A/N: This fic is based on a very unpopular opinion that I have of how the writers tackled Fitzsimmons in S3, particularly during the Maveth-related episodes and the insertion of Will Daniels. I came to realise that 'Coda' was a story I wanted to read, but more than that; it was a story I wanted to write, so I did.
(Well kids, I think communication is important.)
Chapter 1: Departure
Who would have known that the previously-believed unbreakable bonds of a decade-old friendship wouldn't have withstood the perfect maelstrom of time, the odd chance and more than a few debilitating circumstances?
Lost in this particularly boat-shaking revelation, Fitz starts mentally taking stock.
That much he is sure about: the confidence he has in his abilities and his understanding of science (and some newfound knowledge on astronomy) to bring Will back from that godforsaken planet.
So sure, that he leaves a hastily-written letter at Coulson's desk before joining everyone else in the lab for the final but delicate stage of the operation.
The insistence whines of the machines take precedence over his morose thoughts. Fitz parks himself at a computer terminal in a corner of the lab, with an eye on the door and an eye on the screen scrolling data that would revolutionise NASA.
After all, he'd crossed the universe for her, and quite possibly bent and twisted several theoretical laws of physics in the process and is alive and well to talk about it should he wish to. But what could have ordinarily been considered one of the few miracles of his career—the leaps and bounds he's single-handedly made in pushing through to achieve the impossible—has instead shattered his entire world.
The scene in front is hard to take in.
Fitz averts his eyes and stares instead at his dusty shoes as Jemma lavishes sobbing kisses on a ragged and dazed Will, taking small comfort in knowing that his last deed for her is one that will at least, guarantee her happiness.
Locked in a tight embrace, at this very moment, Will and Jemma form a grotesque parody of a medieval triptych that he'd taken in as a wide-eyed boy so long ago in the National Gallery: a woman who weeps over a fallen man, the folds of her skirt draped carefully over him. The pose is intimately timeless, a perfect framing of devotion between two people so intense that every other subject fades into obscurity in the background.
Fitz has never felt more like the outsider. To keep on looking would be intrusively profane in this sacred moment that relegates him to the role of the dispassionate observer. To insert himself into this would render its perfect symmetry askew and disrupt the harmony of its composition.
He uses that frozen moment as additional validation that his place isn't here any longer.
Close on the heels of relief in knowing that he'd brought Will back are the tiny pinpricks of resentment, anger and throbbing pain that he'd managed to shoved into a deep, dark box the very moment that Jemma had made it clear where she stood.
Fitz raises his head and forces himself to watch as Simmons reluctantly disentangles herself from Will, her movements awkward and anxious as she moves to prep him for a period in isolation.
Coulson approaches slowly in his peripheral vision, tilting his head sideways at the flurry of activity in front of them.
"I think they won't miss us just yet. Come to my office."
Fitz slips from the room numbly. The blankness occupying a huge part of his mind is welcome; he has no more words to give. Having kept a promise he'd made himself a while ago—that is, to do all he can to make Simmons happy—he's nonetheless still floundering as the realisation dawns on him that this winding journey can end today.
His feet take him past the lab—a place which had once freed him to be in his element, then later became a refuge when Simmons was off to Hydra—and the common area (another place where the memories now weigh like a yoke on his neck) and finally to the office, his walk not unlike a prisoner making his way to the gallows.
Those memories of what he and Simmons had accomplished in the years together, both good and bad, flit past until they're like intertwined catacombs, a haven in the hell he felt he'd just endured, or maybe like a hell that he needed to carve his refuge from.
His breaths automatically quicken, the sudden onslaught of emotions leaving his bad hand trembling more than usual.
Fitz moves two steps past Coulson's doorway and tries to shake the panic free. With deliberate slowness, he tucks his hands into his pockets. He clenches his fists, then unclenches them, bunching the already-wrinkled fabric of his trousers.
The suffocating weight of claustrophobia that he's kept at bay now tunnels his vision to the very spot on Coulson's desk where the letter lies. Nestled haphazardly in the pile of paperwork on the director's desk is the envelope that he'd left on top of everything else, which means that Coulson has probably read it.
His acceptance of it, however, is another issue altogether.
In fact, it's surprising to see the letter in a sorry state, as though it'd been read, crumpled and tossed away, before it was reluctantly plucked from its grave and re-read.
Coulson's appraising sigh echoes loud in the small space, signalling the reckoning that's coming.
"I'm not going to mince words, Fitz. The last few months have been hard. On you, on all of us, but on you especially. Too much has happened and I know that you and Simmons haven't been—"
Hearing this from Coulson himself…excruciating doesn't even begin to cover this.
