His work carries on like normal for months. He continues to write to Jemma, but with their new cipher the words aren't effortless anymore. They are clinical in nature now. Sometimes it takes over a day to figure out how to tell her what he is working on. The words come out like formulaic descriptions about what he'd eaten for breakfast and where in the city he'd gone that weekend. Then he fills out a crossword full of nonsense words. She writes back with the same generic statements, offering suggestions and input disguised as movies and bike rides. There is no more crossword competition. They share little resemblance of their old familiar exchanges. He doesn't look forward to them with quite the same enthusiasm he looked forward to them before.
And he hates himself for it. He hates himself for ruining things. They were perfect. Their five days had been perfect. Then he'd gone and ruined everything by opening his mouth. It's exactly what he'd wanted to avoid. This is why he'd always kept silent.
The change is imperceptible, but the Commodore notices. Coulson too. They say he seems subdued, lacking the usual passion and enthusiasm for the projects that used to characterize his work.
"This is all you've done in a month?" Coulson's disappointment is obvious. He'd been thrilled when he'd seen Fitz's initial output in the immediate aftermath of Jemma's departure. Those had been the designs they'd worked on together. It had been her formulas, her handwriting in his notebook he'd been following. The work they'd done in those few days together had been able to sustain him for weeks, but his output has slowed to a trickle since. Their cipher is helpful, but progress is still slow. Projects are staggered and not on the same schedule that Majour Coulson needs.
"I still can't figure out the photomultiplier."
"But the...cathode?" The Major struggles for the correct term. "What you were working on last month? That's operational?"
"It works, yeah, but without the photomultiplier there's nothing to hit the phosphor screen," he laments. He needs Jemma for that and he is still waiting on her suggestions.
"What about the non-lethal weapon you were developing?"
"The Night Night Gun?"
"The gun with the toxin - you're not calling it that." Fitz smiles wistfully at the remark, recalling a similar comment from Jemma.
"I can't figure out the chemical compound," he lies. He can't figure out the compound because he has yet to hear back from Jemma. "I'm working on it, I promise," he assures. There's an urgency to Major Coulson's requests that makes him wonder more than ever where exactly his prototypes are going.
It's hard not to ask questions. France, the British story in this war had been nothing but evacuation, retreat, and humiliation. A series of one catastrophic defeat after another. First Norway and Dunkirk, then Greece and Crete, and even Singapore. The progress in North Africa seems to have raised everybody's expectations for more, including Major 's lost anything resembling hope that the summer months will hold anything better, despite the progress in North Africa.
He sits huddled over his desk on his lunch break, poring through his notes from the day and contemplating what to write to Jemma about his work that day. He has pages from the codebook they made huddled beneath a blanket on the Salsbury Crags to help him draft silly sentences about food and leisure. Vera Lynn warbles on the wireless about how "you'll never know if you don't know now". He switches the music off in frustration.
He's not sure what he's angry about. The fact that he ruined everything or the fact that Jemma hadn't responded to his confession on the platform or in any letter after. It's like it never happened..
Sometimes when he is working in the shop he lets himself wonder what it would be like to work alongside her every day like Milton does. The way they'd been able to for those five glorious days. He wouldn't have to spend hours crafting a cipher and waiting weeks for her reply to incorporate her ideas into his designs. But all it takes is a recollection of that moment on the train platform.
Oh.
The word rings out constantly whenever he thinks of her now. He can't separate it from anything else. He can't think of the fun days they'd spent in Edinburgh, the years of correspondence, her unconditional support and friendship.
Oh.
It's all he can hear.
Diving into his projects doesn't help. Somehow, even with her assistance, this job that had been everything he'd ever wanted begins to haunt him.
"Fitz?" The Commodore raps on the door with his knuckles and calls to him.
"I'm finishing lunch," he shouts through the door. "Be down in a minute!"
"There's some men down here to see you."
"What?" Fitz shuts his notebook and shoves it into the desk drawer.
"They say they need to speak with you."
"Yeah, I'll be right - "
"Er - now, Fitz." There is an urgency to the Commodore's typically laid back tone. Fitz folds up his half-finished letter to Jemma and sticks it in his pocket to go see what the Commodore is rambling about.
"Is it Clarke? Tell him I'm nearly finished with the - " Suddenly there are a host of uniformed men standing behind the Commodore that make Fitz stop talking mid-sentence.
"Private Fitz, you need to come with us - " The senior ranking officer speaks briskly.
"I'm - what now?"
"You need to come with us." The two enlisted men flanking the officer don't wait and seize him forcefully by the arm.
"What in the - no, I won't - what in the world?"
"Fitz, I'll call Mr. Clarke and Major Coulson. Just go with them."
