#februaryprompt

Maybe they couldn’t read each other’s minds, but they knew each other’s hearts. Fitz would never give up. Not on her, and not on SHIELD. No matter what they did to him. And he knew that she would never give up either. He considered himself weak, for having caved when they’d hurt her, but he did not see her as that weak. He knew she’d be able to hold on. As much as it pained her, as many tears as she might cry, she would not give them what they wanted as long as he was willing to endure their pain.

Simmons swallowed, and clenched her fists until she could feel them again. The ground solidified beneath her feet. The bitter stench of stale air and rusting metal hit her senses like a wave and she breathed it in. This horror was real, but it was only human horror. They could only do what they could do.

Images of vicious lacerations, horrific sleep deprivation, brainwashing devices, and injuries self-inflicted by victims of fear serums flickered through her mind.

She swallowed again, and ground her teeth together, blinking the tears out of her eyes and feeling them burn their way down her face. Again, she told herself, the perpetrators were human. They could be overcome, stopped, even killed. She and Fitz would be rescued, or would figure out how to rescue themselves, long before they would break.

The first strangled shout cut clean through the air. It was followed by a second, louder, venting yell.

Simmons took a deep breath. She paced the room briefly, but then sat. No need to build anxiety. No need to display her fear. They already knew it was there, otherwise they wouldn’t be using this as a tactic.

She sat and listened to the scuttling of rats somewhere out of sight, and to the dripping of a tap, or a broken sink. As these grew louder, they came to match the sounds of Fitz’ pain. It all became noise – but not meaningless noise. Aside from venting his pain and satisfying his torturers, Fitz was communicating to her that he was still alive and responsive. The rats told her there were ways in and out, and even if they were small ones only meant for wires and plumbing, she and Fitz could make do. The tap or sink suggested that there were facilities nearby intended for keeping people for extended periods of time. That if they did not give up what was requested today, they would be kept until they did. They were unlikely to be intentionally killed.

CRACK  

He screamed like she’d never heard him scream before. He hadn’t been prepared for whatever it was. Her eye snapped open, her mind reeling. A hammer? A baton? His fingers, his knees?

She fought to control her breathing, desperate to hear over it. Anything. Whimpering or crying. The sound of them hitting him again. At this moment she’d even have taken the sound of him confessing everything, over the silence that met her when she held her breath.

“Walls are thick,” a voice pointed out. “So we only get to hear the fun stuff.”

Simmons turned, glaring through the darkness to find the source of the voice. It was familiar, but she couldn’t quite place it. They were speaking from the cell next door, but she couldn’t see anybody there. She got up and moved toward it, her heart racing, starkly aware of the continuing silence in the belly of the beast.

“The thing about torture is, everyone thinks they can take it.”

A face appeared between the bars, taking possession of the voice. All of a sudden, Simmons remembered with horror, where it was she knew him from.

“Turgeon?”

“Everybody has a breaking point. They already know his. Think about it. This is about trying to find yours.”

“Of course it is. Why do you think they’re trying this?”

“They will succeed. You know they will.”

“Never.”

“You’d let them kill him to keep your secrets?”

“If they kill him, they’ll never get our secrets. They know that.”

“Hmm.” Turgeon pursed his lips, wishing he could be amused by her refusal to understand, but finding himself disappointed – maybe even a little heartbroken.

“You know, there’s only one sink here,” he pointed out. “Only one cell. No windows. No bars on the doors. They’re steel, with just a slit for food. They can keep you alive for an awful long time. But only one of you. In the dark. Alone. With years and years to contemplate why you let him die. Not much seems worth it, after that.”

“They won’t get anything from me. On his life or on his memory.”

“But he’ll still be dead.”

“Ah. So what you’re saying is, ‘tell them, and pray they don’t kill you both once they’re done with you’. I have to say I’m disinclined.”

Backing away with a sharp smile and a glare, Simmons resumed her earlier position, sitting on the floor and facing the doorway.

“What I’m saying,” Turgeon corrected, “is that there’s not enough time for somebody to come for you. What I’m saying is, you have to get yourselves out, and quickly, because one of you will die unless you do.”

Simmons glanced back at him, fully prepared to chew him out for providing positively useless advice and no hints whatsoever.

But nobody was there.

