i was meant to be a warrior (i'm on my knees)
They’d ended up tangling with some sort of huge water snake in San Antonio that had been causing trouble along the River Walk; four days of floating up and down the water in various boats had ended with May turning the monster into a long line of wet dust, but not before it had done its fair share of damage to the three of them. The snake had managed to pull the older girl out of the boat with its tail and then flip the craft itself, with Fitz and Jemma still on board, before May got her sword into it.
For a terrifying few seconds, he hadn’t been able to find Jemma or the surface in the murky water, until a hand had grabbed his and he’d kicked in one direction, figuring that even if he found the bottom of the river he’d still have time to get back above the water. They’d broken the surface underneath the upside down boat the first time and had to re-submerge, still holding hands, coming up again just in time to see May push off the concrete bank of the river and drive her sword through the snake.
He and Jemma had stayed close to each other since then, even more than usual, and Fitz can feel her shoulder brushing his as they make their way up Half-Blood Hill towards Peggy’s tree; it sends fuzzy flares of pain up the ribs he’d smashed against the side of the boat, but he’s been trying not to complain much after the initial few minutes they’d spent besides the river, attempting to catch their breaths and assess the damage, especially since both of the girls were in worse shape than him to start with and without the newly discovered healing benefits his powers gave him. They’d both had about as much nectar and ambrosia as a demigod could stand, and May had stopped limping at least, but neither of them was at full strength at the moment.
It takes him a few seconds through his exhaustion to realize May has tensed next to him, his hand dropping to Pyrrhos’s scabbard as he hears Jemma draw her knives.
“What?” she asks, and May shakes her head for quiet. Fitz draws his sword as she glances around, then nods toward the pine tree at the top of the hill.
“You two go, get across the border. Go!” she says with force when neither of them move.
“We’re not leaving you down here, you can barely stand,” Jemma protests, and Fitz nods next to her. May shakes her head, looking fierce despite the fact that she’s clearly favoring her left side as she raises her sword.
“Get across the border now, I’ll be right behind you. I just need to figure out-” she starts, then spins to the side as something huge and dark emerges from the woods to their right.
Fitz reacts without thinking, reaching back to grab at Jemma’s wrist, feeling a sharp, hot line of pain run up his left forearm as he pulls her up the hill. He can hear May running behind them, and something else, skittering after the three of them as they dash toward the border. Barely watching where he’s going, he nearly collides with Peggy’s tree, the lower branches brushing against his shoulder as he veers to avoid it, tumbling to the grass as his feet slip out from under him.
Even though the impact with the ground knocks most of the air from his lungs, Fitz still manages to heave a sigh of relief, because they’re up the hill, past the tree and across the border, which means they’re safe. He doesn’t know where Pyrrhos is, having lost it in the fall, and he’s lost track of May as well, but he can feel Jemma next to him on the grass, which feels like enough for the moment until he hears her cry out, obviously in pain.
May leaps over the two of them in a flash, her sword slicing through the dark shape that had pursued them up Half-Blood Hill. As it falls into a cloud of dust, Fitz is horrified to realize that it had somehow crossed the border, and that there’s a bright red streak across Jemma’s upper arm, visible through the large rip in the sleeve of her orange camp t-shirt.
“May,” he gasps, when he reaches out to touch the wound and Jemma recoils with a hiss; it’s deeper than he thought, and overwarm to the touch.
“I’m going to the Big House for help. You stay here with her.”
“I can’t leave her,” he says, though he’s not sure why. It’s just something he needs to say, as he feels Jemma shiver beneath his hand on her shoulder.
“I know, Fitz. Just do that, ok?” she answers and then takes off down the hill, even as Fitz repeats I can’t leave her, still feeling ridiculous for saying it and still unable to keep himself from it. Jemma leans against his shoulder, grimacing as she moves her arm.
“May went for help,” he says, and Jemma laughs softly before grimacing again.
