Amnesiacs
The woman lying on the ground stirred first. Whether it was the blast of cold air passing from the trees or the realization that she had been lying on the hard ground she was unsure.
Her head felt like someone had popped it off and screwed it on entirely wrong. In fact, there was something very wrong but she couldn’t quite place it.
Oh wait… actually she could.
For starters, she couldn’t even remember her name, or how she got here. She needed to find clues. Dusting off her jeans, and straightening up her – what was this? – lab coat, the woman stood up from the moss covered ground. She did a slow 360 degree turn around to assess her surroundings, and came upon a lump of a person, also in a lab coat, a few feet away.
She approached cautiously, but it was apparent the man was still out cold. A name tag hung off the pocket on the chest of his lab coat. She reached down and flipped it over to read it.
Fitz, Leopold.
Engineer, SHIELD.
It caused a few minutes of pause for the woman, like she was staring at a toy she had as a child, but otherwise his name didn’t ring a bell. Perhaps if she woke him up he would have the answers. She checked her own lab coat and found her own I.D. card clipped to the waistband of her jeans.
Simmons, Jemma
Biochemistry, SHIELD.
She assumed they were co-workers. Good. That was definitely a positive sign. She crouched next to this Leopold person and gently rocked him from side to side.
“Hey, hey, wake up,” she accompanied with her shaking.
The man groaned, and his hands shot up to hold the sides of his head. Jemma reared back a bit, startled by his sudden movement.
“My god- this headache,” he muttered with distortion, his palms covered his mouth.
His accent piqued her interest. Scottish. Familiar to her.
After passing his hands over his face, he opened his eyes and stared back at Jemma.
“Eh, who are you?” he finally said.
Jemma pawed at her badge again, forgetting for the moment what she had read on it.
“Jemma,” she read off of it.
He propped himself on his elbows, and struggled to lift himself further up. Jemma aided him in sitting up right.
“I have no idea what is going on,” he said, frowning and looking around the clearance of the forest they were in.
His grimace was contagious; Jemma hoped he would have answers or memory of what was happening.
“It seems you and I have lost our memories. Your name is apparently Leopold. Leopold Fitz,” Jemma pointed to the badge hanging from his lab coat’s chest pocket. Contorting his face, he read over the identification card himself.
“Leopold? What kind of bloody name…,” he murmured to himself. Jemma couldn’t quite catch the end of his statement.
In a louder voice, Leopold asked if she had a phone on her, and he began checking his pockets. He found his in a front pocket and Jemma found hers in her lab coat, the small pull of weight giving it away.
At first, both the phones were locked, but easily unlocked by fingerprints.
The background of Jemma’s phone was a picture of what she assumed she looked like (not remembering what she looked like struck her as a passing scary thought), and Leopold. They were head-to-head and making two different silly faces to the camera.
“Awe, look at this,” she exclaimed, and she showed Leopold her screen. He smiled and nodded accordingly, and flipped his phone around so she could see a similar but different picture of them displaying funny faces.
“Well, at least we have humor,” Jemma said with approval.
She went to look over her text messages next. Several were unread- one from someone named Director Coulson that beckoned to know where she was (several messages over the span of two hours, actually), and a new one from someone named DaisyQuakes, who had emoji’s of flowers and the open palmed hallelujah hands. She asked more specifically where her and Fitz had gone off to because Coulson was freaking out.
“I think I found you on my phone, let me text you and see if it works,” Jemma said, typing up a message to Monkeyboy.
Leopold, or Fitz, as the girl Daisy had referred to him, received the message several seconds later.
“Ypu, it is you,” he confirmed, showing her the picture of her face that popped up with the message. Her name Jemma was there too, followed by an assortment of hearts.
“Jeez, do you think we’re dating?” Jemma said, with an accompanied laugh.
Leopold was scrolling through their texts.
“It would seem so,” he mused.
Jemm wasn’t too shocked by this. She had seen the messages, too. She stood up and offered Leopold the help up.
“I’ll text these people who seem to be concerned, but I think we should start looking for a way out- it will be dark soon- and colder,” Jemma said as she helped hoist up Leopold to his feet. He dusted off his own lab coat and pants and pocketed his phone. Jemma shivered.
While Jemma responded to the texts, carefully, Leopold fanned out and began looking for clues as to where they were and how they could get out. Three things were certain; they both had amnesia, they were in some sort of forest and the sun was going down. In fact, the only sunlight remaining came was cascading through the thick branches of the trees. It was early fall, colors had begun to change, but the threes were still full of leaves. One thing was possible, Leopold thought; at least he was stuck here with his girlfriend.
