-three am (i must be lonely)

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Not that Skye expected her to, but Simmons really isn't handling Fitz's condition well.

Or — well, she probably thinks she's handling it swimmingly, that she's being productive with all the research into neurology and long (sometimes gross) hours put into meticulously caring for him. She probably thinks she's taking it all in stride, that everyone is fooled by her one-day-at-a-time optimism.

She's falling apart.

More than most people, Skye has experience in turning on to obsessions to turn off emotions; she doesn't want to think about how much of her life she's spent hunting for her parents so she didn't have to care that her foster parents never cared, or how long she would go without sleep, doing increasingly-stupid things (and consuming increasingly-dangerous substances) to keep herself awake so she wouldn't have another nightmare… how long she has gone without sleep lately, because every time she closes her eyes all she can think of is Ward's it wasn't personal and all the things she should have done instead of yell at him and —

It's a downward spiral, but it's damn hard to stop. And Simmons…

Simmons prays at the altar of science like a devout Catholic does the crucifix, and at the moment, she's accomplishing just as much.

"Simmons," she says sharply, stalking into the new lab and placing her hand over the book she's been poring over. "Go to sleep."

Simmons just looks at her for a moment, like she's trying to decide if she's hallucinating or not, and boy howdy, is that a bad sign. Another bad sign is the half-full comically-oversized coffee cup; she's surprised she isn't just drinking it straight from the pot.

"You've been sitting in here doing 'research' — " she rolls her eyes and makes air-quotes " — for at least three days. You're not doing anything productive anymore. Go to bed."

"I'm not tired," Simmons replies, lightning-fast. "And I think I'm on the verge of a breakthrough…"

"What breakthrough could you possibly be on the verge of?" she asks, exasperated and probably sounding a little more callous than she means to. "His condition hasn't changed. You can't have any breakthroughs until he wakes up and you know how much damage there is."

Simmons blinks rapidly several times, before swallowing hard and wrenching the book out from under Skye's hand with more force than Skye really thinks is necessary.

"I've been making a sort of — well, plan of attack, you could say," she answers, and she's breathing much too fast and the book is visibly shaking in her hands. "For whatever degree of damage there is, and what we can do to combat whatever complications arise. And I think I've found out how to make an MRI without a superconductor. Maybe."

"You lost me there," she deadpans. "What does an MRI have to do with anything?"

"Well, to assess the damage, of course," Simmons replies, and Skye raises an eyebrow. "Using an MRI — a magnetic resonance imager — I can take 'pictures' of his brain, and see what parts are or aren't still getting blood."

"Okay, that's great," she says, nodding in mild sarcasm. "But I hear that 'sleeping on it' is a great strategy for solving problems."

"I can't sleep," Simmons mumbles, and she sighs.

"At this point," Skye says in a low voice, "I think you'll sleep too hard for nightmares."

Simmons stills. "What makes you think I'm having nightmares?" she counters, voice stretched taut and thin and brittle and Skye should really start back-pedaling right now, but she's never been much good at doing what she's supposed to do.

"Please," she snorts. "We're all having nightmares… except maybe May, but I'm not entirely sure she sleeps. And you… you went through a really bad experience, and now your best friend is in a coma! You'd have to be inhuman — you'd have to be — to be Ward not to have nightmares."

(Maybe if she puts him down and insults him enough, it'll stop stinging. Maybe.)

"I'm not having nightmares," Simmons lies woodenly.

"It's okay," she insists. "It's okay to be scared."

"I'm not frightened," Simmons counters, taking several deep, shaky breaths, and she reaches for her coffee. Skye snatches it before she can, and for a moment she just stands there, looking like a broken doll, staring at the space where her cup used to be. "I'm not frightened," she repeats. "I'm focused. I'm determined. I'm — I'm not frightened."

"We're all frightened, Simmons," she says. "This has been scary as hell, and we don't know how long we'll be safe here, and we don't know how Fitz will be when he wakes up… it's terrifying. I'm scared, everyone's scared."

"I'm not."

She says it like it's the word of God, firm and immovable, and it hits Skye that maybe she's not lying.

Maybe she hasn't come around to fear yet.

"No…" she murmurs, "you're not…You're… angry?" she offers, and Simmons twitches. Jackpot. "That's okay, too. I'm pissed at a lot of people right now."

