Note: In this, Jemma is still Fitz's hallucination.
"How fascinating," Jemma's voice rang in his head.
"Hmm," Fitz hummed in detached agreement. He was hunched over his desk at the lab, intently studying the schematics for the cloaking technology and truly immersed in his work for the first time since his injury.
Fitz had long ago learned how to tune out Jemma's near-constant chatter in the lab. She was so excitable and eager to learn that each new scientific discovery enthralled her in a way that made her talk like a toddler on a sugar rush. Once they had gotten to the Bus, nearly every single project they worked on was a new discovery, so her voice had become a sort of soothing white noise to Fitz. Her babbling had never once bothered him, but rather the opposite - encouraged him to continue his work and comforted him that if someone as brilliant as Jemma Simmons could still find all of this fascinating with every fresh discovery, then he wasn't too dorky for feeling the same way.
Always enthusiastic, her murmurs were the one constant no matter where they worked - whether in her dorm room at the Academy, in a training facility in Sci-Ops, or in their cramped lab on the Bus. He never had a long adjustment period from lab-to-lab, or any sort of discomfort working with new or unfamiliar lab techs because the warm, white noise of Jemma's voice, accompanied by the occasional arm pat in excitement or shoulder squeeze of encouragement, let him know that he was safe.
He was home.
He had long ago learned the differences in Jemma's tones when she was speaking - he didn't really pay attention when she was happily talking to herself in the lab, and she didn't need him to. But her voice took on a slightly different tone according to her moods, so he would tune in whenever he heard her switch. When she needed his input or expertise on a project, her voice got a little higher, her accent a little clearer and pointed. His favorite was when she was about to say something she considered improper or against SHIELD's rules; her voice would go up very high and almost comically quiet. When she was frustrated and near her breaking point, her voice got low and faint, her accent muddled… This was the tone that had been the soundtrack to Fitz fading in and out of consciousness for nine days after the incident.
He heard Simmons' voice again, this time the tone a bit higher and going up at the end of her statement, like she asked a question.
"What?" Fitz asked, straightening up and turning to her work station.
She wasn't there.
Fitz stared at the empty space, frozen as the realization hit him right in the gut, the pain as fresh as the day Coulson had told him of her departure. She wasn't there. She hadn't been there for weeks and the evidence was unavoidable.
He flinched, seeing the stacks of Post-Its she usually arranged so carefully in ROY-G-BIV order in the corner of her desk scattered haphazardly in a heap. The notes that had been neatly printed in her precise handwriting and tacked to the wall over her computer were gone, pulled down by a lab tech who needed them for reference at a different work station.
She wasn't there. He didn't know where she was. He wondered briefly what she was saying, who was listening to her melodious words as she puzzled out a difficult problem or delighted in a hard-won solution. He wondered if she was saying anything at all. If he would ever hear her say anything again.
Forcing himself to snap out of that line of thinking, Fitz turned his attention back to the schematics in front of him.
What had he been working on? Something about the device that powered the cloaking?… Or was it the cloaking technology itself… Or….
Fitz stared at the tablet in front of him, anger starting to course through his veins. He slammed a fist on the table and shoved the tablet away before burying his head in his shaking hands. It was too quiet. He couldn't focus without some noise to tune out.
He needed music, voices, talking, something to tune out so he could focus on the problem at hand.
He needed her.
