A/N: So I'm still not over Tuesday's AoS and that spectacular Fitzsimmons scene, and I'm so grateful that I've had nothing to do this week because I've been able to just watch that scene a million times and work on this fic. It's been lovely. 3
I've gotten a fair bit of the rest of this written, and I'll hopefully have it finished by the time the season's over. Fingers crossed.
Enjoy!
But, regardless of how difficult everything was, Fitz had live with it.
On the whole, he didn't regret coming back to the palace. Practically, he needed the lab, and things still weren't adding up with whatever had happened at the fortress, so, really, it was good that he was there.
Fitz's first project now that he was back to work was attempting to make a stronger version of he and Jemma's unconsciousness solution so he could use it against Maveth, assuming he would actually get a chance to kill the sorcerer. What had been so promising only a week or two ago as he and his friends traveled with Grant to meet up with the King now seemed nearly impossible. Fitz had no idea where Maveth was, none of his friends remembered he existed, the person who's help he needed most hated him, and he didn't even know where the monolith was at this point. All evidence pointed against Fitz actually getting to kill Maveth.
But he had to try.
Except making compounds had never really been his specialty. This kind of thing had always been Jemma's area. Fitz had helped, of course, but the original formula had been Jemma's.
Finding himself going in circles with the compound, Fitz decided, instead, to look into curses themselves. He knew his father must have done all sorts of research like this back when Fitz had firstbeen cursed, but it couldn't hurt for Fitz to see it all for himself.
Plus the afternoons in the library had the added bonus of getting him out of the lab, which Fitz hated but really needed to do. If Jemma's glares weren't enough, watching her and Sir William whisper and giggle together was physically painful to him.
She doesn't know, Fitz would tell himself. This Jemma had been cursed to hate him just as he'd been cursed to watch. She didn't know that he loved her far more than this Sir William ever could.
But that didn't make it hurt any less. Nothing could alter the fact that Fitz was watching the love of his life fall in love with someone else, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.
Sir William was charming, at least decently smart (otherwise, Fitz knew with certainty, Jemma would have gotten rid of him long ago), and, worst, he seemed to really like Jemma. Or at least he seemed to really like making Jemma think he liked her.
(Curse or no curse, Fitz was allowing himself to be just a little bitter.)
Things might have been almost okay if Jemma would just have stopped acting as though Fitz was some sort of evil monster come to torment her, but every time he spoke to her, every time he so much as entered the same room as her, he received a look of such intense hatred that Fitz had to turn away or, better yet, from Jemma's perspective at least, leave the lab entirely. Fitz loved her so much, but every moment he spent with her now was pure torture.
But then there were moments, so brief Fitz would have dismissed them if they hadn't continued to happen, where Jemma narrowed her eyes as though she was trying to remember something but couldn't quite figure it out, like she recognized him from somewhere but couldn't place him.
And so Fitz allowed himself just the smallest bit of hope.
Mack had visited them all in the lab a few days after Fitz's arrival to invite Sir William and Fitz to tea that afternoon.
The glare that Jemma had shot him after Mack was gone was more than enough to keep Fitz from attending. In this twisted reality, they were all Jemma's friends and not his.
Before long, Christmas came to the castle, but instead of celebrating in the morning with his parents and then exchanging gifts with Jemma and the rest of his friends in the afternoon as he had every other year he could remember, Fitz found himself secluded in the library, in a chair he had once fallen asleep in with Jemma, with nothing but his thoughts to keep him company, plus a stack of books on sorcery and curses.
Not a particularly happy Christmas by any standards.
The New Year dawned, and things were, if possible, even worse. There were rumors of mysterious activity to the north, nothing as blatant as Maveth's attack on the village the previous autumn, but, in all likelihood, these cases of bewitchings and black magic and even little things like theft were Maveth's doing.
