A Doctor Who AU because I am a massive whovian. Warnings for therapy, minor character death and car crash. Hope you enjoy this one.
When she was five, he saved her life.
She was driving home with her mother, driving home from their annual holiday in Perthshire when suddenly the car was thrown of the road, and toppled into a ditch.
The rest of the memories were a jumble for her, she didn't know what had happened fully. All she knew was that they were upside down, in a ditch, in the Scottish countryside.
There was a man who rescued her. A man who had a Scottish accent and curly hair.
The man who saved her life.
But he wasn't able to save her mother.
She was pronounced dead on the scene.
Jemma Simmons was five when she became an orphan.
The next twenty years of her life were a roller coaster for her, to say the least.
A month after the accident, once she was discharged from the hospital, she was placed with an emergency foster family, who eventually took her in full time.
They had one son, two years older than her, but he cared for her, protected her.
And he was the only one to listen to her when she started to talk about her mother's death.
About how it was aliens that had caused the crash.
Aliens who had killed her mother.
Her adoptive parents, discouraged this and sought advice, but were told it was her way of coping, that it was her way of processing what she couldn't yet comprehend.
And no one believed her.
No one except her brother, Lance.
He believed her.
But then again, boys at that age had a tendency to be obsessed with space and aliens and astronauts, and Lance Hunter was no exception.
Years passed and while Lance started to doubt the idea, Jemma only grew more passionate about it.
And grew more obsessed about the man who had rescued her.
A man that she called the Fitz.
"He's a time traveller," she would say.
"He's going to come back and rescue me."
"He's going to let me explore the stars."
It was at this point that her new parents decided that therapy would be the best option of the young girl.
But it proved to be the opposite in fact, only making Jemma sink further into her fantasy world.
And by the time that high school had rolled around, Jemma, now aged eleven, had learnt that this was not the best thing to talk about, to tell others.
And at this point, Lance who was entering his teenage years, didn't care much about her fantasies, but more about her mental health, worrying that this was the start of something worrying.
He kept an eye out for his younger sister in school.
And that's when he noticed it.
The name calling.
The isolation.
The bullying.
Age thirteen proved to be a tough one for Lance Hunter, worrying about his younger sister, dealing with the pressures of school and choosing his subjects that would affect the rest of his life and dealing with the drama that comes with a teenage romance.
With a Barbara Morse.
Barbara, or Bobbi as she preferred to go back, instantly clicked.
Bobbi listened to Jemma's worries and helped her presume her interests, something that everyone hadn't did.
Together, they pursued their interests in biochemistry, and while Hunter and Bobbi where on and off more than a light switch, Jemma and Bobbi remained close friends, even getting a house together for university.
University something that Jemma went to two years early, having skipped two years of high school when staff there realised just what an intelligent woman she was.
Half way through their first year, however, Jemma had to drop out on medical grounds, and Lance moved in with them, both helping out with Jemma, and also rekindling his romance with Bobbi yet again.
It was another four years before Jemma was able to get her first PhD. And another five after that until she saw Fitz again.
When she was twenty-five, he changed her life.
Showing her far off galaxies and creatures that she couldn't even imagine, not even in her wildest dreams.
Letting her explore the past and experience the future.
And he also told her the truth about her mother's death.
That there had been Graske on the loose, and that he was trying to deal with it when it had run in front of her mother's car, confusing it for something other than it was, had swerved to avoid it, unable to break in time, causing the car to roll side over side into the ditch, before landing upside down.
Fitz had seen this, feeling a deep guilt, and had rushed to help.
He had offered to save her mother first, but Jemma Simmons had inherited that goodness inside of her from her mother, and along with her maternal instincts, had refused the help until her daughter was safe.
Fitz couldn't deny her requests and so he saved the young girl. And her mother later passed away.
Fitz, meanwhile, sat with the young Jemma, in a field in Scotland, with the rain pouring down and told her what he was.
How he was a Time Lord, and how it was his duty to protect as many people as possible.
But sometimes that he couldn't save everyone.
When the emergency services came, he passed them onto her, a girl now an orphan, and left.
But not before promising her that he would take her to the stars.
A promise he had kept, one that lasted twenty years for her, and twenty two hundred for him.
In the two years that she spent in his company, a relationship blossomed between the two of them.
For the human fell in love with the Time Lord.
But when she turned twenty-seven, Jemma Simmons faced certain death at the hands of a Daleks, and it was only regeneration energy that lingered in the T.A.R.D.I.S. that had saved her.
Turning her into a human/Time Lord hybrid. Something that was dangerous.
Something that was powerful.
Something that should never have existed.
But it did.
And Fitz started to notice it's impacts on her.
How she was repeating everything she was saying.
But what really hurt him, pained both of his hearts, was when her headache brought her to her knees, causing her to release a scream of agony.
When she was twenty-seven, he had erased her life.
All memories of him. From when she was five, to when she twenty-seven.
Every thought of him.
Every dream that she had ever had of him.
Everything was gone.
Of course she had objected, of courses she had complained.
And she had cried, screaming, begging not to lose him.
Not after all she had suffered.
She couldn't lose him now.
But she had.
She had lost him in an instant, like she had lost her mother.
And when she had to say her final goodbye, it was with a kiss upon his lips and a confession whispered into her hair.
It was with tears soaking his shirt.
It was with more pain than she had ever experienced in her life.
It was with her memories being taken from her.
It was with sleep claiming her.
He took her back to the only two people that she had in her life.
Bobbi and Hunter.
When he took her to their house, tears escaped from Bobbi, as she took the woman that she considered a sister into her arms. Jemma was still unconscious and Fitz told them that she would be for the next number of hours, until her brain regained some sense of normality.
Fitz explained to the only two people she had, her family that she could never know of him, of their adventures or else she would die. That he had erased all her memories to protect her.
Hunter nodded, hating to admit that his younger sister's hero had to disappear and that she couldn't be with the one who truly made her happy.
And when Fitz told them that they had to get rid of all her art that she had done of him, Hunter stood and left, unable to take any more.
Bobbi, however stayed, and nodded, promising that she would do whatever she could to protect Jemma, and whispering reassurances Jemma would never hear.
Fitz stood up to leave, and handed a confused Bobbi a box.
Inside was a key to a cottage.
The cottage in Perthshire.
It was the only thing that he could do to make up for the pain that he had caused.
Bobbi took it with thanks, and lead Fitz to the door, unable to prolong the inevitable any longer.
Standing in the street in that cold November in his evening, Fitz looked at the house one last time and said three words.
"I love you."
I just really value the Lance and Jemma BROTP.