Begin Again

Day four

She didn't exist anymore, and that was hard to come to terms with. Maybe even harder was that she had nothing to fall back on.

And yes, she had gotten all choked up when Skye had asked for her I.D, because it felt like she had nothing to fight for anymore. Her whole life, down the drain. Gone.

It must have been harder for Coulson. His badge, torn apart by a bullet. It must have felt like the bullet was ripping through his heart.

But when she saw his face again, she realised that even though neither of them existed anymore, she still had something to fall back on. Him.

~*~

She was scared of what she might see. She almost didn't want to see him lying there, broken, but going another day was just going to break her too, even more than she had been already.

And he did look broken. Pale. Small. And he had a few day's worth of stubble on his chin and his nails needed a trim. But she was sure that she looked more of a fright than he did.

Being closer to him laid the foundations of the bridge between them, and even if it killed her to see him as vulnerable as he was, it still glued a few pieces back into the skeleton of her broken heart.

~*~

Skye was beside her, a respectful distance away, standing in silence as they watched their unmoving friend.

The silence wasn't awkward but comfortable, the type of silence you can lose yourself in and just forget the world.

Simmons broke it anyway. She had lost enough of herself for the while.

"It reminds me a little of Snow White, except our places are switched, he's lying in the coma and I'm watching him through a sheet of glass and I wish I could just make him wake up by giving him a true love's kiss-" She stopped and waited for the ground to open up and swallow her whole.

"I have never felt true love, but if what you and him have for each other isn't it then I'm pretty damn sure that there's no such thing."

And Simmons almost smiled.