Skye was waiting for her at the entrance of the Playground when Jemma returned, carrying the samples she'd gone to procure in a small, square cooler.
She took a tentative step forward, reaching out a hand but Jemma shook her head, veering away.
"I'd really rather not talk about it," she said dully and Skye nodded in agreement.
"Yeah… OK. That's OK." Her lip trembled and she took a breath. "What can I do?"
"Nothing," Jemma answered. She carefully shuffled the samples from one hand to the other, unable to keep herself from feeling protective of them. She couldn't stop herself from remembering that these fragmented bits of matter had once been part of someone she loved. "I- I'm alright I just need to test this. I need to see if it's…"
'I need to see if it was actually Fitz that we dug out of the ground,' she thought, but the words wouldn't leave her throat. They were too heavy, weighed down with the pain of what she'd just had to do and her refusal to give in to hopeful fantasies. She couldn't allow herself hope only to lose it again, she knew that she wasn't strong enough for that.
"I just need to get this over with," she told her. Then she sighed, contemplating her next request carefully. "Well, actually… I might need the…" What in the world was she suppose to call it? What was it, if it wasn't him but it had his DNA? "The copy," she decided upon at last. "To run a few more tests on," she hurried on when Skye raised her eyebrows, concerned.
"Are you sure?" she cautioned, looking Jemma straight in the eyes as she spoke, as if she could tell that way whether or not she was telling the truth.
From all her years working alongside May, maybe she could.
"I'll be fine," Jemma promised. "He- it doesn't want to hurt us, it passed the lie detector test didn't it? And it's of average human strength and ability, even if it somehow managed to fool our machine. Besides there'll be armed agents just outside-"
"That's not what I meant Jemma," she said firmly.
She looked away, struggling not to show how bruised and broken she'd become, how shattered all this was leaving her. "I'll be fine," she mumbled. "I'm the most qualified person to do this, and if whoever set this up was banking on me not being able to…" She shook her head. "I can't let them win."
"This isn't about winning," Skye pressed, gentle now. "You don't have to prove anything."
"I'm not," she told her. "I want to do this. For myself and for Fitz." She paused before forcing a smile, straining to keep her voice light. "It's peaceful, where he's buried. He would have liked it."
Skye smiled too, her eyes swimming beneath her unshed tears, and she nodded sadly. "Yeah, I remember. It's beautiful."
"It is," she agreed softly. She took a breath, steadying herself before briefly touching Skye's shoulder. Then she continued past her towards the lab. "I'll be ready, whenever you bring it up," she called over her shoulder.
/-/-/
Fitz had been awakened by Skye late that morning, head fuzzy and his limbs feeling as if they'd been filled with stones, even though he'd slept through most of the night and the morning too.
It was hard for him to imagine it having been so long. It hadn't seemed like he'd slept even a couple hours.
He had a few minutes to eat the breakfast which had been laid out for him earlier (cold toast and a banana) before Skye had ushered him out and up the stairs, warning him with a deadly quiet ferocity that he was not to harm anyone, especially not Jemma.
Even though he understood why, it made his feet trudge just a little more, his weariness just a bit harder to shake off, that she thought he'd ever hurt anyone, let alone the person he loved most in the world. It pained him that his friend believed him capable of such things, that she could only glare at him now when what seemed to him like only a week ago she'd been smiling and waving good bye.
Skye left him with the pair of expressionless agents just outside the lab and he crept slowly into the doorway, watching Jemma work before she heard him and turned around, forcing him to look away.
"You… uh, you needed me?" he mumbled.
He didn't know how to interact with her right now, what he was suppose to do, to say, that wouldn't cruelly pull at her grief.
Her gaze fell on him for just a heartbeat before she cast it away, keeping it anywhere but on him and the strength that drained out of him threatened to make his knees buckle.
"I need to use the MRI machine," she said, but it didn't feel like she was talking to him, even though it was an answer to his question.
He chuckled nervously. "What, do think I might be some sort of robot?"
Her silence was an answer in itself and try as he might he was unable to stifle the small huff of indignation that escaped him.
He certainly wasn't a robot... Right?
