Chapter 3 - Friction
"Fitz?"
Is that…?
Her voice. Her voice.
What the hell...?
He has to be dreaming.
Fitz blinks once, twice and still sees the same thing. The same face.
Her face, those worried eyes. Hears her voice, calling his name.
There's no fucking way that he's blacked out beneath Jemma Simmons, when all he remembered was running to the nearest shelter before something detonated and something else heavy had hit him hard enough to pass out.
Waking up beneath Simmons in the worst way possible isn't what Fitz had counted on. In fact, he hadn't counted on ever seeing her again, let alone meeting her in this manner, months after he'd said his goodbyes.
And if Simmons is here, the rest of the team isn't far behind.
The vague possibility of their paths crossing again existed, of course, something that he'd feared and hoped in equal measure. The overlap between the black-ops paramilitary stuff and the other kinds of missions that deal with potential extra-terrestrial activity Edwin takes on always make him edgy.
In the past few weeks, it has just been low-key risk management and technologically-driven security solutions, but being in Greenwich right now drives home this overlap of what the team's doing with what they might run across in this mission.
Or rather, whom.
That worry as it seems now, is fully merited.
The rest of the boys have told him with matching grimaces that it doesn't happen often, but when it does, it often involves some kind of fatality that no one can really solve—at least, no one whose knowledge goes beyond advanced weaponry and engineering. Their part has always been to provide more of the brawn than the brain and it's Fitz, as they tell him, who tips the scales a little more in the latter direction and gives the team a wee bit more class.
For it to have happened in Greenwich—the place of yet another battle between humans and races determined to subjugate humans—is a kind of unpleasant reminder of being led back by the tip of his nose to the very things he'd been trying hard to move on from.
Bruised, dusty and too flustered for his liking, Fitz takes his time sitting up, too aware of the heat of her hands on his shoulders even through the thick fabric of his gear.
"Simmons? What are—"
Before he can have another word in edgewise, she starts babbling, something so familiar that a completely different kind of ache stops him short.
"—might be hurt when the blast happened and your head…there might be a concussion that I need to check—"
"Simmons! Stop! I'm alright."
She finally does and moves awkwardly to the side as he sorts himself out, getting first to his knees, then to his feet.
However, the shock of seeing Jemma Simmons in the flesh fades enough for him to notice the rubble around them and their very precarious position just under a jutting pillar that's in danger of toppling right over their heads.
"We have to move. Now," he grates out and grabs her hand, starting to navigate clumsily over the debris when a chorus of voices reaches them.
They take a mere ten steps before Smithy emerges out of the cloud of dust with a torch and a weapon dangling loosely in his hand.
"Fitzy, you alright there?"
Shite.
It's Smith who has come calling. Or rather, Smithy, the large Viking that Fitz dubs him in secret, with a penchant for telling the wrong jokes at the wrong times, which is why Fitz loves him too much and hates that he's soon about to be the victim of a stray, throwaway line that will only make things more awkward.
"Yeah. The rest of the guys?"
A beefy finger points in a direction. "Outside. Waiting for you. Everyone's good, considering the circumstances." In the dim light, Smithy's eyes widen in curiosity when it finally registers on him that Fitz isn't alone. "And who do we have here?"
"Let's get out of here first before story time starts, shall we?"
Fitz grimaces at the sharp, knowing glance that he gets in response. But he'd take his new team's funny brand of shelter and protection over the dread of talking to Simmons again, despite the lad jokes the guys are certain to spring on him when the site's secured and the place canvassed.
Simmons is oddly quiet as they make their way to where his team is and as Fitz had fully expected, garners wide-eyed stares when she stumbles out of the rubble after him. With her hand still tightly latched onto his and barely any physical space between them, he can only imagine what sort of picture he's presenting to a team that is currently gaping at the both of them.
The surrealism of the moment strikes him hard, along with the urge to laugh hysterically at this twist of fate or whatever the cosmos has done this time by putting him straight where both his old life and his new one converge.
Avoiding her eyes, he gently disengages himself from Simmons and faces his leader. "What's going on, Langston?"
