Simmons was well aware of the fact that a part of Fitz's brain was damaged beyond healing. That a part of it would never work again. There were days when it hurt him. Literally hurt him with headache so strong he couldn't stand even the tiniest sound or light. His migraines were strong in the first month after the accident, appearing far too often for Simmons liking, but as the time passed they were less frequent. Usually they could soothe the pain with meds. Not anymore.
It pained her to hear his moans of agony. She couldn't stand them.
"Why do you torture yourself?" Skye stood next to her, looking worried.
Simmons looked up from her place on the floor next to the closed door to Fitz's room. She spent the last half an hour straining her ears to hear anything coming from his room, to pick up soft whines full of pain that were to be expected. There was nothing she could do, but she couldn't make herself leave that spot, part of her hoping he would call and she would finally be able to do something useful then, something that would help ease his suffering even a little.
He never called.
"I don't." Simmons denied.
"Then why are you sitting here?"
It was a good question. She wanted to go inside, to be with him, to hold his hands and kiss his forehead to make it better, but she couldn't. Every time he tried to move resulted in nausea, so he just lay in his bed, buried under a blanket, head tucked under his arm to block out everything around him. He couldn't stand light and he would wake up the moment someone entered the room, his sharpened hearing catching the sound of footsteps no matter how quiet she tried to be. Sleep was the only thing taking his pain away, so she was determined to not wake him up. Which left her there, on a cold concrete floor outside of the dark and uncaring door to his room. She was like an electron, being pulled closer by Fitz's proton but at the same time kept away by the electron shield of the closed door, incapable of getting closer nor breaking away.
"I've finished my work in the lab for today. Fitz's migraine started around nine hours ago, so it should be over soon. He will be hungry then." Simmons tried to explain.
"He will come to the kitchen when he feels better. No need to guard his door, it won't run away." Skye didn't seem convinced. Not even the tiniest bit.
"I can't just leave him all alone with this, Skye." She added. "It's my fault he's going through this. I can't give him any painkillers. Standard ones don't work and I can't give him anything stronger. He's taking too many meds already, I can't mix them." She bit her lower lip going through this problem yet again, not finding any satisfying solution. "No painkiller will work well with the meds that he started taking recently, not like with his old ones. Side effects. So now he has to just bear with it and wait until it passes." Simmons was silent for a while, thinking about how much she should say, then looked away from Skye. "It was me who decide to change his meds." She admitted. "I'd known it would make using painkillers impossible. I... I thought that it would be better. That it's better if it's just physical pain bothering him, not conflicted emotions tearing him apart from the inside, because of meds affecting his hormones."
"You keep forgetting that he agreed." Skye pointed out, because seriously, how often can one dwell on the same topic and repeat the same conversation? "You asked him about this, and he agreed for it. You didn't do anything wrong."
"I did everything wrong." She didn't want to even start counting her latest mistakes regarding Fitz. Not again.
Once, for example, when his migraines were still a new thing, she made him his favourite sandwich, hoping that it would cheer him up a little, give him some comfort. He ran away from the room the moment he smelled it, his face even paler than before. She should have predicted that bringing smelly meat to a sick person wouldn't end well. He couldn't even eat anything normal with this headache. Now she knew better: she limited her interferences to bringing him water and some porridge and sitting on the corridor right next to his door, listening to his quiet cries in case he wanted something. Anything.
"You're helping him. You saved him." Skye was persistent in her mission to take Simmons out of her black pit of misery.
"Did I?" Simmons circled her arms around her knees, and rested her jaw on them. "I dragged him out. But not all of him." They were both quiet for a few seconds, Simmons going over sad thoughts that were plaguing her lately, Skye wondering what she could say to make it better. "I didn't do this for him." She admitted breaking the silence with her trembling voice. "I did this for myself. I couldn't live without him. I just... couldn't. I was not thinking about what he wanted, about how it would end, how he would change after we got out. I knew there was no chance of him getting out unscratched. Still, I couldn't leave without him. That was all I could think about. I couldn't, that would destroy me. More than drowning. Was I egoistic then? Since I didn't care what pieces of him would be lost as long as there was still even the smallest chance of him staying with me?"
"He's alive thanks to you."
"And does he look happy about it?" She snapped.
Skye was silent for a moment, not understanding what Simmons was talking about.
"You regret saving him?" She tried with the worst possibility.
"No!" Simmons shout and immediately looked at the door, scared that her outburst might have woken Fitz up. "No, Dear Lord, no, never. But every day I regret I didn't swim faster. That I hadn't tried harder. Back then every millisecond was worth his weight in gold."
"You've done everything you could." Skye tried to reason with her, getting more and more uncomfortable with each second.
"Have I? How do you know that Skye? I could have swum faster. I could, I know that. I could have ignored my tiredness and forced my legs and arms to move faster."
Silence.
"Fitz is alive, that all that matters." Skye looked like she wanted to be somewhere far away. She hadn't signed up for this.
"When I reached the surface I took a deep breath, Skye. My lungs were burning. I took one breath, back in the pod, just after the glass shattered, then I swam 90 feet up, then I reached the surface. There was a fire in my lungs so I took a deep breath. And only then did I take Fitz's head out of the water. If my lungs were burning then, what about his? He didn't take a breath in the pod, because I took it away from him. And then I let him breath only after myself, Skye. Even though he needed it more than I did. I should have pushed him first." Her voice was almost a whisper now, and her lips twisted when she was no longer capable of steeling them.
Skye was looking at her, searching desperately for something to say, for some argument that would twist that logic.
"Simmons, that was just a split of second." She muttered finally with tiredness and resignation.
"And how many of his brain cells died in that split of second?" Simmons could easily calculate that, but she didn't want to work on this hypothesis anymore. "Maybe the ones responsible for his speech? Or movement? Or maybe the ones causing his migraine? In brain damage every millisecond is important."
Skye couldn't find the answer to her question. So she answered the real one instead.
"Nobody blames you Simmons. Nobody but you. Least of all Fitz."
Simmons remained silent and unconvinced. Skye looked at her for a moment, but there was nothing left for her to say, so she just patted her head trying to reassure her and went back to work. Simmons bit her lip and forced herself to go back to analysing a simulation of chemical reactions on her tablet.
"Being overprotective doesn't help anyone," she heard May's voice right above her head, "It only weakens. Makes a person look for support in matters that they could easily handle on their own."
Simmons just looked at older agent not knowing what to say, startled by the thought of how much she could have heard.
"And if you had fainted because you've denied yourself taking a breath," May continued apparently not expecting an answer at all. "Both of you would be dead. Some tactical decisions may seem egoistical, but are necessary." With that she simply left, leaving Simmons alone with her thoughts.
Less than thirty minutes later May was finishing her video conference with Coulson, reporting about the latest events at the Playground.
"As for Simmons," she said looking pointedly at the screen. "She's reaching her limit."
A/N:
- I know that by the time Simmons reached the surface Fitz's lungs were probably full of water so he couldn't breathe anyway, but still I think that Simmons would wonder if it wouldn't be better for him if he was out of water a second sooner. I guess she would still blame herself.
- I wondered for a long time if this chapter is really necessary, but I figured that since I've already written it I may as well post it.
- Thanks to TheLateNightStoryTeller, amandajbruce and hazel-elizabeth-stark for beta reading.