Frowning, she stood, and walked back toward his cell. Was he hidden in the shadows? Was there some corner he was hiding around that she couldn’t see?

The door at the end of the cell corridor flung open. Heavy, staggering steps ran toward her. Simmons jumped, distracted, and turned to where a blood-smeared Fitz was fumbling at the cell door with one hand. The other hung limply by his side. Simmons stood, stunned and horrified, as Fitz pulled the door open, his face contorting in agony as he desperately tried not to move his injured arm. He could barely stand straight.

“Come on,” he insisted. “We’ve gotta go.”

“But-“ she followed him automatically, while her brain struggled to catch up. “But – how?”

He checked around a corner, and turned briefly to smile at her.

“I asked myself, what would Simmons do? Not sit around and take a beating, that’s for sure. So I escaped. Took me a few goes though.”

He nodded at his arm; dislocated, she realised, and possibly broken too. It was not so long ago that he would have paled at the thought of dislocation, especially dislocating one’s own appendages. Clearly he still wasn’t too well-versed in the art, but he seemed almost unfazed by the blood, and by whatever had been done to cause the aggressively one-sided limp he was nursing. His mind was on one track, and that track was to escape.

What would Simmons do?

“That’s…”

“Amazing?” – he paused to groan and grind his teeth as his bad arm bumped the wall they hid against. “Thanks, but I’m going to have to ask you to save your flattery until we get out of here.”

He stumbled forward, to open the door and lead the escape out into the snow. Though well aware of the need to reach cover before alarm bells started ringing, Simmons paused a moment and tilted her head, her heart aching as she watched him struggle on unaided.

What would Fitz do?

His words had driven her to wonder, but it only took a second for her to know.

“Lean on me,” she insisted, running to his side and pulling him onto her shoulder. He nodded, exhausted. His eyes fluttered closed, and Simmons couldn’t help but smile at the endearingly sleepy expression on his face, satisfied with his part of the mission being complete.

“Stay with me,” she insisted. “Stay awake til we get out of here.”

The essence of that desolate, impossibly blue planet still clung to her even after the weeks she’d spent back on Earth. Jemma jaw worked as she remembered the multitude of showers she had taken once she had been fit to stand, desperate to be free of its influence. But no matter how much she tried to move on from her experiences, the darkness that had filled that place never quite let go. She still had nightmares, though she would never let anyone know about it. Her restless nights were filled with her own screams, flashes of that horrible blue landscape, and the image of Death looming ever closer. A shiver went through Jemma’s spine as she recalled the image of Will’s rotting corpse, an image her brain had decided to place in the torturous dreams that refused her sleep.

Will’s death had hit Jemma hard, which surprised even her.

She supposed she had loved the astronaut in her own way, making do with a situation that was hopeless for everyone involved from the very start. He had helped her, protected her, and had stopped her from ending her own life when everything had come crashing down. When their attempt to use the portal to send a message back to Earth had failed, Jemma had given up all hope. She had resigned herself to the fact that she would never see her family or friends again, would never have the chance to be with her S.H.I.E.L.D. team again. But most of all, she had feared that she was stuck in a world without Fitz in it.

Fitz. Jemma let out a strangled breath as she recalled that piercing pain. Despite her actions afterwards, she had truly wanted to end it all when it became clear that there was no hope of returning to Earth. The reality of living in a world without Fitz was simply unbearable, and it would have been be the worst kind of hell to shoulder that pain. Now as she sat in her dimly lit bedroom reflecting on the man who pulled her back from the edge, Jemma mused that there was one kind worse; to live in a world where every action they made only pulled her and Fitz further apart.

Fitz had been understanding and supportive, but Jemma knew that something was off about him. When he had returned to her unharmed, she had nearly broken down right there. While Will had not made it, she thanked whatever higher power existed that Fitz was standing there completely whole. With their luck and the fact that he had gone in with a full HYDRA squad, it was a miracle that he wasn’t hurt or even worse, separated from her again. He had come back, and Jemma could not have been happier.