Langston's disgruntled shrug says it all. "Nothing that we should know about, apparently. Direct orders to stand down and move out."
Classified information, then. Above their pay grade. Only those with the appropriate clearance levels have access, the knowledge meant only for a particular group of people within S.H.I.E.L.D. so the rest should buzz off. Fitz isn't part of S.H.I.E.L.D. any longer, though he can probably guess what it'll be about as he takes in the aftermath around them.
From where he stands, he finally sees May, Daisy, Hunter and Bobbi trying to contain the fallout, and with May's usual efficiency, things get done quicker than most people can blink.
In some alternate universe, he'd be waiting in a lab awaiting the new toy or gadget that they'll bring back.
Now however, he's content to stay back, to watch with detached eyes.
But there's still Simmons by his side, silently taking in everything and suddenly, he's unsure what to do with her.
He opens his mouth to say something, but a vast chasm suddenly opens up between his mind and his tongue. All he knows is that what has been worth saying has long been said, which leaves the mundane and the banal.
So what's really left but yet another cursory (and lame) adieu and a clean getaway?
(He'll pray later to whatever higher being out there—even if the odds have never quite been in his favour—in the transport that's arranged for the team, that this severing is permanent this time around.)
He faces her and aims for an evenness that he barely feels. "Simmons, I have to go."
oOo
Jemma is entirely unprepared for this. Whatever this is, but it's almost akin to a second-chance that she knows she needs to grab by the bull's horns. But how rare is it that Fitz is—
"Wait!"
Her body functions apart from her mind for once, as she clutches his arm again and pulls him back.
The detonation, the weird hums, the blast…and Fitz. It's taking a while for her to catch up—mentally and emotionally—but all she knows is that Fitz is turning to leave and that he simply isn't going to flit out of her life the way he did all those months ago.
Between the force of her pull and her yell, Fitz jerks to a stop and so does his entire team.
Someone nudges Fitz's side. "You know her?"
The man Fitz called Smithy earlier shoots her a meaningful look. "Looks like this isn't over yet."
His eyes flit to her then back to the group of men moving to stand rather protectively around him. "She, um…was someone I used to work with."
Disbelief wars with anger. "Honestly, Fitz, someone you used to work with? Is that all we are? All we were?"
To his credit, he looks a little uncertain at her outburst.
But the euphoric excitement of seeing him again crashes with that muttered denial, melding with rising hurt and outrage that she can't contain. There's not a Simmons in any multi-verse that would willingly go on in life without a Fitz, she's that sure of it now (how wrong she'd been all along), but hearing him so easily disavowing the weight of their personal history to a curious audience nearly puts paid to that theory.
"From the looks she's giving him, I doubt that." The tallest, blond one strokes an imaginary goatee and looks like he's starting to enjoy himself to her chagrin.
"Now this is something the bloke's never mentioned."
"Quite a bit of drama here. Ah, is that why that thing you had with Amélie—"
"So, still waters and all, eh, Fitz?"
The men look as interested in their bickering as gossiping old ladies at a Sunday morning brunch, which makes her cringe. Thankfully, Fitz seems to feel the same—she doesn't miss the glare that he shoots his team and the rife speculation that their untimely reunion seems to spark.
Beyond the surface irritation however, this Fitz is somehow…scarily indecipherable. Shuttered, with so much distance and a touch of coolness that she isn't used to seeing on his face, more so when he's talking to her.
Not so much of an open book any more, then. For all of his warmth and kindness that she's used to seeing, to be the recipient of the other end of the emotional spectrum from Fitz, of all people, sparks a twinge of panic.
But just because she's crossed some distance in her own head, or even jumped some major emotional obstacles, there're still the physical ones to overcome with him. With the added complication of the last half a year of separation, this version of Fitz might as well be a stranger she'd be trying hard to reconnect with.
Unless, what they had before…it's all irrevocably lost.
Had it taken all but 6 months to erase them completely?
"This is Agent Simmons." Fitz looks at the men around him and introduces her curtly to them. "She's with S.H.I.E.L.D.."
