"You know, for the amount of blood you two are taking from me every day, I should at least get some cookies and a juice box afterwards," Skye joked, rolling down her sleeves after Simmons pressed down a bandaid over her veins.
The biochemist merely stood and gave Skye a tight smile before leaving the room with a fresh vial of blood in her hands.
Fitz remained behind, crossing his arms over his chest and watching his colleague walk away.
"I'm worried about Simmons," he finally said, turning his attention to Skye as she lay in the bed in quarantine.
"Why? What's wrong?" Skye asked, eyes flying back to hall their friend had just left. "Was she hurt back at the earthqu - back at the cave?" She asked, trying to skip over the topic that had her absolutely terrified.
"No," Fitz said absentmindedly. "I covered her."
Skye made an impressed noise, but Fitz continued, "It's because of Trip."
"Oh," Skye said, the teasing completely dropping from her tone. "Yeah. We all miss him."
"Yeah," Fitz said, his voice getting a little harder as he tried to explain, "But I mean it's really hard on her. More than the rest of us."
"What are you talking about?" Skye asked, confused. "Simmons will be fine," she dismissed, reaching around the table next to her bed for her tablet.
"She cared about him," Fitz bursts out, and he feels instantly guilty for the unbidden twinge of jealousy he feels mentioning it. "Of course she'd -"
"Yeah, cared about him in that he was a good flirt," Skye bluntly interrupted. She started ticking names off her fingers. "Hunter's fun but he's got lady issues, Ward turned into a psycho killer, Mac is a giant, terrifying teddy bear who is beautiful to look at but so not interested in flirting with anyone on this base. Not to mention, I caught you stuttering around Simmons a few times before your injury, so obviously you weren't stellar on that front."
"Hey!" Fitz complained, but only weakly. They both knew she was right.
"Don't get me wrong, Trip was a genuinely wonderful guy and this is a huge loss for all of us," Skye rushed to clarify. "He was a good, loyal friend, and simply a fun flirt. He wasn't someone Simmons was actually interested in," she said carefully, staring at Fitz like he was missing something.
"Okaaay," Fitz said slowly, not understanding what Skye was trying to accomplish with the entire conversation.
"I just… She's taking it so hard, I don't know how to help her… I've never seen her so distraught," Fitz continued. "Just the other day she switched up two lab samples and forgot to properly close the venting door while testing something. I know it may not seem like much, but for Simmons, it's the worst it's ever been."
"Maybe she's just stressed like the rest of us. I know everyone's worried about me," Skye said. No use sugar coating it.
"No, that would be different. She's just very unfocused - I know you haven't known her as long as I have, so you'll have to trust me," Fitz barreled on. "This is the most upset I've ever seen her. Well, except for when you were shot, of course. That was pretty bad too, actually. She -"
"What?" Skye interrupted, looking up sharply from her tablet. "You think right now is the 'worst' Simmons has ever been?"
"Well, yeah…" Fitz said, confused. He would obviously be an expert at this, he'd known Simmons the longest and seen her through some hard times.
"And you, expert in all things Simmons, knows that she is the most upset she's ever been in her life because she switched up some lab samples?" Skye asked to confirm.
Fitz flinched at the jab, but nodded. Obviously. "Well, again, your injury was bad, but she was mostly terrified of losing you. And we've had a few... Conversations... Since her return that she got pretty upset during. And well, I suppose maybe something could have happened before we ever met that made her more upset, but she would've told me about it. But since we've met..." He trailed off, not sure where he was going with this.
Skye stared at him for another moment, an unreadable expression on her face, before bursting into loud guffaws. She started laughing so loud her shoulders were shaking in time with the alarms going off outside the quarantine chamber, reacting to her change in heart rate.
"Hey, did you hear that?" Skye yelled at May who ducked in to see why the alarms were sounding.
May raised an eyebrow, waiting.
"Fitzy here," Skye motioned to Fitz, who had crossed his arms uncomfortably across his chest at this point, "Thinks that Simmons is currently the most upset she has never been."
May turned her razor focus to Fitz and stared him down, cocking an eyebrow.
