#fitz who even though has a blank look on his face

[lucyshypemaster]

fitz "what if I told you I stopped pressing buttons?" vacker

[aphelea]

like an old enemy (keefitz)

Ao3 Link

hi @when-wax-wings-melt i was your secret santa!! apologies for the late gift, it got slightly longer than expected, but i hope you enjoy this keefitz royal AU :)

(also thank you @song-tam for hosting this!)

quick note: the fic is non-linear and the scenes alternate between the adult and child/teenage versions of fitz and keefe, with excerpts of letters in between.

Summary: There’s a long pause before Keefe finally replies. “I swear to the moon and the stars, Fitz. I would never, ever kill the only person who ever loved me like a son.”

And how could Fitz’s will ever hold against that?

(Or, the story of two princes, through childhood wonder and wartime unrest.)

Warnings: vague mention of vomiting and canon-typical violence

-

The guards find Fitz in the garden at sunrise, pen in hand as he attempts to write a letter to be sent with tonight’s delivery to Candleshade. He is surrounded by drafts deemed unworthy of his intended recipient’s eyes—though, these days, Fitz thinks that nothing he could write would ever be truly worthy enough for him. No words could ever fully communicate what he needs to say—and yet he tries anyway.  

“You’re here early,” Fitz says, upon hearing approaching footsteps. He pats his pockets frantically and sighs. “I’m afraid I don’t have any payment for the delivery right now. Or a delivery at all, actually.” He turns, expecting to see the palace’s messenger—but he is instead met with the carefully blank faces of five goblin guards, each quickly moving to surround him. Grizel, his personal bodyguard, stands in the middle, but she refuses to meet his gaze—Fitz’s first clue that something is terribly wrong. 

“Your Highness,” one goblin begins, after a long moment of tense silence. “I—”

She’s cut off by a scream, loud and harrowed, from inside the palace. Immediately, Fitz scrambles up and reaches for his own sword, but is stopped by Grizel’s outstretched arm. He casts her a quizzical look, but she only shakes her head and looks toward the doors. 

“Who did this?” comes the next cry, now in his mother’s voice. Fitz’s heart stops for a moment. He’s never known such anguish from her. 

“Grizel?” he asks, and his voice wavers dangerously. “Who…”

Fitz can’t bring himself to say the words. Of course, it isn’t the first time that rebels have come after one of their own—he still vividly remembers the night of Jolie’s death, and how the fires had been so deceptively warm for a moment—but today, of all days? If he knew better, he’d take it as a sign from the universe. 

But even the universe could not have prepared him for the words Grizel utters. 

“King Alden,” she says quietly, and the world stops for a moment.

Even the birds are silent, as if mourning alongside him. 

Fitz’s throat thickens. He’d seen his father just hours ago, in this very garden. They’d spoken about the state of the world, and as always, he’d told Fitz that there was no reason to worry about the rebels, and Fitz had scoffed and told him to stop treating him like a child. Was that truly the last thing he’d said to him? The last thing he would ever say to him? 

His turmoil must be evident on his face, as Grizel reaches out and places a comforting hand on his shoulder. But he can only stare at the ground, unblinking. 

“I thought the palace was secure,” he says, after a long moment—ever since rebels burned the old Havenfield Palace, the Alliance kingdoms have been incredibly careful with who enters and exits the palace grounds. Everglen is perhaps the most secure kingdom of the five—or, rather, it used to be. 

From the grim expressions on the guards’ faces, that might no longer be the case.

“It appears to have been the work of a clever assassin,” Grizel says, and Fitz is surprised to see true fear in her eyes. In all his years of knowing her, nothing has ever shaken her composure, and certainly not enough to be plainly visible on her face. “They somehow exploited a secret entry into the palace just outside the gardens.” 

A secret entry. 

Fitz tries his best not to react, but he knows the recognition is all-too-obvious on his face. The only other person who knew about the path was…no, that’s impossible. He wouldn’t do this. 

And Fitz wants, so desperately, to believe it. He wants to say that he trusts him more than anything—but when it comes down to it, in the final choice between right and wrong? Fitz isn’t sure where he would go. 

Keefe has no reason to kill a king, he tells himself. 

But the people he keeps company with certainly do, his mind rather unhelpfully supplies. 

Fitz shakes his head, as if that will erase the presence of his thoughts. Why does he torment himself with speculation like this? He looks to Grizel, trying to appear as unshaken as possible, the furthest from his true turmoil. “Who did it?” he asks; the only way he has ever taken after his mother. 

Grizel is silent and unreadable. But she has experience in stealth that the other guards do not, so the glances between them are all-too-obvious to Fitz now. “Who did it?” he repeats, raising his voice. “Who? Answer me!”

“Fitz,” Grizel warns, in that familiar way that tells him he won’t like the answer. 

“Was it Alvar?” he asks, well aware that his voice is slipping into an unrestrained shout, but he can’t bring himself to care. “Quinlin? Biana?” She frowns, but remains silent. “Somebody just tell me!” He doesn’t realize he’s drawn his knife until it’s pointing at Grizel, tickling her throat. 

Gently, she removes it, watching him with all the sorrow he’s not sure he deserves. “We recovered one of the many arrows found at the scene. It carried a…familiar flag.”

“Of the rebels?” Fitz asks. He knows the sign of the swan by heart; he has known it since it graced the cloaks of Jolie’s murderers, all those years ago. And it would make sense—too much sense, perhaps.

“No,” she replies, her voice so soft it’s barely a whisper. “Though that would be more predictable.”

“Then who?” Fitz asks, racking his brain for another group that would both want his father dead and shatter him badly. He doesn’t exactly keep close connections with many people, personally. With war looming over them, it’s easier to trust nobody but the people he loves.

Grizel lets out a shaky breath. “It carried the flag of Candleshade.”

Oh.

Oh, God. 

Fitz leans over and throws up in the roses. 

-

Dear Prince Keefe,

Hi! It’s me. Fitz. Obviously you know that, because what other royal from Everglen would be writing to you (unless you’re secretly pen pals with Biana, which would be weird since she doesn’t even know how to send a letter yet. Also, her handwriting is atroshous atrocuos atrocious.) I figured since it takes forever to get from Candleshade to here, it might be easier for us to send letters while we can’t see each other. Although, my father says that your father is coming over next month for a trade meeting, so maybe you can come then?

(Please come. Biana and I are really bored without anyone else our age around.) 

Anyway, I used that goop you gave me earlier to prank my bodyguard. It worked! She was stuck to the wall and I swear it was the funniest thing I’ve ever seen in my life. Biana and I were laughing so hard that the other guards ran in because they thought we were choking! Then we had to get her out, sadly, and Grizel was pretty mad, even though some of the other guards were definitely laughing too. But at least I didn’t have to do my sword fighting training. So thank you! I’m sending some ripplefluffs along with this letter as a thank-you gift. 

(I didn’t make them, though. I’m still banned from the kitchens after that prank we pulled last time.)

Oh, and on that note, I also found…

-

The first time Fitz speaks to Keefe, it’s by Jolie’s insistence. They’re eight years old, sitting in the gardens of Everglen and pointedly avoiding each other’s gazes—it’s the first time that the prince of Candleshade has ever visited, and he seems to be much more interested in his sketchbook than speaking to any of the other children. Though Fitz isn’t exactly interested in being social, either; he’s still sulking from being banned from the meeting room, despite the fact that he’s certainly old enough to be discussing grown-up matters. And if Alvar is going to be there, then why isn’t Fitz allowed? It’s all stupid. And unfair. And stupidly unfair. 

The Princess of Havenfield, to her credit, listens to all of Fitz’s concerns. She doesn’t let him leave, of course, but at least she doesn’t treat him like a baby like other adults. This appeases Fitz a bit—but that still doesn’t mean he wants to run around the gardens playing games with his little sister and her new best friend. He’s not six anymore. 

“I know you’re not,” Jolie says, sighing. “But I’m sure they would still really appreciate it if you joined them. Hey, you two, what game are you playing?” She directs the last sentence to the two girls who are currently galloping around a tree and waving sticks around wildly. 

Princess Stina stops and grins. “Super Cowboys!” she shouts gleefully, then returns to hitting the air violently. Woltzer, Biana’s bodyguard, watches the whole situation with clear discomfort—it’s only a matter of time before he’s forced into playing one of their characters. Likely as whatever thing they’re killing. 

Jolie raises an eyebrow. “And what are you cowboys fighting?”

“Rebels,” Biana answers, glaring at whatever imaginary person she must see in front of her. “We’re fighting rebels!”

Jolie pales, ever so slightly, but she still manages a smile. “See?” she tells Fitz. “You can play a…rebel-fighting cowboy.”

“I don’t want to be a cowboy. I hate cowboys.” Truthfully, Fitz doesn’t know much about them, but he definitely doesn’t want to be running around with a bunch of babies. He’s almost nine. If he’s going to be a good prince for his kingdom, he has to give up on childish pretend games now. 

“Why?” Jolie asks. “Cowboys can be fun.”

“Yeah, but you only think that because you live in the land of cowboys. That’s different.” Fitz has never been to her kingdom, but he remembers learning about Havenfield during his diplomacy lessons—while it’s certainly not lawless, the towns on its outskirts are nowhere a prince should be sent to. Plus, it’s the closest Alliance kingdom to rebel country, so danger is always lurking around the corner outside the capital. 

Grizel snorts behind him, and Jolie sighs. “Look,” she tells him, standing up, “it’s fine if you don’t want to play with them. But your father told me to watch over you here, so don’t plan on going anywhere else. At least, nowhere where I can’t see you.”

Fitz only wrinkles his nose and turns away. Why can’t his father just trust him? Alvar’s been attending Alliance meetings since he was nine. And Fitz has excelled in all his lessons; he’s done even better than his brother in most of them. And he’s not ignorant, either—he knows why today’s meeting was called. He’s heard the whispers of the growing rebel conflicts in all the kingdoms; he’s heard the rumours being spread about the real reason the Crown Princess of Havenfield was sidelined to babysitting instead of speaking for her kingdom. Rebel sympathies, they say. Will Princess Jolie’s first act as queen be removing her kingdom from the Council Alliance? Who was the mysterious commoner seen at her Winnowing Gala? Is she truly planning on betraying her country?

“Maybe you can talk to Keefe, then,” Jolie says, after a moment. “I’m sure he’d like some company.”

“Who?” Fitz asks, and then notices the boy sitting on a bench near them, drawing quietly in a sketchbook. 

The boy—Keefe, apparently—looks up upon hearing his name. “I’m fine, actually,” he says, then returns to his drawing without giving Fitz so much as a glance. 

Fitz scoffs. “Yeah, me too,” he says, moving to sit on the furthest possible bench that’s still in Jolie’s sight. Which, unfortunately, isn’t far. He should really ask his father to build more benches in these gardens. 

For at least ten minutes, they sit in tense silence—Keefe, with his nose buried in his sketchbook, and Fitz, sulking and glaring at the dirt beneath him. Jolie and Grizel are having a conversation about the hardships of babysitting, or something. Fitz tunes them out. 

Then, he feels a tap on his shoulder, and he turns to find Jolie looking at him with raised eyebrows. “What did the ground ever do to you?” she asks, gesturing to where he’s kicked up enough dirt to create a small hole in Everglen’s perfectly pristine path. Oops. 

“Nothing. I’m fine,” Fitz replies. It’s a lie. 

She sighs. “Why don’t you two just talk to each other? I’m sure he didn’t mean to offend you earlier. Besides, you two must be about the same age.”

Fitz huffs, but he knows she’s not wrong. He can’t sulk like this forever, after all. And the artist in front of him does look to be closer to his age—which is refreshing, since Fitz is used to spending all his time with either his six-year-old sister or his nineteen-year-old brother. Life in the palace isn’t exactly conducive to healthy social development, anyway. 

So he sighs, gets up, and sits down next to Keefe. “Hi,” he says, in a perfectly normal and very chill way. 

“Hi,” Keefe replies, still focused on his drawing. 

“Uh,” Fitz starts, but he doesn’t quite know what to say. It’s then that Keefe finally looks up and meets his gaze, and it’s then that Fitz suddenly realizes who the boy in front of him is: Keefe Sencen, Prince of Candleshade. Of course, how could he not have realized? He’s seen the king and queen of Candleshade dozens of times, as Everglen’s closest ally. Fitz had been vaguely aware that they had a son, though he’d never stopped to think about him much. 

“Want a cookie?” Keefe says, after a long moment of awkward silence. 

Fitz stares at him. “What?”

“Here.” Keefe shoves a cookie in his face, and Fitz accepts—at first, for politeness, but then he takes a bite and he’s not sure he’s ever tasted a cookie this good. “I made them yesterday.”

“You…made these?” Fitz replies, frowning slightly. He’s never even been in the Everglen kitchens. And he doubts he could make a cookie that’s even edible, much less tasty.

Keefe shrugs. “Yeah. I like baking. It takes my mind off things.”

“Wow,” Fitz says with wide eyes. “I wish I had time to learn that. I feel like I spend all my time in lessons or training or something.”

Keefe snorts. “Oh, I’m supposed to be doing that. I just skip.”

Fitz’s jaw drops. “You…skip? Your lessons?”

“Yeah,” Keefe replies casually—clearly, he has no idea how much he’s just completely overhauled Fitz’s mind. “If I don’t want to be there, I just don’t go. Besides, I already know pretty much everything they try to teach me.” He pauses and wrinkles nose. “Except for the sword fighting stuff. That stuff sucks.”

