Chapter 2: A human dreaming of being a butterfly
There was no wave of feelings or memories.
There was a chain of... Things. Past things.
Sadness conquered by determination.
Tight, peaceful smile.
A scream that should tear his soul apart, but was accepted as necessity- sad but right.
A flick of crushing pain and a bliss of falling asleep.
A sky or a wall of water crushing down on him.
A piercing sound getting louder and louder.
A noise.
A light.
A blur of colours.
Chaos.
There were sounds Fitz couldn't recognise. There was that piercing beat, the first sound he had heard, getting louder and louder with each second. There was something familiar in it, even though it was way too noisy. There was a light shining right into his used-to-darkness eyes. There were voices and shadows moving everywhere.
There was something in his mouth, something covering his jaw and nose, something that got in the way of his shaky breath. He wanted to get rid of it, but it was stuck and he couldn't do anything about it.
Something blocked the light from him, a shadow of brown and white. Something touched his cheek, warm and soothing. He tried to move back to see more clearly, not able to focus his eyes in such a short distance. There was no place for him to move back. He had nowhere to move. Nowhere to run.
There was a sound coming from the shadow's direction, something repeated over and over. The air around him smelled familiar, calming. The beating sound was getting louder and faster, drilling into his brain and he wanted to cover his ears but couldn't find his hands; they were alien and out of reach. There were wires, or ropes, or some other kind of restriction on his body and he couldn't move, not when all of his limbs felt numb and alien.
The brown shadow disappeared from his vision along with the familiar scent, but it's voice could still be heard, louder and more urgent. There was a strong light shooting right into one of his eyes, then to the other one. He wanted to say something, anything, but he couldn't. Even if it wasn't for the gag in his mouth, he couldn't recollect what was it that he wanted to communicate.
And then everything started to blur even more, sounds muffled, and the light was replaced by darkness.
"Simmons, calm down. They know what they're doing." May tried to hold the other woman away from the glass window in the door. Not an easy task when the tiny scientist was doing everything to get out and back into the room, to Fitz's side.
"Why are they sedating him? He just woke up." May could tell that Skye was trying not to let her emotions swallow her, but her worry was only getting stronger.
"He was starting to panic, you've seen his heart rate. The doctors know what they're doing," May repeated trying to convince herself, because she couldn't start doubting if she was to keep the other two agents out of the way. "It will be fine. What's important is that he's awake. You hear me, Simmons?" She tried to get her attention and finally succeeded - Jemma looked away from the window and back at her. "He's awake, he just needs a moment."
There was a moment of silence when she was just staring at her with wide eyes.
"Fitz is awake," Simmons finally nodded, a tiny, watery smile at last appearing on her face after nine long days.
A/N:
This story is not abandoned! I'm working on it, I have a few chapters finished already but it's just being pushed lower and lower on my priority list, since I keep writing other things.
The title of this and the previous chapter is a reference to Zhuangzi- a Chinese philosopher and his "Butterfly dream". (I'm not a specialist in Chinese philosophy, I read this in manga).
Thanks to TheLateNightStoryTeller and amandajbruce for beta reading.
