Hero

The throbbing pain in his head had disappeared the moment she’d been sucked out of the BUS and become nothing more than just a small dot in the distance, before falling from view entirely. He had shouted until his throat was raw and had bruised his fist against the glass that separated him from her, Jemma Simmons; his best friend and the love of his life. The realisation that he loved her hit him hard; he’d always known she was special but it was only as she fell from the cargo ramp that he knew he loved her, completely. He had screamed and pleaded and thrown himself at the door but she was gone, and if he didn’t do anything he’d never see her again. He needed to act, fast. Fitz only noticed the tears burning at his eyes as his vision blurred and even then he ignored them, willing himself to fight the sheer panic that had gripped onto him and rooted him to the spot. His heart pounded so fast it threatened to burst his chest and even as he turned to grab the vaccine, antiserum, from its position on one of the lab worktops he felt as though he would be sick.

It haunted Fitz that she had been there one moment and then was gone the next, that the pale, terrified and tearful expression she bore as she stared at him and cried, would be his last memory of her. It had been so fast – a couple of seconds and suddenly his world had shifted irreparably for the worse. All at once the life they had and the life he found he had so often pictured them having together in the future crashed down on him, constricting and threatening to paralyse him in horror. And yet that awful, gut wrenching feeling lasted only a brief moment before Fitz’s mind was awash with equations instead of emotions. The shock and adrenaline and the knowledge that each second was more precious now than it had ever been in his life purged the feeling from him, freeing him. Each passing second ripped her further away from him and closer to death. If someone had asked Fitz to recite the periodic table then he couldn’t have answered, his body was simply reacting – it was sheer instinct that drove him.

He stilled his trembling hands as they pushed the antiserum into the delivery mechanism he’d manufactured, aware even as he did so that it was almost certainly too late. Once he heard the tell-tale clicking sound that revealed the antiserum was ready to be administered he hurried to the door, the young scientist’s mind was a flurry of questions. How fast was the plane travelling? What was the wind speed at this altitude? How quickly would she have reached terminal velocity? How many seconds have passed since she fell? How do I save her? Fitz wouldn’t let himself just do nothing; he couldn’t stand by that glass if there was even the slightest chance that he could stop her from dying – I’ll jump off the bloody plane if I have to, he thought, the idea not fully dawning on him that that was exactly what he would have to do.

To Fitz all this had happened so fast he had barely noticed what he was doing, one instant he had been staring through the glass wistfully into the space Simmons had occupied just seconds earlier, the next he had slotted the antiserum into its distribution mechanism and as he ran onto the cargo ramp himself, the wind whipping into his face, he wasn’t even sure when he had unlocked the doors to the lab. Soon enough he was fumbling with the straps for one of the parachutes, slipping first one arm in and then the other, holding onto the antiserum so tightly that his knuckles practically shone white. He cursed as he realised he had only just submitted new designs for parachutes that would open themselves at a certain altitude and doubted very much he’d know the correct time to open one manually. He noted the two cords on the front; one red, one yellow, as he got ready to jump – pushing to the back of his mind that he was terrified of heights. He was halfway through attaching the clip across his chest when he found himself running to the edge of the plane; his feet heavily slapping against the metal beneath them, and then against nothing.

The fall was probably the single most horrific experience that Fitz had ever had in what he at that point suspected would be a painfully short life... with the emphasis on the painfully. His whole body seized up in protest to the sudden drop; his stomach muscles tightened into knots and he flailed uncontrollably as he hurtled towards the ocean in free fall. The young scientist slammed his eyes shut as he began to spin, gritting his teeth so hard he thought they would shatter into his gums and felt his arms and legs kicking and grasping in vain as he desperately attempted to hold on to something even though there was, of course, nothing around him but clouds. The turning sensation made him wretch and then, almost as quickly as it had come, he suddenly felt remarkably peaceful. His body relaxed and he almost enjoyed the feeling of the air running through his hair – the thought occurring to him that what with all the work he’d been doing with SHIELD it had been over a month since he’d had it cut – it was far too unruly and looked unkempt. If his mouth hadn’t been drawn into a grimace he could have burst out laughing – him, Leo Fitz, the nerd from sci-ops, terrified of heights, had just jumped out of a plane – and all he could think of was his hair. He couldn’t wait to tell Jemma. Jemma.

