gotten a grip on her fingers before it pulled him away. They were winding him in. "No! Jemma!"
"Fitz!"
For one crazy moment he considered trying to cut himself free, but the cord was made to withstand all kinds of potential environments and wear. He had designed the original material and weave himself.
Nevertheless, he threw himself against its pull, reaching again for Jemma. She was fighting the wind and gravity, and losing.
"Jemma!"
He reached, and he swore he could feel his shoulder trying to pop out of the joint. And she grasped his hand. This time he held on. He didn't care if they made it to the portal or not. He had found her. They had found each other.
He fell with her, felt when something went so desperately wrong. The universe was collapsing around them, cracking, chipping, breaking.
And then he was covered in ash. The rubble of the portal. For a moment his heart stopped. Jemma.
He dug through the black chips until he found her. Three months on an alien planet, and they were both alive. I love you, he thought instantly, but his lungs had no air. It was all he could do to smile, all he could do to hug her to his shoulder. It was awkward and painful, but he wouldn't have moved for anything.
She was back.
###
1.)
"I need you," she said. "I couldn't live without you if I tried. I wouldn't be breathing without you. I jumped out of a plane to try and save your life."
They sat together, as close as they had ever been. He was so tired. Exhausted. He leaned his head against her shoulder. And she turned her neck awkwardly to kiss his forehead. "But most of all, I love you," she said softly.
"I love you too."
### FIN ###