“Woah,” Fitz breathes. “That’s pretty cool.”

The longer they talk, the more Fitz starts to forget about the meeting he’d so desperately wanted to attend. Something about this boy—a boy like no other he’s met before—is entrancing, the only puzzle Fitz has ever encountered that he hasn’t been able to decipher immediately. 

He resolves, that night, that one day he will figure out the mystery of Prince Keefe Sencen. 

No matter how long it takes. 

-

Dear Keefe,

I think something serious is happening. You know how your father arrived in Everglen over the weekend? I’ll admit, I was kind of disappointed that you weren’t with him, but I think I understand why now. He, King Grady, and my father have been locked in the King’s office for nearly three days now—and every time I see them, they have these terrible, grim expressions on their faces. I’ve been asking everyone for information, but nobody will tell me anything! Not even Alvar. He keeps telling me that everything is fine. What a liar. 

I know that it’s something to do with the rebels, though. I can see it in their eyes. 

Anyway. I just want to make sure you’re okay, since I heard that there were a lot of rebel attacks in Candleshade recently, and you haven’t responded to my last letter yet…no pressure to respond quickly, of course. I just like knowing that you’re not dead. 

I miss you I hope you’re okay, Keefe…

-

“You have a lot of nerve asking me to come here,” Fitz says. He doesn’t turn around; he won’t give Keefe the satisfaction of looking into his eyes, no matter how much he desperately wants to. 

Keefe’s breath is warm on his neck—it’s December, and Fitz is so, so cold without someone to hold—and he sighs. “And yet, you still came.”

“I need to know why,” Fitz says. He keeps his gaze trained on the horizon, even as Keefe moves to stand in front of him, begging for his attention. What attention does he deserve? The attention of a prison guard, perhaps. Not a prince. 

Keefe shakes his head in Fitz’s peripheral vision. “I didn’t know,” he says, and Fitz can only scoff. 

“Didn’t know what?” he says incredulously. “That I would find out? Your kingdom’s flag was on the arrow that killed him! They found footprints on the path behind the roses—the path that only you and I know about. I’m not stupid, Keefe. I know what that means.” Fitz is well aware that he’s shouting, now, but they’re deep enough into the woods that he doesn’t quite care anymore. He directs his fury at the air beside Keefe’s perfectly-maintained curls—of course he has the nerve to look pretty even among all this pain. Fitz wouldn’t expect any less. 

But Keefe only stares at him, with something akin to grief in his eyes. “Fitz, please,” he begs, stepping forward. “Look at me.” And if they were just a few years younger, Fitz wouldn’t have hesitated to do so; after all, most of their childhood had been spent following each other blindly. Now, though, they are both hardened by the war at their borders; now, Fitz shouldn’t trust Keefe as he once did, even if his faith in him has become muscle memory. 

 “Just tell me it wasn’t you,” is all Fitz can manage to say without succumbing.  

There’s a long pause before Keefe finally replies. “I swear to the moon and the stars, Fitz. I would never, ever kill the only person who ever loved me like a son.” 

And how could Fitz’s will ever hold against that?

So he gives in, and finally meets the gaze of the only man who could ever ruin him; it’s stormy, terrifying, and all too familiar. Under the moonlight, it reminds Fitz of their younger days—before war caught up to them, when they would spend most of their nights together running off to where they weren’t meant to be and ignoring the shouts from their bodyguards in favour of each other. He’s forced to remember that the boy in front of him is the same boy who taught him how to prank his tutors, years and years ago; the same boy who taught him that love is as easily taken away as it is given. 

“What happened to you?” Fitz asks, and even he’s not quite sure what he means by it. 

Keefe chuckles dryly. “You’ll have to be more specific.”

It’s then that Fitz notices the bruises on his cheeks, nearly covered by the blood and mud smudged across his skin. “You’re hurt,” he realizes. He reaches out to examine further, but stops midway—he can’t hold Keefe like this anymore. They aren’t who they once were. 

“Oh, that,” Keefe says, rubbing his face. “I lost a fight with some rebels.”

Fitz gapes at him. “What?”

Keefe looks away and moves his hair across his face, presumably trying to hide the extent of his injuries. “They attacked the palace three days ago. It shouldn’t have been as bad as it was—we have more than enough forces to counter them—but they were one step ahead of us. As they always are.”

A million situations run through Fitz’s mind, but he’s studied the rebel tactics long enough to understand what Keefe is saying. “They had people on the inside.”

Keefe nods. “They knew every weakness in our defense, and every single passage in or out of the palace. Even the ones I thought only I knew about. I was only able to run because Ro fought them off behind me.” 

That means… “So the rebels killed my father, then.”

Keefe pauses. “I don’t know. I’ve been on the road for three days—I didn’t even know he was dead until I got into town. But I can’t imagine that my father would choose to make an enemy out of our only allies.”

Fitz sucks in a breath. “Which can only mean that Candleshade has fallen.” It seems almost impossible, but if what Keefe is telling him is true…then the rebels have grown much more powerful than he ever thought. 

“This is the start of the real war,” Keefe says quietly. “They’ll stop at nothing to take down the Alliance. And with your father dead…Everglen is definitely going to be next. It’s an easy opening for them.”

“Then I suppose we’ll have to prepare for a fight,” Fitz says. “After that, hopefully, we can help you reclaim Candleshade.” And with it, perhaps, they can reclaim some of themselves too. 

At this—strangely—Keefe’s face falls, and he winces. “About that…” he begins, and suddenly, he won’t meet Fitz’s eyes. “I’m leaving.”

Fitz stares at him. “What?”

“I can’t stay here,” Keefe says. “You said it yourself—people think I’m a killer. And even once I tell them I’m not, if they believe me…what can I do? The rebels need me dead to end the line; they’ll be searching for me everywhere. I’ll only bring death to your door even quicker.” He chuckles, though it’s as dry as the winter air surrounding them.

The idea is so absurd, Fitz can’t even believe it’s coming out of his mouth. “So, what, your best solution is to run away?” Fitz snaps. “You have a duty, Keefe! A duty to your kingdom, a duty to your legacy, a duty to—” He stops himself before he can say something ridiculous like a duty to me. 

Keefe scoffs. “I have no obligation to a kingdom that despises every bone in my body.”

“You’re a prince.”

“I’m well aware,” Keefe snaps. “Not all of us are as obsessed with our legacies as you, Fitzroy.” The name is like a punch to the stomach; it’s a dirty trick, hitting where he knows it’ll hurt Fitz the most. 

The reply tumbles out of his mouth before he can fully process what he’s saying. “Then maybe you should just leave!” Fitz says. “Clearly I can’t stop you.”

For a moment, the devastation is evident on Keefe’s face, But it’s gone in just a second, replaced by a fiery determination unlike any Fitz has seen before. “Fine. If that’s what you want.”

 Is this what you want, Fitzroy?

“I’m not the one who called you here. I don’t care what you do,” he lies. “I haven’t cared in a long, long time.” Lies, lies, and more lies. Keefe can see through it, of course—he knows Fitz better than to believe anything he says out loud. 

“Fine,” Keefe says. “Then I guess this is it.” 

He turns, and Fitz can only watch, frozen, as Keefe mounts his horse. Say something, his mind begs him, Tell him you don’t mean it! But wouldn’t that be too easy?

He waits silently, until Keefe is entirely out of earshot, before he mutters one final wish to the wind—perhaps Keefe might think he’s forgotten about what today is, but of course, he hasn’t. He can’t. “Happy birthday, Keefe,” he says, hoping that the wind can carry his message home. 

Then, he begins on the path back home, and resolves to forget that this—that Keefe—ever happened. 

He fails, obviously.

-

Keefe,

Do you see her too? In your dreams, in your nightmares…Do you hear her screaming? Because I do, every single day and it doesn’t stop please Keefe you’re the only one who understands

Look, I know there’s snow piling outside my window, I know it should be icy and frigid and terrible without a fire on—but somehow I can’t stop feeling like every inch of me is warming up, exponentially and endlessly until I’m burnt to a crisp. Like a pig on a spit, forever roasting. 

And logically, I know we’re not there anymore; I know I’m safe behind the walls of Everglen—well, as safe as anyone can be, in these times. But somehow, for some reason, I can’t stop feeling like I’m still stuck in Havenfield, doomed to watch her burn forever. 

I guess what I’m asking is…does it haunt you too? Does she haunt you too?

You’re the only one who saw it like I did. Running to the woods for just a moment, and then we come back and the world’s on fire right in front of our faces…were we the last people she saw? The last people whom she trusted, I mean. 

Or maybe I shouldn’t be asking these kinds of questions. It’ll only make it worse—at least, that’s what my mother says. But what does she know of real terror?

I think life was easier when I saw the rebels as this distant, intangible thing. I used to be obsessed with being allowed into Alliance meetings, and I never understood why they wouldn’t let me in when I knew so much about the war—but I understand now. I had the information, but I didn’t truly know them. I didn’t have the fear that’s required to really understand what they’re capable of. I didn’t have these dreams that remind me of how cruel the world can really be to people who don’t deserve it.

I do now, though. 

I don’t know why I’m telling you this. Maybe because nobody else listens? My mother tries, but she just can’t understand what I’m feeling. And my brother keeps ignoring me, for some reason. I’m trying not to read too much into it. 

I just wish you were here, Keefe. Being around you is kind of like a cure for everything, you know? Like I’m a walking wound and you cauterize me. Or maybe you burn me. I’m not quite sure yet.

-

The unfortunate consequence of sneaking out of the palace at night is that the much-harder process of sneaking in has to occur eventually. 

The first time Fitz and Keefe find themselves in this predicament, they’re fifteen, and regretting many of the night’s decisions as they stare up at the heavily guarded palace in front of them. Sneaking out hadn’t been incredibly difficult, surprisingly. It’s Grizel’s day off, and her substitutes aren’t quite used to the antics of the young royals yet, so they’d employed Biana to distract the goblins—with a promise to do whatever she wants for the next three days—and had successfully lowered themselves out through a first-story window. Easy. 

What’s less easy, however, is getting back in. They’ve searched for an easy entrance back into Fitz’s room for nearly an hour, now, to no avail—and Fitz is starting to shiver, in the cool autumn air. 

“Do you want my cloak?” Keefe asks, and he doesn’t even wait for a response before slipping it off. 

“Won’t you be cold?” Fitz replies, staring at his friend with wide eyes—Candleshade is considerably warmer than Everglen, so there’s no way Keefe is used to the cold here. Fitz isn’t even used to the harsh winters of his home, and he’s lived here his whole life.

Keefe shrugs. “I’m really not cold, and your nose is turning red, so.” 

Fitz probably turns even more red at the comment. “I’m fine,” he swears, and Keefe raises his eyebrows. “...Maybe I’m a little cold,” he concedes. 

With the admission, Keefe grins and reaches around Fitz’s shoulders to wrap his cloak around him. He’s forced to step closer to pin it shut, and Fitz finds his face burning once again at their proximity. Please don’t notice, he begs, but of course, the universe hates him. 

“Are you okay?” Keefe asks, frowning. “You look a little weird.” He hasn’t moved, yet—he’s still just inches away from Fitz, so close that he can make out all the little scars on Keefe’s face. 

“I’m fine,” Fitz replies, and he knows he’s staring. But how can he not, when Keefe is so close? 

What he doesn’t expect is for Keefe to meet his gaze with equal intensity, a small smirk growing on his lips. “Are you?” he asks, with a teasing lilt to his voice. 

And for a moment, Fitz is stunned speechless. 

Then Keefe leans forward, kisses him lightly on the cheek, and steps back as if it’s just a casual motion—as if he hasn’t just stopped and started Fitz’s heart all in the span of two seconds. “Hey, what’s that?” he calls, already running toward a random patch of roses before Fitz can say a word.  

Not that Fitz knows what he would say, if Keefe had waited. He can’t confess to feelings that he doesn’t understand. 

So he runs after Keefe, as he always does, bracing himself for the pain of the thorns. Hopefully the healers don’t ask too many questions about his cuts and bruises from the night—though it’ll be obvious to them once they notice that he matches Keefe. (It’s nice, knowing that they’ve been marked together. Even when the wounds fade, his memories certainly won’t.)

“What are you doing?” Fitz whispers once he finds Keefe crawling beneath a particularly thick rosebush. 

“There’s something beyond this,” Keefe says, pushing forward. “Something hidden in the roses. I think it’s a clearing of some sort.”

Fitz scoffs. “Why would there be a hidden clearing in the middle of our gardens? What could we possibly have to hide—”

“I found it!” Keefe suddenly exclaims. “Come on, come through!”

Well. That’s certainly strange. “I can’t believe I’m doing this,” he mutters to himself as he makes his way through the dirt, wincing each time a thorn catches on his clothes. Thankfully, he has Keefe’s cloak to protect his arms—though he can’t imagine how scratched up Keefe must be, with only a sleeveless tunic to protect him. 

 After a minute of fighting a maze of flowers, Fitz emerges in a dark clearing, with flowers above blocking the moonlight. The ground beneath him is dusty, and he realizes with a start that this isn’t just a clearing—it’s a path. “What the hell?” he mutters, and Keefe snorts. 

“It’s a bit concerning that the Prince of Everglen isn’t aware of a secret passage into his palace,” Keefe says, and Fitz can tell he’s grinning even without seeing him. 

“This goes all the way into the palace?” Fitz asks, glancing around at the little he can see. 

