Jemma stuck close to Mack, finding a few shreds of comfort in her old friend's shadow, but it didn't stop the thing inside of her from clawing at her ribs, knitting anxious knots and yowling at her to move faster, to find Fitz before it was too late.
Still protected by Lincoln and Violet, they crept through the building, carefully peering through windows and creaking open solid doors.
What they found behind the third door set the creature in her chest into a frenzy.
It was a bright, large room with row upon row of metal shelves, stacked up towards a tall ceiling like towers in a metropolis. On the shelves there were jars, neatly labelled in a text she could not read, pieces of human beings suspended in a thick, clear liquid. There were eyes, tongues, livers and kidneys, organized into sets so that each set filled a stack of shelves. A quick count brought her to nineteen. Nineteen people cut up into pieces.
Mack swore beside her but she couldn't speak. Her blood seemed to be draining out her feet and she wouldn't have been surprised if she'd turned whiter than fresh snow. She felt about as cold as snow.
"We should move on," Violet said after a long few seconds. She sounded as if she were struggling not to throw up. "There- there's no one we can help here."
Her head was spinning, but Jemma managed a stiff nod, tearing her eyes away from the sight before her.
"He wasn't in there," Mack mumbled as they carefully squeezed through the door, back to their search.
Jemma's mouth was dry and her voice felt strange as she spoke. "How do you know that?" she asked dully.
His mouth twitched and he shook his head. "He wasn't in there," he repeated quietly.
As they moved on, the hot, wet tickle on her cheeks told her that she was crying but, though her next few breath trembled and wheezed a bit near the end, no one commented.
A couple of footsteps later she felt Mack's arm press into hers and she leaned against it briefly, biting her cheek and drawing cold air over her throat through her nose to suppress the gasp that gurgled up.
They needed to be quiet or they could be caught. And if they were caught they wouldn't be able to help the six people left alive.
/-/-/
When Fitz woke up he was laying on his back in a brightly lit room wearing nothing but a pair of shorts.
And he couldn't move.
Straining his eyes, he blearily managed a glimpse of his arm, stretched out to his side. Thin black lines had been drawn all the way to the start of his hand, segmented like the 'cut here' label on a bag of peanuts.
On his other side, a cheerful grey alien was humming to herself as she set out her glistening steel tool set, saws and scalpels and finely tipped tweezers neatly laid out on metal trays.
His stomach clenched, his heartbeat quickening. This was it. This was going to be the end of him.
"Is he ready?" another silver one asked to her right, about as chipper as his companion was.
"The paralytic has taken effect," she responded, glancing towards him with a grin. "The results have been promising so far. I'm hoping that his are as encouraging as well."
"Do you think then they'll let us move on from human trials?" he wondered longingly. "They're close enough to us in their biology. Maybe-"
"Let's not get ahead of ourselves," she cut him off, though her good mood didn't waver and she grinned at him. "One trial at a time." She chose a scalpel, catching the tip of the blade under the overhead lights so that a shining star slid up the side of it, twinkling at the end, and Fitz was sure he could hear how sharp it was. "We should be ready to begin."
They weren't going to put him to sleep then. He wondered if he would feel it, or if they'd made his body numb as well as immobile.
He tried to think of something else, send his mind far away from his body where he could hide until both of them dwindled into nothing. He thought of sunshine bathing his cheeks, the feel of a beachball between his fingers, eating biscuits with Jemma while they chatted and giggled together, her lips freckled with crumbs and her eyes sparkling. All of it was wonderful and peaceful and real. But it wasn't enough to override his horror and as the alien glided to his side to stand over him, lowering her blade towards his skin, fear shot through him from his stomach right to the ends of his fingertips and down to the tips of his toes. If he could have moved his eyelids, his eyes would have been shut tight, but they hadn't even allowed him that.
Then there was a short bang and blood splattered over his chest and across the side of his face. The alien fell from his view and hit the floor with a thud. The other had only a moment to cry out before he met the same fate.
"Fitz?" It was May, her fingers finding the place on his neck just under his jaw, pushing down to search for a pulse.
She blew out a breath of relief before hurriedly working to unstrap him from what would have been his execution table. He'd never wanted to hug her more than he did in that moment and he wished he could speak to thank her. His friends had come looking for him, just like they said they would, and they'd found him. It was sunlight streaking down between rain clouds, golden rays pouring from the sky.
May scooped him up, carrying him for a moment before gently lowering him onto the ground and propping him up against her arm. Her free hand moved to her ear and she spoke over the coms.
"Jemma? I found him." A brief pause as she listened for the reply. "He's alive but he's not moving, I think they might have given him something. They were just about to cut into him."
She gave him a quick shake, but he could only lull limply in her arms, though the thrill of fear and excitement that panged through him with the knowledge that Jemma had come too would have sent him shooting to his feet if he'd had any control of his legs whatsoever.
Jemma's here, she came for me. She kept her promise.
"Is there some way to wake him up…" May was saying now. "...No, I need him to run, they aren't far behind me." Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her expression darken and she looked down at him with a long sigh. "I understand… Yes, I've done it before."
