Conversation Hearts.
-o-
Jog.
-o-
It's not something she was ever very keen on – exercising her body. It was always her mind that was more important to her. But now, in this place called The Playground, Jemma finds that exercising her mind just leaves her thoughts circling in on themselves, settling somewhere between fear and guilt that often leaves her sobbing, so she takes to getting up in the middle of the night and spending hours in the gym to force herself into a state of exhaustion.
-o-
It was 3:47 AM when she rolled over for the umpteenth time that night. Days in this new place, trying to sleep in an unfamiliar room, walking in unfamiliar halls, she almost preferred that awful motel in Los Angeles. At least they had a pool. And cable. And bigger bedrooms. And each other. Sighing, Jemma threw the blanket from herself, picked up her elastic from the table and put her hair into a hasty ponytail. It only takes her moments to dress herself in what used to be standard issue SHIELD workout gear for all the other agents – black tank top, black pants, both emblazoned with the logo of the agency they were supposed to be helping Coulson rebuild from the ground up. She idly wondered if he would change the symbol now that he was put in charge as she pulled socks and running shoes on to her feet. It was a little strange. The amount of SHIELD logoed clothing in storage here in various sizes dwarfed her own belongings.
She made no noise as she walked down the darkened hallway. Even though everything was so unfamiliar and uncomfortable here, she had memorized the route from her room to the small gym meant to keep housed agents in shape. She'd also memorized the route to the kitchen and the bathroom, but she'd barely been eating and she hated going into the bathroom to shower unless she knew someone else was near.
The sound of the water rushing from the faucet made her shake. She knew that was normal, given what she'd been through, but she was beginning to worry about how long it would last since it was taking her longer and longer to force herself to jump into the shower stall and stick her head under the spray of the water. The first time she did it, she hyperventilated. She managed to calm herself down before anyone found her panicking, but it was getting harder to keep herself calm when she was in there by herself.
As she turned into the workout room, lined with blue mats and filled with a weight bench, a punching bag, a treadmill, and various other pieces of equipment, the soles of her shoes squeaked on the tiled floor. Jemma paused, her ear quirked, listening for any signs of movement. Explaining why she was utilizing gym equipment in the middle of the night was not what she wanted. She just wanted to be so exhausted that her brain would finally allow her to sleep without thinking of how she ended up here. When she heard nothing, she padded into the room and made her way to the equipment without turning on any lights.
Logically, Jemma knew that you were supposed to do a series of stretches before working out any of the muscles in your body to prevent injury, but just then, she could care less about straining a muscle in her legs or twisting an ankle. She stepped up onto the treadmill and pushed a series of buttons that would give her an easy pace with little incline. She wanted to run as long as she could until her muscles burned with exhaustion and she could collapse on the bed in her new room. Or at the very least, she wanted to run until she heard the others begin to wake, then she would stop and join the morning meeting.
One foot in front of the other. She breathed in and out easily, arms pumping at her sides. Her lungs had recovered surprisingly quickly after forcing herself to swim through 90 feet of water on one breath and pulling Fitz's weight to the surface with her. The pounding of her feet on the belt of the treadmill reminded her of the pounding of helicopter blades.
She pushed the button to speed herself up just a bit.
It was still an easy pace. She wasn't even out of breath. She jogged for several minutes, closing her eyes for a moment, but the blackness on the back of her lids made her think of the black of the almost complete darkness of the sea. She snapped her eyes open again, locking her gaze on the stark white walls.
The white of the walls here was almost the exact same shade of paint issued for the painting of the walls for things like medical pods that could be stored on hellicarriers or submarines. Her breath caught somewhere in the vicinity of her lungs, but Jemma forced herself to exhale slowly through her nose and take a deep breath in through her mouth. Once. Twice. Three times. And she was back.
She pushed a button increasing the incline of her run just slightly, just enough to put in a bit more effort.
More.
You're more than that.
