Chapter 3
She waits until dinner. The rest of the team is feasting on take-out in the kitchen, a little more lively than they were this morning. But May isn’t there, and Simmons doesn’t feel like eating and even less like dodging Fitz’s solicitous staring. This time May’s in the cockpit, checking everything over after their last disaster.
Simmons doesn’t know what to do. She’s aware that hovering in the doorway watching May work is both very awkward and slightly creepy, but her voice seems to have deserted her and she’s not sure what she came here for anyway. She’s about to slip away like a shadow when May speaks.
“Did you need something, Agent Simmons?”
Simmons can’t help but jump. May keeps her eyes on what she’s doing, but she still feels caught in the headlights. She doesn’t know how to explain what she wants, doesn’t even know exactly what it is.
“I practice at five every morning,” May says into the spooling silence.
Simmons nods although May can’t see it and turns to go. Facing the hallway, though, she pauses, closes her eyes for a moment. “Thank you.”
Xxx
He just wants to check on her. He’s not… expecting something. Just because they kissed. He’s not that guy. He’s happy to take it slow, as slow as she wants. But she wasn’t at dinner and he doesn’t think she’s eaten very much and –
But the door’s locked. It’s late and she’s probably asleep and he doesn’t want to wake her. He just… thought she might have left it unlocked. He turns toward his own bunk, trying not to be too disappointed and hoping she’s okay.
Xxx
She cannot take this sitting still. It might actually be killing her. May sits cross-legged in front of her, eyes closed, still as a statue. Her only instructions, forty-five minutes ago, were to “sit, breathe, don’t think.”
Simmons is not built for not thinking, though. She has to do calculus in her head while debating the merits of the ninth and tenth doctors with Fitz just to keep from getting bored in the lab. She can’t just stop thinking, and that’s the problem. Her side hurts. Her ribs hurt. Her back hurts. Her leg hurts. Every time she closes her eyes she sees Ward, and every time she opens them she sees May and thinks of Andrew.
“That was good,” May says when the hour’s finally up.
She stands, stretches, and bends down to help Simmons carefully to her feet, taking a moment to look over her expression.
“It takes practice,” she says quietly.
Simmons shakes her head ruefully. “I’m not used to doing poorly at mental activities.”
“Keep trying. You’ll get better,” May promises.
Xxx
“This is new,” Bobbi comments, taking Simmons’ bandaged hand gently in her own.
“I punched a wall,” she admits, not meeting Bobbi’s eyes. “Sorry, but can we… just… get through with it?”
She sits tensely on the exam table, looking anywhere but at the bandages and antiseptic Bobbi has lined up at the ready. Bobbi frowns. It isn’t like Jemma not to micromanage medical procedures, even minor ones. Bobbi’s caught her trying to stitch herself up too many times to not be perturbed by this compliance.
“Okay, let’s start with your leg, then. How’s it feel today?” Bobbi kneels to roll Simmons’ pant leg up and carefully remove the bandage.
“It stings,” Jemma tells her.
This is the understatement of the century. From what Bobbi can tell, someone peeled back strips of skin from her right shin, leaving stripes of bloody muscle exposed from knee to ankle. The medical team was talking about skin grafts. It’s not infected, so the most Bobbi can do is clean it and apply a new bandage coated in a light neurotoxin that will hopefully numb some of the pain of exposed nerves.
“This is going to hurt,” Bobbi tells her with a grimace. “Feel free to scream a little.”
But aside from a sharp hiss when the antiseptic streams over her shin, Jemma doesn’t make a noise. This turns something in Bobbi’s stomach.
The rest of the examination goes in similar fashion, Bobbi checking, cleaning, and redressing each wound as gently as she can in silence. She wants to speak, to distract Jemma, to take her out of this clinical place, to remind her the hands on her body are kind. But she can think of nothing to say. Narrating what she’s doing will only make it worse, and might even be insulting to Jemma. Smiling or chirping gossip or making small-talk over injuries like these would be grotesque. And Bobbi is acutely aware that the wounds she’s seeing are only the half that are visible.
There are shallow slices all over Jemma’s abdomen and lower back, only a couple requiring stitches. Several of her ribs are fractured. Bruises splotch her torso and back in garish blacks and purples. They center on mottled patches where ridged imprints suggest a plyers had been used to twist the skin and muscle.
The worst part, however, are the burns. They are a sort of horrifying artwork, probably achieving such definition from a blowtorch. The tentacles of the HYDRA seal curl over the bony planes of her back around the thick letters ‘TK’. The Telekinetic. ‘Slut’ and ‘bitch’ are seared over her chest and side. And on her lower belly, right over where her uterus must lie, the crude image of a dick has been etched with flame.
Bobbi doesn’t know if Jemma has seen the burns yet; they’ve been covered thickly in healing pastes and bandages. She hopes they’ll heal, but scarring is almost inevitable. Looking at them again today, it is all Bobbi can do to swallow back the nausea and cold fury roiling in her stomach.
Xxx
Fitz isn’t exactly surprised to find her there when he shuffles into the lab, still groggy from sleep at 6:30 in the morning. It’s only been four days since they got back, since everything. Jemma’s technically not supposed to be here. She’s supposed to be on medical leave. Coulson even tried to persuade her to go home, spend some time with her parents. She hasn’t seen them since before the alien planet and the holidays are coming up now.
