Finding You

Always

Guess who's now a Harry Potter addict and couldn't help writing this???? Yup, FitzSimmons finding each other through  the lovely world of fandoms. Wish it worked for me . . .

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They fight constantly now.

It's so much different from the constant bickering they used to share. That action - hell, that life - is no more. It's the ending of quiet muttering over who took the better pair of goggles, which Doctor was better, who was quicker at repeating the digits of pi.

That's over. Those days are left in the sullen darkness of the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. Just like those times, FitzSimmons are no more.

He stutters; she cries. He shakes; she hides. He thunders; she stops.

She stops helping. She stops following him. She just . . . Ceases.

They're volatile. Deep within her aching chest, she knows this. She's toxic. He's damaged. They're no longer a "they."

She looks at him and sees a best friend that's no longer there - and if he is, he's too far buried under the sediment of a broken friendship, the words at the bottom of the sea, the days spent silent in the infirmary. She can't dig him out any more than she could swim those ninety feet faster.

So she watches as he rides the waves, risingrisingrising before the inevitable crush of salt against the rocks. And then she's there to pull him up, clean the glass out of his hands, before he's back at the crest.

Her distance is maintained. She watches and watches and watches and feels like screaming because if he would only let her help he wouldn't be hurting. She wouldn't be laboring under this burden of responsibility.

For six weeks this continues. Forty-two days filled with waves and tears as salty as the sea. But like all, the darkness ends. Even if for but a spark of light, the darkness must cease.

He seemed well enough last week to hold tea cups with sloshing too much, so that's what she brings him. The set is old, but nonetheless it represents them as much as the lab. The sugar dish is a Dalek, the pot the TARDIS, and the cups covered in various quotes. And though she can't see it as she rests the pot on the tray, she almost smiles at the fact a "Love, Fitz" is scribbled on the bottom. Almost.

His door is left open, so she doesn't bother knocking. He's not asleep, and he avoids showers as long as possible due to his trauma, so she has good reason that she won't interrupt.

Sure enough, he's on the bed, a well worn book open against his knees. He doesn't notice her come in, too engrossed in the pages. A smile ticks at the corner of her lips; he looks near exactly like the Fitz from years before. Curled up, reading.

It's only as she draws nearer that she realizes he's mouthing the words, squinting harshly at the pages. Her heart plummets.

"Knock knock," Jemma whispers, offering a plastic smile.

His head jerks up, hand shaking against the book's back, eyes wide with surprise.

"I brought tea," she holds the tray up just a bit higher, his eyes following the trail of steam. "English, just the way you like it."

He nods, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. When she makes no move, his hand twitches to his side.

She shakes her head, as if in a trance, and softly pads over, hesitating a second more before taking a seat next to him. The tray is placed between them.

It's silent, and that hurts. Less than two months before they would have banter between them, perhaps even laughing.

But the airwaves are as still as the ocean depths, the only echoes being the clink of tea spoons on china.