Jemma joined his search, and the pair of them meticulously scanned each square footage of the clearing they were in. Just when Leopold thought they should instead work on getting out of the forest, he stumbled upon a rock. And behind that rock was the first clue.
“It is drone, a crashed one,” Fitz said having an a-ha moment. He picked up the small device and examined in intently from all different angles.
“Dopey…,” he added, completely ingrained in the drone. Jemma peered over from behind, putting her hand on his shoulder to stabilize her tiptoeing.
“What are you thinking?” she asked.
Leopold’s hands worked before his brain did, like their memory hadn’t been lost. Pretty soon the drone turned on, and hovered in the air above Leopold’s palm for a moment. Then it began to fly away. Leopold quickly followed, causing Jemma to stumble a bit.
Leopold followed the drone along its course to some nearby bushes on the edge of the clearing. The drone, hovered again, then casually descended, leading Leopold to the discovery of a tablet, a suitcase and a whole bunch of other drones.
“Bingo!” he exclaimed, reaching into the bush and pulling out the tablet, which was glowing. Leopold began to prattle off what he automatically knew about the devices.
“The tablet is both a receiver and controller,” he popped in on. Jemma collected the rest of the drones and read off their names, the Seven Dwarfs.
“I’ll bet, I can program this with the GPS and they can lead us right out of the forest and back into civilization,” he beamed, clicking away at things on the tablet.
“Well, good, because it is nearly dark and who knows what lives in here,” Jemma answered. She opened the briefcase and found that it was the holding case for the equipment. A few clicks more and Leopold had done it, the dwarf named Bashful, took flight and led the way.
“So simple to do, these drones have amazing capabilities, biometric scanning, small specimen collection, bioluminescent restructuring, not to mention amazing GPS,” he said.
Jemma glanced at the screen. They weren’t too far in the forest, but far enough it would be completely dark by the way they got out. The dark didn’t frighten her, but just being in a strange place at night did. As Jemma and Leopold followed the drone, Jemma picked up a stick and a rock, sharpening a side. It was getting to the point where Jemma could barely see what she was doing. Leopold finally took notice and offered to help. He went to reach for Jemma’s makeshift spear but lost his footing in the darkness, tripping over an exposed tree root, and tumbling to the ground. Bashful halted, its small glowing blue light looked like it was levitating in the air.
“Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow,” Fitz hollered. He placed the tablet on his lap, and wrapped is knee with his hands.
Jemma sprung into action, busting out her phone to turn the flashlight on, and shoved it into Leopold’s hands so she could use hers. She tore a strip off the bottom of her lab coat, and created a tourniquet over the laceration just above Fitz’ knee. It didn’t look terribly deep, but would probably need stitches later on. And proper sterilization. The placement of the cut just missed some major knee damage, so Leopold was a very lucky man.
“You’ll live!” she said, wiping her bloodied hands on the remains of her lab coat. She was hoping this didn’t make her an easy target. Leopold handed back her phone, and she had to wipe blood off that too. He used her as an anchor to get back up, and leaned on her for support. The closer proximity was felt comfortable. And Leopold didn’t know what came over him but he kissed her. Jemma, a tad startled by his move, fell into the kiss, welcoming the warm effect the closeness of his body had on her. The kiss ended after a few moments, and then they were blanketed by the calm of darkness.
“Are you okay with the kiss?” Leopold said, quite sheepishly. Jemma reached for his hand in the darkness and squeezed. She liked him, and she was glad he liked her.
“Yes, more than okay.”
Bashful resumed its journey.
With Leopold’s injury, it took nearly twice as long as Jemma presumed it would take to get out of that forest. It helped that Jemma used the flashlight on her phone to illuminate the way, but they both suffered cuts and scrapes from low-lying tree branches and prickly bushes. When they resurfaced to the civilized world, they looked just as exhausted as they felt. And, they had only found a road, nothing remarkable on it.
At the side of the road, Leopold played around with the drones again, and used them as a beacon to find some kind of shelter, and they were in luck, they found a motel down the road.
“But we don’t have any money,” Jemma said, checking her pockets again to make sure she hadn’t missed a wallet. Leopold checked his as well.
“I have enough phone reception now, though, to send a call. I’ll call… Daisy!” Jemma said, already with it to her ears. It rang just once before it was picked up.
