SERIOUS S2E19 SPOILERS!
Careful
Fitz didn't feel quite so different any more. He felt a lot like his old self. He wasn't stuttering. His hand wasn't playing up on him. The data in his head seemed to have gotten its act together at last.
He had spent an inordinate amount of time talking about his differences as if they made him and Skye alike, as if damage and superpowers were somehow the same thing. She had been different, he had been different and Jemma hadn't been coping with any of it.
With a jab of his finger, Fitz had told her the scariest change was in her and he'd meant it.
The splinter bomb, however, was entirely new.
Ward was alive, or so it seemed. So, what exactly had happened back there? He was almost too afraid to ask.
After getting Mike evac-ed to the facility that would restore his leg, Jemma went to check on Lincoln and catch up with Skye. Fitz anticipated that he and Skye would end up crashed out in front of some old movie in the early hours of the morning as per their new 'usual', so he didn't follow.
Instead, he took his chance to sneak back to the lab. Looking cautiously over his shoulder he surreptitiously removed the case from where he'd seen Jemma stash it. It was very unlike her not to return unused inventory, especially when a full case was left with only one empty slot. He'd known Jemma to eat through boxes of chocolates in whole rows at a time, unable to handle the untidiness of uneven numbers, of empty places. Even when attempting self-control she'd find herself haunted by the asymmetricality of a half-eaten sleeve of biscuits, forcing them on him to ameliorate her sense of order. Fitz was always hungry so it was a quirk of which he'd become very fond.
Clicking the clasps and raising the lid he could see that she must have at least tried to make good on her plan. He quickly closed up the case and tucked it away, glancing around once more to be sure he'd been undetected. He collapsed onto the chair he'd been wheeling around in earlier and pushed himself as far away from the case as he could get.
Poof she had said. No more Ward. Her tone sing-song, like a librarian with a great big picture book during Story Hour. Like a S.H.I.E.L.D. scientist with a Hydra-made hand-held weapon of total annihilation. Poof.
That's not love, she'd declared with a confidence that made it sound like she knew what love was. Later Fitz had worried over the segue from that to the sandwich. Had he made it sound that though that wasn't love, he thought the sandwich was? Because though didn't think that that was love, he didn't know if this was love anymore either.
What if after all her fear that she'd never get her best friend back, she'd gone and lost herself? What if he was back but she had vanished, consumed by this person whose thinking wasn't all that far from the philosophy behind Project Insight?
If it hadn't been so horrifying, Fitz might have laughed to see the loop come full circle. A trusting, wide-eyed scientist watches her closest friend nearly destroyed, her allies turning on one another and the people she loves put at risk. The fear turns her inward and her compassionate, forgiving heart is hardened. She no longer believes in second chances. She believes in eliminating the threat before it has a chance to arise.
She looked more like a Hydra agent now than she did even when she walked through their doors every day, when she watched the technology that powered the splinter bombs being developed, when she was horrified by the very idea of the Diviners destructive capabilities.
He pushed himself off from the nearest work station and spun on the spot, eyes fixed on the ceiling like some sort of Winter Paralympics wheel-chair figure skater. The motion and the ensuing dizziness focused him on one spot.
He still believed in second chances.
Fitz couldn't let Jemma continue down this path that she'd stepped onto.
He knew what he wished she would have done for him. Now it was his chance to show her how it was done.
Fitz had to love Jemma back to her old self.
If only I had the time to think through and write HOW Fitz might love Jemma back to her old self!
Ok, we're about to fall behind the US again because we're going to wait til our TV schedule catches up to try and make this season last longer. So PLEASE no spoilers!
Maybe I'll imagine how Fitz goes about getting the old Jemma back to entertain/console myself while I wait for that?
I don't like where Jemma is going people. I begin to worry that by the time she realises she loves Fitz, there won't be much of her left for him to love! How can you be so cruel M.A.O.S. writers?! I mean, it's so painful it's almost as if there's a Whedon involved somewhere in this! ;)