—the weight of your bones
.
.
.
The dreams start before he's even fully woken up — when he's still confined to a hospital bed in an unfamiliar place, drifting in and out of the world and straddling the line between conscious and comatose; he dreams of a woman crying and wakes up confused, scared, and powerfully, horribly, overwhelmingly alone.
.
They tell him that someone tried to kill him.
"You nearly drowned," a severe-looking Asian woman tells him. "Your brain was without oxygen for several minutes."
But why? he tries to ask, but his tongue isn't working right and he can't form words.
"We've found you a physical therapist," she adds after a moment, as though apologizing for something.
.
The first thing he manages to say is —
"What happened?"
— although it comes out more like "wahaaaappen".
The physical therapist smiles and pats his shoulder and tells him that he almost drowned.
"How?"
"Someone tried to kill you," she replies, and he blinks sluggishly several times.
"Why?"
She doesn't answer.
.
"You almost drowned," an older man in a suit tells him.
"How?" he asks.
.
"You nearly drowned," a young brunette woman says, eyes filled with tears.
.
"You almost drowned."
"You nearly drowned."
"Your brain was without oxygen for several minutes."
"You almost drowned."
He wishes someone would explain to him what happened.
.
His first attempt at standing ends badly; he staggers against the bedside table and knocks over a vase filled with stale water and half-dead flowers, cutting his hand badly and jarring a bone that's unexpectedly tender. The physical therapist tuts and says he shouldn't try to do anything without help just yet, and he scowls at the bandage she's wrapping around his hand.
"What's wrong with me?" he growls, although it comes out somewhat slurred; he hasn't gotten his tongue completely under control just yet, and it feels thick and heavy in his mouth.
She opens her mouth to respond, closes it again, and then takes a deep breath.
"You know what happened to you, Leopold," she says, and he flinches at the name.
"Don't call me that," he snaps. "And no, I don't."
"Yes, you do," she counters. "You've just forgotten. It's all right," she adds, in a tone of false reassurance, "short-term memory loss is normal for this kind of thing, and it should pass as you continue to heal."
"What about the rest of it?"
"The rest of what?"
"Everything," he sighs helplessly, and she pats him on the arm like a child.
"It should pass," she repeats. "Your progress thus far has been very promising."
"Promising?" he cries, waving his injured hand. "I can't do anything!"
"You're awake, and you can speak," she says evenly. "And it appears that you can think well enough. Those are critical. Everything else can be fixed with time and effort."
"And my memory?"
She tilts her head, looking at him like she's afraid he's about to explode. "How much do you remember?"
He opens and closes his mouth several times, trying to drum something up from the depths, but it's exhausting. "I don't… I don't know," he mumbles.
"You know who you are," she prompts; he stares at her for a moment in despair, his own name slipping away from him as he tries to grasp it.
"I can't remember," he whimpers, and she takes a deep breath.
"Well, you knew that you don't want to be called Leopold," she says brightly, although it rings false. "That's certainly a promising start. It's only been a week and a half since you started regaining consciousness, you can't expect too much from yourself right now."
He sighs and sinks back into the hospital bed.
.
In his dream, a woman is crying — not loud or hard or sobbing or screaming, but constant, muffled cries that sound like they're coming from right in front of him — and he can't find her to help her. He needs to, everything in him needs to find the crying woman and help her, but every door he opens leads to another empty room or dark hallway, and her crying never gets softer or louder.
He calls her name, but when he wakes up he can't remember what it was.
.
They introduce him to a new doctor the next morning, a pretty woman with a brittle, forced smile and dark circles under her eyes, named Dr. Simmons.
"I'm a biochemist, really, not a medical doctor," she explains, standing uncomfortably at the foot of his bed and clutching the railing with white-knuckled hands. "But our resources are limited, unfortunately. Don't worry, though!" she adds, with a desperate brightness. "I've been doing a lot of research over the past few weeks, everything I can find on neurology and anoxic brain injuries. I think I can help you."
The last she says in a much smaller voice.
"Oh," he replies woodenly. "Pleased to meet you."
For some reason, this makes her flinch.
.
He doesn't like Dr. Simmons very much — she's too friendly, and something about her gives off the impression that she'll shatter at the smallest touch.
He says as much to the brunette girl who seems to visit him more than the others, and her face falls like he's said something personally wounding.
"She's having a hard time with this," the girl explains. "But helping you is all she cares about."
"Why is that?" he asks.
"Because you're her best friend," she replies, and he laughs out loud. "What's so funny?" she cries, with some reproach, but it fails to sober him up.
"I don't have friends," he answers, still laughing in near-hysteria.
She looks very sad when she mutters, "I'm your friend," but he doesn't believe her.
.
When he wakes up — sometime in the middle of the night, if he had to guess from the quiet — someone has left a magazine with a big picture of a brain on the cover on the bedside table.
He picks it up in mild interest, but finds it impossible to read — the words get jumbled up somewhere between his eyes and his brain, and his already-simmering frustration increases exponentially; he throws it against the far wall with more force than he'd thought possible.
The noise alerts someone outside his room, and the Asian woman — something with an M, he thinks, her name starts with an M — steps in, body tense like she's expecting a fight.
"Sorry," he mutters, and she raises an eyebrow before picking up the magazine.
"Something wrong?" she asks; he looks away.
"I can't read it."
For a moment, she doesn't respond; finally, she walks over and takes a seat on the chair beside him and reads out, "The New Century of the Brain: revolutionary tools will reveal how thoughts and emotions arise."
He listens to her read him the article, but a lot of the words don't make sense, and she can only define some of them for him — anything that sounds really technical is met with, "you'll have to ask Simmons about it" — so after the one article is finished, he thanks her and says that he's going to go back to sleep now.
"All right," she replies, and if she's disappointed, she doesn't show it. "I'll be outside if you need anything."
That brings him up short.
"Why?" he asks, and she glances back at him. "Why do I need a guard?"
She looks at him for another moment before finally responding, a bit lamely, "Anything could happen," and leaving before he can ask anything else.
.
He can feel the woman crying and taste her name on his lips, but she stays maddeningly out of sight.
He wakes up in a worse mood than ever before, to see Dr. Simmons and the brunette girl bursting in the door, both with hopeful looks on their faces that immediately fade when they see his.
"What?" he snarls, and the brunette girl takes a couple of steps toward him; Dr. Simmons's knuckles are white on the doorframe.
"You shouted…" she says hesitantly, and he rubs his face angrily.
"I was dreaming."
"But you shouted…" the girl repeats, as though the rest of the sentence is something huge and important and critical, and he cuts her off.