He gets a slap on his back and several nods of acknowledgement by the team with that revelation. Jemma doesn't know much he has or hasn't told them or just how settled he's been in this new life but it's apparently enough to bring out those looks of sympathy…for him.
She sighs, the painful edges of their stilted interaction rubbing salt into the wound of their broken friendship. "We can't be doing this, Fitz."
"—what the lady said, Fitzy lad," Smithy chimes in with a smirk. The mischievous twinkle on his face suddenly reminds her of Trip, along with the nagging feeling that Fitz has found another team of his own to fit into.
Someone else—the team leader, perhaps—cuts right back in. "As fun as it is seeing Fitz in a domestic dispute, there is actually still work to be done. And those reports aren't going to write themselves, ladies, if you've conveniently forgotten." He pauses long enough for the loud groans to fade. "Wheels up in fifteen."
The relief that shows up on Fitz's face is stark. "Yeah, copy."
The rest of his team reluctantly head out, leaving the both of them alone. Only a few feet separate them now, yet this awkwardness is as new as the man standing in front of her.
Jemma tries again, needing a solid footing with him but finds none. Her hand darts out to grab at his arm, yet again. "Fitz…it's…it's good to see you. I was hoping you could…stay and talk a bit?"
He's silent for a moment as he stares at her. "I think we've said all we needed to say, haven't we, Simmons?"
She doesn't quite know how to answer that. There are in fact, a thousand things she wants to say, having imagined every conversation between her and Fitz nightly in her bunk, but seeing him in the flesh, so changed, so altered in a way she can't recognise, leaves those words clogged in her throat.
"I—"
"You heard Langston," he rushes on, looking in the direction where his team went. "It's not the best time, I have to go, and I think May and Daisy will be looking for you. I'm sure S.H.I.E.L.D.—"
"Please, Fitz." Her protesting plea comes out unbidden, causing him to pause.
The hardness in his face softens for a second, as he shakes his head with a small sigh. "I'm glad to see you well, Simmons. Take care of yourself."
That goodbye tastes like a subtle and involuntary form of rejection. It's not in him to be cruel at all but she feels the sharp sting of it just the same. The formality of his address is jarring—never in their years together had he spoken to her like that—, snagging the air in her lungs and widening the fissures in her heart.
Through eyes that suddenly burn hot, she watches despondently as he stalks out of the alcove and into the night.
oOo
The post-mission briefing goes by in a fog.
There isn't much she can say about the 084 at the end of a hard week at the lab. That it comes with the power to influence human behaviour as well as the ability to tear open a dimensional rift that existed for all of 4.56 seconds when the blast happened are cause enough to get S.H.I.E.L.D. lab techs moving a little faster and more enthusiastically. Test results remain inconclusive, especially with the kind of dark matter they've been dealing with, which isn't of the Earth variety, just to complicate matters.
But weak boundaries between realms, mysterious portals, inter-dimensional slippages are all quite beyond any of their expertise right now. Maybe they'll just leave it to the self-styled Avengers to deal with those—Jemma couldn't actually care less.
Kranz takes over from her with a technology update and she's more than happy to sit back to let her mind wander to the previous week's meeting with Fitz.
It's new fodder that she obsesses over, and how wrong it'd gone in so many ways and how she might pull a mulligan. As she'd done the entire week with every spare moment she had, taking apart every facet of their brief interaction and putting every word and action under a mental microscope, the immutable conclusion that emerges each time is that Fitz had truly given up on them.
Her thumbs brush absently across the pages of the report she'd just given Coulson as her jumbled thoughts finally coalesce in an idea so reckless that it continually twists her insides in dreaded anticipation.
Only when the rest of the room clear out later does Jemma ask to speak to Coulson privately.
oOo
With a tight, tearful hug from Daisy, cheerful little twin smirks from Hunter and Bobbi and solemn nods from May and Mack, she walks off the Zephyr with her bags and into the dreary and muggy London evening.
