The next morning Jemma woke early, regretting a little her promise to Jeremy that she would come see his collection of rare coins.
There was a team meeting at eight that she needed to be back for, so they had agreed to meet at seven. Which would be fine, except that she was already a little muddled by the time change and she'd stayed out with Leo a little later than she probably should have.
She smiled to herself at the memory as she pulled a light shirt over her head, careful not to wake Skye or May who hadn't made anyone any promises to get up early, because it had been worth staying up late, even worth being tired in the morning.
The sky was grey and ominous but, despite the gathering storm clouds, her thoughts were on stars and giggles and kisses as Jemma skipped cheerfully down the road to the research centre. This would be fun, coins were neat, she'd decided merrily, adjusting the strap of her bag on her shoulder. Along with the countless gadgets Leo had insisted she pack, it contained a special edition quarter and a book about tropical plants she thought Jeremy would be interested in.
Jeremy intercepted her before she reached the building. Her bubbly mood popped instantly as she saw the expression on his face and realized something was horribly wrong.
"Jeremy? Are you alright?" she asked, concerned.
"Wha-... no... yes..." his eyes were wide and he was shaking his head slowly from side to side. "Agent Simmons, thank God, you need to come with me!" he exclaimed.
"Where? What's happening?" She demanded, dread rising up her throat.
Jeremy didn't reply. Instead he grabbed her arm, soaking her sleeve with blood from his fingers as he tried hurry her along.
"Are you hurt?" she gasped, looking the man up and down for signs of injury.
"Not me..." he squeaked, pulling back his hand and staring at it in shock. "There was an accident... with a hover-board... agent Fitz..."
"What's happened to Fitz?" she squeaked, afraid of the answer, her lungs squeezing painfully so that it was suddenly difficult to breath. Was it Leo's blood on his hands? From the look on Jeremy's face, she could tell this was serious.
"You need to come with me," he repeated. "I need help lifting the tree off of him, I think it's obstructing his breathing... it's crushing him. We need to hurry."he urged.
Cold fear coursed through her and she did as she was told, without really thinking about it, without stopping to question why Leo would be out on a hover-board so early. Somewhere underneath her blinding panic she reasoned that he was probably with Gadget, working on their new design, the one he'd told her about last night.
They reached the edge of the village and she crossed it, without hesitation, running as fast as she could behind Jeremy. Her bag slid off her shoulder and tumbled behind her but she didn't have time to stop for it and they kept running until they were surrounded by trees and thick bushes.
Something felt wrong, this didn't make sense, they were too far out. Why would Leo come all the way out here?
"There," Jeremy panted, pointing to a fallen tree.
It was enormous, how in the world had Leo managed to knock it on top of himself? Where was Gadget? Where was the hover-board?
Someone was struggling beneath the branches. Leo... she couldn't see him but she saw the stream of blood trickling away from the leaves. He was here and he was hurt. The rest of the world faded to black, nothing else mattered, so she stopped asking herself stupid questions and darted towards him.
Before she could reach him though, vines sprung up like pouncing snakes and twisted around her ankles, and then around her arms and she screamed as she realized with a sharp jolt of fear that she'd stepped into grasp of an Ikudodo.
"Help!" she begged, yanking her arms away, trying in vain to snap the thick green vines, flailing around desperately and being pulled in towards the plant's open mouth anyway. "Help!" she shrieked but Jeremy didn't come to her aid.
Instead he walked breezily over to the tree which had collapsed onto Leo and took out a gun, pointing it down at his unseen form.
"No," she choked.
Jeremy was going to kill him... Jemma couldn't let that happen, it wasn't an option, and she fought fiercely, with renewed vigor, against the plant's hold on her, however it still dragged her backwards, away from them and towards her own death.
"No!" she screamed but her cry was drowned out by the sound of a gunshot which sent her into a hysterical panicked struggle, fueled by rage and grief.
Jeremy dragged the body out from under the tree and she saw that it was an animal, an antelope, gruesomely cut open before he'd ended its misery with a shot to the head.
It hit her suddenly that Leo wasn't there, Jeremy had lied to her, he was probably safe, still sleeping under the protection of their teammates.
Relief mingled with her fear and confusion. Leo was OK, she could breathe again, but she was going to die.
The head of the plant lunged forward and engulfed her, trying to shut on her as she fought furiously to drag herself out of it.
"No! No, no, no!" she cried. "Help! Please help me!" she pleaded in vain, sobbing and consumed by horrible, sickening terror as it closed over her.
/-/-/
Leo yawned as he followed his friends out into the morning sunlight. He'd probably stayed up later than he should have but it had been well worth it. A warm little bubble floated around inside him at the memory and he smiled.