Very slowly, she lowered him the rest of the way to the floor, giving his shoulder a quick squeeze before searching through her bag. She pulled out a rectangular cardboard box and from that she slid out a long needle, uncapping the tip before meeting his eyes.
Fitz knew what it was and as much as he knew that she needed to do it, he found himself struggling to scream for her not to.
"I'm sorry," she said softly, shaking her head in sympathy. "But I need you to get up."
In a single, rapid motion, she brought the needle down like a dagger into his chest, piercing the skin and digging down deep beneath the flesh to pierce his heart.
It hurt like hell and it felt like being hit by the ocean, waves barreling into him then exploding through him and he sat up, screaming before May's hand came up to cover his mouth and she was pulling him to his feet long before he was ready.
"C'mon," she urged brusquely. "The others are this way."
Shakily, he found his footing, and together they sprinted away, stampeding footsteps from the other direction telling him that their enemy was close on their heels. A ball of light rocketed past his ear, colliding with the wall to his left and sending a shower of debris pelting into him. A few speeding pebbles stung his arm, but otherwise he was unharmed.
"Keep running," May barked, slowing and pivoting around so that she could return their fire, narrowly avoiding another blast.
"I can't just leave y-" he began, slowing with her with but she cut him off.
"Go!" she snapped. "I've got this."
Fitz realized that he wasn't going to be much help, painting a target on her. It was him that they wanted, so he did as he was told and scampered away, hearing her shots ring out behind.
/-/-/
He didn't get far before he found Jemma and the others. He couldn't see them at first, they must have had some sort of cloaking around them, but when he'd rounded the corner there'd been a loud gasp and they'd appeared, as if from nowhere.
His gaze fell on Jemma like a the needle of a compass. Their eyes met and time seemed to slow, inching towards a stop.
The relief that washed over her face was more than he'd expected and her breath caught at the same moment his did, their bodies finding perfect synchronicity.
Then she was bolting like a bullet train towards him and it was all the invitation he needed to do the same, colliding with her embrace and dissolving into it. Her arms clamped around his shoulders, reeling him in, and he brought his own up to hold her against him, warmth diffusing through him like hot water. He felt her cheek, damp against his own and she let out a long, gurgling sigh, as if she'd been holding it in for days before burying her face against him.
"How did you-" he started to ask, but he froze as he felt her arms tighten around him in one quick squeeze, then another, and another bringing the number to three.
The world came to a standstill, narrowing into a tiny bubble, big enough for just the two of them.
It couldn't be what he thought it was, he must have been mistaken. She wouldn't-
Another three squeezes, evenly spaced, deliberate, causing him to pull back, leaving the ends of her arms resting on his shoulders and his hands on her sides as he met her bright, round gaze. She was looking at him like he was the light at the end of a tunnel and the intensity of her expression was like having his soul torn out of him.
And still he was unable to believe that he hadn't been mistaken in her intent.
"Jemma?" he breathed.
His heart thumped against his chest and he saw her swallow, a few more tears finding their way onto her cheeks, but the clock had continued to slow so that seconds turned into years and her pause felt like forever.
At last, she pulled up a weak smile, managing a hoarse whisper. "I love you."
Joy leapt in his chest but he forced it down, narrowing his eyes and shaking his head because it frightened him. It was everything he wanted but he couldn't bring himself to trust that it was real. "Jemma I'm not-"
"Yes you are," she said, louder now, turning her hands to grip his shoulders. "You're Fitz. They brought you back, that was the point of the experiment. It's you in there Fitz."
Was it? How could she be so certain? He wanted to believe her, he really did, but he'd been too filled with doubt for too long and the tangled mess of uncertainty inside of him was not so easily shaken.
His eyes stung with tears and his chin fell to his aching chest. "How do you know it worked?" he whispered.
Her palms pressed against his cheeks, a light, tender touch, and he allowed her to lift his head, sniffing as he saw her gentle smile and the warm glow of love in her eyes. "Because you couldn't possibly be anyone else," she told him softly.
She leaned forward, lightly bumping his nose with her own, leaving their lips less than an inch apart and once again the act of her reaching out towards him was enough for him to reciprocate, eliminating the gap between them in one swift motion.
He hadn't forgotten the way she tasted, how her mouth felt against his, and she obviously hadn't forgotten either because her kiss was as familiar as she was.
Then, much too soon, she was pulling away and the bubble popped, time resuming at its regular pace, as they remembered where they were and who was with them.
Lincoln and Violet had recast their net of invisibility, buying them the few precious moments they needed, but it was well past time to go.
As they moved out, Mack shot him a delighted grin, letting him know that he too believed he was the man they'd lost, but they were off again before either of them could say anything and before Fitz could figure out whether or not he believed it himself.
But his hand was wrapped tightly in Jemma's fingers and it didn't feel as if she were going to be letting go anytime soon and, for just a minute, he decided it didn't matter what he believed. It was then that he realized that home was the place where you were loved and that he'd finally found his way back there. He could figure out the rest when all of them were safe.
/-/-/
Thank you to notapepper for betaing this chapter :D
The adrenaline needle-thing was from a part in Fringe (and also, as I was told, Pulp Fiction) when Olivia finds herself in a similar predicament to poor Fitz.