“Yeah,” Keefe replies. “I followed it to the end. Turns out, Everglen isn’t quite as secure as it claims to be.”

And Fitz really shouldn’t be celebrating a secret breach in the castle’s defense. But clearly, no potential intruder is aware of it, since no-one seems to have discovered it…so there’s really no harm in using it himself, right? “You know what this means, Keefe?” he asks. 

“What?”

A Keefe-like grin makes its way onto Fitz’s lips. “This means we can get in and out of the castle any time we want.” It’s both a terrifying and exhilarating thought—for the first time in his life, he’s free. At least, in some sense of the word. 

Keefe laughs. “I guess you’re right,” he says, smiling softly. “Oh, and, by the way, I have a gift for you.”

At this, Fitz raises his eyebrows. “A gift?” he repeats. “Why? It’s not my birthday.”

Keefe shrugs. “I just thought you would like it.”

“Oh.” Oh. It’s a strange feeling, to be known like this, and Fitz loves every second of it. He watches Keefe bring something out of his pocket and hand it to him, gentle and delicate, and it takes him a moment to realize what it is—then he’s blushing wildly again. “Is this a rose?”

Keefe smiles. “Yeah. It’s classic, you know?”

Fitz does know. In fact, he knows quite well, since he’s read practically every novel in the library…but Keefe can’t possibly mean it like that.

In response to his shocked silence, Keefe steps forward and tucks a strand of Fitz’s hair behind his ear. His hand then falls to Fitz’s chin—still as gentle a touch as ever—and Fitz can barely breathe. Maybe he’s reading far too much into this, but… “Isn’t a kiss classic, too?”

Keefe grins. “I suppose it is.” And Fitz doesn’t know how long he’s been waiting to hear it, or how long he’s been waiting to step forward and hold Keefe’s face like this—like a lover, like a dearest friend. But he holds him, now, and it feels like releasing a breath of air he never knew he’d been holding. 

Keefe’s lips are as soft as morning sunlight. 

And Fitz’s world has never been so peaceful.

-

Dear Keefe,

I wish we could live forever. Just you and I, immortals for eternity—wouldn’t it be fun? We could look at the stars together, every night until the end of the world. We could speak as we wish and love as we’d like and nobody would have the guts to bother us…we’d be gods, really, in our own little world. 

But since we aren’t immortals, I think I’d like to know you for every remaining night of my mortal life. And who knows how long that will be?

Truthfully, Keefe, I’m terrified. I’m terrified that this war will take over our lives and we’ll forget who we truly are amidst the chaos. I’m terrified that I’ll become someone who you don’t know how to want anymore—I fear, sometimes, that I already am. 

I just wish you and I could stay the same forever. I know it’s ridiculous—impossible, even—but wouldn’t it be nice to have something constant in our lives?

Just promise you’ll never let go of me, Keefe. Not until our dying breaths. 

-

“I heard about Keefe,” Biana says from the doorway, and Fitz startles. He’d been so engrossed in watching his ceiling that he hadn’t even noticed her come in—a luxury he doesn’t have, now that rebels could be coming for him any day now. 

“What about him?” he asks, forcing himself to seem as nonchalant as possible. 

It’s impossible to hide anything from his sister, after all these years together. “That he’s gone,” she states, three simple words for such a complex thing. “I’m surprised you’re not with him.”

Fitz scoffs. “I wouldn’t abandon our family like that. Especially not now.” Not now, when the throne where Alden should sit still lies vacant, with no agreement on who should fill it next. Not now, when there could be killers around every corner. 

Biana’s expression softens, and she moves to sit beside him on his bed. “I know,” she says quietly. “But…don’t you ever wish you could? Just leave, and be free of all this. Be a normal person.”

Every single day, he wants to say. But these are times that call for his strengths, not his weaknesses. “That’s what the rebels want us to do,” he says. “Run away from our lives, and give them our kingdom without a fight. We can’t give up so easily.” 

“But we can’t let our fear of them control our lives, either,” Biana replies. “Let yourself be selfish for once, Fitz. What do you actually want to do? Who do you actually want to be?”

Fitz laughs dryly. “When did you become so wise?” he asks, hoping to avoid a real answer. But she keeps her gaze sharp and steady on him, and he realizes that there is nowhere for him to run from this. “I don’t know,” he finally answers—the most honest he’s been with himself in a very long time. 

Biana smiles. “Yeah. Me neither,” she says, and it’s strangely comforting.

But as peaceful as not knowing sounds, Fitz knows that he can’t afford to indulge it for very long. Perhaps, as a child, he’d been able to run and play to his heart’s content, but those days are gone now. Those people are gone. 

“I can’t afford to be selfish, though,” he tells her. “Maybe in a few years, once this is all over, I can be who I want. But not today.”

For a long moment, Biana just looks at him, with something like sadness in her eyes. “Well,” she finally says, her voice wavering slightly, “I suppose you’ll make a great king, then.”

What?

Fitz sits up so quickly that there are spots in his eyes. “What are you talking about?” he asks, because there’s no way she’s saying what he thinks she is. Because that would mean…

“Alvar officially abdicated this morning,” she tells him, softly. “The throne is yours now.”

Fitz…doesn’t even know what to think. For as long as he can remember, he’s had a set path for his future—Alvar would be king, and Fitz would work by his side, a prince with the freedom to travel the continent, learning everything he possibly can. “Why would he abdicate?”

Biana sighs. “You know he and Dad were never on the best terms.” It’s true, though Fitz hadn’t understood why until he was nearly an adult. Alvar has always had drastically different ideas on how to run the kingdom, and there were certain things that Alden simply wasn’t willing to change. 

The older he gets, the more Fitz realizes that neither of his idols are quite what they seemed to be.  

“You know, you don’t have to do it,” Biana says. “You don’t have to bear the burden of the crown just because it fell to you. We have more than enough cousins to give it to.”

And the idea is tempting, for a moment. Handing off the crown and living life as a normal citizen, away from the pain that this palace has brought him…but he has a duty, both to his father and to his kingdom. Fitz was raised a prince, unlike his cousins—this has to be his burden to bear. It has been his burden since he was born. 

“No,” he tells Biana. “I won’t run away. Not anymore.”

If this is what his destiny is, then so be it. 

Fitz will be a king. 

-

Dear Keefe,

My Winnowing Gala is set for November. 

Isn’t it strange, how old we are now? I don’t feel old enough to get married. Or engaged, even. Though I suppose I don’t have much of a choice—with how long Alvar is waiting, my family is itching for a wedding. To bring joy to the citizens, if nothing else. 

Anyway, I’m writing to you to ask if you can come. I need someone sane to be around while everyone is caught up in the chaos of finding me a perfect match. That, and honestly, I don’t think I’ve attended a single gala without you since we were twelve, and there’s no reason to change that now. 

Also, I miss you. 

Please come. 

- 

Fitz spends the first ten minutes of his Winnowing Gala hiding in his bedroom, watching the swarms of carriages arriving through his window. There can’t possibly be this many women here to see him. This must be more people attending than he’s met in his entire life—though given that he’s only ever had two friends who weren’t related to him, perhaps that isn’t much of a bar to set. 

While he panics, Keefe is standing at the vanity, aggressively scrunching hair gel into his curls. “You look fine,” Fitz says, after hearing far too many frustrated grunts—and then he really stops to look at him. “More than fine, actually. You look incredible. So stop fussing around with it!”

“The beauty is in the details,” Keefe replies, carefully adjusting one singular strand of hair. “It has to curl away from my face. Not toward. That’s my secret to looking perfect everyday.” He sends Fitz a wink, and for some reason, Fitz’s face burns. Charming fool. 

But he rolls his eyes anyway. “You would look perfect even if you dyed your hair green and shaved half of it off,” Fitz says, and immediately regrets it as a grin grows on Keefe’s lips. 

“Good idea,” Keefe replies, that familiar mischievous twinkle in his eye—but before he can elaborate on his terrible plan, they’re interrupted by a loud banging on the door, accompanied by a chorus of shouts. 

“Your highness, where the hell are you?” comes Grizel’s voice. 

“You lovesick fools better be hiding in there, or I’ll kill you!” comes Ro’s. 

“Fitzroy Avery Vacker, get your ass out here right now!” And Biana. 

None are particularly promising. 

Fitz immediately runs to hide behind his curtains—he can’t possibly go down there and speak to all those people, what if they hate him? What if he trips and falls in front of everybody? What if he scares off every single possible match?

(That last one doesn’t seem so bad, actually. It’s not like he wants to get married soon. He can’t imagine falling in love with anyone else, right now.)

Keefe grabs his wrist before he can fully tuck himself away. “Fitz,” he says, and his voice is suddenly serious. “You’ll have to go eventually, you know. Might as well get it over with now.”

“I thought you didn’t want me to have a Gala,” Fitz says with a scoff. “Suddenly you’re a fan?”

Keefe sighs, but his hold on Fitz’s arm never wavers. It’s a comforting constant, right now. “I didn’t want you to go through with it only because your family asked you to. I thought you, of all people, should get at least somewhat of a choice in who you love...but it’s too late to change that now, isn’t it? The Gala is happening. So we might as well show up, if all of this is in your honour.”

“I suppose,” Fitz agrees, electing to ignore the parts he doesn’t understand. He has his suspicions, of course, as to what Keefe is implying—they’re suspicions he’s carried himself, after all—but this is hardly the time to be thinking about that. Now that he is about to walk into the traditions of a prince, he cannot be bound to his past distractions. 

Though his worst distraction still sits here, holding his wrist gently as if it were porcelain. And Fitz cannot bring himself to send him away. (He brought him here, after all, despite his parents’ protests—rarely are friends allowed to attend Winnowing Galas, but Fitz had insisted. He couldn’t bear to think about love for a whole night without the boy who personified it by his side.)

Another series of loud bangs on the door prompts Keefe to stand up, bringing Fitz with him. He sends Fitz a look—the kind only the two of them can decipher—and Fitz nods. He is as ready as he can ever be—which still isn’t quite ready at all.  

“Finally,” Biana says when they open the door. “I’ve been fielding questions about you left and right. Your potential matches are awfully inquisitive.” 

Keefe snorts. “Good luck with that.”

As it turns out, when they reach the gala, the attendees are indeed strangely curious about him—his favourite colours, his morning routine, his favourite things to cook, and more ridiculously irrelevant things. More than once, their conversations fall into awkward silence, because Fitz finds that he has nothing substantial to say to them. He isn’t actually interested in finding a wife here, anyway. 

Though many of them aren’t even here for him—they’re only here to see the legendary palace of Everglen, and he’s simply their ticket inside. Which he doesn’t quite mind, except for when they’re swarming him and asking him a million questions about the size and the material and the location of the palace…things that he doesn’t know, and things that he cares even less to talk about. 

And now there’s about twenty people trying to talk to him at once, and probably at least one hundred people surrounding him, crushing him, suffocating him, and suddenly Fitz just can’t breathe. 

“Get me out of here,” Fitz whispers to Keefe, interrupting his conversation with some blonde Noble from Havenfield who looks eerily like Jolie. 

Keefe mutters an apology to the girl—Sophie, apparently—and immediately slips out of the room beside him, a worried expression on his face. “Are you alright?” he asks, and Fitz shakes his head. 

“There’s people everywhere,” he says. “Nobody is giving me space to even think.” 

Keefe sighs. “Yeah, well, seeing how many people are on that list, I’m not surprised you’re overwhelmed.” He gestures to the wall behind them, where a long scroll is pinned to the wall, covered with a long list of names and check marks. 

“Oh,” Fitz realizes. “That’s my match list.” He never even knew that they had taken it from his bedroom—but, then again, he had stayed as far away as possible from the gala planning. 

Keefe walks forward to examine it, and Fitz’s breath catches. These two worlds—his duty and his choice, his head and his heart—were never meant to exist so close to one another. And yet, here Keefe is. 

“Your number one match is Sophie,” Keefe reads out, his expression indecipherable. “She seems nice enough. Maybe you should consider her.” 

The words are so incredibly foreign to hear—Keefe, telling him to marry someone else. Some stranger. As if Fitz was ever truly going to walk out of this ball engaged. He doubts he’s even capable of giving his heart to anyone else, now. He’s invested too much of it in one place. In one man. 

“You know,” Fitz says, after a long moment, “I wanted it to be you.” It’s as close to a confession as he’s ever gotten, and Fitz regrets the words immediately after they’re spoken. Now, Keefe is staring at him like he’s said something outlandish, when it’s certainly nothing he didn’t already know.

After a minute, Keefe rips his gaze away from Fitz, and stares at the wall with the intensity of a thousand stars. 

“Keefe?” Fitz says. If only he could read his thoughts. 

Keefe shakes his head. “I’m sorry,” he says, so quietly it’s almost lost in the din of the Gala. 

“What?”  

Keefe sighs. “You deserve someone better than your kingdom and better than me. I’m not what you really want, Fitz. You just don’t know any better.” 

And before Fitz can respond, before he can protest that he’s not a child, he knows exactly what he wants—Keefe is gone. Out the main doors, into the rain. 

And the silence that lingers has never felt more suffocating. 

-

Dear Keefe,

Happy birthday, you idiot.  

I miss you. 

Please respond. 

What the hell am I writing?

I can’t tell what you want from me. You tell me to want freely, and then tell me I shouldn’t want you. You want me to live selfishly, and then claim I can’t live beside you. Do you despise me? Do you fear me? 

Or is it that you’re too afraid of it all, yourself?