There will be a ton of favours she knows she'll owe Hunter by the time she's settled. But he's gone through hoops and hoops to get her here—something she suspects that he's doing more for Fitz than her after his wry confession that he's been in and out of Fitz's corner since he'd left—by giving her more than probably deserves at the moment.
Pressing the button and the code that she's been given at the entrance of the nondescript warehouse where Edwin has his team headquartered, Jemma waits until the opaque doors slide open to reveal an empty sitting area and an electronic barrier that requires a biometric scan before she can even step foot into its inner sanctum.
The barrier slides open silently before she can do anything else, the corridor ahead lighting up as she shoulders the bags with a deep breath and walks ahead.
She's rustled the hornet's nest. No turning back now for the stings that await.
It's Edwin Sorcher himself who meets her halfway, the man whose name she can finally put a face to. There's an assessing glint in his eye before he holds out his hand and she gets the uneasy feeling that he already knows way more than he lets on.
"Jemma Simmons, in the flesh. Welcome to Citadel."
oOo
Housed in the residential zone of Edwin's cluster of warehouses, her smallish bunk isn't unlike the ones she'd lived in previously, except that it isn't underground or on a plane. The squeaks and squawks of urban wildlife interrupts her first early morning, and along with the sunrise to regulate her body's biorhythms, waking up in London's backyard of sorts takes some getting used to.
It is far from a difficult change in routine really, the adjustment passably pleasant as far as transatlantic upheavals go.
But everything else lies outside Jemma's comfort zone; she's eking out a series of paths she'd never envisioned past S.H.I.E.L.D.'s grey walls since the Academy.
The induction here in contrast, is as quick as the one at S.H.I.E.L.D. had been bureaucratic and multi-tiered. Without mincing words, Edwin points out everything that she needs to know, gets her settled in Fitz's small lab with a makeshift space of her own and then ushers her out of the building to look at the residential spaces of the place.
The discussion she had with Edwin the night before had instilled a new sense of hope, prompting her to wonder if this was what Fitz craved when he'd left: the exhilarating chance of a fresh start, the opportunity to forget and forge something entirely new on his own.
The bland terms of their agreement had been hashed out, rehashed and then renegotiated, until both were satisfied with what they'd put on the table. At the end of it, with her contract drafted, Edwin told her unhappily that she'd driven a very hard bargain, then ordered her straight to her bunk to get some rest after their signatures were put to paper.
Not for the first time, Jemma wonders just how presumptuous this move of hers to South London really is, depending as she is, on the assumption that the decade-long friendship with Fitz is more invincible than they'd both thought, and that Fitz would be willing to have anything to do with her after what she'd done to him. That he'd still have her around in any kind of capacity, even if he's seeing someone else, as heart-splintering as that might be.
It isn't a coincidence that her arrival is timed such that Fitz's team is away on assignment for a week in Africa, thanks to Hunter, whose private conversations with Edwin (and Fitz) have probably paved the way.
oOo
In the lab, two days after her stepping off the Zephyr, Jemma takes a moment to centre herself. This small space, even without Fitz, is Fitz in every way, the tells (the slight quirk in the arrangement of his half-finished prototypes, the physical files, the tools) in this pristine, organised room only obvious to her because she knows—knew—him in and out. This ingrained habit of his hasn't changed at least, as meagre a source of comfort as she has in putting together what she knows of him in his absence.
She's on his turf now, attempting to piece back together their shattered relationship, or rather, to tell him how much she'd missed him beyond friendship, that she'd stop at nothing to show him how important he is to her—
The rush of footsteps into the lab cuts even that thought away as she turns to face, for the second time, shocked blue eyes.
It finally registers on her that he's back early, still fully dressed in the same black tactical gear she'd first seen him in, with an atypical-looking rifle of sorts slung over his right shoulder and a backpack hanging on his left.
Five full days early, which meant the assignment hadn't gone according to plan, leaving her as flustered and as unprepared as him for this unexpected meeting.
Just the thought of this sends her into a freefall. Like a week and a half ago, when that shock detonation had sent her careening into him, adrenaline and anticipation now flow through her veins, fusing into a mass of tumbling emotions she can't separate from one another.
