In the face of failure and despite the tyranny of time, Fitz finally manages to bring Jemma home.
She cannot speak.
When at last he hears her cry out in her sleep, Fitz thinks he understands.
Of course, he doesn't.
When we very first met FitzSimmons they were "psychically linked" but it soon took a turn for the worst – always moving out of step, communicating at cross purposes.
It seems like it might take them a little time to fully untangle the knots…
She struggled out of sleep, its tentacles tangled around her limbs, its heaviness holding down her head.
In her mouth, the taste of ashes.
Her fingers curled against the hard stone beneath her but instead of cold resistance, they found the long-lost familiarity of soft flannel.
That's when she remembered that Fitz had brought her home.
.
One of the many off-grid locations the director had at his disposal was made available to her.
"For as long as you need it," she'd been assured.
Only if he comes with me, she'd silently insisted.
Despite their promises that they'd do anything to assist her, that was one sacrifice they almost refused to make. But when they saw his face they knew there was no point trying to make him remain behind without her.
Building the new transport he'd designed would have to wait. Along with almost everything else.
S.H.I.E.L.D. was at a standstill without him.
But Fitz had been at a standstill without her.
Coulson took a calculated risk, granted the two of them all the time they needed, assigned the others to pressing assignments, prepared to wait indefinitely for his scientists to heal.
Each of them alone, even damaged, were incredibly valuable assets. But together? They were formidable.
And if they could be pieced carefully, painstakingly back together? Well, S.H.I.E.L.D. could use a bit of that kind of formidable right now.
In the back of his mind lurked the possibility that by letting them go, S.H.I.E.L.D. might end up losing them entirely. Coulson didn't let himself dwell on that.
.
They'd arrived in the dark the previous evening and Fitz had put her straight to bed, shaking into her palm two of the yellow pills Dr Garner had prescribed.
Jemma had mentally traced his profile as he sat beside her on the mattress, the line of his brow in the darkness forming a crisp silhouette against the glow from the hallway light. She had wished he would lie down next to her, perhaps even hold her, a barrier against her dreams.
He had assured her he'd be in the very next room. He left both their doors ajar.
Though it still felt far away, the very next room was such a vast improvement on the light years only recently between them that she had put up no resistance. She'd even slept more than an hour at a stretch – a first since she'd been consumed anew by the blue flame of his eyes and grasped a hold of his outstretched hand, since she'd been washed up in the wave of molten rock that Fitz had forced at last to crash upon the lab's concrete floor.
.
She sat up to gaze out of the floor-to-ceiling windows.
Huh. The ocean. At least that old terror had no power over her now. She wondered if the earth had any terrors left for her.
The sound of a kettle whistling reminded her of the last remaining thing she was afraid to lose. She got to her feet and padded through the unfamiliar house in pursuit of him.
From the door she watched him leaning his weight against the slate benchtop, knuckles white, elbows locked, head bowed. Out the window above him the overcast sky was grey like his cardigan, the whole image monochrome until he heard her and turned his electric blue eyes on her.
"You're awake."
She nodded, shuffling forward, hiding her hands in the cuffs of his navy jumper that she had no memory of putting on.
At the slightest raising of her arms towards him, Fitz took one giant stride and pulled her into his embrace. He was urgent and gentle as he had been from the moment his mastery forced her prison to release her.
All the frightening powers and authorities she'd been cowed by alone – his talent, his determination, his loyalty had conquered. And now he stood against the backdrop of a whistling kettle, wearing a cardigan and holding her close.
The silver grey of the wool might as well have been the gleam of burnished armour. When (if) she found her voice again she'd tell him.
For now she concentrated on the soft cotton of his navy t-shirt against her cheek, the firm warmth of muscle and tissue emanating from beneath.
She focused on the sensation of the pads of his fingers in her hair, pressing lightly against the base of her skull.
She nestled into the confines of his arms, resting her brow against his throat, the rhythm of his pulse keeping this new time that she wasn't going to let herself lose.
She slid her arms around his waist and hoped he wouldn't mind that her hands dipped under the hem of his t-shirt to splay against the warm skin of his lower back. She felt him shiver but his grip on her tightened so she didn't let go.
This body of his, his very presence, was so achingly familiar and yet so new. May had conveyed, with her characteristic economy of language, that from the moment he'd discovered her capture he'd worked to transform himself, to become everything he felt he needed to be to get her back. Perhaps the physical training had been just as much about managing his anger and his grief. The mental and emotional discipline he acquired was all focused on bringing that anger and grief to an end. It was all focused on bringing her home.
