(Two Weeks Ago)
Jemma could feel the pressure of a pair of hand upon her shoulder, lightly shaking her in order to stir her from her sleep. She swatted the hands away and proceeded to stretch out and yawn.
"Look, I know you told me to go home Phil, but I couldn't just leave him could I? What sort of a friend would that make me, eh? A bloody awful one. And anyway, he risked his life for-"
"Simmons, as cute as you are when you ramble, shut up." The voice of Leo Fitz made Jemma's head snap up.
Too stunned to speak, Jemma just stared at her best friend disbelievingly. This, in turn, caused Fitz to chuckle and take her hand in his own.
"Wow. I never thought I'd live to see the day that Jemma Simmons had run out of words to say."
"You we're in a coma."
"I know."
"They didn't even know if would be able to surpass being brain dead."
"I know."
"But now-"
"Jemma, I know."
Fitz spoke softly and tilted his face down towards his best friend, tucking a loose strand of hair back behind her ear as he gently pressed his mouth against hers.
The diluted sound of knuckles on wood pulled Jemma out of her dream and back into reality. She could still feel Fitz on her lips.
"Sorry to wake you, I just thought you might be in need of some coffee."
Melinda May placed a large Styrofoam cup into Jemma's hands and gave her a rare and reassuring smile as she sat beside the other agent.
"It will be okay Jemma, he'll pull through – if only to tell you himself that you'll both get through this."
Jemma sighed and mimicked Fitz's words from her dream; "Yeah, I know."
(Present Day)
The first thing Leo Fitz noticed when opened his eyes was that he was in a hospital room, a fact that was proven to him by the overpowering shade of sickly green that coated the four walls around him and made him feel nauseous. The second was that he had no knowledge as to what the hell he was doing in a hospital in the first place; apart from a headache that was threatening to split his head open, he could feel no serious injury – no broken limb or visible wound. As he sat up in his bed, trying to recall even the tiniest scrap of memory that would allow him to figure out why he was here, a flash of pain shot across Leo's forehead, making the Scotsman to double over in pain. Leo fumbled around at the table on his right, to where he swore he saw a glass of water during his previous sweep of the room. But, in his haste Leo managed to knock over the lamp, also on the table, causing it to shatter on the floor. As a result Leo awoke his third discovery; a petite woman he guessed was in her mid-twenties, who was sat in a chair to the left of Leo and roused with strands of ash brown hair stuck to her cheek. For a while they just stared at each other, one too unsure as to whether she was dreaming to make the first move and one with no recollection of the other to know where to begin.
However, after what felt like hours to them both, the brunette finally spoke – albeit in such a small voice that Leo had to strain just to hear her.
"Are you really awake? Please tell me you are truly awake Fitz. Oh god please."
"Who's Fitz?" Leo replied, his voice hoarse and frayed at the edges.
The woman tilted her head and bit the side of her cheek, a move that would normally be recognised by Leo as a sign the former had encountered a perplexing problem. Although this time, it went by unnoticed.
"Right, erm okay, the doctors said to expect this, memory loss I mean. Only they couldn't tell just how severe it would be whilst you were in the coma though. Wait here, I need to go and tell someone that you're awake. Oh god, I'm so happy you're awake Fitz. It will be okay, we can get you better in no time. It'll be just like that time you inhaled that poison at the academy and we sat and watched Doctor Who re-runs until you got recovered. "
Giving him one last glance, as if to check Leo wasn't some sort of hallucination, the woman darted out of the room, narrowly avoiding tripping on the shards of the lamp Leo had knocked off of the table. Memory loss, coma, academy? The words span around Leo's head, doing nothing to subdue his ever present headache. The woman, who had called him Fitz – what the hell kind of name was Fitz anyway? – appeared to know him rather well. Or at least well enough to know that he liked to watch Doctor Who when he was sick. His mother had brought him the complete collection of the classic Who episodes when he was nine and he had watched the show every week religiously when it was re-launched.
When the woman finally returned she brought with her a small crowd; two doctors, a small Asian woman, a slightly taller, dark haired woman and a man in his late 40s, who all now stood around the hospital room. The doctors approached him first, asking him if he knew the year, where he was, why he was there and his name.
"Two-thousand-and-something I think. I have no clue and, what did you call me, Fitz?" He turned to the woman for assurance on the last question. She nodded but did not speak.
The doctors passed each other a look as one stepped closer towards him. "Nearly, it's two-thousand-and-thirteen and we're in Holguin, Cuba, you are here because your brain went without oxygen for quite a long period of time and you've been in a coma for the past three weeks. Your name is Leopold Fitz, but yes, I am told your friends over there call you Fitz."
Leo tried to take it all in, ignoring the fact that he couldn't account for about the past five years of his life. So, he was in Cuba, as far as he knew he had never been to Cuba before and had no clue as to why he was there now. The doctor had said his brain had received a lack of oxygen – that meant there was a risk of brain damage. And hang on…
"Did you say they were my friends?" Leo gestured to other people in the room, his eyes catching that of the woman he awoke to beside him. "I'm sorry, but I've never see any of you before in my life."
The petite woman from before let out a whimper and turned her face away. This was followed by the forty-something man, dressed rather impeccably for a hospital visit, resting a hand on Leo's shin. "Fitz, my name is Phil Coulson. I'm the director of S.H.I.E.L.D., your team leader and your friend. I know this is probably too much for you at once, but we all have the highest faith that you'll make a full recovery."
