Candy-Coated: the Epilogue
The final part of our Fitzsimmons Exchange! to andhedidntinviteme and theblakesiblings
read on AO3 or below the cut:
Simmons’ phone buzzed. They’d just taken out Loki, and with a new prototype: Fitz wanted to call it the Night-Night gun, but that seemed a bit much. A text alert appeared on the screen, and her heart swelled. It was Maria Hill. “That was easy enough, wasn’t it Simmons?” Fitz chattered, picking up some stray papers that had fallen to the floor in the middle of the fight. Who would’ve thought that Mockingbird had a son that cleaned up on his own? Agent Morse had quite a reputation of going in and getting things done. Her son must be in the background, much like she was herself.
“Hmm?” she asked absentmindedly, swiping the notification off the screen. If it was important, she would have called, wouldn’t she have? Simmons assured herself. Nothing to worry about. Just then, her phone received a call, as if she had provoked it. Not a good sign. “I—I need to go...” she stammered, leaving the room. Fitz may have trailed after, but she broke into a jog, hitting the answer button. “Hello?”
“Agent Simmons?”
“Yes, its me,” Simmons answered slowly. “Is everything okay?”
There was a pause. “This is a unique situation” Agent Hill started slowly,” but since both of your parents are in the field right now and you are an agent yourself, I feel as if it is important to know.”
That did NOT sound good. “Agent Hill, is something wrong?”
There was a shuffle on the other end of the line. “Agents Rogers and Carter have been compromised, Agent Simmons,” she said. “We are doing our best to get them back. They are currently on a mission in a particularly delicate situation.”
“How delicate?!” Simmons asked, “you know that it’s nearly impossible to get either of my parents to actually be captured, let alone both of them TOGETHER!”
Agent Hill sighed. “Agent Simmons, it is that ‘nearly’ that matters. They were taken hostage of their own free will. As I said, delicate situation, but they agreed upon it to free others. You should be proud, Agent Simmons.”
“Proud?” her words broke through the tense silence. “Proud?! Are you going to get them out anytime soon? They are your stars, for the bloody Avengers! Your legacy and your super soldier, are they not top priority?”
“Our team is looking into it,” Hill soothed, “But since it was a free will situation, they are not priority over public safety. They’ll be back, Jemma, you just need to be patient.” She sounded like she was hiding something.
“Maria, I need to know why you called me,” Simmons retorted. “This is not protocol; you need something from me.”
“I do need something,” Agent Hill offered, not even wavering. “I need you to get Agent Fitz on board, and I need Hawkeye. He’s off the grid, personal time, and since this is a free will hostage case... well, protocol is to send in less experienced agents. But this is an Avenger, and I’m afraid that we need some back-up.”
*****
She ambled back to the lab, shaken a bit but determined to keep it under wraps around Coulson. “Agent Simmons,” he called, “you’re off the rest of the night, good work. I think Agent Fitz is in the lab.” She nodded and attempted a warm smile, which he thankfully returned. “I actually need to discuss something with the both of you, if you’d meet me up there in 5.”
“Of course, Agent Coulson, I’ll be right up there.” She found Fitz straightening the chemicals at the back of the mobile lab.
“Hey Simmons,” he called, “I just finished submitting our lab report for this case, too bad it was such a simple solution.”
“Simple diagnosis, but very rare, so it was just good that we caught it,” she answered, assisting him with the cleaning. She set herself to work at the tool bench, sliding odd bits back into their respective drawers and the tools into their proper places. “Do you know what Coulson needs to talk to us for?”
Before he could answer, Coulson appeared with cookies and files. “Have a seat Agents, this won’t take long.” They chose to just sit on top of the lab table, grabbing cookies and trying not to appear nervous. Coulson got right down to business, fortunately. “I’ve been offered this plane as a sort of mobile command station,” he started. “And I’ve been told that I get to set up my own team. I was hoping that both of you would be able to assist me as a bio-engineering team. I’ve been very impressed by both your Academy scores and your work on this past project and I think that you both have skill sets that would be very useful in the field, though you wouldn’t be directly in the line of fire of course.” Fitz straightened up, looking over the file that he has just been handed. Simmons decided to reach for her file as well, flipping though it absentmindedly. She looked at Fitz and nodded, returning his gleam of excitement.
“Sign us up, Sir,” he answered. Coulson beamed.
“I had to bribe Agent Weaver with cupcakes to get her to let me bring you on. I’m glad my effort didn’t go to waste.” He cleared his throat. “It’s obviously going to be mostly on-the-road, so we start in a month or so, giving you both some time to wrap things up here. We’ll visit of course, but every few months is going to be new cases and missions. I’ll keep you both posted.” With that, he walked down the ramp, running his hand over the red Corvette.
“Well how about that,” Fitz beamed. “It’s like we’re the new Howling Commandos! Do you think we’ll get to meet Agent Carter?” He faltered a moment. “Agent Margaret Carter, I mean. Though I guess you’ve spent a lot of time with her, as she is your grandmother and all. Does your dad embrace the post-World War 2 world well?” Simmons’ heart dropped as she realized that her legendary parents could quite possibly meet their downfall without help of a certain acquaintance.
“Uh, I can’t—I can’t be here. I’ve got to go!” She started walking out of the room, but Fitz definitely trailed her this time.