"Fitz," she begins with trepidation, "I—"
Taking a tentative step into the lab, Fitz blinks twice and rubs a hand over his face as confusion slowly melds into irritation. "This has to be a fucking joke."
She steels herself for the outburst, needing some courage for the specific and uncomfortable questions that are just around the corner.
"No, it isn't, Fitz. You wouldn't talk to me the last time we met, so I…I took matters in my own hands."
"You…you took matters—what have you done, Simmons?" He stalks to his bench, dumps the rifle on it and unceremoniously drops his pack on the floor before turning to face her with his arms crossed over his chest. "Why are you here?"
It's only now, in the harsh fluorescent lighting that she gets a good look at him. With a pang, she realises there's so much she finds unfamiliar and yet familiar.
But it doesn't matter that he's slightly bulkier and more leanly-muscled and assumes some sort of distance between them like a protective coat of arms.
The hard introspection she'd put herself through had merely helped her articulate clearly what she hadn't bothered to put into words before: that she has loved every iteration of him and probably always will, from the handsome, pasty boy in mismatched colours and odd cardigans, to the man who struggles with trembling hands and faltering speech…to the one right now who's harder to read, who's more confident in his own abilities, whose distrust now shines a little too brightly in his gaze.
The old hurt, however, lingers in his eyes. That vibrant blue which she loves, becomes a faded and dimmed version of what she remembers as he looks at her, now hooded and fortified by the mile-high walls he had constructed for himself in the intervening months.
There's so much timidity in her voice when she ventures a question of her own. "How…how have you been, Fitz?"
He pinches the bridge of his nose, squeezing his eyes shut. "Don't—I…I…just, don't make this any harder, Simmons. Just answer the question."
"I'm trying not to, I swear." She's fumbling around, hating this stilted, awkward moment that has barely just begun. It's infinitely harder to be brave, she finds, to do the right thing, to say the right words, and later, to stick around, than to run away and call it the convenient solution to problems. "I just wanted to be your friend again, Fitz, if you'd let me."
He stiffens noticeably on her emphasis of that word.
Not the best of beginnings, then.
"You've come a long way for that," he says flatly, his hands already busy with dismantling his vest and weapons, stopping only when he finally notices the new setup of his small lab and the space sharing that he'd be required to do in the future. "What's this really all about?"
"Can't you tell?" She asks softly, desperate to erase the wariness that laces his response. And to set that initial course of action, she knows that he rightfully needs an explanation—no, her full disclosure—of her sudden insertion in a space that's probably sacred to him. But her frantic thoughts, rushing at a mile an hour, prove to be tiny snares that refuse to settle into logical coherence.
"Can't I tell…? No, I can't, Simmons!" He gestures wildly around him, his escalating distress manifesting as a trembling hand and a raised voice. "All I know is that we've just returned from Africa, I'm bloody tired and…and…there's…there's this! You!"
Mutely, she watches him pace with a fist pressed to his mouth, anxiously trying to find the words other than sorry.
"Fitz, please, please listen to me."
He stops abruptly in a corner of the room, fighting for control as much as she is.
"I—I know I've made an unforgivable mess, Fitz. I know that. You have every right to be angry. I took advantage of our friendship, your affection and your attention…I just…I just wish I saw it sooner before and—"
"And so here you are, trying to apologise?"
"It's more than that, Fitz. I know we didn't part on the best of terms—"
He interrupts her with some annoyance. "At the risk of rehashing a history that I'd rather leave alone till the end of the universe comes, I don't recall ever trying to make you feel bad about it. I offered to do those things and you know damn well too that I did. To give you the oxygen. To bring Will back."
"I know! And I wish you weren't so noble—"
"Because that wouldn't give me the chance to play the hero?" He cuts in bitingly.
Frustration pools deep at his insistent interruptions, at his deliberate dodging of the conversation that she's been trying to steer them into having. "That's not what I'm saying!"