At the palace itself, the queen's health was not improving, and Bobbi, it seemed, was in a similar state, judging from the increasingly worried looks on Lance's face whenever Fitz saw him around the palace. Fitz wanted to help, but he knew Jemma was working on it and anything she could do was more likely to be effective than anything from him. She had always been the one who really worked in the infirmary.
Fitz was getting nowhere with his research on curses, so he decided that he might as well try to look for the monolith, if it was even still around the palace grounds somewhere. It was freezing outside, but the walks let him clear his head and imagine for a moment that everything was okay. That task was far easier to accomplish when he didn't have Jemma staring daggers at him from across the lab.
He hiked through the woods to where the monolith had been before, but there was nothing, and the patch of ground was completely covered by freshly fallen snow. He and Jemma (along with Bobbi, Daisy, and May) had sent Lady Weaver to the Queen to bring the monolith to meet them (and specifically Maveth) so they could destroy the sorcerer once and for all. The monolith could have been left behind by the fortress, though Fitz definitely didn't remember seeing it. More likely, it had been brought back and was now at some secure location that Fitz wouldn't have access to. It would definitely be suspicious if he started asking questions about a monolith that he, to the knowledge of anyone at the palace, shouldn't know about.
But he still kept an eye out as he wandered around the grounds. It was something to do, and he certainly needed that. Fitz had long ago discovered that he worked much better if he had Jemma with him, and, subsequently, his productivity was at an all time low.
On one of these afternoons, Fitz wandered back into the palace and found himself face-to-face with none other than Grant Ward.
Fitz quickly lowered himself into a bow. "Your Majesty."
Grant seemed startled to have run into someone by the back palace entrance on such a cold day, but as soon as Fitz straightened up and met Grant's eyes, the king's expression changed. Instead of being confused, he seemed almost scared for just a brief moment, as though Fitz's presence itself was some kind of threat. But Grant quickly adjusted his features into the not-quite-genuine smile that Fitz knew well.
"Who are you, then?" Grant asked, his voice as even as it usually was.
"Master John Fitz, Your Majesty," Fitz replied quickly, confused by Grant's odd expression from a moment before.
"Master?" Grant asked, eyes narrowed slightly.
"I'm a scientist, Your Majesty," Fitz answered. "The King has allowed me to stay here for the winter."
Realization seemed to dawn on Grant. "Oh! I remember hearing about you when you arrived," he said, almost more to himself than to Fitz. "No one ever mentioned your name."
Fitz nodded. "Of course, Your Majesty."
"And what were you doing outside on such a dreary day, Master Fitz?" Grant asked, his voice sweet and syrupy, a smoothness to it that made him seem trustworthy. He and Fitz had been friends after all, at the end at least, not that Grant would remember that.
"Just clearing my head, Your Majesty," Fitz replied. "The palace grounds are lovely all covered in snow."
Grant stared at him appraisingly for a moment before nodding. "Very true, Master Fitz. This is the longest I've ever spent here, and I've found that I like it very much."
"I'm sure the King is grateful to have Your Majesty around," Fitz added and then moved to go. "I'll let Your Majesty get on."
Grant smiled at him. "Good to meet you, Master Fitz."
"Likewise, Your Majesty," Fitz replied with a bow and left his former friend.
Fitz walked back to the library deep in thought. Grant's reaction to seeing him had been… odd. The surprise at finding someone in a place where Grant had expected to be alone was one thing, but when Fitz had looked up at him, that had been beyond surprise; Grant had been afraid to see him. Did he recognize him? Surely Grant would have said something if the curse by some miracle hadn't worked on him. Or maybe Grant had seen Fitz's body lying in the field in front of the fortress? That was a possibility, since Fitz really didn't know what had happened there besides Mack's little ten-second account, but that still didn't explain the fear.
Fitz shook his head. Just another scrap of information to add to the pile of things that didn't quite make sense.
Only a few days later, Fitz happened to run into the other member of the Ward family currently residing in the palace. He wasn't sure how he had avoided running into Daisy in the month he'd been at the palace so far, but on this particular afternoon he happened to be passing by her alcove under the stairs just as she was leaving, presumably to go to Mack and Lady Mackenzie's for Friday afternoon tea.
