#fraida

“Wha-what- what are you doing?”

Leopoldhas woken up. And, from the sound of the chain rattling, discoveredhe’s been handcuffed to a pipe and quite too far away to interfere.

“Aida,what are you-”

Hersharp look cuts him off. She hatesthat name. It belonged to an it,a thing built only to serve and bend and break itself for the benefitof others.

Shelooks down at her hands, sees the blood beneath a broken nail and thedirt clinging to her fingers. But this is different. This is a choice.

Sheturns to consult the Darkhold again.

au that’s something between the ‘undercover at hydra’ s2 arc and that conversation in 4.21

prompt: "if you really loved me, there wouldn't be a choice."

word count: 982

title from here

Fitz trails after Ophelia to the cargo hold of the Zephyr where she’s piling suitcases into the trunk of her car.

He knows his presence is more than likely unwelcome after what he’d said, but he feels compelled to bid her a proper goodbye all the same. He owes her that much.

“Ophelia, wait—” His muscles ache like he’s run a marathon but he’s still trying to lift something heavier than himself.

She slams the trunk shut with more force than necessary, and he flinches infinitesimally, both at the harshness of the sound and the finality of it all.

It’s too late to take it back now anyway, and even if he tried to, what good would it do? He’d meant what he said—sure, in hindsight he could’ve been a bit more subtle, but the message would’ve remained more or less the same.

She’s still so maddeningly beautiful, even when she’s scowling at him with her arms crossed over her chest, like she’s bracing herself for another blow.

“What for, Fitz? I think you’ve already said everything you needed to say.”

She doesn’t even sound angry anymore, just… resigned and somehow that’s so much worse. 

Her expression hardens, the way it always does when she’s trying to hold back tears. Her eyes are glassy but her jaw is clenched as she stares him down and he knows she’s not about to crack, not in front of him.

Stubborn thing, even now. He’s always adored it about her.

He opens his mouth, as if to tell her that he still cares, or maybe that she means a lot to him, even though it feels futile. She beats him to it, in the end.

“Look, I get it.” She says. “What we had was an—” She makes a face, searching for the right word, “—interlude, and it was nice but it’s never going to be enough now that she’s back because you only have room in your heart for her.”

Fitz bristles at that, feeling guilty and wounded all at once. Had he really been that blunt?

It’s very hard to look at her right now, and her plaintive, pretty face, so he just doesn’t.

“You know that’s not what I was going to say.” He protests weakly, sounding the slightest bit defensive.

“Maybe,” she shrugs, “but that’s the gist of it, right?”

He supposes it is.

“You don’t have to leave.” He says instead, the words coming out of him in a jumbled rush, like it’s a last-ditch effort. “You could stay.”

She shakes her head, half-heartedly scoffing through the hurt she can’t quite chase away.

“No,” she disagrees, “I really don’t think I can.”

They’re standing close enough that he can smell the coconut soap she uses sometimes. He leans in, and she draws in a sharp breath, turning her face away.

“Don’t.” She warns, because he might be over it but that doesn’t mean she is. “Don’t make this any harder than it needs to be.”

She steps away and there’s this odd moment where his stomach plummets because this is it, surely. But no. She hesitates, then slowly turns back towards him. He feels more relieved than he has any right to.

She looks at him for a long moment with those muddy green eyes of hers, searching his face for something, and then says, “Just tell me one thing.”

Anything, he wants to say, but doesn’t. He just stands there with an ache blossoming in his chest, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“Do you regret it?” She asks, uncharacteristically quiet as she plays with the top button on his collared shirt with an intimacy reserved for lovers. She figures it’s going to take some time to unlearn it. “What we had. Do you think it was a mistake?”

He fixes his gaze on her with just as much intensity. They’d promised they wouldn’t lie to each other, a long time ago.

“No,” he concedes, dry-mouthed, when it becomes apparent that a sufficient word isn’t going to come to him. “I don’t. I couldn’t.”

She nods slowly, processing. It would’ve been so much easier if he’d been dismissive, if he’d said she never meant anything to him anyway and it was just something to pass the time. But instead there’s this sincerity bleeding out of him, and knowing that in spite of everything it still isn’t enough makes it that much harder to swallow. There’s no comfort in being second best.

Her hand slips from his shirt and he raises his, fingers curled like he’s about to tuck a loose strand of hair behind her ear or maybe sweep his thumb across the apple of her cheek. Then he seemingly thinks better of it and lets it awkwardly fall back down to his side, stilted in a way she’s never seen him before. There’s no touch, just the purposeful, torturous wave of separation between them.

“I guess this is goodbye, then.” She concludes, fiddling with her keys.

There’s a bit of a jump in his jaw, all of a sudden.

It hurts, to hear that. There was a time when he couldn’t watch her leave without wanting to pull her right back, a time when a minute without her felt like far too long.

He’s never been fully able to quash that feeling. Even now, when it’s so wildly inappropriate, he briefly flirts with the (admittedly desperate) idea of surging forward to kiss her, or at least hold her again. But it’s not his place to do that, not anymore.

“I guess it is.” He agrees mirthlessly, watching as she climbs into the car.

Send me a one word prompt and a pairing! Please!

OH MAN FRAIDA THROWBACK YES I CAN DO THIS, THIS IS THE EXCEPTION OKAY

Technically this is the first time she’s ever seen snow.

Real snow.

Not the fabricated stuff that they had in the Framework. That wasn’t real, back when she wasn’t real, back when she would have never had an interest in going out and just playing in the snow, but now - 

Now, they’ve left the beach house for a holiday retreat, because they’d been wanting a holiday movie and Ophelia had asked Leopold what snow was like, just a simple question, but one that had made him laugh with that sort of wild happiness that was so rare and far between. 

They’d spent the hour after that finding a place where the snow was coming down, destination in mind, and then after that it had just been a matter of holding hands and focusing on the place that they wanted to be and they were there.

“I should’ve dressed warmer,” Ophelia says, shivering slightly in her jeans and loose chiffon top. 

Of course, it would only take seconds for her to be back at the beach house, she could grab a sweater for each of them, but the thought of leaving Leopold for even a second seemed too long. 

Especially here and now with snowflakes dusting his hair and a rosy red color rising up to his cheeks - from the cold, not being flustered - it feels just like all those movies they’ve been watching.

Romantic.

Happy.

At peace.

This is how humans were supposed to feel, this is how they could always feel. 

She watches how Leopold reacts to the snow, not with the same wonder and amazement that she does, but with quiet understand. She watches as he sticks his tongue out for a snowflake to land upon them.

This too she had seen in the movies.

A moment later Ophelia mimics the action, sticking her own tongue out and watching for the magic to happen. 

Though the magic never seems to come. 

Ophelia pulls her tongue back into her mouth disappointed, “Leopold, I don’t understand.”

“It’s harder than it looks,” Leopold tells her, “I learned when I was a kid, but you never...” he trails off. “This is your first snow, we have to make sure you experience it properly.” 

"How do I do that? I can’t even catch a snowflake properly.” 

She’s disappointed, but only for a moment, for when she catches his eye Leopold is smiling like she’s given him the greatest gift in the world. It’s hard to be disappointed with that in mind.