"I am fine," Simmons breathes. She wonders how many times she's had to tell herself that so far.

"No, you're not," she says bluntly. "You're not even close to fine. You need to take a break."

"I can't stop, not now — "

"Yes, now!" she snaps. "Stop. Look at me." She grabs Simmons by the shoulders and turns her forcefully so she's standing directly in front of her; it's easy: Simmons doesn't fight it, just lets Skye move her like… like a doll.

Skye never liked dolls.

"Talk to me," she commands. "Let it out."

The lost look on Simmons's face screams what she probably won't ever say — I only cry on one person's shoulder.

"You have to talk to someone, Jemma," she pleads, shaking her a little. "Something has to give, you're driving yourself crazy."

"And you're not?" she snaps back, voice cracking like a whip. "You're standing there telling me to sleep, but it's three o'clock in the morning, why aren't you in bed?"

Shit.

"I woke up," she lies, and Simmons scoffs.

"You haven't slept either, you've no room to talk — " her voice rising with every word and starting to crack " — you've no room to tell me what to do, no room to make my decisions for me! I decide what happens to me, and if I want to — " she catches herself, eyes wide and wet and chin shaking and face turning red.

Skye isn't offended — it's not her she's yelling at, after all — but she's not entirely sure who she is angry with.

"Go to bed yourself," Simmons whispers. "Don't suffer on account of me. I'll be fine."

It clicks.

"What happened down there?" she asks softly. Simmons's already-failing neutral facade begins to crack.

"He didn't even try to find another way," she chokes, throwing the book to the counter, where it skitters and knocks over several empty test tubes. Glass breaks all over the floor, and Simmons lets out a cry. "Oh, no…" she moans, trying to pull away and clean up, but Skye doesn't let her, tightening her grip on her shoulders and forcing her to stay still.

"What do you mean, he didn't try to find another way?"

Simmons blinks sluggishly, and it seems like all the weight of the past few weeks settles on her at once; she can literally see the fight going out of her. "Because of me," she mumbles, and Skye gasps.

It's stupidly obvious.

"He told you, didn't he?" she murmurs, and Simmons's head snaps up. "He told you he loved you."

"You knew?" she cries, and Skye sighs.

"Simmons, it was obvious," she says sympathetically. "He was terrible at hiding it."

For a moment, neither of them move, and then the weight finally shatters her.

"He had no right," she sobs, jaw clenched, and Skye is about to explain to her that falling in love is a thing that happens, whether you like it or not, when she goes on. "He didn't tell me there was only enough air in the tank for one, not until everything was ready, he didn't even look for another way, all because — because he wanted to be the hero, or — or — "

"He knew you'd die down there with him if you waited much longer," she cuts her off, and Simmons looks up to the ceiling, choking back a sob.

"Yes!" she cries. "Yes, I would have, and he had no right to decide that I couldn't. No right."

She can't decide if pulling her into a hug would be a good idea or not; she settles for guiding her to the work bench and forcing her to sit.

"You're right," she says softly, sitting next to her. "He should have told you about the air thing, and he should have looked for another way. And I should have kicked Ward in the balls when I had the chance, and we should have noticed that Garrett was an evil bastard, and we should have — done a million things, I could go on forever, and it wouldn't do any of us any good." She sighs, and shakes her head. "When Fitz wakes up, when he's better? Get angry at him then, tell him off, make him understand. But you're just hurting yourself by staying angry right now."

Simmons seems to deflate further. "He has to wake up and get better first," she says, in a very small voice. "I have to make him wake up and get better."

Tears prick at her eyes, and she finally thinks — oh, fuck it — and pulls Simmons in to rest her head on her shoulder.

"You can't," she replies quietly. "You can't make him magically wake up and be okay, there aren't any fairy godmothers here to wave a wand and fix it. And you can't help him by driving yourself crazy with caffeine and bottling everything up. You've gotta feel it, you have to…" she sighs. "You have to let the emotions run their course. You can't make yourself un-love someone," she adds in a low, miserable murmur.

Simmons sinks further against Skye, sobbing once, twice, and then she's crying, really crying the way she probably should have a week ago. Skye draws in a shaky breath and looks up for guidance but finds nothing but plaster.

Choking back a sob of her own, she leans her cheek against the top of Jemma's head, and they stay like that for a long time before Simmons finally picks herself back up, rubbing angrily at her face as though the tears have personally offended her.

