A/N: This is chapter twenty-five Seekers! A loooot has happened at this point in the fic, eh? Here's to never slowing down :) And also some tooth-rotting fluff. For practice, obviously. God knows we've earned it. Season 3's been brutal. Couple of not-so-subtle references in here, so if you catch them, I hope you enjoy them.

Desperation is the raw material of drastic change.

Only those who can leave behind everything they have ever believed in

can hope to escape.

- William S. Burroughs

There was a point where, at least from Jemma's perspective, nothing seemed to matter anymore. The only work she had to distract herself was an elaborate lie, deliberately constructed so they could escape the hell that had been their home for months now. It wasn't that they found themselves in a rut; rather, the virus seemed to be developing almost too well. Ward's request wasn't particularly difficult – there are any number of strains of any one virus, with thousands of variations in their effect on the body – rather it was the conditions which he demanded. Fitz sighed dramatically at the pages and pages of various promising lab reports.

"I think we're going to have trouble not finding a virus that catalyses these symptoms. Almost all of these tests had consistent results. Now we just need to pick one and run with it," he stated flatly, pressing his hands onto the benchtop in mild frustration.

"Obviously the most suitable existing virus would be adenovirus serotype fourteen," Simmons began thoughtfully, "but that would be far too suspicious in too short of a time period from the initial transfer. So perhaps a genetically altered version of it, or-"

"Yeah, that's your division, not mine," Fitz replied abruptly.

"Right. Sorry. Continue."

"You see, Ward's going to want us to test it at some point," he explained, tip-toeing the subject gingerly like a cat walking across a thin fence.

Simmons buried her face in her hands, stepping away from the bench for a moment. "You're right, of course. Of course he is. What are we going to do? Human trials at this stage of experimentation are so far outside our code of ethics, you couldn't reach it with twenty-foot forceps."

"They're out of the question," he agreed. "I'll have to build some kind of simulation program, but I can't do it without Daisy. She's the only one who knows anything about these things, and we're shut away in here with no access to other specialists."

Simmons bit her lip thoughtfully, and continued.

"That... may not entirely be true. We pass what has to be hundreds of offices on the way to the lab, they've got to have somebody working there."

"I – we... I didn't think of that. It's hard to worry about what other people are doing when you're getting tortured for days on end."

She frowned at his words, acutely aware of their weight. The weight of the truth hung in the air like bodies in a cellar.

Skeletons in a closet.

Two souls that died at the bottom of the ocean.

"I'm sorry," Simmons blurted after a moment, but she gleaned no response from him.

The next two months flew by in much the same manner. Weeks of late nights in the lab, Fitz slamming the benchtop with an open palm in frustration, and Simmons wanting to drop dead of the exhaustion became a common occurrence. On one such a night, she simply packed up her equipment quietly and sat on the floor, cross-legged like an angry child.

"It's the Academy all over again," Simmons joked bitterly.

A tiny smile played at the corners of Fitz's lips as he replayed the fuzzy memories he had of the place that brought them together.

"I suppose I'd enjoy it more if we weren't so... so - help me with the word?"

"Sleep-deprived? Utterly defeated? Deeply considering execution as an alternative?"

"I was just going to say tired."

The engineer pulled a sour face to punctuate his reply. He hated when Simmons got like this. Or more specifically, he hated any and all circumstances that brought out the morbid edge to her humour. She looked up at him, cocking her head to the side like a sad puppy. He hadn't struggled with phrasing in a while, and she knew that extensive stress brought that out in a head trauma patient. But they still had a long way to go before the research would yield anything useful, and they refused to give up just yet.

A few nights before the Day, Simmons closed the drawer containing the cultures they'd cultivated together, carefully peeled off her gloves and strode over to stand before him. Reverently cupping his face with her hands, she looked into his eyes, as if to say, Are you okay? He smiled at her, but it was a weak shadow of what he had once been. Where Fitz had been a fierce beam of sunlight, he was now a candle by the window. Flickering desperately, neither here nor away; dancing between alive and too far gone.

