"How are you not dead?"
Fitz glanced between the smiling face of SHIELD Employee Simmons, Jemma on his computer screen to the real-life version, much more pale and haunted, sitting across from his desk.
"That's what I've been trying to tell you Fitz," the woman responded, despondently. "None of this is real. My body was dead. But here I am, alive. So obviously something's not right with this world if that's possible."
"You used to work for SHIELD. Says here you were a scientist," Fitz said, focusing on the computer screen. For some reason, the longer he looked at the woman's heartbroken eyes, the more he felt the unfamiliar urge to comfort her. That wouldn't do at all. "So there are three options here."
He rocked back into his chair and crossed his legs, ticking off the possibilities on his fingers with a bored air. "One: SHIELD had insanely low standards for scientists - not unlikely - and you're mentally unstable. Two: You're actually brilliant and somehow invented something tech or biological that protected you from dying to begin with - also unlikely, because I actually am brilliant and I would know if something like that were possible… And that still wouldn't answer why you've waited so long to make your presence known; or Three…" Fitz trailed off, narrowing his eyes at her. "You're lying and this is all a ploy to get my attention for something else completely."
The woman stared at him mournfully for a long moment before rolling her eyes and standing suddenly. Stunned, Fitz reeled back, nearly falling out of his chair.
"Oh, for heaven's sake, Fitz!" The woman yelled, exasperated. "I am a scientist, you bloody fool, and one thing that I'm sure has carried over into this God-foresaken hellscape is that I'm still the smarter one."
Fitz's eyes grew wide as the woman started unbuttoning her blouse. "Wha… What are you.." He started to stammer.
"You think I'm lying? You think I'm 'mentally unstable'?!" The woman mocked, angrily pulling off her blouse, leaving her in just a camisole and jeans, "Then examine me! You're a scientist, Fitz! Seeing is believing, and all that! Examine my wounds! Medically prove, beyond a shadow of the doubt, that these gunshots," at this, she pulled down the top of the camisole a few inches, exposing ugly burn marks on her collarbone and chest, "were fatal. Do you think you're brilliant enough to do that, Doctor?" She asked, the sarcasm flooding her question.
Seeing Fitz just sitting there, gaping at her in astonishment, the woman rolled her eyes again and threw her hands up in frustration. "Ugh, FITZ!" She half-yelled, half-growled, then marched over to the nearest lab table.
The sight of an unknown woman picking up one of his most prized inventions was evidently all the motivation Fitz needed to finally respond. He stood and ran over to the table, "Be careful!" He shouted, grabbing the dwarves from her hands. "You do not have the clearance to-"
"You know, I'm going to have so much fun when you wake up from this madness, Fitz," the woman commented, seemingly unbothered by his rough manners. She continued talking to herself as she walked to a nearby shelf, beginning to methodically pull items off the shelf, "This whole thing is empirical proof that I make your inventions better. I know you think the Dwarves were all you, but you always conveniently forget how much I contributed to that little brainstorming session back at the Academy."
Fitz just stared, completely lost, as the woman arranged the tools she had selected on the table in front of her, then sketched something on a nearby notepad. "May I?" She asked, finally looking Fitz directly in the eyes and arching an eyebrow, motioning expectantly at the Dwarves in his hands.
"What?" He asked again, still trying to catch up. "How did you know where everything is?"
Simmons just shrugged, grabbing the Dwarves back from his hands - he didn't resist, too curious to see what she had in mind - "Your organizational system is the same in the real world, in our lab. There would be no reason to change something like that in the Framework."
Fitz just blinked, then watched in stunned silence as the woman effortlessly pried open the back casing of the Dwarves' base station and began fiddling with the wiring inside. All the while, she kept talking to herself, pausing intermittently as she worked. "I know I'm not the engineer in this partnership, but I've spent enough time around these things to know a thing or two… Why look, Fitz, you found a way to extend the battery life! Cheers! I'll have to write that down for real Fitz… Or, actually, maybe you'll remember it… Of course Sleepy isn't programmed to sense bio readings without me… Have you even named them or is that too fun for Hydra… Honestly I think I prefer hanging with Ward over watching what's happening with you… You know these - wait, do they - ah! Fitz, they don't even track individually yet? Tsk, tsk…"
She continued muttering, fingers flying over the instruments and Fitz couldn't help himself from leaning in, dazed, to inspect her work and trying to comprehend what was happening. For half a second, when she had seemed actually happy that he had created a long-lasting, lightweight lithium ion power source, he had pictured another moment, with this woman beaming at her from behind safety goggles, obviously proud of him for something, but the moment slipped away as quickly as it appeared.