"You need to go to bed," Skye says quietly, and Simmons nods.

"All right," she mumbles, allowing Skye to pull her to her feet and guide her out of the lab. "I can't promise I'll sleep."

"At least try."

They reach her room and Simmons just sort of slumps down on the bed, where she buries her face in her pillow like she's ashamed of being seen to cry.

(Or maybe there's another reason; Skye could swear that the pillow came from Fitz's room on the Bus, and wow, that's a punch to the gut.)

She draws the blanket up over Simmons, but it doesn't seem like she notices.

She shuts the door quietly behind her and stays there for a long moment, head resting against the wood, eyes closed and jaw clenched and god — she should take her own advice.

You can't make yourself un-love someone.

Instead, she goes to the gym and hits a punching bag over and over, imagining that it's Ward and imagining that it's her heart and imagining that it's Garrett and even imagining that it's Fitz, who didn't do anything really wrong but still left Simmons sobbing into his stolen pillows and it's not fair — it's not fair that Simmons — well, at least Simmons will always know that Fitz was genuine, and he loved her, even if he never wakes up or wakes up a totally different person, at least Simmons doesn't get nauseous when her heart aches, at least Simmons fell for someone worth falling for.

And it's not fair to be jealous and it's not fair to be angry at her and it's not fair to think like Simmons isn't living just as much of a nightmare as Skye is. Or more — Fitz has been a part of Simmons's life way longer than Ward was part of Skye's.

And anyway, it's not like suffering is a competition; or if it is, the rewards really fucking suck.

She's vaguely aware of someone walking into the gym, but she's too busy wailing on the punching bag to care until a pair of hands physically stop her and pull her away.

It's Coulson. Because of course it is.

"Don't," she chokes. "I need to — "

"You need to go to bed," he cuts in sharply, much more authoritatively than Skye was with Simmons, and that's somehow hilarious to her right now, that she was on that side of this just a couple of hours ago and Simmons was right, she's got no room to talk. "You'll break your hands, and it still won't be Ward's face you broke them on."

"Did you know," she hiccups, refusing to acknowledge his words and refusing even harder to acknowledge that she's crying and has been for a while now, "did you know that Simmons is sleeping on Fitz's pillow? Isn't that the saddest thing you've ever heard?"

"No," Coulson replies bluntly. "But I've heard a lot of very, very sad things."

"How do you do it?" she whispers. "You and May, how do you just — how do you just not feel?"

"Experience," he answers. "And it's a lesson I'd rather you didn't learn."

"I never learn," she sighs, her own words ringing in her head, about you have to let the emotions run their course and you can't make yourself un-love someone — god, why did she say that? Why did she let that thought form? Why couldn't she just leave well enough alone and go on pretending?

Coulson stays quiet for a moment, before he finally takes a deep breath, and she prepares herself for some deep, fatherly wisdom or advice that'll change everything, but what she gets is:

"Go to bed, Skye."

She waits for something more, but he doesn't say anything else.

"That's it?" she cries, and he tilts his head. "That's all you have to say, 'go to bed', what kind of advice is that?"

"The kind that actually helps," he drawls. "You'll feel better when you wake up."

"No, no, see I just did this," she says, and at the moment, this is the most important thing in her world, this is all that matters, making Coulson give her some kind of actual guidance. "With Simmons, I just told her that exact same thing and I made her sit down and cry it out and I gave her actual advice and you're supposed to be better at this than I am!"

"Skye," he says firmly, pushing her to the door. "Sleep. Trust me, it's the only thing that will help right now."

She isn't really sure what she expected.

Grumbling and drained, she leaves, but instead of going back to her own room, she goes to Fitz's.

It's warm and quiet in there, only the steady in-and-out of the ventilator and Fitz's silence for company.

"You'd better wake up soon," she tells him, curling up with a blanket — definitely from his room on the Bus, neatly folded and cleaned and placed at the foot of his bed — on the uncomfortable chair. "Simmons is coming apart at the seams without you. So you've gotta wake up," she chokes, swallowing a hard lump in her throat. "And you've gotta still be Fitz, you've gotta be okay. At least one of us should have a happy ending," she adds in a mutter.

It's a very long time before the sound of the breathing machine lulls her into a fitful, but blessedly dreamless, sleep.