I know that I can be both your prince and Everglen’s. I resigned myself to living two lives, long ago—but you? You’ve always wanted more. More than your duty, more than our secrets—but when will it all be enough?

Part of me doesn’t even want to send this letter, because I know you won’t respond to it. 

Happy birthday, Keefe. I hope you think of me. 

-

His coronation is far too grand for the times, but Fitz lets it slide. The kingdom needs some joy, after all. (And a distraction from the fact that their new king, who is supposed to lead them through war, is barely twenty years old.)

There’s still over an hour before it’s set to start, but the hall is already filled with decorations and massive displays of opulence. The guest list is small, by Fitz’s own request—he can’t risk inviting anyone he doesn’t know well into the heart of the palace. It would be far too easy for someone to send an arrow through his throat while he’s distracted, even with Grizel’s extra security measures. 

Right now, though, he’s more concerned with trying to find his siblings. In the chaos, he somehow managed to lose Biana, and Alvar is, of course, nowhere to be seen. Though that isn’t entirely unexpected; ever since Fitz had agreed to take the throne, his brother hasn’t spoken even a word to him. Alvar walks out of every room Fitz enters, eats only in his own bedroom, and refuses to even look at him. Fitz can’t deny that it hurts—in the span of just a month, he’s lost three of the most important people in his life, and only one is actually dead. 

But he pretends to be unfazed, for the sake of Everglen. He can’t let his personal issues get in the way of leading his kingdom. 

Through the crowd, Fitz suddenly notices Alvar, pushing through and running with some strange sense of urgency. Where could he possibly need to go right now? There’s nothing in that wing of the palace except for…

Except for Fitz’s room. 

Fitz drops his staff and rushes after him. 

But when he finally reaches his bedroom, he finds it to be empty. “Odd,” he mutters aloud. He looks around, but everything seems to be as he left it in the morning, with nobody else in sight. Fitz could’ve sworn he saw Alvar run up these stairs. Where else could he have gone? 

He gets his answer in the form of cool metal to the back of his neck and a sudden, strong grip on his shoulder. 

“Don’t move,” Alvar snarls, pressing his dagger into Fitz’s skin. 

“Have you lost your mind?” Fitz snaps. “What are you doing?”

“I can’t let you become King,” Alvar says. “I can’t let you continue this madness.”

Fitz scoffs. “What madness?”

“The madness of the Alliance, Fitz!” he spits. “Not one of these kingdoms truly cares about their people. Don’t you see? The endless exiling of so-called rebels, the matchmaking system—it’s all built for maximum control.”

“So your solution is to kill me?” Fitz replies, and he so desperately wants to run, but he needs to understand whatever curse has befallen his brother. This cannot be the man he idolized as a child. 

“I had high hopes for you,” Alvar says. “You used to be more than a prince, you used to have passion! I really thought you would be the one to change things, when we were younger. Now I see you’re no better than your father.”

“Our father was a good man!” Fitz protests, but even he can’t entirely believe it. 

Alvar scoffs. “Alden was a good king, but he could never be more than that. That’s why he had to go.”

It’s a strange way to word the statement, and to Fitz, it almost seems like… “You’re talking as if you killed him.” The idea is absurd, but the more he thinks about it, Fitz can’t deny its plausibility. In the months leading to the King’s death, Alden and Alvar had had such dramatic disagreements that practically the whole palace knew about them. Fitz had been too worried about Keefe to really pay attention, then, but…it certainly makes sense. 

“Because he did,” a voice suddenly says from the shadows behind them. 

Fitz’s blood runs cold. 

Alvar’s dagger falls from his neck and he pushes Fitz to the floor, whirling to face the intruder. A cloaked figure emerges from the corner, a pair of curved blades in their hands—blades that Fitz is all too familiar with. 

“Keefe Sencen,” Alvar sneers, stepping backward. “The disgraced prince returns.”

But when Keefe’s hood falls, Fitz is practically faced with a stranger—his face is decorated with scars from all manner of weapons, and his once-beloved hair is now a tangled mess that reaches past shoulders. No longer is he the man Fitz had known. This is someone new. 

“I’m not a prince anymore,” Keefe says, bringing his hand to his chest where a small pendant sits—too small for Fitz to really make out what it is. But Alvar seems to recognize it, as his eyes widen.

“So the Black Swan have finally decided to emerge from the shadows,” Alvar says, reaching for the sword at his waist. “How cute.”

“Step away from the king,” is Keefe’s only response.

Alvar glances between the blades, both pointed at him, and Keefe’s dark scowl. “And what if I don’t?” he asks. “What will you do when the strongest kingdom in the Alliance falls to us?” He steps forward, drawing his own sword and matching Keefe’s stance. 

Quietly, Fitz draws himself up to a sitting position. Neither Keefe nor Alvar are paying attention to him anymore—they’re too focused on each other, waiting for the first strike. And while Fitz knows that he and Keefe have been strangers for far too long, he doubts that Keefe’s skills in swordsmanship have improved enough over the past year to beat Alvar. He’d been a sword fighting prodigy in his youth, after all. 

So while they circle each other, Fitz draws his own dagger from his pocket—a gift from his father, once upon a time. He wonders how Alden would feel, if he saw his sons now. Probably disgusted. 

And then it all happens at once—Alvar lunges toward Keefe, and Keefe parries wildly though it’s clear he doesn’t know what he’s doing. Fitz scrambles to stand up, watching with increasing alarm as Alvar pushes closer and closer toward Keefe. There’s a clear winner, already, and Fitz knows this fight will not end until Keefe is too injured to fight any longer. 

He watches Alvar kick Keefe to the floor, some unbridled fury in his eyes. And as he holds his blade above Keefe’s chest, Fitz realizes he has only one option. 

He lunges and tackles Alvar to the floor, sinking his dagger into the skin above his collarbone. 

It’s deathly quiet, for a moment. 

Then Alvar starts gagging, and Fitz suddenly realizes that his hand is covered in blood. The blood of his brother. 

“Fitz,” Keefe says, his voice wavering. “What did you do?”

Alvar squirms beneath him, and the horror of what Fitz has done washes over him like a wave of fire. “I had to,” he says, as if he can make himself believe it. “He was going to kill you.”

Keefe is silent, for a moment. Then, he says, “I didn’t think you would care if I died anymore.”

“No,” Fitz replies, laughing bitterly. “I didn’t think I would either.” Somehow, in the month since he’d left, Fitz had managed to convince himself that he didn’t care about Keefe at all. He’d convinced himself that he had finally grown out of his old distractions; that with the crown, he could be reborn with a fresh heart to give.  

But the blood on his hands is proof that he can never truly break free of his childhood devotion. And the body beneath him is proof that he has let this love corrupt him beyond his ideals. 

“I hate that I love you,” he confesses, and it’s as much a confession to himself as it is to Keefe. 

Keefe rests a hand on his shoulder, as gentle as when they were kids. “I know,” he says. “I know you.”

I know you. 

And Fitz hates that he’s right. 

[luobingmeis]

68 for the prompts list w >:3 argo and fitz??

A/N: on god matt ur getting angst

this is like. maplekeene. but they’re not together. argo is just falling hard but fitzroy already adds enough complications to his life when his romantic feelings aren’t concerned.

(i’m also taking some personal liberties with what i think will be happening in canon vis a vis the unbroken chain + the thundermen)

-----------------------

68) “Were you ever going to tell me?”

-----------------------

Falling for Fitzroy Maplecourt made Argo feel like he was plummeting into the sea.

Which he has done before. Once. Unintentionally, that is. 

(Unintentional is how he wanted to describe everything about Fitzroy Maplecourt). 

It was a nasty storm, really. Unexpected, too. One of the worst he had seen since the... passing of his mother. When he watched the wave crest up over the bow of the ship, he knew it was going to hurt like hell when it crashed back down on him.

The true shock came when it washed him overboard and, for just a second, the world slowed to a halt as he watched the toiling, white-capped water approaching faster and faster as he descended.

And then, with a burning gush of salt water forcing it’s way down his throat as he crashed, the world began to turn again.

If falling for Fitzroy felt like hurdling towards the ocean, hearing Fitzroy’s first words to him as he walked into their common room felt like sea water filling his lungs.

“W-What?” he sputtered out, hoping that it would clear the burning from his throat (and that he misheard).

Fitzroy, instead, repeated himself word for word. “Were you ever going to tell me?” 

His tone was blank, his voice quiet, his face unreadable, but the letter in his hands said enough.

Fitzroy was silent after that, and Argo realized that the question wasn’t rhetorical.

“Listen, Fitz,” Argo began with no clue where he was going. “Just- listen, okay? It was for- a job, you know? For-”

“The Unbroken Chain.” Fitzroy’s voice wasn’t cold or hard, but lifeless. Perhaps that made it all worse. “I figured that.”

“Yeah!” Argo knew he was trying to overcompensate for Fitzroy with his own excitement, however fake it was, but he couldn’t just stand there while Fitzroy looked so- “That’s exactly it! They just- wanted to... to know some stuff and- and I was never going to let it go too far! I just needed-”

“Go too far?” Fitzroy repeated and he finally looked at Argo, finally sounded like more than just a husk. The pain on his face and the incredulity in his voice, though... Argo didn’t think he could handle- “You... you sent a letter to my family!”

“I wasn’t- I wasn’t going to do anything with it!” Argo defended, fumbled, lied.

The Unbroken Chain already knew everything.

The way Fitzroy’s eyes never left his own made it clear that he knew Argo was lying, too.

Thus, Argo sighed and shook his head, pushing back the loose hairs of his ponytail. “Or we’re- we’re not going to do anything more with it.”

Fitzroy’s bottom lip trembled as he crumpled the letter in his hand. “You betrayed me.”

“Fitz, please!” Argo pleaded, putting his hands up as he walked closer to Fitzroy. Fitzroy took a step back. “It was just- it was a job! I needed to do it! I pledged myself loyal to them, and-”

“What do you know about loyalty?” Fitzroy snapped. Argo flinched, but he couldn’t tell if it was from his words or the anguish that coated them. “We- we were supposed to be... be friends! We were supposed to trust each other!”

“Well you haven’t always shown me trust!” Argo snapped back, and he knew he was getting unfairly angry, unfairly defensive, but he didn’t want to go down in this ship without Fitzroy.

Didn’t want to go anywhere without Fitzroy.

“And this is exactly why!” Fitzroy kicked the crumpled up letter towards him. “You- you went behind my back! This is from weeks ago! And- And I don’t even want to know how you found my home address!”

Argo shook his head and kept trying to swim to the surface. “Fitzroy, it- it doesn’t matter now! The Unbroken Chain... they were never going to harm you! They just- just wanted to make sure that you were okay! And we’re on your side now and-”

“Now?” Argo felt like he was going to choke on the despair in Fitzroy’s voice. “Now you’re on my side? Now, after we’ve been- roommates for months? Now, after we’ve been working together? Now, after I almost died with you at my side? Now you’re on Team Maplecourt?”

Argo shook his head. “That- That isn’t what I meant! The Unbroken Chain- we can all trust each other! No more sneaking around! Just- just trust now!”

“That isn’t possible anymore, Argo!” Fitzroy shouted. “You lied, Argo! Every time you saw me, you knew the truth! You knew that you went behind my back, that you lied to my mother, and you let it happen! You continued facing me every- every fucking day like you hadn’t found out everything! Where’s the trust in that, Argo? Where’s the good, fun comraderie you always preach?”

Argo winced with every word out of his mouth until he believed his heart couldn’t handle it anymore. “Fitzroy, I- if you believe anything I say, believe it when I say that I didn’t want it to come to this!”

Fitzroy threw his hands up. “But you let it! You did the research! You sent the letter! You- you found out everything that I have deliberately chosen to keep hidden!” 

“But you could’ve always been honest with us! You could’ve told us that and- and we would’ve been fine with you! You don’t need to be some fancy guy, you can be you! You can be the Fitzroy Maplecourt, and-”

“This is Fitzroy Maplecourt!” Fitzroy shouted, stomping his foot. “This is Fitzroy Maplecourt after he learned what would get him liked! This is Fitzroy Maplecourt who people accept! This is Fitzroy Maplecourt who survived! This is Fitzroy Maplecourt, Knight in Absentia to the Realm of Goodcastle, and you don’t get to decide when I can finally be the man who doesn’t exist anymore!”

The silence that filled the room made Argo feel like he already drowned.

He didn’t know what to say.

“You never answered my question,” Fitzroy, exhausted, whispered. “Were you ever going to tell me?”

He didn’t know what to say.

“I- I-” Argo, faltering, sighed and shrugged. “I don’t know. I... knew I was gonna have to some day. That it would... come up.” He weakly motioned to the letter. “But I didn’t... want to. At first, I was terrified. That you would find out. But...” He swallowed thickly, looking down. “Time passed and I... we were getting close, so I thought it would go away. Wouldn’t... matter anymore. I thought maybe, just maybe, we could of... had something, so I hoped this whole situation would just... go away.”

“I thought we could have, too.”

Argo looked up, his eyes wide.

The cold, hard look Fitzroy was giving him was the last thing he wanted in this situation. Was the last thing he wanted in all the times he dreamed of finally seeing what this “something” could have been.

“Fitzroy,” Argo tried again, and couldn’t even think of something to follow up with.