"Yeah, really," Skye answered her unsaid question. "Jemma Simmons has never been more distraught and sad than she is right now."
May stared at Fitz for a moment longer, making the engineer squirm, before finally rolling her eyes and walking away.
"What was that abo-" Fitz started.
"I hate to break it to you, Fitz," Skye interrupted. "But you, in all your years of expertise, know absolutely nothing about how Jemma Simmons behaves when she is seriously upset."
"Wha-"
"Because you were unconscious for all of it."
Fitz snapped his mouth shut, staring at Skye as realization hit him. Oh. Oh. He had never actually been told what Simmons had been doing during those nine days he was unconscious after his injury. By the time his brain had unscrambled itself enough to really start asking questions of its own instead of responding to commands or parroting Simmons' words, the biochemist had been out the door, on her way to Hydra.
He had always just assumed she had spent most of the nine days resenting his declaration of love, counting down the hours until she could bolt.
But now that he thought about it, finally free of the haze of anger that Simmons' departure had cast over all of his memories of that time, he realized that he hadn't given a fair consideration to his partner's actions during his coma.
He assumed now that she had probably spent most of it fussing over him, laughing lightly as he pictured her bossing around all the doctors on the base.
"Why are you laughing?" Skye asked, her voice laced with... Was that disgust? Admonishment? Fitz snapped out of his imaginings and looked down at her, propped up in the bed.
"Just picturing Simmons bossing everyone around while I was asleep. She's always smarter than everyone, that one. You know she would be hovering -"
"Hovering!?" Skye's voice was incredulous. "Bossing people around while you were sleeping?"
Fitz's eyes grew wide. Why was Skye so angry. "Yes..."
"Fitz, we didn't think you would ever wake up. She thought you were dying. For nine days, she thought she was watching you slowly die in front of her, and there was nothing she could do to help you."
Fitz's face paled. Oh. He hadn't realized...
"She literally didn't leave your side. The whole time. She didn't eat, she didn't sleep, she just sobbed at your bedside, holding your hand. The doctors told her not to touch your bad hand, but she would ignore them and massage it every chance she got so it wouldn't be cramped when you woke up. After a while they let her, since she had more degrees than the rest of them put together anyway."
Fitz flexed his left hand, remembering how he had gone nearly a full week after he woke up before anyone realized there was a problem with his hand. He had been able to focus solely on his mental progression during that time before getting bogged down with the emotions of realizing he had a whole other, much more physical problem to deal with.
Simmons had done that for him.
Suddenly, he remembered a meeting he had had with doctors a few days before Simmons left, when they had told him that he was weeks behind schedule with his wrist exercises and he had tried to haltingly explain it was because it didn't always hurt. Simmons' guilt-stricken expression during that appointment suddnely made more sense.
"What else did she - um..." He started, hesitant to ask but desperate to know more.
"Did you know she had scoliosis as a child? Had surgery and everything."
Fitz nodded.
"Of course you did. Well, none of us did. But we found out after she remained hunched over your bed for four days straight, screwing up her back so badly the doctors tried to put her in a back brace so she couldn't slouch."
Fitz winced. He knew how painful that could get for her, having witnessed her fall asleep at her desk at the academy more than once and wake up in pain so severe it would bring tears to her eyes.
"Your heart stopped twice and I swear Simmons died both times," Skye continued, pressing onwards. She suddenly felt the need to impress upon Fitz the severity of all that he had missed.
His mouth went dry. He knew his heart had stopped twice, but it had been described to him as very brief blips, a result of his body taking a long time to adjust to the breathing tube.
"She didn't stop crying for four days, Fitz. For four days. Eventually, she cried herself out of tears. None of us really had much time to worry about you - no offense, the doctors were doing their jobs so all we could do was wait. But for her... Coulson would just sit with her and hold her when she cried. I offered to take her shopping or at least watch movies. Trip at one point brought a bottle of whiskey and tried to get her to drink, hoping she would drink too much and pass out and actually sleep for more than a few hours... but she never took a sip. She didn't want to be muddled when you woke up."
Fitz just stared at Skye, slowly sinking into a nearby chair. The Simmons she was describing was one he had never seen.
