Communiqué

***SEASON TWO SPOILER ALERT***

Fitz is broken. Simmons is gone and he doesn't even seem to realise. But in a post-midnight moment of total clarity, he sees things as they really are and pours out his heart to Jemma in a letter he doesn't know if he can ever send. You can only read this if you promise to read it in your best Fitz accent. Written in the utter hell of suspense between S2E1 and whatever is going to happen next…

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Jemma,

I woke in the dark and you were gone. It wasn't just that couldn't feel your hand on my shoulder, it was that I actually remembered the moment that you (the Jemma that possesses corporeal reality) embraced me, kissed me and said goodbye, leaving your tears on my neck.

I know I've been living in denial of that moment - keeping you with me, muttering to you, bickering with you. I'm sure someone in here has been telling you that, that you've been worrying about me between yourselves. But in those moments, when I imagine you here comforting me, you tell me that you can see that I'm getting better. You tell me that soon I'll see it too. And right in this moment, Jemma, I do see it. Right in this moment I'm myself – the absolute wally that you know and love. But it's 3am wherever I am and I don't even know where in the world you are and you're the only person that I want to tell, you're the only person I want to prove myself to, that I want to be better for.

In our cosy little box at the bottom of the ocean, the last time I remember feeling this clear-headed, I showed you how I felt, but I still haven't said it. I want to say it now, just in case this is a clarity that I never experience again.

Jemma, I'm your best friend in the whole world, and I am so honoured to be that man. But, as I said, you are so much more to me than that. I am, and I think I probably have always been, completely off my nut in love with you. Of course I followed you into the field - who am I without you? And of course I wanted to follow you into the field because, though it terrified the life out of me, I loved the new light the idea of it brought into your eyes. But out of the lab, I just saw all your gifts, all your wonderfulness more clearly, while all my weaknesses, all my pettiness, all my cowardliness was brought into stark relief.

Out here you get to see some impressive men – Ward, before he turned out to be an evil psychopath, Coulson, and this Triplett guy that I'm particularly nervous about – men that are good at what they do without even a hint of my pettiness or cowardice. I wish I could be like them for you, Jemma. I wish you would one day look at me the way I've seen you look at Tripp, but those crucial seconds of oxygen deprivation have left just the shell of me, not only will I never be one of them for you, I may not even ever be myself.

I have very few regrets, Jemma. I've seen you come alive in new ways since we left the lab. I've seen you throw yourself wholeheartedly into every challenge, I've seen you bring warmth and compassion as well as logic and medical expertise into every situation we've found ourselves in and I've even gleaned some courage from the courage you seem to somehow have in excess. You were always beautiful to me, but now all that has passed between us has made you so much more beautiful that you have genuinely ruined me for any one else.

I know that you don't love me the way that I love you, Jemma, and because of what has happened, I'm actually thankful for my broken heart. I want all the very best things for you and I am very far from that, especially now. The Simmons delusion that I have with me most of them time is a great second-best. I think she even finds me a bit less annoying than you do – maybe that's the silver-lining! But I'll always love you, Jemma Simmons, and I'll always wish you well.

All my love, Your Fitz – or what's left of him.