I'm sorry this final chapter has taken so long. I've had a horrible cold, and when I'm bunged up and headachy, concentrating on writing is impossible.

Thank you to everyone who has stuck with it, and also to those who have left me lovely reviews.

This last chapter is just mostly tying things up, but I hope it does so in a satisfying way. I knew exactly what was happening to them from the very beginning, but I'm not that good at writing fake science (I'm not that good at writing real science, either), so I haven't gone into it much, but I think it makes sense (well, does to me...).

Onwards!


Jemma struggles against the strong hands holding her in place, her whole body fighting to get away. This isn't fair. How can he be doing this? How can he be everywhere and nowhere, how can she search and search and not find Fitz, yet he can find her whenever he wants to? She feels so weak, so fatigued, but she keeps on trying to pull away, willing her body to not collapse under the strain of terror and exhaustion, because the adrenalin left her long ago, and she's not sure just how much longer she can go on. So, for now, she fights, her body twisting as she thrashes.

"Simmons..."

"No... NO! LET ME GO!" Jemma has no idea how this man knows her name, and she doesn't care - she just needs to get away, because all the while he's got hold of her, Fitz is alone and bleeding and needing her.

"Jemma!"

In the midst of her screaming, of her trying to kick him, something registers in the back of her mind, something familiar and calming, but because her first instinct is to try and escape, she can't concentrate on it.

"Jemma, stop! It's me, it's Coulson..."

What?

Confused, Jemma slows her movements, her eyes, from their position over his shoulder, move up to the man's face, and as they focus, as the mist of panic clears, she sees not the masked face of a maniac, but the concerned gaze of someone she recognises as warm and comforting and safe.

Her mouth drops open, a wretched sob falls from her lips, and she throws her arms around him, burying her face in his shoulder as relief floods through her.

"It's all right, you're okay... Look at me, Jemma."

She does so, lifting her head with effort, as if lead has replaced the bone of her skull, and it makes her grimace through her tears. "Fitz..."

"The others are looking for him. Tell me what happened."

She does so, as best she can, her normally articulate speech rushed, her words running into each other as she hurries through the nightmare of the last few hours. "Fitz is hurt, I know it. We need to find him!"

"Simmons, you're not going anywhere. Come over here, sit down - that's an order." Coulson leads her over to a fallen tree and sits her down on the trunk. He starts to look her over properly, turning her head this way and that, and Jemma winces as he dabs his tie against the wound by her temple.

It's then that Jemma realises that she must look a fright. She can feel the blood and dirt on her face, can see the mud that's streaked down her front and caked on her arms and legs.

"Oh, my god!"

Jemma's head shoots up at the breathless exclamation, and she sees Skye running towards her, the young agent's face clouded with concern.

"Jesus. What the hell happened to you?" She sits on the log next to Jemma, places one hand on her knee and the other on her arm. But it doesn't make her feel any better.

"Skye, stay here with Simmons - I'm going to go help May and Trip look for Fitz. Do not let her go anywhere."

"Yeah, sure," Skye nods.

Jemma pushes the tips of her fingers into the rough bark of the fallen tree, using the hard, jagged press of it to keep her grounded, because she feels as though at any second she'll float away on a wave of grief where Fitz is dead and everything as she knows it ceases to exist.

xxxx

Fitz cradles his aching hand against his chest, trying to ignore the biting sting of torn flesh and the warm dripping of his blood as he ambles aimlessly though the trees, still calling Jemma's name as he goes. His eyes are heavy, and he's starting to shiver, but whether that's because he's cold or because he's in shock, he can't tell. His head's starting to spin again, and it's slowing him down, but he continues to trip forward, because he's not going to stop until he finds her.

A rustle from behind has him spinning precariously round, and he squints into the darkness as he tries to spot the source of the noise, his breath quickening.

"Hey!" He moves forward, blinking as he tries to focus his gaze. "Come on out! I'm not afraid of you!" He's aware that he sounds a little drunk.

A shape looms before him, shrouded by the trees, and he tenses up, only to drop his shoulders seconds later, his jaw slackening and his brow furrowing in confusion. Just as he's starting to convince himself that he's hallucinating, the figure steps out into the moonlight and hurries towards him.

"Trip?"

"Fitz, man, what the hell happened to you?!"

Trip is in front of him and taking hold of his arm before he even has time to process anything. He tries to pull away. "We need to find Jemma - he's out there and she's in danger and we have to find her!"