"Did you talk to Simmons last night?" Coulson asked and Trip was strategically averting his attention from the conversation, though Leo wouldn't have minded so much if he'd been a little nosy. This wasn't a secret, not from friends.
"Yeah," he told Coulson. "We talked about it, we'll be more careful from now on," he vowed solemnly.
"Good," Coulson nodded seriously before smiling at him. "Ready for breakfast? Zambuli said he was making pear soup and fresh two-bellied river fish," He licked his lips. "I still need to ask for the recipe for that stew last night."
Leo's stomach grumbled at the thought (though he did wonder what exactly a two bellied-river-fish was) and Trip stopped pretending to be distracted by the design on the side of their house to agree that he was looking forward to breakfast.
They'd just met up with May and Skye when a man, Leo recognized Jeremy, came running towards them in a panic.
"Something horrible had happened!" he shouted shaking a filthy, slimy bag he held in his hands.
It was Jemma's bag, Leo realized. He recognized the polka dot pattern, three green dots and a red one, and the stitching over one of the pockets even under the thick, clear, goopy slime that covered it. Slime, like the slime from one of those plants.
The world spun around him, shifted beneath his feet so that he feared he'd fall over.
"Where is she?" he demanded quietly, frightened of the answer but needing to know so he could do something, anything, to help her.
"That's Simmons' bag," Skye gasped beside him but Leo kept his gaze on Jeremy, pleading for an explanation.
"She went out... t-there... she s-saw something..." he stammered. "I did not hear what... I tried to follow her but she was too quick and then... I found this," he held the bag up for them to see, "covered in the paralytic substance from Ikudodo. I think she has been-"
"No!" Leo cut him off angrily because he didn't want to hear it. Because he couldn't still be standing here if it were true. His heart couldn't keep beating in a world without her, it'd be too broken. "This is crazy, she wouldn't do that," he insisted, shaking his head. "That's ridiculous, why would she go off on her own? She wouldn't... This isn't right."
"Why are you so sure she would not?" Jeremy disagreed, tilting his head as if Leo were the one talking nonsense.
"Because she's not stupid, you dirt brain," he shot back furiously. Dirt brain? really? At least the man looked offended, it had certainly been meant offensively. "She wouldn't just go out into the bush by herself, this doesn't make any sense. What you're saying isn't making any sense." he shouted the last part.
"I'm with Fitz," Skye agreed, placing a hand on his shoulder and giving it a squeeze. "Simmons is way too responsible to just skip out in search of a flesh eating plant when there are people throwing grenades around like hot potatoes. She's curious, but she also likes not being plant food. Something is wrong here. We need to go look for her," she insisted firmly, face set in determination.
"I agree," Coulson said and the others nodded.
Leo had been about to pull away, to shake off Skye's hand but now he was glad for his friend's comfort. Skye was on his side, and maybe holding him back from shoving Jeremy which probably wasn't fair to the man who was only the messenger of bad news, not the cause of it, and definitely wouldn't help Jemma. He realized his hands were balled up into fists and he relaxed them, taking a deep breath, trying to stop rumbling, raging thunder in his chest that roared in between the terrified, desperate downpour.
Jemma wasn't stupid, the opposite she was clever, resourceful and creative. They would find her or she'd make her way back with a perfectly reasonable explanation for where she'd been, probably bubbling on cheerily about some fascinating new creature she'd encountered.
What she wasn't, absolutely wasn't, was being digested by a giant plant.
/-/-/
Jemma was surrounded by the Ikudodo's flesh, trapped in darkness and shaking in terror. She wasn't giving up though, she had a way to escape and she fished it out of her pocket, glad for once that Leo was paranoid.
'Is it really paranoia if you're right?' she wondered as her trembling hands fumbled with the on switch and the beam of the laser sawed through the thick flesh of the plant.
She tumbled out of the hole she'd cut but as she did so the plant released its sticky juices onto her, covering her in slime which made her skin tingle frighteningly. She stubbornly fought the growing numbness in her limbs, crawling as far away as she could from the dangerous vines until she couldn't move anymore and she collapsed, paralyzed, what she could only hope was as safe distance away.
Even out of the Ikudodo's reach though, she didn't feel safe. Jeremy was still out there, armed and ready to kill. Her team didn't know, had no clue he was a threat and they were in danger. They were in danger and she couldn't warn them because she couldn't make her arms and legs work.
She was in danger because the wilderness was filled with people who shot at Shield agents and animals which could eat her and the poison was soaking through her shirt and onto the skin of her body, threatening to paralyze the muscles she used to breathe.
She tried to scream but she couldn't and hot tears streamed down her face, dripped onto the leaf-covered ground. She was so scared. She didn't want to die out here, alone and not knowing whether or not her friends were going to be killed. She wanted Leo, wanted him here holding her and telling her it was OK, that she didn't need to be afraid and he could fix this. At the very least she wanted the chance to say goodbye.
