"How've you been?"
Simmons' question hung in the air, unanswered.
Fitz stared at her, a million emotions flitting through his brain. Shocked she was actually there. Furious at her for leaving. Relieved she was alive. Scared she was just another hallucination. Nervous to talk to her. Hurt all over again with her rejection of his confession.
But the emotion that won out was, surprisingly, anger.
How had he been? How had he been?! Was she kidding him? He was on the brink of death for 9 days and had spent months clawing his way toward some semblance of the boy he had once been, his brain kicking and screaming and blocking him at every chance along the way, and she had up and disappeared on him.
He knew now that she had been on an undercover assignment. Though no one had told him, he had figured out she had asked for the assignment, leaving him in the dust, leaving him with a lie and a false promise to come back. She hadn't known she would ever come back, and now she was there, standing there and staring at him with an expression in her eyes he didn't recognize.
How could he not recognize it? He knew all of Simmons' expressions. And now she was here, with shorter hair and darker makeup and nicer clothes, staring at him in a way he couldn't understand.
Simmons was practically a stranger to him, and he had changed so much in the last few months, he knew he would be a stranger to her. It was all too much.
So he said the only thing he knew would shorten their conversation so he could get out of the situation as quickly as possible.
"Fine," Fitz lied.
Simmons smiled politely, but it didn't reach her eyes. She knew he was lying.
"Good," she said. "I, um, I just got back from…" She paused, realizing the dangerous territory she was about to enter, and changed directions. "They told me you were in the lab and I wanted to see if…" Simmons looked down, staring at her hands. "I missed being in the lab with you," she said quietly, quickly.
It's where she felt safest, Fitz realized. That much he still knew about her. He didn't know what terrors she had been through, but he knew she needed safety now. And to feel at home. And for her, that was the lab. As it always had been for him.
Maybe….
A wisp of hope appeared in Fitz's thoughts and he smiled tentatively at his erstwhile partner.
Maybe this could work. Maybe they could go back to working together in the lab and maybe he'd get over his feelings for her and they'd both be able to move on and work together, and things would go back to the way they had always been.
"I've been studying the face-mapping technology Agent 33 has been using," Fitz said, taking a tentative step forward. "Do - ah, um… Do you want to look at it?"
Simmons' face broke into a beaming smile, so wide and bright that it sent a wave of calm through Fitz. It had been so long since he had seen that smile. When he saw Simmons' eyes starting to well up, he briefly wondered how long it had been since she had smiled at all.
"Yes, Fitz. Please. Oh, I would like that very much."