"Fitz, calm down, the others are out there looking - we'll find her, I promise. Let me look at your hand..." He turns it over, and Fitz hisses as fingers press gently just at the edge of the wound. "Sorry," Trip grimaces, and releases his hand. "You haven't lost any feeling - that's a good thing." He rips off the sleeve of his shirt, pulls at the seams so it tears and becomes just a strip of material - he ties it around Fitz's hand in an effort to stem the bleeding. Fitz barely flinches this time.

A cry suddenly pierces the air from near the direction from which Trip had appeared, and they listen as grunts and thuds fill the air before becoming silent again. Seconds later, May appears, dragging a body behind her.

"That's him! That's-" Fitz wobbles as he moves forward, and a hand flies out to steady him.

"Easy, easy." Trip holds him upright, and nods towards May. "We need to get him to a hospital." He nods towards the unconscious man behind her. "Any idea who he is?"

"No, but I'm sure I can get him to talk once he wakes up." She opens up her palm to reveal a small, round, metal button. "He was holding this."

Trip leans forward to look at it. "What is it?"

"Not a clue. Fitz?"

Fitz shakes his head, his vision cloudy. "Never seen it. I'd have to..." he sways, and May pockets the small device and hauls up the still masked man lying at her feet.

"I want to see his face..."

"Not now. Let's find the others and get you out of here."

"Jemma..."

"We'll find her."

"How did you know where we were?"

May looks at him sympathetically, but he can tell that this is something he should already know. "Your phones have trackers, remember?"

Oh, bloody hell. Yes, of course - after all, he was the one who'd put them there. He'd smack his hand against his head if he had the energy.

"Hey, don't worry about it. You've had enough to be dealing with for one night."

xxxx

The cry of relief that tears from Jemma's throat when she sees him nearly rips Fitz in two. Trip is still half holding him up, but with renewed vigour he pulls away from him and runs haphazardly towards her. Dried blood is smeared down and across her face, is matted in her hair, her body plastered with mud, but she's alive, and that's all that matters, despite the fact that he wishes he had the energy to turn round and kick the unconscious Mask-Face in his stomach for hurting her, because he clearly has. She falls into his arms and sobs into his neck, and he holds her tight, breathing her in to make sure she's really real.

"I thought you were dead! I couldn't find you anywhere, and... Oh, god, your hand!" Jemma wraps one of her own around his wrist and looks at the blood stained cloth that's tied around it. "He bit you, didn't he? I saw his mouth smeared in blood, and I thought..." she chokes back another sob and presses her cheek to his.

He threads his good hand through her hair in an attempt to soothe her. "I'm all right, I..." The shot of adrenalin that had briefly seared through him wears off, and he stumbles a little against her.

Coulson appears at his side and slings a supporting arm around him. "Let's get you two out of here."

xxxx

The drive to the hospital is a quiet one. Jemma clings to Fitz and watches him closely. He's conscious, but in shock. She can't see the damage to his hand beneath its wrappings, but she can tell that it's bad.

They're in the car with Coulson and Skye. Trip and May are in their rental car with the man who'd caused this whole mess. As it happens, now they're able to leave the area easily without getting lost or going round in circles, and while she's desperate to know just who he is and how he was able to keep them captive, that's not as important right now as getting to the hospital is so they can both be checked out. She's certain that she's fine, unlike Fitz, but Fitz had mentioned that she'd hit her head during their earlier collision, and Couslon was adamant that she get checked out, too.

Once there, they're separated, much to Jemma's chagrin, but she doesn't have the energy to argue. It's almost three hours before she sees Fitz again, and to her relief, he's looking a lot better. There's a drip in his arm, the fluid bag almost empty, and his hand is bandaged neatly. He has colour back in his cheeks, and when he sees her, the smile that lights up his face almost makes her cry again. She sits down on the edge of his bed and sighs as he wraps his arms around her, his forehead resting against hers, and she makes sure to mind the tube attached to him as she hugs him back.

"You're okay..."

"Twelve stitches, but it still works." He wriggles his fingers to show her, and she gives him a watery smile.

"I was so scared."

"Me, too. But it's over. We're safe. All I needed to know was that you were okay... You are okay, right? What did the doctor say?" He pulls back to stare at her, concern written openly across his face as he takes in the patch taped to the side of her head from where she'd scraped it against the tree.

She nods. "I'm fine. Just cuts and bruises. No concussion, although I was forced to take a leaflet about it, just in case, as if we don't already know the signs." She picks up his injured hand carefully. "You'll have a scar," she says, sadly. She knows he was lucky, knows it could have been much worse, but she's always loved his hands, and while she of course won't love them any less, she's angry that he's been marked in such a barbaric way, that the part of him he uses the most, not just in everyday life, but for his job, has been violated so thoughtlessly. He's had a tough year, and to lose the use of a hand now, after everything he's been through, after not knowing at first how his arm would heal, would have been utterly devastating for him.