"Is that why you're here?" Fitz stubbornly repeats the question, the pinched look on his face growing with each punctuated syllable. "If this is some effort on your part to—" He paces in a tight circle, gesturing at her then at himself, seemingly at a loss for words. "There's no need to make amends, Simmons. I did what I, no—we did what we had to do, and that's it, okay? We both made choices and now we live with them."
"That's just it, Fitz! I can't live with them!" Some deep-buried instinct born of emotional turmoil tells Jemma that this is their last chance. Mess this up and there'll be nothing more left of them to salvage.
He tilts his head upwards and sighs. "Some things are best left alone."
"This isn't!"
Conversely, his agitation spurs her on. It's the only thing that she's hanging onto right now—any show of emotion, any kind of reaction from him—because it's the only indication she has that he hasn't turned completely indifferent to their friendship, or whatever he's willing to restore to them both.
"What about S.H.I.E.L.D.?" Fitz demands suddenly.
He's raking his hand through his hair, rubbing his hand over his mouth—all the signs of increasing agitation that she wants to take away, but only exacerbates.
"Indefinite leave of absence," she tells him simply, feeling the burden of the past few months shed immediately, as though giving voice to those words could make that fact more concrete than it really is. "And a temporary place here with Citadel."
The shock that rolls off him is like a tangible wave of disbelief and incredulity. "You what? Coulson allowed that?"
"I told Coulson that I needed to go. And with some help from Hunter, I did. They both understand."
"It's been six months, Jemma!" He finally yells, the agony so clear now on his face that it hauls her back to the very day he'd left. "I've only had six sodding months away from you…that's like a magical number isn't it? Six sodding months to get over you and I really thought I was on my way there. And then you waltz in here after all this time like nothing's out of place, wanting our friendship back like nothing ever broke it in the first place—"
"No, that's not it at all!" She puts in urgently as tears start to burn at the corner of her eyes, as the pressure on her chest grows with the revelation he'd just tossed at her. If the months of separation have brought such a different outcome for her, and as eager as she is to talk out her personal revelations, it's harder to accept that Fitz isn't even willing to meet her halfway.
"I…I couldn't come to terms with what your leaving really meant, Fitz. For six months, I wondered and struggled with how I'd done everything wrong such that you had to leave. Then envisioning a future without you…I couldn't do it."
"Really? When you came back from Hydra, when you chose Will…that was you moving onto a future without us." Fitz stalks up to her, forcing her back against the lab bench as he leans in, heedless of her personal space. "I did nothing, Simmons, that you didn't already first do to us. I left because there was nothing else there for me. Maybe it's the coward's way out, but it was the only option I could stomach back then."
His mirthless chuckle and flinty stare dissect her as he delivers blow after blow of hard truth that feels like a blade in her ribs.
"Is that what you wanted to hear? I helped bring Will back to you, because it was him you wanted. Will, the man you said you loved! You've made that abundantly clear. So tell me, why are you here, in South London, when you should be at S.H.I.E.L.D. with Will Daniels at your side?"
The anger that pours from him shouldn't be unexpected. But everything shifts yet again in a fundamental way, condensing, shrinking around her despite the conclusions she'd come to in the months they were apart. Hearing everything from Fitz's perspective merely confirms how her words about Will, tossed out in a fit of despair and confusion, had merely raked over festering wounds and left them with such prominent scars.
Time might have passed, but the current of grief and hurt remains. Jemma knows that full well. But to adequately convey that it's him that she'd really ever wanted or needed or that she's beyond sorry for playing too big a part in making him feel that he could never measure up, is a momentous task she's clueless to undertake.
"Will isn't even in the picture."
He retreats hurriedly as though she'd burned him and hikes a thumb backwards over his shoulder in challenge. "Everything you've said and done previously contradicts that statement."
She stops short for a few seconds.
Fitz had always held his own in an argument, their competitive natures always providing the creative fodder that had driven them forward together. But this man…this man, unmoved by her half-baked confessions and still full of questioning doubt, makes her feel as though Fitzsimmons is truly over.