“I know, I heard her. You’re bleeding.” Fitz looks down at where the fingers of her uninjured arm are brushing at the shallow cut along his forearm, which is bleeding slightly. “When you grabbed me… I was still holding my knife. That’s what cut you. Sorry.”
“Not your fault. Sorry for grabbing you,” he says, moving his arm around her shoulders when he feels her shudder again.
“It was some kind of scorpion. Whatever hit me.”
“I could only see that it was big and dark. We’ll figure it out, Jemma. You’ll be fine.”
“It crossed the border.”
“I know. We’ll figure that out, too.”
“You’re still bleeding.”
Fitz shakes his head and holds his arm out away from her, not wanting her to worry about him when her injury is clearly worse than his.
“I can figure that out right now,” he says, letting his arm burst into flames along the cut. It stings a bit, and he realizes he’s never tried to heal anything that quickly. When he shakes the fire out, there’s a thin white scar along his arm, but it’s no longer bleeding, and Jemma’s head drops to his shoulder again, her own hand coming up to trace the edges of her wound.
Fitz sighs in relief when he hears the sound of hooves coming up the hill, and glances over to see Chiron thundering towards them, Coulson and May running after him. He turns his head, pressing his nose against Jemma’s hair with a deep breath.
“We’ll figure it out together, Jem.”
————-
They’re sitting at a table in the infirmary, except for Chiron, towering over the rest of them with a stormy look on his face, and Trip, who crouches next to Jemma, inspecting her arm. He’s the oldest Apollo kid at camp over the school year and has a knack for medicine inherited from his father, although both Mr. D and Chiron are watching him carefully, as is Skye, who he had brought along when Coulson had gone to get him. Ward had come with them as well, but the camp supervisors had sent him to collect a couple of his siblings to go up and guard the border until they could figure out how it had been breached.
Chiron had tried to get Jemma to lie on one of the beds, but she’d refused, wanting to be a part of the conversation, rather than just the subject. Fitz had tugged his chair over close to hers though, so she could lean her head against his shoulder; she was pale and every once and a while she would shiver powerfully, her fingers tightening where she’d tangled them in his shirt whenever she did. Skye, sitting on her injured side, had her hand on Jemma’s knee, peering over Trip’s shoulder as he examines the wound.
“This isn’t good, but it could be worse. You said it was a scorpion?” he asks, and Jemma and May both nod, “I think it just sort of hit you with its stinger, it didn’t get a chance to actually sting you. There’s still definitely poison in there, though.” Trip reaches out carefully to touch the deep cut, then draws away with a hiss. Fitz realizes that if Jemma’s injury felt overwarm even to him, he couldn’t imagine how hot it must feel to the rest of them.
“So what can we do?” Skye asks, and Trip rubs at his eyes.
“If we knew what attacked you, we could figure out the antidote, especially since the poison seems to be fairly slow acting,” Chiron says, turning from where he’d wandered over to the large window in the infirmary, looking out over camp, “But the three of you have only been able to provide a limited description from your encounter. And guessing incorrectly would be disasterous.”
“I would know it if I saw it again, even just a picture,” Jemma says, her voice slightly weaker than usual, although Fitz thinks he might be the only one who notices. It’s pretty clear that she’s trying not to let them see how much the poison might be affecting her, but he knows her better than anyone. He swallows hard as she shivers again, wrapping his arm around her shoulders, careful not to touch her arm.
“We’ve got books on monsters, right? We could find it, a picture or even just a description, and then we would know what we were dealing with,” she continues, and Fitz nods from her side.
Chiron sighs, rubbing at his eyes while he nods.
“I’ll get you the books.”
————–
Jemma’s shivering has become pretty much constant now, as they enter their third hour of poring over the camp’s books on monsters; Trip and Skye have been in and out, both trying to convince her to lie down, but she’s shaken her head and stubbornly kept her eyes on the pages in front of her every time. Fitz hasn’t even bothered trying to get her to take a break, just making sure his chair is close enough that she can lean into his side. She gives a particularly large shudder, needing a moment to steady herself against the edge of the table, and he stands without a word, retrieving a blanket off the nearest bed and draping it over her shoulders. Wrapping it around herself a little more, Jemma tilts her head back to smile at him standing behind her.
