coming together, coming apart
Summary: She never realizes she's doing it purely by instinct. OneShot- Jemma Simmons, Leo Fitz. Post-ep to s02ep16. (They can both feel the hairline fractures.)
Warning: Fractured. (And, of course, this has been done before.)
Set: post-ep to s02ep16 Afterlife.
Disclaimer: Standards apply.
"And the peptide sequence, as you can see it is slightly different than the other. That's because…"
She concentrates on the display, shifts the image and enlarges it.
"Yes?"
"Excuse me?" Jemma Simmons looks up and meets Phil Coulson's eyes.
"Why is it different?"
"Oh, didn't I say it? It probably was modified by a Rhinovirus, a simple one, I'm running the tests right now."
Her mind is three corners and a myriad of miles away already. SHIELD's director sighs almost unheard and leaves her to her task.
Leo Fitz is pretty sure that it's not his mind that is in pieces anymore.
Rather the opposite. He has fought and fought against the darkness and the fog for so long, never realizing how much easier it became bit by bit, that it feels strangely easy to complete his thought processes now. His hands are not shaking anymore, not when he concentrates. He can complete his thought processes. He can think, and think straight. It's… It's a wonderful feeling.
At the same time, everything else is coming apart.
(Shouldn't he be used to it by now?)
Trip is dead. Hunter goes AWOL, Bobbi and Mack behave strangely. Coulson is worried about Skye, and Skye is changing and he has no idea how to help her. May is the same as always, and Jemma… Jemma is terrified. Jemma is so afraid he thinks he can actually feel her heart beat frantically when they are close. So he moves away, because despite everything – despite his confession and her leaving him and returning and his struggle and her fear – despite everything, he can't forget. She's still Simmons and he's still Fitz. They should be Fitzsimmons, as they always were, and he catches himself finishing her sentences in his mind and desperately tries to ignore her pleading glances that follow when he doesn't say anything and refuses to look at her. But he keeps his distance (he doesn't think he could go without touching her, and that wouldn't be good) and watches as she shatters, piece by piece, consumed by her fear.
("You can't go back, you know.")
"You're afraid, Jemma." Fitz looks at her – tousled hair, dark eyes, his innocence long gone – and she cannot remember when he last looked her straight in the eyes.
Her heart slams against her rib cage painfully.
"You're so scared that we'll all change, but we already have changed, and there's nothing you can do to make it stop."
He's right, of course: she doesn't want things to change. She wants to be Fitzsimmons forever. She wants to watch May and Skye train and listen to Ward and Coulson strategize, wants to laugh with Trip and see Leo and Mack's heads bent over one of their silly console games. She wants to listen to Hunter and Bobbi banter in the kitchen like the silly couple-in-love they are, even if they try to hide it. And for all of this, Jemma doesn't care that Grant never met Hunter and the others, that they are only there because of Hydra and that the world is coming apart around her. That she is fervently trying to reconcile two different lives of hers that have not a single thing in common. Three different lives, even, if she counts the one she had before the Bus and The Missions and Grant's Betrayal and Alien Cities. Jemma doesn't want much: just peace, and that the people she loves are safe and happy.
Of course, she gets nothing of all this.
She's so scared that all of the remaining parts of her family will fall apart that she's clinging to the remnants of what she was with all her strength. And the one person who was her second half, who always was there, always understood her best: Fitz looks past her like he doesn't like what he sees, and Jemma…
Something in her fractures.
(Later she asks herself whether it really was fear that had her heart beat speed up at Fitz accusation, or the fact that he was looking at her.
But only later.
Much later.)
From the glances Bobbi and Mack are giving him, Leo deduces their thoughts.
He doesn't give much for Bobbi's, actually. She only knows him now, never met the person he once was, and the pity he sometimes senses in her is almost – but not quite – worse than Jemma's fear. But Mack was his friend. Mack explicitly became his friend because the other SHIELD needed to infiltrate Coulson's basis, and that is not something Leo thinks he can forgive.
So if they believe Jemma's purposely antagonizing him in order to make him leave – because she wants to protect him, the weak one, the incomplete and stupid one who's not worth their time anyway – then he doesn't give a bloody damn about it. They can think he's weak and a coward and too stubborn to see the truth, as long as he can get away from Base and to Coulson.
Much more important than anything his former friends and colleagues think is the fact that he's leaving Jemma behind.
Just now, of all the possible scenarios, when she has finally caught herself and he can feel his Jemma looking out at him from her eyes. He'll leave her behind if he really does this, if they do this. He'll be the one to run, this time, when he promised her – in his heart, but it matters to him – that he wouldn't leave her. But Jemma's a SHIELD agent. She's been in the field. She can take care of herself. She proved it: she caught herself, somehow. She stopped her self-destruction mode – the memory of her trembling hand grasping his is vivid in his mind – and came back. To him. For a fraction of a heartbeat, they were… Well. The fact that they're splitting up now doesn't mean they won't be together in the future. Jemma already infiltrated an enemy base without being noticed once, she'll do it a second time.
(At least, he desperately hopes so.)
Jemma can pinpoint exactly when she stops doubting.
It begins with Coulson telling them Mack had built a transmitter into his car. It begins with Bobbi cutting off the power and with Jemma lying to her face (she, the one who never was able to lie!), with Fitz almost blown to pieces and only saved by Mack. It begins somewhere in between seeing an agent shoot at Skye and realizing Skye would have been dead had she worn the gloves Jemma had made her, and then it's SHIELD against SHIELD, May in the Cage and Coulson in handcuffs in front of his own desk.
