About 1.5 Years Earlier
It was the fourth time that morning that Jemma had checked her phone, hoping for a message from Fitz. Since the sun had risen, he'd been in her thoughts more than usual, likely because a part of her knew that he should have been with her already, that he was suppose to be home. It was as if her heart were complaining to her, feeling cheated out of what should have been their reunion.
There was a restlessness there too, along with the excitement, a jittery ball of nerves just under her stomach, bouncing around and setting off static, making her eyes dart towards her silent phone. She wasn't just excited that he was coming home, she was nervous that he hadn't made contact yet.
Which was absolutely ridiculous.
'Patience,' she told herself, doing her best to shake off the irritating feeling. 'He'll be back soon enough, then you can show him how far you've progressed on the project. Won't he be surprised!"
She wondered what he'd think of the new formula she'd designed for their Spray-n-Track microdrones. A week ago he'd suggested they have smaller cartridges, spray a smaller dose of scentless tracker odour onto the target, his argument being that a lighter spray would be less noticeable. Of course that meant that she'd be the one needing to further concentrate the tracker solution- a feat easier said than done.
Yeah, well if you can't do it, at least then we'll know for sure that it's impossible.
Her cheeks still warmed at the memory of his fond encouragement, at how highly he thought of her abilities, of her as a whole. The way he looked at her, like daydreams and Christmas morning, made her wonder sometimes how she'd gotten so lucky, to fall in love with such an amazing, incredible person who was as enamoured with her as she was with him.
Sometimes people were just lucky, she supposed. Though it hadn't all been chance, they'd worked hard to find each other again, to understand their feelings for each other, to change and mend their once broken relationship because to one another, they were worth all the effort ten times over.
She'd fought to find her way back to him over and over, and she'd do it again, a hundred times if she needed to, because what they had now was precious and beautiful. She had his kiss on her cheek before she shut her eyes at night, his chest rising and falling beneath her ear in gentle breaths or chortling laughter. She had his hand to hold when she was frightened and his arms around her when she cried.
There were hours spent inventing, pulling ideas from the tangle of knowledge between them, and there were nights spent tangled in each other. There were rare Saturday mornings spent in pajamas with cereal and video games and scattered midnights spent charting the sky.
She loved him with the brightness of a supernova and the soft warmth of the sun in a spring afternoon and, incredibly, he loved her too.
It was early, not yet past seven thirty in the morning, and she was sitting in the kitchen, nearly done with her tea, her breakfast was completely eaten. Soon it would be time to head to the lab to continue her work from the previous night. Skye sat across from her, still on her second slice of peanut buttered toast.
Her eyebrows rose questioningly when Jemma set the phone back down onto the table.
"Still nothing?" she guessed.
Jemma shook her head. "Not yet, but it's early"
"He's probably still asleep," Skye mused. She leaned back in her chair, head lolling to the side while her arms spread out in a very unflattering impression of a sleeping human and Jemma rolled her eyes.
"He doesn't sleep like that," she told her. "Actually, I don't think anyone sleeps like that," she added, amused when Skye's tongue stuck out the side of her mouth.
She sat back up, giggling. "OK then how does he sleep?" Her eyebrows wiggled. "Is he a cuddler? He seems like a cuddler."
Smiling, Jemma was about to reply when they heard the sound of shuffling footsteps and Coulson appeared in the doorway, looking sick to his stomach. Her face fell at his expression and she felt the air in the room thicken, taking on an electrical charge.
Something was very wrong.
"Sir?" she asked, concerned. "Is everything alright?"
His eyes grew bright and he swallowed before taking a deep breath through his nose, he seemed unsure what to say, the information too heavy to pull out, and his hesitation made her stomach sink, her breakfast sitting like a stone at the bottom.
Skye frowned, rising to her feet. "Coulson what's happening?"
His eyes darted between them before resting on Jemma and suddenly, without really being able to explain it, she had a feeling she knew what was happening. Time froze, the world stopped turning, and everything was still.
She knew, but she needed to ask, to hear him say it.
"Where's Fitz?" she breathed. Skye turned to her in surprise but Coulson seemed to have been expecting her question.
On the outside she was eerily calm however inside she was screaming, panicked as if she'd been sealed into a small, airtight room.
No, no not him. Please, he has to be alright.
Coulson shook his head miserably, his mouth opening and closing a few times before at last he found the strength to say what he needed to.
"They found a man at the hotel he was staying at," he said slowly, each word laced with doom. "He had ID in his pocket. They think it's him but… but they need someone to come…" Another deep breath. "They need someone to come and identify the body."
It was as if she'd been dropped from a thousand feet in the air. She was falling, dizzy, unable to move, to breathe because the wind kept whipping against her.
"A... a body?" Skye's hands flew to her mouth and tears gathered in her eyes, head twitching from side to side in pained denial. "No… no it's not… Oh my God…. have you seen…?" Her voice broke and she choked out a whimper, stumbling back onto her chair.
"I haven't seen him," Coulson told her, hollowed with sorrow. "But he matches the picture on his ID. It's him… we just need to confirm it."