“Thank you,” she says with a smile, and something in Fitz’s stomach flips.
“No problem,” he whispers, then clears his throat to manage a more normal volume, “We’re going to fix this, Jem.”
She nods, and he bends down to press a kiss against her forehead, her skin overly warm against his lips before he resumes his seat, meeting her smile with the biggest one of his own that he can manage right now. His stomach flips again.
He doesn’t know why he keeps repeating that, except that maybe if he says it enough they’ll both keep believing it and because the only other thing he can think to say is I can’t leave you, and he’s terrified of saying that again.
He’s scared. It’s the first time he’s really thought it, really acknowledged it with words instead of just nearly drowning in the feeling, since they’d begun their mad dash up the hill. He’s scared of losing her and of the flips in his stomach and of I can’t leave you and of being called a genius by everyone but not being able to figure out how to help her.
Jemma straightens next to him suddenly, and he glances over at the book in front of her; stretched across most of the area of both pages is a huge, dark sketch of a scorpion, more information scrawled in the one empty corner.
“Is that what it was?” he asks, and Jemma’s nods, turning the page to look at the drawing from another angle.
“I think. You didn’t really see it?” Fitz shakes his head. “May said she did. Is she…?”
“I’ll go get her,” he says, jumping to his feet, then hesitates, “You’ll be all right on your own for a few minutes?” She smiles softly at him, nodding, and he takes off to look for May as his stomach flip-flops again.
She’s sitting out on the porch with Chiron, and both of them follow Fitz back to the infirmary, where Jemma has wrapped the blanket around herself and curled up in the chair to study the little paragraph that accompanies the drawing. May nods as soon as she sees the monster in the book, and Chiron accepts the book from Jemma’s shaking hands. Fitz sits back down so she can lean against him, letting her eyes fall closed as she rests her head against his shoulder.
Chiron sighs, and Fitz thinks he can hear millennia in it.
“It’s a descendent of Scorpio. There are some in the forest, which means that it’s possible to make an antidote if you can kill one and bring back the stinger. It’s easy enough to find, but it won’t be easy to kill.”
“I’ll go,” Fitz says, before he can think enough to let his fear stop him, his voice sounding doubled in his ears until he realizes that Jemma had said the same thing at the same time, lifting her head from his shoulder and curling her hands into the blanket to stop their shaking. They match each other again with “You can’t go.”
“You’re shaking like a leaf, Jem,” he says, as she forces herself to stand even as she shudders and catches herself against the table, “You can’t possibly-”
“It’s my life, Fitz. I’m not asking your permission,” she continues, finality in her voice, when he opens his mouth to argue again. He watches her for a moment, pale, eyes red-rimmed, carefully holding her entire body still through pure force of will, and then he nods.
“I’ll come with you.” I can’t leave you.
She nods, her stern expression softening into a smile as she steps forward to hug him, pressing her face in against his shoulder, his bruised ribs protesting the strength with which she’s got her arms wrapped around him. Fitz returns the pressure in equal measure, and Chiron looks up from the book to watch the two of them before he speaks.
“There is no beast I cannot beat. Repeating that phrase should draw the scorpion to you, so you don’t have to scour the entirety of the woods for it. Be careful.”
It’s a long way between the Big House and the woods, and they walk in silence, cutting through the strawberry fields to avoid encountering any other campers. Skye, Ward and Trip will probably come looking for them back in the infirmary at some point, and he wonders if they’ll try to come out after him and Jemma, if Chiron or the older campers will stop them. He wants to break the silence, but doesn’t know what to say until they reach the edge of the forest and Fitz can hear Jemma whispering the phrase Chiron had given them, voice steady even as she shakes. They make sure to keep the edge of the trees in sight as they walk and they haven’t encountered any monsters yet, but they both still draw their weapons without a word between them.