Leo nodded at the other man, unsure of what else to do or say. Nothing made sense to him right now and his headache had double in intensity, he really just wanted for everyone to go away. Thankfully, one of the doctors must have sensed his discomfort and came to his rescue.
"I really think that's enough for the time being. We still have tests we need to run and we will keep you up to date, but for now I suggest we give Mr. Fitz the time he needs to recover. You are welcome to visit him tomorrow; it might be an idea if you bring an item of importance to Mr. Fitz, to help jog his memory."
As the doctors left to bring Leo some more meds and book him in for the tests they mentioned, the other four people in the room started to file out – each giving him a reassuring smile as the left. However, when it came to the petite woman Leo felt compelled to reach out for her.
"Wait, I... I never caught your name."
"It's Jemma, but you call- or called me, Simmons." The woman, or Simmons as he supposed he should call her, wiped away a stray tear that swept her face.
For some reason unknown to Leo he was upset by Simmons' sorrow and so he reached out to hold her hand. Simmons fought back further tears that threatened to fall and helped Leo lie back in the hospital bed; she then stayed with him for the few conscious minutes Leo had before he passed out asleep and kissed his forehead before turning to leave.
In his sleep Leo dreamt of giant aircrafts and of whole days spent in labs, he dreamt of running and falling from the sky, and, although he wouldn't remember it when he woke up, he dreamt of Jemma Simmons.
The next day Leo woke up to find that, once again, he was not alone. The man in the suit, who had called himself Phil Coulson, sat in the same chair that the Simmons woman had. However, unlike the first time, Leo's accompanier was awake, and was watching him like a hawk.
"Ah Fitz, you're up. Good, we just need to run you through some S.H.I.E.L.D. paperwork before we hand you back into the capable hands of the doctors here. It won't take moment."
Leo sat up in the bed and reached for a glass of water – so much for a gentle easy back into the land of the conscious. Not waiting for a reply from the younger man, Coulson pulled out a clipboard and pen and started to scribble something along the top of the forms.
"Since we last spoke yesterday, have you established what you can and can't recall?"
"Sort of, I've got a near perfect memory of my life right up until I was sixteen but then it's all a bit blurry."
"So, you've still lost ten years?" The way he spoke strangely managed to calm Leo's nerves, for some reason he felt soothed by the composure of Coulson's voice.
"The doctors are confident I should be able to get back partial memories of my post-sixteen life, but they cannot be sure if I will fully recover."
"Of course you will. We have our best people working alongside your doctors to ensure that we get you back to normal. Now, when you say you can't remember further than when you were sixteen, does that mea-"
"Mean that I have no full recollection of being recruited by you or by S.H.I.E.L.D., and that I don't have a clue who you or your colleges are other than a vague remembrance? Yes, it does."
Coulson took to scribbling something down on the forms. Leo knew what he was thinking; this Coulson guy clearly hoped that Leo's memory loss was a result of post-traumatic stress – induced by the whole nearly dying at the bottom of the ocean story they had told him. It was plausible, he only had memories prior to joining S.H.I.E.L.D., they cut off at rather a specific moment in his life – but to Leo this just felt like a coincidence. If he was being honest, he half expected a camera crew to pop out any minute and tell him the entire thing was staged and that someone would reveal that the only reason he looked ten years older than he felt was the result of heavy make-up and prosthetics. Only, deep down, Leo could feel a loose connection to the people that called themselves his closest friends, much like when you woke up from a dream and could feel the last remnants of another life. There were also actually parts of what Coulson and the others had told him that rang true, he could briefly recall attending a S.H.I.E.L.D. Academy. As if on cue Coulson interjected Leo's thoughts.
"What can you tell me about the S.H.I.E.L.D. Academy of Sci-Tech?"
"Not much, just bits and pieces and what you have told me; I joined at sixteen, graduated at seventeen – three years early mind you, soon after you said I went to work at a 'Sci-Ops' facility – but I have no idea what that is, and apparently then you recruited me to work for your 'new mobile command unit' as you called it.
Coulson put down the clipboard and pulled out another form from his briefcase. "Here, take a look at this."
As he took the form from Coulson, Leo saw that it was a list of what appeared to be gadgets and weaponry. "I.C.E.R., Night-Night Gun, Mouse Hole? What are these?"
"They're your credentials Fitz, your designs."
"These are all mine?"
"Yes, all twelve. Well, yours and Simmons' designs; these inventions are trademarked Fitzsimmons."
"Fitzsimmons." Leo muttered. "I'm engineering, she's bio-chem." It was as if the words were a knee-jerk reaction to some memory that was trying to resurface in his mind.
Coulson froze, looking at Leo like he was a child who had just taken his first step. "Fitz, are you okay?"
Leo reached a hand up to his face and brought it to eye level; he was having a nosebleed. Coulson, Leo realised, had already left to call for a doctor – it probably wasn't a good sign for a nosebleed to occur when you're still under observation for signs of possible brain damage. When the doctor and Coulson reached Leo's room the young agent had already passed out cold.
(A/N: Just a quick thank you to my cynical asshole of a friend who helped me write this and will cringe at the shout up but he should just suck it up cause he's just as nerdy as I am and ships fitzsimmons just as hard~~)