This story was co-authored by StarryDreamer01 & Anytha84.
A/N: Since we're always bouncing fic ideas back and forth, we decided to try our hand at a RP story. In a little under 2 months, we managed to create a behemoth of a story, surprising us both. The story is largely complete, but we will be posting two chapters a week, so follow or subscribe to ensure that you get the updates.
We'd like to thank amandajbruce for editing our story. She provided some much needed insight into the characters and plot, we are very grateful to her! If you haven't checked out her work, you should!
We'd also love it if you could leave reviews, we'd love to read what you think about the story.
CHAPTER 1
Jemma hears their whispers and knows that they talk about her; rooms fall silent as she enters and everyone moves around her as though she's made of eggshells. She considers questioning the team about it, demanding that everyone just return to normal. But they hustle about her, avoiding sensitive topics, clearly afraid that at any moment she'll break, cracking under the weight of the emotions she's bottled inside.
There is one truth she's certain of: nothing will ever be normal again. She misses Fitz more than she could ever begin to imagine articulating.
Despite months passing, every inch of her continues to yearn for his presence. She wishes she had the creativity to still picture him at her side and to hear his voice lulling her to sleep with talk of photons and rest mass. Every passing day brings with it a fear that he'll disappear entirely from her memory. Already she's having difficulty recalling the sound of his lilt as he bossed her about their lab or which side of his face had the crescent shaped scar above his eyebrow.
Each night in desperation, she buries herself in the blankets from his bunk, clinging to the fibers as if it were him. His scent has long disappeared but she tries to imagine it just the same, fooling herself into believing that he's still alive.
The decisions that they'd made in the medpod still haunt her. Jemma knows she could never have argued any different, he would've forced his last decision on her even if she'd refused. He was always the hero, braver than she could ever hope to be.
She clings to her science, is certain that there must be alternative solutions hidden somewhere on the medpod, other ways she could've saved both of them. She needs to know, needs to understand what went wrong and in her most despairing hours begs Coulson for unfettered access to the rusted remains.
Each time, he refuses.
Her words in response are always furious and wrought, her voice growing in anger; she doesn't understand why.
Coulson holds his ground and is adamant when he tells her that she is to go no where near the medpod; she'd been too close to its demise and her bias would only corrupt the crime scene destroying any evidence that remains.
She bites back a cutting reply and what remains unspoken behind the layers of his words is that he's refusing to let her investigate Fitz's death, that he's keeping her away from the one thing she can't let go of.
...
His last visual memory before the water rushed in is her tearful face. The last thing he remembers hearing is her voice screaming 'No'.
Both things haunt him every night and he always wakes up choking for air, her name on his lips and tears ready to spill down his face.
This shouldn't have happened. It should have been him.
Fitz gets out of bed, running his hands across his face and hair and sighs as he walks to the loo. He wonders why he even bothers to try to sleep: he barely gets one hour of tormented rest before the nightmares return.
The Bus is eerily silent but he's grown accustomed to it. He's the only person that works and sleeps there: the rest of the team uses the rooms at the Playground. He cannot bring himself to do the same: the Bus is the last place where Jemma lived.
The last place where they'd been together.
Leaving it would mean trying to leave her behind and he cannot do that. He's not brave enough. He'll never be brave enough.
He meant to be brave when he offered her the last breath of oxygen: he truly wanted her to live and had accepted his own death. Instead, she dragged him out of the medpod and got them both out to the surface with a single breath. She had always been the braver one. She had always been the reckless one between them: so reckless to forgo her own safety and force herself to save him.
"I-I'm sorry, Fitz," Tears are streaming down Skye's face when he asks where Jemma is when he wakes up. "Simmons- s-she didn't-"
Fitz grits his teeth and goes through his routine of washing and dressing. He does it automatically without even looking at himself in the mirror.
He's so disgusted by himself that he can't even look at his own reflection.
Why is he here when she isn't?
He walks into the kitchenette and makes some tea, avoiding the cupboard that he used to share with Jemma and drops a teabag into a mug.
"Oh dear... Fitz, that will taste horrible."
He closes his eyes and swallows dryly.
His brain has been damaged by the lack of oxygen: it's been months now and he still struggles. Words and ideas are suddenly difficult to grasp for him and he often stops mid-sentence, waiting for someone to finish the thought.
No one did until a few weeks ago.
"I know, Simmons," he rasps, his voice not used to talking. He rarely talks to anyone. Skye manages to get a few muttered words from him every now and then when she comes to the lab.
He turns and sees Jemma standing by the table, dressed in her usual blouse and blue jumper, long hair gathered into a neat ponytail. She looks at him with soft amber eyes and a small smile.
"Then, throw that concoction away and make us a good cup of tea, you dolt." Her voice is lithe, teasing even.
His heart yearns to hear more from her even though a part of his mind is telling him that he's deluding himself.
She's a ghost, a memory...A hallucination likely born from his damaged mind. He knows she's not real... but he doesn't care.
Fitz pours the tea into the sink and takes another mug out, smiling at her as he puts the kettle on the stove again.
He'll never be brave enough to accept that Jemma Simmons died to save him.