"Good afternoon, Your Highness," Fitz said, bowing, as their paths crossed.
"Good afternoon," Daisy replied, a wide smile on her face that Fitz knew well. "You must be Master Fitz."
"I am, Your Highness," Fitz replied. "At your service."
"How are you liking the castle?" Daisy asked kindly. "You've been here nearly a month, haven't you? I'm surprised we haven't met before now."
"It will be a month in a few days, Your Highness," he said, wishing he could speak with his friend less formally than this. "I'm certainly glad I came to stay here. The lab and the library are spectacular, and the people are all so wonderfully nice. Or most of them are anyway," he amended, unable to keep the bitter edge from his words.
Daisy's eyes grew cloudy for a moment. "The King said you come from the North where the raids were last year."
Fitz nodded. "Yes, Your Highness. I worked tending the wounded."
Daisy smiled at him, but she seemed almost confused. "Did you leave behind any family?"
"Not any that would remember me, Your Highness" Fitz replied, speaking only the truth.
Daisy offered him a small smile and gestured to the steps. "Tell me about them."
"Oh, I wouldn't want to bore Your Highness," Fitz said quickly. Of course he wanted nothing more than to talk to his friend, but lies could only go so far.
"You wouldn't bore me!" Daisy said almost laughing as she sat down a few steps up from the base of the stairs. "And please stop with all the 'Your Highness' nonsense. I put up with it from nobles and on formal occasions, but, as it's just us, please call me Daisy. We'll be friends! I'd imagine you're barely older than I am anyway, Master Fitz."
"I'm just Fitz then," Fitz replied sitting down beside her, "if you insist, uh, Daisy."
Daisy grinned at him, and Fitz felt more at ease than he had since he had returned to the palace.
"Now, your family," she said, still smiling, "tell me about them."
Fitz sighed as he looked into the inviting eyes of his friend, and he decided to stick as close to the truth as possible. "My parents are – were," he corrected, "they were very good to me. My mother was always there whenever I needed her; I'd been able to rely on her for my entire life. My father was gone a lot when I was young. I held it against him for a long time, but a few years ago I realized that everything he ever did, he did for me."
"My parents were like that a bit," Daisy said softly. "I was left up to governesses and all that to look after me, but my parents loved me so much. They're gone now too." She stared down at her feet.
"I'm sorry," Fitz said, daring to place his hand on Daisy's forearm comfortingly.
She looked up at him, her eyes watery, but a small smile playing at her lips. "Thanks." She wiped at her eyes quickly. "You know, there's some really great people here at the palace that have kind of become a second family for me. I'm sure they'd all adopt you in a heartbeat."
Fitz made a mental note to thank Daisy for this if he was ever able to break the curse, but, as things were, it wouldn't work. "That's kind of you," he said, his eyes downcast, "but I know you're good friends with Miss Simmons, and she doesn't like me. She hates me really, if I'm honest."
Daisy didn't say anything for a moment, and Fitz knew with certainty that Jemma had complained about him to Daisy and maybe even to all of his old friends.
Daisy finally sighed, and Fitz looked up.
"Jemma just has a weird feeling about you," Daisy said slowly. "I don't know what she's talking about, of course, but that's why she's been so unfriendly. Jemma's really one of the sweetest people I know, I promise."
Fitz offered her a small smile.
Daisy smiled back. "I'll talk to her, and hopefully we can get it all figured out. But first things first, you're coming to tea."
"No, I can't. Miss Simmons-"
"Forget about Jemma!" Daisy said exasperatedly, standing and reaching out her hand to help him up. "She can talk to Will in the corner if she has such a problem with you being there. Dame Isobel always asks after you, and I think Mack would like to see you too. You've made a good impression on everyone."
"Except Miss Simmons," Fitz said, his tone harsh.