“There is no beast I cannot kill,” he whispers, trying to catch sight of movement in the shadows.
“Beat.”
“What?”
“It’s beat, not kill,” Jemma says, smiling a little, but then she stops walking, reaching to lean against the nearest tree to try and catch her breath.
“Jemma, maybe you should go back. Somebody else can-” he starts, but she shakes her head.
“I’m fine. I just need to-”
Her eyes go wide all of the sudden, and Fitz spins to find what she’s looking at: a huge black scorpion, just across the creek from them. He’s just about to turn back to figure out what she thinks they should do when pain explodes at the back of his head.
Fitz drops like a bag of rocks, losing his grip on Pyrrhos as he hits the ground. He lays there gasping, trying to get his breath back and think about anything other than the pain pulsing through his skull and down his neck. When the starbursts finally clear from his vision and he staggers to his feet, what he sees nearly knocks him back down.
Jemma has crossed the creek, dwarfed by the scorpion, knives up. He can see a few deep gouges in the monster’s hard outer body, but not anything that seems to have slowed it down. Scrambling for his sword, still dizzy, Fitz crashes into the creek, the water up to his waist in seconds, stumbling over the uneven ground.
“Jemma!” he shouts as she lunges at the scorpion, barely managing to duck away from the stinger as it comes down, burying itself in the ground for a second before tearing free again, “Jemma!”
Even only halfway across the stream with his vision swimming, he can see that she’s pale and shaking, having trouble getting herself back to her feet. She’s forced to scramble away on hands and knees the next time the scorpion strikes, rolling across the grass to avoid the heavy stinger. Jemma sways where she stands, lifting the lone knife she’s still holding in defense as Fitz reaches the far bank, scrambling out of the water in an attempt to get to her.
“Jemma!” he shouts again, keenly aware of how useless he is as he sprints forward. Jemma tumbles to the grass in an effort to avoid the scorpion, and doesn’t get back up.
A flash of orange shoots past him, and he recognizes Ward just as the older boy pushes his spear deep into the monster’s side. The scorpion lets out a screeching sound that makes Fitz’s head ring, and then it dissolves into a cloud of dust, except for the stinger, which drops next to Jemma’s still form on the ground.
Fitz pushes it out of the way, remembering at the last moment to avoid the point even if it’s not attached to the scorpion anymore, and drops down next to her, shaking her shoulder. He can feel Ward standing behind him, spear at the ready, but he can’t concentrate on anything but the girl in front of him.
“Fitz, we’ve got to get her back to the infirmary. You grab the stinger to take to Chiron, and I’ll follow with her.” Fitz looks back at the older boy, who nods. “I’ll take care of her. I promise.”
He nods back, trying to catch his breath and blink the lingering dizziness away, before he grabs the large black stinger off the ground and sets off towards the Big House. Glancing over his shoulder, Fitz watches as Ward bends down and carefully scoops Jemma up against his chest. With a shaky breath, he breaks into a run, trusting the other boy to keep his word.
————-
“You should probably get some sleep,” May says, and Fitz lifts his head up from where he’s resting it against the edge of Jemma’s bed, “Brought this for your neck, although now that I think about it, you might melt through it in a couple minutes.” She hands him an ice pack, which he accepts gratefully. The position he’d been dozing in was a bad choice with his neck already as sore as it was.
“I want to be here when she wakes up,” he responds through a yawn. May comes to sit next to him without saying anything else, “Does Chiron know how the scorpion got across the border yet?”
“He thinks someone weakened the border just enough for it to get across. It would have to be someone powerful, probably with help from a camper.”
“Chiron thinks a someone in camp helped do this?”
She nods, “He doesn’t think there’s much chance it would work without an inside man. Especially not that close to the tree. It might have been a prank or something.”
“Letting a killer scorpion into camp is considered a prank?”
May shrugs, “It’s not unusual for kids to get bored towards the end of the school year, with so few people in camp and not much to do. People do stupid things. If we figure out who it was, they’ll be in serious trouble for something like that, even if they didn’t actually want anyone to get hurt, but for now we just have to be thankful that Jemma’s going to be fine.” The look on her face doesn’t look like she’s happy that that’s their only option.
