Hologram Jemma had not been much use to him while he was working on his mildly evil super secret side project. She'd just stood there and looked at him compassionately in her smart little collar and navy jumper, hair all neatly side-parted and pony-tailed.

He wasn't moved one bit.

Sure, he might have had some weak moments where he'd told the expanse of air in front of him that he missed her, but mostly they just traded jibes about her useless lack of corporeal reality. I mean, what good was having a sidekick if she was too insubstantial to even pass him a spanner? She would maintain that she spent all day providing him with psychological side-kickery of one sort or another but he would just snort and get back to his blueprints. And who could blame him if he hallucinated her resting her hand tenderly on his shoulder every now and again? It's not like anyone else was offering him cuddles.

Hologram Jemma had laughed at almost every side project idea he'd initially pitched but the sound wasn't nearly as musical as her laugh. His subconscious had provided him with a pretty poor substitute. And if this was all there was, weak tea and an even weaker hallucination, then there was nothing else for it. His mildly evil super secret side project was going to have to involve an escape plan.

Though he and Jemma had spent hours that stretched into weeks arguing about the feasibility of the TARDIS or the flux-capacitor or KITT back at the Academy, he'd never really put his mind to the physical practicalities before. He'd have to disguise it. He couldn't just have Hunter bumbling in, setting it off accidentally and getting him into trouble with Coulson.

And when at last the real flesh-and-blood Jemma Simmons wandered back into the lab late one night and reminded him just how far short his imaginary version fell, then he knew he'd really have to give it all he had. But as it turned out, it hadn't been nearly as hard work to cover his tracks as he'd imagined. She didn't really seem to care all that much about what he was up to these days.

If it had been him who'd left, and her who'd stayed behind, he knew he would have spent every spare minute with her to make up for their time spent apart. But he was starting to realise that that's where they differed. Jemma was his everything, but whatever he was to her seemed to be dwindling by the minute.

The escape portal plans came on apace now that not even his imaginary friend came to interrupt his progress. And the unearthing of the Inhumans provided him with the perfect cover. Sure he had to play a few hum-drum games of Mario Kart with Mack and watch one or two yawn-worthy classic movies with Skye. But every other moment was devoted to his mildly evil super secret project and by the time Jemma noticed that he still existed, he'd used his super secret spy skills (that no one really appreciated) to sneak it into frigging "Real S.H.I.E.L.D."s cargo hold. That'll show 'em.

It had taken him longer than it probably should have to let his defences down so that they could talk again. Frankly, it was a bit embarrassing that he'd let her make him cry so many times. Couldn't a man be left with some small shards of his dignity intact?

But when she'd been the one who'd come to him, eyes glistening with that tantalising maybe there is – he was skewered like a roast on a rotisserie.

Fitz couldn't let an opportunity like that slip through his fingers. If he was going to go, Jemma was going to have to come with him.

Getting some great ideas from both the AO3 and the community – thanks for the enthusiasm peeps! This interlude is just to give me a little more time to deliberate...

Any more ideas for where Fitz has sent them will be gratefully received!

And, in the mean time, watch out for the arrival of the angsty fic I'm working on that spawned this one as cheery emotional release. I think it'll be called Homecoming and it's the post-Kree-rock-ingestion tale I needed to tell myself so that I can go on. *sob!*