Work Text:
[i]
“So let me show you.”
[xxxii]
Her hospital gown itches against her skin.
The beeping of the machine that tells her that her heart is still pounding sounds like a drum in her head.
She eagerly waits for the moment that she stops feeling so alone.
It never arrives.
[xxxi]
She wakes up alone.
[iii]
She crouches down next to the stone, her fingers ghost over the edges of the cold granite.
She feels incredibly alone for the first time since she joined the academy years ago.
She doesn’t like the feeling.
[x]
“You should see someone,” May tells her one night, “I could recommend you some psychologists.”
“I don’t need to see anybody,” she replies, sipping her tea quietly, “I’m doing just fine.”
[xxix]
She dreams she’s drowning, but she no matter how hard she tries she can’t reach the surface.
She can’t feel him beside her anymore.
Sometimes she wonders if it’s even worth trying to reach the surface.
[xxxiv]
“And do you think that’s why you’re unable to find closure,” her psychologist asks her, “that instead of seeing this as the end you saw it was a metaphor?”
Her whole life has been a bit of an extended metaphor.
She long since realized that she hates metaphors.
[viii]
They’re all getting lunch together, she’s telling a story that they’ve probably all heard before, “and then Fitz said, oh god what was it that you said again?”
“That we’d need to recalibrate the brakes,” he supplies helpfully.
She’s not certain why she feels the need to repeat his words to Trip and Skye, but perhaps it has something to do with the anxious looks on their faces as they stare back at her.
[xxviii]
“We need a doctor!”
“I am a doctor,” she tries to say, but the words falls from her lips without any form, and she can’t be certain that anybody’s heard her.
She can’t be certain that she even said the words.
Her world slowly fades to black.
[xxi]
She wakes drenched in sweat, her throat hoarse from screaming out in her sleep.
There’s hands to steady her and bring her back to earth, warm hands that hold onto her tightly.
This voice doesn’t tell her that everything’s going to be okay, he doesn’t like lying to her, doesn’t believe in giving her false hope.
In her half asleep state, she blearily asks, “where’s Fitz?”
She’s doesn’t get to hear his answer.
It’s probably better that way.
[v]
“Don’t forget to turn off the Bunsen Burner,” he reminds her, she hadn’t noticed he was even there until he says the words, a reminder she’d heard far too often in the years that they’d known each other.
The smug smirk is clear just from his tone of voice; she doesn’t even have to look up to see the expression on his face.
She replies, “I know, I know,” instinctively, moving to shut it off.
“If you knew then why’d you leave it on?”
She lets out a little huff at that, “you could have turned it off for me.”
“No, I couldn’t.”
[xiv]
Her recent google searches include guardian angels, ghost stories, how to tell if you’re being haunted, and where to buy a Ouija Board.
[xx]
She puts her back to the stone, shuts her eyes to block out the sight of him watching her.
Her hands come up to cup her ears, and attempt to block out the sound of his voice, though she knows it’s useless, there’s no escaping it.
“This isn’t real. This isn’t real. This isn’t real,” she repeats like a mantra, hoping that maybe if she says it long enough it might feel true, “this isn’t real. This isn’t real. This isn’t real.”
[vi]
Some nights she dreams that she’s trapped under the water again, but he pulls her out of it, whispering words of encouragement in her ears, telling her that everything’s going to be alright.
He promises to say beside her until her breathing evens out, until she feels safe again.
She doesn’t dream of the dark water anymore that night, but she wakes in the morning feeling colder than she should have.
[iv]
She’s not certain when he first appears, one day he’s simply just there, and she quickly comes to accept that as fact.
It’s like he was never gone at all.
[xxv]
“You need to breathe, you’re having a panic attack,” he tells her, his voice calm and steady, unlike the storm that is ripping through her, “Jemma, you need to get help. I can’t help you, you know that and you need to go get help right now.”
[xxiii]
It’s only too late when she realizes she can’t be without him.
She stands in the center of the lab feeling empty and unable to think.
There’s a bottle of pills on the counter that she pretends not to stare at when she can’t think straight.
[vii]
“It’s just like that time with the cat-“
“Don’t you start with the cat again,” Jemma cuts him off, pointing her finger at him while he holds up his arms in playful surrender, “it was hardly even on your side and you just like being overdramatic.”
“But the cat story’s your favorite.”
She’s never admitted that before, so she wonders briefly how he knows that.
[xv]
“It’s not going to work,” he singsongs, from his seat on top of the kitchen counter, “you do realize that right?”