"The machine is this way," she mumbled, starting towards it, out the door without looking back to make sure he was following.
"Yeah, I know," he muttered under his breath, trailing grouchily behind her.
'She's hurting,' he scolded himself. 'Of course she's going to be a bit distant, treat you differently. She doesn't know it's you.'
Not yet. But he'd been told by Skye that the results were coming back from the body they'd dug out of the ground. When it wasn't a match to his file, she'd see that it had to be him, everyone would, and then they could fix this. He could tell her how sorry he was that he'd left her, that it was going to be OK, it was never going to happen again.
They filed into the room and Jemma drifted towards the machine.
"This is where the subjects lay down," she announced, tapping the edge of the bed that would slide into the giant white plastic doughnut.
He was pretty sure that meant she wanted him to lay on it, so he shuffled over to hoist himself onto the bed where he sat, looking around as she adjusted the settings on the side panel. The room was small, but it still felt large compared to his cell. He'd only been confined to the small space for a week and it was already starting to drive him mad.
At least they fed him. Good food too, most of the time. It tasted like Coulson's cooking, though he hadn't struck up the nerve to ask if it was when the Director had paid him a visit. Talking to any of his old friends was like being lost in a labyrinth, one where the walls kept shifting as he learned new information about what he was, what they were doing about him.
About how much had passed in what had seemed to him like a single night. He couldn't help feeling cheated out of the time he'd lost with them.
Coulson thought he was safe at least, though he was still insisting that he remain in the holding cell for most of the day, just in case. May only interacted with him when she needed to and Skye and Jemma outright avoided him.
He hadn't had contact with either of them until again that day.
"The subjects lie down on the table," Jemma said flatly, not looking away from what she was doing, annoyance finding it's way into her voice.
"Can you call me something other than 'the subject'?" he complained, moving to comply with her half-asked instructions. "It's unsettling, like I'm going to be infected with some sort of horrible disease and then dissected or something."
She didn't respond to that, but continued to scroll through the menu until she was able to start the machine. He could practically see the air around them turning to icy crystals. Then she paused, debating with herself.
"Moving will stop the machine from working," she stated finally, eyes glued to the panel. "The process will need to be reset." She seemed to struggle with something, her gaze jerking towards him, lips pressed together. "Don't waste my time," she ordered harshly.
At least she was talking to him, even if her hostility felt more like a step backwards than a victory.
"I don't intend to," he answered, rougher than he'd meant to because she'd left him seared and defensive.
Her footsteps stomped out and he was alone, laying as still as he could as he was pulled into the machine. closing his eyes and doing his best to relax even though he was terrified in a way that had nothing to do with the tiny space, or the large spinning magnets.
'What if I am a robot?' he wondered with a jolt. 'What if I'm pulled to pieces? I don't want to die, even if I am a machine.'
"Jemma?" he squeaked, somehow remembering to sit still through his panic. "You'll turn it off right… if... if it's hurting me?"
He waited, holding his breath, until her voice sounded over the intercom, softened just a little.
"I'm not going to hurt you. I just need you to sit still."
'I am sitting still,' he thought, but he was grateful for her assurances and he found that he believed her.
Jemma wouldn't subject anyone to something like that. Even if she did think they were an abomination.
/-/-/
Much to his relief, he wasn't a robot.
Jemma had allowed him to join her in the cramped monitoring room as she looked over the data she'd compiled, only barely tolerating his occupation of the space beside her.
"Everything's normal," she muttered to herself, flipping through the images saved onto the computer.
Fitz stood a few feet away, watching her with his hands on his hips. "So I'm… I'm human?" Never in his life had he thought that'd ever be a question he'd need to ask seriously. "Well then that proves it doesn't it? That I'm me. It's me Jemma," he urged soft and desperate, pleading with her to believe him. "It's Fitz. I'm sorry that I left you all alone. I never-"
"Could you please stop doing that," she interrupted tartly, evidently not ready to listen to reason.
That was fair, she'd been grieving, devastated if what the others were hinting at was true. She'd thought she'd seen him buried. Of course she was going to be a bit skeptical, frightened even. He needed to be patient, take it slow, like waiting for a fawn to step into a meadow. Sit still, watch, don't make any sudden movements.