Interrupting what he thinks might be a speech—whether a bureaucratic or a heartfelt one—that would deter him from doing what's necessary, Fitz raises a hand in an uncharacteristic plea for silence which catches Coulson off guard.
"Please, Sir."
Fitz hates himself already for that weak response, for the plea dripping with a desperation that mirrors all the times he thinks he's lost Jemma.
In any other circumstance, he would have marvelled at how he'd managed to turn the tide—as short as it is—and take control of a conversation that he doesn't want to have with a man he's always looked up to.
Because allowing Coulson to go on would be to allow the director's blunt words to mercilessly chisel through the emotional fortress that he'd been building brick by brick every sleepless night he'd spent in his bunk since Jemma's return from Maveth.
And alone in his bed, he can be honest with himself: flaky talk of the cosmos aside, reciprocity had always been at the heart of the problem, and the shy hope he'd constantly nurtured about Jemma actually wanting him for who he is? That had finally disintegrated into nothing more than the dust of Maveth just as he thought they were both getting over his difficult recovery and her absence.
An extraordinary combination of circumstances making up the perfect storm, has moved them past the realm of potential and into impossibility.
The ugliest of the confessions he's painfully admitted to himself is one where he knows he's always needed Jemma more than she needed him. And she's always needed him as a friend, an academic equal and as an esteemed colleague.
But as a romantic partner, he'd be her consolation prize.
It's a kind of proof that he'd never wanted to face, until the sharp reality of it is shoved deep in his guts.
The conclusion he reaches doesn't come easy, but what finally pushes him forward is the timid and defeated acknowledgement that he simply needs to de-couple himself from the unbreakable idea of Fitzsimmons.
Hard, fast and cleanly.
Having functioned so long as half of a pair, the time has come to shed this unhealthy co-dependency that has him clinging to Jemma longer than he should be. Her undercover work with Hydra, the quickness with which she'd fallen in love and into the arms of another man, the difficulty she had in facing his quasi-confession of love at the bottom of the Atlantic…aren't these events proof-positive really, that the way forward is one where he needs to stumble onwards and upwards and alone in the journey ahead?
Maybe years later, their paths might cross again and a professional relationship between them could be in the cards. And if time was really said to flatten some scars, this would all be but an unpleasant memory that's lost its sting.
Coulson eyes the letter once again, leaving Fitz to wallow in discomfort for a few seconds of absolute silence.
He shifts slightly from foot to foot, stilling only when Coulson asks him very quietly if this is truly what he wants.
Cut this right now, is the sinuous whisper in his mind. Cut it now, cleanly and quickly, and you'll be free.
All he needs now, is the courage to ask for it.
Taking a deep breath as he battles the roil of guilt and anger in his stomach, Fitz merely nods, curtly and decisively.
He'd dug Jemma—no, he would now only think of her as Simmons—out of rubble and dirt, but perhaps, it's time to dig himself out of this special hell that no one else will pull him from.
Coulson's reluctant acquiescence is the executioner's blade that helps cleave Fitzsimmons in half.
oOo
His bags wait at the heavy doors of the base; he'd packed the last few things of his with a single-minded determination that his mother would be proud of the moment Coulson accepted his resignation letter.
It's this last bit that has him testy and nervous, but his feet nonetheless take him to the medical bay where Simmons still bustles around a sedated Will.
Leaning against the doorway, Fitz watches her for a minute, taking in the utmost care she gives to the people around her. How often had she done that for him as well, while he'd merely repaid her by being an emotional burden that she shouldn't have to carry in more ways than one?
Simmons catches sight of him when he finally takes a tentative step in, her smile wide and a little wobbly.
"Fitz! Oh good, you're here. I wanted to—"
She trails off, as though sensing the struggle in him, the curve of her lips turning downwards into a confused frown.
Best to get this done fast, he tells himself.
Because, despite what he'd seen of her videos and what she'd imagined of them in a planet that brought out the basest of instincts and wants that aren't really there, she'd still chosen Will. In the moments where she'd thought he wasn't looking, the distant stare that he'd mistook for fatigue is one that he now knows had been for another man who was stuck a universe away.
And unless he considers Simmons utterly lost to him, he knows that every last shred of hope he harbours for the both of them would merely keep him coming back for scraps even as a small part of him resolutely insists that he is in fact, deserving of more than that.
Finally, the words spill out of their own accord, the finality of this conversation akin to a swinging sledgehammer in his chest.
"I'm here to say goodbye, Simmons."
