Author Note: Just a cute little one chapter fic about FitzSimmons during Fitz's coma. Not meant to be realistic. Please don't judge too hard.
Disclaimer: Psh, I don't own shield. I'd be so cool if I did tho.
Somewhere down the hall, Fitz can hear crying. It's the muffled kind of crying that someone does when they're not looking for attention, just letting out what's bottled up inside them. He understands how that person is feeling. He's cried more than once the past few days, always when he's been alone. Well, not really alone, but with Simmons.
She's laid completely still in a hospital bed, attached to all manner of tubes and machines. She doesn't move aside from the occasional noticeable rise and fall of her chest as she breathes. Fitz sits in a chair beside her, one of those ones with the bright, cheerful prints that's supposed to make people feel better but just kind of ends up rubbing it in that they're stuck in the hospital.
He's leaned forward, his chosen posture whenever it's just him and Simmons these days. It's as though he's waiting for her eyes to open at any given second. He has the apology prepared on his lips, for being the reason she's there. He has the words caught in his throat, the "I'm sorry, I love you, thank god you're awake." He can still feel the rush of water, the pain of waking somewhere else and hearing that she hit her head, that she's not waking up. She was supposed to be okay. He'd meant for her to be okay. How had this happened?
The crying from down the hall becomes a little louder, closer to a sob. Fitz closes his eyes, tries to block it out. He takes Simmons' hand and grasps it in his own, feeling cold and clammy and far away. "Please wake up." Fitz begs her but she only remains still. He could have sworn he felt her trying to squeeze his hand back, but it was only a trick of his mind. His mind seemed to be playing a lot of tricks on him since Simmons had been in the hospital. He blamed it on the sleep deprivation and refused to let go of her hand until the crying down the hall quieted.
Simmons was dividing her time between work and sitting by Fitz's bedside and that was it. The few hours of sleep she got were in the chair next to his hospital bed or at her desk in the lab when her eyes were too tired to read or look into her microscope. She ate very little, mostly just things Skye handed her when she stopped by to check on her. She'd started talking to herself when she was in the lab, or rather, talking to Fitz when he wasn't there. Coulson didn't want to flood her with work, but he gave her little things to keep her busy. She'd find herself asking Fitz if they could work one of her new serums into a project and then would remember that there might never be another new project they could work on together. There was the chance Fitz would not wake up or he would wake and not be the person he was before.
Mostly, Simmons found herself distracting from the guilt she was feeling. When she was in his hospital room, Simmons would sometimes pace and talk to his comatose form. She'd try and work out his side of different things they'd been working on before the accident. She often tried to clean up his hospital room as well, but the space was very sparse and mostly only held shiny machinery and the office chair to sit by his side. One day, she brought in a few test tubes filled halfway with water and she placed flowers in each one like a little series of vases. She left it in the window until a nurse took it away.
At night, when she couldn't pace or work anymore, she'd just sit in the uncomfortable office chair and pull it close to the edge of his bed. She'd hold his hand and whisper things she wasn't even sure she should be admitting out loud. They were always the same, "I'm so sorry, I love you, please just wake up."
The sleep deprivation is getting to Fitz. He's been having strange, minor hallucinations. First it was just glimpses of things. He'd see May and Ward walk down the hall talking with hushed tones. He'd remember Ward wasn't on their side anymore; Ward had done this to Simmons and to him. He'd feel groggy and angry and then realize that it was just a trick in his head.
His main hallucination is that she's trying to hold his hand back. He finds a new thing to add to his list of strange occurrences now. He reaches into his cardigan pocket and pulls out a crumpled piece of paper. On it, in Simmons' handwriting, is a note. "I'm so sorry, I love you, please just wake up." Fitz shakes his head, thinking those are just words he's been thinking toward her and he's manifesting them as notes because he obviously needs to sleep more than an hour or two a day.
Everyone had been tip-toeing around her since they found out Fitz was in a coma. As the days and then weeks ticked by, their expressions only grew more and more pitying. The work Simmons had been doing for Coulson had started to get sloppy. She'd handed him reports that were obviously unfinished. Things were looking worse and worse by the day.
There were a few newer people milling about the base. One commented that Simmons was only half the scientist without Fitz and that if he never woke up, Simmons wouldn't be an asset anymore. Skye slapped the guy across the face and told him to mind his own business.