"What was…" Fitz muttered under his breath, stumbling back. Where had that come from?
He glanced back at his computer where he could still see the woman's name on his screen. Simmons, Jemma. "Miss Simmons," he started, then paused. That felt wrong, for some reason. "Doctor Simmons?" He tried out, still not liking the sound.
The woman paused only momentarily, still tinkering with his invention. "You know that's not quite right, Fitz," she said quietly. "Think. Why doesn't it sound right? What does everyone call me? What do they call -"
"Are we married?"
At Fitz's abrupt question, Simmons froze. "Why… Why would you say that?" She asked, her face paling slightly. Her grip on the screwdriver she held tightened minutely.
"Fitzsimmons," Fitz said, echoing the word that was relentlessly ringing in his head. "I think you're completely insane, and there's no possible way that we're in this 'alternate reality" you keep prattling on about, but for some reason I can't get the name Fitzsimmons out of my head. And there's absolutely no reason for that. I've never met a Simmons, or a Fitzsimmons."
He rose and crossed his arms, starting to slowly pace around the work station the Simmons woman had apparently taken over. "But saying that I do believe your insane theory - just for a moment - could help explain why your name makes me think of the name 'Fitzsimmons.' So. Just humor me - in this alternate reality, are we married? Instead of you taking my name, we have joint last names?"
He paused his pacing in front of the scientist when he caught her looking down in sorrow, tears welling up in her eyes. "Jemma?" He asked, his voice softer than before. He didn't know why but he couldn't help but want to make sure this woman, as insane as she may be, was okay.
"No, Fitz," she shook her head, wiping back tears with the back of her hand. She sniffed and leaned forward, getting back to work on the Dwarves. "We're not married. Not quite. But we are Fitzsimmons, so you've got that much right."
Fitz couldn't explain the emotions running through his mind at her confession. Why did he feel disappointment at her admittance that they weren't married? He was with the Madame, he shouldn't want anything with this stranger. But what did she mean by… "We are Fitzsimmons?" He prompted.
The woman smiled at him sadly, but didn't say anything. A few more moments passed as she worked on the Dwarves before she stopped and placed her tools on the table. "There," she sighed.
She held out the invention and gave Fitz a soft smile as he took it from her hands. "I made a few modifications - based on our work together. I hope you'll find that they've vastly improved the processing power of the rear sensors and the analytics speed of the device."
Fitz's mouth dropped open as he fiddled with the device in his hands. "Wha - how did you - but.." He stammered, stunned. The improvements were genius. And they felt so familiar somehow, like a design he had created in a dream. He grabbed a nearby tablet and quickly manipulated the settings to account for the new robotics and grinned broadly as he watched the Dwarves take flight.
One of the orange balls flew directly up to the woman now standing by the door, its biometric scan of her filling his tablet with data. "Hey, Bashful," he heard her softly whisper to the floating object, affection lining her voice.
He glanced down, stunned at the readings. He wasn't a biologist by any means - biology had always been his weakest point - but he knew her readings should be impossible. A human body should not be able to function with those levels of…
His thoughts were cut off as he heard the door open and saw Simmons about to slip out. She paused, looking at him with tears filling her eyes again. "Just promise me, Fitz - please don't use them for Hydra, okay? You can play with them here in the lab, but don't use them for any experiments on people.. Or inhumans, or anything else. Just… Don't hurt or hunt anyone with them, okay?"
Fitz stared after her and silently nodded, not entirely understanding why he was agreeing to her terms. Simmons slipped out of the room, and Fitz was left with mental flashes of a woman who looked like her, and an odd, unsettling feeling of deja vu.