…
In the weeks which follow Fitz's death, the team pushes Jemma to consider leaving the Bus once and for all and move into Playground with them. Coulson even goes as far as updating the labs in the SSR to entice her. He tells her that he used the wishlist and blueprints that Fitz had once dropped on his desk in a flurry of frustration after his baseline accelerator had blown for the hundredth time.
"It has everything you could ever want," Coulson insists.
Jemma doesn't doubt that the SSR's labs are far more advanced than the one on the Bus; Fitz had always known exactly what she would need even before she knew it herself.
But she can't bring herself to agree.
She doesn't deserve their kindness; she thinks she deserves only the loneliness and isolation that the now vacated Bus offers.
There are other reasons to stay, but she doesn't dare speak them aloud. They would surely think she's had a mental break. Even she thinks she has.
For the first time since the medpod she'd heard Fitz. It's as clear as day.
He's speaking to her.
Initially she'd thought it was born of her dreams, a byproduct of paradoxical sleep wherein she recalled the very things she'd been beginning to forget. But then one evening while searching the cupboards of the Bus's understocked kitchen for what remains of her tea, she hears him a second time.
Her hands shake so violently with shock that she nearly drops the tin. It's his voice, she's certain of it. He's chastising her as he did before; he hates that she meddles in on his choices. Jemma doesn't dare reply; she thinks her reply would only succeed in acknowledging her apparent psychosis. Instead she listens as he speaks in half sentences; it's as though he wants her to finish his train of thought.
As the days pass, she hears his voice more frequently; he speaks to her while she lies in his bunk or when she fritters away the hours working in the lab. He calls out to her in all the places he used to occupy. It's a startling difference from when she'd cried herself asleep at night, worried that she was forgetting him.
Fitz's voice is loudest when she works near the Asimovian and she begins to wonder if there's a connection. She's desperate to test her theory further and devotes every waking moment toward enhancing its resonance faculties.
There's one problem though: Skye insists on joining Jemma while she works.
She knows that the hacker has good intentions but the space feels more muted on the days that she or anyone else visits.
Jemma notes the concentrated look on Skye's face. She's focused and determined, her attention on her computer, her fingers flying across her keyboard with expert precision. Skye is likely to spend hours at her old desk and as Jemma's solution bubbles in its beaker, she worries she might miss her chance to test her theory.
She fears that the sensations will only become fainter the longer she waits. Indistinct, even.
"Why do you bother coming up here?" Jemma asks, measuring her voice so that it sounds terse and impatient. Her fingers tap nervously against the stainless steel tabletop; she needs Skye to leave.
Skye's own fingers pause over the keyboard as she looks up and at her friend. Her lips purse contemplatively and she shrugs in response. Her mouth opens as if to say something, but she snaps it shut just as quickly.
Jemma lifts the goggles from her eyes and props them on top of her head. "Did Coulson send you to spy on me?" She asks shakily, the truth practically slipping from her lips. "Is this about the medpod again? I swear it's not-"
"Whoa! Simmons!" Skye interrupts, rising from her stool. "Coulson didn't ask me to come here."
Jemma's eyes narrow suspiciously. "Then why- why are you here? I can't be particularly amusing to be around anymore." She returns her goggles to the bridge of her nose and begins to pour the boiled contents of one beaker into another, allowing it to partially occupy her attention. "Honestly, I just want to be left alone," she adds dismissively.
"That's just it!" Skye declares throwing her arms up. "You haven't been the same since…" She inhales a deep breath. "We're just worried about you. You're practically skin and bones."
Jemma's eyes flit to the solution that sits before her. "You shouldn't be."
Skye's eyebrows raise in surprise. "Really? Simmons, the Bus barely has any supplies. Nothing has been replenished in weeks. Just yesterday you asked Trip to update the Asimovian's hard drive. That damn thing is nearly unusable and none of us can figure out why you're even bothering with it. It's like you're a different-"
"I have everything that I need."
"What?"
Jemma blanches. Her words had tumbled from her lips unmoderated and unintentional. She straightens her shoulders and vows to moderate the ones she chooses next.
She has a lie practiced and ready to recite. There's a planted truth in her deception ensuring its believability. She knows the science is mostly lost on Skye and she hopes the younger agent forgets the bulk of her reasoning. "I'm trying to manufacture a transparent substance that should allow for cloaking without the need for additional lens support." She pauses and forces herself to meet Skye's eyes. "I'm testing the longitudinal waves which should allow for the oscillating wave to convert-"
Skye waves her hand, stopping Jemma mid sentence. "I get it, you need silence."
She nods, a forced smile growing purposefully on her lips. "Yes. Yes, I need to concentrate. It's been very difficult…"
Skye shakes her head and returns to her old desk, gathering up her laptop. "There's no need to explain," she says apologetically and Jemma feels a surge of guilt rise in her chest. "I'll get out of your hair. Let you work."
Jemma nods again. "Thank you. Really."
As Skye passes her, she reaches for Jemma's hand and squeezes it. "Just come up for air, okay?"
Restrained, Jemma hopes that she sounds grateful in reply. "You worry too much, Skye."
Her lips tighten as her eyes take in Jemma more wholly. "Maybe. But sometimes I think I'm not worrying enough."
To be continued...