Even long after the whole ordeal was over he would never understand how, at some point between stepping off the plane and practically losing his parachute, he had managed to forget the reason for his jump. He came to suspect it was just the shock; both of watching the love of his life disappear in front of his eyes but also in the face of the prospect of his own probable death. He never spoke about the jump with anybody and after what followed nobody dared to ask him about it, nobody wanted to stir unpleasant memories. Nothing was the same after he was back in the BUS. He knew they thought about what happened though, he sometimes caught them looking at him in pity, like he was some kind of wounded animal, but every time it looked like they were about to say something they stopped themselves and just looked away. It was better that way. He didn’t want to talk about what happened, not with them anyway.

It was only when he felt the parachute slip off from one arm that he forced his eyes open, realising in terror that he hadn’t tied the strap across his chest before jumping and that he had accidently freed one arm of the chute in the process of flailing inanely. If he could breathe, his breath would have caught in his lungs as the parachute slid down his other arm towards his wrist – he wouldn’t be able to pull the cord from this position, and even if he could, he wouldn’t be able to hold on to it with just one hand. He would have screamed out in panic had the fall not squeezed the air from his lungs, his desperate manoeuvres to push his arm back through the strap only made him spin more – making it that much harder to do. He just about managed to pull it from his wrist up to his elbow but almost dropped the antiserum when he tried to thread his arm through the shoulder strap. Try as he might he couldn’t do it and resolved to just hold on tight to the parachute – unable to unclench his fingers he had to pin the one secure shoulder strap to him with his arms, bringing him into an uncomfortably fast dive position. His right hand, the one that wasn’t gripping the antiserum, was clasped firmly around the yellow cord ready to deploy, even though he was aware the sudden loss of speed would likely wrench the chute from him, if not dislocate his shoulder. Still, he held the cord tightly. Not without Jemma.

He scanned below him for any signs of her but the wind stung his eyes and face, making it tough to see anything. He knew he’d already wasted a lot of time spinning and that he needed to reach terminal velocity fast if he hadn’t any chance of reaching her – he also just had to hope that she had fallen in some non-aerodynamic position. It didn’t seem possible to him that his heart could beat any faster but somehow it did, he had long since fallen below cloud cover and looked with terror at the ocean of blue rushing to meet him. The young scientist knew that the chute wouldn’t do him any good not properly fastened and that he wouldn’t have time to fasten it and find Jemma, it wasn’t a choice to him though. A dark thought played across his mind from the argument they’d had earlier. He had shouted at her “You’ve been beside me the whole damn time!”

Fitzsimmons. Whatever happens, happens together.

He had almost lost hope of finding her, desperately scouring the air around him and looking for her, willing her to still be alive, when at last he caught sight of her – little more than a spec below him, twisting and turning. He straightened himself as much as he could, not daring to close his eyes for a moment in case he lost sight of her. As he plummeted head first he found he’d guessed right; he was travelling much faster than she was, he just hoped he’d be able to administer the antiserum in midair. At the back of his mind he also knew he’d have to attach the parachute properly or all of it would be for nothing, even if he caught up with her in time.

His heart skipped a beat when he could make out her face, red with tears and contorted with her eyes scrunched shut. Even with the likelihood that they would both die when they hit the ocean he found himself breaking into a broad grin as he saw her again. She was still spinning uncontrollably which meant he reached her faster than he’d expected, holding out his hands and pulling himself flat to get closer. Of course he’d seen stunts like this in films but that wasn’t what guided him in, he knew the physics, the angle he needed and the best way to achieve it. His body was a machine, each part corresponding to direction and speed; he pulled himself into a flat position as though he were controlling one of his DWARFs. Getting close enough to save her, though, was another matter – his first approach earned him a firm kick in the jaw. It wasn’t intentional, but her legs were twisting in the air as much as she was.

His second approach was more successful, Jemma had opened her eyes to figure out what she’d kicked and stared at him with a mixture of awe, sadness, fear and confusion. She stopped herself from spinning as Fitz glided towards her, overcompensating on speed and missing each other by only a few feet. In turning around Fitz had fallen lower than Jemma, making it tricky to catch her, he relied on her getting to him. He spread his arms and legs to make the least aerodynamic shape possible and give her some time to pick up speed; it was a lot nicer looking upwards, he noted, than downwards. At least this way he wouldn’t see the water when he hit it, the sky barely seemed to move at all. Maybe it won’t hurt? He hoped, taking comfort in seeing Jemma soaring towards him, lit from behind by the sun like his very own angel.