They sit in silence for a few minutes before May has to leave to patrol with Coulson and Garrett, squeezing his shoulder as she rises. Fitz is about to lay his head back down on the edge of the bed when Jemma blinks her eyes open, settling her gaze on him almost immediately. He lets out a breath he’s pretty sure he’s been holding since this morning when she smiles at him.
“It worked?” she asks, voice soft, and he nods, rubbing at his eyes to try to prevent the tears of relief that want to fall.
“Yeah. Sorry I couldn’t- that I couldn’t reach you to help. I was dizzy and the creek was deeper than I thought and then Ward came out of nowhere and-”
“Fitz, it’s fine. I’m the one who hit you, remember?”
“Yeah, no more doing that,” he says, rubbing at the still tender area at the base of his skull. He’d held a handful of flames against his neck for a while, but the soreness continues to linger, and Skye had told him he had a pretty impressive bruise disappearing up into his hair as well. “Although I suppose if you did, Ward would be there to come to the rescue again anyway,” he shrugs, but Jemma shakes her head.
“You were there the whole time,” she says, and I can’t leave you clangs in his head, “That’s important. That’s the most important.”
Fitz blushes, rubbing at the back of his neck for a second until his fingers brush the tender area at his hairline and he pulls away with a wince. Jemma laughs, reaching to tug on his arm, and he stares down at their hands like he’s never seen anything like it before.
“What are you doing?” he asks, and she laughs again.
“I’m sleepy. Come here.”
For the first time in their friendship, Fitz hesitates to climb up on to the bed next to her, his stomach full of motion. But Jemma keeps pulling on his arm, apparently oblivious to his distress, and he gives in after a few seconds, clambering up and letting her get comfortable beside him.
“You’re warm,” Jemma says after a few minutes, and he smiles, pressing his nose against her hair.
“I’m always warm. It’s sort of my thing.”
“You’re taller than me.”
“What?”
“You’re taller than me. We used to be the same height, but I noticed today that now you’re a few inches taller.”
“You had time today to notice that I was taller?”
“I was trying to find things to think about other than what was happening. I noticed while we were walking,” she says, shrugging, and Fitz isn’t sure what to say in response to that. They’re quiet for a few minutes before Jemma speaks again, her voice heavy and soft with exhaustion.
“The fire isn’t Hephaestus.” Fitz doesn’t have to ask for a clarification this time, recognizing the reference to the prophecy immediately. “It’s not your dad. The fire’s chosen one isn’t talking about Hephaestus.”
For a moment, it’s like he can breathe for the first time in months, like someone’s lifted a weight off his chest that had been there for so long he’d stopped noticing it. Jemma shifts slightly against his shoulder, eyes closed as she continues.
“It’s not your dad. It’s Hestia. She chose you. The fire is Hestia.”
The weight drops back onto his chest, the breath leaving his lungs in one fast exhale as he stiffens, although Jemma doesn’t seem to notice at all. Glancing down, he sees that she’s asleep, breathing slow and even. He tries to match his breaths to hers, even as her words echo in his head, and eventually the exhaustion of the day catches up with him.
————–
He’s curled up on his bed, blinking himself awake after an afternoon nap that he had hoped would help with his headache; thankfully, it had, but he’s groggy now, and wonders if anyone would mind if he just spent the rest of the day here.
Jemma’s off doing something with a couple of her siblings, who had been warming up to her over the school year and who had seemed particularly impressed with her after the quest and the business with a scorpion. Fitz wishes that they could have just managed to be nice to her from the start, but she seems happy and they’re nice enough, so he’s decided not to worry about it for now.
Donnie’s gone too, probably off with Seth and Callie somewhere. Aphrodite had finally claimed Seth while Fitz and the others had been in San Antonio, and Donnie’s been different since Fitz got back, quieter and more sullen. He figures that the younger boy is disappointed that Seth had had to wait so long to be claimed for no other reason than that his mother couldn’t be bothered to handle it in a timely manner.
