“We don’t know,” Jemma said, voice tight as she tried to control her emotions. Fitz was looking at Skye’s pale face on the bed, and glanced up at Jemma, but still didn’t say anything. He stood just outside the room and let the others ask the questions.
“But she’s stable?” Coulson said.
“For now,” Jemma answered. “We can reasonably hope she’ll wake up any day now.”
Ward wasn’t taking his eyes off of Skye. May noticed, and put a hand on his shoulder. She could practically see the helplessness radiating off of him.
“You couldn’t have done anything differently. You weren’t there,” she said.
“No,” Ward said, his jaw clenched. “I wasn’t.”
Fitz stared at the ground. Nobody was there when Skye was shot, nobody could have helped her -- except him.
* * *
Jemma put her fingers on Skye’s wrist to check her pulse, just in case the machines were fractionally off, and then sat down next to Fitz, breathing out a sigh.
“Really Jemma,” Fitz said, now that everyone had left, “how long do you think until she wakes up?”
“I don’t know, Fitz,” Jemma said, crinkling her brow. “It could be days.”
Fitz rubbed his eyes.
“Hey,” Jemma said gently, kindness in her tired eyes, even in times like this, “you’re not sleeping.”
Fitz could tell that Jemma was about to say something about the effects of sleep deprivation on the parietal lobe. He cut her short.
“Yeah well, neither are you,” he said, trying to keep the edge out of his voice. He knew she wouldn’t leave Skye until she absolutely had to.
Jemma exhaled. “Right,” she said. “I’m going to get ready for bed, then,” she said quietly, hoping Fitz would tell her to stay, that he needed to sleep, and she was the one who would take care of Skye. But Fitz didn’t say anything.
On her way out of the room, she stopped by the kitchen, and thought back to grad school, when Fitz was anxious before an exam, and needed to sleep, and nothing worked -- except a strong drink.
Jemma smiled. Poor Fitz. Such a lightweight. One drink, and he was out like a light.
She quietly looked through the cabinets in the kitchen, finding the scotch that Ward and May enjoyed at the end of a long mission, and poured a big glass, with only a single ice cube in it.
She paused outside of the room they were keeping Skye in, and watched Fitz’s shoulders hunched just beyond the doorframe. The bus was dark and quiet, except for the hum of the engines that they had all gotten used to. She slowly entered, and handed the drink to Fitz, who nodded as he took it, but said nothing. He looked up at Jemma, and she saw something in his eyes she had never seen before.
This was the look of someone who was slowly being broken. He turned away.
She lingered for a moment, and then left.
It was only a few swigs of the glass before Fitz tilted it until the last of the scotch dripped onto his tongue; he set the glass down, perhaps a little too hard, onto the table.
He watched Skye’s face, waiting for any sign of her waking up. In a way, he had never been this close to her; watching her sleep, her face without lines of worry or anxiety. It was intimate now, but crushingly so; although she was so beautiful when she slept, he wished more than anything that she would wake up. Just wake up.
The sound of the engines was finally lost, behind the alcohol and weariness, and all he could hear was the quiet sound of her breathing in and out, and the subtle beep of her heart monitor.
“I…” Fitz started, unable to continue, his voice hoarse against the quiet of the bus.
“I should have gone in with you. Not because you’re weak, you’re not… I just should have had your back.”
"I’m sorry I didn’t protect you,” he finally choked out. Skye’s face was impassive; nothing changed about her breathing. “I don’t know why I didn’t make you wait.”
Fitz snorted a bitter laugh. “Actually, I guess I do know why. I can’t make you do anything, Skye. That’s what I love about you. You don’t care about what procedures are, or who says what. You care about what’s right. You see what’s right, and you do it. For you... that’s all there is.”
“You know,” he said, “You’re a lot like Jemma that way. Brave.” He thought about Jemma jumping out of the plane; he thought about her shielding them from the grenade, even though, for all she knew, she was about to be blown to bits. He said the word again, feeling it out. “Brave.”
Fitz breathed out slowly. “You went into Quinn’s compound and you had no idea when the rest of the team was coming. If the rest of the team was coming…. I’m not brave like you are, like Jemma is. I like to think I am, but I know I’m not. I hide it. I hide it with stupid jokes. I’m just so sorry, Skye.”
Fitz put his hand on Skye’s, warm but limp, and held his head in his other hand.
“That day, when we almost lost Jemma. She told me… she told me I was the hero.” Fitz was trying not to cry. “God, Skye, do you have any idea what it does to you to hear that? Jemma said that to me, right after she jumped out of an airplane.” He shook his head. “Do you have any idea what it’s like, when someone like her says that to you? When someone thinks you’re good, and you’re not? God, Skye... it makes you so alone.”
The small room was filled with his sobs, one after another, echoing out against the hard walls, the drone of the engines drowned out by his crying. In the dim light, he hunched over closer to Skye, his elbows on his knees.
“You don’t deserve this, Skye. You don’t deserve this.”