"She had to be medicated, Fitz," Skye said softly, finally taking pity on him. "Just so we could give her an IV and get some fluids in her. At one point I thought Coulson was going to restrain her. We took turns watching her on the security cameras in your room to make sure she didn't pass out - which she did, multiple times."
"She talked to you like you were awake. The whole time, she talked to you. It was crazy. She would hold one of your hands, then scribble out math equations on a notepad with another. She was always running the same calculations, over and over, about how much oxygen had been left in that pod, and second-guessing your decision to... Well, whatever it is you two did down there that kept you both alive."
Fitz sucked in an unsteady breath at this and shot his eyes up at Skye, "She never told you?"
"What happened down there? No. She refuses to discuss it. All she said is that you're a hero. She said that over and over, if anyone asked. But that's all she said."
FItz simply nodded, lost in thought.
"What did happen down there, Fitz?" Skye asked gently.
"I kept her alive," He said, parroting her words back to her.
Skye's gaze remained unwavering as she looked at her friend. "You didn't expect to live, did you?" She said quietly.
Fitz shrugged, uncomfortable. "I had broken my arm. She was the stronger swimmer," he said, as though that explained anything.
Skye merely nodded. After a moment, she moved on, much to Fitz's relief. "Do you remember your mom coming to visit you?"
Fitz scrunched up his forehead, wracking his brain. "Vaguely. I know she was there for a few days after I woke up," he said. "It's hard to remember specifics from that time," he admitted.
Skye hummed. "Ddi you know Simmons was the one who called her?"
"Not Coulson?" Fitz asked, surprised.
"Simmons wouldn't let him. Insisted it be her. On day five, she kicked us all of out your room when she made the call. I think she held it together enough so she didn't give your poor mom a heart attack, but... " She trailed off, then looked at Fitz seriously. "How well did Simmons know your mom before all this?"
"Oh, they get on great," Fitz said enthusiastically. He'd always loved how much Jemma and his mom got along. "We always spend Christmas together and every summer break during school we would stay at one another's houses, depending on the type of project we were working on. They text and e-mail, and Ma sends her birthday gifts every year. Yeah, she loves loves Simmons."
Skye just smiled sadly, "So it runs in the family, huh?"
Before Fitz could respond, she continued. "When your mom got here, they just collapsed in each other's arms for a few hours. But your mom collected herself pretty quickly and worked on putting Simmons back together. Forced her into the shower - thank God for that, by the way, she smelled like ocean the whole freaking time you were out - and would take her on walks outside the base, forcing her to get some sunlight. Wouldn't let her back inside to see you until she'd drunk two full water bottles and a Gatorade and eaten a protein bar."
"After two days of this, Simmons was finally calm enough to actually eat. We took turns feeding her and following her to the bathroom to make sure the food stayed down. She and your mom just cried and exchanged stories and pictures and held your hand and cried some more."
"A few days later, you woke up. And that's when Simmons went all bossy doctor on everyone else, taking over your recovery."
"She thinks she hurt my recovery by taking over," Fitz said quietly.
Skye shrugged, "Maybe, looking back on it. You did rely on her a lot. But honestly, I can't blame her - when you woke up you kept looking at her with these pleading puppy dog eyes that even made May cry I few times. She knew your capabilities better than anyone. At the time, it made sense for her to take control."
Fitz took a deep breath and sat back, rubbing his eyes clear of the few tears that had collected during Skye's story. Well, now he knew. And he had a whole new slew of nightmares and guilty feelings to process. Along with, selfishly, a small flare of hope. Hope that maybe, maybe, Simmons cared for him as much as he cared for her. He just wished she hadn't had to go through the agony of those nine days.
They heard Simmons' quick footsteps coming back down the hall, causing the pair to break out of their reflection.
"I know you hate that she left you and you were alone, but remember that she was alone first, Fitz. For nine days, she thought you had left her forever. Try to remember that instead of getting so mad at her for leaving," Skye said quietly, ending right before Simmons entered the room.
"Okay," the biochemist said brightly, smiling wide, and brandishing a small medical hammer. "How about we test those reflexes again?"
"Ohh, come on, Simmons! Not again!" Skye groaned.