Fitz becomes gradually aware that he’s no longer alone in the cabin and speaks without opening his eyes, since there’s only one person who could have gotten in so soundlessly.
“Did you know?” he asks, waiting a few seconds before finally glancing at Hestia where she’s tending her campfire on the floor next to his bed, “Did you know that if you claimed me it would-? With the prophecy and everything?” The goddess nods, and Fitz sighs, staring up at the ceiling above him with his jaw clenched.
“Why? If you knew it would mean that the prophecy was about me, and if you-” he stops there, because they’ve never really talked about why exactly Hestia chose to claim him, even after his father had already done so. “Why would you do that to me, if you cared about me enough to claim me as your son?”
When he finally looks back at Hestia, she’s shaking her head, a stern look on her face.
“Because all that would have changed if I hadn’t claimed you was the wording of the prophecy, Leopold. Do you think I claimed you on some whim, or that the Fates chose you randomly? Chiron must have told you how rare it is for me to claim demigods, especially nowadays.”
“But why me?”
The cross expression drops finally, Hestia smiling softly.
“Whatever you may believe about yourself, Leopold Fitz, you are special. And the things that make you you, the things you choose to be consciously and the things you just are without even thinking about it, those are things that I value in my children. And the Fates, well, they can claim impartiality all they want, but they like their heroes, the real ones, to have at least the potential to be worthy of the task. No one likes a good show more than those three, when it comes down to it.
“There were certain advantages that could be gained in the coming struggle by claiming you as my son as well as Hephaestus’, and it didn’t take much for me to know I wanted to give you those advantages. I know it’s terrifying, not knowing what you’ll have to do but knowing it will be difficult, and I’m sorry if I’ve played a part in that, but not even the gods can escape fate.”
Fitz sits up finally, swinging his feet off his bed through the fire in front of him, kicking brilliant red flames into the air for a few seconds before they disappear. It’s strange, to suddenly know for sure that the prophecy is about him; before, even with the others telling him over and over again that it was about him, there was always room for him to say it wasn’t, that there were an endless number of other possibilities. But now, with Jemma’s insight and Hestia’s confirmation, the idea that the Oracle’s words were meant for him.
“I think I’m going to go take a walk,” he says, after a few minutes, knowing he can’t keep sitting here but unable to think of anything more specific to do. He just knows he needs motion and change and somewhere bigger than the rather cramped and crowded interior of the Hephaestus cabin. Hestia only nods.
Letting his feet take him where they will, he’s surprised to end up in the empty rec room at the Big House. There’s the ping pong table that Skye and Trip are so fond of, and a collection of ratty couches and chairs arranged around a tv and an Xbox. And in the corner, tucked away on a small shelf next to the entertainment center, sat an old telephone, black and heavy and, Fitz realizes, why he’d come here in the first place without really thinking about it.
He half expects there to be no dial tone when he picks it up and holds it to his ear, but it’s there, a steady whine. His fingers trace over the number three times before he actually presses the buttons, and he slides down the wall next to the little shelf to sit in the shadows of the corner as he listens to it ring, once, twice, three times, and then a click as someone on the other end picks up.
Fitz holds his breath, wondering if he’s misremembered the number, or if it’s not the right number anymore, if the dusty old phone tucked into the back corner of this room will even make international calls, and then everything in his body relaxes at the voice he hears.
“Hello?” He’s struck silent then, and she continues after a few seconds, “Is there anyone there?”
“Mum,” Fitz manages finally, and he can clearly hear the gasp at the other end of the line.
They’ve been exchanging letters for months now, since the first reply she’d sent him on his birthday, but he’s never managed to work up the courage to call her, to actually pick up the phone and speak to her. He’s not sure why, except that there’s something that seems more real about a phone call than about the letters, though he can’t even pinpoint what that is either.
“Leopold, is that you?”