When they collided with each other, they hit hard, immediately building into a spin. Jemma locked her arms tightly around Fitz pulling him into a close embrace and Fitz slammed the delivery mechanism against her leg, a lot rougher than he’d intended to, giving her the antiserum. There was a blue flash and she let out a high pitched squeal confirming to him that it worked. He dropped the delivery mechanism and focussed on the parachute, somehow managing to loop his arm into the other shoulder strap and fastening the chest harness around the two of them. Just as when he had left the lab he was functioning by pure instinct, the timid, awkward Fitz was gone, replaced by that same Fitz that had walked into the lab with the Chitauri helmet regardless of his own personal risk. He locked his arms under hers and brought them around to support the back of her neck – when he pulled the cord, it would yank him up and snap her head backwards if he wasn’t careful. He hadn’t come this far to lose her again. He pushed his head against her shoulder, and hers rested on his, before pulling the cord.

He almost dropped her. Almost. When the chute deployed it felt like they were being pulled upwards though in reality Fitz knew they were slowing down, not changing direction. The force of it made Jemma weigh heavier in his arms, the harness around them gave her some support but had it not been for her arms around his back and his arms around her the harness would’ve broken and he wouldn’t have been able to catch up with her again. The thought didn’t cross his mind though, he had his Jemma back. In his arms, he had saved her. As they held eachother in a relieved embrace, drifting lazily towards the water below them, he heard Jemma whisper tiredly into his ear.

“You’re afraid of heights,” she said, arms locked tightly around him, he felt her tears against his cheek, “you said you’d never even bungee jump, not for the whole world.”

“Well… you’re more than that to me Jem,” he mumbled into her ear, before adding with his more usual awkwardness, “I’d bungee jump for you.”

He didn’t think it was possible but she deepened the embrace, holding onto him so tightly he thought he might well die of asphyxiation before they hit the water. She had burst into laughter, she said something but the only word he really caught was his name. He was about to ask her what she said when a bright blue light emitted from her like a pulse and she fell heavy in his arms, unconscious. He cursed himself for not thinking about it – the antiserum had knocked the rat out, of course it would do the same for her. His grip on her was loosening under her weight and his weakness and he found himself praying that they’d hit the water sooner, he couldn’t drop her in unconscious as he’d planned to, she’d drown before he could untangle himself from the backpack.

His arms shook with exertion, Fitz was a scientist, not an athlete – he probably would have dropped her immediately had it not been for all the adrenaline pumping through him, giving him strength. He found himself looking up at the sky for help, hoping to see the BUS speeding towards them, offering an easy solution, but he had no such luck. When he’d designed the new chutes he’d seen a mask to provide oxygen in case of a water landing – if the main chute and assorted ropes came down on top of the parachutist then they were almost certain to drown in the water before they could reach the surface. He tried to push the uncomforting facts back into the corners of his mind, in an average breath the human lungs can take in around 2 litres of water, 3 litres of fresh water is fatal, 1.5 litres of sea water is fatal, two thirds of swimmers that die are good swimmers, the cold gag response is the most common cause of swimming death, drowning is supposed to feel quite pleasant after the water fills the lungs.

He looked down at Jemma and then at the approaching water; they couldn’t be much more than a hundred or so feet above it now. He could make out the gradual rise and fall of the ocean surface as the waves swelled and crested underneath the surface. Fitz knew he’d only get one chance at this – if he reached for the oxygen mask too high he could drop Simmons and she’d either die from the fall or from drowning, if he reached for it too low he might not get it in time and they would both drown. He knew where it was even without having had to look – he’d seen it on the specs, they attached it underneath the main pack so you could reach for it while still wearing the chute. Fitz made a note that if he ever got out of his situation he’d redesign the parachutes again, this time attaching the oxygen mask to one of the front straps. When they were little more than twenty feet above the dark waves he let go with one arm, her full weight fell against the harness and his other hand. By the time he reached the mask, attached loosely to the bottom of the pack as he thought it would be, he could already hear the harness begin to tear. He made a note to strengthen that to as she lurched away from him slightly, straining the muscles on his left arm and fraying the thin strip of fabric that held them together. It made no matter; he pulled the mask free and pushed it over her lips, dragging the strap over her head and against her soft brown hair just moments before his feet touched the water and its icy embrace.