"What did I just say?" Daisy laughed, rolling her eyes. "Come on. And you can meet my fiancé Lincoln! Only you can't tell my brother or the King or really anyone besides everyone who comes to tea that he's my fiancé. It's a secret. You've got to promise not to say anything."
Fitz smiled in spite of himself. "I promise."
"Good!" Daisy beamed at him, practically jumping up and down with excitement. "It'll be fun! You'll see."
And for the first time since he'd come back to the palace, Fitz actually let himself believe that things could maybe be okay.
And it was okay. Sort of.
Lady Mackenzie and Mack were surprised to see Fitz with Daisy, but they welcomed him inside with wide smiles.
"We'd been wondering when we were going to get you to come by, Master Fitz," Lady Mackenzie said kindly. "Of course our dear Daisy managed it."
"She wouldn't take no for an answer," Fitz replied with a small smile.
Daisy beamed at him.
"Oh, Master Fitz!" Dame Isobel quickly took Fitz by the arm. "I've been worried we scared you away."
"No, Dame Isobel," Fitz replied. "I've just been busy."
The woman blinked at him, and Fitz knew that even though in this world where Dame Isobel had only spoken with him once before, she could still read him like a book.
"Fitz!" Daisy called excitedly, hurrying over to him, dragging a bemused but smiling Lincoln behind her. "This is Lincoln."
Fitz made a quick bow. "Nice to meet you, Lincoln. Daisy's been telling me all about you."
Lincoln grimaced slightly, but his eyes were filled with nothing but love as he looked at Daisy. "Sorry about that, Master Fitz."
"Just Fitz," Fitz corrected quickly. "'Master' is far too formal a title for me."
Lincoln grinned. "Just Fitz then."
Instead of the awkward conversation with a "new" acquaintance that Fitz had been expecting, Daisy decided to regale the group with the story of her and Lincoln's latest near-run-in with Grant (which had only been avoided by Lincoln hiding entirely under a table and half behind a tapestry as Daisy steered Grant away with some made-up story about the King needing him for something).
Fitz laughed along with Mack and Dame Isobel, Lady Mackenzie trying her best to look disapproving but unable to hide her smile, and it felt almost like old times. But a knock on the door signaled the arrival of reality.
"Jemma, dear, look who we have joining us!" Lady Mackenzie said pleasantly as she led her niece inside. Just behind her were Sir William and Lance, the latter of whom, instead of looking simply worried, now looked utterly lost without Bobbi at his side.
"Oh," Jemma said, her face falling at the sight of Fitz. "How… nice."
Fitz offered her a bow. "Miss Simmons."
Daisy rolled her eyes, not even attempting to keep secret her annoyance at the pair of them.
"Jemma, Will, would you like some tea?" Lady Mackenzie said, trying to ease the tension.
"That would be lovely, thank you," Jemma answered, throwing her aunt one of her usual bright smiles.
Lady Mackenzie led Jemma and Will across the room, leaving Lance standing by himself staring into space.
"You okay, Lance?" Mack asked his friend quietly.
Lance blinked and looked around as though he'd only just realized he was in Mack and Lady Mackenzie's quarters. "Oh," he said, his voice almost toneless, "yeah, I'm fine. I just… Give me a minute." He turned away from the group and sat down on the sofa.
Fitz could feel Bobbi's absence keenly in the empty seat next to her husband.
"Bobbi still hasn't woken up," Daisy whispered to Fitz softly, her eyes sad. "It's been a month now, and, nothing. She's alive, but even Jemma hasn't been able to do anything, and she knows more about medicine than anyone."
Fitz narrowed his eyes. What if this wasn't about medicine?
He held up a hand to Daisy and the rest of the group excusing him from the conversation as he went to sit in the armchair next to the sofa.
"Sir Lance?" Fitz said hesitantly.
"Just Lance is fine," Lance said with a wave, offering Fitz the slightest glimmer of the jovial man Fitz knew beneath the despair.