Nobody seems to pay him any mind, too consumed with setting up the candles and the board.
“Are you sure you want to do this,” Trip asks them, for probably the hundredth time.
Skye pokes him playfully in the side and asks, “where’s your sense of adventure?”
“It’s not adventure I’m worried about,” he explains, “just double checking that you ladies won’t be having nightmares for weeks after this.”
“Screw you we’ll be fine, right Jemma,” Skye asks.
And she nods her head once, giving Trip a reassuring smile.
In the back of her mind she registers a voice that repeats, “it’s not going to work.”
[xxx]
Her fingers brush the air once more, she gasps, weak lungs filling with a meager amount of air.
The lights are too bright, the walls are too white.
She’s drowning again.
[xiii]
“Is this real or just in my head?”
“Of course it’s in your head,” he replies with ease, “but that doesn’t make it any less real.”
She pauses, blinking back at the figure that floats at the edge of her vision, “did you just misquote Harry Potter to me?”
He shrugs, the movement so casual and so completely him that she can’t believe it not to be truly him standing before her, “I might have.”
[xviii]
“I don’t need a psychologist,” she says into the phone, “I’m fine.”
The voice on the other end of the phone says, “nobody ever thinks that they do.”
[ix]
Two mugs of tea sit on the countertop.
One of them grows cold while the other empties.
[xix]
The psychologist tells her she’s the only one that touched the surface.
“He’s lying,” the voice in the back of her head insists, “he’s lying. Don’t listen to him.”
She listens to him.
[xxiv]
Her fingers fumble over the cap of the bottle, she’s shaking so much that she spills some of the pills on the floor; the orange pills make a stark contrast to the white floors of the laboratory.
“Jemma, no, don’t,” he says, “Jemma, please stop this, you can’t.”
She’s crying so badly that it hurts to breath, her vision blurs as she tries to pour the pills out into her shaking hands.
She wishes she could feel him as he tries to stop her, she wishes her would reach out and grab her by the shoulders, that he would knock the pills out of her hand.
But he can’t, and neither can she.
[xvii]
“Have you called the number I gave you?”
“I’m not losing my mind,” she insists, “the quality of my work has been off the charts, the discoveries I’ve been making are astounding, and I-”
“We both know that’s not what I’m talking about.”
She stares at the undrunk cup of tea on the edge of the table, and says “I’m fine.”
The next morning she calls the number anyways.
[xxvii]
The phone rings once, then twice, then a third time.
She can’t remember if it goes to voicemail or not.
Everything’s become too fuzzy to hold onto.
[xxxiii]
The psychologist visits her in the hospital and has the nerve to ask if they’re alone.
[xvi]
“Ghosts don’t exist,” she tells herself, “neither do guardian angels or magic or horror movies. Everything has a logical explanation.”
“Ah yes, Jemma,” he replies with a snarky hint to his voice, “Because being insane is better than seeing dead people.”
[xi]
“There’s nobody else here.”
“There’s not?”
[xxii]
She’s losing him.
Slowly he’s slipping away from her.
She can’t figure out if it’s a good thing or a bad thing.
[xxvi]
She can feel her blood pumping through her veins; she can feel herself losing control, slipping beyond the bounds of reality and into something completely different.
“I’m dying,” she announces, as if the realization has just come to her, as if she has finally noticed that she doesn’t want this that she doesn’t want this to be the end.
“No, you’re not,” he insists, “I won’t let you.”
“You’re dead,” she says, for the first time she looks up to meet his eyes, but finds that they’re cloudy now.
She can’t seem to remember if they were blue or green.
Everything’s a bit fuzzy around the edges.
“Yes, I am,” he answers, “but you’re not.”
[ii]
They put a box in the ground.
In front of it, they set a gravestone with no writing.
[xii]
She startles backwards when he settles himself atop the stone grinning at her like he had the first time they had gotten a perfect score on one of their academy lab assignments.
“So this is it,” he says, swinging his legs back at forth, there’s a thump in her chest that matches the sound of his foot against the stone, “not very exciting is it?”
“It’s not meant to be exciting,” she starts to explain.
Her cuts her off with that dopey little grin that she’s so foolishly fond of and asks, “why not?”
[xxxv]
She sits back at watches as the sculptor bends over in front of the stone, carving words into it, so the world can remember who lay beneath the dirt.
They skip the fancy titles, the long names, and the tireless reminders that he will be missed.
Instead just five words mar the otherwise spotless granite, “so let me show you.”