But of course she wouldn’t. She hasn’t talked to him much about it other than to tell him the conversation happened and she wasn’t leaving. She’s barely spoken to him at all, actually, since the night they got back. He’s not surprised she won’t go home; the cut across her cheek is still scabbed and puffy, the rope marks on her wrists vivid against her pale skin. And he knows there’s much, much more damage hidden beneath her thick jumpers and collard blouses. She isn’t ready to explain all that to them yet, or rather, make up more comforting lies. She probably never will be.
Because Jemma’s parents are so unabashedly proud, so soft and doting on their brilliant only child, most people forget that she hasn’t lived with them since she was thirteen. By the time he met her at the Academy, she’d already started to feel like they didn’t know her anymore. Now…. He’s starting to doubt that he even knows her anymore.
He rubs the back of his neck, brought back to the current uncertainty between them. That’s when she seems to notice he’s there. She looks up and pulls a smile that’s too thin to even be polite.
“What’re you working on?” he asks, sidling up beside her, deciding he’s going to give it one more shot.
“Just an old prototype,” she murmurs, sliding the blueprints over to him. He recognizes them as a project they’d theorized about a million years ago on the Bus. A pocket dialysis kit that could scrub poisons or infection from the bloodstream.
“We should have tried a different alloy for the siphon,” he says, pointing to some of his chicken-scratch notes in the margins.
“Maybe,” she says distractedly. “I think I’m supposed to be in medical, right now, actually. Sorry. Bobbi’ll kill me if I miss a follow-up.”
“How are you feeling?” he asks. She hasn’t said anything about any of it. He’s not even sure what they did to her, and not knowing is slowly driving him mad.
“Fine, really,” she says vaguely, flitting as quickly toward the door as she can without seeming rude.
Resignation settles over him, heavy and uncomfortable like a wet blanket. He doesn’t blame her for not being able to look at him, for making excuses to get away from him. He’d prepared himself for this that night. But he can’t stop the bitter disappointment it leaves congealing in his stomach. He’d been foolish enough to believe her that night when she said she didn’t blame him, when she kissed him and held him and let him into her bed. But she’d been exhausted and delirious on pain meds and in shock. Of course it hadn’t been real.
As soon as he’s sure she’s out of earshot, he slams his palms against the table, letting his anger and frustration out in a growl. He’s not angry with her. Of course he’s not. It’s not her fault. It’s his fault and fucking HYDRA, and he’s so sick of the universe’s shit, almost giving them something good only to yank it away and shred it to pieces right under his nose again and again.
And he’s more afraid now than ever before that the damage is irreparable.
Xxx
Simmons leans against the wall around the corner from the lab. She can hear Fitz kicking angrily at chairs and tables, and bites the inside of her lip until she tastes blood to stop from crying.
She’s going to lose him.
Maybe it would have turned out okay if she hadn’t kissed him, but now she’s done it twice. What kind of shitty person does that when they know that’s not how they feel? She keeps leading him on and pushing him away, giving him a moment of happiness only to crush it the next day.
She’s destroying him, and she’ll deserve it when he does finally walk away from her for good. And she’s so terrified at the prospect of that loneliness it leaves her breathless.
Xxx
“How’s it going with May?” Daisy asks that night, sliding in next to Simmons at the sink where she’s washing her dishes.
Terribly, she wants to say. She’s rubbish at meditation and it isn’t helping. She isn’t sure what she expected. Maybe some kind of cathartic physical activity. But sitting still with that dark knot of… of... anger and guilt and fear inside her isn’t doing anything but making things worse.
“Fine,” she says instead, quietly, focusing on the mug she’s scrubbing harder than she needs to. Soap trickles down her wrists and smarts in the half-healed rope burns. She can’t stop the wince.
“Here, let me,” Daisy pulls the sponge and the mug from her slick fingers. “Kick back, put your feet up.”
She wants to protest, but Daisy has already ousted her from her position. And her ribs and her back hurt, so she carefully lowers herself into a chair. Lincoln’s the only other person in the mess hall now, clattering his spoon in his soup bowl absent-mindedly.
“May pushes you hard, but she knows what she’s doing,” Daisy tells her over the tinny echo of water hitting the sink basin. Everything is still uncomfortably loud, sometimes, even after all these weeks. “And…” Daisy shuts the water off, dries her hands, and leans against the table in front of Simmons. “Like I said, if you just want to talk, I’m always around.”
She waits for Simmons to say something, maybe start spilling everything that’s welled up in her chest to her right now, but Simmons just smiles a little too tightly and nods her gratitude. Daisy touches her shoulder gently before heading for the hallway. “You coming, Sparky?” she calls over her shoulder to Lincoln.
“In a minute,” he says, grimacing at the name.
He brings his empty bowl around to the sink and starts washing it much more quietly than Daisy managed. Simmons is lost in her thoughts and jumps when he speaks to her. They’ve yet to even be properly introduced, let alone have a conversation.
“You know, if you need someone to talk to, I’m always around, too,” he says. “Sometimes strangers make it easier,” he adds at her startled look. “I don’t really know you, and I don’t really know what you’ve been through, so I don’t have any expectations. No prejudices. In case the people you’d normally talk to are a little too close to the picture.” He shrugs, offers a friendly half-smile, and follows Daisy out of the kitchen.