"I don't even know where I'm going! Where am I going?" he shouts and struggles against the uniformed officers. "Just tell me where I'm going!"
They throw him in the back of a car and he shouts at the officers the entire ride, but they say nothing to him. It's nearly an hour in the car before he's finally let out. They're in the courtyard of a great castle somewhere in the countryside.
"You can't just haul me out like this and not tell me - "
"Right this way, private. First door on your right."
"Oh, now we're talking?" Fitz challenges. "An hour in the car and you can't tell me where we're going, but now that we're here it's 'first door on the right'?" The young officer closes the door on Fitz and he turns around to face yet another young officer sitting behind a desk, a captain by the look of it. This one is an American, he can tell by his uniform. "What am I doing here?"
"Well, you're being charged with treason, private," the dark-haired young officer speaks smoothly. Too smoothly. It makes Fitz's skin crawl.
"With treason?" Fitz snorts with laughter. "How? What? Call Major Coulson."
"I've spoken with Major Coulson. You're a weapons consultant for him, I'm aware."
"Right."
"And you were made aware that the nature of your work was top secret?"
"Nobody ever briefed me, if that's what you mean."
"Why are you communicating government secrets by cipher?" The question takes Fitz by surprise. He has a moment to decide whether to deny the accusation or not.
"By cipher? With who? My mum?" Fitz dismisses. He's not sure why he chooses to lie, but he has an inherent dislike of this American officer.
"With Jemma Simmons actually, who I can see in your records, you've been told to stop communicating with before."
"I was told to stop writing to her about sensitive information," Fitz corrects, remembering the parameters of that conversation with his Battalion S2 all too well.
"And writing about weapons systems and schematics sent to the highest levels of the military and government? That's not sensitive?"
"Where in my letters have I ever written to her about that?" The news that his creations are being sent to the highest levels of military and government are news to him.
"You're clearly communicating by cipher."
"Let me see exactly what you think is a cipher," Fitz laughs. "Show me."
"First you wrote about eating at a restaurant that's no longer open. You wrote about lyrics to a song that - "
"Maybe you're just used to American music," Fitz interjects bravely.
"Don't try to get cheeky with me, Private. I can detain you here for - "
"For what? For writing letters?"
"Explain to me what this means!" Captain Ward stamps his finger onto the desk in anger. "Now!"
Fitz looks over the letter.
"It means I walked to Calton Hill. Stopped by the Nelson monument. Then I went to the docks." Fitz isn't sure where this fierce bravado comes from. He's terrified of the straight-jawed American officer. The letter is a cipher. He'd been communicating to Jemma his plan to alter the photocathode on the night optics to increase the tube's sensitivity. Walking up the hill indicated the increase and the Nelson Monument indicated the night optic.
"Being obstinate is not going to help you, Private," Ward states calmly. "Did you know she's fluent in German?"
"She speaks some German, yes. She's actually fluent in French," Fitz corrects.
"What interest could this woman possibly have in these systems except to pass secrets?"
"I'm not writing to her about weapons systems," Fitz laughs.
Captain Ward slides a completed crossword puzzle over to him.
"So we do the Telegraph puzzle," Fitz shrugs, disguising his alarm. That's where she put the chemical compounds and formulas.
"None of these answers are correct," Ward hisses. "Some of them are nonsense words. L - A - S - H. What's that mean? It's certainly not the answer to 3. What's she writing to you there?"
"She's not a spy." Fitz wonders whether Ward has figured out the cipher that disguises the chemical compound for Gallium and Arsenic.
"That's not for you to determine, Private." Fitz bristles at the way this Captain continually seems to use his rank to demean him. "See your job is to go and point your rifle wherever we tell you." He speaks so quietly, with a smarmy self-assured hubris that makes Fitz's blood boil. As if he knows his rank and position means he'll never be required to do the same.
"I go where my own government tells me. Not yours."
"And where did you think that was? A flat in Leith? Designing weapons?" Fitz can hear the threat before he says it. "Because believe me, Private, Major or no Major, your friend Coulson can't do much to help you. He's got no authority here." Fitz has no idea what here means and why this American has any jurisdiction over what constitutes treason in a country that's not even his.
"She's not a spy," he maintains. It's the only thing he can say in the face of this distasteful officer's accurate claims and terrifying threats.
"Again, Private. That's for me to determine. Not you."
He's locked up for two weeks before he even sees or speaks to another soul. The cell is bare save a straw mattress on the floor and a toilet. He's not even allowed paper and is left to do little but think about all the decisions that have led him here. He wonders if this will be his life now for the duration of the war, whether he'll be able to write to his mother and let her know he's safe. He thinks about Jemma and hopes she hasn't met the same fate. H
He's not sure how Coulson finds him, but the Major arrives outside Fitz's cell on Day 14 of his lockup. He explains that, as distasteful as he was, Captain Ward is correct. He can't spring Fitz from his confinement just yet. The allegations against Fitz are being brought to a higher echelon. He can only wonder what trouble awaits Jemma. The cipher had been her idea, after all.