"It was a bloody nightmare, go away!"
The girl looks at Dr. Simmons, whose expression is carefully, delicately neutral, and apologizes, still glancing from him to the doctor and back, and he wonders what he was shouting, but doesn't want to admit that he doesn't know.
"Leave!" he snaps, and they both jump, and do.
.
"Do you know what happened to you?" the physical therapist asks, and he twists his fingers in the sheet compulsively, a bit childishly.
"I drowned."
"Almost," she corrects him. "You almost drowned."
"No," he mutters, thinking of the look on Dr. Simmons's face this morning — flawless and brittle like diamond — and the brunette girl (S-something, it's an S her name starts with) saying that she is his friend. "I drowned."
.
Dr. Simmons is there with the physical therapist when he finally walks again, for a given definition of 'walking' — he has to hold both of the therapist's hands for support and he only sort of staggers across the room — and her entire countenance lights up when he does.
"That was amazing, Fitz!" she cheers, and hugs him like they're old friends. He stiffens.
"It was just a couple of steps," he grumbles; she stands back, the light fading slowly out of her eyes.
"Well, yes," she concedes, hands still on his shoulders, "but it's still a wonderful sign."
"I can't even stand up on my own," he says, mulishly determined not to be happy about a couple of baby steps; a tiny, surly, mean part of him wants her to stop being so bloody happy for him, too — women like Dr. Simmons do not care about boys like him. They never have, and they never will, and he wishes she'd stop acting like she does.
"Leopold," the physical therapist says, smiling and taking one of his hands again, "I know it doesn't feel like much, but this really is a huge step in your recovery."
He looks down at their joined hands, and feels a little sick.
"You are getting better," Dr. Simmons says quietly, tentatively. "These things simply take time."
He doesn't look at her.
.
"I don't like this," the Asian woman grumbles; the older man in a suit he's only seen once or twice before pushes him in a wheelchair down a sparse hallway (that doesn't look much like a hospital, come to think of it). "It won't accomplish anything."
"Fitz deserves this," the man replies, and the woman scoffs.
"He doesn't even remember," she snaps. "You just want to make Ward feel guilty."
"Guilt is a powerful motivator."
He doesn't even bother asking who the hell they're talking about.
(He kind of wishes Dr. Simmons were here — her forced enthusiasm is grating, but at least she talks to him, instead of around him.)
The wheel him into a room — an interrogation room, he thinks, like something out of Law and Order — where a beast of a man is sitting, handcuffed, at a table. Their eyes meet, and a flicker of what might be horror flashes over the man's face.
"Fitz?"
He doesn't reply.
"Fitz," the suit-wearing man explains, patting him on the shoulder. "This is Grant Ward. He tried to kill you."
"Oh," he says lamely; he doesn't feel anything toward the man in handcuffs — no anger or injustice or sadness or betrayal — because he doesn't recognize him at all.
"What's the point of this?" Ward rasps, and the Asian woman takes the empty seat next to his wheelchair.
"Just letting you know he survived," she replies. The man scoffs.
"Are you trying to guilt-trip me into talking?"
"About what?" Fitz asks, and Ward looks at him in confusion, then unamusement. "Talk about what?"
"Don't even start," Ward sneers. "I know this game. You're faking it."
"He's not faking it," the other man says. "Or do you want me to bring Simmons in here, too? You know she couldn't lie about this kind of thing."
The Asian woman glares hard at the other man, as if to say don't you fucking dare, and he wonders if they've discussed this before.
"Come on, Fitz," Ward sighs, and he clenches his jaw.
"I don't know who the bloody hell any of you people are!" he cries. "I just went along with this to get out of that stupid bed for once. I didn't sign on to be your… your torture device, or something."
"You're not angry at him?" the woman asks, and he lets out a frustrated growl.
"No, I'm not!" he shouts. "I don't care about him, I don't even know him!"
"He tried to kill you," the suit-wearing man says.
"How do I know you're telling the truth?"
For a moment after that, no one talks; finally, after what seems like hours of Ward staring at him like he's trying to read his bones and the woman scowling at the older man, he pushes himself away from the table.
"I want to go back to bed," he articulates, even though that's almost the opposite of true. The woman stands and wheels him back out of the room without another word.
"I'm sorry," she says woodenly. "I told him it wouldn't accomplish anything."
.
"I'm Trip," the new guy (is he new? He isn't sure he hasn't seen him before) tells him, offering out a plate of noodles and beef and peppers. "Sorry I haven't been around much, but it's been kinda crazy around here, and… well," he shrugs apologetically, sounding almost rehearsed, "I imagine you're sick of the well-wishers."
He laughs a little, and winces. "Yeah, it gets old."
"Yeah, I got pneumonia once, and all these people suddenly crawled out of the woodwork to say how sorry they felt for me," he says, shaking his head. "I didn't even know who half of them were, they'd just known my granddad and felt like they had to, it was awkward as hell. Anyway," he adds, sitting in the chair by the bed and indicating to the plate, "I've been craving Chinese, but we can't exactly go on a run to Panda, you know?" Fitz doesn't know, but Trip goes on before he can decide whether or not to ask. "So I got a wok and made some lo mein myself. I think it came out all right."
"And you're offering it to me?" he asks, spinning a fork in the noodles and taking a bite. It's actually pretty good.
Trip shrugs. "I've seen what they feed you," he says, smirking. "Mashed potatoes and overcooked roast, dinner of champions. I figured you could use something different."
"Thanks," he replies quietly, and Trip smiles.
.
Maybe it's because of still-not-really-explained trip to see the man they claim tried to kill him, maybe it's because he still can't walk unaided, or maybe it's the frustration that's been simmering under his skin since he woke up, but when Dr. Simmons wheels him into a room with a big, horrible-looking machine in the center of it and starts explaining that she wants to monitor his brain while he sleeps, he lashes out.
"Would you stop being so bloody cheerful all the damn time?" he snaps, and immediately feels bad — the look on her face makes him feel like he just kicked a puppy. "I'm sorry," he mutters, scowling at the floor, "but it's not like you're fooling anyone."
She stares at him for a long moment before turning compulsively back to the machine and picking at it without any apparent purpose. "I'm not trying to fool anyone," she admits finally, in a very low tone, like this is something she hoped she'd never have to say. "But I can't… I have to do something," she exclaims, a wavering note to her voice. "I can't fix anything by being sad."
"You don't fix anything by faking happy all the time either."
"If it's a choice between faking happy and saving you," she says deliberately, staring hard and unblinking at the machine, "or crying myself to sleep and accomplishing nothing, I'll fake it until the day I die."
