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1.
She reached the doorway of the locker room, hesitating slightly when her eyes landed on him. Fitz was busy packing his bag for the mission, a determined look on his face.
This situation was far too familiar, reminding her of watching him pack by himself for a mission a little over a year ago. The mission with no extraction plan. It seemed like it had been an entire lifetime since then. So much had changed, so many people she loved had been injured or killed. She couldn’t let him be one of those people. At least not before telling him how she felt.
“You’ll be careful,” Jemma said, a slight lump in her throat. He looked over his shoulder at her quickly and then continued to pack.
“I won’t be careful. I’ll get the job done,” he replied. She was impressed by his courage, but her heart sank at his words. She needed him came back to her alive. She couldn’t lose him again.
Walking further into the room, she stammered, “Well, watch your back because… I just saw Hunter with Bobbi and it made me realize that… um…”
How should she put this? The determination she had walked in with was fading fast.
“It’s just that… we never really spoke about... what you said to me at the bottom of the ocean.” Not exactly how she wanted to say it, but at least he knew generally what she had to come to talk to him about. She watched him stop what he was doing and turn around to face her, slowly.
“This?” he asked as he stared back at her. “Now? You want to talk about this, now?” He sounded irritated and turned back to his bag, continuing to pack.
Well this was definitely not good. She hadn’t imagined when she asked him to talk he’d be upset!
“No,” she said, giving a small, nervous laugh. “We.. we don’t…”
She watched nervously as he zipped up his bag and swung it over his shoulder.
“I… It means a lot to me that we’re friends again, and I… um… maybe when you get back, we could finally just… talk about it.”
He turned to face her but deliberately kept his eyes focused on the ground by her feet. “It’s..” he began, then sighed. “There’s nothing to discuss, Jemma.”
With that, he quickly started past her towards the door, but she reached out to grab his hand. He turned back to face her, and she took a deep breath. Speaking around the lump that had been in her throat for the duration of this conversation, she looked up at him with pleading eyes.
“Maybe there is.”
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2.
She nervously twisted her hair around her finger, eyes trained on the door to the med bay. It felt like she had spent every waking moment the past few days staring out a set of glass doors. After she’d… emerged from the Kree stone, the team had taken every precaution to make sure she was safe to be around. She spent two nights in quarantine, and after several blood samples were drawn and dozens of tests were run, it had been determined that she was not carrying any harmful alien pathogens or bacteria. Even so, Coulson had ordered her to stay in the infirmary for the next week, just to be safe.
So here she was, sitting on her bed in a hospital gown, eyeing the clock. It was almost 5:30, the time Fitz came to visit her every evening. A few days after she had… come back, Coulson had kindly suggested that he return to work. After Jemma had convinced him she would be fine without him for a few hours during the day, he reluctantly agreed. But he still came by before he started work every morning and after he got done in the evening (and any odd time of day in between that he was able). He was due in her room at any moment, and Jemma couldn’t contain her excitement. She had been planning something for him for days. She was practically bouncing with anticipation when Fitz entered the room.
“Someone looks happy,” he said with a smile as he walked over to her bed and pulled up a chair.
“Oh, you know,” Simmons replied, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “I’m just hopped up on all this pain medication they have me on.”
“You’re on pain medication?” Fitz asked, his eyebrows furrowed. “What for? What hurts? Is it bad? How long-”
“Fitz!” Jemma cut in, putting a hand on his shoulder to stop him. “It’s nothing. I was just joking,” she reassured him, squeezing his shoulder lightly.
“Oh,” he said, letting out a sigh. “Okay. You scared me for a second there, Jem.”
“Fitz, you don’t have to worry about me. I’m back now. I’m-”
“-fine. Yeah, I know. You keep saying that, but I still worry. I can’t lose you again, Jemma,” he said quietly, his head bowed slightly and hands clasped tightly in his lap.
“You won’t,” she said, moving her hand to gently cup the side of his face. He leaned his head against her hand and closed his eyes.
She knew that all this had been hard on him, but now she could see just how worried he was in the bags under his eyes and frown lines etched onto his face.
“I’m here, Fitz,” she whispered. “And I’m not going anywhere.”
“Okay,” he whispered back, opening his eyes and staring up at her. She looked at him and couldn’t imagine ever having anyone else by her side. She loved him, and she couldn’t believe she’d ever doubted that.
Which reminded her of her surprise.
“Oh!” she said as she moved her hand from his face and sat up straight on the bed.
“What is it?” Fitz asked, jerking backwards in surprise.
“Nothing… it’s just… we never got to have our dinner,” she said as she studied his face. “What with the alien rock swallowing me whole and all.” Jemma slowly reached her arm around to the other side of the bed and wrapped her hand around an object.
“Aww, Jem, it’s alright. There’s nothing you can do about that,” Fitz replied, a soft smile playing on his lips.