"Lance," Fitz started again, "would you mind telling me about your wife's condition? I… I want to help."
Lance looked up at him warily. "I wasn't there when it happened. There's not much I can tell you."
"What's she like right now, then?" Fitz asked.
"She hasn't woken up since they brought her out of the fortress," Lance said, his voice hollow. "She's still breathing, and she looks perfect, but she won't wake up. Will said it was just a nasty bump to her head, but that healed in a few days, and it's been a month."
Fitz rubbed the back of his neck, thinking. "I have an idea. It could come to nothing, but I'd like to try."
Lance looked up at him, his eyes pleading. "I'll do anything. Anything," he repeated, his words heavy with emotion. "I just need her back." A tear dripped down his cheek.
Fitz didn't know what to say. He'd never seen his friend like this.
"I was always the one who got hurt," Lance said after a moment, "I'd go into battle and break my leg falling off a horse after the battle was over. Once, I tripped over a tree root and was laid up for days. But Bob put up with all of it; she married me regardless." He let out a bitter laugh. "And now it's her, practically dead in the infirmary. Look at that irony!" He threw his head in his hands. "I can't take it. I'd give up the whole world just to see her smile one more time."
"Can I see her?" Fitz asked after a moment. "Please."
Lance shrugged hopelessly. "Can't hurt, can it?"
They both stood up, and Fitz mouthed a quick "we'll be back" at Daisy who smiled at him sympathetically and nodded.
As he and Lance left the room, Fitz couldn't help but notice Jemma's sigh of relief.
After a quick stop in the library for Fitz to grab a book that had the information he was looking for, Lance led him to the infirmary.
A group of nurses passed them as they entered, apparently heading for the main palace.
"They're going to see the queen," Lance whispered to Fitz. "She's been very sick, different than Bobbi though, maybe worse even. No one knows why."
Fitz nodded but said nothing, the gears turning in his mind. If it turned out that Maveth was responsible for his mother's illness, that was all the more reason for Fitz to kill him.
"She's just in here, Fitz" Lance said, opening a door and pulling Fitz from his thoughts. On the walk from Lady Mackenzie's, Fitz had asked that Lance drop the "Master" and just stick with "Fitz."
Bobbi lay in the furthest bed in the otherwise empty room. Fitz knew that particular bed had been occupied by Lance many times over the years, and the chair next to it was one that Fitz still considered to be Bobbi's.
Bobbi was pale, but there was some color in her cheeks, letting Fitz know that she was indeed still with them in the land of the living. Her hair lay smooth as though someone (most likely Lance) had recently brushed it. She looked so peaceful.
Lance reached out and stroked Bobbi's cheek as he sat down next to her. "Come back, love," he whispered, "I miss you."
Fitz felt like he was intruding, so he took a seat a bit away from the bed, a chair he had sat in many times as he and Jemma had joked around with an injured and bedridden Lance, and pulled out the book he had brought with him.
Through his research, Fitz had found no way to reverse strong curses like the one Maveth had placed on him, but less powerful curses could be stopped relatively easily. His book spelled out a fairly simple solution that could remedy sleeping curses, but Fitz wasn't sure what kind of medicine Jemma had on hand. Really, he would have given anything to have Jemma helping him with this. He trusted her so much more with medicines and compounds than he trusted himself.
And, as if on cue, Jemma and Sir William entered the room.
Fitz instantly decided to ignore all the animosity Jemma felt toward him and just worry about Bobbi.
"J-Miss Simmons, did you ever try a compound like this?" Fitz moved deliberately in front of Sir William so he could show Jemma the passage he was referring to.
"What?" Jemma looked affronted by Fitz's sudden impudence.
"I think Lady Hunter might be cursed," he explained, pointing deliberately to the passage he wanted Jemma to read. "There's a solution that might counteract the curse and bring her back."
"But she isn't cursed, Master Fitz," Jemma said, matter-of-fact, though there was a hint of doubt in her words. "Will said he saw Bobbi get hit in the head by one of Maveth's men, that's all it was."
