#fzzt

And that was all that he needed before he started running, making his way to the lab, and she was standing there, a look of pure shock on her face. Eyes wide, tear tracks on her cheeks. 

He must have mirrored her on the other side of the glass, the red light on the door showing that it was under quarantine

“Simmons… what?” He was unable to find the words needed to form the question. It wasn’t like him to find himself speechless, especially around her. “What happened?”

Because this couldn’t be happening. She couldn’t be ill. She couldn’t be infected.

Not with an alien virus that had no cure. Not to something that would emit an electrostatic pulse that would fry her brilliant, beautiful brain.

“It was the Troop Leader. I think… I got a shock from him. It passed the infection on to me.” Her words were too analytical. As though she were trying to think about this in a way where she wasn’t the patient. As though this were happening to someone else. “I didn’t… I didn’t realise. I thought the headaches were just from stress. Lack of sleep.” She rubbed at her face with her hands, clearly agitated. “You know I got them during exam season at the Academy. I thought that it was just that. It was Coulson who realised. I was too late in noticing. And by that time…” Gesturing at her body with her hands said all the words that remained unspoken. “I need you, Fitz. To help me.”

He nodded.  “What… what do you need from me?”

“I need,” she began before pausing, taking a moment to pause, to breathe, to think. He knew that her mind would be racing, working through every hypothesis that it could. “I need you to make a device, one that can suspend a mineralised solution and can conduct electricity. I have to make an anti-serum. Something that can fight something like this. And conduct electricity. I need something that will allow for it, the anti-serum, to be administered, and I need you to make it.”

That… that would be difficult. Something like that… it had rarely been made before. And those who had, they had been more unsuccessful than successful. He needed time, but time was something that he did not have. “How long do we - ?” But once again, he was rendered speechless. Something just to her left, several inches behind her, had caught his attention.

Seeing it happening, it confirmed that all of his worst fears were happening. That this wasn’t a mistake.

A selection of lab tools was floating in the air, and when she noticed him staring, she turned to see what he was staring at.

They fell once with a jolt of electricity, and she flinched and winced, as though in pain. But she never turned back around to face him, choosing instead to continue her conversation with the space where he should be. 

“How long? Based on when the firefighters were infected and how long it took until they… I have just under… just under three hours.” Her composure broke on those last words as she admitted that her time left was no longer measured in years, but hours. The length of a film. “Fitz, please.” She turned to face him, breaking down for the first time. Tears were clinging to her lashes. “I need your help. I can’t do this without you. Please. Help me.”

“Of course.” There was never any question to be asked. Never any plea that needed to be given. He would help her. He would always help her. They were a team.

They were FitzSimmons.

So after instructing her on what he needed and accepting the tools and materials that had been passed out to him, he took his position, his watch, in the garage of the Bus, his back pressed against the glass, and without even looking over his shoulder, he knew that she was doing the same in the lab.

Her prison.