Chapter 1
Will is dead. No one’s said it out loud yet, but she sees it etched in Fitz’s expression, flickering in his eyes the moment he finds her gaze. Still, she has to look herself, has to see the empty retrieval pod, see that there is no one else coming.
First she feels horror, because even though she knew this was a possibility – a probability – she had clung to that small grain of hope for him. Because she owed him that much. Then she feels sick. Sick at the thought of him dying there without ever seeing the sun again. Dying there all alone after fourteen years. Dying there while she is living here.
And then, as she turns, sees the expression on Fitz’s face, launches herself into his arms, something finally seems to disconnect, to snap inside her. There is too much to feel, so she stops feeling it. Her face is soaked with tears that keep coming in silent waves as the hugging and holding part of the reunions start to break up, but the inside of her has gone numb.
She is ushered along with everyone else to the medical bay for a perfunctory examination. She registers Bobbi’s look of shock and anger when she strips off her shirt, and realizes distantly that she hadn’t really gotten the chance to mention the torture bit. She doesn’t even feel the antiseptic or the stitches.
“I’m sorry,” Daisy says, getting in front of her as they transition to debriefing. The words aren’t just for Will; they’re an apology for what happened to Simmons tonight. There’s so much in those two little words, and she wipes her cheeks and tries to smile for Daisy’s sake, but it goes no deeper than the twitch of her lips.
And then Fitz, sitting next to her, tells the whole story of what happened. How Will had been dead since they’d pulled Simmons out. How that thing had stolen his body. How he’d had to destroy it. And this finally cracks the damn, the knowledge that he died giving her the chance to escape. As she dreaded for weeks, seen again and again in her nightmares.
Why do all these men she loves keep sacrificing themselves for her?
She manages to keep a hold on herself until they get back to base. Until she’s alone in her shower standing under the steaming jet turned up high enough to numb her skin. Then she sobs until its screams, curls up on the tiled floor and tries to rid herself of this horrible, crushing feeling that is more than simple grief or guilt or whatever it is. It only helps a little.
...
When she opens the bathroom door, Fitz is sitting on the end of her bed. He jumps up the moment he sees her, looking everywhere but at her, standing in only a towel, dripping on the rug. Finally settling on staring at the floor, he says haltingly, “I just – I needed to – but I can come back later –”
He starts for the door.
“Don’t go.” The words surprise both of them, jumping from her in a sudden aversion-edging-on-terror of solitude. He pauses, hand hovering uncertainly over the doorknob. “I’ll just… um… get dressed quickly and…” She trails off. What are they going to do? She doesn’t particularly want to talk. She doesn’t particularly want to do anything but stare into the darkness, but she doesn’t want to do it alone.
She crosses over to her closet and he turns dutifully to the corner, staring hard at the wall. It reminds her of The Academy, in between seventeen hour days in the lab when she would crash on his floor because it was closer, and they didn’t think twice about blearily scrambling in and out of clothes in the same room. Then she thinks of Will and how they only had one room and how personal boundaries had eroded to the point of nonexistence. Then she stops thinking again.
She doesn’t pay much attention to what she grabs, pulling on the first garments her hands find, and when she’s suitably covered, pads over to the bed and curls up against the headboard, looking at him sideways.
“Jemma…” he starts, turning toward her, but he still can’t look at her. His eyes slide over her and fix on the corner of the mattress. “I just… I’m so, so sorry. And I needed to say that.”
She feels her throat closing and thinks she might be sick again. When she doesn’t say anything he hurries on, words tumbling over one another in his haste to explain.
“I tried to bring him back, I promise I did. I had a plan. We were going to give Ward the slip; it was clever, but – but I know it doesn’t matter anyway. I mean, I’ll understand if you can’t look at me for a while. It was still me who set him on fire. I’ll understand if that –” his voice breaks – “ruins things.”
She’s been shaking her head faster and faster as he keeps talking.
“No, Fitz, of course it wasn’t your fault –”
“I know that, but it was still me,” he tramples over her protestations. “It was still his body, and it was still me that destroyed it.”
“You had to,” she’s crying again. She hates that she’s crying because he won’t take what she’s saying seriously, but she can’t help it. She slides to the floor in a heap, reaching for his fingers, pulling him down in front of her, gripping his hands between hers as hard as she can so that maybe he’ll understand. “You saved him. It’s what he’d’ve wanted, it’s what he did. He made the same choice with his crew, his friends. You saved him.”
She brings his fingers to her lips, kissing his knuckles, her tears dripping down the backs of his hands. The next things she knows he’s holding her, their foreheads touching, then their lips and everything is confusing. She wants him to know that she doesn’t blame him, could never blame him. That she’s so relieved he came back. That she’s grateful he tried at all. Tried so hard. And she’s grateful he doesn’t leave. The warm weight of his arm over her stomach, the steady rise of his chest against her back keep her sane in the darkness. But this is not exactly where she wanted to go. This is not exactly how she wanted to get there.