Fitz shakes his head. "I can live with a scar. I couldn't live without you." He cups her face and leans in to press his lips gently to hers.

"Knock knock!" Skye's voice floats round from behind the curtain, and when Fitz calls her through, she steps into the cubicle with a smile on her face. "The nurse is gonna come take out your IV in a minute, and she'll bring the pills for your hand and your discharge papers, and then we can get out of here and tuck you both up in bed. Trip returned the car for you and is sorting out the damage, and May is back at the Bus interrogating that lunatic as we speak. Don't worry," she says, her face softening, "we'll find out just who he is and how he did it. And then he'll pay."

Jemma shudders involuntarily. She hates the thought that he might still be there when they return. What will happen to him and who they'll have to turn him over to depends entirely on who he is and how he managed to trap them - it might be more than the local police force can handle, especially if it turns out that he's been using technology that no average Joe has even seen or can even comprehend.

"Don't worry," Fitz comforts, as if reading her mind. "You won't have to see him - he can't hurt us anymore."

"I know." She worries her lip between her teeth, and drops her voice to a whisper, her eyes shifting away from Fitz's gaze. "I just honestly thought, after being taunted by him for so long, that his intention was to frighten us to death, to drive us mad, and when it felt like it was starting to work..." She shakes her head and watches numbly as Fitz covers her hand with his. "I don't want to go back to the Bus, tonight; I don't want to sleep in that little bunk on my own."

"You won't have to."

"We can't share - there's only just enough room for one of us. One of us will end up squashed against the wall or falling out of bed."

"No, I meant that I'll come sleep on your floor."

Jemma brings her eyes back up to his, and the beautiful pools of blue staring back at her, earnest and true, make her heart swell. She cradles his cheek in her hand, his skin rough where stubble is starting to poke through. "That's sweet, but no. You need a proper night's rest in a bed."

"I have an idea."

Skye. They'd almost forgotten that she was there. The hacker smiles at them. "Give me a minute." She moves back through the curtain, nearly colliding with the nurse as she enters at the same time. Skye gives her a wave of apology as she goes.

"You'll be pleased to know that you can escape at last," the nurse smiles, moving over to disconnect the IV and remove the cannula from Fitz's arm. "You must be Jemma," she smiles, glancing up at her before looking down to concentrate on her work. Fitz hisses a little as the needle is carefully pulled from the inside of his elbow. "I tried to find you earlier, and when I asked Leo what you looked like, he said "She looks like an angel". He wasn't wrong."

Fitz blushes, and Jemma laughs. He's adorable when he's embarrassed, but she's touched by his description.

"I'm pretty sure you're not supposed to embarrass your patients," Fitz grumbles, and the nurse grins at Jemma knowingly before taping some gauze over where the cannula had been to stem the bleeding. She pats his knee and picks up two boxes that she'd placed on the bed when she'd come in. "Now, these are your painkillers," she says, holding up the first one. "Take one or two, every four to six hours, and don't take more than eight in a day." She passes them to him, then holds up the other box. "These are your antibiotics. Take one three times a day - breakfast, lunch, and dinner would be best - and make sure you finish the full course. They're just a precaution, but nevertheless, do not miss any."

Fitz takes them from her hand, and just manages to suppress an eye-roll. "I won't."

"I'll make sure he won't," Jemma assures her. While Fitz probably wouldn't, she knew what he was like when his mind wandered - she'd have to make sure he set an alarm on his phone to remind him, just in case they were separated at some point for any reason. And at that thought, she feels her blood turn to ice in her veins. She never wants to be separated from him again, not even for work purposes, even though she knows it's inevitable.

"Excellent." The nurse picks up the papers she'd also placed down, and hands them to him. "You're now discharged."

Fitz throws her a smile of gratitude. "Thanks."

She beams one back. "You're very welcome."

Once they're alone again, Jemma looks at Fitz questioningly, her mouth stretching upwards, and her eyes crinkling. "An angel?"

"I was delirious," he huffs, his fingers picking at an invisible thread on the bed-sheet.

"So, you don't think I look like an angel?" Her tone is light and teasing, but Fitz still manages to look up at her with a vaguely alarmed expression.

"I never said that."

"So, you do?" Jemma catches her tongue between her teeth, seeing the exact moment of comprehension on Fitz's face when he realises that she's messing with him.

"Hmmm, maybe I did, but I think, on the basis of new evidence, that you're a little too mean to be an angel."

