Consanguine

Waking up from being cryo-sleep is like fighting your way up 90 feet of freezing cold water, from what he can recall from his vague memories of Jemma dragging him to safety after Ward almost killed them. It’s a slow, steady inevitable process in stages wrenching him from completely dark, silent abysses where he has little or no conscious thought to a hazy twilight zone where his mind is starting to come back online full of confusing dreams and distorted images. Finally he’s hovering just below the surface of complete awareness, this is the worst part because his mind is full back online and struggling to wake up, to complete his mission and find his friends….

Jemma

For months he’s been terrified for her, searched for her and missed her terribly. According to Robin and Enoch he needed to get the future and rescue them and now he was stuck, helpless and struggling trapped while his body wakes itself.

He thrashed helplessly against the tide, trying to free himself

To get where he needs to be

Waking up when it comes is quite easy in comparison, like waking up from a normal sleep. He breaks the surface of consciousness and takes a deep cleansing breath, saturating his lungs with oxygen. His eyes take their time adjusting to the light and the world is a blur until he blinks several times and the world comes into view.

To be honest he wasn’t sure what he expected to find when he woke up in the future but it certainly wasn’t this.

For a start he’s not in the cryogenic chamber he carefully restored and programmed he’s lying in a bunk, one of the zephyrs it looks like, blanket gently pulled up to his chin. The engines don’t sound quite like a zephyr’s engine a low continuous hum instead of a jet engines heavy rumble. Briefly he considers the possibility if he’s dreamt the whole thing, that his mind is so fractured from the hypoxia damage and from the framework that he’s been hallucinating again.

Or maybe something has gone terribly wrong and Hunter and Enoch had to pull him out of the chamber and find some old shield base to help him recover. If that’s the case then he has no hope of finding Jemma or rescuing the others, no hope of the happy future he has been planning for them since they got together.

He wants to leapt up, charge off and demand the information he needs from his companions but his muscles in his back and shoulders have seized up and he’s forced to sit up as slowly as an old man. Muscles, joints and bones creaking and cracking from disuse, at least the chamber has kept him in as good as condition as when he froze himself, the stiffness should clear up after a bit of exercise and stretching. The pain is so bad that he has to lower himself back down, his spine popping as it stretches but he manages to prop himself up with a pillow so he can see around the room a little better.

His eyes bounce around the room and immediately his eyes are drawn to her and the world narrows to her alone. It’s how it’s always been between them. Instantly the tight binds of stress constricting his chest since they’ve been parted vanish, he’s been living with for so long it’s a novelty to breathe so easily. He’s flooded with such relief and an overwhelming amount of love for her that his head starts spinning.

He’s found her.

Or she’s found him.

Doesn’t matter as long as they are together

It doesn’t matter that she’s dozing opposite him, leaning against the wall; it allows him to drink her in. Hungrily his eyes absorb her features: trace the contours of her face, the dark wave of her hair, the rest of her body loose with sleep. His blood making a rushing sound in his ears, she’s almost always up before him so it’s rare for him to have the opportunity to enjoy her peace and it allows his heart and breathing rate to settle.

And yet the longer he looks at her he can’t help but notice the lavender coloured bruised under her eyes from lack of sleep, how drawn and pale her skin is and that she’s thinner than he’s ever seen her. He wants to chide her, eat Jemma, you have to eat your fragile little bird bones can’t tolerate you skipping meals because your distracted with a project.

He’s so enthralled in looking at her that the sound of a page turning makes him jump out of his skin. Straight away he’s wondering how he managed to miss that there was another person in the room with them, especially as Jemma is resting her head on his shoulder. He doesn’t recognise the young man at all, but he does get a strange feeling that he should. He got dark hair and eyes, a sprinkling of stubble on his cheek, his headphones produce a little tsk tsk tsk sound of his music and he’s reading his encyclopaedia with ferocious intensity. The strangers a lot taller than either him or Jemma with his legs stretched out in front of him he looks impossibly tall, they almost touch his bunk.

The jump he made must have caught the man’s eye as he looks up sees he’s awake and gives a little start which in turn disturbs Jemma. She sucks a little breath in as she wakes and her brown eyes look around hazily and then focus on him. He can hear her sudden sharp intake of breath.

The world falls away again. His breath catches and then he completely forgets to breath and he thinks she has as well.