Jemma pulled the picnic basket she had in her hand up onto her lap and showed it to Fitz with a shy grin. She watched his eyes widen in surprise as she softly replied,
“Maybe there is.”
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3.
Simmons stared at the microscope in front of her, then quickly jerked her head up to look at the screen.
“No, no, no,” she muttered, brushing her hair back from her forehead in agitation. “That isn’t going to work. It’s just…. not good enough. All of it! All of this… IT”S NOT GOOD ENOUGH!” she screamed, slamming her palms down on the table in front of her.
“Jemma?” someone asked from the doorway, catching her off guard and making her jump a little.
“Christ, Fitz,” she said, laughing nervously at him and brushing her hair away from her face. “You scared me.” She turned back to her work and put another sample on a slide, then placing it under the microscope.
“Is everything okay?” Fitz asked hesitantly, stepping a little further into the lab.
“Oh yes, everything’s great,” she answered. She tried to make it sound cheery, but it just came off sounding fake and tired. “I’m just re-analyzing these samples I took from that girl today.”
“Jemma…” Fitz warned.
“I know, I know, I’ve already looked at them, but I just think that if I spend a little more time-”
“Jem,” Fitz said quietly, coming over to put a hand on her arm. “It’s too late.”
“Yes, I know that, Fitz!” Simmons replied angrily, brushing his hand off of her arm and bending down to adjust the microscope’s focus. “I just think that if I look at these a little longer, I can find a way to save the cells from combusting. If I can get it right, I might be able to save someone else with a similar power... “
Even if I couldn’t save her. She didn’t need to say it out loud. The unspoken thought hung in the air between them.
“Jemma, that wasn’t your fault. Her powers, they were too… unstable. She was a ticking time bomb,” Fitz said, attempting to put her guilt at ease.
“But it was my fault, Fitz!” Simmons exclaimed, turning to face him. “It was my job to help her. Mine. No one else’s. All I had to do was find some way to keep her stable, something to give us enough time to find a permanent solution,” she said, her eyes pleading with him to understand. “But I couldn’t. I wasn’t fast enough, or smart enough, or… good enough. I wasn’t enough to keep her alive,” she said, tears now filling her eyes. “I couldn’t… I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t keep her alive and now… now she’s dead… and it’s all my fault. It’s my fault she’s dead. It’s all my fault,” Jemma sobbed, sinking to the floor. “I wasn’t enough to save her.”
She held her head in her hands as guilt and grief threatened to consume her. Fitz knelt down next to her and gathered her in his arms.
“Shhh…” he soothed, stroking her hair. “None of this is your fault. You did everything you knew how to do,” he whispered, gently placing a kiss on the top of her head.
Jemma thought back to the girl, her eyes the only part of her betraying how scared she was to die. She was so brave, so young, so bright. But now she was gone forever, and it was all Jemma’s fault. She was dead because for the first time in her life, Jemma Simmons wasn’t enough to fix the problem.
“There is no reason that you should blame yourself for what happened today,” Fitz added, trying once again to relieve her of her grief.
“Oh, Fitz,” she sobbed, burying her face against his chest. “Maybe there is.”
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4.
“Oh, Fitz.”
Simmons rolled her eyes from her spot next to him on the couch. They were having their weekly movie night, and it was her turn to pick. As usual, she’d picked a movie that Fitz deemed less than satisfactory, and he was making sure she knew it through his sarcastic comments and thinly veiled annoyance.
“I’m just saying. If he wanted to propose to her, why didn’t he just do it the normal way? You know, getting down on one knee, saying something from the heart. He didn’t have to go to all the trouble of hiring a sky-writer and such. No wonder she turned him down!” Fitz complained, his arms crossed over his chest as he watched the credits of the movie roll.
“Oh, and I suppose you’re an expert on proposing?” Simmons asked, elbowing him softly in the ribs with her left arm. An arm that ended in a hand devoid of a ring.
“No,” Fitz said, his voice cracking slightly. “I’m just saying that you can’t exactly propose to a girl in such an outlandish way and expect her to say yes! ” he said, defending his point.”I mean, whenever I imagined how I would propose to you, it was always in the traditional way. Not with a bloody airplane.”
At her silence, he turned his head and saw her staring back at him with an unreadable look on her face.
“What?” he asked, concerned he had said something wrong.
“Nothing,” she said, shaking her head slightly. “I just didn’t know you’ve thought about proposing to me.”
“Wha… No, I haven’t,” Fitz spluttered, his face turning red.
“Yes, you have!” Simmons retorted. “You just said you did!”
Fitz opened his mouth to argue back, then snapped it shut as he realized she was right.
“Oh,” he said slowly, his eyes shifting from her face to the ground. “I guess you’re right.”
They sat in silence for a minute before Simmons asked, “Then why haven’t you?”
“Why haven’t I what?”