"Hey!" Jemma laughs, and buries her face in his neck as he envelopes her again. But seconds later, the melancholy that had temporarily left her swoops back in, darkening her thoughts like a storm cloud passing overhead, and she grips him tighter.

"Right, I have some good news for you guys."

Jemma and Fitz both look up at Skye simultaneously as she steps back into the cubicle.

"Coulson's booked you a room in a little hotel not far from the airfield. You can sleep there, and one of us will swing by and get you in the morning. We're not flying anywhere tonight."

Fitz smiles appreciatively, his eyes tinged red from exhaustion. "Thanks, Skye."

"No problem. Come on, let's get out of here."

xxxx

They're back on the Bus late the next morning, after having spent the night curled up together in a fitful sleep plagued by nightmares, and now they're being told things that Fitz is having trouble getting his head around. He knows about aliens, knows the limitless possibilities when it comes to their technology, but still, the thought that someone could open up and jump through portals whenever they pleased, and how that actually worked, made the faint headache he still had a little worse. They've dealt with a dead man trapped between worlds, before, but to be able to jump through a portal at the push of a tiny button, a portal so invisible that they had been driving through it over and over again... The engineer in him wants to take it apart and study it, probe its inner workings and see if he can recreate it - after all, he's managed to repair Asgardian metal, before. And he knows Jemma is thinking the same thing. But, for now, the events of the night before are far too fresh in their minds to to be able to concentrate at the level needed to work through such a discovery. His eyes are already drooping, and they only woke-up a few hours ago. Plus, his hand aches beyond belief, despite the fact that he's dosed up on painkillers.

"I have no idea how he escaped our radar. When we captured those Hydra agents, we thought that was it, a two-man team, and we'd recovered all the tech they had. It was planned - he'd managed to listen in on the conversation you had the night before you went out there, and then he tracked you and lay in wait. I'm sorry - this should never have happened."

Coulson sounds angry, disappointed in himself, but it's not his fault. Fitz knows it, and Jemma knows it.

"Sir-"

"No. I know what you're going to say, but you're part of my team, and you're my responsibility. He went after you because you're not trained like the others. And if we hadn't got there when we did..." Coulson sighs and rubs a hand across his eyes.

He doesn't need to finish that sentence. It might have seemed like he was trying to frighten them to death, but in the end he would have killed them, used the cleaver that he'd been taunting them with and murdered them without a second thought. Fitz swallows hard, forcing down the sudden queasiness that's crawling up from his stomach. He glances at Jemma, who's staring down at Coulson's desk, her fingers drawling non-committal circles across the wood. She's pale, and he reaches for her hand and squeezes reassuringly.

"This isn't over," Coulson finally continues, his face set in determination. "They won't get away with this."

Fitz nods. "Thank you, sir."

Coulson pops open the button on his jacket and sits down behind his desk. "I don't want either of you anywhere near the lab today. No offence, but neither of you look fit for it. Go sleep, watch some TV, drink tea."

Jemma's face perks up a little, and she gives the director an amused half-smile. "Is that all you think we do? Drink tea?"

He smirks at her. "The way you Brits get through it, I assumed it had magical properties."

Jemma snorts out a laugh.

"That's better. Now, go on," he inclines his head towards the door, "go relax - that's an order."

They don't need telling twice.

xxxx

"Jem?" Fitz approaches her with a cup of tea and nudges her knee with his leg to get her attention. She glances up at him with tired eyes and a smile that doesn't quite reach the amber gaze he's looking into, although the "Thank you" she gives him is genuine as he sets her mug down in front of her. When he lowers himself next to her, she curls into him, and he presses a kiss to her hair.

They drink their tea in silence, trying to ignore the fact that the crazed Hydra agent is not too far away, locked up in the Cage after Couslon found that he'd have to go back with them, and Fitz has nearly nodded off when Jemma touches his face and brings his attention back to her.

"We survived," she says, as if she's only just realised that they're actually still here. Fitz weaves his fingers through hers.

"We always will."

"Fitz-"

He moves his hand quickly and cuts her off with a finger to her lips. "No. I know what you're going to say, but let us just wallow in ignorant bliss, for now, okay?"

Jemma smiles softly at him, and it reaches her eyes this time. "Fine. But it doesn't mean we can be lax when it comes to protecting ourselves from danger."

"Of course not. I just need to believe it, otherwise I'll never get anything else done." He knows she understands that, and this is confirmed when she rests her head against his shoulder and sighs. Her fingers slip back between his, and soon they're both asleep, cuddled up on the small sofa in the living area, and thankfully, unlike the night before, their slumber goes undisturbed.