Fitz shook his head. "It's more than that. It has to be."
Jemma stared at him, almost confused.
"Please, can we try this?" Fitz said, his voice quieter now. "It can't hurt."
Jemma looked up at Sir William. The taller man was stony-faced, clearly upset by Fitz's immediate disregard for his evidence.
Jemma finally sighed, turning away from Sir William. "What do I need?"
Fitz forced himself not to smile at the small victory he had just won (or, more accurately he knew, Jemma's sense of reason and thoroughness had just won against second-hand evidence) as he showed Jemma what he was talking about.
"Could you make it?" Fitz asked after Jemma had nodded her way through the instructions. "I've never been as good at stuff like this."
Jemma gave him an odd look, but then she nodded again, hurrying away to a cabinet and pulling out vials and measuring glasses.
Sir William followed her, whispering what Fitz could only assume were as string of comments asking why Jemma was suddenly trusting Fitz when she'd spent nearly a month trying to ignore him.
"It's a legitimate theory, Will!" Jemma replied, presumably louder than she had intended because she immediately dropped her voice, though Fitz could, of course, still hear her. "I know you think it's pointless, but he's still a scientist, even if I don't trust him. We have to try."
Jemma saying she didn't trust Fitz was like a dagger in his heart, but this was about Bobbi and not about him. That's the only reason Jemma had agreed to help in the first place.
Fitz knew it would take some time to make the compound, so he started pacing the length of the room, trying to think of anything else to help Bobbi if this didn't work.
"Okay, it should be finished," Jemma said almost twenty minutes later.
Fitz walked over to see. It was just a small glass filled with clear liquid that could have been water if Fitz hadn't known better.
Jemma handed it to him. "You do it. It was your idea."
Fitz took the glass and nodded, offering Jemma a small smile, which she, as expected, didn't return.
He walked over to where Lance was sitting talking quietly to his sleeping wife, one of her hands clutched in both of his.
"I can't guarantee anything, Lance," Fitz said quickly, "but no one's tried this yet so it might do something. Can you move her head up a little so she doesn't choke when I give her this?"
Lance nodded and repositioned his wife so she was leaning against the headboard of the bed before moving back to give Fitz better access.
"Come on, Bobbi," Fitz muttered, his voice quiet enough that no one else could hear him. He took a deep breath as he brought the glass to Bobbi's lips and tilted it into her mouth.
After giving her enough for the solution to work, according to the instructions in the book, Fitz set the half-empty glass down on the table beside him and waited.
A minute passed, and Fitz heard a tutting sound from Will, but before Fitz could respond, Bobbi started coughing.
"Ugh, my head," Bobbi groaned, her eyes finally opening. "What happened?"
"BOBBI!" Lance practically launched himself on top of his wife. "Oh my God, Bob, you're okay! You're okay. I've been so worried. You're okay!"
Bobbi stared at her husband, confused, before laughing. "Yeah, I'm okay, Lance. It's okay."
Lance just stared at his wife, shaking his head. "I never thought I'd see that again." He leaned in to kiss her quickly. "I never thought I'd get to do that again."
Bobbi grinned at him for a moment, but then her expression faltered. "How long have I been out?" She looked around. "Why are we in the infirmary? What happened at the fortress? Where's Jem-" Bobbi's eyes lit up as she noticed Jemma at the foot of her bed. "So Grant found you then?"
Lance sighed. "You've missed a lot, Bob. It's been a month."
"A month?" Bobbi turned back to him, dumbfounded.
Lance nodded. "Would have been longer if it wasn't for Fitz here." He gestured to Fitz.
Fitz had been holding out the faintest hope that whatever had happened to Bobbi had stopped the curse from affecting her, but the look of confusion she gave him destroyed that idea quickly.
"I'm a scientist working at the palace for the winter," Fitz explained. "And Jemma, uh Miss Simmons, deserves as much credit as I do."