“You okay, Simmons?” he called after her. “What’s wrong?” She stopped, tears finally breaking through. Fitz wrapped her in a hug, his unfamiliar arms seeming comforting and inviting.
“My mum and dad were taken hostage, Fitz,” she whispered, “and Agent Hill said that she needs to find Hawkeye to get them back.” Fitz stiffened, pulling back a little.
“Are you bloody serious? My deadbeat, dropped off the earth father is your salvation? He left my mom He left my mom years ago, of Valentine’s day for god’s sake. And to help Mr. Star Spangled Banner and Peggy-reincarnate? He’s going to need some more incentive that that, Simmons.”
“Will you try to talk to him, though? I—I just want to see them home safely, before I go on Coulson’s motley SWAT team. I need to see them okay.” He groaned.
“I have known you for a week, Agent Simmons, but I do like you. Enough. If I promise to call him, will you stay on Coulson’s team with me?”
“Fair enough.”
*****
Fitz ran his hand through his hair. This was not going well. “Dad, I just need you to call Agent Hill. I have no idea what they need you to do.”
“If you have no idea, why’d they ask you to call me?!” There was a dog barking in the background. “Lucky, away from the coffee.”
Fitz signed deeply. “It wasn’t Agent Hill who wanted me to call you.”
His father laughed. “Yeah, I KNOW that Leopold. That is totally against protocol, for one thing, and Maria only calls herself.”
“Well she could have DONE that if you didn’t have a secret CELL PHONE.”
“I’m done here, Leopold. Why do you even care? I’m off the grid; I requested time off and it’s perfectly acceptable to do so. Since when do you care?” A few beeps went off and Fitz could hear a girl slamming a door.
“Dad, do you have someone over? Seriously?”
“No, it’s just Kate.”
“I’ll never understand why she hangs around you.”
“You’re avoiding my question, and I’m curious. Why do you care Leo?” He sounded as if he had just sat down, judging by the grunt and the faint cry of ‘coffee, no.’
Fitz thought for a moment. Would the truth help or hurt his case? “Dad, it’s for a girl.”
His dad whistled. “You serious Leopold? You want me to believe that a GIRL asked you to call me? Is this for her birthday party or something?”
“It’s a hostage crisis, I swear. But since it was voluntary, Agent Hill said that she couldn’t directly request you. Also, she couldn’t BLOODY GET AHOLD OF YOU!”
“I told your mother that sending you to a Scottish school would be bad news,” he relented. “She never listened to me, you know.”
“Dad, I don’t care. Mum has at least looked out for me, and she probably would call up Agent Hill if I asked her to. But Hill said that she needed YOU so I guess that doesn’t matter.” Fitz pulled out some pretzels. This would take some more time.
“Fine, fine. I’ll call. But you’ll come visit next time you’re around Manhattan, yeah? I have some very interested people who want to meet the renounced scientist son of mine.”
“I’m not a piece of meat, Dad, I’m your son.”
“When you think about it, you are not so different.” A splash filled the silence, followed by a stream of curse words. “But you’ll visit?”
“Whatever Dad. Agent Coulson asked me to join his team, but I’ll visit if I’m ever within a 10 mile radius.”
***** three weeks later ******
“Fitz, I can’t BELIEVE YOU!” His dad must have been coffee-deprived.
“Good morning.”
“So I called up Maria, she sent me out INTO THE FIELD WITHOUT KNOWING WHO I WAS GETTING OUT, and the next thing I know I’m dragging along Star-Spangled and his wife, the daughter of his girlfriend. What in the hell did you get me mixed up in?!”
Fitz winced. “Uh, you’re JOB?”
“Damn right, BUDDY. Was this podruga a fangirl or what? Or was this for Coulson? He’s always been the most active on FFN.net...”
“But you took care of the problem? And since when do you speak Russian?”
“Nat made me learn. The mobsters... It doesn’t matter.”
“The girlfriend was Steve’s daughter, Dad.” Breath held, he waited for the hammer to drop.
“I—” His dad seemed flustered. “I swear, Leopold, if you taint our bloodline with ROGERS I will disown you.”
“As if you haven’t tainted the bloodline yourself? I got over you not being a part of my life years ago.”
“See, Leopold, you say that now, but I’ve got 27 years of bills that say otherwise.” He laughed dryly. Fitz hung up. The chatter outside the door of the lab indicated that the Rogers were safe and sound. He looked out the glass door and saw Simmons, crying and hugging Sharon Carter and the Big Man himself. Cap made eye contact with Steve and saluted him. Simmons, noticing Fitz, ran to the doors and pulled him over to her parents. “Fitz, this is Sharon Carter and Steve Rogers.” Fitz shook hands with both of them.
“It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood, huh Agent Rogers?” He chucked to himself, but Steve looked mostly confused.
“Like... the American kids show? Never mind.” Sharon winked at Fitz.
“I hear you two are going on an adventure with Coulson? He’s a good guy, you two should feel honored,” she said. Simmons blushed.
“Mum, Fitz is an amazing scientist, better than anyone I’ve ever met.” She beamed at him. “We’re going to have a lot of work to do and interesting places to see.”
Steve grinned at her. “Europe has changed a lot... but it’s fascinating. You kids have fun.”
They walked down the path a bit, but then Steve turned around. “Don’t mess around with Jemma, Fitz. I could take you down in so many ways—“ Sharon grabbed his arm and dragged him away.