Regardless, where he'd once been all angles and bones, now he was rock-solid. Where he'd briefly been stutters and helplessness, now he was unflinching strength.
She tried to trace the threads of this man back to the dinner date she'd been snatched away from almost a year before. Whether those threads stretched far enough to connect him to the struggler she'd found at the base on her return from HYDRA, she couldn't say.
The man who'd given her his last breath, who'd tried to follow her out of a plane at who-knows-how-many-thousand feet, who'd blindly followed her onto that plane in the first place. Was there any connection between these arms around her now and that brilliant boy she met at the Academy?
White blood cells last little more than a year, red blood cells four months. Skin cells survive only two or three weeks, colon cells four days. All the procreative potential of a sperm cell, spent after only seventy-two hours.
Those combined facts led some dubious pop-science publications to jump to the conclusion that you were a whole new person after seven years.
But Jemma knew otherwise.
She knew cells.
And brain cells are for life.
This truth had provided Fitz no comfort in the midst of his struggle. Neurons in the cerebral cortex are not replaced when they die.
But whatever he'd lost to the sea was obviously superfluous. He'd harnessed what was left to achieve things nobody else could. And it seemed, warming her right to her toes, that all the bits of his brain with which he'd loved her were very much alive.
"I'm gonna go for a walk and get some firewood. Want to come with?" he asked, loosening his grip of her to rub some warmth into her upper arms.
His skin slipping from under her fingers felt like loss but, in the glare, the scruff on his cheeks glowed a warm gold.
She nodded.
"I'll find your coat."
In only a moment, Fitz returned in his jacket and blue beanie, holding out her navy duffle coat to help her into it.
The grey of the ocean and the slate sky mirrored Jemma's mood as they meandered along the sand of the deserted beach gathering armfuls of driftwood. The wind was bitter against her face, whipping at the tendrils of hair that escaped her hood. Nevertheless, the chill felt somehow life-affirming, as did the proximity of Fitz, never moving far from her side.
They carried the driftwood back into the warmth and shelter of their home-for-now and Fitz settled her on the couch with a mug of tea. He busied himself building them a fire, kneeling on the stone hearth. Jemma watched him from the grey leather couch, her legs tucked underneath her, and thought of all the things she needed to tell him despite her lack of immediate means.
The kindling he had carefully laid beneath the snarls of dry white wood whooshed into flame. Jemma allowed herself to be mesmerised by the flickering blaze, the only thing on the entire horizon burning brighter than Fitz's blue gaze as he rocked back onto his haunches to admire his handiwork.
He got to his feet and padded past her in his socks, giving her shoulder a gentle squeeze before disappearing into the kitchen. When he returned he handed her a bowl of steaming rice pudding sprinkled with cinnamon and plonked himself down on the couch next to her.
Her look of surprised gratitude elicited a shrug from Fitz. "I woke up ridiculously early and I couldn't get back to sleep. I know you used to love it."
The long unaccustomed expression forming on her face felt like it must have been a smile.
Fitz's answering grin contained so much relief she wondered whether he might have thought he'd never see her smile again.
"We can live on rice pudding if you want," he laughed. "That's one recipe I have actually managed to master."
She gave a non-committal little shrug but worked harder to hold onto her smile.
The first mouthful of food that had been lovingly prepared for her, rather than just having water added, reawakened her palate. Her eyes fluttered closed and her head tilted back against the leather in a way that made Fitz laugh.
"I don't think you have ever been this easy to impress," he chuckled, but immediately heard the echo of the reason why in his words and the laughter fell away from his eyes.
Jemma wanted to tell him it was alright. She wanted to coax laughter out of him and stoke it up in him the way she'd watched him stoking the flames earlier. Perhaps then she'd be able to laugh along with him. Instead she could only reach for his knee, pressing her fingertips into the denim-clad dips between bone and cartilage.
His smile had turned sad but she already knew about sadness. That wasn't one of the things she needed to re-learn. Instead, she wanted him to teach her lightness and joy, tenderness and comfort, desperation and passion and release.
Patience, Jemma.
Love to hear what you think lovelies! I think this might be my first go of just trying to be serious and not silly at all. It's been really hard!
If you prefer silliness, I'm getting it out of my system in another post-Kree-rock work-in-progress entitled In Case Of Emergency, Break Glass.
Bring on September and a glorious FitzSimmons reunion! (fingers crossed)