“I don’t feel things for people easily, Argo,” Fitzroy said, walking closer to him. “Years of keeping people at bay so they don’t look too closely could do that to a guy. But, for once, I finally thought: here’s my chance. We’ve had our ups and downs, and yet we’re still here, ‘coming back to each other,’ you could say. We’ve even had our fair shares of brushes with death and have still come back, and that felt like a big enough sign. So, I finally thought: here is my opportunity to be comfortable at a pace that I’ve never been given before, in a skin that maybe I can learn to live with.”

And then Fitzroy was right on top of him, looking down at him over the bridge of his nose.

“Leave it to a rogue to steal that opportunity away from me.”

And then Fitzroy kept walking.

Argo was still standing motionless, floating in a sea that raged around him, when Fitzroy slammed the door behind him.

[moonxvxsun]

aaaa i love the morning sickness one! id love to read the continuation :)

here is the second part! there can be a third part if there is enough interest in it. but remember this is all in the past all of this already happened. here is how Ryver and Myla first met!

TW: sexual assault, transphobia, not respecting pronouns, emeto

everything in italics is sign language

-------------------------------

Ryver was broken, completely broken. Not only because all of this was the product of the night he'll never talk about. The night he can't forget about. The night that replays in his head over and over and over again. But because while he was transgender, he wasn't able to get the surgery and it wasn't even something that he was sure that he wanted. Despite that, he still hated all of his female parts, all the parts of him that gave people ammunition to invalidate who he was as a person.

Sitting in the exam room, he was having a full-on panic attack. His mental state was broken, completely broken. Once he ran out of energy he basically collapsed on the exam bed, crying himself to sleep. There was no way the hospital would let him leave, he was broken.

He was moved up to the psych ward and refused to talk to anyone, to eat, or sleep. He did nothing but just stare at the blank wall. He had to be given IVs to give nutrients to him and the baby.

"He's new, he's eighteen and he agreed to try this new type of therapy. Go in and good luck, if he doesn't respond that's normal, but give it time. He is also hard of hearing, but you're proficient in ASL, so it shouldn't be a problem."

Ryver was sitting in his room on his bed staring at the wall, he had agreed to try a new form for therapy thinking that nothing would work anyway so he didn't care.

"Ryver, hello. My name Myla Fitz, I'm a senior in high school and I'm volunteering for the new teen help program." A small girl in a white dress said as they walked into the room. Her voice sounded like the voice of an angel, Ryver couldn't help but turn to see the owner of the voice. Looking at her, he was sure that she was an angel.

"I understand that you've been here for over a month now and that you're three months pregnant." She said softly and looked up at him smiling, he had the cutest little baby bump and despite how sad and depressed he looked, he was gorgeous. "I know that you haven't talked to anyone since you found out you were pregnant and that you've dropped out of college. Can you tell me what you're feeling?"

Ryver just shook his head, but that was more than he's done in months. "Ryver, I understand that things are hard for you right now. And I know that you might not want to talk about you yet, so I'll tell you about me so you know who you'd be opening up to." Myla smiled as she sat down in a chair across from him and crossed her legs. "I had just been accepted to college, I wanted to go far away but I decided that our hometown college here was the best place for me to be. I'm actually pretty nervous about college, my twin Avi is also going to be attending the same college but we're trying to branch out our friend groups. But I'm glad to have my twin there with me, I always feel like I need to protect Avi...people have always bullied them and while I'm more dainty I would seriously hurt anyone who comes near them. Avi goes by they/him pronouns and is more masculine even though we are identical twin sisters. But I just call Avi my twin, I hope no one is mean to them...High school has been hard for Avi. They're actually the reason I joined this program, they were locked in their room refusing to talk to anyone until they found this program. They really helped Avi, I owe this group my life for saving them, I want to help people too."

"I became pregnant because a boy I liked asked me to go to a party at his frat and we started getting more... intense... but his friends were all hiding taking pictures and videos proving that I wasn't a boy..." Ryver finally spoke and signed his voice weak and tears were filling his eyes. "I go to the college where you're going, and I hope your twin never has to experience what I've gone through."

Myla didn't know what to do, they just wanted to run to Ryver and hold them and protect them. It was the same anger that they felt whenever someone was mean to Avi. "Ryver, I'm so sorry that happened to you, and I'm so proud of you for being able to tell me that." Myla signed back before she stood up and walked over to the bed and sat beside him and held out her hand. "I'm glad you could trust me Ryver, and if you're more comfortable, I'm fluent in ASL."

Ryver smiled, for the first time in months, he smiled as he looked over at Myla and grabbed her hand, and squeezed it before letting go and signing. I don't know what to do, I don't want to terminate Myla... but I'm only eighteen...

There's always adoption, but I know that there is a lot of thought that goes into this. But remember Ryver, you're not alone. You have the hospital staff and I'll be here to check in on you while you're still a part of the program.

Ryver just nodded, but the thought and anxiety of everything were overtaking him, along with the smell of his lunch that was being brought into the room. I feel sick... He spoke softly and a wet belch escaped his lips and his face dropped, he was so embarrassed. He couldn't focus, he was so embarrassed, and the anxiety of it all, he just burped again, this time a small stream of bile coming up and pouring all down his front. He barely had time to recover before his stomach lurched and a thinker stream of chunky green and brown vomit spilled all down his front. Myla didn't move, despite the vomit getting on the edge of her dress, she just stayed calm and rubbed his back.

Ryver had never been so embarrassed in his whole life. He had been throwing up every day in front of countless nurses and doctors but today was different, there was an actual angel before him and he got sick on her beautiful dress. But instead of being disgusted she just sat calmly and helped him pass his nausea.

Ryver, you're okay. Calm down okay, and take a breath, okay? Myla spoke and signed. She was internally thanking her twin for being obsessed with learning ASL.

Ryver just nodded but he was still feeling terrible. Though his nausea had passed, his whole body felt weak and that's not to mention how embarrassed he was about getting sick on Myla's dress.

I'm sorry about your dress...That was gross, I feel so bad...

No please don't apologize Ryver. I'll let you get cleaned up and I have to go change. But before that, I'll be back next week and we can chat again. I hope you can start to feel a little better and return to your normal life.

Ryver couldn't respond. It had been such a long time since he had felt so loved and cared for, even if was just a volunteer who he figured probably didn't even care about them. But he couldn't help how much this visit meant to him, and how cared for he felt.

What was he going to do? Was he going to actually go through with this?

[cadence-talle]

Rain Against A Window

Pairing: Eventual Fitz Vacker/Dex Dizznee, Eventual Biana Vacker/Sophie Foster

Wordcount: 1,746

Summary: Dex continues, “have you heard the rumors? About the prince and princess?”

“You mean the princess whose name is so similar to mine I visibly react whenever anyone mentions her? Yeah, I’ve heard of her.”

“They’re saying-” and here Dex’s voice drops to a whisper- “that Fitzroy and Bianca are alive.”

Other notes: Here’s the first chapter of the Anastasia AU! I’m a little nervous about starting a multichap, so please bear with me!

Read it on ao3 or under the cut!

St Petersburg, Russia. October 12, 1917. 

Della rushes through the palace hallways, holding tight to the hands of her two smallest children. Fitzroy stumbles, and she pulls him to his feet. 

“Come on, sweetheart,” she says. “We need to keep going.”

She doesn’t know where Alden and Alvar are. As soon as the shouts of “assassin” had been heard, she had taken Fitzroy and Bianca and run. She hopes that her husband and her eldest son are all right.

They turn into a hallway, and Della can see the doorway that will lead them outside at the end. She breathes a sigh of relief- they’re almost there. They’re going to make it. 

Gently, she pushes Bianca and Fitzroy forward towards the door, spinning around when she hears footsteps behind them. Della’s sags when she sees Alvar standing there. 

“Al, thank goodness,” she says. “Come on, we need to leave.”

“You’re right,” Alvar says coldly. “You do.”

Della blinks. “Alvar?”

Slowly, her son reaches behind himself and points a gun at her. Della freezes. “Alvar,” she pleads, “Don’t do this. You’re better than this.”

Alvar snorts. “Funny. I wasn’t aware you thought of me as ‘better’ than anything.” 

“Alvar-” Della starts, shooing her other children towards the exit behind her back. Alvar growls. 

“Even now, they’re more important than me.”

“They’re not,” Della says. “But it’s me you’re frustrated with. Don’t take it out on them.”

“I’m not frustrated,” Alvar responds coolly, gun never shifting in his hand. “I’m simply tired of this facade.” He steps closer. 

“You’ll see. Or, you won’t, really. But as you go blind, know that this is what’s best for Russia.”

He pulls the trigger. 

-/-

St Petersburg, Russia. February 23, 1927.

“Comrades!”

A crowd surrounds a wooden platform, the man atop it spreading his arms wide.  “The revolution hears you. Each and every one of you. Together, we will forge a new Russia that will be the envy of all the world!” The crowd erupts into tears, and he gives the people below a wide smile.

 This is Alvar, the ex-Vacker prince who took out his mother and siblings in a single night. Everyone in Russia- or, at least, in the general area around Petersburg- knows him. Some love him, some hate him, but all are agreed on one thing: you don’t mess with Alvar. Those who do tend to disappear. 

A brown-haired girl lurks on the edge of the onlookers, frown deepening with each word Alvar says. When he begins to wrap up his speech, she sighs and ducks into an alleyway. 

This is Biana Dizznee, fifteen year old scam artist and oddly good singer. She’s technically an orphan, but she’ll refute any claim towards that- this is my family, she’ll say, gesturing towards the Dizznees, not some people who didn’t even care enough to keep me. She disapproves of the current government, not that she’d ever be loud about it; she likes being alive very much, thank you. 

Biana moves along the dirty streets to a small market, loud with the sound of voices. She walks over to a boy with strawberry-blond hair, tapping him on the shoulder. He turns around, leaning against the fruit stall they’re standing in front of. 

“Hey, Bi. What’s going on?”

Biana shrugs, picking up an apple and inspecting it for spots. She doesn’t know why she even bothers anymore, honestly- any and all fruit that’s being sold down here is sure to be half-rotted already. “Not much. Alvar’s on another of his tangents. Apparently Petersburg is now called ‘Leningrad.’”

Dex snorts. “Good luck with that.”

This is Dex Dizznee, Biana’s adopted brother. People say he can fix everything; and, while almost true, fixing things is nowhere near his most useful talent. No, that would be his ability to forge papers, hotwire machines, pick locks. If Biana’s the face of their little group, the one who talks their way out, Dex is the one who gets things done. 

“Right?” Biana agrees, giving up on her apple. “He’s tried stuff like this before, too. It won’t work- Petersburg will always be Petersburg, no matter how many new names they give it. The tsar’s influence is too strong for that.”

“Speaking of the tsar,” Dex says casually. Biana recognizes the twinkle in his heads and jerks her head covertly to the left. They move out of the market, out of earshot of anyone incriminating. Biana raises an eyebrow and Dex continues, “have you heard the rumors? About the prince and princess?”

“You mean the princess whose name is so similar to mine I visibly react whenever anyone mentions her? Yeah, I’ve heard of her.”

“They’re saying-” and here Dex’s voice drops to a whisper- “that Fitzroy and Bianca are alive.”

Biana scoffs. “That’s impossible. Alvar killed them- he boasts about it once a week.”

Dex shrugs. “Maybe so. All I know is that the Ruewens, over in Paris, are offering a huge reward if someone brings them the lost Vackers.”

A slow smile creeps over Biana’s face. “And if someone was to, say, bring them the lost Vackers, or people who seemed like the lost Vackers…”

“That someone would get a reward.” Dex finishes. “A reward so huge we could pay off all of Mom’s medical bills right now.”

“Then let’s do it,” Biana says. “It can’t be too hard, right? I could play Bianca, you could be Fitz-” she trails off, thinking. “No, that won’t work. I look pretty close to a Vacker, teal eyes and all that, but you’re not even the right skin tone.”

“But you know who is?” Dex responds. “That streetsweeper everyone keeps thinking is your brother.”

Biana gasps. “You’re right. That’s brilliant.”

“All we need to do is get him on board.”

-/-

A light mist settles over the city as a teal-eyed boy sweeps a broom across the sidewalks, shivering as the cold sets into his clothes. Passer-bys push him this way and that, barely sparing him a glance.  

This is Fitz. He doesn’t know quite who he is, or why he’s in Russia, but he doesn’t need to. Sweep the streets, he’s told, and sweep the streets he does. It’s a simple, mind-numbing job, but Fitz doesn’t care- if his mind is numb, it distracts from the numerous blank spots in his memory. 

He’s just finished, leaning his broom against the wall inside a small hat shop, when a truck in the street backfires, emitting a loud bang. Unbidden, Fitz flinches. 

Loud noises startle him. The nurses at the hospital believe that it’s a side effect of getting shot in the head, that every shot-like sound will trigger him, but Fitz thinks it’s more than that. 

Loud noises these days, after all, never mean anything good. 

The truck on the road moves on, a small paper-wrapped package falling out of the back. Curiously, Fitz picks it up and peeks inside. 

It’s an ornate box, initialed with a gold-inlaid V that even Fitz, with his limited memory, knows- the sign of the royal family. He moves to tilt the lid open, but footsteps behind him make him hurriedly rewrap the box and turn around. 

“Hello,” a girl with eyes the same shade as Fitz’s says. “We’d like to talk.” She loops her arm through his and Fitz’s eyes go wide. He pushes away, trying to back up. A boy with red hair, standing a few feet behind the girl, sighs. 

“Bi, that’s probably not the best way to do this. You sound like you’re kidnapping him.”