"I'm sorry, you're right, I should let you process this," he agreed, as politely as he could.
"No, not that," she shook her head, shooting him a quick glance before returning her focus to the computer screen. "There's nothing to process, I mean your hands."
He looked between his hands, still resting on his hips, confused. "What's wrong with my hands?"
She sighed, lifting her head to stare at him exasperatedly. "Could you… move them? I'd rather you didn't stand that way."
His attempts at politeness fell through and he snorted indignantly. "This is they way I stand!"
"I'd really rather you didn't," she pressed.
Their eyes met and he saw a small tremor move through her bottom lip before she looked away, inhaling deeply.
'It's bothering her that I look like myself,' he realized with a jolt. 'I'm reminding her of me, but she doesn't think I AM me. She still thinks I'm a copy.'
It was enough to make his head spin but he complied with her request, dropping his arms to his sides.
"Better?" he asked.
She regarded him briefly, eyes frosting over. "That's acceptable."
Fitz had to bite down a hot retort.
'Patience,' he reminded himself. 'She'll see, when the results come back from the body, she'll know you're telling the truth.'
"That's OK," he said, nodding encouragingly. "That's fine, you… you just… you just let it out. I understand-"
A shadow passed over her, eyes hardening to steel, and his tongue froze up.
"You understand do you?" She laughed bitterly, disbelief and disgust shifting her features. "Then why are you here?"
He was trying very hard to stop his heart from smushing like a rotten grape, searching for something, anything, to reply to her, when the printer beside her chugged abruptly to life.
Fitz nearly jumped out of his skin but Jemma merely turned her head towards it, calm as if she'd been expecting it.
"That'd be the results," she mumbled, talking to herself again. Ignoring him.
The results. As in the DNA results from the body. As in the proof that he was him and this was all just some big mistake. His chest swelled with hope.
"Now you'll see," he told her excitedly, sauntering behind her towards the printer and trying to ignore the icy scowl she shot at him. "You'll see that I'm telling the truth and then… then we can…" But he didn't know how to finish the thought, realizing with a start that he didn't actually know what was going to happen next.
When she truly knew that it was him, not an imposter posing as the person she'd lost, but the man she loved, seemingly back from the dead, what would she do?
Several classic romance inspired scenarios played out in his, admittedly, overactive imagination.
In one, he saw her leaping with joy and throwing her arms around his neck, paper still in hand but quickly dropped to flutter to the floor as she took hold of either side of his face and planted the most loving and passionate of kisses onto his relieved grin.
In another, she ran, tears streaming down past her cheeks, into his open arms and they held each other while they wept with joy and relief. Loud and messy and beautiful.
Then, in yet another, slightly less pleasant scenario, she strutted towards him to slap him across the face, demanding to know where in the world he'd been all this time. However her anger only burned for a few seconds, before it dissolved and their arms were around each other as he rushed to explain and she told him to shush so she could kiss him.
Possibilities swirling in his head like leaves, caught in the wind, Fitz watched with bated breath as the results finished printing, hopeful because whatever happened next, it had to be better than this.
Jemma's expression was steely, but he noticed her fingers twitch when she reached for the printed results, her hand floating over them in a moment's hesitation before she inhaled sharply and snatched them up, gliding swiftly away from him so he couldn't see.
Even though he knew what they were going to tell her, knew that he was him so whoever they'd dug out of the ground must be someone else, he found his heart fluttering and his throat grow dry from nerves.
It wasn't at all the scene expected.
Jemma stared at the page for a full minute and a half, scrutinizing its contents. Her lips pressed together in a straight, trembling line, her eyes narrowed and bright and she swallowed hard, as if she were pushing back tears.
Then her gaze fell to the floor. "It's him," she mumbled.
Fitz frowned, not understanding. "You... you mean me?" he squeaked. How could it be him? How could he be dead and alive at the same time?
He couldn't be. Even after everything they'd seen, all the wonders and horrors that they'd witnessed, it didn't make sense.