But something was different, and it was starting to unnerve her. After a few days had passed and she got over her grief and guilt about Will, Jemma had attempted to talk with Fitz about the state of their relationship. It had always been clear to her what she wanted, but she needed them to be on the same page for once. They had been dancing around issues for far too long and it was long past time they had a proper, honest talk about everything. But every time Jemma tried to get Fitz alone, he had always made up some excuse or darted out of the room when he saw her coming. His behavior was confusing to say the least; the last time they had avoided each other like this was when Jemma had come back from being undercover. Jemma sincerely hoped that they were not back to that place again; she didn’t know if her heart could take it.

Bobbi and Daisy had not given her much to go on, either. They theorized that he was trying to give her space after of Will’s death, but that didn’t make any sense. He had seen her go through her grief and move past it, what else was he doing? Whenever she asked about him, Mack would that he was trying to work through his experiences on Maveth and that she should give him time. So Jemma had given him space, knowing too well the effect of that horrible planet. But eventually the space had become too much; she needed to be around him, to feel his presence again. Jemma had survived over six months without him on another planet and she didn’t think that she could continue not being around him if he was just down the hall.

Jemma’s brow creased as she recalled the few botched attempts she had made to talk to Fitz over the past few days, nearly all of them ending in him quickly making up some excuse or being interrupted by someone. The one time she had managed to talk to him for more than a few seconds, the way he looked at her had nearly stopped her heart. His blue eyes had been layered with sadness, like he was looking at some horrible tragedy. But behind the sadness, Jemma saw something that she had only seen once before when he had found out his father passed away; despair.

It had only taken her a few seconds to realize the source of the problem. Them.

The memory of his speech about the universe wanting them apart rushed back to the forefront of her mind, sending waves of shock through her ribcage. All the signs pointed to Fitz trying to get over her, to purge himself of any feelings for her because the pain of their relationship had gotten to be too much. If she were honest with herself, Jemma couldn’t blame him; she nearly sacrificed herself during the alien virus, left him after his accident, got sucked up into a portal to another planet, only to return with the fact that she had seemingly moved on during her time there. Then he had helped her find a way to save Will, only to get captured by HYDRA and having to listen to her being tortured, which led to him jumping in the portal and failing to gain back what he thought was what she wanted. From his perspective, things seemed bleak.

Jemma had spent a few days going over these things in her mind, finally reaching that conclusion earlier that night when she was too heartsick to sleep. Now she sat there on the bed with a sinking feeling in her stomach. He was trying to give her up, closing any chance she had of being happy with him, something she had wanted for so long now. If she let him they would both become a shell of what they once were, doomed to tiptoeing around the other for the rest of their lives, missing out on the deep love that they carried for each other.

In the darkness of her room, Jemma’s eyes lit up like a determined flame.

She would not let this happen. They had come so far and gotten through so much, didn’t they deserve this? This resolve pushed her off the bed and across the room, opening the door with a desperate energy that send her running down the hall to the door of his bunk. Jemma stopped as she raised her hand to knock on his door, a little of the resolve slipping away. What if he had already given up hope? What if she was too late? The memory of his lips on hers had her knocking on the door without a second thought. They could fix this. They had to.

The sound of Fitz groaning and muttering curses along with the distinctive squeak of his bed suddenly reminded her of the fact that it was four in the morning, way earlier than he usually got up. The door opened to a very sleepy-looking Fitz, his shirt askew and his hair stuck up on one side. He rubbed one of his tired blue eyes and held back a yawn with the other one, sending a wave of affection through Jemma. He looked so adorable and so, well, kissable in this moment that she almost forgot what she had come there to say. The sudden reality of the situation combined with the close proximity to Fitz left Jemma amazed that she could even breathe.

“Jemma?” Fitz’s hoarse voice brought her back to her senses, the words slurred. “Wha’ sa matter?”

She stood up straighter and began to speak so quickly that even she had trouble keeping up. “Fitz, I know the past few weeks have been hard for you and that things haven’t really been working out between us recently but I need you to know that I haven’t given up. I haven’t given up on the idea of us.” Fitz’s expression turned from tired to alert in a fraction of a second. “No matter what’s happened or what will happen,” she barreled on. “You will always mean the world to me and I can’t have you shut me out like this. I can’t take not talking to you or being around you and especially not seeing you! I can’t take it, Fitz!” Her exclamation made his eyes widen.