Bi makes a considering noise and nods. “You’re right. Sorry,” she says to Fitz. “Just to clarify, ‘We want to talk’ wasn’t a way of saying ‘we want to kidnap you’- we actually do just want to talk.”

Fitz narrows his eyes at them, gesturing towards the hat shop in front of them. They huddle under the awning, and Fitz raises an eyebrow. 

“Talk,” he says. Bi turns to her friend. 

“Uh, okay,” she starts. “First of all, I’m Biana, and this is Dex. And we.. well. You’ve heard of the Vackers, right?”

Five minutes later, Fitz leans against the glass of the shop window, staring at them. “You’re going to impersonate the prince and princess and go to Paris to get money,” he says, “and you want me to help?”

“Pretty much, yeah,” Dex agrees. “We’ll give you a third of the profits, though. What do you say?”

Fitz should say no. He should say no, and walk away, and tell the government. That’s what a loyal citizen would do, and Fitz has worked hard to be a loyal citizen.

But something in the back of his mind says Paris, and something in the back of his mind says you need to get out of here, and something in the back of his mind says aren’t you tired of being a streetsweeper, and Fitz finds he can’t say no.

“I’ll do it.”

-/-

The rumor mill in Russia flows as steadily as the Neva river, always staying its course. It can be diverted, of course, and it is- sometimes to Germany, sometimes to Belarus, sometimes to France. 

Now, rumors flow to Paris, where a blond girl walks the streets, greeting people who she knows. She smiles and chuckles and seems, for all the world, like a people person.

She is not.

This is Sophie Ruewen, previously Foster. She’s the adopted daughter of Grady and Edaline Ruewen, ex-count and countess of Russia. Sophie’s never actually been to Russia- her parents left before things got too bad. She’s heard the stories, though, and keeps an ear out for any rumors.

Rumors are flying around Paris today, though, and Sophie carefully commits them to memory. 

The Vacker siblings, it seems, are back. 

-/-

And back in Russia, Alvar sits in his office, door closed and scowling. People are saying Fitzroy and Bianca are alive, which is impossible. Alvar killed them himself.

Still, every rumor in St Petersburg has a hint of truth. 

Carefully, Alvar slides a drawer in his desk open and takes out his gun. 

Better safe than sorry, after all. 

-/-

This is Alvar, Biana, Dex, Fitz, and Sophie.

They don’t all know each other, not yet. They’re scattered, each with their own hopes and dreams and fears. Some of them are luckier than others. But all have a role to play in the drama of the Vackers.

This is Sophie, Fitz, Dex, Biana, and Alvar. 

And with them, on a cold February day, we set our scene. 

[the-hidden-writer]

An Odd Family Tree

A series of snippets from the lives of the FitzSimmons family, set post 7x13. Also, the series of events that leads up to the birth of their grandson.

Available to read on AO3 and FF.net.

Comments make my day!

Chapter 10: Wedding

Coulson was the first to arrive. After Jemma and Fitz had pitched the idea of his LMD-self officiating the wedding to Bobbi and Hunter, they had immediately been on board. He’d arrived one week early so that they could run through the ceremony so that everything could go smoothly on the big day.

Hunter and Bobbi had offered to be the ones to meet him at the airport. After the initial shock at seeing the fact that he hadn’t aged since they last saw him all those years ago, they’d rushed forwards to hug him. Hunter almost cried. Coulson was incredibly shocked himself, and the taxi ride back to the cottage was full of impossible stories that must have confused the poor driver.

Alya had been waiting in the garden for them. She stood up when the taxi pulled up their rocky driveway and had greeted her uncle with a warm hug. Fitz and Jemma watched on from the front door, with Jemma resting her head on her husband’s shoulder as they both tried not to cry. Coulson had congratulated them in the form of extremely out-of-date dad jokes, and nobody would have it any other way.

The wedding rehearsal went perfectly.

Next came Daisy and Sousa. They’d arrived a day earlier than expected as a surprise. It had been Jemma who’d opened the door, and she’d immediately reverted back to her ten-year-old self and had squealed with excitement. She and Daisy embraced straight away and refused to let each other go until they’d had a good minute or so of hugging.

When Alya came to investigate the commotion from the top of the stairs, she’d let out a similar sort of noise to her mother. She raced down the stairs, calling out “Uncle Dan!”. Daniel, who had gone back to using his cane since his prosthetic had started throwing him slightly off-balance, had laughed heartily as his niece proceeded to almost squeeze the life out of him. Her favourite Aunt didn’t escape this treatment, because the moment Jemma let go of her, Alya pounced on Daisy like a fox.

Daisy was over the moon when Hunter and Bobbi dramatically revealed themselves. Dear Sousa was beyond confused.

Davis arrived with Piper two days before the wedding. Though Piper had a broken arm, the also-strangely-young Davis was taking care of her like his life depended on it. Piper was sick and tired of the constant attention. The others felt relieved and reassured that neither of them had changed one bit.

Hunter wanted to experiment with Davis through the medium of extremely-dangerous pranks. Fitz practically had to tackle him to stop him from throwing a butter knife at the back of his head.

Late on the night before the wedding, Mack and Flint arrived. Though they both wanted to come much earlier, both were caught up in SHIELD business. Mack had a mountain’s worth of paperwork and missions to organize, and Flint was one of SHIELD’s top field agents.

Mack had cried upon seeing Fitz and Jemma in person after so, so long. He was still able to pick up a very reluctant Fitz, before doing the same to a less-reluctant Alya.

He’d bawled like a baby when Bobbi and Hunter walked in. At first he’d frozen, and said their names like he didn’t dare to even hope. They’d walked closer, and the reunited trio had shared a beautiful moment of hugging each other with tears rolling down all three of their cheeks.

Even later that night, Mack joined Fitz and Hunter to sit down and watch a football game they’d taped.

And then tomorrow arrived.

Alya had begun to hyperventilate, and Jemma had held her in her arms, whispering to her reassuringly until she felt ready to get ready. They’d picked out the perfect dress weeks in advance. It was simple, plain and white, but had subtle, delicate details that made it stand out like one in a million- just like Alya. It had soft, floral lacing around the waist and a wavy pattern towards the bottom. The sleeves were covered with translucent silk. Alya suddenly looked like the princess Jemma and Fitz had always believed she was.

Daisy had offered to do her hair and makeup. Alya’s hair was relatively short, but that didn’t stop her aunt from twisting and curling it and adding various clips and grips and making it impossibly beautiful. There wasn’t much makeup, as per the bride’s request, but even the lightest powder and lipstick were added to make her ready.

The ride to the woodland venue was the hardest part. Alya sat squashed between her parents who were desperately trying and failing not to weep. She placed a graceful hand on each of their legs and squeezed it comfortingly. Her parents immediately did the same to her.

Because they were more than her parents. They were her best friends. They were her life. They were her everything.

When they’d arrived, the driver had to repeatedly tell the trio to not be late since the couple was too busy kissing their daughter’s hands over and over.

Alya apologised for them and they finally exited the car.

When it was time for the ceremony to begin, it was Fitz that got cold feet. He tried so hard to think of the reasons that he disliked Owen, but his mind had gone blank. He couldn’t think of a single excuse to blame the situation on, he’d worn a suit and everything, and he knew that everyone was waiting for him.

He silently looked up at his daughter with a pleading expression. Alya wiped away his tears with her finger. And then they did the one thing he’d yearned for and dreaded for so many years.

He walked her down the aisle.

Jemma, Bobbi and Hunter sat at the front, all with watery eyes transfixed on them. Coulson stood under the arch at the end with the biggest smile on his face. Daisy was trying her best not to cry, clutching Daniel’s hand under the table. Piper and Davis looked like they were having the time of their lives. Flint and May (when did she arrive?) looked so happy for them. Mack was openly dabbing at his eyes. And Owen…

Owen looked surprisingly dapper in a suit. Forget Fitz, it was even harder trying to imagine the scruffy boy Owen in a suit. But the man had cleaned himself up amazingly, was wearing a stunning black suit (that looked a size too big on him) and had his green eyes locked on Alya.

Those green eyes had shone when they reached the altar. He’d smiled at Fitz, but Fitz was shaking. He couldn’t give away his daughter, especially not to Owen.

But then he turned and saw his team, his family all looking at him expectantly.

And after one final kiss on Alya's hand, he gave it to Owen.

He sat down slowly and immediately linked hands with his wife.

Coulson began his speech.

“We are gathered here today for the momentous occasion of the marriage of two wonderful people, Alya Fitz-Simmons and Owen Shaw. One could say that their union was written in the stars given their heritage, but these are two souls that are truly in love.”

Alya and Owen stared at each other with utter adoration in their eyes.

“If anyone has any reason for these two to not be wed, speak now or forever hold your peace.”

Nobody spoke up, though Jemma had to hold down Fitz’s knee to stop him from jumping up.

“In that case, onto the vows. Alya?”

Alya took a deep breath. “It was my Dad who first introduced us, but Owen you have slowly become my life. It was your pure, unparalleled determination that I fell for, and even before our first date, I think I’d realised that you are the person I want to spend the rest of my life with, and I promise to always do my best for you. No matter what.”

Owen’s voice was uncharacteristically nervous. “Alya, I… you’re such an amazing person. It’s so hard for me to wrap my head around, that someone as perfect as you could even like someone like me. You’re so smart, and I’m just a dumb traveller. And now we’re getting married. I love you, Alya, and I promise to always love and protect you as much as I can.”

Coulson asked for the rings, and the best man (one of Owen’s American friends) handed the matching set over.

It was once the rings were on the fingers, the couple had kissed, and the applause had died down that Jemma and Fitz both broke down into tears and were instantly engulfed in hugs and reassurance from their old teammates in what was the hardest moment of their entire, already challenged lives.

[eristories-sev]

CHAPTER THREE. AND THEN SHE FELL.

Sophie glanced at the frilly gowns in front of her and looked straight towards Biana,

"No."

Biana pouted. "BUT ITS MY BIRTHDAY!"

Sophie smiled at her, "Your birthday was two months ago."

Biana came beside her and flopped onto the bed covering herself in frills. "Yeah but today's the day I celebrate it."

Sophie rolled her eyes and dragged Biana out of the bed. "I already dressed up that day and gave you a present. I'm only doing one of those today."

Biana started pouting again. Then Sophie got an idea, "Maybe you can give Dex a makeover."

Luckily she took the bait and hopped down the corridor screaming for Dex. Sophie had no regrets. She was most definitely going to pay for this later.

"BIANA! MOM TOLD YOU TO-" Fitz appeared in front of Biana's bedroom and blushed when he saw her.

"Hey, Sophie." Fitz rubbed his hand on the back of his neck. "Did you see Biana?"

Sophie smiled. "You might wanna warn Dex I sent her that way. She was trying to give me a makeover."

Fitz winced. "Poor Dex. I should probably go help him also tell me if you see Keefe."

"Who's Keefe?" She asked cocking her head to the side, the name sounded familiar...

"You don't know Keefe? That's weird your both here most of the time. There's no way you couldn't have met him-" he stopped abruptly when he saw her face. "Keefe's my best friend. He's over here a lot."

Sophie school her head, "I might have heard the name before but I don't think I've seen him."

"Well, I'm going to make sure that you two meet today. He's a bit annoying mind you but he's hard not to like and he also has the most hilarious mark." He said goodbye and went to save Dex from Biana.

Sophie sighed. She been feeling down for some reason lately. For no apparent reason she felt like someone sucked the joy out of her. She needed food. Foods the best way to go.

She marched out of the door putting her head away from Fitz's mysterious friend she never met...

***

Keefe wandered along the corridors of Everglen at random. He was trying to set the perfect trap but he was hungry and he wasn't feeling well. He didn't know why. It's been a thing these days, he wanted whine and stomp on the floor.

He took another turn this time though he recognized where he was, this was where Biana's bedroom was. He took another turn expecting to run into Biana or someone but all he saw was a flash of gold down the corner. He was seeing things now. Great.

His phone chimed, he looked upto to see that it was from Fitz,

'Where are you?'

Keefe texted back,

'Near Biana's bedroom.'

'Oh good you can meet Sophie then.'

Keefe didn't know who that was but he wanted to ask Keefe when he met him. He took yet another turn towards the kitchen only this time... He collided with another person.

***

Sophie was getting tired of the Everglen corridors. She didn't normally get lost. She knew her way around just fine but with the hunger and her not feeling well. She randomly took turns. She didn't even have a phone because she left it back at Biana's bedroom and she was too tired to go get it back.

She took another turn and this time hit someone...

The last thing she saw before hitting the ground was a pair of crocs. Which made her think-

All thought was cut off when she took in what was in front of her, a boy with the most bluest eyes and golden hair. Her mind went blank.

"Are those vintage crocs?"

What? She had not just said that. IT DIDN'T EVEN MAKE SENSE! But if was kinda hard to function when the most gorgeous person is on top of you and can feel his breath on your face.

"No, they're originals."

That was when it hit Sophie.

She had just knocked over her soulmate.

[arrow-guy]

Take Cover (11/??)

Summary: The world’s gone to shit and the Avengers have been missing for eight years. What difference can one person ever hope to make?

A/N: Hi, it’s been Too Long since I posted a new chapter of this story, but there’s no time like the present to get back to it. As a warning, this chapter is Super Emotional, so please go into it with caution. I made myself cry with this one, it’s that heavy. Anyway, please enjoy!

