Chapter Two – He Was Real
The Who – Baba O'Reilly
"Bleurgh."
This was why she didn't drink. Still in her red dress, though the shoes had been discarded somewhere, Jemma peeled herself slowly off the bed and staggered towards the bathroom.
Oh dear God my head hurts. She scrabbled in the medicine cabinet for aspirin, thought for a moment wistfully of the wide selection of pharmaceuticals in her lab, and mentally smacked herself for even thinking of it.
A few minutes later she stumbled back towards the bed. A couple more hours sleep would be just the thing, and really on the day after her birthday no one could expect her to be in the lab at the crack of dawn… well, okay, eight-fifteen, but she often worked until after midnight, one day late would…
Jemma's train of thought fractured and broke. She'd been busy peeling off the dress, knowing she'd be much more comfortable sleeping without it and the strapless bra she'd had on underneath, when something fluttered to the floor. A playing card, landing face up. The Queen of Hearts.
"Oh God." Suddenly, she was wide awake and very alert, even though her head was still pounding and her stomach roiled. "That was real! He was real!"
"Jemma?" there was a soft scratching at her door. "Jemma, are you awake? Are you feeling all right?"
She grabbed her dressing-gown hastily and dragged it on to cover her nakedness, heading for the door. "That you, Skye?" and at her friend's affirmative answer, she yanked the door open and almost bodily dragged her inside.
"Hey – oh, wow, you don't look such a good colour," Skye appraised her. "Do you need any Alka-Seltzer?" she held up a tube.
"No. What I need is for you to hack that bar's surveillance system and get me the footage from last night."
"Er…" Skye blinked, surveying Jemma cautiously. The scientist really didn't look well, her skin even paler than usual, her hair a mess of tangled chestnut curls. "…why? Because if you're thinking of blackmailing May with footage of her singing, I think that's a really terrible idea…"
Jemma snatched the card off the floor and shoved it at Skye. "Because my soulmate gave me this, and I don't know who he is or anything about him!" She'd been wracking her brain, but she just couldn't come up with his name. "Except, he might be French."
"French? Your soulmate?" Skye's eyebrows were climbing steadily.
"He called me chère. And he had an accent."
"Ooh. Hot. It – it wasn't that hot guy with the hat, from the bar?" Skye's eyes were suddenly as wide as saucers. "Fitz and I thought we saw him go outside just before you did…"
Jemma nodded jerkily, clutching onto the card when Skye tried to take it. "He was even hotter close up. He took his hat off." She remembered the sharply carved lines of his cheekbones, those glowing eyes…
… GLOWING EYES?
"Surveillance footage. I need to see the footage right now."
Skye stared at Jemma, slightly alarmed, and then very carefully detached Jemma's hand from where it was gripping onto the collar of Skye's jacket. "Tell you what. Why don't you have a shower and get some clothes on while I go to my office and hack into the bar's cameras? Because AC will have a fit if he sees you running round the halls looking like you do right now."
Skye was right, much though Jemma hated to admit it, and Coulson did have an uncanny ability to appear just when you didn't want him to. He seemed to catch Hunter and Morse every single time one of them did the walk of shame – Jemma just wished the two of them would own up already and start sharing a room. Preferably Hunter's, which had the advantage of being not next door to Jemma.
"All right," she conceded. "I'll go wash. You go hack, and see what you can find in the way of footage of…" she blushed.
"You didn't even get his name?" Skye squawked, shocked.
"He told me! But – I was so drunk I can't remember it."
Howling with laughter, Skye left Jemma alone and went off to her office. Jemma headed for the shower, scowling. What the hell was his name? She could remember the way his thickly accented, husky voice sounded, remember feeling the heat of him against her back as he pulled her against him, but his name… she closed her eyes against the hot needles of water beating on her face.
Mine. That gravelly voice almost seemed to whisper in her ear again, and she twitched, reaching for her shampoo. I'll find you soon, he'd murmured before pulling his disappearing trick, but how on earth could he? Her identity had been erased, she lived in a top-secret spy base – how could he possibly find her? No, she'd have to find him. Fortunately, she knew just how to do it.