Something flared behind her downcast eyes and her head shook sharply,. "No. I mean him," she growled. "I don't know what you are."
Her words stung like hot sparks and he flinched. "Jemma…" he whispered, his hand reaching out to her subconsciously but she skittered back, still refusing to look at him. "It's… there must be some sort of mistake-"
"It's not a mistake," she said, her voice quiet and hard with anger.
"Then someone must have planted it," he tried desperately, his feet feeling close to the edge of a very, very high drop, ready to slip off. "They… they took a sample from me and… uh… and cloned it or something, made… made excess tissue to spread over the uh…" His head spun and the words began to slip as he started to panic.
Surely the body would be in the later stages of decomposition by now? He hadn't ever paid very close attention to the science of rotting corpses (because he had planned on eating again sometime during his lifetime) but surely after two years it would have been unrecognizable. All their unknown enemy would need to do was spread a good layer of tissue over the… human remains (he didn't really want to think about whose remains they actually were), enough to trick the M.E. into scraping some off for analysis, and he could call Bob his uncle.
"How, uh… how gooey was it? I mean was it… whatever it is, it's, uh… it's been down there for while, wouldn't it be a bit messy?" he asked, speaking his thoughts out loud before he could check himself and realizing instantly that he'd made a mistake when her shoulders stiffened and she grew rigid, muscles tense like a coiled rattler.
"Excuse me?" she hissed. He could hear her fury, bubbling just beneath the surface of the quiet question, and suddenly the temperature in the room seemed to drop several degrees.
She was looking at him at last, really looking, but he wished she wasn't. She'd never looked at him the way she was right then, he'd never seen her warm, golden brown eyes so filled with cold and hatred.
His mouth opened but nothing came out, it was as if something were crushing his throat, squeezing it until it cracked and splintered.
"Get out," she whispered fiercely, fingers gripping the page so tightly it crumpled around them.
He shook his head, his eyes burning. This was wrong, it was all wrong, she shouldn't be angry with him, she shouldn't hate him.
She shouldn't be shaking like she was about to fall apart.
It was her pain that drew him forward, visible in the air around her like the shimmer of heat around a flame. It was her pain, and the overwhelming need to extinguish it, that made him take a step towards her.
"Jemma I'm sorry," he murmured. "I didn't mean-"
"GET OUT!" she shouted, throwing the paper down as she started towards him.
It fluttered to the floor, strangely peaceful beside her gathering outrage and he stumbled backwards, his hands raised defensively.
He didn't think she was going to hurt him, not his body anyway, but he couldn't stand the heat of the flames that blazed around her and he was worried that his presence would only strengthen them, burning them both.
Apparently, he hadn't gone far enough though because she continued forward, shrieking at him until she became incoherent.
"Get out of here! Get out! You're not him, you're a- a thing! You're a b-bloody insult to his memory y-you… whatever the hell you are! J-just get out! Get out-get-out-get-out!"
The sharp words hit him like hard punches to the stomach, pummelling him until he couldn't stand it anymore and he turned tail and fled, out the door, hearing her slam it behind him with a loud thud.
It wasn't until the echo had stopped bouncing off the walls, and there was a thick slab of solid wood between them, that he heard the first of her sobbs.
If her shouting had been punches, these were knives stabbing into him. They weren't loud but they boomed out of her, nuclear explosions of anguish and despair and she gasped in air between them as if they were burning up all the oxygen.
She was hurting, so badly, suffocating from it, but the only thing he'd accomplish by going to her would be to make it worse. So instead he stood like a stone statue, listening miserably to her cries, until he found the strength to walk away.
He left her alone because if he didn't and he made her worse than she already was, he'd probably end up hating himself too.
/-/-/
Thanks to notapepper for adding the oey to the gooey of this story :D You rock
M.E. means medical examiner. I think. According to cop shows and google :P
Jemma calling Fitz 'the subject' is a reference to/ inspired by Walter's interactions with Peter in the 4th season of Fringe while he is forced to examine him in an attempt to send him 'home'. He is very grumpy about it. I don't remember which episode it is.
Sorry this one is so late! I had some stuff I had to do and all my time was eaten up.