“JEMMA, WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN, HOLY CRAP, IT HAS BEEN HOURS!” the girl on the other end shouted. Jemma had to hold the phone a few inches from her face.
“Uh, hi…Daisy. Leopold and I were in a forest, and now we’re out of the forest. But, we are pretty much stranded here. Could… could you help us out, we definitely could use some help.” Jemma stammered through the words, not sure who Daisy was to her and how to deal with her.
“Of course! We have been waiting for you guys. Have Fitz message me the coordinates and I’ll send the Bus over,” Daisy responded.
“Oh, okay, well, thank you, Daisy, we’ll be on the lookout for a bus!” Jemma stated.
And she ended the call. Jemma instructed Fitz what to do, and then it was just time to sit and wait it out. And it was so cold. At first, Jemma and Leopold sat next to each other should to shoulder. Jemma would anxiously peer down both sides of the road, but no cars ever came. After a half hour, Jemma began to nod off. Leopold was still tinkering away at his tablet (exclaiming things about how great the battery life was and so on). Jemma soon dozed off completely, leaning her head first on Leopold’s shoulder, but sliding down to his lap. He didn’t mind.
Pretty soon, a whirring noise in the air caught the attention of Leopold. He wanted to look around, but with Jemma on his lap and his leg stinging he wasn’t about to move around. Not a moment later, he didn’t have to, as a large aircraft appeared almost out of nowhere. This of course, woke up Jemma, who stared in shock. She lifted her head off of Leopold, and helped him up.
The cargo door of the plane opened, and out ran a single woman.
“You guys had us worried sick!” she called out, Jemma recognized that voice as Daisy’s.
When she got closer, she stopped herself from giving the two a hug.
“God, you guys look like hell,” she exclaimed.
“Daisy, you found Fitzsimmons?” a male voice from the plane called out. He appeared on the ramp moments later.
After helping Leopold up the ramp, Daisy and the man led the pair to a kitchen, where hot tea was waiting for them.
“So tell us what happened when we lost you guys,” the man said. Leopold and Jemma looked at each other. They shared the same unnerving looks.
“Well…” Leopold began. But he didn’t have much to say about it and stopped.
“To be honest, we both lost our memories,” Jemma said, clenching her eyes shut.
Daisy’s expression changed, her eyes bulged and her mouth fell agape.
“But at least we had each other, and, you know, she’s my girlfriend so at least if you’re going to get lost and stuck in a forest, that’s the best person to do it with, ehm, to be stuck with…” Leopold said.
And this time the man and Daisy exchanged a look.
“Should we tell them?” the man asked, smirking.
“No, no, no! Don’t let it ruin their moment. We’ll just focus on getting you two back to tip top shape,” Daisy replied, almost pleading to the man.
“Well, saying that you lost your memories, is a good start, now we know who we are dealing with,” the man said.
“Um, excuse me, what’s your name, by the way? I know you’re Daisy from your voice, but…” Leopold spoke up.
“Fitz, I’m Phil Coulson,” the man replied. He didn’t seem offended or upset. Coulson had a warmth about him, it made him so approachable.
Coulson, reached over to a large file on the table nearby and thumbed through it until he found what he was looking for.
“We identified an Inhuman,” Coulson paused to address the confused faces on Jemma and Fitz, “an Inhuman- a super powered kind of hybrid human being, Daisy here is one, one who has the ability to manipulate memory. Bad news, we know that it can be permanent, but good news, your case isn’t, as you know how to speak and it looks like you’ve retained your training somewhere deep in your mind. So the next step is reversing it,” Coulson glanced over a sheet of paper.
He handed a few sheets over for Fitz and Simmons to look at.
After looking through them, they understood.
“So we have to experience an electrical shock…” Jemma started.
“But we won’t remember our time as amnesiacs,” Fitz finished.
The pair looked at each other. They didn’t know they wouldn’t recall their feelings for each other. Or that they weren’t in a relationship. They would go back to being two best friends who were both too shy to enact on their feelings.
Coulson led Fitz, Simmons and Daisy to the lab, where Fitz picked up a charger that could omit a small enough electrical shock, but big enough to recalibrate their memories. He prepped it, and handed one of the two wires to Jemma, instructing her on his count to just tap the exposed metal to her skin.
She held it in her hand and waited for Fitz to finish prepping. She took his free hand with hers.
“See you on the other side,” she said with a smile.
He returned the smile, “see you too.”