A/N: I blame a deceptively sad song and an episode full of FitzSimmons feels for this story.
You Are My Sunshine
The other night, dear, as I lay sleeping, I dreamed I held you in my arms. But when I woke, dear, I was mistaken, and I hung my head, and cried.
~ You Are My Sunshine, Jimmie Davis (1939)
He had her.
After all of the disappointing trips and dead ends, after all of the sleepless nights he woke up in tears and mental breakdowns, he had her.
He had her and the sun was shining. He had her and all was right. The clouds parted and the dark days were behind him. He could breathe again. He could live again. He had purpose again, and all because he had her in his arms alive and breathing and one hundred percent real.
But she was cold.
She was so cold and so thin and barely able to keep her head up on her own. Fitz could feel every bone in her body, every tremor that wracked her skeletal frame. She was exhausted and pushed past every breaking point. Any longer and...well, Fitz didn't want to think about that. All the hell he thought he had been through couldn't hold a candle to what she had endured.
She was fragile. She was so, so fragile, like he could shatter her just by touching her. In the water, they were weightless, suspended so that the world couldn't reach her, couldn't crash into her and send her flying into a million little pieces. But on land she was as stable as a house of cards. One wrong blow of the wind and she could come tumbling down.
He was so terrified of losing her. He only just got her back. He couldn't cope, not with that.
But she was sleeping now.
She was sleeping, just sleeping, but it was the restless kind. She was lying down on a cot, curled up tightly into a ball, her body tense and coiled like a spring. Nothing about her was relaxed, and she was making noises. Terrified, high pitched noises that had no business coming out of her mouth and made his stomach turn.
Fitz found himself running to her faster than he thought humanly possible. She was about to start throwing a fit when he got to her, pulling her hands away from where they were knotted into her hair. Her face was screwed up in agony, and Fitz felt like the breath had been knocked out of him. She had never been prone to nightmares before, and seeing her so distressed made him feel helpless, like a failure.
He didn't get to her fast enough.
He didn't try hard enough.
He didn't look far enough.
And now she was suffering the consequences.
But Fitz pushed those thoughts out of his head, focusing all his energy on Jemma. She was all that mattered now, and she needed him.
"Shh," Fitz soothed, running his hands down Jemma's arms, through her hair, trying to calm her. "Shh, it's okay. You're safe. You're safe Jemma, I promise."
She didn't open her eyes, but she stopped thrashing in her sheets, her breath fighting to become even. Fitz could tell that she was fighting her fear, that she was locked inside a battle with whatever was still plaguing her from planets away. He couldn't help her, not with that, and it made his guilt come back ten fold.
"I'm right here Jemma," he assured her, "I'm here and I'm never letting you go again."
Again, her eyes remained frozen shut and her body rigid and tense. Though the struggling had stopped, she was still terrified. She was still whimpering, sweat clinging to her pajamas and forehead from exertion. She had been fighting so hard ever since she had been sucked up by the alien artifact...he just wanted to see her rest.
"You are my sunshine, my only sunshine," he started singing, remembering how she used to love the tune. Something about how her parents used to sing it to her as a child, and how they turned into something the both of them sang when the other needed comforting through long exam nights or bouts of homesickness. His singing voice wasn't he greatest, but he must've done something right. Immediately he felt the tension drain from Jemma, her weight settling as her breathing evened out and slowed to normal.
"You make me happy when skies are grey. You never know dear, how much I love you..."
He paused on that part, if only to come to terms with how deeply he actually loved this woman. He knew his feelings for Jemma had run deeper than friendship before he had joined Coulson's team. He knew that from the moment he met her, but he didn't truly know how to categorize his feelings until recently. Being held underwater in that box, having her leave him, and then her being sucked into an alien portal, it all made the picture painfully clear. He didn't just care for her or need her; he loved her. He loved her, and he could admit it now. He couldn't back then, but now that he was able, he was never going to stop.
He was never going to stop protecting her. He was never going to stop fighting for her. He was never going to stop looking for her if she got lost. And he was never going to stop loving her. All that was in his way was the universe, and whatever it decided to throw their way.
Jemma was fully asleep by the time Fitz remembered to finish the line. It was a wonderful thing to see her asleep, without worry or fear lining her face. She looked almost peaceful there in his lap, her chest rising steadily up and down. She was beautiful, despite the bruises and bumps she had collected, and she was finally home.
So, as the hours carried on, he did all he knew how to do. The words came on their own, like a second nature, and he sang to Jemma through the night, the same tune over and over again. He sang the words as a prayer, like a plea to whatever powers above - whether they be God or karma or the First Law of Thermodynamics - were listening.
Please don't take my sunshine away.
Finally his world was bright again. It wasn't the kind of light that shone down on a summer day and lit the sky for ages. It wasn't the kind of light that blinded even the strongest of eyes. It was a tiny, tentative thing, like the flicker of a candle in a dark room. Nothing much, but it was warm and glowed brightly just for him, and he would take it.
He would take his sunshine and never let it go.