“Proposed. You said you’ve imagined how you would do it. So why haven’t you?” she asked, worried about the kind of answer she was going to receive. Maybe he didn’t propose because he didn’t want to marry her.
Fitz moved his gaze up to the wall behind her. He brought his hand up to rub the back of his neck as he quietly muttered, “I didn’t propose because...well… because I thought there was no chance someone as amazing a you would want to marry someone like me.” He glanced up at her sheepishly, then looked down at his feet, clearly embarrassed.
Simmons reached out and cupped her hand under his chin, gently raising his head so he was looking into her eyes instead of at the ground.
She smiled at him and then said softly, “Maybe there is.”
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5.
“Are you nervous?” Fitz asked her from his spot next to her.
“Of course I am, Fitz,” she said, her leg bouncing up and down. She was sitting on the edge of her chair, practically bouncing in anticipation.
“Yeah, me too.”
“But I’m mostly excited.”
“Me too,” he grinned, giving her the same soft look she’d become accustomed to in the past few months. She took his hand in hers and gently kissed his knuckles.
“I couldn’t sleep last night I was so excited,” she admitted. She had been awake all night just laying on her side, imagining every possible way this could go. Even though she had prepared herself for the worst case scenario, she couldn’t help but feel giddy with anticipation.
“Mr. and Mrs. FitzSimmons?” the nurse called from the waiting room doorway.
Simmons smiled slightly and squeezed Fitz’s hand before placing them both on her slightly swollen stomach.
“Are you ready?” she asked.
“I’ve never been more ready in my life,” Fitz replied, standing up without releasing her hand. “Let’s go see our baby.”
They followed the nurse back into an exam room, and Fitz helped Jemma up onto the exam table.
“If you could lay back for me, Mrs. FitzSimmons. The doctor will be in shortly,” the nurse said with a smile before leaving the room, closing the door behind her. Jemma leaned back on the table and stared at the ceiling while Fitz rubbed circles on the back of her hand.
She couldn’t believe they were actually here. They were actually going to get to see their baby. Their baby. She liked the way that sounded.
When she first found out she was pregnant, she was concerned with how Fitz would react. They had only been married for a few months and weren’t really trying to have a baby. Was he ready for this? Did he even want kids? That was never something they had discussed. But when she told him, the smile on his face wiped away any doubts she had. They had been ecstatic ever since. And now they were here, ready to get their first look at their unborn child.
The door swung open and the doctor walked in.
“Hi, Mr. and Mrs. FitzSimmons. My name is Dr. Connor, and I’ll be examining you today and conducting your first ultrasound,” she said with a smile. She came over and sat on a stool beside the exam table, taking the ultrasound wand in one hand and gently pulling Jemma’s shirt up with the other. She then squirted some gel on her stomach and began to move the wand in circular motions, searching for a heartbeat.
“I’m ready,”Fitz said, clasping Jemma’s right hand in both of his. “I can’t believe we’re actually going to see our baby. I mean, I’ve looked at dozens of ultrasounds online and in those baby books, but none of them were of our baby. I’d practically consider myself an ultrasound expert at this point. I looked at so many that I started to see them in my sleep,” Fitz rambled on, nervously bouncing his leg up and down as he watched the doctor. “Yeah, I know pretty much everything there is to know about what a baby looks like at this stage of development.There is nothing that ultrasound could show that would surprise me.”
Jemma just rolled her eyes and squinted at the screen, trying to see their baby. After all, she had done a fair amount of research herself and was fairly confident she could read the ultrasound. Something caught her eye, and she leaned in to take a closer look. Was that…? No, it couldn’t be. She must be seeing it wrong. There was no way…..
Dr. Connor looked up from the screen with a smile and then swiveled it around so Jemma and Fitz could have a better look. That really did look like….
“Uh, Fitz?” Jemma asked, grasping his hand even tighter.
“Yeah, Jem?” he replied, squinting at the screen. No doubt he was trying to find their baby in the fuzzy picture.
“You know how you just said there is nothing about this ultrasound could surprise you?”
Fitz nodded, still studying the screen.
“Well…..” Jemma said uncertainly, looking to Dr. Connor for confirmation.
The doctor gave a brief nod and then exclaimed, “Congratulations Mr. and Mrs. FitzSimmons. You’re having twins!”
Jemma looked at the stunned expression on Fitz’s face that no doubt mirrored her own. They sat in stunned silence for a minute before she grinned at him and said, “Maybe there is.”
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+1
It was supposed to be a non-combat mission.
Ever since Peggy and Max were born, both Fitz and Simmons had been reluctant to go back into the field. But Coulson had assured them that this mission was perfectly safe. It was just a simple analysis of an 0-8-4 that had been detected in an abandoned warehouse. Coulson was sure there would be no danger whatsoever.
He couldn’t have been more wrong.