Having fell however far it was they’d fallen Fitz was already cold before he reached the water; he hadn’t had time to grab a jacket and had jumped off the plane in thin, ordinary clothing. The wind had cut right the way through him and, despite having held Simmons close to him, she was not much warmer. Even so, as the water closed around his ankles and drew him in Fitz had never felt so freezing before. He wasn’t worried about exposure, they had some twenty eight minutes before they’d need to worry about that, but by the time it rose above his waist he began to panic, realising the water would induce a cold gag reflex, threatening to flood his lungs with water, if he couldn’t keep his head above the surface. He had never been a bad swimmer but that was in public pools, heated, safe, public pools that you can stand up in. As he felt the water close around his chest and over his arms, still wrapped around Jemma, he began fumbling with the strap that tied him to the chute, unclasping it with great difficulty given his shaking fingers. He slipped the shoulder straps off him and took as deep a breath as he could as the water reached his neck; pressing in on his lungs and making them burn inside him. He kicked in the water furiously and held Simmons upright – even if she had oxygen, he didn’t want to let go of her ever again.

It wasn’t until the chute came down on them that he once again realised the danger, the great sail of fabric and its attendant ropes would trap them under the water if they didn’t move fast. His arms burned against the cold water as he held one of them around Jemma’s waist and used the other to try and steer them away but he knew even after he began that they wouldn’t be fast enough to avoid the oncoming danger. He tried to take another deep breath but failed, the icy water constricting his ribs and only allowing for short, sharp gasps. By the time the great stretch of fabric dropped on them Fitz was terrified; he’d come all this way only to die in the water, he frantically began swimming away, kicking his feet and splashing his one useable arm but the sheet came down and before he knew it he’d been pushed underwater. He tried to swim forwards but his feet got caught in ropes and having left the pack with the chute in behind, he couldn’t cut them with the knife it should have had. The water became darker around him and he felt a sense of rising dread surge through him as he realised there was no way out. The harder he kicked, the tighter the ropes around his ankles became and the faster he’d run out of air. He could probably have made the distance if he wasn’t also dragging Jemma, but he wouldn’t let go of her.

Finally, his lips parted, and the water pushed into his mouth, forced its way down his throat and then rested in his lungs. It made him want to be sick and cough and cry and scream all at once and then, nothing. His final thoughts as that dark, but oddly warm, nothingness surrounded him were of Jemma; hoping beyond hope that he could keep her from sinking but feeling his grip on her gradually loosening.

He woke up and coughed up several lungfuls of water all over the cargo ramp of the BUS, spluttering and shivering and shaking as Skye removed an oxygen mask from his face. He instinctively rolled onto his side, throat so raw he was certain he’d cough up blood not seawater. As he lay there, face pressed against the cold metal of the ramp floor, he saw Simmons sat against the wall with several blankets around her shoulders, her face pale and expression unreadable. Coulson was with her, muttering something to her, but once Fitz awoke he immediately rushed over to him. Coulson’s face bore a mixture of surprise, elation and concern.

“Jemma!” Fitz called out, his voice cracked and rough, choking on what leftover seawater was in his system. He had to be sure his eyes weren’t playing tricks on him.

“Simmons is fine,” Coulson soothed him, “you saved her life.” Fitz closed his eyes in relief breaking into a wide grin and rolling onto his back to look at the ceiling. Agent Coulson continued, “But what you did was reckless and irresponsible, you could have got yourself killed and this could have gone very wro–”

Fitz cut him off, “Don’t–” He stopped, he didn’t understand. “Don’t–” It happened again. He tried to tell Coulson never to tell him there was no way, and in so doing repeat something Coulson had told him once. “Don’t… ever–” He forced out before a slight smile broke out on Coulson’s face and he nodded in understanding.

Something was wrong, Fitz could feel it. Something had changed in him, his mind wasn’t working right. He looked pleadingly at Simmons who had tears streaked down her cheeks, before looking to Skye who was packing away the emergency crash paddles from the medical station in the lab. “I…” Fitz stuttered, looking at the crash cart, “I was…” he turned back to Coulson and asked, hesitantly, “How, erm, how long was I… gone?”

“Almost four minutes.”

His heart sank in horror, he knew. He knew what it meant, what could happen, and so did Jemma. She shakily walked towards him, the effects of the antiserum not having worn off properly, and crouched at his side, placing her hand on his forehead and running her fingers through his unkempt hair. Fitz remembered he was supposed to tell her something about his hair halfway through the jump but couldn’t piece it together. When he furrowed his brow in frustration Jemma pressed her head against his for comfort. From the corner of the room he was acutely aware of Skye talking to Coulson.