The spell is broken just before he passes out from oxygen deprivation, Jemma scrambles to her feet and lunges at him, he manages to get his arms up in time and he’s holding her. He holding her again, feeling her warm skin on his, her tears, her breath on his neck as she presses her face into his shoulder. Burying his face in her hair he lets himself cry and they rock each other gently from side to side.

She’s sobbing his name over and over and he’s saying hers and as if from a great distance he hears the man mutter that he’s going to get the others.

She takes his face in her hands and basically covers his face with kisses just like she did when they were stuck at the bottom of the ocean. He sinks his fingers into her hair and pulls her into a proper kiss which is readily reciprocated. Drawing back, he presses their foreheads together.

Letting out a long sigh of relief he manages to calm himself enough to murmur “I have missed you so much Jemma. So so very much” he brushes his fingers against her cheekbone “and here you are”

He wants to ask her to marry him, right here right now but the words don’t come.

She’s half sobbing, half crying. She cups his face in her hands and brushes his stubble with her thumbs, which he leans into. “Oh Fitz, you have no idea how much…” she breaks off take a few deep calming breaths. Smiling tearfully at him she kissed him again and whispered wonderingly against his lips “I finally found something magnificent out in space”

They are interrupted by the bunk door flying open and a stampede of people flood into the room. Daisy is at the head of the crowd and skids across the room almost hitting the far wall and starts bouncing on the spot, hands covering her mouth as she bursts into tears. Mack is second into the room almost knocking to door of its hinges, bellowing “Turbo!” and grinning so widely all his teeth are sparkling his eyes are suspiciously damp. Yo-Yo flattens the new guy into the hall as she sprints into the room. Davis, Piper and the new guy all crowd the doorway.

Jemma reluctantly sits back and weakly he grins at them. A little space was all they needed to all suddenly tackle him in an enormous group hug all three of them have burst into tears. He’s never played rugby before but this is probably how it feels to be at the bottom of a scrum.

He hugs them back fiercely, he’s missed them too but just not as much as he missed Jemma. Rubbing Mack and Daisy’s backs, he can’t quite reach Yo-Yo he soaks up the reunion. Coulson and May aren’t with them and that concerns him quite a lot.  Where on earth could they be?

Air is becoming a real issue now so he pats Mack on the shoulder and trying to lighten the mood “Hey Guys its great to see you but please could I get a little room here? you’re kind of crushing me”

All three just start weeping even harder but they do let go and give him some room, Mack wraps Yo-Yo up in a hug and Daisy kept patting him gently on the chest and Jemma clutched his hands in a painfully tight grip. He furrows in confusion brain finally freeing itself from the storm of emotions and notices the changes. Sure they must have missed him but after the framework and everything he’d done they’re reaction was extreme? May and Coulson aren’t here they should be, where are they? What the hell, the why and the when did Yo-Yo get cybernetic arms? How did Agent Davis survive Aida? He thought for sure he was dead, it must be quite an amazing story. Why was Daisy wearing her quake braces off mission? Who on earth was the new guy grinning at him? How long had he been asleep?

He directs his question to the person he trust most “Jemma what happened? Enoch said that you guys were taken seventy years into the future and Robin said that I needed to get there to rescue you? Where’s Coulson and May?”

They all look extremely sad.

Jemma moves his right hand to press in on the crook of her neck. “Fitz” she’s quite like she’s breaking something hard to him “We can change time.” He’s rocked to his core “It’s fluid and beautiful and unexpected.” She’s crying again “and so, so amazing”

The room is full of sniffles, but he still doesn’t understand.

She can see he doesn’t understand and turns to the others “Could I get some alone time with Fitz?”

It takes a good ten to fifteen minutes for them all to leave with everyone coming back again and again for hugs and to ruffle his hair. Mack hugs him again for a whole three minutes. Yo-Yo hugs him repeatedly while offering prayers of thanks in Spanish. Likewise Daisy repeatedly embraces him and once he thought he heard her whisper “I forgive you” into his hair but she to quite for him to be sure. New Guy hugs him and introduces himself as Deke and then mumbles uncomfortably on how he knows him. Even Piper and Davis get in on the action, though they had never been that close. All the while he burns to be alone with Jemma and get the answers he needs.

