Drabble 32: Bringing You Back
A/N: Hey guys! Sorry updates have been slower, but since school started up again I've been busy. I really need some more ideas, too, so please tell me any you have for more drabbles! The request for a drabble based on the episode Turn, Turn, Turn, it's coming, I promise. I need to watch the episode again, which I plan to do this weekend. Anyway, enjoy this chapter. And give me more ideas!
People say scents can bring back memory. That if you smell something, it could bring you back to the first time you encountered the scent, to that memory. Or that, if you know it's important, you can use the scent to remember something specific.
Jemma Simmons knows all this. She tried using scents when Fitz first woke up, that first horrible day in which he'd remembered next to nothing. She'd told him their past and shown him pictures, and then she'd remembered how scent triggers memory. So she'd found all the samples she could that she thought tied in most strongly with her favorite memories.
It seemed to work well enough; he became at least hazily able to recall the memories. He knew her name, and the basics of how they had met. It was something.
It worked wonders for Jemma. She felt like she was living all of it again, and she let herself replay it all in her mind greedily, letting it comfort her.
And when he was recovered more, and Coulson asked her to go undercover at HYDRA, she relied on those memories: for confidence and strength. She wasn't allowed to contact her old team, no one except Coulson; and even then she rarely got to speak to him, and it was even rarer to see him. There were no friendly faces around her most of the time.
One night, after seeing some of her team on the boat with Donny Gill, she had almost called them, just to hear their voices and explain herself. She felt so scared to be behind enemy lines. She had known it all along, the threat of being discovered, but seeing her team had made it more real. And she had seen how much she had hurt them by leaving without saying goodbye. That had scared her almost as much, the thought that she had hurt them. It would've been too painful if she had goodbye, though. More final.
Only Coulson was supposed to know. She had guessed May would find out, but Skye and Fitz were meant to be kept in the dark, to protect all of them. Surely Coulson would explain it to them, now that she had been seen. She hoped he would. She didn't want them to think she was really a traitor. They'd had enough experience with that.
She thought of Fitz and hoped he was better than when she left. She knew he needed to be away from her to heal properly, or he'd rely on her more than he should. But it had killed her to leave. And she didn't know if he understood.
But she'd taken something with her before leaving the Playground. She'd sprayed some of his cologne on an index card. She'd wanted to spray it on a bit of fabric, but she had to be able to dispose of it easily, in case it in some way could be connected with Fitz, and she could part with an index card far more easily than an old shirt or something. By that night it was mostly just a memory of a scent, faded from time. But it soothed her, even just to hold it.
It made her think he was standing there, beside her. Just like he always had. And it gave her the strength she needed to not call them.
She didn't know that Fitz relied on scent too.
In his delusions of her standing by his side, some part of him knew she was gone. But it took his brain some time to realize it, and for him to be able to make the fake Jemma go away. And when he did he felt depressed, and angry. And betrayed.
She hadn't said goodbye. He should have been mad at her, with that being the end of it. But he missed her. He didn't feel like himself with her gone, especially not since he had changed. So one day he walked into her old room and just took a deep breath, hoping for some reminder of her. There was the faintest trace of a scent left over, from her perfume and her clean laundry. And he felt as if she was by his side again.
Not the fake Jemma of his hallucinations.
The real one. The one who had been his partner for years, who he couldn't imagine his life without. The one who had left him without saying goodbye, or where she was going, or even if she was coming back.
And in that moment he felt like his old self.
Scents can transport you to your deepest self, and make you relive memories you didn't even know you had. Sometimes they're used to search for specific memories. Sometimes they're used to bring back a general collection of them, for comfort.
That is how Fitz-Simmons stayed close in their separation, though neither knew the other ever did it. It kept them grounded, and helped bring them back to each other.