He stares at her for a moment, acutely aware of saving you and that girl — Skye, that's her name — telling him that he is Dr. Simmons's best friend.
He hasn't even entertained the possibility that Skye was telling the truth, but watching Dr. Simmons now…
"Why do you care?" he asks quietly, and she finally looks back at him.
"You'll remember," she replies. "I'm confident. And this — " she goes on, louder, with a flourish as she presents the machine to him " — is going to help us. It's an open MRI, do… you remember what those do?"
"Magnetic resonance imaging," he answers without thinking, but he doesn't know how he knows those words. Dr. Simmons's smile is luminous and, for the first time since he took those first steps, looks genuine.
"That's right, Fitz!" she cheers, and he fights not to smile.
She just looks so happy at this tiny victory.
"I don't know where that came from," he mumbles, but she only shrugs.
"It supports my hypothesis," she says, matter-of-fact, gesticulating wildly and — somewhat neurotically — untangling already-organized wires. "Total amnesia is rare with anoxic brain injuries, generally it's short-term memory loss, some trouble making new memories… we saw that a couple of weeks ago, but the brain is remarkably adaptable, and I suspect you're already making new neuronal connections… well, obviously, you are, you're beginning to remember our names now, and what…" she trails off for a moment before coming back around to — "My point is, I believe that the amnesia is more psychological than physiological. You blacked it all out, a sort of — of coping mechanism."
"And this… helps?"
"It does!" she nods firmly. "Because if it was true amnesia caused by physical damage, you wouldn't have any memory of anything you'd learned before whatever cut-off point you've formed — not even reflex recall like 'magnetic resonance imaging.' It would all be gone. But these tiny things escape when you're not paying attention to them, that suggests that the root is psychological, at least in part."
He gestures to the machine. "And this thing?"
She opens and closes her mouth several times, clearly trying to form a white lie. "I think you access memories in your dreams," she answers finally. "Or… nightmares, rather. The psychological block isn't there and you relive certain memories. You said you've been having nightmares, right?"
"I don't ever remember them," he winces, and she nods.
"Psychological source," she repeats, a confirmation. "This will allow me to monitor your brain waves while you sleep, to see what parts 'light up' during the REM cycles. If it's parts of the brain associated with memory, that would confirm that they aren't damaged, and you can regain your memories."
"And if they are damaged?" he asks quietly, and she blinks.
"Well," she flounders, the animation falling away from her face like when he snapped at her earlier, a wounded sort of loss, "that… would mean that there would be little to no chance of regaining your memories. But I don't think they're damaged."
An awkward silence falls after that; finally, he lands on a different topic of conversation.
"Where'd you get this?"
She winces. "Well… We couldn't possibly get access to a machine in an actual clinical setting, so Agent Triplett and I had to sort of… make our own. It's not as powerful as one you'd find in a hospital, but it should work."
He blinks several times in quick succession. "You… made an MRI machine?"
"The concept isn't necessarily as difficult as you would expect," she replies, as though that's comforting. "It's mostly just getting the magnet that's the hard part. In hospitals, they use superconductors, but I haven't got the resources to put one of those together — "
"Wait," he says sharply, holding out a hand, "what do you mean 'in hospitals'? Am I not in a hospital?"
Dr. Simmons looks like a deer caught in headlights.
"Well…" she starts, wincing. "Um… strictly speaking… no," she sighs. "It's complicated."
"Complicated," he repeats blankly, and then, with rising panic — "I think I should be in a hospital, you know," he says, clutching the armrests of the wheelchair. "I'd like to be speaking to experts, thanks."
"It isn't safe, Fitz," she says, like it's an apology. "Technically speaking, you don't exist… not legally, at any rate. Taking you to a hospital would draw a lot of attention from the wrong sort of people. Right now, they think you're dead, and the longer we can keep it that way, the better."
"Who is 'they'?" he snaps, and she takes a deep breath.
"The people who tried to kill you."
"I thought it was one person," he replies, snapping his fingers in an effort to remember his name, "that beast-man they were talking to, they told me he tried to kill me."
"He did," Dr. Simmons says quietly. "But he was working for a group of others, very powerful people."
"Why?" he exclaims, and she jumps at the volume. "Why do people want me dead?"
"They don't want you dead, Fitz," she says, and he's about to lunge at her and shake her by the shoulders because none of this makes any sense, but she goes on: "They want you to work for them. To create weapons and horrible technology that will kill and control people, that's what they want."
"And they tried to kill me for refusing?"
Dr. Simmons nods, but he can't wrap his head around it — this sort of thing… that happens in movies! In books, or TV shows, not reality. In real life, there aren't any shady groups of powerful people that kill you for not cooperating, except maybe the mafia.
"What, were they the mafia or something?"
She winces and replies, somewhat enigmatically, "Not exactly," before turning back to the machine. "I know it'll be difficult to fall asleep," she says, as though they've been discussing the procedure, and helps him up onto the platform, "but I need you to try. I won't turn it on until you enter an REM cycle, and by then, you should be so deep asleep that you don't even know about it. No worries," she adds, with a smile.
He opens his mouth to demand more details, but she's already stepping out.
.
It's Trip, of all people, who is there when he wakes up, and tells him that the results were pretty inconclusive — "Maybe," he says tentatively, "our machine just wasn't good enough. I'm not as good as this as you are."
"Or," he replies, "Dr. Simmons's hypothesis was wrong."
Trip's mouth forms a thin line. "I don't think the results are strong enough to say that," he says. "And anyway, you never base a diagnosis on a single test result and nothing else."
"You think she's right?"
"I know she's right," he replies simply.
"Why?"
He takes a deep breath, watching Fitz critically for a moment before finally: "What's Dr. Simmons's first name?"
"Huh?"
"Her first name," he repeats, crossing his arms. Fitz shrugs.
"I don't know, no one's ever told me."
"Yes, you do," Trip says quietly, opening the door and walking out. "You say it in your sleep."
.
"What's Dr. Simmons's first name?" he asks Skye, who seems to have taken it upon herself to re-teach Fitz how to read (a daunting task, since he still struggles to focus on the letters, and at any rate, it's horribly embarrassing to be a full-grown man getting reading lessons from a pretty, if well-meaning, girl). Skye winces.
"I'm not supposed to tell you," she admits, looking away and thumbing through the pages until she lands on something she thinks he might be able to read. "Here, try thi — "
"Why can't you tell me?" he snaps. "I've gotten everyone else's names, what's so special about hers?"
"Simmons would have to explain it to you," she cringes. "I'm not really good at all the… brain-stuff, she's done all the research. I think she wants you to remember it on your own."