This man in front of her, programmed by betrayal and holding her up to relentless scrutiny, is terrifying.
Never had she wished more than now that she could take back that thoughtless statement said so long ago; evidently, it'd torn Fitz up more than he'd let on and just…why hadn't she looked past her own confusion to see how devastating this would have been on him?
"Don't you want to know what happened after you left?"
His scoff is loud in the enclosed space, his knuckles already white from the death grip he has on the lab bench which he's leaning against.
"It's none of my business, Simmons, what you do now."
"You're hearing it, anyway," she snaps in return, tired of hitting her head against the Fitz-sized-wall repeatedly for all the lack of progress they'd made. "Will…left. Those first few days after you—I can't remember them too well, only that I couldn't stop obsessing over why you went away and how big a part I'd played in it. I think he tried to talk to me, but all I could think about was you and the gaping hole you'd made when you left. So he…all he could do was to walk away a week later and I can't even blame him once for it."
Fitz is already shaking his head as she barrels on ahead in a rambling glut in order to quell the doubts and hurts that he'd been sequestered with, panicked that she's on the verge of losing him again when she's so close in laying the first, small brick in their wrecked foundation of mutual respect and trust.
"I missed you, Fitz. I don't know what to say to convince you, but you're really all that I want. In whatever way you want me back. You're the only one I could love in the way you need me to. It's you, Fitz. I just need you by my side, Fitz, in whatever way you want us to be. I'm…sorry I took so long, I'm sorry I couldn't figure it out earlier and made you suffer. I need you to believe me. If you couldn't trust anything I said before, please believe me this time."
The light-headedness that sweeps in after her clumsy, inelegant confession leaves her shaking and wrung-out.
He flinches instead, his scepticism almost a tangible entity as he hangs his head. "Did you come to this conclusion only after I left?"
Involuntarily, the question makes her think back to the days and weeks that had greyed out everything else and brought to the fore the mind-crippling fear that she'd truly lost him.
"If I can forget those months apart from you, it wouldn't be soon enough. If I thought Maveth was my greatest nightmare," she pauses as he briefly turns shimmering eyes to her, "the last half a year surpassed that a million times. I don't know how else to convince you, Fitz, because I know this probably sounds flaky and glib and…and hollow and empty. But could we, please, have this chance again?"
Fatigue and defeat wash out the anger in the slump of his shoulders.
"It doesn't work that way. We can't just turn back the clock, Simmons and you know it. There's no such thing as starting over, no reintroductions or the pretence that we're both 16 years old and achingly shy and completely out of our depths in a whole new world in an Academy too unprepared for us."
Not when the following years have left them out at pasture too long for the scars to be erased. It's what Fitz doesn't say but what she hears all the same. He's merely echoing what hadn't already occurred to her.
Still, her voice cracks as his implication sinks in. "You…you don't want to try? Not at all? Not even as colleagues?"
He fiddles anxiously with a spare part on the bench before putting it down, as though mulling his next words. When he finally looks up at her, the conflict and guilt written on his face break her all over again.
"This—this is not what I wanted at all, Simmons. Not someone who…who suddenly realises I'm worth something more only after I left, but hasn't been sure of it when I was around for years." He waves that bit away, as though it's an insignificant detail that he shouldn't have bothered with. "The point is, I wanted you happy and I've long accepted that it wouldn't be with me. So you don't have do this only because Will is gone."
Her denial is sure, this time. "You don't understand! I'm not—"
"—and honestly? I…I don't know what you're really saying right now," he squeezes his eyes shut in consternation, "I'm not ready to…I can't process this, alright?"
Caught at this impasse, misery lodges itself as a lump in her throat. Floundering in an area where there's no specific scientific method to follow, no easy answers waiting at the end of the line, she's steering a ship into a treacherous storm without any navigation markers.
It takes her a few tries to find her voice, as impulse prompts her to move towards him and grab both his hands tightly in hers.
"You were once my best friend. But you're also much more than that." He snaps his eyes back to hers as the familiarity of the words washes over the both of them. "Please, Fitz, please let me show you."
