Jemma
Fitz's voice called to her from somewhere in building, high and frightened.
Jemma, help me!
Her heart hammered against her chest as she ran towards it through the twisting, forking, hallways. She ran despite the fact that her feet seemed to have been encased in lead, now heavy and cumbersome, frantically trying to find her way to him, but every path she took seemed to lead to a dead end and it was dark, so dark, she could barely see a foot in front of her.
"Fitz where are you?" she shouted.
Hurry!
She'd never heard him so scared before. His cries kept changing their origin, growing in desperation each time he called to her.
Help me!
Another wall, thick, smooth stone, blocking her path.
Jemma!
The floor stretched out before her, longer and longer and when she finally neared the end he had moved again.
Please Jemma, don't let me die.
He was weeping now, terrified and alone.
"I won't!" she promised, struggling to run, though it felt as if her legs were moving through dense mud. "I'm coming Fitz, hold on."
A long, awful scream ripped through the air. It was close, right beside her, and when she turned her head she found him, lying crumpled on his side, completely still.
"No!" she shrieked.
Too late, her legs obeyed her and she raced towards his unmoving form, dropping down beside him and gently lifting him up to cradle against her.
"No," she moaned, voice breaking as her heart shattered inside her chest. "No. Wake up."
His eyes were closed, a pinkish liquid running down his face in streaks beneath them like tears dyed red.
"Wake up," she begged, shaking him so that his head lolled lifelessly against her. "Wake up, wake up, wake up." She chanted the words, over and over until they didn't sound like words anymore.
Help me
He hadn't moved, but she heard his voice, surrounding her from all sides, seeping through her ears into her head where it stuck and she heard his cries from the inside out.
Please, don't let me die. Help, help me! Jemma help me. Please-
Her eyes flew open, pulling her, gasping for breath, out of her nightmare, her cheeks drenched.
It was absurd, considering the content of the dream that had woken her, but for half a second she forgot that he was gone and she reached out for him, expecting a warm body or the soft, comforting sound of his breath as he slept.
The cold empty space she found instead twisted her heart and she whimpered, pushing her face into the side of her pillow to let it soak up the hot tears that rained out of her without any sign of easing their torrential flow.
It had been months since she'd last slipped up like that, since her mind had betrayed her, placing an imprint of him in front of her like a ghost only to let it disappear when reality caught up with it. She'd open a door and expect him to be standing behind it, look up from her work and expect to catch a glimpse of him working alongside her.
Like so many things though, she'd thought time had began to take it away. As the days passed, her brain was learning to omit him from her imagined picture of the world she lived in, the same way his scent had long ago left the room she slept in and the last of his things had been found and sorted.
She curled around herself, holding everything together as her shoulders quaked and she waited for the waves of pain running through her to die down, for her soul to stop screaming for him.
What she'd said out in the hall had been a lie, she wasn't OK, she was living on the caldera of a volcano, waiting for it to erupt and each time it did she was left scorched and battered on top of it again, waiting for the next one.
Someone knocked at the door, a gentle, hesitant tap that broke into her despair and made her stifle down her next sob, breathing deeply through her nose as she attempted to calm herself.
"Jemma?" It was Skye, quiet and sad even through the door. "Jemma are you OK?"
There was a short pause as she waited for an answer, but Jemma didn't trust herself to speak just yet.
"I'm sorry," Skye continued and it was clear that she meant it. "I shouldn't have pushed you like that. It was stupid, a dumb, not-good thing to do."
Jemma sniffed, pulling the blanket further over her shoulder. She wanted to answer, to say it was OK and of course she forgave her, but she couldn't until her throat stopped burning or it might come out as a whimper.
"You don't have to say anything," Skye assured her, as if hearing her silent thoughts. "Just… I'm here, OK? Whenever you need me… if you need me."
She stopped talking and Jemma found herself worrying she was going to leave her alone. It surprised her to realize that that wasn't what she wanted.
"Skye?" she called.
"I'm still here," her friend murmured.
She swallowed, gathering her courage.
'You can't keep up like this,' she reminded herself. She couldn't live this way anymore, closed and shaken like a soda bottle ready to pop.
"I miss him," she admitted. 'I miss him so much that's it's tearing me apart. I feel like when he died he took my heart and I'm dead too now. Except I'm not, I'm alive, even if it doesn't seem that way. '
Skye's breath hitched and Jemma wondered if she was crying as well. Her next words gargled as if she still were. "I know."
'She misses him too,' she thought. 'Maybe it wouldn't be so lonely to miss him together. Fitz wouldn't want either of us to be alone.'
Jemma sat up, pawing at her eyes and sniffing loudly. "I- I can't sleep," she told her.