"Well, it doesn't look like that's gonna happen," he says, crossing his arms. "So can you just tell me?"
Skye's face crumbles. "Don't give up!" she pleads, and finally tosses the book aside, leaning forward in earnest. "If there's anything I know about you, Fitz, it's that you never just give up." She rolls her eyes on the last two words, spitting them out like they're covered in poison.
He sighs and glances away. "Trip said that I say her name in my sleep," he mutters, and when he looks up, Skye is staring at him like she doesn't really know what to say.
"You do," she admits. "Shout it, more like. I think… we all think," she corrects herself, "that you dream about… it."
"It?" he asks. "You mean when I almost drowned? Dr. Simmons was there?"
Skye opens her mouth and then closes it again, standing hastily. "I've probably said too much," she says fervently. "I don't want to mess anything up with your recovery," she adds, as an apology before she leaves.
.
When Dr. Simmons comes back, it's with a plan she's researched and outlined, a method to work with his memory and rehabilitation, but he isn't interested in hearing her explain it.
"What's your name?" he asks, cutting her off, and she flounders for a moment, a little lost.
"I'm Dr. Simmons, Fitz, you know that," she replies, and he shakes his head.
"Your first name," he says. "No one will tell me."
"Oh," is all she says for a moment, before looking back at her notes and biting her lip. "You know my name, Fitz," she says in a low voice, glancing up at him without tilting her head. "You need to remember it."
"It doesn't look like I'm getting my memories back — " he starts, but she's shaking her head.
"I refuse to accept that," she says, and the words sound like they're carved out of stone, solid and immovable.
"But you can't jog it at all?"
She shakes her head again. "The memory is notoriously susceptible to suggestion," she explains, shifting back into 'teacher' mode; he's starting to understand that this — the research and the science and the details — this is how she copes with fear, by picking it apart until she understands all the fragments. "There have been numerous studies showing that people can plant memories in your head just by photoshopping you into a picture and telling you that you were actually there! People have made up whole stories, complete with intricate details, about what happened to them in these pictures that weren't even real. And they were completely certain that they remembered taking them. No," she says firmly, "the memory is too fickle for 'jogging' like that. There are other methods of encouraging memory reformation, though," she adds, indicating to her notes.
"What makes you think there's any point to this?" he grumbles. "Your MRI said I'm not getting my memories back."
"The MRI's results were inconclusive," she counters, very deliberately and delicately. "I still believe that the root of the amnesia is psychological, and that you can overcome it with effort and time."
He sighs and clenches his jaw, demanding to know, "Why?"
Dr. Simmons blinks. "I believe in you, Fitz," she says quietly, and he meets her eyes. "I always have, and I always will."
For a long moment, neither of them speak, but he can't tear his eyes away from her.
"You're one of the most remarkable people I have ever known," she adds, still in that very soft voice, and finally looks away from him. "No head injury could possibly change that."
But why? he wants to ask — why do you think so highly of me?
But he knows she won't answer him, not really. She'll tell him something like 'because it's the truth' or 'because you've earned it' and neither of those answers would mean anything to him.
All of a sudden, he needs her to go away, to stop — he knows that she isn't lying, but he can't believe her because what she's saying is so — so — impossible, from the 'not-mafia people want you dead' to the 'most remarkable person' — this doesn't happen to people like him, and he needs —
He needs her to leave.
"Well, it did," he snarls, startling her with its venom. "I don't know who this 'remarkable Leopold Fitz' person you knew was, but he's dead now, and he's not coming back. You're just deluding yourself at this point."
Each word makes him feel more nauseous than the one before it.
Dr. Simmons watches him for a moment that seems to stretch on for an hour, before swallowing hard and setting the little file down on the bedside table.
"For whenever you're ready," she whispers, and leaves.
.
He throws it at the door instead.
It's not like he could read it anyway.
.
It's May — who he's starting to think of as some kind of perpetually-unimpressed guardian angel — who comes in several hours later, pausing at the door and looking dispassionately over the scattered papers, and then up to Fitz, sitting on the bed in abject misery.
"You should try to be nicer to Simmons," she says, stooping to pick up the pages.
"I know," he mutters, feeling like a child being reprimanded.
"What I don't understand," she continues, as though he said nothing, "is why you're so particularly nasty to her but not the rest of us."
He opens and closes his mouth several times, trying to find an answer that fits; the truth is, something about her sets him on edge, deep, deep down in his gut, or hind-brain — something about Dr. Simmons scares him on a fundamental level, but he can't put his finger on what, or why, or how.
"I'm not particularly nasty to her," he says, and May snorts, so he winces. "I mean, I was nasty to her earlier, yes, but I'm usually perfectly nice."
"That wasn't an answer."
"I don't try to be rude to her — "
"That's not an answer, either."
By now, she's put the file back together, but she doesn't hand it back to him, instead holding it in front of her, hands folded over it calmly, like a soldier at a debriefing.
"I don't know," he mutters finally. "She just… irritates me."
"Why?"
He growls under his breath. "She's so bloody optimistic, it gets old."
"She has faith in you."
"It's misplaced!"
His voice cracks on the last syllable and gives him away; he turns to stare at the wall instead of the woman's placid face.
May watches him for a while, until he starts to feel even more horribly uncomfortable, before she replies, "So you push her away because you're afraid to prove her wrong," as a statement of fact. Before he can protest, she nods and replaces the file on the bedside table. "The only way you'll prove Dr. Simmons wrong," she goes on softly, "is by giving up. And if you give up…" she trails off, tilting her head, and then shaking it several times in apparent disapproval, "then Leo Fitz really is dead. And if that's the case, then who are you?"
She doesn't wait for him to answer.
.
And if that's the case, then who are you?
Then who are you?
Who are you?
He has to get the hell out of this goddamn room before he goes completely mad.
Walking is still a bit of a crapshoot, but they have one of those rolling tables that are ubiquitous in hospital rooms — although this isn't a hospital, what the hell, he still doesn't know what to make of that — and he uses it as a sort of crutch to limp his way to the door.
To his relief, no one is on the other side.
He eases the door open and staggers through it, leaning heavily against the wall and closing the door behind him as quietly as he can. He is just going for a short walk, he tells himself. Just a change of scenery, just a distraction.
But it's quiet in the halls, probably night-time, and the harsh fluorescent lights on the stone and tile somehow serve to light the space up in the worst way possible; it all feels artificial, and vaguely toxic, and horribly, horribly empty.
He sort of wishes he'd stayed in his room.
He makes it all the way to the end of the eerily-empty hall, using the wall for support and walking like a drunk ostrich with a bad ankle, and is about to turn around, when he hears the crying.