Fitz glances once more at the sleeping man on the bed and then shifts his gaze to the familiar, beloved face that he'd grown up with for a decade.
The rush of grief and regret bursts from its dam when he sees the dawning look of wretched understanding in her eyes, to the point where it almost has him marching back into Coulson's office to tear up that letter and rescind his resignation.
But his eagerness to give Simmons what she needs wars with the only selfish decision he wants to make for himself and as much as he wants to be there for her in any capacity at all as she sorts herself out, he is of little use to her as a pillar of support when his own blind need for her would only cripple them both.
She throws her arms around him in a quick, tight hug that he misses already before the sobs start to come.
In a soft whisper, he tells her not to cry for him, then releases her, in all senses of the word.
She doesn't offer platitudes or any offers to keep in touch, for which he is grateful. Juggling the hurt she must feel with his own …it's an unbreakable cycle (she had to have known this, surely?) that could only be ruthlessly broken by one of them somehow.
Maybe it's the last time he'll ever see her, maybe not, and in the moment before he spins on his heel to walk out, he turns back partially for a last look at her. But it's a stolen and mute glance as always, like one of the many he'd sneaked in over the last few months because he always feels as though he's taking something from her without her express permission.
The approach of quiet footsteps stops him in his tracks when he nears the exit.
"Sorry to see you go, mate."
Hunter swings a brotherly arm around him then hugs him tightly, the exuberance of the action in stark contrast to the quiet words of farewell, then tucks a slip of paper into his pocket.
Baffled, Fitz fishes the paper out curiously but finds that it's nothing more than a name and a number, neither of which are familiar to him.
"Call the number when you're ready. Edwin," Hunter gestures cryptically at his near-illegible scrawl of that mysterious name, "will be expecting you."
It's all Hunter leaves him with before turning back and rounding the corner.
Fitz shoulders his bags and waits for the heavy door to open. His eyes are burning (it's just a trick of the light, he's sure of it) as he walks forward into the bright sunlight.
It takes every effort not to look back.
oOo
The journey back to Glasgow is brutal, but that's because he takes the slow way with too many connections for his liking, eschewing Coulson's offer to use the quinjet to cross the Atlantic.
With nothing but time on his hands and his meagre belongings sitting in the cargo hold of a commercial flight, Fitz only remembers traversing the distance with lingering pains in his tailbone and the occasional drink that he takes from the flight attendant.
When time is catalogued as an endless stream of memories, night can meld into day and into night again outside the plane's window, he finds that even jet-lag is no match for the movie in his mind. There's no transcendental epiphany as much as he wishes for it, but merely an emptiness and a longing that he knows he has to fight, this time, for himself.
He's come too far now—there're literally thousands of miles between him and Simmons—to look back.
That decision to leave S.H.I.E.L.D., in truth, had been made the day when he slowly realised she'd increasingly become a crutch for him but had been too deep in denial to say so. The growing distance between them had spoken volumes about their once-in-sync relationship, professional civility replacing the platonic familiarity they once had with each other.
Then the revelation of his feelings which apparently repulsed her so much that she'd gone off on assignment to Hydra (what was he to think, after all?), their tentative truce before the damn planet whisked her away, her admission of love for Will...it's a cosmic hand dealing him odds he can't overcome.
He knows that the cracks in this once invincible pairing had formed long ago. Only later can he painfully conclude that excising himself from her life is the only option for his sanity, because he doesn't think he can bear being there (it's just perfect timing, innit?) when Will Daniels gets back on his feet and starts building a life with Simmons.
It's only when he raises his fist to knock on the door of a modest home in Glasgow that he realises the late hour he's arrived. But just like the stalwart woman he remembers who'd brought him up single-handedly, she opens the door in her pyjamas sans robe, shock and delighted surprise on her face when she sees him.
For the third time in two days, he's engulfed in a hug.
Clinging to her to as long as he can, he tries to give her a smile when she asks about Jemma, though he doesn't say a word in reply to her rapid-fire questions.
In fact, just the mention of her now brings up the roiling emotions he's promised himself to keep tightly locked down—Fitzsimmons is no longer a fixable thing, he'd made sure of it and well…fuck this skewed crisis of conscience that he can't get past.
After all, how does he tell his mother that long, complicated story that starts with him nearly giving up the ghost at the bottom of the Atlantic, then giving up on a complicated friendship—if one could even call it that still—that had uttered its dying breath even before he'd walked away?
This close to breaking point, Fitz just shakes his head and avoids the intensity of her stare. He simply tells his mum that he's tired from all the travel.