"No I don't," Jemma interjected quickly, tears in her eyes at the sight of Bobbi back again. "This was all Master Fitz. I don't know why I never insisted we look into curses. That was incredibly stupid of me."
"It's not your fault; you just needed a fresh perspective," Fitz said without thinking. That was the kind of thing he would have said to the Jemma who knew actually him.
Jemma gave Fitz what he could have sworn was almost a smile before she turned back to Bobbi and Lance. "I have to go tell everyone. They'll be so happy."
She turned to go to the door, but Fitz quickly crossed the room and grabbed her arm.
"Really," Fitz said, his words sincere, his love for Jemma bleeding through them even as he tried to keep it at bay, "I don't think that would have worked without you, Miss Simmons."
"Jemma," Jemma said almost automatically, though her eyes grew cloudy almost immediately after she spoke, as though she wasn't sure she wanted actually to be on first name terms with Fitz.
Fitz didn't care. He'd take it. "Fitz," he replied, grinning.
Jemma stared at him for a moment before leaving the room.
Fitz noted with more than a little satisfaction that she hadn't stopped to talk to Sir William.
Fitz moved back to Bobbi's bedside to check that everything was okay.
Lance beamed at him. "I can't thank you enough, Fitz. You brought her back to me."
Fitz shook his head. "It was no trouble. I'm just glad you're okay, Lady Hunter."
Bobbi laughed "After saving me from that curse or whatever it was, I think you can call me Bobbi."
Fitz smiled. "Of course, Bobbi. Well, I'll leave you both then."
Lance clapped him on the shoulder before turning back to his wife.
Fitz grabbed the library book and slipped out into the hallway. He let out a breath, allowing himself to laugh. He was just so grateful that had actually worked out. Bobbi and Lance were both going to be okay, even if they didn't remember him. And that had been the closest thing to a positive interaction he had ever had with this Jemma. All he could feel was gratitude.
"Fitz."
Fitz turned around and found himself face-to-face with Sir William, who looked pretty angry for someone who had just seen a woman suddenly wake up after being cursed to sleep for a month.
"Yes?" Fitz asked as non-confrontationally as possible. As much as he really didn't like Sir William, he also didn't want to get into a fight when today was going so well.
"You think you're so clever," Sir William said, his words almost a snarl as he narrowed his eyes at Fitz.
Fitz realized with a start that he had never actually heard Sir William speak before. He'd seen him whisper to Jemma a hundred times, but, somehow, Fitz had never heard the other man's actual voice. Something about it was oddly familiar, but Fitz couldn't place it.
Instead of replying, Fitz merely shrugged, hoping that would make the other man go away.
"Leave Jemma alone," Sir William said, his words harsh and his tone even worse, as though he were threatening Fitz's life if he so much as stood near Jemma. "This is her job and these are her friends, not yours."
Fitz knew it would be smarter for him to ignore Sir William and say nothing, but this was too much. "Actually she seemed pretty happy that Bobbi's okay, regardless of how it happened," Fitz said nonchalantly, "so I think I'm fine."
Sir William glared at him. "Mind your own business, and stay away from her." He started walking away from Fitz toward the way out of the infirmary, but then he stopped and turned around, a twisted smile on his face. "She hates you anyway."
Fitz kept his face blank until he heard the door close behind Sir William, but as soon as the other man was gone, Fitz began to worry. Even if he hadn't been in love with Jemma, Fitz still wouldn't want Sir William around. Fitz could understand being protective, but Sir William's words had been more threatening than anything, and they demonstrated that Jemma's new suitor cared more about being right than he cared about Bobbi's life, which was clearly a problem.
And then there was his voice, which Fitz was sure he had heard somewhere before.
Fitz shook his head, trying not to dwell on it. Jemma had very nearly smiled at him, ans that was certainly something else to think about. Progress was progress, and Fitz was willing to take whatever he could get.
A/N: Reviews are absolutely lovely. Thanks for reading!