Fitz's words continued to echo in her brain. His voice has been haunting her since she got here. She'd been having a hard time thinking of anything other than how he felt (feels, her brain corrects her automatically) about her, what he did for her, and where he presently was – asleep in a hospital bed being monitored by doctors who were not her, but had all been vouched for by the former director of the former SHIELD. It wasn't fair that they wouldn't let her see his charts, that they wouldn't take her input, that they wouldn't let her help him. He's only in the shape he's in because of her, and she would give anything, anything in the entire world, to make everything okay again.
She pushed another button increasing her speed, her legs moving twice as fast as they were before. Her body could take it. She had every confidence in her ability to just keep running, even if she wasn't going anywhere.
Fitz wasn't going anywhere either, her traitorous brain reminded her. Fitz was currently trapped inside his own head, likely his own version of a private hell. She was living in hers too. They always had been on the same wavelength.
Up went the incline.
She missed him. She more than missed him.
More than.
Up went the speed.
She wasn't sure that she was going to be a good enough agent without him. She wasn't used to having to work without him by her side anymore.
Up went the incline.
She began to lose track of her breathing, unable to keep herself calm and steady as she ran at this pace. Her breathing began to come in sharp gasps, her lungs burning, but she pushed herself harder. Her muscles stretched, but they weren't rubbery and spent yet, and she wasn't about to stop until that happened.
Up went the speed again.
The pace was punishing, but it wasn't stopping the images flicking through her head with each of the balls of her feet hitting the treadmill belt. When she couldn't take it anymore, she slammed her hand on the button to bring the machine to a stop, then grabbed the handrails on the sides of the control panel, bending at the waist, sobs racking her body.
"Simmons?"
She hadn't even heard the door open behind her. She was usually more observant than that. The scientist in her appeared to be on pause. Just like the rest of her life.
Jemma choked down her tears, but her stomach heaved unexpectedly against her, so she dropped to her knees on the treadmill, breath rushing out of her. Clearing her throat, Jemma forced her voice to sound some semblance of normal as she said, "yes?"
Her voice was too high though, almost shrill, and she winced before turning her head to the side at the feminine voice behind her. It wasn't low enough to be May. It could only be Skye.
"Hey…" Skye walked into her line of sight, dropping to the ground on the other side of the treadmill, her eyes huge and concerned as she peered at Jemma under the railing. "What are you doing?"
Jemma was glad that Skye didn't go for the old how are you this time around. As horrible as she was finding her current state of mind, she was also so tired of people checking on her, worrying about her.
"I'm-" her voice gave out and she was forced to take a breath, clear her throat, to say "just, you know, jogging."
"Jogging?" Skye echoed, eyes still wide and concerned, but she gave a gentle smile. "That didn't look like jogging to me. When I jog, it's nice and easy, kind of lazy, just to burn some extra calories, you know? That looked like, to borrow a phrase from one of the nuns I used to know, the devil himself was chasing you."
"Yes, well…. No devil here, just me." Simmons quieted before she was forced to lie, her eyes beginning to fill with tears without her consent. "It's just me," she murmured to herself, dropping her eyes down to stare at the floor, her feet moving out from under her to find purchase on the floor, but she didn't rise, just hugged her knees. Skye didn't say anything seated opposite her on the floor. They could be a couple of young women after gym class gossiping on the mats if it wasn't for Simmons trembling hands and red rimmed eyes. Sighing, Simmons admitted to Skye, "I can't sleep." A tear made its way out and down her cheek before she could stop it. "Every time I close my eyes, I see it."
"The water?"
"Yes." Simmons flinched when Skye placed on hand over hers, not out of fear, but out of surprise. She raised her gaze to meet Skye's in the darkness, willing her to understand that the flinch was nothing personal. "I thought – I thought we were going to die down there." Her voice became quieter as she spoke, afraid to give voice to her thoughts, not wanting to make them real.
