Fitzsimmons

Engineer's Notebook

Quick Note:  I said I'm in a write-y mood, didn't I?  Get ready for the Fitzsimmons fest!

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"Definitely switch the material in the grip here. It might fix Ward's ridiculous demands. 'One ounce lighter, Fitzsimmons. I need it one ounce lighter to aim perfectly and-' Fitz, are you listening to me?" Jemma stopped her hilarious impersonation of their specialist and turned to face Fitz, who was drawing something in his engineer's notebook. He looked up, frantically flipped pages in the book, then added a note to the Icer design.

"Yeah, I was listening, Jemma. An ounce off the gripping. I've got it." he blurted out, his face turning red.

"It's just that you usually join in on my Ward rant. What were you working on?"

"Nothing." Fitz answered a little too quickly. Jemma smiled at him, but decided not to pry. Fitz hated when she touched his notebook, let alone read from it, so Jemma sort of let it go. Forgot about it.

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"Fitz, I've misplaced my notebook. May I use a page of yours?" Jemma said casually as she entered the lab. She needed to take notes of her observations of Skye, who was resting in the med pod downstairs.

Fitz shuffled through his pages quickly before he got to an empty one. Still, Jemma got a glance of a drawing he had done of an eye. She had never known how talented an artist Fitz was. She was about to ask him about his drawings when he handed her a crudely torn piece of paper.

"Here." he insisted, silencing Jemma. She took the paper with a frown, then exited the lab, not thinking much of it.

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Jemma rummaged through Fitz's old things, trying to find an explanation for what he had said in the ocean. She was finding nothing until she reached her hand under the pillow and brushed against wrinkled paper. With a deep breath, she pulled out his notebook. It felt like she was betraying him, even now when he was in a coma. His voice saying, "Don't touch my notebook," rang through her mind as she finally opened it.

The first page she turned to was a sketch of her. A sketch of Jemma, smiling. She turned to the next page from there. Another drawing of her, this time of her scrawling in a medical journal. She flipped through the pages, finding only sketches of her and the occasional invention.

She went to the beginning to the first sketch of her. It was the day she had jumped from the plane. This one was the least detailed of all of them, and was smudged. She saw herself, standing there as Fitz would've seen her, her hair whipping around her face. She traced her fingers along the drawing, feeling the markings until she reached Fitz's signature. Underneath was a caption, and Jemma's heart skipped a best as she read it.

"When she jumped, I think I fell, too."

She felt the familiar pinpricks behind her eyes, and blinked hard. She wanted to see more of what he had written about her.

She skimmed page after page to find more handwritten notes. There was none until the very last page in the notebook. It was a letter, addressed to Jemma. She inhaled sharply as she read.

"Dear Jemma,

If you're reading this, it means you've found my notebook, and, despite all my rules against it, you've read through it. It'll probably be a relief to me when you do. It's been hard keeping this secret.

Now I don't know how you feel about me, besides that it's nowhere close to how I feel about you. I'm sorry if this changes anything between us.

The truth is, I'm in love with you. Now I'd rather be telling you this, because I can't express it all on paper, but I'm obviously too cowardly to tell you anything.

If I barge in on you reading this, please, forgive me. Don't be mad at me. I'm already mad at myself for feeling this way.

I'm genuinely sorry for putting you in this position, but I needed to tell you. I don't think I'll ever get over this.

-Fitz"

A tear fell on the page, and Jemma closed the book and hugged it to her chest. When had Fitz written this? She hoped it hadn't been a long time ago. She was so mad at herself for being oblivious to this. She had known something was going on. She just hasn't cared to figure it out. Fitz could've hated himself for years. And she could've put an end to it in a second.

She pulled out a pen and wrote beneath Fitz's note, "I'm sorry, Fitz."