That is enough to galvanise her into action. She literally pulls him inside and pushes him into the bathroom to clean up, then sets out to make a full Scottish breakfast for him in the middle of the night.
It's morning somewhere else around the world, she tells him later after the first helping of tatties and buttered toast and bacon, and her returning, prodigal son gives her an excellent excuse to eat a huge meal at the wrong time.
Much later, tucked into his childhood bed, all scrubbed raw and unpacked, he tosses and turns, and stares unseeing, at the crack in the window that he'd accidentally made the day before he left for the Academy all those years ago, contemplating the journey that has him coming back full circle after far too many losses.
The tears only fall hours later, when there's no one at home.
oOo
Apart from Simmons, Fitz learns to live with a terrifying vulnerability that he hasn't felt in years. Having been sheltered by her constant presence and then twinned with her in so many ways for so long, going solo makes him wobble like a new-born foal struggling to find its feet.
After the cathartic breakdown a week ago, he feels just a little bit stronger to face the world, so he ventures out and around Glasgow, keenly feeling the cold Scottish air nipping at his cheeks and nose and reddening the tips of his ears.
So much has changed, yet so many things have stayed the same. He walks past the high street in somewhat of a daze, still fingering the slip of paper that he hadn't bothered to remove from the pocket of his jacket. He revisits old haunts—these memories, from before the Academy, now take on faded, sepia tones—and tries to remember what that time had been like.
Never has Fitz imagined a life past S.H.I.E.L.D. and in these uncharted waters, it's either sink or swim. The former is something he'd literally already experienced and has no wish to go through again.
So that leaves him with learning how to swim, just as he tries to put the memory of the last sacrificial breath of oxygen out of his mind and the ill-timed confession that went with it.
Slipping his phone out of his pocket, he dials the number written on the piece of paper.
oOo
People can say all they like about Hunter and his ilk but Fitz is nothing but thankful for the man's outstretched hand of friendship and help in his darkest hour. The only caveat being, all bets are off when it comes to their favourite football teams.
Edwin (the man with no apparent last name), as it turns out, is an English owner of a large private security firm and apparently, Hunter has said enough to Edwin that he'd been willing to hire Fitz on the spot as a tech-and-weapons specialist, with just that single but lengthy phone call.
Edwin's proposal is simple and tempting: he wants Fitz in his first team, convinced that the addition of a tech-and weapons specialist of Fitz's calibre can only be an asset to his expanding business.
The job role after all, isn't too dissimilar to what Fitz had been doing all along, though he would be expected to participate more in fieldwork this time around and not sit in a van or in a lab behind a screen to remotely toggle switches or calibrate his readings. The lifestyle can be a nomadic one at times, but with the firm's permanent bases in London, the Middle-East and North America, he's guaranteed downtime and the choice of several countries to be based in, if he chooses to.
He accepts the offer after the hour-long conversation, then returns to his mother's house to pack his bags once again.
oOo
As spring breaks the harsh colours of winter, Fitz learns once again, what it means to be part of a team.
It's different but not unpleasant. Less grounded in alien tech, more focused on immediate threats that don't come from realms unknown.
The fieldwork training is hard, but whatever he's taken from those short years with Coulson helps him along somewhat. Whatever foundation S.H.I.E.L.D. had given him, Edwin's team now build ferociously on it.
Fitz still finds himself out of his depth—it's knowledge of a different sort after all and acting on it with a calm head under fire is bloody difficult because he's inclined to give into panic first—but instincts can be honed and sharpened and that's exactly what his new team gives him.
The leader of the team is not the Cavalry, but he comfortably holds his own in hand-to-hand combat and it's his patient training that returns some of Fitz's confidence in his own physical abilities. He isn't the strongest man around, but he discovers he's quite a natural at taking shots and that the odd but precise task of packing his go-bag for every mission (one of the first things they teach him) soon becomes a routine that he can do in his sleep.
They also give him a small lab to work in and even if it isn't the state-of-the-art kind of technology he's used to, it's space that he can call his own where no one bothers to disturb him unless it's a reminder about deployment or down-time. Engineering improvements to their safety gear becomes his creative outlet and soon enough, the teams start squabbling among themselves to see who gets to use the enhanced tech first.
The camaraderie between the guys is solid and despite their intimidating sizes, they'd been nothing but welcoming to him, more so when he manages to save their collective arses (he'd just gotten his own arse singed in the process), first on a black-ops mission in Honduras and then later, during a covert operation where they'd been inserted into deep in the Kamchatka peninsula.