“You can’t keep shutting me out and not talking to me. That’s what got us into this bloody mess in the first place!” Her voice became louder. “We never talk about what’s going on between us because we’re too afraid that it’ll change things. But I’m okay with that.” Tears were flowing now as Jemma tried to reign in a growing feeling of desperation at the situation. “I’m okay with things changing. I want to move forward with you more than I’ve wanted anything in my entire life. There’s nothing that would make me happier.” The look of surprise on Fitz’s face allowed her to bring her voice down to a quieter tone.

“I know I haven’t been very good at expressing myself,” Jemma said, feeling the weight of all the missed opportunities and misunderstandings over the years. “But I need you to understand that I am completely, irrevocably, and unbearably in love with you, Fitz. I have been since the first moment we met, even if I wasn’t completely aware of it. I suppose I never thought that you could possibly feel anything towards me in return. You’re m-my best f-friend in the w-whole world, and if I’m messing this up right now p-please stop me-“

“Jemma.” Fitz’s voice cut through her speech and Jemma let out a choked sob, trying to contain the emotions that threatened to tear her up from the inside. She chose to stare at the floor instead of seeing what she feared would be the face of the man she loved finally letting her go.

Instead, she was surprised when she felt a hand on her cheek, bringing her gaze upwards. As her tear-filled eyes met his shining blue ones, Jemma felt like the entire world had stopped around them. Nothing else mattered but the two of them standing there in the doorway to Fitz’s bunk.

“Jemma.” He said again, her name rolling off his tongue like some sort of prayer. “You haven’t ruined anything.” His voice was soft, as if he were afraid of scaring her away. She let out a breath, but still braced herself for the inevitable blow; that he would continue to be her friend but that they could never be together. God, the thought of it made her heart ache. Jemma closed her eyes, waiting for the other shoe to drop, intending on enjoying these last few moments with his hand on her cheek.

“I love you too.”

At first the words didn’t register in her mind but when they did, she opened her eyes to see Fitz wearing an expression of nothing less than pure love. Jemma let out a strangled sob and immediately grabbed the front of his bed shirt, pulling him in for a tight embrace that left the both of them holding the other like it was the last time they would ever see each other. He loved her. He wasn’t going to give up on her. They would make it work, together.

Eventually, they pulled away and she couldn’t help but ask. “Why’ve you been pulling away from me? I thought you were giving up on this.” She motioned between them.

Fitz looked at her sadly. “I was.” Her heart lurched. “After coming back from Maveth and the whole incident with Will I felt like no matter what we did, something was always bound to pull us apart. I thought that giving you up was the safest way for me to keep whatever was left of my heart and move on with my life. I was nearly there, too.” He looked at her with an expression of absolute adoration, his hand returning to cup her cheek.

Jemma closed her eyes briefly at his touch, then opened them and looked at him questioningly. “What changed your mind?”

Fitz laughed, sending butterflies to her stomach. God, she had missed that sound. “You. It was a few days ago when you cornered me in the lab. I was just about done trying to hold onto my feelings for you when you suddenly burst in and stood right in front of me.” He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “You looked so sad, so lost that I wanted nothing more than to make you happy again. I ducked out of there because I was afraid that I would do something stupid. It’s taken me the past few days to realize that I’m always going to be someone that tries to make you happy.” It was her turn to look at him with adoration. “I’m in love with you, Jemma Simmons. If these past few years have shown me anything, it’s that nothing will ever change that. Screw the universe.” This made a laugh escape her. She clung to him again, enjoying the feeling of being able to hold him close for the first time since his return from Maveth.

Leaning back, Jemma very slowly slid her lips onto his, enjoying the way he seemed to melt into her. One of her hands came to rest on his cheek while the other one claimed his neck, all the while her mouth worked against his, the taste of him nearly overwhelming her. If their kiss in the lab had been desperate and over quicker than it started, this one felt slow and sure, like it was a promise of things to come. Of a future spent at each other’s side.

As Fitz swept his tongue over her lower lip, Jemma let out a moan from the back of her throat and pulled him in deeper. She felt him push her back towards the door, allowing Jemma to wrap one of her legs around his waist in an effort to bring him even closer. Fitz titled his head and continued to plunder her lips, causing her brain to short-circuit with the feeling of her body being pressed between his and the wall. Only when the air in their lungs disappeared did they break apart, breathing heavily and leaning on the other’s forehead.