Eventually they all file out of the bunk except for Deke who lingers eyes moving between him and Jemma. Finally when Jemma gets up to close the door Deke puts his hand on her shoulder “I’ll b in ear shot in case you need help explaining everything” He gestures loosely at the ship, them and this whole situation. Jemma smiled at him and draws him into a very tight hug and when they break apart Deke kissed her tenderly on the cheek. She closed the door behind him with a soft click.

He’d managed to prop himself up against the wall and she padded over to join him hands resting on her raised knees, leaning her head on his shoulder. It’s quite between them not uncomfortably so, he knows this silence and that shes just trying to sort out what she wants to tell him.

As good as it feels just to be with her, he needs to know.

“Jemma?”

She chuckled watery and gesticulated frustratedly “its just so much Fitz”

 Her gesture made him notice a silver gleam on the fourth finger of her right hand and his heart sinks into his socks, he’s not wearing shoes. He catches it gently and examines in detail, it’s a beautiful ring definitely a wedding ring. His chest hurts, he knew his actions in the framework had destroyed their future he just hoped…. Hoped he was wrong. Fighting back the pain was nearly impossible, like fighting a rabid wolf with his bare hands but he pushed it deep, her happiness was more important to him than having her with him.

Even if it’s to that handsome moron Deke.

He can’t keep the devastation from his voice though when he asks her “Jemma, are you married?”

Alarm crossed her face and a deep deep grief “Yes Fitz, its not what you think though.”  

He feels the savageness he’s felt since the framework rising and the bitterness “Who?” he asks quietly.

She draws a necklace from underneath her collar on it is a shining platinum ring and rubbed it with great care. He watched her throat move as she swallowed. “You Fitz, I married you”

In between bouts of tears she manages to tell him the whole story: about how and why they travelled to the past, about what happened at the Lighthouse and to humanities future, about how he arrived and rescued them and they’d all escaping back into the past bringing Deke their grandson back with them, about how they’d tried and succeeded in breaking the time loop, about their lovely wedding, about Coulson’s illness and more shockingly that Coulson and May were now in a relationship. Finally in halting words she told him about his future self’s death and how they had all resolved to find him.

Stunned and with fingers bloodlessly clutching his wedding ring he realised that Jemma still had her hand on his heart and realised that she was feeling his heartbeat, a reminded for her that he was alive. He’d done that when she’d returned from Maveth The agony she must have felt losing him, when she’d been taken to Maveth he’d been devastated but he had had the, not good fortune but to not to know if she was alive or dead because he could have hope she was still alive but Jemma had seen his dead body and only later realised there was a way to cheat the system since they had broken the loop and he was no longer needed to rescue them in the future..

“I couldn’t let you wake up seventy four years from now and be all alone” she sobbed in his arms “it was bad enough went I was without you in the future believing you’d died years before I’d even arrived there.”

He pulls her onto his lap and she wraps herself around him, trying to bury herself into his skin and they both cry then.

He cries for the Fitz who’d died just a few short eventful weeks into his marriage, for Coulson who he may never be able to say goodbye to, for May whose losing someone she loves and admires, for Yo-Yo and Mack, for what other Fitz did to Daisy and he cried for Jemma’s heartbreak.

At length though their sobs quietened to crying then to whimpers and then into a comfortable silence

He feels drained and empty but at the same time sort of peaceful and he suspects that Jemma feels the same way. The future is no longer set in stone and while they may never fully recover from their losses they can face that future together.

“What now?” He asks her

She’s as lost as he is “I don’t know Fitz, We have to get back to earth and help the Avengers but…” She trailed off “we’ve been working towards changing one future for so long I don’t really know where to go from here?”

“We’ll figure it out” He gave her a little squeeze “I’m sorry I missed our proposal and our wedding”

“Its ok Fitz, because of a Kree device I didn’t hear your first one and I just said “Marry me Fitz” while we were escaping and you said yes” They really do have the weirdest adventures.

His hearts in his mouth “Can I ask you to marry me again?”

She looks him in the eye in surprise and then a smile spread across her face, chasing away the shadows of grief and making her look like the young scientist he met when he was sixteen “Definitely”

He launches into his prepared speech and as he gets to the end his chest is tight and his heart is pounding. When he finishes his little speech he waits for her answer, He thinks he knows the answer, is almost certain of it, but still until you hear it you’re never quite certain.

“Absolutely”