So I'm sorry for tearing your hearts out yesterday, but your reviews were amazing, I mean seriously - ask my sisters, I was giggling like a mad woman reading them all this morning (I delight in your pain! Not really. Well ... I kind of do ... anyway ...)

So, as I killed Simmons yesterday (in quite possibly the most peaceful and happiest death ever), I decided to do the opposite today.

Also, I reached my target of eight reviews yesterday (have I mentioned I love you all - I do, really), I'm going to try and get ... ten for this chapter. There's seventy of you following this, if one in seven of just my followers review, I'll have them all in no time.

See you tomorrow and happy Friday 13th.


"Are they back?" Jemma's voice was cheerful, as she checked her watch. "I suppose that means he wins."

A confused look from Skye had the bio-chemist explaining further.

"We had a bet. He bet he would be back by Christmas Eve. I bet he wouldn't." Offering her wrist up, she continued to rattle on, not even noticing the other woman as she packed away her work. "Ten to twelve. That means he wins, just."

Jemma frowned, her hand drifting lower until it rested on her abdomen and the slight raised bump that was just showing at three months. "You won't tell him I've been in the lab will you? He gets terribly worked up over these things." Her voice lowered to a whisper as if it was some sort of secret, as if the entire Bus didn't know how difficult it was to keep any part of FitzSimmons away from their work.

"Jemma..." Skye's voice was quiet, and there was a hint of ... something in it that had the blood in her veins run cold all of a sudden.

Her arm wrapped tighter around her stomach, subconsciously protective, her mind refusing to register the words she knew were coming.

"It was an ambush, they knew they were coming, and they were ready for it," Skye took a deep breath, tears clear in her eyes, "Grant's still in surgery, and even now it could go either way," suddenly the computer specialist's eyes were anywhere but on her friend, her voice trailing off.

"And Leo?" She prompted, her mouth dry, her face fearful.

"I'm so sorry Jemma, but there was so much blood, he lost too much blood."

Jemma paled instantly, the blood draining from her face as Skye watched - her features becoming pale and ashen, her legs buckling underneath her in a way that would have had her plummeting to the ground had it not been for the junior agent's quick reactions, but even that succeeded in only slowing her descent.

"This is a joke right?" Her voice was desperate, clutching to the last straws of hope she had. "Any minute now Leo is going to walk down those stairs and we'll laugh and I'll probably hate you a little bit, but it'll be okay - because you're just joking. Right?"

The pleading look on the elder woman's was more suited to a terrified child than a full grown adult, but terrified child worked just as well.

"I ... I wouldn't ..." Skye tried to speak but the words just weren't working, and she couldn't do anything to help but watch as the silent tears slid down her best friend's cheek, dripping in undisturbed paths until they fell off of her face and onto her hands, the hands gripping a small gold band.

("Keep it safe," he had said - just two days before. "I don't want to lose it."

And he had pressed a kiss to his wife's cheek, and a hand to her stomach and then he got in the car with Ward.

And they didn't know it then, but they would never see him again.)

Skye couldn't help but remember the day they had given each other their rings, just over eighteen months before hand, in a little garden in England, the grass was green and the sun was shining and everything was beautiful, and of course neither side of FitzSimmons noticed, their attention entirely too focused on each other - but it was the happiest she'd ever seen them, the happiest she would ever see them, until the day about a month before when they announced they were going to be parents.

Her face fell flat as she realised - they weren't going to be parents anymore, Jemma was.

And it was all she could do to force the images out of her head - Grant, motionless on a table, kept alive by machines and the frantic hands of strangers; May and Coulson stood by the door, waiting for news, not letting another member of their team, their family, slip away so easily; and Leo, motionless forever, laid on a cold metal slab waiting for his next of kin.

But she couldn't delete the images, they were seared into her mind, so she turned her attention to the still dangerously pale woman next to her, wrapping her arms around her shoulders as she became to sob, large silent shakes rattling her body, tears soaking the shoulder of Skye's shirt.

("I'll be home soon." He promised.

He lied.)


(Did that make you sad?)

Thank you for reading, and please review,
Mia