"You want to tell me what happened?" Something must have shown in her face because Skye rushed to add, "You don't have to if you don't want to!" But her grip on Simmons hand tightened, wanting to encourage Simmons to get some of her feelings out in the open. The scientist might have thought she had been holding back her discomfort well, but the entire team was just as worried for her as they were for Fitz, maybe more so because Jemma was here with them, wide awake, and supposed to be participating in the rebuild, but there was a vacancy in her that wasn't there before, a cloudiness to her gaze.
"He saved me." Jemma rocked back just a bit, more tears falling. "He saved me and-" She stopped herself from saying what she had intended. Some things that happened at the bottom of the ocean floor were not things she was ready for everyone to know just yet. Instead, she shook her head. "I keep seeing his face right before he got the pod open. I keep seeing the way he smiled at me – like he accepted everything. Like it was right that I would live and he could - Like he thought I could just leave him there. I couldn't." She shook her head again. "I couldn't."
"I know. Shh…" Skye moved up onto the treadmill next to her, looping their arms together and letting Jemma lean on her. "I know you couldn't leave him there. Jemma, you did everything you could to get him out of there. He's alive because of you," she tried to soothe her, but Jemma was full on sobbing now.
"You d-don't understand. I couldn't. He practically told me to. He said. He made me take the oxygen. I just. Skye." Jemma's breath came in quick bursts like she was running again. She tried to stop the tears again. She was tired of crying. So tired of it. After days of finding quiet places to break down, she felt like she shouldn't have any fluids left to form tears. "He's my very best friend." She gulped. "In the world." She brought one hand up to wipe at her face. "It's not that I don't love all of you. I do. But it's Fitz."
"Yeah," Skye agreed in a whisper, "it's Fitz." She waited a beat for Simmons breathing to even out, sensing that she was still holding something back about her best friend in the world. She wasn't going to try to pry it out of her, but she knew that Simmons needed some sort of release. She needed to direct all of this guilt and worry and sorrow somewhere, and she wasn't getting to direct it into helping Fitz. Skye was pretty sure it was only a matter of time though before Coulson allowed her to take over the engineer's treatment. They weren't going to be able to keep her from him for long. "You didn't tell us how you ended up in the water. Did Garrett-"
"Ward," Simmons cut her off quickly. He was a sore subject with the whole team at this point. "We got away from some of the other Hydras on the plane, and we locked ourselves in because we were afraid of what would happen if they got to us. Fitz tried to talk to him, but he was so – cold. He wouldn't listen to reason. He just – he entered the release protocol and dropped us into the middle of the bloody ocean. All because Garrett was more important than us." Her grief gave way to anger and she gave a little stomp of her foot like a child throwing a tantrum. It was the most she could muster.
"Ward did that?" Skye knew her former SO had been busy doing everything Garrett told him to do, but with everything that he had lied about, everything he had done to them, there was still a part of her that believed he wouldn't put FitzSimmons in harm's way. They were FitzSimmons! Shuttling them out of a plane into the middle of the ocean to die was like abandoning a sick puppy or something. It was unthinkable.
Simmons nodded. "Have you seen him since they took him into custody?" She asked, trying to shift the conversation, and her mindset, away from Fitz, but still envisioning the expression of horror on her friend's face when Ward hit the button on the control panel in the wall.
"No. I don't think I really want to. May's been in to interrogate him a couple of times." Skye shrugged. "I'd rather not think about it."
"I know I shouldn't condone the torture he's probably going through in those interrogations," Simmons said, "but I really hope she makes him hurt. So much." Her breath caught in her throat and she fought for composure. "I know that he was doing what Garrett told him to do, he was just following orders, but I don't know… I don't think I'll ever be able to forgive him for this."
"Good." Skye's tone was so flat and final that it surprised her.
"What?" Jemma turned to her incredulously.
"It's good that you're mad at him. What happened to you and Fitz? That's on him, not on you. Hold on to that. Anger is useful." Skye nodded her head at her pointedly.