Simmons found herself at Fitz's bedside more and more often. One late afternoon, she lays her head down beside his arm and hums the song about the five little monkeys jumping on the bed until her humming turns to quiet tears and they drip off her nose and onto Fitz's fingertips.
Fitz is starting to become suspicious of things. His hallucinations aren't the only weird thing that has happened to him. He realizes that, over the weeks, he hasn't eaten anything. And, despite telling himself that he must have slept only an hour or two, he hasn't actually had any memory of sleeping at all. The notes have showed up in his pocket more and more frequently. They mostly all said the same types of things about waking up and love and, strangely, science.
He now checks his pockets regularly. Just now, he pulls out a new crumpled piece with a makeshift drawing on it of five monkeys. Fitz smiles until it somehow becomes damp. Had he been crying on it? No, but his fingertips were wet. He brought them to his lips and tasted salt.
"It says here you could try some sort of voodoo practice. Or you could pray to this ancient god. Or, uhm, light a candle and write down what you want to happen and something about a bunch of herbs from the Middle East." Skye is reading off a laptop screen while an exhausted looking Simmons stares blankly at the wall across from her in Fitz's hospital room.
"I'm about ready to try anything." Simmons murmurs, holding Fitz's hand limply in her own.
"There's actually a whole bunch about guided hypnosis. Doesn't that stuff actually work?" Skye perks up a little, sitting straighter in the fold-down chair she's dragged in.
"What should I do?" Simmons asks in the same dead pan, exhausted tone. She's ready to abandon science and take Skye's theories.
"It says you have to count down by ten and talk to his subconscious. This one woman said she tried it with her daughter who was in a coma for three months and the girl came out of it twenty minutes into the hypnosis. I don't know if it's true, but we can try if you want." Skye keeps her tone optimistic but also sees that Simmons is in bad shape.
"Of course, anything." Simmons agrees, her voice gaining a bit more inflection.
The note is longer today. It says she's going to find a way to wake him up, even if it's completely insane. Fitz is starting to wonder if he's gone insane. What if he's been sitting in a mental institution this whole time because he had a nervous breakdown because Simmons hadn't made it out of everything alive?
Skye had left about an hour earlier and Simmons is sitting in the office chair with her hand to her forehead, contemplating what she's doing. "As a scientist, I'm not sure how I feel about Skye's many different theories on how to wake you up. As your best friend, I know have to try them even if they sound completely ridiculous. So, please, if you remember any of this when you wake up, don't tease me. We're desperate." Simmons confides in him in a whisper.
"She says I have to count down from ten. Some people like to have their subjects visualize something on which they're progressing downward. So, if you can hear me and if this is really working, you can imagine anything you want. Stairs or rungs on a latter or floors on a the lift. Just humor me Fitz and try."
"10-9-8-7..." Simmons pauses and shoots a glance backward at the door, wondering if anyone will walk by and ask why she's counting. "6-5-4..." She takes a deep inhalation between counting, praying any miracle will wake him. "3-2-1." She clears her throat and takes his hand.
"Imagine you're somewhere really safe, okay. Your favorite place ever. You could be staring at monkeys at the zoo or maybe sitting at home with your mum on Christmas morning or maybe even in our lab making something brilliant. Imagine you're there, in your safe, happy place." Simmons can't help but feel a little silly but she presses on.
"Once you're in your happy place, I want you to let your mind go. I want you to open up and be as receptive to my words as possible. I've got a few questions we're going to try to answer. If you want to say yes, I want you to try and wiggle your thumb. If you want to say no, I want you to try and wiggle your index finger. Are you ready?" Simmons asks, not expecting a response, but patiently giving it a go anyway. She waits, letting the pause linger in a hurtful silence that's telling her she was being an idiot and this was never going to work. She can feel tears bubbling to the surface at her failure when she feels a slight wiggle of his thumb. Maybe she'd imagined it, but maybe she'd needed to. Simmons keeps going, using her free hand to wipe away the tears that had escaped.
"Do you know you're in a coma?" Simmons asks now. As if learning the game better after the first question, Fitz's fingers are moving quicker. He moves his index finger this time. Simmons is shocked that this might actually be working. Index means no. "Well, Fitz, you're in a coma and it's been a while now and we're all really scared." Simmons confesses, almost breaking her hypnosis tone. "Do you want to wake up?" She asks, her voice hitching slightly. His thumb twitches. She's starting to become more excited, more hopeful. "Do you want me to help guide you?" She inquires. His thumb twitches again.