"So what have you found?" she strode into Skye's office fifteen minutes later, hair still damp but at least she was clean, teeth brushed, dressed in her favourite pale blue blouse, black and white cardigan and comfortable black trousers.
"A guy who doesn't like surveillance cameras," Skye responded dryly. She tapped a few keys on her keyboard and the big screen across the room lit up. "The bar's got excellent camera coverage, but look. The place he's sitting at the bar is covered by one camera only, right at the very edge of the field of view. And with that hat on, there's basically no view of his face at all."
Jemma bit her lip, looking at the frozen image on the screen. It was a good, clear image, but it showed almost nothing of her soulmate's face.
"I don't think it was a coincidence he picked that seat." Skye shrugged. "He's got an excellent view of the whole bar, he's in a dark corner, and it's probably the closest thing to a surveillance blind spot in there."
"Do you think he's a regular?"
"The bar's hard drive only holds a week's worth of footage before overwriting itself," Skye shrugged, "and he wasn't in there any other night this last week." She grinned. "Watch this."
Jemma watched as Skye touched a key, and the frozen image moved again. Hat Guy – she was going to call him that until her stupid brain dredged up his name – jerked slightly, his head turning, body shifting as he obviously sought to get a better view of something.
"What's he looking at?" Jemma asked. For answer, Skye hit another key and the screen divided, the other half showing the take from another camera. And Jemma, walking into the room in her red dress, laughing at something Fitz had just said.
"You."
"He was not."
"Oh yes he was. Look." Skye ran both cameras back in sync for a few seconds, then played the footage again. After a few seconds she switched in a third camera, showing Jemma walking across the bar and Hat Guy quite clearly shifting on his stool, leaning forward to keep his eyes on her. "Hot Hat Guy was definitely watching you, Simmons, long before he knew he was your soulmate. Told you that red dress was a good idea. I caught him looking at you once or twice, but he was watching you all night. It wasn't until you got up on the stage that he made a move, though."
Jemma sat down with a thump, staring at the screen. Skye was right: she fast-forwarded through the footage, showing Hat Guy shifting his bar stool slightly back so he could lean on the bar and surreptitiously watch their table. He watched her when she went to the bathroom, when she came to the bar to order the round she'd insisted on buying even though it was her birthday.
Then Skye pointed Hat Guy out – she remembered that – and she saw herself turn to look at him. Saw his head tip slightly, though the smile she recalled was invisible to the camera. Her answering blush wasn't, though.
"He really was looking at me," she said wonderingly.
"And there's no possible way he could have known you were his soulmate, could he? You didn't say your name in your words…?"
"No," Jemma shook her head. "I sang them to him."
"Oh my God, of course you did!" Skye laughed. "Well then he really had no way of knowing. He obviously just thought you were sexy. Which you were, Simmons, he wasn't the only guy in the bar paying attention, you know."
Pink-cheeked, she gave Skye a glare. "Come on, Skye, we need to know who he is! You must have got some better shots of him when he came on over to me!"
Skye grinned and tapped keys. "Somewhat. Even then he was still aware of the cameras, kept his face tilted away from them."
Jemma watched as Hat Guy came walking over. Skye was right, even though he was looking directly at Jemma – and she spared a moment to feel horribly embarrassed about the way she was dancing, she looked positively slutty – the cameras still never got a clear view of his face. The best view was when she put a hand to his cheek to sing to him and he looked up at her.
"You've got your hand over too much of his face," Skye muttered, tapping keys. "I can't get enough points for facial recognition."
Jemma moved closer to the screen, peering at his face. "Do you see something strange about his eyes?"
Skye zoomed in. "No… just the light reflecting off them in a funny way?"
"Hmm." Jemma watched as Hat Guy stepped back, stared at her for a minute longer, and then abruptly turned away and headed out the door.
"Now hang on, I didn't see this bit." Skye paused everything as Jemma walked to the door too, and after a couple of minutes brought up two more camera feeds. "Aha, the outside cameras! Oh… wow."
Hat Guy apparently didn't know about one of the cameras. Because he took his hat and jacket off in full view of it, turning back to look at the door of the bar. The light outside wasn't fantastic, but Skye soon had the footage enhanced for a close look.