Page Dividers by @carryonmyswansong

Pairing: ClintxReader

Word Count: 4.4k

Warnings: Fire, severe exhaustion, Abuse, Murder

Part 10

“How did you figure out your powers?”

“Hydra tortured my brother and I until we were able to control them well enough.”

“I mean when you weren’t being used as a weapon.”

She frowns. “When I had the time, I would meditate. Retreat within my mind, and try to work towards the source of my powers. Then I was better able to control myself and my power. It is still a work in progress, but progress is made every single day.”

“Do you think it could work for me?” I ask. “My powers aren’t quite on the same level as yours, but they could come from the same place.”

Wanda shrugs. “It is worth a try, right?”

I nod and sigh. I press my palms together and rest my hands in my lap. Closing my eyes, I focus on trying to locate the source of my powers within me. Wanda tells me that she was able to gain better control of her powers by going back to the source. She explains that her source was a bright, angry, red ball of emotion at the core of her being, which she finds is anchored in her mind. I can’t even begin to guess at what mine will be, if I can even manage to find it.

No matter how hard I try, how tightly I squeeze my eyes shut, I can’t seem to find anything. Frustration flares in me and I clench my hands.

"I can't feel anything," I mutter. "It's just blank. Like I'm empty."

Wanda frowns. “There has to be something in there, (Y/N). Maybe you just need a little extra help to find it.”

“Are you suggesting-”

“That I poke around inside of your head?” she asks. I nod. “That is exactly what I’m suggesting.”

I hesitate. “I don’t know…”

She tilts her head to the side. “Why? Are you worried about what I might find?”

“No, it’s just… does it hurt?” I ask. “What if I lose control of my powers and hurt you?”

“That won’t happen,” she says. “And I promise that I will be gentle.”

I press my lips together. “Okay. Let’s do it.”

“Give me your hands.”

I reach out and we link hands. Her eyes glow red and her power gathers in her hands before traveling up my arms. Every point that a tendril touches tingles and goes numb. I squeeze my eyes shut and focus on trying to locate my power. Even with a little bit of help from Wanda, I can feel something within me that I couldn’t feel before, but I can’t pull it forward.

“You need to relax, (Y/N),” Wanda says. “Getting frustrated will not help.”

I nod and take several slow, deep breaths. I try to release the tension from my shoulders and sit up a little straighter, but it still feels like there’s something holding me back.

“I can feel it, but I can’t reach it.”

“This will take time. You won’t get to it after only trying for five minutes.” Her grip on my hands tightens and I feel a surge of energy rush into my chest. “Allow me to help you look.”

The energy spreads from my chest to the rest of my body, but it’s most concentrated behind my eyes. The pressure inside my head builds until everything just falls away, and I’m free-falling through blank space. I hit the ground hard enough to knock the wind from my lungs and I just lay there for a moment, trying to catch my breath. When I can finally manage it, I sit up. The area around me is bathed in pale, watery light.

I can vaguely hear Wanda’s voice in the distance. She’s trying to get my attention, but there’s too much going through my head for anything she says to stick. I stumble around in the hazy darkness until a light cuts through in the distance. I freeze in my tracks and watch as it advances on me. It gets closer and closer and I try to turn to run, but my feet are stuck in place. I can’t move.

I close my eyes and bring my arms up to shield myself as the light crashes over me. Wanda’s voice drains away completely.

When the light dissipates, it’s replaced by the warm, red light of a raging fire. I shield my face against the glow, only to realize what I’m looking at. It’s the Church. The farm I left behind all those months ago, up in flames. Something inside me forces me forward to find water, Tells me to put out the fire. Fix this. Put everything back the way things used to be. Control the outcome.

I race around, trying to find any source of water possible, but every single spigot that I know was at the farm is gone. It’s not until I find a single bucket near the chicken pens that I see any kind of source.

When I reach out to turn the crank, I jerk my hands back. Looking at my palms, I find massive blisters forming all over my hands. I clench my hands into fists and reach out again. I fill the bucket with water and throw the contents at the fire. I fill it again and again, but nothing I do makes any kind of dent in the wall of flames separating me from the rest of the facility. I keep working and push myself to the point of exhaustion.

I pause to take a break, only for the fire to swallow me up. The heat of the flames slams into me with enough force to knock me to the ground. I gasp for air and only manage to pull smoke into my lungs. With each breath, my vision grows darker and darker until I finally lose consciousness.

When I come to, I’m sat on the stool in front of Tony’s set-up in the lab. The same place where I first saw myself on the Most Wanted list. The place where I learned that Grant Ward had completely, and thoroughly betrayed me and everyone else who was supposed to trust him. That he had helped the government, Hydra, capture and torture Inhumans, my own kind, for no reason other than a sadistic fascination with taking something apart with absolutely no intention to put it back together. My blood boils just thinking about it.

I try to get up from the stool, but I’m held there by an invisible force. The more I struggle against it, the tighter the hold becomes until I’m gasping for air. Just when I think the restraints might crack a rib, the room goes dark. The restraints loosen slightly. Screens flicker to life from every possible angle, bathing the room in an eerie light. The room seems to tilt as a video begins to play.

A figure is curled into a ball in the corner to my left. It takes me a moment to recognize them as Daisy. The door opens and I flinch away when Ward walks in front of me. The audio from the video is garbled and fuzzy, like the sound is coming from far away as Ward addressed Daisy. She doesn’t move except to breathe and Ward nudges her with his boot. When she doesn’t respond he kicks her harder. I try to call out to her, to yell, scream, whatever I can to just get her attention, but no sound comes out.

Only when he does it a fourth time do her whimpers reach my ears. I yell for her again. Still, no sound.

Ward turns to face me completely and walks towards the screen facing me. He has a smile plastered on that is much too wide for his features and it makes my stomach churn.

“Ah, (Y/F/N) (Y/L/N). How kind of you to join us again.” He grabs the back of Daisy’s shirt and drags her into the middle of the room. “All of this,” he gestures to Daisy, then the room in general. “All of this could’ve been avoided if you hadn’t been such a selfish little kid. Handed over the power to me instead. You never knew what you were doing. I was the only one who could’ve handled the pressure.”

Daisy gurgles out something incoherent and Ward kicks her again, several times over. “Shut up,” he hisses. “You’re the reason everyone left. No one trusted you. Not even Coulson’s favorites. Now look at them. Daisy’s the only one left.”

Bile rises at the back of my throat, and I gag. I try to say something, anything, but the words won’t come. I can’t force them past my lips.

“May was easy, Yo-yo didn’t stand a chance against the scientists, and Mack?” Ward whistles and shakes his head. “Not nearly as tough as he wanted everyone to think he was, was he, Skye?” He laughs when she doesn’t answer. “Fitz and Simmons, now they were fun. Watching one beg for the other’s life. Wow. That truly was something special.”

I strain against the restraints as tears roll down my cheeks. I still can’t force any sound past my lips, but something shifts in the bindings around my body. They loosen and give with each new movement, and they soon snap and disappear altogether. I lunge forward to stop Ward, only for the room to go dark again. I fall to my knees and bury my head in my hands.

“Don’t cry.”

I startle at the familiar voice and, trembling, lift my eyes to see them.

Coulson lays in a hospital bed, gaunt and sickly. This would be about the time he died, if not the exact day.

I shuffle over to his bedside and haul myself up into the chair there. The plastic is hard and digs into my back. I feel very small all of a sudden. I take several shaky breaths and reach out to take his hand. It’s cold and insubstantial, like he’s here, but just barely. He could disappear at any moment.

“I don’t know how much time I’ve got with you,” he says. “But I don’t want to make you cry, (Y/N). There’s been enough of that already.”

I nod and rub my tears away with the heel of my hand. I still can’t quite form words, but they’re there on the tip of my tongue. I just need a little extra time.

Coulson squeezes my hand. “Good. You always were one of my favorites.”

“You had a lot of favorites, Phil,” I mumble. “You liked people. A lot.”

“I certainly did my best,” he says. “Though I’m sure I could’ve done better.”

I shake my head. “No, you couldn’t. You were the best. You kept everyone together.”

“All that took practice. I had my fair share of failures among the successes.” He sighs. “I will admit, you didn’t  have enough time to get used to the position-”

“You didn’t even tell me I was supposed to be running S.H.I.E.L.D., Phil. I didn’t know what I was getting myself into.”

“Would you have stuck around if I’d told you?”

“I don’t know, but I didn’t even get to make that choice, and then I had to watch you die after I had to do the same with my dad.” I hunch in on myself. “I don’t know how much more of this I can take.”

“You’ve lost a lot already, but there’s still more to come before you can do anything about it.”

“What?”

“You’re on a journey here, (Y/N).” Images appear on the walls. My father’s death, trashing the Church, Daisy, Fitz, Simmons, May, everything, everyone I’ve lost along the way, laid out for me to see. Every image chips away at whatever’s been holding me together.

“Why?”

“Hell if I know, I’m just in your head. I do know that there’s just one last thing you need to see. You’re not ready. You’ll never be ready. But whatever it is you’re trying to find, this last thing is the key.”

“I don’t want that.”

“No, (Y/N). What you don’t like about this is letting go of your control over the situation. But you know that you’ve never been in control of any of this. You gave that up a long time ago.”

“I know.”

“You have to be strong,” he says. “Not just for everyone else, but for yourself. Especially yourself.”

I nod and wipe my thumb under my eyes. “I understand. Or I think I will, at least.”

“Good.” He squeezes my hand one last time. “This is it, kiddo. I can’t help you after this.”

“I know,” I take a deep, shaking breath. “I know.”

Phil nods once and settles back against his pillows.

Everything begins to blur and fade until Phil is gone and my chair disappears from underneath me. I expect to fall to the floor, but I slowly drift down through hazy white clouds. Only when I begin to relax does my momentum begin to build, and I find myself plummeting through open space. I wrap my arms around myself and curl into as tight a ball as I can manage.

I land with back-breaking force in a grassy field, arms and legs akimbo.

It takes a moment for my head to stop spinning and for me to register the world around me.

I feel the sun on my skin and manage to peel myself up from the ground and sit up. I’m in the middle of a grassy clearing in the middle of the forest. A short way off I can see two people playing in the sun, while another sits against the trunk of a tree, watching them. Curious, I wander closer to investigate. I freeze when I’m close enough to see the person against the tree.

“Dad?” I say.

He doesn’t register anything I said and doesn’t react when I sit beside him. He just stares at the two people in the middle of the clearing. I glance at the pair running around in the sun before looking back at my father. He’s so much younger than I remember him. Happier. The worry lines haven’t set in yet and the tension I remember in his shoulders isn’t there. It brings tears to my eyes realizing that this is probably before we lost my mother.

Dad leans forward slightly and I follow his gaze.

“Careful, Rose,” he calls. “Our little sparkplug is faster than you think! She’ll run you down in no time.”

The woman stops running away from the child, who I assume is me, probably around three years old here, to look back at dad and grin. Little me manages to get the upper hand and crashes into mother’s legs. Both of them tumble to the ground laughing.

“I got you, mommy!” I squeak.

“So you did!” she exclaims. “I think that warrants a prize.”

Little me gasps and sits back in mother’s lap as she sits up. I watch in awe as she plucks several daisies from the grass and closes them between her hands. When she pulls them apart, the daisies have tripled in size and number, weaving themselves into a vibrant green, white, and fuschia flower crown. Little me squeals and claps her hands and leans forward for mother to place the crown on top of her head. Mother laughs and positions the fragile crown daintily on her head.

“Do I look pretty?” little me asks.

Mother smiles and tucks my hair behind my ear, carefully smoothing down any stray strands. “You look beautiful, little one. Every bit the princess you are.”

A rustling in the underbrush at the other side of the clearing draws my attention away from my mother, and dad seems to have noticed it as well. Mother looks up when the first man in black breaks through the treeline.

Hydra.

The first man lifts his gun, followed by four more following through the brush. Dad tenses and slowly creeps forward until he’s just barely covered by the shade.

“Take her,” mother hisses. She slowly moves little me from her lap, trying her best to keep the toddler behind her back.

“But what about you?!” dad hisses back.

“Come with us,” one of the men in black demands. “Come freely and no one will be harmed.”

“Take her, Daniel!” she says. “You take her and-”

“You will come with us!” another man barks. “We will not give you another chance.”

A third man advances with his gun raised. “Don’t move!”

Mother raises her hands, submissive. She glances back at dad and little me, silently begging my father to grab me and get out of there. Little me makes the mistake of reaching out for her, saying, “Mommy?”

One of the men gets spooked and fires off several rounds. Dad lurches forward and snatches up little me. The rest of the men open fire on the clearing and my mother rears back before slamming her hands to the earth. The ground trembles and massive roots burst through the earth. Mother is shot in the leg and she cries out. Dad looks back for a moment. A mistake.

The men turn their fire on us, and little me cries out for our mother, not understanding what’s going on. I feel sick to my stomach, but stand rooted to my spot. I’m helpless to do anything but watch. I can’t even call out a warning.

The roots tangle around the men, binding their arms to their sides, forcing their guns from their hands. She then turns back and slaps her hand on the ground behind her. A wall of grass and roots weaves together behind my father and little me. Three more men emerge from the underbrush before the wall closes completely and my father looks back, just in time to see the three men shoot her. Once in the stomach, once in the heart, and one last time in her neck.