It ends with Gonzales telling them Skye might be dangerous. When he asks them – her and Fitz – to open up Fury's tool box, and Fitz – wonderful, brave, amazing Fitz, her Fitz – telling the man he'd rather leave than work with him.
It ends with Fitz not only letting her take his hand but holding hers, as well, and suddenly Jemma's doubts are gone.
"It has some kind of biological fingerprint recognition system…"
When Bobbi (Bobbi who saved her when they ran from Hydra, Bobbi whom she thought was her friend) clears her throat, Jemma looks up again.
"Yes?"
"Some kind of fingerprint recognition system?" The blonde prompts and Jemma realizes she's done it once again.
"… That only reacts to Coulson's DNA, of course," she finishes.
Bobbi looks at her oddly. "Of course."
Jemma pretends not to notice.
This is when Fitz realizes:
He's in the lab of the bus, desperately trying to convince himself that he hasn't felt hesitation in Jemma's unspoken words and, at the same time, trying to distract himself, when Mack enters and tells him Jemma's decoding the tool box.
His first thought is that she is doing it again.
Again: she's letting her fear control her actions, she's putting herself on the other side for the sake of what she believes might save them, not what she believes is right. His second thought is that no, Jemma might be afraid but she wouldn't do anything to betray Coulson (he very deliberately thinks Coulson because he isn't quite sure he knows Jemma anymore, and the thought hurts like hell but at least he had time to get used to it since the events that killed Trip and changed Skye). And while thinking those things, he is already storming towards the old mission briefing room. The screens turn on at his touch and he thinks – Jemma must have established the connection again – that really, she is – but what is she doing?
They already scanned the tool box, after all, these kinds of preliminary tasks are what scientists do before they even start formulating a strategy for the investigation. It's something so basic it isn't even acknowledged by anyone anymore. They already know what the box is made of, there is no need…
A schematic appears on the right hand side of the screen, a bar diagram, names of proteins and chemicals. To mere field agents, the names might seem unfamiliar. But Leo isn't only the tech guy. He was a part of Fitzsimmons once and – probably by osmosis – he's learned enough basic chemistry to understand what Jemma is doing, and…
God, she's brilliant.
He storms down the ramp and towards the new lab, and, on his way, forces down triumph and schools his features.
Later he asks himself if maybe – maybe, maybe – they can not only go back to what they once were but if they could – maybe – be more.
Once all of this is over.
If it ever is.
Or whatever.
This is when Jemma realizes:
They are standing in the lab, their backs to the lab tables, and Gonzales and Bobbi overlook them in a way that makes her feel very small and very young. Looking at Bobbi is almost physically painful and it probably is the same for Leo when he looks at Mack. Was Trip in on this? They'll never know. And intellectually, she can understand these people: a SHIELD led by a democratic council might not be so bad and going against Fury's last command surely saved many peoples' lives. But she also knows how it works on the small scale, the One-Director-May-Skye-Fitzsimmons-scale: there is a person who carries the burden of responsibility, and the ones that go out into the field and the ones that stay behind in the lab and tech facilities. May and Coulson are useless in a lab, but they can lead. Skye is a brilliant IT specialist and has become a great agent, but she, too, cannot carry the burden of everything. And finally, people like Jemma and Fitz barely can comprehend what it is like to carry the burden of coordinating every operation; it's not an excuse, it's a fact. Their small group of SHIELD agents around Coulson has suffered through much of the things that a large SHIELD agency would suffer under, but it did so quite well. Realistically and scientifically she sees no way they would have been even half as successful had there been the added pressure not only from the outside, but also from within.
Jemma could explain all of this, but she doesn't. Leo does: decided, strong, proud. He does it by throwing Gonzales' attempt at humor back into his face and leaving the room.
Jemma can't remember a moment when she loved him more.
So they part ways again.
It's like a repetition of the same old song, Murphy's Law in action: whenever they get closer, they are forced apart again. It's why Leo, up until the last moment, never said that he loved her, and why Jemma, until the last moment, will always look at him.
She watches him walk down the ramp and disappear and her fingernails bite into the palms of her hands. She should be anxious about what they will do to her once they find out what they've done – well, they aren't Hydra, they're SHIELD, after all, and she's a fellow agent. But so was Skye, wasn't she? And Jemma, at this point, is not willing to trust anyone except for Leo, May, Skye and Coulson. Since none of them is there anymore, she figures, she will have to make do. Oh, really, she should be even more afraid, but somehow she can't. Fear is being suppressed by something else, and it takes some time until she understands.
He walks away and leaves behind everything he knew, but instead of the terror he thought would overwhelm him he can only feel calm. They'll trail him, but he'll make do somehow. He always did. A small part of his brain is terrified what will happen to Jemma, though. She stole the tool box and hid it in his backpack – he hasn't checked yet but from her glance, he knows she succeeded. He has to take it to Coulson. She will work from the inside, she has done it before. And, despite everything, elation is like a drug in his system.
Watch out, world. Fitzsimmons is back.
"Agent Simmons, we need access to the database you and Agent Fitz created for the Gifted and Enhanced."
The agent could be faceless for all that Jemma cares, but she smiles and nods politely.
"Oh yes, let me show you. You see, for once you have to insert the right password. This will take you to the main mask, where you…"
This is our place, she thinks resentfully; and in her mind, a familiar voice completes her sentence: You are not welcome here.
You can't take us down.
You can't separate us anymore.
Despite the physical distance between them, Leo Fitz and Jemma Simmons are together again.
Should have tried the cupcakes.