A/N: This comes from a song not on the list provided in the contest and is a direct sequel to the first chapter Wayward Son and is based of of You've Got a Friend in Me by Randy Newman from Toy Story
Skye was sitting in the lab with Simmons when she heard the door to the short bus slam and Fitz stomp up the ramp and through the doors. It had been nearly three hours since he had left and though she was nearly praying that things went well one look at Fitz told Skye that they didn't. He was without his nearly constant boyish grin and instead he looked as if he had been on the receiving end of a very nasty beating, his shoulder slumped, his feet dragged, and his eyes were looking anywhere besides his two closest friends.
"How'd it go?" Simmons asked cheerily, seemingly oblivious to the fact that her best friend in the entire world looked like somebody kicked his pet dog off of a bridge due to the fact that she had not pried her gaze away from a microscope slide of asgardian lung tissue.
"Fine." He answered even though it looked like he was anything but.
"Really, that's fantastic. How were they? Were they like the last time you saw them? Was your village similar? Did anybody in town recognize you?" Simmons looked like she could have gone on with the questions for all day but at that moment put his hand up and did the one thing that Skye in all her time on the BUS never saw. At that exact moment Fitz pleaded, not in the way that children plead their parents for an extra five minutes before they need to go to bed but in the way that a desperate man does when he would rather be anywhere but where he was doing what he was doing.
"Stop. Jemma, please just stop talking for once and listen. It was fine and I don't want to talk about it." With those words Simmons looked up at Fitz, the person who was always there for her, who ate her weird sandwiches, and who at this moment wanted nothing to do with her. Seeing this she did the only thing she could at his hurtful words, she took off running out of the lab in a vain attempt to not let Fitz see her tears.
Not even turning around to look at Simmons Fitz made his way to his work bench and began to fiddle with the pieces of equipment on the table. He sat doing that for a few moments before looking up at Skye and not seeing what he expected, instead of seeing concern or disappointment on her face she was absolutely livid. He had not seen her this angry since the time she was first brought on to the BUS in handcuffs with a burlap sack over her head so she couldn't see anything.
After looking down on him for a second with wild eyes and clenched fists she errupted. "WHAT IN THE HELL WAS THAT FITZ?" She screamed so loudly that he was surprised that all of the glassware in the lab didn't shatter. After her outburst she was still staring at him with her chest heaving from the volume of air that she managed to expel in such a small amount of time. She still had the same wild look in her eyes and it seemed that she wanted a response from him.
"What?" He questioned though he was beginning to feel guilty about what he had said.
"What, What? I'll tell you what. You just made Jemma Simmons, one of the nicest, bravest, and most resilient people I have met not to mention your best friend and basically your family for the past ten years, cry. Besides that, your visit clearly wasn't fine. I may not be as smart as Simmons and I may not have known you for as long but I still can read you like a book now, tell me the truth, what happened when you met your family?" She asked, finally softening a little but near the end of her tirade but she still looked like she would consider throwing him from the window while they were in flight if he didn't start talking right then and there.
With a sigh he started. "Everything seemed fine when I had gotten there, the house and street looked the same as it did the last time I had seen it. I was nervous when I knocked but when my mum opened the door it seemed like everything was exactly the same, she looked, talked, and hell she even smelled the same. The moment she opened the door she recognized me and pulled me into a hug one of those hugs that only a mom can give the ones where they feel like they are squeezing all the love they possibly could into your very bones, you know?" Frankly Skye had no idea what he meant by that but knowing that if he stopped talking he may not ever start talking about it again she merely nodded at him and gestured to continue. "Well she pulled me into the house and something seemed off in some way. I'm not sure how to describe it, it's almost as if there was something else there besides us. When she showed me around it all looked the same but something I couldn't place just felt wrong. I asked her where my dad was because I wanted to reconcile with him you know? I didn't want the last thing that I said to him to be me calling him an 'old fashioned bleeding idiot who couldn't find his own common decency if he was hit over the head with it.' Anyways when I asked her about him she got this look on her face that made it seem like I had just asked to see a serial killer, complete shock. You know why that is?" Fitz managed to ask with a rough, barking laugh that was completely humorless and instead filled with anger and rage.
"Why?" Skye asked, knowing that they were finally getting to the reason that Fitz had snapped.
"She took me up to his room, it was the same room that he had when I lived with them. So she takes me up there and just before she leads me into there she drops the bomb. My own father wouldn't recognize me. You hear that? My dad's going senile!" He yelled the last part, standing up so suddenly that his chair fell to the ground behind him.
"Oh my god, I'm so sorry I made you do that. I had no idea." She managed to choke out from the shock that had constricted her throat.
"I know you didn't but that's not the worst. She walks into the room and I have to follow her. As I walk into the room I see him, just lying there with his head rolling about in his pajamas at two in the afternoon. My mum walks up to him and says 'Robert there's somebody here to see you, it's our son Leopold." At this he looks at me but not rally, almost as if he's looking through me and right through the wall behind me. I can tell that he has no idea who I was he just decides to say, to a complete stranger mind you, 'Your son, not mine. That good for nothing failure isn't good for anything besides lazing about in his room all day while I put in work trying to put food on the table.' By that point I was so shocked that I just stood there for a good half-minute without saying anything. I just said 'goodbye mum' and walked out of there, never looking back until I got here. But do you want to know the good thing about all this?" He asked sarcastically.
"What is it?" She responded, paying rapt attention to him standing there looking like a wide-eyed madman.
"At least I now know that my dad always believed what he said about me."
"Listen Fitz, I may not have known you for as long as Coulson or Simmons but I will Always with you, if you need help, somebody to talk to, or even just somebody to goof around with, my door is always open and don't forget that for a second. We're team mates and you will always have me if you need me."
"Thank yo, for everything Skye. I really would probably have done something that I regretted even more if you didn't make me talk." Fitz admitted gratefully.
"Hey, what did I just tell you? I'll always be there for you."
Seeing her standing next to him in the lab, talking him through a personal problem again made him realize how true those words were, there may have been people who he knew longer, but he would never have a friend just like Skye so he needed to hold onto her and never let her go. As cheesy as it was to reference Pixar he had to admit that he had a friend in Skye and she had one in him.
A/N: That turned out a lot more angsty than I expected but I still really like it. Please review.
