#willjemma

Funny how three little words, ten whole letters, could shatter someone’s world like it was nothing. Like it was the easiest thing in the whole entire world. She doesn’t know what’s worse: the vehement denial she lived in when the police were at her front door or seeing his lifeless corpse on the autopsy table.

Will had never been dull, or lifeless for that matter. He’d always been so bright and lively, joking with everyone he met, teasing Jemma just to make her smile. Even when he got hurt at work, he’d never lost his spark. It had waned somewhat, but it wasn’t gone completely.

Jemma feels terrible as she stares at him, a silent procession of tears streaming down her face, because he looks so wrong. It isn’t just the lifelessness that comes with corpses, he’d changed drastically since she’d last seen him. His eyes were sunken in, he was far too skinny, his stubble was too long and untamed and his lips were horribly chapped.

She didn’t want to remember him like this. The good times, before the accident, hell even for a while after, those are how she wants him to appear in her mind. Not like this. The ultimatum hadn’t been enough for him to live, and in a way she’d known that for months now, but here he is, dying proof of the fact.

In a selfish way she wishes that the divorce papers had made their way to him. This way she wouldn’t be next of kin, she wouldn’t be in the police station identifying his body, it would be his mother’s job. God, his mother. They’d kept in touch, after the separation, but never did she think this would be the end of their obligations to one another.

“How did he die?” She asks the chief medical examiner, a tall blonde woman with warm eyes she couldn’t make contact with.

“The toxicology results haven’t come back yet, but our preliminary findings indicate it was a fatal overdose. Detective Hunter from the Drug Unit and Lieutenant May from the Suspicious Deaths Unit will want to speak to you later, if they haven’t done so already.”

“Yes, I know. They were the ones who did the notice.” Jemma says, her voice barely louder than a whisper as she stares at her dead husband. “Is this my fault?”

“Mrs Daniels-” Dr. Morse says, only to be interrupted by Jemma correcting her, her voice hitching as she tries to maintain composure. “Dr. Simmons, excuse me for talking out of place but there was nothing you could have done to save him, from his addiction or his death. The fact that you’re here right now is testament to the relationship you both had before your separation.”

“Okay.” The medical examiner pretends not to notice the brunette harshly scrubbing her tears from her cheeks, hovering a step behind her. “Am I free to leave? I already spoke with them, I really would like to go home now.”

“Of course, is there anyone I can call for you, anyone who can drive you home, look after you?”

“I already called someone, he’s waiting outside. Please, help them catch whoever gave him the drugs, I don’t want his death to be in vain.”

“It won’t be, thanks for your time Dr. Simmons.”

With a terse nod of her head, she follows Dr. Morse out of the precinct, a cardigan wearing man stretching his arms out wide for her the moment she clears the metal detectors. She falls into his arms, her soft sniffles turning into heartbroken sobs as she lets out a wail, barely muffled by the soft fabric. He clings to her even tighter, ignoring the looks the both of them are receiving by the crowd of civilians and police staff alike milling around them.

As the guy escorts her out of the building, she turns to head back downstairs, pressing the down arrow on the elevator before pressing the up one a second later. It wouldn’t do any harm to bug Hunter with her findings and encourage him to hurry it along a little. She just hopes that his death didn’t have to be for nothing after all. If not for his sake, then the widow who was now mourning two versions of the same man.

A week later, Jemma gets another call from the police district, asking that she come to collect his personal belongings as they release his body to the funeral home. When Fitz hears of it, he offers to go with her, not taking her halfhearted refusals for an answer, and together they make their way down to the precinct. Ever since she’d had the notification, Jemma had been wrought with guilt, blaming herself for not being able to fix him or save him from himself.

What ifs had been coursing through her mind, keeping her up until the earliest hours of the morning, her dreams filled with twisted versions of her favourite memories with him, and his body haunted her mind every time she shut her eyes. If it weren’t for the fact that his mother had already flown back to Toronto to prepare his funeral, she would have insisted that she collect them for her, but here she was. Just about standing on her own two feet, wearing his old NASA shirt and a pair of leggings, her hair a matted greasy mess.

Her dishevelled appearance only draws the attention of the civilians in the building, the staff much more accustomed to the sight of grieving family members, but Jemma can’t find it in herself to care all that much. Next to Fitz, who was dressed in his work clothes as he’d been about to leave for the university when she got the call, she looks even more pathetic, probably why she gets more pitying looks than scathing glares of disapproval. One of the desk officers, a man named Officer Davis, offers to take them up to the Suspicious Deaths Unit floor to meet with Lieutenant May, but they politely refuse his offer, having both been up there multiple times in the past week and knowing how to get up there.

The elevator takes far too much and too little time to reach the floor, and when they walk in, Lieutenant May is ready and waiting for them both, ushering them into her office without saying a word. His belongings easily fit into a brown box, and Jemma mourns who he used to be, knowing that before his accident he’d had a life with her, that they’d had a house together and were planning on getting a dog or a cat together.

And he’d wound up here. Not even a filebox worth of things. She doesn’t hear the older woman step out of the office, all she can stare at is the wallet in the box, a prepaid phone, his favourite hoodie and a pair of trainers she’d bought him for his last birthday with her. Pulling the wallet from the things, she thumbs through the various sections, a choked out sob coming out the second she sees one of their wedding pictures, creased and worn from folding it over and over again. 

Clutching it to her chest, her sobs increasing in strength tenfold, she flings the wallet in Fitz’s direction, not noticing when he opens the coin section and empties it out on the desk. Before them are dozens of chips from NA and AA, citing days, weeks, even months of sobriety. The highest value one was a 90 day one, and Fitz flips it across his knuckles while Jemma rocks back and forth in the chair, very nearly creasing the picture further.

As her tears slowly subside, she looks up to see the chips and starts crying again, this time slow but steady tears that she can’t stop, her distress silent rather than loud enough for the whole world to hear. When the older woman slips back in, a solemn look on her face, Fitz gently shakes Jemma’s shoulder and starts to place all of Will’s things back into the box, allowing the widow to hold onto the picture while he sorts out everything else.

“Dr. Simmons, Jemma.” Lieutenant May says as they’re both walking out of the office. “If I could offer you some advice.”

“Sure.” She whispers, not looking away from the picture for one minute.

“Live for him. Live the life he’ll never get to have. Don’t let your grief consume you. He obviously loved you a lot, don’t let all of that love go to waste.”

“Thank you.”