It's very soft and very close, and it takes him a moment to notice the barely-cracked-open door just around the corner; when he pushes it a little, it silently opens a few inches, to reveal someone sitting on the floor of what appears to be a stock room, knees drawn up to their chest and head buried in their arms, shoulders shaking.
It's Dr. Simmons.
Distantly, he thinks that he should walk in and comfort her, but then he remembers that he is the problem, isn't he? This is his fault. He doesn't remember her, he snapped at her, he rejected her faith and kindness, he hurt her.
He can't help her; he's the reason she's crying.
Skye told him that he is Dr. Simmons's best friend, except he's not anymore because he doesn't even know Dr. Simmons's first name.
She takes a deep, shuddering breath and, without looking up, reaches out and touches something on the floor in front of her.
"Oi!" his voice says, "no cameras allowed in my lab!"
"Oh, hush," Simmons-on-the-recording replies. "It's not science unless it's been recorded, you know that."
"That's what pens and paper were invented for," his voice counters, but it sounds more teasing than exasperated, and (in his opinion) contains entirely too much affection.
"And it's our lab, Fitz," Simmons says, sounding a little annoyed, like she had to remind him of this all the time.
The recording goes on, the two of them bickering lightly and explaining to the camera what they're working on (robots of some kind, he hears his voice saying that there will be eight of them total, and he's working on Grumpy right now), and for a long time, Fitz sits quietly in the hall, listening to Dr. Simmons listen to the video.
Occasionally, she'll choke back a sob.
Eventually, the recording runs out and she sits in silence in the room for maybe a full minute or two, before touching the device again.
"Oi!" his voice says, "no cameras allowed in my lab!"
.
That night, he dreams that Dr. Simmons commits suicide; he sees her face, tear-stained and miserable, as she falls from a great height, and he's screaming when he wakes up.
.
"What is this place?" he asks the suit-wearing man, Coulson — the only person who's been to see him today, he thinks that probably everyone else is mad at him for being so mean to Dr. Simmons — and his mouth forms a thin line.
"These are our new headquarters," he replies enigmatically. "That'll make sense when you get your memories back."
He clenches his jaw. "I'm not getting — " he starts, but the other man cuts him off.
"As long as you continue to believe that, you won't," he interjects, before going on, very matter-of-fact: "Simmons is right, you know," he says. "It's psychological. You don't want to remember. Honestly," he adds, "I don't blame you. There's a lot of trauma there, and forgetting it all has its perks. But you can't keep this up."
"I'm trying — "
"No, you're not," he says severely, and the chill in his tone is startling. "And we do not have the resources to maintain this level of hand-holding. I'm giving you an ultimatum," he goes on, crossing his arms. "One week. Get your memories back, or I'm calling your mother and handing you over to her custody. I brought you on to do a job, and if you can't do that job, we'll have to let you go."
Fitz blinks several times in quick succession, trying to wrap his head around this new development.
It's an out, he realizes dimly — he can escape this not-a-hospital place and these people who act like they know him and whoever tried to kill him. He can go home.
"I'll leave you to think about it," Coulson says, and turns on his heel, and leaves.
.
It rattles around in his head all night — from May asking him who he is to Skye telling him that she's his friend to Trip giving him lo mein to Dr. Simmons committing suicide in his dreams to Coulson demanding that he get his memories back or else — and he can't even close his eyes, let alone entertain sleep.
He can get out of this mess.
He tries to picture it: going home, being nursed back to health by his mother, the only family he's ever known. Maybe going back to university, or getting a job flipping burgers somewhere. Accepting that there's a big, several-years-wide gap in his past that will never get filled. Finding a girl who doesn't mind. Settling down, getting married, having two-point-five kids and a home in the suburbs.
Never, ever, ever finding out the truth.
All he has to do is nothing.
All he has to do is fail.
He thinks of the affection in his voice on Dr. Simmons's recording, the light teasing, the camaraderie — it sounded like some entirely different person, someone he never thought he would be, but apparently was.
He thinks of her saying that she believes in him, that he is the most remarkable person she's ever known, that he knows her name.
He pictures the look on her face when his mother comes to get him, the disappointment that will be there, the devastation, the loss.
Helping you is all she cares about, that's what Skye said.
The only way you'll prove Dr. Simmons wrong is by giving up, May told him.
Or do you want me to bring Simmons in here, too? Coulson asked that man, Ward, the killer, trying to guilt him into talking.
He feels like his head is going to explode, an itching agitation thrumming under his skin that makes him want to run out into the open and scream and scream and scream until his throat closes up on itself and he can't make another sound.
He wants to go home.
He has the sneaking suspicion that his mother's house wouldn't be home.
Jaw clenched, he forces himself to his feet and limps to the door.
.
He finds the airplane by accident; one too many left turns lands him in an otherwise-empty hangar, only the lonely, slightly-beaten-up-looking plane sitting out-of-place in the concrete room, its belly open and inviting.
And a good fifteen meters away from any wall or other kind of support.
Fitz hesitates.
He should turn around; he's been out of his room for a while now, and he's not sure how to get back, and anyway, there's nothing to hold onto between him and the plane — if he wants to explore it, he'll have to either magically re-master walking or crawl.
He should go back.
His jaw aches from the tension; he makes up his mind to see what's on the random plane in the middle of the creepy 'new headquarters' if it's the last goddamn thing he does, and so he walks.
For a couple of paces, anyway.
As it turns out, determination alone doesn't re-form neurons that have been badly damaged, and he only makes it about a meter before he stumbles and collapses, landing hard on his hip and wincing in pain.
He should go back, or at least commit to crawling.
And if you give up, Leo Fitz really is dead.
He blinks hard and stands up and tries again, and, after only a couple more steps, falls again.
And if that's the case, then who are you?
His chest hurts like he's about to cry, and the desire to scream bloody murder has only gotten worse; he clenches his jaw harder, biting his tongue until he tastes blood, and stands up again.
And walks, and falls, and stands up, and walks, and falls, and stands up, and walks, and falls.
But eventually, after entirely too long and with entirely too many new bruises decorating his legs and arms, eventually, he makes it to the plane.
It's dark, and looks mostly abandoned — there's a big open space right in front of him when he gets up the ramp, that looks like a window frame, like there should be glass there; beyond it is a gutted lab.
All that's left in it is a few machines and an empty cage with old wood chips in the bottom, as if for a hamster or a mouse; a closer glance reveals that the cage isn't empty after all: the mouse is just asleep, curled up in a corner under a hollow plastic rock.