"Fuck, Jemma, he's gorgeous," Skye let out a low whistle, both women staring at the screen, at the chiselled features of the man standing there, watching the door. "How did he guess you'd come out?"
"I was hot. And he wasn't far ahead of me, he probably saw me looking at the door as I came down off the stage and guessed I'd go outside to cool down," Jemma reasoned, as she saw herself come out and run right into her soulmate. He caught her and spoke, and she winced as she saw her own startled recoil.
"That's when he said your words?" Skye said quietly, feeling as though she was intruding on something very private all of a sudden.
"Yes, and he showed me his arm," Jemma pointed. They could clearly see the dark markings on her soulmate's arm as he held it out. They spoke for a few moments more, and then suddenly he was spinning her around and pulling her back against him. Jemma gasped in surprise at the speed he'd moved.
"Wow," Skye was staring again. "Damn, you and him look hot together, Jemma."
And then he was gone, almost a blur, the card fluttering to the ground in front of Jemma as Skye and Fitz came out of the bar.
"That was it, he just left?" Skye said incredulously.
"He said he'd find me," Jemma said despondently, "but I don't see how he can. I told him my real name, but you erased me off the grid…"
"Well," Skye wound back the footage, pausing on a great clear shot of that gorgeous face, "let's see if we can't find him, hmm?"
Skye set to work on her computer magic, selecting points and programming a facial recognition search. "He likes playing with cards," she muttered, "so let's try the casinos first – the Gaming Commission…"
Three-quarters of an hour later Skye was practically tearing her hair out. Hat Guy didn't seem to exist in the system. "He's not French," was all she could determine. "He'd have to have a passport photo in the system. You said he sounded French?"
"Sort of," Jemma sighed, kneading at her forehead with her knuckles. She tried to mimic his accent saying her soulmark words, which sent Skye into hysterical giggles.
"He could be Cajun," Skye murmured when she eventually recovered. "Louisiana… hmm."
Jemma found herself fidgeting, staring at the image on the screen, the clear picture of her soulmate's face. Moving closer, she peered at his eyes again. "Skye, can you zoom in on his face?"
Skye glanced up, zoomed in and went back to her tapping.
There was definitely something wrong with his eyes. There was no light that could be reflecting in them, and they were glowing. Drunk-Jemma on the video seemed to have noticed it too, which was why he spun her around, she guessed, to stop her looking.
"Uh, Jemma," Skye said behind her. "You'll want to look at this."
"What?" she rounded Skye's desk, looked down at her screen. There was a photo of her soulmate there, wearing a white T-shirt and black jacket, staring directly at the camera with an unsmiling expression.
"You found him! Who is he?"
"Well, that's the problem." Skye tapped at the bottom of the screen. "This photo is from the S.H.I.E.L.D. asset register database. It's restricted access. Even I can't get in without Coulson knowing about it, and he'll want to know why."
Restricted Access, the caption below the image read. Identity Classified, Level 8.
"He's on the asset register?" Jemma said incredulously.
"Level 8 means May would have access?" Skye glanced sideways at her. "If you didn't want to tell Coulson just yet…"
Jemma sighed. "I have to."
Skye gave her a funny look.
"Oh, that's right, you still haven't read the S.H.I.E.L.D. procedural handbook, have you?" Jemma gave her a censuring look. "Well, if you had, you'd know that there's a whole section on What To Do When You Meet Your Soulmate, Section 16. And section 16.1.1 states, Upon meeting your soulmate, it is your duty to report the meeting to your superior officer within 24 hours unless constrained from doing so by operational conditions."
"Do you really have that entire handbook memorised?" Skye said with a grin.
Jemma gave her a glare in return. "Are you going to bring that while I go and 'fess up to Coulson or not?" she asked a bit plaintively, gesturing at Skye's tablet. "Because I'd really like to know his name. And where to find him. And why the hell he's on the Asset Register."
"Those are all very excellent questions," Skye conceded, scooping up her tablet. "All right. Let's go face Dad and tell him one of his girls is all grown up."
Next chapter: Jemma tells Coulson and is somewhat surprised by his reaction…