"She's not a spy!" Fitz laments to Coulson through the bars, grabbing fistfuls of his own hair in frustration.
"They know more about her than you do, Fitz."
"Somehow I doubt that." Even as he says it, doubt creeps into his mind. She'd never officially confirmed being a codebreaker.
"You should have told me about her." The gentle scolding is the closest Coulson's ever come to a reprimand.
"I told you I had a friend who worked at a wireless factory. I told you she liked the sciences."
"I think she does a bit more than that."
Fitz's eyes light up as he looks at Coulson. He wonders if he knows her secret too.
"Do you know what she does?"
"Do you?" Coulson challenges. Remembering his promise to Jemma on the stoop of her coworker's flat in Dumbiedykes, Fitz tells the Major that he doesn't. "Don't lie. That's what got you into this mess in the first place," Coulson reminds.
"I don't know for certain."
"But you think…"
"I think I know." He places emphasis on the word 'think'.
"Did she tell you anything?" Suddenly it feels like Jemma is on trial. Remembering how teary she'd gotten the two times she'd come close to admitting her true job, Fitz is quick to dispel any rumors of disloyalty.
"No. She never said a word." He ignores the part where she'd admitted to lying him back in Sheffield. "I just - I figured it out. Her logic, her intuition, the way her brain works. I just - I just knew."
"You just knew?" He can hear how incredulous Major Coulson sounds.
"Look, she was helping me with your designs! She came up with half of them!"
"So you were actually telling her about your work?"
"Yes," Fitz admits softly. "She's a chemist. She's a brilliant chemist. She's working on the proper neurotoxin for the Night Night - the non-lethal weapon."
"She came up with it?"
"Yes," Fitz insists. "I mean, we did. Together."
"So you were actually communicating by cipher?"
"Yes."
"And you lied to Captain Ward?"
"Yes."
At the revelation, Coulson sits down on the chair outside Fitz's cell and breathes out an exhausted sigh.
"I suppose this is all my fault."
"Your fault?"
"I should have told you what the exact nature of the work you've been doing for me is."
"I never asked."
"A good soldier never does," Coulson sighs again. "I figured the less you knew the better."
"The less I knew about what?"
"Your research, your prototypes, your designs - they've all been going to a weapons research and development program inside the Ministry of Defense."
"What've you got to do with our Ministry of Defense?" Fitz asks bluntly, unsure what an American has to do with any of this. Never mind why the lieutenant who detained him and threatened him was American too.
"I'm sure you're aware this war is a joint effort. Nobody's going to win it alone." Fitz scowls, suddenly feeling like the Major is belittling him by trying to explain how important it is to have Allies. "We've got our own R&D back home. But the way I see it, the more we work together the quicker this thing is over. I'm a liaison of sorts.."
"So do you work for MD1?" Fitz dares to question..
"In a way." The coy answer makes Fitz laugh.
"So you can't tell me who you work for, but I'm the one in a jail cell?" he laughs at the ridiculous situation. Coulson doesn't respond to the allegation and for a long time neither speaks. "Look, I'll tell you what the bloody letters say! She's helping me build the weapons you want. She's not stealing secrets. I told you already, she came up with half of them!"
"She works for the Home Office. She's fluent in German."
"She's not fluent in German!" Fitz grits his teeth together, annoyed that something as simple as her being proficient in languages could be a reason to suspect her of being a spy.
"She has a marked interest in weapons schematics - "
"She likes the sciences!"
"It all seems a bit suspicious. Especially when you factor in that you've already been told once before by your S2 to stop writing her." Fitz looks down at the floor shamefully. It seems like forever ago he'd been warned by the friendly lieutenant to be careful. He'd known it was a bad idea to communicate by cypher, but Jemma had been so excited. She'd loved the idea of being able to help him directly.
"She just wanted to help," Fitz laments.
"How long have you known this woman?"
"Three years."
"And you have no arrangement with her? She's just a friend?"
"You're just in love with her?"
"Yeah," he admits after several steadying breaths. He'd never dared admit it to himself, but saying it out loud is oddly comforting.
"Only a man in love would do something so stupid," Coulson mutters.
"Is she in trouble?" Fitz fails to disguise the panicked shaking of his voice. "Please, tell me she's not - I mean, she's okay, isn't she?"
"To my knowledge, she hasn't been imprisoned, no." Fitz blows out a sigh of relief. "She is being investigated though."