He inspects the cage, confused and uncertain and overwhelmed by the magnitude of empty space in his memories and underwhelmed by the empty plane, like there should be so much more here, and he's uncomfortable and aching in every joint and weak and tired and confused.
Why is there a mouse in an empty lab?
"Why did I know I'd find you here?" a voice behind him says, and he whirls around, startled, losing his footing; Trip lunges forward and catches him before he can hit the ground again. "Sorry! I didn't mean to scare you."
"It's fine," he mutters self-consciously. "You were looking for me?"
"Yeah," Trip says, like it's obvious. "I went to check on you and your room was empty. You shouldn't be wandering around."
"I couldn't sleep," he replies, and glances back to the cage — the noise hasn't seemed to have an effect on the animal. "What's the mouse doing here?"
Trip pauses and looks at the cage with a weird sort of sympathy. "This is the only home it's ever known," he answers. "Simmons tried to take it out, to the new lab, but it didn't take the move well, got really anxious and lost a lot of weight, so she brought it back."
"I didn't know mice were that… delicate," he muses, and Trip shrugs.
"No two mice are exactly the same," he says. "This one's just more sensitive than most of them."
"Poor thing must get lonely."
"Simmons spends a lot of time here," Trip replies enigmatically.
"Doing what?" he asks, brow furrowing in confusion, but Trip doesn't look back at him, instead watching the sleeping mouse. "There's no equipment, there's nothing to do here."
"This is her safe place, I guess," he says quietly, and now that he's looking for it, he can see a few little signs of life — a couple of textbooks neatly stacked in one corner, a folded blanket in a chair beside the mouse cage.
He can almost see her, curled up under that blanket in that chair, reading — researching a solution, he thinks traitorously, trying to save her best friend — in the middle of the night, blinking away sleep or tears or boredom, alone.
And it's our lab, Fitz.
And that mouse, he thinks, there's something about that mouse that's tickling his brain…
He turns, curious, so that he's facing back the way he came, out to the cargo bay with its open door, and remembers his dream, of Dr. Simmons committing suicide.
They tell him that he accesses his memories in his dreams.
There's no sign that there used to be glass between him and the cargo bay, but he's absolutely positive that it was there anyway; he remembers bits and pieces of the dream, pounding on a glass wall and pulling at a glass door and screaming a name as Dr. Simmons fell out of the open cargo bay door.
And there's something about that mouse…
It can't be a memory, unless this has been the afterlife the whole time, but he doesn't believe in the afterlife, but how is Dr. Simmons alive if she jumped out of a plane without a parachute?
Maybe they were on the ground, he thinks, but that's wrong too — he remembers the wind whipping her hair all around her and echoes of the panic he felt still linger when he thinks of the dream, or the memory, or the nightmare, or the — whatever it is.
Whatever it is, they weren't safe on the ground.
And there's something about the damn mouse, if he could just put his finger on it —
"Stop trying to force it," Trip says, abruptly shattering the moment and wrenching him uncomfortably back to the present, blinking in the low light.
"What?"
"Your memory," he clarifies, and Fitz is about to tell him that he has no other choice, that Coulson will send him back to his mother if he doesn't, but he goes on before he can: "It's like trying to figure out the answer to a test question," he says. "If you don't know it, skip it and move on and come back to it later. You're just frustrating yourself and making another mental block. Don't force it."
He blinks several times. "How did you know I was trying to remember something?"
"You're staring blankly at the cargo bay," Trip drawls, raising an eyebrow. "I don't think you're admiring the decor."
He sighs. "I had a dream about this place," he admits. "I think."
"What was it about?"
He rolls it around in his mouth for a moment before responding, fully aware of how creepy it'll sound: "Dr. Simmons killing herself," he says quietly. "Jumping out that door."
Trip doesn't respond, just takes him by the arm. "Come on, Fitz," he says, "let's get you back to bed."
"I know it sounds crazy," he starts, but Trip shakes his head.
"It's not crazy," he says, but it doesn't sound like he believes it.
.
The mouse died too, he thinks.
But the mouse is still alive.
But the mouse died, in his dream he's staring at a dead mouse and feeling the pit of his stomach dropping ten kilometers and then Dr. Simmons is crying and falling and the mouse is dead but the mouse is not dead.
— Leo Fitz really is dead, and if that's the case —
Dr. Simmons died but she didn't die and the mouse died but it didn't die and Fitz died but he didn't die and —
It's all a tangled mess in his head.
— then who are you?
Her name is still on his lips when he wakes up.
It starts with a J.
.
It's not so much that he believes he can walk again, so much as he knows he can get back up when he inevitably falls; he gets out of bed and takes Dr. Simmons's file and goes looking for help.
He finds it in Skye, only one hall down, with a platter in her hands like she was coming to bring him breakfast.
It's awfully nice of her, he thinks distantly.
"Fitz!" she cries, hastily shifting the platter to one hand and rushing to take his arm with her other. "What are you doing out here?"
"I need to read this," he says firmly, holding up the file. "I need to remember."
Skye stares at him for a moment, wide-eyed and searching and uncertain, before breaking out into a huge smile.
"Okay," she replies, and guides him back into his room. "Let's get started."
.
It does not come easy.
Dr. Simmons's file is filled with notes about his condition and what each symptom means, and she devotes several paragraphs to "functionally speaking, you have developed severe dyslexia" and a long-winded lecture that she must have found from some psychology book or site, how to teach dyslexic children to read.
It's embarrassing, but he gets it — there probably isn't a whole lot of information on teaching an adult with acute brain damage how to read again, so she found the next best thing — and Skye does her best to make it sound as grown-up and non-condescending as possible.
That doesn't change the fact that she's using books that belong in a grammar school's library to do it, but he understands: they need to start somewhere, and that means going back to the very basics.
He just feels stupid, even though Skye tries very hard to make sure he doesn't.
"You're not stupid," she says fervently. "You were badly injured, and you're recovering, that's all."
He tamps down on the simmering anger, thinking of Coulson's ultimatum and Trip telling him that he's just making another mental block by getting frustrated, and forces himself to nod.
"I know," he grits, and she glances away, cringing a little.
"Maybe we should take a break…" she muses, and he sighs.
"I need to do this," he grumbles. "I don't have time for breaks."
"Why not?"
He sighs, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "Coulson said he'd call my mother and send me home to her if I don't have my memories back by the end of the week," he replies, and Skye blinks.
"He said what?" she cries, furious, but then comes over a little queer, as though realizing something important. "Oh…"
"Oh?"
She shakes her head. "You're right," she says firmly. "We need to get on this."
.