After they had completed their inspection and determined the device was safe to transport, Fitz began to put the Dwarves back in their case. Simmons gently removed the 0-8-4 from the crate where it had been sitting and was about to place it in the transport case when they heard gun shots. Fitz immediately snapped the case to the Dwarves shut and rushed over to help her pack the 0-8-4. Shouts and more gunfire could be heard from outside, and they were both in a hurry to get back to the SUV where it was safe. Jemma shoved the device inside and snapped the case shut, standing up quickly with it in her hands. They turned towards the doorway in unison, only to find it blocked by a man with rifle.
“Device located,” he called over his shoulder, then raised his gun and pointed it Jemma.
“Just put it down, sweetheart, and no one gets hurt,” he sneered, slowly inching towards them.
“Never,” she spat back at him, her eyes steely and body rigid. She could feel Fitz beside her, practically seething with anger as he placed a protective hand on her shoulder
“Suit yourself,” the man said with a shrug, cocking the gun. He smiled slightly and adjusted his aim, clearly enjoying the powerless position she was in.
Jemma heard the shot ring through the room and shut her eyes, flying sideways and falling to the ground on impact. She opened her eyes slowly, expecting to see a red stain blossoming on her shirt. But it wasn’t there. She stared down at her chest in confusion, then back up at the man with the rifle just in time to see him taken out by a bullet to the head.
But what had happened? Had he missed?
She looked around the room, trying to figure it all out. Her eyes were drawn to the pool of red liquid on the floor to her left.
And then her gaze fell on the man lying in it.
Oh god. No. Please, no.
She crawled quickly over to Fitz and pulled him into her lap, putting both hands on the wound in his chest, attempting to staunch the flow of blood. He’d lost so much; it was everywhere.
This was not supposed to happen. This was NOT supposed to happen.
It was all Jemma could think as she looked down at her husband. His chest was rising up and down in short gasps as he tried to breathe around the blood pooling in his lungs.
“Oh, Fitz,” she sighed, her voice trembling slightly. “What happened?”
Of course, she knew exactly what had happened: He had taken the bullet for her. The impact she felt must have been him pushing her out of the way. Yet she still felt the need to ask, as if him telling her what she already knew would somehow make this less painful. He stared up at her, his normally clear blue eyes clouded with pain.
“Nothing, Jemma,” he choked out, a thin smile on his pale lips. “Just had… a bit... of an accident.”
Even with a hole in his chest, he was trying to make her laugh.
“This looks like a bit more than an accident,” she replied, attempting to joke back. She was trying to stay calm, but blood was still seeping through her fingers: his blood. He was getting paler by the minute, and his breathing was getting shallow.
Her eyes began to fill with tears, and she was suddenly forced to imagine a world where Leopold Fitz was no longer by her side.
“Why would you do that?” she choked out, the tears now streaming down her face. She moved one of her hands up to stroke his face, conceding that her attempt to stop his wound from bleeding was futile. With her other hand, she grasped one of his like a lifeline. The slight pulse she felt in it was the only thing keeping her from losing it.
“Had to,” he said, his voice growing weaker. “Couldn’t… Couldn’t live if... you didn’t.” His breath was rattling in his chest, and his skin was clammy.
“I feel the same way,” she sobbed, running her hand up the side of his face and into his hair. “I need you, so you have to make it through this, okay?” she pleaded. The man she loved was dying in front of her, and she would give anything for him to be okay.
“You can… you can survive this,” she said shakily, slowly nodding her head. “Yeah. You’re gonna be just fine.” Her breath was coming in gasps now as she tried to convince herself he would make it out of this alive.
“Jemma,” Fitz practically whispered, his free hand reaching up to touch the side of her face.”You know that’s not true.” She began to sob harder and bent down to earnestly kiss every inch of his face she could reach as he continued to speak.
“Tell Peggy and Max that… I love them… so much.” His eyes were drifting closed, but he fought hard to keep them open just a little longer. There was so much more he wanted to say, but he didn’t have enough time. “I love you, Jem.” His voice broke as a few tears slipped down his face. This wasn’t how he had pictured their last minutes together. It was too soon, too painful.
“Always have… always… will.” The darkness was threatening to take over now, and it was all he could do to stay conscious.
“No,” Jemma sobbed, taking his hand from her face and grasping it tightly. “No, you can’t go. I…I need you.” She pressed a kiss to his now blood stained lips, trying to coax some life back into them.
“Peggy and Max need you. I need you. I can’t… I can’t do this without you.” She had both hands on his face now, staring with red-rimmed eyes into his cloudy blue ones.
“Please, Leo!” she begged, his first name catching in her throat. “There is no way I can exist in a world where you don’t!”
She clutched him to her and sobbed into his neck as she felt him inhale one last time. Before his blue eyes closed forever, she barely heard him whisper, “Maybe there is.”