"... and you're sure it's Jemma? Well, yes I know, but I don't want to get their hopes up."
Fitz was padding past Coulson's door when he heard it. It was three in the morning and he just couldn't sleep. He was restless and he knew why; last Thursday marked the one year anniversary of Simmons' disappearance. Tired and thirsty, he'd wandered to the kitchen in his pyjamas to get a bottle of water before making his way back to bed. But going back meant passing Coulson's room and the one-sided conversation that was happening inside had caught his attention.
The door was slightly ajar and Fitz could see a sliver of Coulson's office through it. The agent was pacing up and down his office in a set of navy blue pyjamas, a phone pressed to his ear.
"Where is she now?" Fitz heard Coulson ask whoever was on the other end of the phone line. "Keep her safe and I'll get May to reroute the plane." The conversation ended and Fitz knew that he should probably run back to bed and pretend that he hadn't heard anything, but he was glued to the spot. All the muscles in his body were frozen, despite the sound that he could hear footsteps on the other side of the door.
The door swung open, revealing Coulson. "Fitz, what are you doing out here?" he asked calmly. He looked more surprised than anything else. "I was just…" He'd always been a terrible liar; he had a tell that everyone picked up on almost instantly. Scratching the back of his neck, he continued to stutter an excuse. "Thirsty…" He held up the bottle only for it to roll out of his hands and onto the floor.
"Oh, okay. I'd suggest you try and get as much sleep as you can, we're going to have a busy day today…" Coulson replied, striding down the corridor towards the kitchen.
"Why? What are we doing?" He didn't reply. "Is this about our current mission?" Still nothing. "I heard you say you were going to get May to reroute the plane."
"Fitz, I can't-" he began.
"Have you found her?" he blurted out before he could stop himself. A look of conflict crossed the senior agent's face; he looked as though he wanted to tell Fitz everything but S.H.I.E.L.D. protocol wouldn't allow that. "Please, sir," Fitz continued. "Just tell me if they've found her."
Coulson pursed his lips. "A girl matching her appearance has just turned up at S.H.I.E.L.D.'s headquarters. They want us to go and have a look." Upon noticing Fitz's hopeful look, he felt obliged to continue. "It could be nothing, Fitz. Don't get too excited. And don't tell the others. We'll meet at eight to discuss the matter further with the rest of the team." And with that, Coulson disappeared back into his office.
Fitz couldn't sleep. Of course he couldn't. He'd had trouble sleeping because of her disappearance but now he was experiencing the problem in reverse; he couldn't sleep because he was excited about the possibility of her return. Coulson had told him not to get excited or hopeful but how was he supposed to? Simmons had been his lab partner and his friend and learning to cope without her had been difficult.
Whenever he needed a second pair of hands for whatever he'd been working on, he had to go and find someone else to help. If he needed to confide in anyone, everything had to be bottled up because he knew that no one else on the Bus could comfort him like Simmons could. And most importantly, any Doctor Who marathons had be either postponed or appreciated alone. So that thought that Jemma might actually be back - even though the possibility was small - was something that excited Fitz to no end.
As promised, everyone gathered around at eight the next morning. Fitz had been waiting there since half past seven, fully dressed and nervously waiting. May had joined him a little later followed by Ward and finally Skye who padded in just before eight wearing a fluffy lilac dressing gown, yawning.
"What does AC want with us so early?" she muttered, pulling her dressing gown tighter around her. "I thought we didn't need to be up until nine." No one said anything. "Wow, I take it no one else here is a morning person…"
At exactly eight according to Fitz' watch, Coulson walked down the corridor towards where the four of them had gathered. "You're probably all wondering why we're all here this morning…" he began. Sensing the serious tone in his voice, no one dared to reply. "The mission we were supposed to be finishing today has been reassigned to another team."
"But we were so close to getting the papers!" Ward exclaimed. "They can't just take it away from us without reason."
"They can if something more important comes along," he replied. That got their attentions. "Last night at approximately half past three, a girl appeared outside S.H.I.E.L.D.'s headquarters. There we no footprints or tire tracks leading up to where she was found which is a mystery in itself, but more importantly, the girl in question has been ID'd as someone who has been missing for over a year."
It took a moment for the information to sink in. "Wait, you don't mean…"
"Are you talking about…?"
"Simmons," Fitz finished for them. Skye gasped. Ward raised an eyebrow. May's face didn't change and Fitz guessed that she knew. So much for secret. Ward and Skye looked to Coulson for more information.
"We'll have to see when we get there. Please, let's not get our hopes up in case there's been a mistake." Coulson directed his glance at May. "ETA?"
"Eight twenty five," she replied.
"Perfect."
As soon as they'd arrived at the headquarters - having been guided in wearing blindfolds, because apparently not even Level 7 agents could know the location, let alone Fitz and Skye - the four of them were ushered into some kind of waiting room whilst Coulson was whisked away, presumably to wherever Simmons was.
"Well, this place looks cheery…" Skye remarked as she settled into one of the many black chairs in the waiting room, which felt just as uncomfortable as they looked. "I didn't know S.H.I.E.L.D. had a magazine," Ward pondered as he picked up a glossy black booklet, emblazoned with their silver logo from the coffee table and opened it.