The file explains that reading to coma patients is important, that it can sometimes help them retain language, that people in comas can sometimes hear people talking to them.
"Do you remember hearing any of us talking to you?" Skye asks, a little tentatively, and he shakes his head.
"No, I don't remember anything from before I woke up," he replies, sighing. "I don't even remember a lot from after I woke up, either."
"Simmons says that's normal," Skye says, indicating to the file. "So does Dr. Pierce. But it's getting better, right?"
"It is," he answers, and hopes it isn't a lie.
.
"Agent Triplett tells me that you've taken to wandering around the complex," the physical therapist says, a bit severely, but instead of being admonished, all Fitz feels is vaguely betrayed by Trip telling his doctor that he's been breaking the rules.
"I'm sick of sitting in this room," he grumbles, and she sighs, primly crossing one leg over the other.
"I know," Dr. Pierce replies, "but you run the risk of doing yourself serious injury going out alone like that."
He decides not to tell her about the bruises. After a moment, she sighs again.
"How well did you manage walking?" she asks, and he shrugs.
"I had to hold onto something," he admits. "But I got around all right."
"Hmm," she says, tapping her chin. "Maybe we could get you a cane, at least for the short term. Training wheels, of a sort."
He's torn between the petulant canes are for little old ladies who can't cross the street alone, and the pragmatic a cane would be a huge help. He settles for a non-committal shrug. "Whatever you think would be best."
She peers at him intently for a long time, until he starts to feel uncomfortable, before saying, "If I don't give you a cane, will you promise to take it slow and stay still until you're more sure of your footing?"
He doesn't have any answer but the truth.
"No."
Dr. Pierce blinks.
"A cane it is, then."
.
It really is a huge help, even if it makes him feel a bit like a crotchety old man, hobbling about on a damn cane. At least it isn't a walker.
Deep into the night, his feet guide him back to the hangar, somewhere between muscle memory and a sort of magnetism, the plane sticking out in his mind like a big, bright spot on a dull map screaming you should be here.
The mouse is awake this time, and skittering around its cage a little bit; there's still some food left in its bowl, but only a few pellets, and he takes it upon himself to find the mouse food and feed the mouse and study the mouse and maybe remember what the hell this mouse has to do with anything.
He finds the little, neatly-bagged box of food in the first cabinet he opens, and he's just finished filling up the bowl when he hears motion on the other side of the room.
"Oh!" Dr. Simmons gasps, blinking several times in quick succession and freezing in place. "How did — "
"Oh, I…" he starts, and then trails off, wincing. "I couldn't sleep."
"How'd you find the Bus?" she asks, and when he stares at her in blank confusion, she shakes herself self-consciously. "The plane, I mean. We call it the Bus, one of our little… quirks." She tries to smile, but it doesn't reach her eyes.
The shadow of their last encounter hangs heavy over them, his guilt and her uncertainty, like maybe he'll blow up at her again.
It makes him a little nauseous, and a lot ashamed.
He tries to tell her that he just wandered around until he ended up at the hangar yesterday, that he was curious about the mouse, that he feels like something important happened here, that he's dreamed about this place, that he feels like there's nowhere else he's supposed to be, but what comes out instead is a very hasty and awkward —
"I'm sorry."
"I'm… sorry?" she repeats, confused, and he rubs the back of his neck.
"For yelling at you," he mumbles, looking away. "It was uncalled-for, you didn't deserve it."
"Oh," she says, a bit lamely, and then shrugs, that brittle smile returning to her face. "Don't worry about it. I understand, this has been enormously frustrating for you… I'm not angry," she adds softly, and instead of being reassuring, it just makes him feel about two millimeters tall.
"You should be," he counters, sighing. "It was mean."
"It's all right," she replies. "Water under the bridge."
He looks up at her and meets her eyes and there's a softness in her face, and a sort of melancholy exhaustion that tugs at his gut and twists him up in knots and she really is so much more extraordinary than she seems to think she is.
He glances away, jaw clenching and un-clenching, before he finally blurts out — "It starts with a J, doesn't it?" She freezes up again, searching and uncertain like Skye was earlier today, so he goes on, unable to stop himself from babbling, gesticulating animatedly. "Or a G, something with a 'juh' sound. It's not Jenny, I don't think that's right, but I keep coming back to that…"
"It's not Jenny," she says, and her knuckles are white on the counter. "But that's close. You're nearly there."
"Jenny," he muses, biting his tongue and sounding out the words, throwing verbal darts and hoping one lands, "Jennifer, Jenna, Jen, Gina, J — Gelada — no — "
Dr. Simmons bursts out laughing, genuine, doubled-over-and-tearing-up peals of laughter,and before he can remember why he doesn't like being happy with her, he starts laughing too.
"I'm sorry!" he chortles. "I'm just saying anything that pops into my head."
"Gelada?" she asks incredulously, still laughing. "I'm afraid I'm not a baboon, no."
He rubs the back of his neck again, glancing up at her in somewhat-sheepish amusement. "It'll come back to me," he mutters, part apology and part promise, and she smiles.
"Yes," she says, tears in her eyes. "It will."
.
He spends a long time in the gutted lab with Dr. Simmons, while she uses one of her textbooks to teach him to read; he feels a little bad about it, because Skye has been so eager and determined and friendly, but Dr. Simmons is better at it.
Or maybe he's just responding to the subject matter better — Skye's been using children's books, but Dr. Simmons uses her books on neurology and magazines with names like Scientific American and Popular Science, and he's just more interested in what she's showing him, just wants to read these words more than he wants to read Skye's.
(He notices, but doesn't point out, that one of her magazines is the one that he found on his bedside table, with the brain on it.)
(He imagines her sitting in the chair next to his bed, reading to him while he was in a coma, hooked up to wires and tubes and little beeping machines and all of a sudden, he wonders if the dreams of a woman crying were really dreams after all.)
After several hours, Dr. Simmons takes him back to his room, only glancing sideways at the cane once — "You should see the bruises I got when I tried to go without one," he insists when she does, oddly defensive, not wanting Dr. Simmons to think him weak.
"I'm just glad you're walking again," she replies softy.
She looks so tired, he thinks, after she leaves him back in his not-a-hospital room, like she's been bleeding herself dry for a very long time.
It's her, really, it comes back to her — he owes it to her to remember. Not to Coulson, or Trip, or May, or Dr. Pierce, or Skye, or maybe even himself — but to J—
To J—
J—
He screams into his pillow until his throat hurts.
.
He's in a dark room, cold, with heavy air, and he is absolutely certain that he is going to die.
But it's all right.