“I still can’t believe he saved her,” Skye said, “he’s afraid of heights.”

Coulson ignored her and touched his earpiece, “May, how long until we touch down?”

Fitz never spoke about the jump with anybody and after what followed nobody dared to ask him about it, nobody wanted to stir unpleasant memories. Nothing was the same after he was back in the BUS. He knew they thought about what happened though, he sometimes caught them looking at him in pity, like he was some kind of wounded animal, but every time it looked like they were about to say something they stopped themselves and just looked away. It was better that way.

He didn’t want to talk about what happened, not with them anyway.

He only wanted to talk to her. That night, as he was whisked away to a SHIELD medical facility for proper treatment she called him her hero, she said that him falling out of the sky and rescuing her was the happiest moment of her life, she placed chaste kisses across his cheeks and held his hand all the way through the MRI scans. Eventually, after he pressed her on the subject, she told him that May had brought the BUS down to hover at the water level while Skye and Coulson dragged them inside. She regained consciousness in the water and had held Fitz’s head above the surface. They had had to resuscitate him twice on the cargo ramp floor; the first time he woke he drown again almost immediately after waking and seeing that, watching him writhe and choke on the floor, was the worst moment of her life, twinned with finding him unconscious faced down in the water.

Once, after a couple of weeks of intensive care at the Hub, he’d wheeled himself past one of the training rooms and heard a Level 7 Field Agent teaching Level 3s the basics of parachuting, he even heard his own name mentioned, well, not his name – but him.

“How hard can it be, really?” A student asked, “I heard an engineer did it.” There were some sniggers around the class.

The Level 7 said, “Aye, an engineer with almost no field experience and a fear of heights jumped without attaching a parachute, administered a serum to someone in midair and then give his oxygen to save that person. That engineer had never so much as fired a real gun at another person yet when it came to it was more gutsy than half the agents on this base.”

After a long period of silence another student asked, “What made him do it?”

The Level 7 paused in thought, “I imagine the same reason any of us do anything, because he thought he could, and because he couldn’t live with himself if he didn't.” The Level 7 turned to look out of one of the glass doors, noticing Fitz in surprise and dipped his head in respect. As Fitz wheeled away he heard the man continue, “That same engineer knew that there are more important things than ranks and rewards, he was offered a Level 6 position but refused it, citing he wouldn’t want to be a higher position than the colleague he saved.”

As Fitz wheeled away he felt that a couple of the students were watching him, he was sure he heard one of them saying “That's him, isn’t it?” He couldn’t stop himself grinning in spite of everything.

When the doctors told him that they had no idea how permanent the damage to his brain would be, that the results for the first few weeks were inconclusive and it could heal, stay the same or get worse and they had no indications of which eventuality would happen, Fitz squeezed Simmons hand so hard it was almost uncomfortable. He looked to her despairingly in the knowledge that he might never again be the same. She had barely left his side since he’d been admitted to the Hub, Coulson had left her to it, though he still had work to do so didn’t visit as often.

“I’m… I’m…” he struggled, cursing himself as he lost the words.

“Going to get better?” Simmons replied a little to optimistically, the pain showing through.

“Useless.” Fitz spat out, as though the very word were poisonous to him.

“No.” Jemma cut across him firmly, looking right at him before repeating slightly less sternly, “No, Fitz.”

“But I can’t… I can’t… I can’t…” he grimaced in frustration, “I can’t… express…” he looked away from her, “I’m damaged… useless…”

She placed her hand against his jaw and pulled him into her so that their eyes locked on each other. “No, Fitz, you are not. You are more than that, you are so much more. You’re going to get better; we’ll figure this out, together. You fixed me, now let me fix you. And after that dive – once you’re out of hospital – you could even become a field agent. Have you heard about the way people are talking about you, you’re a hero, Fitz.” She grinned, knowing that it had always been a secret dream of his to get out of the lab and lead a mission. “You are my hero Fitz, you saved my life, you gave up everything for me, I lo–” She stopped herself, blushing, before leaning in towards him so their faces were only inches apart, “I love you Leo Fitz.”

He broke into a wide smile, joy radiating from him, and pressed a kiss against her lips before whispering back, “I love you Jemma Simmons… You’re right… We… We’ll… We’ll figure it out…”

They said “together” at the same time.