"Me neither," Skye answered sadly. She paused. "Hey, do you want to go watch videos of baby animals?" Jemma heard her laugh weakly through the door, a valiant, however doomed, attempt to lift the mood. "I think I know where they put the leftovers from the party, there's probably enough ice cream in the freezer to make us never want to eat anything sweet ever again."
She chuckled along, sniffling some more before getting up and pulling on the worn out old sweater that was draped over her chair, the button up one, with patches on the elbows, the one that still felt like Fitz even if it didn't smell like him anymore.
"I think I'd like that," she said, picking up the locket on her bedside table and buckling the clasp behind her neck before tucking it safely under her shirt. She hadn't opened it in a very long time, but she knew the words inscribed inside it by heart anyhow. "Just… just no…"
"I know," Skye answered quickly. "Just puppies and kittens."
Jemma opened the door and, to her credit, Skye didn't bat an eye at her tear streaked face, despite the mess she must have been.
"Perhaps baby elephants?" she suggested, pulling up a smile even though it felt entirely unnatural. "Or the ducklings that think the labrador is their mother."
Skye's eyes were bright but she laughed at that. "Let's just go wild."
/-/-/
High above the surface of the Playground, Fitz stumbled around in the dark, searching for the hidden entrance embedded in the side of the rock face.
He didn't have an access card so he felt behind a thick spread of moss for the two way speaker and hit the button to contact the security guards.
"This is agent Fitz," he told them, leaning forward to ensure the microphone picked up his voice clearly. "I've been, uh…. compromised. Can you send someone to come get me? Agent Simmons maybe-"
"Sorry, who is this?" the guard asked, a man, older by the sounds of it. Fitz didn't recognize him.
"Agent Fitz," he repeated, louder this time, wondering if there were something wrong with the communications system. A cool breeze ruffled his hair, flowing through the thin fabric of the blanket which he'd wrapped around himself like a cloak, and he scrunched his arms to his body, attempting to keep warm. "Look it's really cold out here. Ask for Simmons, she'll know who-"
"There is no agent Fitz in our registry," he interrupted, suspicious now. "What division are you from?"
"I'm 616," Fitz answered impatiently. "Coulson's team, you know, the Director of SHIELD. He knows who I am. If he's there-"
"There is no agent Fitz in SHIELD 616," The man told him edgily. "Sir, I'm going to need to ask you to wait where you are. We're sending someone to get you."
"Thank you!" he exclaimed, relieved before the first half of what had been said sank in. "Wait… no, yes there is."
Silence.
Fitz tapped the call button again, guessing the connection had been broken. "Hello?"
Nothing.
"You can't leave me out here to freeze my fingers off!" he protested, pivoting around to where he knew they kept one of the hidden cameras (one he'd helped install), knowing that if they weren't transmitting audio, the lip reading software would get his message across. "I don't even have any shoes! Call Jemma, or Skye or Coulson or anyone. They'll know who I am."
And yet, still nothing.
"Unbelievable," he muttered under his breath, turning his attention back to the call button, pressing it several times only to determine that it had been disconnected. "This is unbelievable, and at the Playground of all places." He spun around so that he was facing the camera once more. "I bloody live here!" he shouted.
The hidden door slid open with a sudden thunk, cutting off the end of his complaint and his head snapped towards it, shoulders dropping in relief when he recognized Skye.
"Oh good, Skye it's you." He blew out a long breath. "I was starting to uh… to…" He fell silent, noticing her expression.
Her eyes were round and bright, locked onto him like she couldn't believe what she was seeing, as if she were scared that if she broke contact he'd disappear.
She had come out with her gun raised towards him, but her formerly solid stance had loosened when he'd turned around and, hands trembling, she lowered it towards the ground.
"Oh my God," she breathed, words thick with an emotion he wasn't sure he could completely identify. "Fitz?"
How long had he been gone? It had felt like no time at all, and he'd been sure that he'd been kidnapped only a few hours before he'd been left in the field, but maybe…
Maybe he'd been gone for days.
"I'm back," he assured her softly, taking a step forward and wondering why his friend had suddenly turned to stone. "I'm OK." He looked down at his mud coated body and chuckled uneasily. "Well.. mostly."
She gaped at him, chest rising and falling with ragged breaths, speechless for several seconds. Then her mouth moved and she began to choke something out, but before she could May appeared behind her, walking up from the tunnels below.
Without breaking stride or losing her flat expression, the other agent raised her weapon and shot him twice in the chest.
Just before he hit the ground, in his last moment of consciousness, Fitz was sure he felt it quake.
/-/-/
Thanks to notappeper for you help editing this chapter :D
Also I'm not sure how people normally dream, but that's totally how my dreams work. You can't seem to run right and things turn into things they shouldn't and nothing make sense, especially nightmares.
I don't think there's a Fringe reference in this chapter, but I could have forgotten that I put one.
Yay! Fitz is back. But everything may not be the way he remembers it...