"Everything hurts and I'm dying." -me after watching the season premiere
SHIELD belongs to Marvel and ABC. Those cruel, cruel bastards.
Jemma Simmons had shouted at them.
She had screamed, and cried, and begged, and she even broke one of Coulson's antique walkie-talkies. She had just shoved it off the table and let it smash on the floor when Skye tried to calm her down.
She had asked to speak to them, just Skye and Coulson and May, alone in Coulson's office after Fitz had been awake for nearly a month. And she had asked for the one thing they had all been dreading her asking.
She wanted to know about GH-325, the drug that had saved Coulson and Skye's lives.
That was when she had started shouting at them.
She wanted to know what they weren't telling her, what could possibly be so dangerous about something that had saved both of their lives with no side effects. She wanted to know why something with such extraordinary cellular regeneration capabilities was not being studied and tested. She wanted to know why she couldn't use it to help Fitz.
There it was. Fitz. Of course she would only be asking about it, shouting at the director of SHIELD, for the sake of Fitz.
They tried to reason with her. He had already gotten so much better since waking up from his five day coma. Surely he would just keep improving. It wasn't like her to try to take the easy way out like this.
That was when she started crying.
He had been getting better, but he had stopped. Because of her. She was always at his side and he wanted her there, but she was hindering his recovery. Coming back from this type of brain damage was hard work. It required a lot of agony and frustration on the part of the patient, a lot of words on the tip of the tongue and knowledge that should be there but wasn't. And whenever Simmons saw him getting frustrated and angry, she would help. She would supply the word he couldn't find or the knowledge he couldn't access without a second thought.
Because she couldn't see him in pain like that. She couldn't sit by and watch him go through hell on his own. She was physically incapable of letting him be Fitz instead of letting them be FitzSimmons.
It was her fault, she had sobbed, angry tears running down her face as Skye, Coulson, and May stood frozen in dismay. She couldn't leave him there, couldn't let him die to save her. She had saved his life, but at the cost of his extraordinary mind. He was so frustrated and so angry, all because of her. And in trying to help, she was just making him worse.
So she needed the drug, she needed that miraculous GH-325, because her only other option was to leave.
The room had fallen silent after that. Then she started sobbing.
She had been agonizing over this by herself for nearly a week now. It was tearing her to pieces. She didn't want to leave him. Not when he needed her the most. But he would never get better if things kept going the way they were. He would just be stuck as he was, better than dead or comatose but not the same.
So she issued an ultimatum. Either they helped her fix him, or she would have no choice but to leave him and hope he could fix himself. She couldn't stop crying, her hand pressed to her heart as if that could stop it from breaking.
Skye wanted to relent, it was clear by the way she looked to Coulson. But the director knew it was too late. All of the drug was gone, and no amount of telling Simmons about it and its origins would help that. So he told her he couldn't. There was no way to get the drug.
That was when she started screaming.
Raw, agonized screams that seemed they would rent her whole body in two. Skye had approached her in tears, trying to comfort her, trying to tell her that she didn't have to leave, there had to be another way.
Simmons had pushed her away and scattered the contents of the nearest end table, angrily crying that if there was another way, if there was any way she could stay by his side and he would get better, wouldn't she have done that by now? It would destroy her to leave him now, to leave him like this, to leave him at all. But it was all her fault, so she had to do this. For him.
She slammed her fists into the table so hard they bled, and that was when May made her move.
She hadn't spoken a word the entire time, but as soon as Jemma Simmons started to bleed, the Cavalry strode forward and pulled her into her arms in a tight hug.
Skye and Coulson were both shocked, and Simmons would have been too if she hadn't immediately latched onto the older woman and sobbed into her leather jacket with reckless abandon.
After the initial surprise, Coulson recognized that it was a strategic move as much as it was an emotional one. Simmons was going to hurt herself, and she needed someone to stop her. But it was clear that May wasn't just holding onto her because she had to when she spoke quietly to the broken girl in her arms.
She told her she understood. She knew it would be hard, but if Simmons said there was no other way, then she had to go. After all, May knew better than anyone what it was like to leave for the good of the team.
Simmons eventually calmed down enough to apologize for her behavior and offer to try to fix the antique walkie-talkie she had broken. Her voice was hollow and her eyes were dull as she sat in the office, watching Coulson speak to the London office. Skye cried the entire time she sat at her laptop making Simmons a new identity she could travel safely with. May just sat beside her in silence, holding her hand.
By the time everything was said and done, it was late into the night. Fitz was taking medication to help him sleep, so Simmons sat at his bedside and cried, gripping his hand in hers and pressing kisses to his forehead and cheeks. She left him a letter, knowing that if she tried to tell him face-to-face that she was leaving him, she would never be able to do it.
She told no one else she was leaving. Coulson would have to announce it in the morning. Skye clung to her as long as she could, hugging her up until the moment she got into the car with May. Much of the drive to the nearest airport was in silence, but when they were nearly there, May told Simmons she would take care of him. She would watch out for Fitz while Simmons was away.
Simmons thanked her, but she didn't cry. She was in shock. She was getting farther away from him every passing moment, and she could feel it in her heart like a slowly twisting knife.
Before she got out of the car, she asked May if she was doing the right thing. May looked her in the eye and told her she didn't know.
Simmons just nodded and thanked her again.
May could hear her crying again before she even left the parking lot.