"We're nearly done," she whispered to him, pressing her forehead against his. "Just a few more lab reports before we release a safe version of the virus, and we get out of here."

Fitz nodded, barely processing her words in his ghoulish state. They both eyed the surveillance camera in the corner cautiously before returning to their work. Just a few more lab reports, Simmons told herself through the haze of fatigue settling over her brain. And then you'll be free.

"I can't believe we've actually gotten this far. Working for Hydra, doing... what we're doing..." he trailed off with a vague sense of regret.

"It'll be over soon," Simmons replied, words heavy with double meaning. "The formula's nearly done."

She played idly with the corner of her lab coat as Fitz began to pack up his equipment.

Soon.

The biochemist bit her lip, stifling a smile as she felt strong arms wrap around her waist as carefully as their lab protocol allowed. Fitz pressed a gentle kiss to her shoulder, frowning slightly at the joint that was now sharp as glass from prisoner's rations, and watched her squeeze two drops of the solution in her hand into a petri dish.

"Morning," Simmons murmured happily.

"Good morning," he mumbled back in an equally chipper tone.

"Is it?"

"It is. Today is the day," Fitz whispered in her ear, and she could feel him smirking a little against her skin.

She raised her eyebrows a little, careful not to give anything away to the surveillance cameras.

"Mhmm," he hummed in satisfaction. Simmons decided the vibration of his voice against the gap between her neck and shoulder was her new favourite thing. "Today is the day we escape this God-forsaken place."

Fitz paired the statement with a frown for the cameras, as if he was confused by something Simmons was doing with the virus sample. Just in case, he reminded himself. They're watching our every move. His partner froze mid-smile, realising the same thing.

"Just like we planned," she informed him quietly through her now effortlessly casual smile, as if they were discussing a memory from school. "You grab the tray with the ordinary flu cultures, I sneeze and bump into you. We get the symptoms of a cold, set off the quarantine alarm and call it code orange, claiming we've had an accident with the real virus samples-"

"And they take us to the containment area hidden beneath the office next door," he finished. "Got it."

There was a moment of silence while Simmons chewed on a thought.

"When we walk out those doors - or get wheeled out on stretchers, I suppose – do you think we'll be different people?" she asked, voice trembling ever so slightly with the quiver of her eyelashes.

The breath whooshed from Fitz's chest in a sigh as he set down the tray of the real virus samples, marvelling both at her words and at the power of life and death before him.

"I expect so. I certainly hope so. From SHIELD, to Hydra, to... us," he finished in a breathless whisper.

"We could be anyone."

The shimmering air of hope painted her voice in every colour imaginable, but Fitz shook his head with a little frown and met her eyes with the intention of disagreeing.

"Why be anyone when we could be FitzSimmons? Two twenty-somethings and achingly shy."

"Oh Fitz," Simmons replied with an affectionate eye roll and a toss of her mahogany silk-covered head. "We've been FitzSimmons the whole damn time."

He looked down at his cracked, worn-in sneakers with a self-deprecating smile and promised, "We're gonna get through this. Together."

Then Fitz picked up the tray, Simmons crashed into him and the petri dishes they'd spent months working on hit the floor. Scrambling away from the mess, the biochemist hit the quarantine alarm while her partner snatched the required paperwork from a folder on the other side of the room. The doors to the lab swung open to reveal impossibly tall men in impossibly bright hazmat suits as Simmons swayed ever so slightly on the spot. God, this stuff works fast, she mused to herself before crashing to the floor in a coughing fit. Too fast. She looked over to Fitz with dazed concern and saw that he was in a similar state on the floor at the other end of the lab, the same look of surprised panic in his eyes.

"Fitz, 're you sure you got the right... one...?" she slurred in delayed alarm, but she was distracted by the way the world seemed to be blurring around her like a pleasant children's ride at the amusement park. Like those little spinning teapots. I'd kill for a nice cup of tea.

Simmons smiled at that thought before her knees gave out and her temple hit the ground with a chilling crack.