It's all right because Dr. Simmons is standing in front of him and looking at him like the Earth just vanished from under her feet and it's all right because he is going to die but she is going to live.
It's all right.
He smiles, she screams, and he wakes up gasping for air.
It's a memory, he's positive of it, and he runs over it again in his head, trying to cement every detail and pick it all apart before he wakes up completely, but it falls through his fingers like sand so that all he can remember clearly is Dr. Simmons screaming like her world is ending.
.
May is the one who brings him breakfast, and he asks her the question that he hasn't quite formed fully enough to ask himself:
"How did I survive?"
May blinks.
"Director Fury saved you," she answers, and he decides not to bother asking who that is. "You had a tracking device with you, he used it to find you and fish you out of the water."
"Oh," he says, but doesn't feel like he's been answered. "How'd I get to the surface?" May only tilts her head in response, so he goes on. "Someone tried to kill me, right? So it stands to reason that they would've knocked me out and dumped me in the ocean with cement shoes or — " he waves a hand dismissively " — something, but I'd've sunk if they did that. Why didn't I sink?"
She opens her mouth to respond but then pauses thoughtfully, and closes it again. "You tell me," she replies.
"What?"
"You tell me," she repeats firmly, crossing her arms.
"I don't remember — "
"So don't try to remember," she cuts him off. "You're a smart guy, Fitz. How could you have made it to the surface so that Director Fury could pull you out of the water?"
He stares at her for a moment, and then it occurs to him that she's asking him a simple logic question — she's making him science it out, come up with hypotheses. He opens and closes his mouth several times, deep in thought, before he finally starts throwing darts.
"Well… I could've landed on something floating in the water," he muses, furrowing his brow, "but that would be a huge coincidence. Maybe I was still conscious when I hit the water?" he offers, wincing. "And found something to hold onto… no, that doesn't work," he mutters. "I wouldn't've nearly drowned in that case, I'd've dehydrated or something similar, not drowned… He could've gone in after me, maybe?"
"He didn't."
Fitz frowns, running his hand over his face. "Well, someone had to've gone in after me," he says, but she shakes her head.
"No one from Director Fury's helicopter went into the water to rescue you."
He blinks, frowning harder — if that's the case, then there's no way, unless —
"I wasn't alone," he says.
May's expression doesn't change.
"Someone else was with me," he says. "Someone brought me to the surface."
The dark room in his dream, he thinks, Dr. Simmons screaming as he smiled, Skye's comment that he says her name when he dreams of it; he closes his eyes and for a moment, he's there, grasping at every detail of that dream, the darkness and the cold, the bruises on her face and the tears in her eyes, the overwhelming fear crystallizing into a cold sort of peace, her name on his lips, her name —
"Jemma," he says, and May smiles.
.
It's not the open floodgates he was sort of expecting — all that happens when he remembers her name is that he remembers her name. He doesn't remember meeting her for the first time, or how they ended up in the ocean, or anything that happened before he nearly drowned; it's a little disappointing.
But he remembers her name, remembered it all on his own, and that counts for something.
He also knows — although doesn't remember, not really, not a true memory — that Dr. Simmons — Jemma, he repeats the name to himself and tries to identify the emotion that rises up in him when he does — was there when he nearly died.
Jemma saved his life.
And he's done almost nothing but make her cry.
He has to fix this. He has to apologize to Jemma — he already apologized to Dr. Simmons, but he has to apologize to Jemma, Jemma who they say is his best friend, Jemma who's name is a key to his past and an emotion he can't name, Jemma who cried in the closet to the sound of his voice, Jemma Jemma Jemma —
The door opens and he looks up, feeling a bit like a deer caught in headlights, to see Dr. Simmons poking her head in tentatively.
"Fitz?" she says. "May said you wanted to see me?"
(He did not tell May anything of the sort.)
He opens his mouth to speak, but nothing comes out, and she shuts the door behind her, looking genuinely — and deeply — concerned.
"Is… everything all right?" she asks, and he thinks of her screaming, as he accepted that he was going to die and she did the exact opposite, and he thinks of her crying, falling from a great height while he pounded on the glass, desperate and unable to save her, and he thinks of her replaying the recording over and over for he doesn't even know how long, and he thinks of the horrible crushing emotion that sucks all the air out of his lungs when he thinks of her name, and it clicks.
No, he thinks, nothing is all right, except that I remember your name, and I remember who you are to me.
"Fitz?"
"I'll be fine," he says, nearly choking on the words. "I'll be all right, Jemma."
She goes very still, and for a hysterical split-second, he thinks that maybe he was wrong, maybe May is pulling his leg, that her name really isn't Jemma after all, but then she whispers, in a halting voice:
"How much do you remember?"
He winces, scratching the back of his neck. "Not much," he answers. "A dark room… you were there," he says quietly, glancing up at her as his throat tries to close up on itself. "You saved my life."
"You saved mine first," she says, lightning-fast. "And anyway, you're my — " she cuts herself off and then changes tack: "There was no way I was just going to let you die."
— best friend, he can hear her saying that, sobbing that, you're my best friend, and he replied — replied —
"Thank you," he says anyway.
Jemma smiles.
What did he say to her?
"Don't worry about it," she replies. "It's in the past. All that matters is that you're getting better."
"Still," he says. "I don't remember…" he trails off for a moment, trying to find the words, before glancing away and biting his lip. "I don't remember why anyone would go out of their way to save my life, or help me the way you've helped me, and maybe Fitz-before-the-drowning-thing wouldn't think anything of it, but it means a lot to me."
He can't remember what he said to her, but it had to have been important — he was about to die, it was his last chance to say something, anything, to the woman he —
It takes her a moment to respond, and when she does, it's very quiet:
"You will," she says softly. "You'll remember."
"Yeah," he breathes. "I will."
.
(coda—
"So," Coulson says, walking into the lab where he and Jemma and Skye are working on his reading again, and he is doing a very bad job of concealing a smile, "I hear you're starting to get your memories back."
"Bits and pieces," he replies, shrugging like it's nothing and paying close attention to the mouse so he doesn't have to look at anyone else. "There's still a lot I don't remember at all."
"That's all right," Coulson says. "It'll come back to you. The important thing is that we know you can remember."
"Right," he laughs, a bit desperately, "so you don't have to call my mum to come get me."
Jemma gives Coulson a really? sort of look, and Skye bites her lip, and Coulson is still trying to hide his smile, and he thinks suddenly that he has been had.
"You were never going to call my mother, were you?" he accuses, and the man finally stops trying to keep a straight face. "You were bluffing."
"Good to see you're getting better, Fitz," he says warmly, and leaves.)