'Please,' she begged, irrationally calling out to him when there was no hope of him hearing. He was too far away and she couldn't even speak the words but she thought them as loudly as she could even if it didn't make any sense. 'Please find me, I need you.'
The skin of her chest and stomach was beginning to tingle and a sickening, terrifying wave of despair turned everything to haze as she realized she was going to die and she couldn't do anything to stop it.
'No,' she thought desperately. 'I'm not ready, I don't want to go.'
Maybe someone, or something heard her, or maybe it was only a fluke, but the moment the thought was out there was a crack of thunder and, miraculously, rain fell in sheets from the troubled sky, soaking her and washing off the poison slime.
She was freezing now, and she still couldn't move but she could breath and she was going to keep breathing, stay awake until someone found her, until she was safe in Leo's arms again.
/-/-/
It was pouring and Leo was completely drenched but he barely felt it, barely felt anything except the aching, desperate need to find Jemma.
"Jemma!" he screamed over a crash of thunder.
"Simmons!" Skye yelled a few meters away and he could tell by the catch in her voice that she was struggling not to cry.
Leo was beyond struggling against his storming emotions and if not for the rain his face would have been covered in his warm, salty tears. He needed Jemma back, needed her in his arms again or he was going to break and no one was ever going to be able to fix him.
May, Coulson and Trip surrounded them, armed and on the look out for signs of both Jemma and the people who had shot at them earlier. A few of the villagers had volunteered to help, despite the risk and, somewhere underneath his pain, he was grateful for them.
"Jemma!" he called again, not knowing if she was able to answer him but sure she was alive and that she needed him.
She was out there, somewhere, and she needed him. He knew it without knowing how he knew it, without reason.
He didn't believe in magic, neither of them did, but he did believe in the strength of his love for her and hers for him, believed in the power of the connection between them. So when something inside him said to turn left he did, motioning for Skye to follow, to run ahead because she was faster than him, because if Jemma was in danger she could get to her quicker.
/-/-/
Jemma wished she could shiver, wished she could curl into a ball to warm herself up but she knew from her time at the research center that the paralysis lasted several hours, it could be up to six before she could move again. She was dizzy and her vision kept blurring around the edges but she forced herself to stay awake, was too frightened she'd never wake up to allow the world to fall away.
People were calling to her, she heard her name and fought to move her tongue, to get her vocal cords to work so she could call back to them but it was futile.
"Jemma!" It was Leo and another round of tears poured down her face at how unfair this was. He was so close, so close but there was nothing she could do except wait and hope they found her in the downpour, in the darkness created by thick grey clouds.
'Leo! I'm here, I'm over here,' she shouted the words in her head, still not making sense, still being ridiculous because it wasn't possible he could hear her.
Someone was coming, running towards her and, amazingly, they spotted her.
"Simmons!" Skye exclaimed, kneeling down beside her and feeling her neck for a pulse. "She's over here. She's alive," she cried and Jemma saw her friend taking off her jacket, felt the lingering warmth against her freezing cold skin before Skye took her hand.
"Jemma?" It was Leo, crashing down on her other side, his voice high and scared, but sounding like home and refuge all the same. "I think she's been paralyzed," he told Skye, rubbing Jemma's shoulders, trying to warm her up. "We found you sweetheart, you're safe now," he soothed, running his fingers gently across her cheek before he placed a soft kiss on her forehead and she knew it was going to be OK. If he was with her, everything was going to be OK.
Someone, May, she recognized her voice, helped him carry her onto a hover craft and he held her against him the whole way back, rubbing her arm and covering her in gentle kisses, the heat from his body thawing hers and his soft, tender words in her ears, filling her up with his love for her, sunshine in the cold darkness.
Skye kept hold of her hand, moving her thumb comfortingly back and forth across the top of it, and she felt the other's presence around her, guarding her as Leo was and she was finally able to let go of the sickening terror that had consumed her.
Calming now, she felt her exhaustion like a sudden blast of wind, blowing away her strength. She could sleep, Leo had her, was protecting her, and, safely in his arms, she could at last allow herself to stop her desperate struggle to remain awake.
She heard him murmur gently that he loved her, his words turning her swirling, fearful thoughts to still water, like a soothing lullaby, before she fell unconscious.
Thanks so much for all the reviews, likes, reads and follows! You are all magically cool B)
The Fringe reference is the dots, green, green, green, red. It is a pattern that occurs over and over in the show and is a key plot point in the first season episode The Equation.
I almost forgot, the whole "I don't want to go," was sort of a reference to Doctor Who and I am pretty sure the "Is it paranoia if you're right?" question is from something esle too.
