AN: Not even closely what I am supposed to be writing, but this needed out. Watching S3 right now and eps 5 and 6 got me thinking. Or made me speculate my head off during a lengthy car ride that followed... Obviously I haven't got the faintest what's going to happen in the remainder of this season (or the following ones...). Still, I figured some people might enjoy :)

If so, or even if you want to poke fun at me for getting everything wrong, I'd love to read a few words from you!

~whenisayfriend aka elenthari

Within Us Hide...

For some reason it had never occurred to Jemma that leaving the Dark Planet might not set her life on the right track again. Not as long as she had harbored any such thoughts at all, anyway. Hope had persisted, the outcome as clear in her mind as the pictures she was able to call up on her phone. If any doubt had ever crept in, it had always been about the factual possibilities of opening the portal from Earth's side, or her own capability of finding the point of entry on her side.

Now, everything was askew, wrong, confusing, and eating her alive. Now that she was home... And it was her own damned fault.

She thought of that photograph of Fitz's on her phone. It felt like he had always been with her, be it at her side or in her mind. She could not imagine life without this constant, ever again.
And yet. Here she was, torn between what she knew to be true and the inevitable certainty that she could not act on that knowledge. Not before things were sorted out, not before they had found a way back to the Dark Planet and rescued Will.

She had, for a long, long time, thought Fitz and she were similar or even alike. How untrue this turned out to be. Ultimately, Fitz had been the courageous one who had risked everything, baring his deepest secret when the moment came, down there, in the darkness of the ocean. She had been the cowardly traitor who turned away. Then, and again.
It had taken forever for her to believe Fitz was not gone, was not even all that different. If anything, he had learned something from that brush with death: courage. Unlike her. She had been grateful, yet still too afraid to do what she wanted to. And when she had finally pulled her head out of the sand long enough to at least acknowledge the possibility of a second chance... the Monolith had happened. Good thing she did not believe in karma.

After the Dark Planet, she now knew what it took: It was giving her no choice but to choose in order to survive. Make it a matter of survival and she could give herself over to another person.
Without Will she could not ever have hoped to have a shot at survival – so there they went. Q.E.D.
And right that was the problem when it came to Fitz. She would always have a choice with him. He'd never push or make her do anything, never demand she make a decision – for the both of them – how their lives would go. She would have to declare willingly that she wanted him and wanted to be with him, just because. Because she loved him, no better reason than that. And that, she was sure now, was something she couldn't do. Was not capable of. Having to face her own feelings – it had been precisely what had pushed, or possibly dragged, her away from him before, hadn't it.

While this had been a sad state of affairs before, the months on the Dark Planet had added another layer of complications as well as self-awareness. Because now she was the most awful person on two planets.

She had held out, she thought, for a long time, admirably. Had firmly believed in Fitz, his loyalty, his genius mind, too, of course. And yet, wasn't the truth that she had begun to waver the moment another human being had become part of the equation of survival? Would it not have been easy for her to keep her faith and wait for Fitz's help, sitting on that barren, lonely planet? Instead she had seized on that one single alternative that presented itself to her the moment hope had deserted her for the very first time.
Whereas Fitz, who could have had the whole wide world to keep him distracted and occupied for the rest of his life, had stuck to his mission to find and save her.
What this said about her was unflattering and sad, but there it was. Fitz was the fierce one of the two if them. Always had been. And she had known and often enough banked on it. And yet, when on the Dark Planet long enough, she'd forgotten what that'd mean. They were not only capable of reading each other's mind – Fitz would also never give up on her, for as long as he lived. She should have known that.

After days and nights of thinking things through, she had now arrived at the conclusion that she herself could not love in the true sense of the word. This unsettling idea had been following her around for some time – ever since the incident in the pod, – but now she had proof she'd been right all along. What other explanation was there, really?
She had felt absolutely sure of Fitz, of his loyalty, his... love for her. She had never doubted anything about him, still did not, as a matter of fact – but she herself had betrayed every single thing they had. Or had had. The moment she'd lost hope she had thrown it all away, in a second, taking the easiest way out imaginable.
All it would have taken was some real love on her part, she was sure, to keep on trusting in Fitz on the other side of the void. But instead she had taken her own failure as a reason to declare FitzSimmons a thing of the past. Despite everything. Despite the fact that she loved him.

As much as she was capable of loving anyone, that is.

What she felt about Will she couldn't say. But obviously she owed him. And that was enough reason to do everything in her power to save him. Still, she had told no one about him until now. God, she was... what had she been thinking?
She knew Fitz assumed, from her behavior, that she was in love with Will. And did she not lead him to believe so because she could see it made her best friend work so hard to rescue the man? How twisted and messed up was that? With anyone else the suggestion would have the very opposite effect most likely – but she knew Fitz too well. And so she was lying by omission, wasn't she...

Neither man deserved what she was doing. Maybe she didn't even deserve this dilemma herself, but there was no doubt she was the only one who could solve it. But she'd be damned if she could see how.
On the practical side of things, she figured, there would likely be very little to keep her and Will together on this side of the portal. But as well as she knew she was not in love with the astronaut, as little did she know how to deal with the current limbo or the aftermath, no matter which form that would take.
While Will's fate was hanging in the balance or unknown, she could not possibly move forward; should he be dead she would feel guilty, should they be able to rescue him, she would have to deal with him in person. Most terrifying was the, probably, most likely outcome: Fitz would fail this time and either destroy himself in the process, or she'd not be able to let Will go, destroying Fitz and herself all over again.

And with every passing day now, the moral Fitz showed was heartbreaking in its own right; he was pursuing the search for a way to rescue Will with all the determination she knew he had used in his search for herself, as well. Yet another reason why she should never even consider acting on her own feelings for him.
She did not deserve this kind of love, now less than ever.
And he deserved infinitely more than a best friend who was too weak to own up to her feelings, who went running in a million different ways, while he had been and was willing to give everything, including his life, to save hers, or even just her happiness.

Tell me what you think, please? Thank you!