"What in the bloody hell are you talking about?" Simmons was so confused by the turn in the conversation that she momentarily forgot her grief again.
"I've been training with May. Hate-fu is awesome." Skye's expression was so earnest and excited that Jemma felt a laugh start to bubble up in her throat, but she swallowed it down and waited for an explanation. "Come on, I'll show you." Skye hopped up and gestured for her to do the same.
Jemma shakily climbed to her feet to follow Skye across the room to the punching bag. On it was something she hadn't noticed before. Someone, presumable May or Skye, had taped a printed picture of Garrett to the middle of the bag, right at the height were Skye's fist would normally connect to it.
"Wha-"
"Yeah, I was going to put a picture of Ward on here, but I thought that would just piss May off even more than she already is, and Ward really was just Garrett's lapdog… didn't seem fair. Everything that's wrong with our team right now, it can all be traced back to Garrett. He's where our anger belongs." Skye jabbed one finger at the middle of the paper to emphasize her point.
"But… Garrett's gone," Simmons struggled to understand.
"He's a metaphor, Simmons. He gives us a place to focus all of that anger, all of that pain." Skye gestured to the picture again, but Simmons kept her forehead scrunched up as though trying to work out a difficult equation.
"It's probably better that you show her," came May's voice from the door.
Simmons jumped almost theatrically, but Skye didn't react to the other woman's sudden presence other than an eye roll. She hurriedly wrapped her hands with tape provided by the bag May placed on the ground near them, explaining to Simmons about posture and stance and a lot of other things that the scientist didn't process. Jemma was too busy looking back and forth between the two women, not sure how she had wound up in the middle of one of their training sessions before the sun was even up when all she had wanted to do was outrun her own thoughts.
"You should stand over here," May told her softly when Skye took up a fighting stance in front of the punching bag. She gently pulled Jemma to the side where she had a nice view of Skye and the Garrett photo without being in the line of fire. "Skye's made a lot of progress, but sometimes her control isn't the best."
"Not like you," Jemma whispered apprehensively.
"Not like me," May agreed with something of a sigh.
May gave Skye a set of instructions as she worked on her form and her thrust, Skye's fists landing sometimes on the paper, sometimes just outside of the square. Once the basics were over though, May began presenting Skye with various scenarios. Garrett lying to them all, betraying them to Hydra, ordering Ward to steal their secrets, threatening them. Skye appeared to regroup, drawing from some internal place that Jemma didn't have access to, before her punches began to land again, her stance more self-assured, the blows coming faster, until the paper came clean off the bag in a series of shredded segments.
"We're gonna need another one," Skye panted as May pulled one from a shelf at the back of the room.
"That was good, but you still need to work on protecting your core." May tore off a piece of duct tape from a roll with her teeth and slapped the new picture into place. It was slightly below the square of the old one. "One blow to the right spot, and you'll be so winded, your instinct will be to double over. You don't want to put your head down like that."
"Got it."
May turned to Simmons while Skye grabbed a bottle of water from the bag. "Would you like to try?"
She shook her head uncertainly. "I never did well with defense training at the Academy."
"This isn't the Academy. And this isn't defensive."
May produced another roll of tape and methodically wrapped Simmons hands for her, showing her which areas to protect, how to get the fabric tight enough to do its job, but still be able to flex her fingers. Skye hopped up and down just off to the side of the mat and smiled encouragingly while May positioned Simmons in front of the bag.
"You want to keep your weight balanced," Skye called to her. "And keep your body moving. Like in a real fight. Breathe through the punches too. It helps you not lose your breath so fast."
May fought off a smile at Skye's enthusiasm to help Jemma. "Bend your knees a little bit." She put her hands lightly on Jemma's waist, showing her how to position her feet and her shoulders, then bent her fingers into fists that wouldn't leave her with broken bones if they hit against someone else's skull. "Aim right for the center of the picture, like this." May moved into a stance right next to her, drawing one fist back and then letting it fly directly in the middle of Garrett's face, leaving a deep wrinkle in the paper.
