Jemma knows that Fiz thinks she doesn't see, but she does. How cold and distant he is, the way he avoids her in his free time. How when they work in the lab, three feet apart, it's the longest distance between them. His smiles are strained and more grimaces than anything. She's hurting him, and she can't stand that. So she distances herself from him, or she tries.
It's for the best, she tells herself.
But yet, she longs for the companionship they used to have, late nights in the lab, talking about anything and everything.
/
She can't have that anymore.
She gave that up.
/
Jemma's supposed to be a scientist, and yet she can't figure out why, the one thing she can't see, after everything she's done to him, why he helps. Why he looked her in the eye after she broke and finally told him the truth, and promised they'd get Will back. Why he stays, why he still cares. He felt something for her, Jemma is sure of it, and she broke his heart, so why is he still around?
/
She doesn't tell him- or anyone that this is the worst torture, that this hurts so bad. To save one man means to break another. To save Will, the one who saved her and kept her alive and sane on the godforsaken planet. Or Fiz, her friend, her lab partner, her everything. Jemma chose, and she's breaking Fiz.
/
The others look at Fiz with pity. But she's not missing anything, she see's him, because she knows him so well.
She doesn't hear him crying in his room at night.
She doesn't see him sit down in the lab, staring at equations and schematics, trying to forget but at the same time wondering, what if?
She doesn't see his heart break.
She doesn't see that he still loves her.
/
He won't know that this is tearing her apart.