"When do we leave?" Jemma asked. Her throat was dry, constricting so that her words came out strained and low.
Skye sniffed beside her as she stood up, chest heaving as the air screaming past her filled her up. It was inside her, loud and angry and scared, blurring everything else and making her limbs buzz.
"I need to see him," she said, louder now, with more ferocity that she'd intended.
"We're taking the Quinjet," Coulson answered. "It's in the-"
But she didn't hear the end because she knew where it was and suddenly there was nothing else. There was only Fitz, maybe dead, probably dead, and the slim chance that it was someone else. He was dead and alive at the same time, Schrodinger's cat, and she couldn't stand it. Before her leader could finish his sentence she was out the door and halfway sprinting for the loading bay.
She sat in the corner of the plane the entire ride over, away from the others, moving when Skye had tried to sit down beside her. She couldn't talk to them, she couldn't think, she couldn't even see straight, not until she saw him, not until she knew.
It was just a few hours but the trip dragged out, each passing second allowing the wind to build in her lungs, fill her chest, her arms, her head and she was sure that any minute it was going to drive her mad.
Everything flooded back to her in those few hours, the scent of his skin, the colour of his eyes and the taste of his lips. She went through their conversation, over and over, trying to remember, to grasp onto any hint that could have warned her of danger.
He'd been tired, vulnerable, left in a strange city for the night, but compared to the things they'd experienced, what they did for a living, he'd seemed safe.
He'd been safe... Hadn't he? Surely this was a mistake, wasn't real. It couldn't be real. He couldn't be gone, not her Fitz.
'Please Fitz, please be alright. I need you to come back to me. I need you to be OK.'
She continued to call out to him, inside her head, for the rest of the journey. He couldn't hear her, that was impossible, but she couldn't stop herself from trying to reach him anyway.
/-/-/
It was him, lying under a sheet, red streaks beneath his open eyes. They didn't look like his eyes. Fitz's eyes had always been a window to his heart, shining with pain or sparkling with love, dancing as he laughed or flaring with his anger, but these weren't a window to anything and she didn't understand why no one had closed them yet, why they weren't more frightened of the abyss that stretched out behind them.
Briefly, she noted that it might have been because of the liquid, they hadn't wanted to disturb it, but she couldn't seem to grasp onto the thought or comprehend why it would matter. So she closed them, gently, startled by the chill of his skin beneath her fingertips, and no one had protested.
It wasn't until much later that she'd had the sense to wonder if that had been a mistake.
They left her alone and she sat beside him for a long while, feeling like she was in a dream, like none of this was real, numbed from rest of the world.
Her head spun, the little room too big and too small all at once, cold, hard emptiness that crowded around her and it hurt, so much, but not nearly as much as it did when her mind began to wander. It wasn't until her thoughts drifted, to the things she was going to need to do after they took him away, and she realized that someone was going to need to cancel their dinner reservations, that the first true waves of it crashed into her, crushing her like driftwood against a rocky shore.
'We aren't going to be there,' she thought wretchedly. 'We're never going to go. I'm never going to see him again. He's gone…"
A sob ripped through her body, then another, and she leaned forward, pressing her forehead into his as the tears rolled onto her face. Her hands slid past his cheeks, taking his head between them and she kissed the space above his nose, his eyelids, his forehead, choking out a desperate plea between squeaks and sobbs.
"No… no, come back." She trembled above him, lips lingering beside his eye before she exhaled a shuddering breath and dropped her cheek onto his, heart twisting at how unfamiliar it felt. He felt wrong. He was too cold, too still. "C-come back… come back… please, please come back!" She'd do anything, if only he'd warm up, take a breath, open his eyes. "Come back…"
/-/-/
Present
"Come back!"
The barrier down at last, she bolted into the empty cell, desperately searching for a hint, something left behind to tell them where he'd been taken. Half of her had hoped that, somehow, she'd be pulled along behind them. That if she had only been fast enough she could have hitchhiked onto whatever that damn thing had used to rip him away from her.
"Fitz!"
He was to far to hear her, but she couldn't stop herself from screaming his name, chest heaving as she realized he was gone, that she couldn't follow him, and her legs gave out beneath her. Kneeling where he'd stood only seconds, she felt tears streak down her face and the world spin out from under her.
What had he been thinking? Why hadn't he run, or moved away or at least made an effort to escape?
'Because he doesn't think he belongs here,' came a voice from the back of her mind. 'Because he cares about the people here, about you, and he doesn't think he has anything to lose. He doesn't think he has anything.'
He had something though. He had her. And he wasn't gone this time, not yet.
After one last sniff, she wiped the tears from her cheeks and rose to her feet, sparks lighting in her chest, catching into a flame.
Fitz thought he was alone but he wasn't, and she was going to find him. Wherever he was, whoever had taken him, however hard she'd need to fight, she was getting him back.
She only wished that he knew that, wished she'd had the courage to tell him that she loved him before he'd been taken away again.
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Thank you to notapepper for betaing this chapter :D Your help and enthusiasm is awesome