"Okay," Jemma left her voice small, feeling self-conscious. She knew they were trying to help. God knew how much of the conversation between them May had heard. They knew she was upset. She didn't see how repeatedly hitting a picture of a dead man was supposed to help her work through her feelings about Fitz though. She took a deep breath in through her nose, then let it out in a quick burst as she lightly let her fist hit the side of the picture. She dropped her hands to her sides, shrugging.
"Put your weight behind it. Harder," May instructed, still close by her side.
Jemma did as she was told, bringing her arms back up in the position May had placed her, her eyes boring into Garrett's in intense concentration. She tried to conjure up the same anger that Skye had talked about and shove aside her embarrassment at punching a picture in front of The Cavalry. She drew her right arm back into an imitation of May's and put as much of her strength behind it as she could. It hurt just a little bit when her fist connected with the edge of the paper, but it was a good kind of hurt.
Skye took a step closer to them seeing the determination on Jemma's face, and after exchanging a look with May, she took a breath and said, "Garrett tortured people into working for him, just like the worst of Hydra. He would take the people they loved and threaten to do horrible things to them if they didn't cooperate."
Jemma hit the paper again, nodding her head in agreement with Skye. She glanced back and forth at the women flanking her. "What else?" she asked breathlessly. To her surprise, this could actually work.
"At the Hub," May began, not sure if this was a good tactic to take or not, but thinking it might be what Simmons needed to keep going, "he told us you were probably dead. He was going to kill us and take Fitz with him to work for Hydra."
Jemma hit the paper again, narrowly missing Garrett's face. "I heard that," she breathed out before drawing back for another punch. "Agent Hand had a radio." She clenched her jaw in frustration.
"Try to alternate hits from each hand so you don't burn yourself out," May instructed, one hand on the middle of her back to help hold the younger woman together.
"He gave Ward his orders," Skye reminded Jemma, "got him to steal all of your research about everything we've done."
Jemma hit the paper again and again. She tried to carefully control her breathing as Skye had warned her, but it was becoming more difficult the longer this went on.
"He betrayed an organization that was supposed to protect people," May said softly.
"He took a little boy from his dad."
"He had Victoria Hand killed."
"He had all of Trip's partners killed."
Jemma's fists slowly began to land closer and closer to the center of the picture with each blow, the paper crinkling more and more with each thrust.
"He's the reason Ward dropped us into the ocean," she bit out, landing a punch dead center, the paper tearing in two. She pulled her body back in surprise, tension uncoiling from her muscles when she saw the image of Garrett distorted and broken. It was amazingly cathartic. Heart pounding in her chest, she turned, looking back and forth between them again as though her head was on some sort of swivel, eyes bright and for once, clear. "That's…"
"Better than jogging?" Skye finished for her, a broad smile on her face.
"Much better than jogging. What do we do next?"
For the next hour, May led Skye and Jemma in a series of drills that involved weights and fight training. Every so often, Jemma would glance back at the ripped picture on the punching bag, take a deep breath, and dive back in.
-o-
The noise of the punches being thrown, a few yells, and a loud chuckle that hadn't been heard in days, were what drew Triplett and Coulson to the doors of the gym, though neither of them went in.
"You think this is a good idea, sir?" Triplett's eyes followed Jemma's movements as May and Skye demonstrated how to use an opponent's weight to throw them off balance.
"They're working it out," Coulson answered, his own eyes landing on the torn picture of Garrett on the punching bag at the back of the room. "May's given them something to focus on. For now, that's enough." Jemma's laugh as Skye managed to throw May echoed through the room. "More than enough."
-o-
A/N: I know there's been a lot of Simmons-by-Fitz's-bedside stories after the events of the finale, but I really wanted to give her a way to deal with her grief other than sitting by Fitz's side crying. After May and Skye's discussion about hate-fu, this seemed like a pretty plausible way for Simmons to deal if she couldn't help Fitz right away.