Fitz couldn't understand how everyone around him managed to be so calm. Here they were, waiting for Coulson's verdict on one of their team members and they were just sat here as though they were waiting for nothing more than coffee in Starbucks. It didn't make sense. And it made him nervous.
Eventually they heard footsteps down the long corridor and Fitz looked up to see Coulson, accompanied by a tall redhead wearing a lab coat. "Fitz. She wants to see you."
The long walk down the corridor towards Simmons' room seemed endless; every time they passed one of the doors leading off it, another seemed to appear in front of them. It was clichéd but true. Two main emotions were displayed on Fitz's face, clear as day: excitement and nervousness. The thought of seeing Jemma again excited him - of course it did - but what if she wasn't the same?
Who was he kidding, she'd just spent a year in the clutches of some unknown force, of course she was going to be changed by it. But then he was getting Simmons back, his Jemma, and that was the most important thing, right?
By the time he finally reached her room, Fitz's brain was clouded with questions, pointless, occasionally rhetorical questions that he didn't know the answer to. It was only when he heard another voice that he realised the doctor that Coulson had been speaking with had followed him down the corridor. "I'll leave you two alone for now," she said quietly. "Take as long as you like." And with that, she retraced her steps in the direction of the waiting room, her heels clicking against the tile flooring.
The sweat that had collected in the palms of his hands only made it more difficult for Fitz to turn the doorknob. It took a few moments of fumbling with the shiny silver handle before he managed to twist it open, revealing the room and the girl that lay behind it.
"Fitz!" a voice cried enthusiastically, a voice that was unmistakably hers.
"Simmons!" he replied, striding over to her bedside.
In the short walk over to her, Fitz took the time to survey her for injuries. Her hair was tied back neatly, revealing a deep gash that wound from her left eyebrow across her temple and down her cheek. Dark stitches snaked across it like railway tracks through previously undisturbed land and they made Fitz want to protect her from all harm. But that seemed to be the worst injury - there were a few purplish bruises marking her otherwise perfect skin and greyish circles looping around her wrists, suggesting that wherever she'd been, she'd been there against her will. From the way her arm was positioned under the covers, he could see an IV had been inserted into her right arm, pumping some kind of colourless liquid into her bloodstream.
Apart from the various cuts and bruises that were scattered across her being she seemed fine. Perfect even. Her lips formed a small smile and her eyes still had that youthful glint in them, the kind she used to have whenever she was on the brink of finishing an experiment or gathering conclusions from new data.
Dragging over a nearby chair - which thankfully looked comfier than the ones in the waiting room - Fitz seated himself next to the bed, hoping that Simmons would start a conversation. Most of all he wanted to ask her everything, where she'd been and what she'd been doing, what they'd done to her, but he knew that she'd tell him in her own time. And he didn't want to be insensitive.
They sat for a moment in silence, pure and unbroken, both unsure of what to say next. So Fitz reached across the bed and took Simmons' hand gently, interlocking her fragile fingers with his. And somehow, this one gesture said more than a thousand words ever could.
"Agent Coulson, could I speak to you for a moment, please?"
"Of course," Coulson replied, looking up at Dr. Richards, the woman who had been trusted with looking after Simmons whilst she was here. Leading him to a small room, not unlike the interrogation room they had on the Bus, she indicated for him to sit down.
"I take it you've run the necessary tests on Simmons," he asked.
"I have," she replied. "And the results are very interesting."
"I'm listening…"
"Agent Simmons seems to be in perfect health. I've checked everything from her blood pressure to her eye sight and everything seems to match perfectly with S.H.I.E.L.D.'s records of her," the redhead explained, consulting her notes.
"So what's the problem then?" Coulson asked, sensing an upcoming "but…".
"She appears to be suffering from some type of dissociative amnesia."
"What?" he asked, in shock. Simmons' memory had seemed intact when he'd spoken to her not moments ago. "Amnesia?"
"Dissociative amnesia is when a person blocks out a series of memories associated with a particularly traumatic event in their life," the doctor continued. "It appears that Agent Simmons has done this with all memories associated with her disappearance and therefore can't remember anything between the points of the start of the mission in Morocco and arriving here."
"So she can't remember anything?"
"The last thing she remembers is diving for cover with Agent Fitz after recovering the serum from the laboratory. And then her most recent memory is standing outside here last night."
"Is there any way we can recover her memory?"
"I don't know…" Dr. Richards explained. "The strange thing about her case is that the physical and mental signs that are usually connected with this type of dissociative disorder aren't present."
"What's the next step then?" Coulson asked. Simmons was a highly valued member of his team and now that she was back on the radar, he couldn't afford to lose her.
"I think the next progress point would be to get her to see a psychiatrist."
"A psychiatrist? Doesn't that seem a little extreme?"
"Extreme but necessary," she continued, shutting the little metal folder containing Simmons' medical notes with a snap. "We'll see how she is tomorrow." And with that, she turned on her heel and fled the room, her lab coat billowing out behind her dramatically.