Fitz
“You’ve been through a lot this past year, Agent Fitz,” Andrew said, looking over his file.
“You could say that again,” Fitz muttered bitterly, nervously twisting his hands in front of him. He’d really rather be anywhere but here, talking about things he’d long since put behind him.
Or at least tried to.
“I suppose you want me to tell you about the med-pod,” he said looking up at Andrew. “Since… since that’s when all this started.”
“What do you mean by ‘all this’?”
“The head injury. The brain trauma. The um… the…” He snapped the fingers of his good hand, trying to come up with the word. Andrew was tempted to give it to him, but he knew how important it was for Fitz to find the word on his own.
“The aphasia,” he finished triumphantly, a small smile of satisfaction on his face. “Sorry. Sometimes it still takes me a while to come up with the words. It’s gotten better, though. Usually only happens now when… when I’m nervous,” Fitz explained, bringing a hand up to rub the back of his neck.
“There’s nothing to apologize for,” Andrew said seriously, making sure Fitz knew he had nothing to be sorry about. “It is completely normal to still have trouble coming up with words at this stage in your recovery. In fact, most people who suffer from aphasia aren’t nearly as far along as you are at this point.”
Fitz smiled at that, bringing his hands to rest in his lap.
“Really?”
“Yes. You should be extremely proud of yourself,” Andrew assured him.
“Now why don’t you tell me what happened in the pod?”
Fitz’s face settled into a grimace and his hands tightened around each other.
“Well, Simmons and I… we…It’s difficult to talk about.” he explained, obviously struggling to put the experience into words.
“It’s okay. Take your time.”
“Simmons and I were on a mission to locate the Bus. We found it, but before we could put a tracker on it… Ward found us. He took us to Garrett, who tried to recruit us for Hydra. As if we would ever work for such scum,” Fitz spat, the venom dripping from his words.
“I had an EMP in my pocket, and I used it to short out the electrical systems on the Bus. I was just trying to cause a diver… distraction, so maybe Simmons and I could get away. But… it did something to Garrett, too. So he told the guards to lock us up, but we got away from them and just started running… For a minute, I really thought we could get away,” he said softly, his eyes trained on the ground.
“But then Ward found us again.” His voice hardened as he continued his story. “He chased us into the med-pod, and before I knew it, he was keying in the code to drop us out of the plane. We begged him not to, but…. he didn’t care. He watched us slide backwards out of the plane and into the ocean, and… not once did he look like he regretted doing it… And the worst part was that I…” Fitz stopped, choking on the lump in his throat.
“You what, Fitz?”
“I defended him,” he admitted. “Before he did that to us…. I refused to believe Ward was Hydra. I thought that there was no way he could possibly be so evil. I thought that maybe… he was brainwashed… or that Garrett had forced him to join Hydra. But when I watched him drop us out of that plane… I saw him for what he really was.”
The tears were streaming down Fitz’s face now as he clenched his jaw in anger.
“He was… is… a monster. Only a monster could do all the terrible things he’s done.”
Andrew nodded in sympathy and slid the tissue box his way. Fitz wiped his eyes and cleared his throat before continuing.
“I don’t remember much of what happened after we hit the water. I remember waking up with a broken arm. I rigged a distress signal, but… then I realized no one would be looking for it. Simmons woke up and… we talked. About death. About dying.” He stopped there, his eyes taking on a distant quality as he recalled their conversation.
“Then what did you do?” Andrew asked, bringing him out of his reverie.
“We did what we always do.... or at least used to do. We found a way out. Together.”
“Why do you say ‘used to’?”
Fitz sighed as he crossed his arms over his chest. “When we had everything set up, there was only enough oxygen for one of us. I tried to get her to take it, but she wouldn’t, so…. I said something…. something that I knew would make her take it.”
“What did you say?”
“I told her how I felt about her,” Fitz mumbled, clearly uncomfortable.
At Andrew’s silence, he took a deep breath and continued. “I told her that I loved her…. not exactly in those words, but... I know she understood. Then I hit the button, and the water rushed in. And I blacked out.”
“Why hadn’t you told her before?” Andrew asked.
“I… I didn’t have the courage.”
“What gave you the courage to tell her then?”
Fitz averted his gaze to the wall, his eyes glassy and his face forlorn.
“I thought I was going to die.”
Tears began to stream down his face again as he looked back at Andrew. “So imagine my surprise when I wake up… in a hospital bed. When I saw her, I tried to talk… to explain to her… but… I couldn’t. My words… they wouldn’t come.”
He sniffled and dried his eyes once again as he sat up straighter in his chair. “The next few months were… well they were absolute Hell. My hands shook. I couldn’t get out a single thought without stuttering. Simmons tried to help… but she really couldn’t. For the first time, we were facing something we couldn’t fix together. And it only got worse when… when she left.”
“Why do you think she left?”
Fitz’s face took on a contemplative look as he considered Andrew’s question.
“At the time, I thought it was because of what I said to her. Because she didn’t feel the same way. Then I thought it was because she couldn’t stand to be near me anymore. Because I wasn’t the same man I was before the… accident. But… then I saw she was the one who had really changed. When she came back, she was… different.”
“Different how?”
“More determined. More focused. But also… more scared. She wasn’t curious anymore. She saw something new and instead of learning about it, she wanted to destroy it. I don’t know what made her that way, but…for a while I thought she may never be the same Simmons that I…”
Fitz took a deep breath, then whispered, “I thought she’d never be the same woman that I fell in love with.”
“And now?” Andrew asked.
“Now… I think that she still may never be the same person she used to be. But that’s okay,” Fitz said, his eyes finally looking up to stare into Andrew’s.
“Because I’m not the same person I used to be either. After everything we’ve been through, it’d be crazy for anyone to expect us to be who we were 2 years ago.”
“It sounds like you’ve put a lot of thought into this,” Andrew said, impressed that Fitz had come to this realization on his own.
“I have,” Fitz agreed, nodding his head slowly. “This past year has been pretty awful, but it’s taught me a lot about myself.”
“Like what?”
“I’ve learned who I am as an individual. For the past 10 years, Simmons has been by my side for everything. My identity was just half of FitzSimmons, one part of a dynamic duo. But with her being gone, I had to figure out how to survive without her.”
“And did you?”
“I did,” Fitz said proudly, a smile making its way onto his face for the first time since the beginning of their rather lengthy session.
“I learned how to live without her by my side for every minute of the day. But do you know what else I learned?” he asked, his blue eyes wide.
Andrew shook his head, curious.
“I learned that even though I can live without Jemma… I really don’t want to.”