Simmons is quiet for a moment, trying to form a plan of action. The miracle stories Skye had read to her earlier involved people walking the subject through some different type of awakening scenario. The whole thing seemed difficult to Simmons. She had to work on the fly and come up with a way to lure Fitz out of the deepest sleep he's ever been in.
"Mmk, this is gonna be a bit far-fetched, but you've got to play along. I want you to imagine a sandwich. But not just any sandwich... The sandwich. Your favorite, with just a dash of pesto aioli. And I want you to imagine that you can smell it but you can't see it. You're gonna close your eyes and when you open them, you won't be in your happy place anymore. Instead, you're in the bus, on the deck, smelling your sandwich and it's somewhere, hidden. Can you smell it?" Simmons asks, wincing at how she's somehow managed to force Fitz's subconscious into focusing on a sandwich. Despite the oddness of it all, Fitz still manages to wiggle his thumb.
"The sandwich is somewhere on the bus just like the key to waking up is somewhere inside your brain. If you can find the sandwich, you can wake up. Are you looking for it?" His thumb twitches again. "You're doing really well Fitz. Keep looking. You're checking in a cupboard. You're checking the interrogation room. You're checking in the backseat of one of the cars. Keep looking." Simmons can't help but imagine it too, like she's right there with him.
Fitz has figured out that this isn't real. He pulls up the blinds on the hospital window and behind them are more blinds. He looks at the monitors that are supposed to tell him Simmons' heart rate and realizes that they're not monitors at all, but television screens showing a commercial for a sandwich shop. Fitz's breathing becomes too quick. He's starting to panic. He turns to look at Simmons, for some reassurance that she's real but she's not in the bed anymore. He jerks his head toward the door and sees her there, standing in her hospital gown, completely silent and sad looking. She's been crying, she's exhausted, she looks pale. Fitz moves toward her and she takes one step back. He starts to try and say something but she puts a finger to her lips, motioning that he has to be quiet.
She turns around to start leaving the room but glances back at him, her eyes beckoning him to go with her. Fitz starts after her. The door to his hospital room shuts and he realizes that he's not in the hall of a hospital, but in one of the tight halls on the bus. What is happening?
Simmons is up ahead, holding out a hand for him to take. Before he can reach out and take it, she darts forward, like a child baiting him in a game of tag. He goes through another door and suddenly, they're underwater. They're swimming upward. Fitz can't breathe, but Simmons has him tied to her wrist by a kite string, the kind of little bows at varying intervals. As quickly as he's drowning, he's pulled through another door into another room, the interrogation room. Ward is sitting there, as silent as Simmons has been, looking brooding. Fitz moves in one fast motion to try and punch him in the face, but as soon as contact is made, Ward shatters into countless minuscule shards.
Simmons waits in the door frame and Fitz follows her into what is now their lab. A sandwich sits inside, one of his favorites, the kind Simmons makes when they go out for a picnic. He moves forward to take it when everything goes black. Or is it white? The point is, he's not where he was.
Outside the door to Fitz's room, Skye, May, and Coulson stand in silence, listening to Simmons try and walk Fitz out of his coma. Skye looks so hopeful and eager to burst in and see Fitz awake that it's almost sad. May and Coulson wear matching looks of pity.
Simmons isn't willing to give up. She's gotten his fingers to twitch in response and she didn't think that would work. Who was to say she couldn't wake him up? "It's happening Fitz. Do you see it? The sandwich? It's right there." Fitz's whole hand starts to flex and suddenly, there's a sputtering little cough out of him. Fitz lets out a soft chuckle and very quietly tries to murmur something about being hungry. Simmons actually squeaks at the sound of him. She jumps back from the bed, stunned.
"N-nurse!" She calls out to someone outside the room. "He's awake! He's trying to talk!" Simmons is shouting. Skye and the others are in the room before there's a chance for them to be invited and a nurse comes rushing over to check everything. Simmons remains where she was standing when she jumped back, she's too surprised it worked. Or, maybe it was just a coincidence. Either way, he had his eyes open and he was trying to speak. That was more than she'd had an hour ago and it brought tears to Simmons' eyes. Maybe there were miracles hidden inside theories. Maybe it all came down to the things they'd told each other when the other was asleep.