But maybe what Fitz likes about them best is how they don't see the occasional shake of his bad hand and how they ignore the stutter that still emerges from time to time (they don't say anything if they notice it anyway). With the ribbing and joking aside (being the new guy can still suck at times and the pranking doesn't go away just because he's come highly recommended), he learns that there is a life apart from S.H.I.E.L.D. and it isn't a dark path as he'd previously imagined without Simmons at his side.
Edwin had merely introduced him as a former agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. and that had been enough to stir some gossip amongst the more…curious ones. There are things Fitz knows that the guys are dying to ask him, but it's not something he's ready, or will ever be ready, to talk about.
His unnatural silence when they jokingly question him on girlfriends and the other missions he'd been on might show that while he'd walked past the light at the end of the tunnel, but his inability to say the words perpetually stuck in his throat is also a reminder of a dull, lingering ache that still throbs when he slides his own mental shielding up for a bit. The pattern of silence that he takes henceforth when it comes to anything remotely related to Simmons becomes as natural as breathing. Pain and other thorny emotions, rendered into muteness, had become his salvation.
But Fitz isn't too daft as to think that it's all sunshine and roses. Such moments are milestones in some ways, or at least, indicators that he has still not fully come to terms with the past few months yet, not when they still feel like a jagged knife in his gut.
Still, he meticulously builds layer upon layer of personal armour, strengthening the walls each time to keep out the thoughts of S.H.I.E.L.D. (and Simmons) that creep unwittingly into his mind.
He slowly gets used to having his own locker in the boys' room with his name printed on it—the term 'operative' is so laughable when it's applied to him—as well as the tactical clothing that he dons more often now than the shirts and ties that have been stowed and largely forgotten in the bottom of a drawer.
He learns of adrenaline highs and lows during and after missions and how to manage them.
Mostly, it's found at the bottom of a beer bottle with the rest of the rowdy crew or in an intense lab session where he takes things apart and puts them back together again on his pristine workspace, and on a memorable occasion, in the bed of a young prodigy of a physics professor staying in town for a few nights for a conference.
Maybe it's a rebound, maybe it's not; he doesn't quite know how to classify this thing between them that's so not him. But he'd loved the past few days of laughter and easy conversations, along with the surprising amount of heat two people can generate when they're genuinely into each other minus the baggage, the expectations and the heartache.
She looks nothing like Simmons yet speaks his kind of science language, and her own beauty stands on its own. But her exuberant nature is infectious—she tells him quite honestly that the general air of brooding he carries around, along with the delectable accent, are like catnip to some women (he laughs shyly at that)—and by the time she fondly kisses him goodbye at the end of their short time together, she'd inadvertently gifted him with some measure of understanding that maybe, just maybe, his brokenness is not unfixable, and that his world really hadn't started and ended with Simmons.
Mostly, despite the gaping hole that's still in his chest, she leaves him in awe of the passion she has for the life ahead of her, though it isn't without some shock to discover how far he'd come since joining Coulson's mobile unit.
He learns to disassemble and reassemble his weapons as quickly as the rest of the guys (timed competitions that he can't resist help make this second nature to him), joins them sometimes in the gym (he develops a fondness for the punching bag in particular because it helps blank his mind) and slowly, starts accepting their invitations for after-work drinks.
He learns, for the first time, what bromance really means after seeing how the guys have each other's backs, and that he's actually grateful for this sort of masculine connections that had he'd sorely lacked for the first part of his life. Their don't-ask-don't-tell attitudes compel him to shed the last of the awkwardness that he has around them, though it takes more than a few drunken nights to achieve that.
He also learns to call London, Bahrain and Colorado home, where temporary but luxurious apartments house the teams on their downtime. Eventually, he thinks he might want London as his permanent base—it's the closest to home where he's just a few hours away from his mum should she need him around.
With the weeks marked by some periods of mad activity and sometimes, even longer periods of lull, the cool spring gradually transitions into the scorching heat of summer. Without really knowing when it happened, Fitz realises that he'd completely slipped into another kind of life—and down a very different path—that he couldn't possibly have conceived of when he'd first stepped into the Academy.
The only connection with the past is the rare but treasured phone call from Hunter, who never fails to take some credit for this new life Fitz has made for himself. They steer clear of the sensitive topics because Hunter can be perceptive when he chooses to be and he always grits his teeth and swallows back the questions he wants to ask about the rest of the team and well, Simmons.
Or Simmons and Will Daniels.
The only time Hunter tangentially mentions her is when he slips in a side-complaint about her new engineering partner who has had more than a few difficulties filling the shoes he'd left behind.
But Hunter also never fails to make it clear that he is sorely missed.
Just like that, the dull ache returns with a vengeance.