"Investigated, what's that mean?"
"They interview her friends and family, look at her university records, contacts, any travel abroad or foreign contacts. The same that's been done for you."
"Y - you talked to my mum?"
"I didn't talk to anybody. This isn't my investigation. Believe me, I'm trying to end it and let you get back to work."
"I'll tell you whatever you want to know. I'l tell you what everything in the cipher means. Just please make sure she's okay," Fitz pleads, panicked by the mere notion that she's in any kind of trouble.
He's not sure what it takes for him to be released. Whether they'd questioned Jemma or whether Coulson had appealed to whomever had detained him with the hapless story of a lovelorn Private.
He gets no answers about who Captain Ward is other than an officer in a joint counter-intelligence team. When he's finally released and returns to work after nearly one month in lock-up he has nine letters waiting for him. Three are concerned notes from his mother, but the rest are all from Jemma. There is no attempt at a cipher or code in any of them. She's worried about his lack of correspondence and has written one each week he's been in lock-up. She asks if he has moved again and begs him to write to her, but he still doesn't reply for over a week.
All he tells her is that he has mucked everything up and it's probably a good idea if he doesn't write to her anymore. It's about more than just the cipher and his interaction and subsequent imprisonment at the hands of Captain Ward. For his sanity, he thinks it's for the best.
He tries to dive back into his work on his own, but can hardly concentrate and doesn't need Clarke or Coulson to tell him his output is below what is expected.
There is no knock at the door. Fitz hears it open and, while he's surprised the Commodore didn't knock, he doesn't even look up to see him.
"I know I need to finish the anti-personnel mines. I'm just adjusting the alloy on the mechanical timer!"
"Leopold." He recognizes the voice immediately and drops his ink pen. Nobody else in the world calls him by his first name.
"Father." The curt greeting belies the fact that it's been three years since they've seen each other. Fitz had tried not to keep tabs on where the Black Watch is, but he knows at the very least he's been leading men in Africa. By the look of his epaulettes, he'd climbed the ranks and was now a Brigadier.
"I had a devil of a time finding you. Did you know your battalion is up at Loncindorb Moor doing mountain warfare training?" Fitz can already hear the disappointment in his voice. "And you are...here," he sighs, looking around the room. The walls are covered with Fitz's scribblings and schematics. There are weapons prototypes on every available surface. Fitz is quiet because he knows what's about to come. He's heard it his whole life. It scarcely matters that he is working on matters of national , according to Coulson, his designs are being used across England from Cornwall to Comrie and even in Africa and the South Pacific. "Fiddling with toys."
"I'm building weapons," Fitz offers quietly, though he knows it's futile to argue.
"This war's not going to be won in a garage, Leopold." Fitz opens his mouth to offer a feeble protest, but doesn't even get a sound out before his father continues. ''But it's certainly not going to be won training on the moors either." The words are a surprise. Fitz had been sure his father was going to force him back to his unit, but now he's unsure where the conversation is headed. "That's why I've got great news."
In the past, his father's great news has ranged from his own postings in Egypt to Fitz's admission to Edinburgh. Fitz sits quietly and waits.
"I've gotten you a transfer."
"A what?"
"A transfer. To 2nd Battalion."
"2nd Battalion? They're just over in Aberdeen."
"Transfer to the Regiment."
"To the Regiment?" Fitz isn't sure what regiment he's talking about.
"Highland Light Infantry Regiment. Hell's Last Issue, they call it."
"Hell's Last Issue?"
"You'll be in the 51st Highland now. See while the 52nd has been paying football matches and having parades for the princess, your sister division's been fighting across Africa." Somehow his father is able to make Fitz feel like the failings of an entire army division are his fault. "They saw combat at Keren in '41 and Knightsbridge and Fuka last year. It's a solid unit. Good command staff. Great NCOs."
"But, I'm - "
"Tinkering in a shop! Playing with toys and gadgets! The same as you've always done! Men are dying, Leopold."
"So send me back to the Highlanders," Fitz offers weakly. He detests the thought of leaving this place that has allowed him to work with a kind of freedom he's never known and do what he loves, but at the very least he wants to return to his unit where the faces are familiar.
"So you can play soldier out in the mountains?" his father snorts in disgust. "The only way to train for a war is to fight in a war!" He raises his voice now and Fitz knows it's past the point of argument, if there ever was one.
"Yes, sir."
"Damned if I allow my only son to spend the entire war sitting on his arse."
"Yes, sir."
This isn't a discussion. It's not even a conversation with his father. It's an order from a senior officer. He wonders if his detainment by Captain Ward has anything to do with the sudden transfer, but doesn't dare ask or reveal to his father he'd been sent to the brig for an entire month. He just nods his head like he's always done and obeys.