“Yeah, Mum, it’s me.”
“It’s so good to hear your voice,” she says, and he can tell that she’s crying.
“You too, Mum,” he replies, his own voice thick.
“Did something happen? Is that why you’re calling now?”
“No. I mean, sort of. Something happened to Jemma, but I just- I just needed to hear your voice. I needed to talk to you. I should have called a long time ago. I’m sorry.”
“None of that now, Leopold. Something happened to Jemma? Is she all right?”
“She’s fine, Mum,” he starts, and he can’t stop once he’s going. Fitz tells her everything he can think of, about his friends and camp and the things he’s learned. Even the prophecy, as much as he can manage with the raw, exposed feeling of the recent revelations still sitting in his chest; he worries, when he first starts talking about it, that he’ll scare her, but she just listens, asks questions, and it’s such a relief to talk about it to someone who is outside of it but who loves him, to have this contact with the outside world who is concerned about his fate.
Eventually, they run out of things to say and just sit silently, until Fitz realizes how late it is in Glasgow.
“I should let you go, Mum. I’ll call again soon, I promise.”
“You had better, Leopold John Fitz. I love you. Be safe. Or at least, as safe as you can manage.”
“I love you, too. I’ll try. And I’ll call, I really promise.”
They sit for a few more minutes, unwilling to cut the connection just yet, before they finally hang up with one more round of goodbyes and promises. Even after that, Fitz listens to the buzz of the dial tone, his grip tight around the phone and at the outside edge of his jeans to keep him from just calling her again. Finally, he returns the phone to the cradle, curling tighter into the corner, arms around his knees.
“Fitz, is there a reason you’re curled up in the corner?” asks Ward, and Fitz looks up to see him standing in the doorway, realizing he must have lost track of time a bit.
“I, uh, was calling my mum.”
“Oh,” he says, crossing the room to settle next to Fitz in the corner, which is slightly amusing to watch. Ward is very athletic and graceful, but he’s just so damn tall that folding himself into the cramped space is quite a thing to see. Eventually he’s settled, although Fitz isn’t sure why he’d come over in the first place as they sit in silence.
“How’s your mom?” Ward asks after a while, fiddling with the laces on his sneakers.
“Good. I hadn’t talked to her in a long time, so it was nice to- to finally get to talk to her again.”
“I bet.” Fitz likes Ward, but they rarely spend time together without the others around and when they do, it’s usually at the forge and they don’t talk that much. Fitz isn’t sure what to say, and he’s fairly sure the older boy feels the same.
“Thank you. For what you did for Jemma,” he clarifies, when Ward raises his eyebrows.
“No problem. Anybody would have done it.”
“You slayed a full grown killer scorpion after coming out after us even when Chiron told you not to while I couldn’t even cross a creek.” This just earns a shrug from Ward.
“You went out there with her in the first place. And I know you would have gotten that scorpion if I hadn’t shown up. Jemma knows that, too,” he adds after a second, bringing a hand up to touch one of the many beads on his necklace, the orange at the far end, “I mean, they put you on the bead for a reason.”
Fitz blushes, looking down at the single bead on his own necklace, a tiny flame carved into it. All the campers had the leather strings, with beads to mark every summer they were at camp, each bead marked with a little symbol representing the most significant event of that particular summer as chosen by the head campers. He’d been embarrassed when they’d handed out the beads in early August, and whenever Skye or Trip or Jemma teased him about it, he reminded all of them that it didn’t really have much to do with him at all; it was about a power that hadn’t been seen in centuries turning up at camp, not about him. They still teased him.
“Skye and Trip were looking for you so we could play ping pong. They should be here soon, probably. I volunteered to go look for you to see if I could catch some peace and quiet.”
“Sorry.”
Ward shrugs, “Don’t mind. I kind of like this corner.”
Fitz raises his eyebrows, looking at the clearly uncomfortable way the other boy is sitting, and they both laugh at the same time, reaching to help each other up when they hear Skye, Trip and Jemma’s voices from the hallway.