She chokes on her own blood and collapses onto the torn-up earth beneath her, arm outstretched to us as little me screams out for her. Dad takes off running, but the Hydra operatives make no move to follow them. Instead, they stand over my mother’s body, shaking their heads, freeing their companions, and radioing back to whoever they answer to. Eventually, they clear out, leaving my mother to bleed out in the middle of the clearing.

I’m finally able to make myself move and manage to stumble over to my mother. I fall to my knees beside her, hands hovering over her motionless body, unsure of what I’m supposed to do.

“No, no, mom, I-” my voice fails me when I can’t hold back the tears any longer.

I cover my mouth with one hand to muffle the broken noises I make as tears stream down my cheeks. This is why dad never talked about her. Why wanted everything to be normal for me growing up.

“I’m so s-sorry,” I sob. I lean forward and press my forehead to my mothers, hiccupping and sniffling, completely incapable of getting myself under control. “I can barely remember who you were. I never knew you. It’s not fair. None of this is fair.”

I curl in on myself and just allow myself to cry. Let everything out. The grief, the pain, the stress, and anxiety, and pressure that’s been building up over the years. Let go of it, feel it, let it flow through me like it’s supposed to instead of keeping it bottled up.

Everything around me fades away, leaving me to cry alone in the dark.

“(Y/N)?“ I recognize that voice. “(Y/N), you gotta come back to us.”

“I don’t know how,” I answer. My voice is feeble. Broken. They won’t be able to hear me.

“Come on, sweetheart,” they say. “You’re strong. I know you can do this.”

The panicked edge in their voice causes me to worry. I prop myself up on one elbow and look around. Off in the distance, there’s a pinprick of light. It’s far away, I don’t know if I’ll be able to make it.

“Please,” they beg.

I stand up.

“Come back to us.”

I put one foot in front of the other. The voice urges me forward, gives me the strength to make the journey. The light grows bigger and brighter than before.

“Come back to me, (Y/N). I need you.”

I reach the edge of the light. Again, the voice pleads for me to come back. I take a running leap at the light, shielding my face with my hands. The world rushes in around me as soon as I crash through the barrier.

Someone sits in front of me, quietly begging for me to come back. Their warm hands on either side of my face slowly pull me forward. I can’t quite open my eyes yet. It feels like they’re glued shut. I feel myself begin to shake with the effort it takes to force my eyes open.

The person in front of me slowly comes into focus as I manage to pry one eye open, then the other. I squint against the lights but manage to make out their face.

“Clint?”

“(Y/N), oh, thank God.” He leans forward and presses his forehead to mine. “We couldn’t get through to you. I didn’t know what to do.”

“H-how long was I out?”

“Five, maybe six minutes?” He looks to Wanda for confirmation. “Wanda couldn’t pull you out of it.”

I let out a shaky breath. Everything I saw is slowly sinking in and my eyes fill with tears.

“I’m so sorry, (Y/N),” Wanda says.

“What happened?” Clint asks. He looks from me to Wanda for an answer.

“I can’t,” I shake my head. “Not here.”

Clint nods. “Okay.”

He helps me to my feet, almost supporting my full weight with his arm.

“Carry her,” Wanda says. “She is weak.”

Clint looks to me for approval and, only when I nod does he pick me up. He gently kisses my forehead and walks out into the hall. I let my head fall against his chest and hold my hands against my stomach when my fingers start to tingle. I don’t feel like I’m in control anymore.

Clint and I curl up together in bed, but he doesn’t ask me to talk. He keeps me close to his chest, my head tucked under his chin. I allow myself to calm down, for my shoulders to stop shaking, and for the tears and sniffling to subside before even trying to get his attention.

“I think I’m ready,” I say.

“Okay,” he says. He shifts back enough to see my face. “Don’t push yourself.”

I nod. “Wanda was trying to help me figure out how to use my powers. Something went wrong and I got stuck in my head, but it felt like it was longer than five minutes. It felt more like hours, and there was nothing I could do to control what was happening. There were just urges and feelings and no way to escape.”

“Are you okay?”

I shake my head. “No.”

“Can you tell me about what you saw?”

I recount the scene from the farm, how I had to keep throwing water on the fire until I passed out. About Ward and Daisy. About seeing Coulson again. “It was like he was there. Like the day he died. More lucid that he’d been for months right before he passed. He knew more about what was happening than I did.”

“He always seemed to figure things out before everyone else.”

“He warned me about the last thing I saw. Said I wasn’t ready for it and that I never would be.”

“Was he right?”

“Yes,” I whisper. I press my lips together to keep myself from crying again. I suck in a sharp breath and wipe my cheeks. “He was right. He always was.”

“What happened?”

“I saw how my mom died.”

“I thought she left when you were little.”

“No, she-” I take a shaky breath. “She was an Inhuman. She could control plants. She and I were playing in a clearing in the woods when I was about three. My dad was watching us. We were ambushed by a team of Hydra operatives. I think they were trying to bring her in or something, maybe for their experiments, but they didn’t try very hard. When I reached out for her, one of the operatives got spooked and started shooting. It turned into a full out firefight. My dad managed to get me out of there, but my mother was shot.”

“(Y/N)...”

“And I had to just watch while it happened. There was nothing I could do to stop it.” I cover my face with my hands. “I watched my own mother get murdered when I was a little kid because she was an Inhuman. Because she was different. And now I’m just like her, facing off against the same people, and I can’t even control my powers like she could.”

“You’ll get there. You’re already leaps ahead of where you were last week.”

“Huh?”

“Webster is like four floors up right now,” he says. His brows pull together. “Did you not know that?”

“No, how could I?” I begin to panic, which sends my fingers sparking. I hold my hands tight to my chest and shuffle away from Clint. I shake my head and curl into myself.

“(Y/N)-”

“No, I can’t do this.” I can feel myself start to hyperventilate. “I can’t keep doing this. I can’t.”

“Give me your hand.”

“Wh-”

“Gimme your hand, (Y/N),” he says. “I’m serious.”

I tentatively place my still sparking hand in his. The muscles in his forearm tense and I try to pull back. Clint doesn’t let me. Instead, he holds on tighter.

It dawns on me that he trusts me. Trusts that I won’t hurt him. I don’t want to hurt him. I won’t hurt him. I won’t. I won’t. I silently repeat it like a mantra and push down my panic. Clint relaxes.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I chant as Clint pulls me against him. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I’m so sorry, Clint.”

“Honey, calm down,” he says. “You just gave me a little shock.”

“I could’ve hurt you.”

“You’d never hurt me. You’re too patient for that.” He ducks his head to look me in the eye. “I love you, (Y/N). I know you can get this.”

My heart hammers in my chest. “I love you too.”

Clint cups my face and kisses me. “We’ll do this together. Okay?”

I sniff once and nod. “Okay. Together.”

He smiles, kisses my forehead, and holds me close. I fall asleep against his chest.

Thank you guys so much for reading! If you liked this chapter, please reblog, comment, and/or shoot me an ask! Feedback would be greatly appreciated!

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[besidemethewholedamntime]

For spring prompts - 13. Working in the garden, only to start a water fight + FS if you feel like it? 😊♥️

hello! I’m so sorry it took me so long. Just a quick warning for mentions to current events but it’s nothing too depressing and it leads to a really sweet family moment with Sarah!  I hope you enjoy it :)

water fights and saving the world

{Read on Ao3}

“I can’t believe we’re stuck here.”

Jemma looks around their garden which is roughly the size of a football pitch, the rolling hills stretching into craggy mountains beyond it, and tries to see what her husband is seeing, and fails. “Oh, yes,” she says drily. “Because it’s so tiny.”

He looks up at her from where he’s unspooling the hose. “You know that’s not what I mean.”

No, she supposes it’s not, and she can understand his frustration. After years of being stuck places, whether it be the Bus, or the Playground, or the Lighthouse, or in Space, or the Past (the list gets exhausting to think about after a while), their freedom found in Perth was something they had certainly enjoyed. The ability to go places wherever you felt like it, take a trip to the supermarket without wondering if someone wanted to kill you for it,  to buy  maltesers and chocolate hobnobs just knowing they would be on the shelf was something they swore they would never take for granted again. They will always be agents, it’s in their bones, but it appears they’ve let themselves slip.

“A bloody virus,” Fitz continues to mutter. “After everything we’ve been through, this is what finally does us in? You’ve got to be having a laugh.”

“Fitz,” Jemma says warningly. “Don’t go there again. Please.”

He sighs and nods, remembering, as she is, the conversation they had last night. The promise that that they wouldn’t get dragged into the bitterness. That they wouldn’t be afraid. “I know, I’m sorry. I just feel so bloody useless.”

As does she. If this were any other time in their life they would be on it by now. But it isn’t just them anymore. They have a family to think of and it is their duty above all else to keep that safe.

“We’re leaving on Thursday,” she says, but she is trying to convince herself more than anything. “Isn’t that enough?”

“You were the one who told me it wasn’t. You wanted to leave today.”

They were further out of the loop than they had realised, and the news of the virus had long since become a dominant feature on the news before other, more unofficial channels, reached out to them. Yes, they had retired, and yes, they had focused on bringing up their daughter, but she had still thought that she would be… well, it doesn’t matter, because she hadn’t been until it was too late for many, many people.

“But I know we can’t,” she tells him. “We can’t rush off into the night anymore. We have to do it properly.”

They’ve been doing their own research, of course, but without the equipment and supplies that she once had, Jemma’s been finding it rather slow. Every idea is one another has already had, every method is something somebody else has already tried. She needs to go back into a lab and she needs to bury herself in it and not emerge until she finds a solution. They need to become who they were then, but it’s so hard when she so dearly loves the life she has now.

Fitz is doing his very best to hold it together, but he is in danger of coming apart at the seams. She puts her hand on his shoulder and he grabs onto it as though it is the only thing keeping him afloat.

“We solved an alien virus, Jemma,” he says quietly, his voice dangerously close to breaking. “We solved that and we can’t-”

“Don’t. Please.” But only because she cannot bear it. She takes a deep breath. “That was different. This isn’t just us and you know it. Everybody’s trying. Science can’t be rushed, it takes time. You know that.”

They both do, it’s just the fact is rather inconvenient now.

“I’m scared,” he had told her last night, while they were pressed together in the middle of the bed, the dark a comforting blanket around them. “I’m so scared.”

“Me too,” she had told him, snuggling into him further, and allowing the weight of his arms around her waist to ground her. “But we’ll get through this. We don’t know any other way.”

Jemma knows he remembers her falling out of the plane, that it is, in fact, one of his recurring nightmares. It’s returned with a vengeance, recently, and he wakes up gasping for breath and sometimes not even Jemma is enough to calm him down. The only thing that always works, without fail, is when he stumbles to their daughter’s room and watches her sleep. She is what reminds him how far they have come, no matter what.

Jemma has dreams, too, and they are different, but it’s always their daughter that brings her back, too. If she’s terrified enough then Fitz can be an illusion, the right face but the wrong mind. Sarah is Sarah, a salvation, and she is always the same. It’s the only way to know the dream is truly over.

“I want to protect you both,” he tells her now, and he looks down at the grass but Jemma knows there are tears in his eyes. “I just don’t know how and it makes me feel even more useless.”

“Hey,” she says softly, kneeling down next to him. Gently, she places two fingers under his chin and forces him to meet her eyes. “It’s not just your job. It’s our job.”

He sniffs. “Yeah, you’re right. And we’re going soon. We’ll help.”

“That’s the spirit,” she says, and kisses him quickly before standing up. “Come on then,” she says briskly, trying to restore some sort of normalcy in this crazy world. “We better water the plants now, while we still can. It looks like it will rain soon.”

Fitz stands up, too, and she watches as he rearranges his face. “You do know that if it rains that kind of makes this pointless, right?”

“The rain doesn’t get the plants in the greenhouse, and it doesn’t get the plants in that corner because of the trees.”

“I actually had a plan for that-”

But he breaks off, because they don’t know when they’ll be back here to enact any plan they may have for their garden. They stand dumbly for a moment, completely at a loss for what to say.

Luckily Sarah breaks the silence with a wail and Jemma mutters, “I’ll get her,” before darting inside the house, swiping tears off her cheeks as she goes.

“Hello, there,” she says to her daughter, who’s standing up in her cot, gripping the bars and casting her mother a mournful look. “You’re awake, I see.”

Sarah isn’t even a year old yet, and already her life is being uprooted. She may not remember it, true, but it doesn’t ease the guilt any. Jemma picks her up and holds her close, feeling, not for the first time, that desire to press her into her heart and keep her safe there forever.

“Come on,” she says, faux jovially, desperate to keep some semblance of normal in these last few remaining days before they’re brought back into the fold. “Shall we go and help daddy with the garden?”

Sarah giggles happily and begins to play with Jemma’s necklace, clutching it in her tiny starfish hands. Jemma’s so absorbed in trying to gently tease it from her that she doesn’t look where she’s going and as soon as she steps out the back door into the garden she’s immediately sprayed with a burst of freezing water.

For a second she can’t move, can’t believe it’s just happened. Then she turns to Fitz, who stands there with a horrified expression on his face, the hose dangling guiltily on his face.

“Oops,” he says sheepishly. “Sorry about that. Was trying to, um, wash the windows and must have missed it by a bit.”

She could be angry, but it’s not his fault and Sarah laughing away and trying to clutch at the water droplets still falling through the air is enough to dispel any negative feeling. Still, there’s no reason not to have a little fun. Keeping her face blank, she spins on her heel and marches back into the kitchen.

“Aw, Jemma!” He calls after her, and she’ll have to be quick for in a minute he’ll come looking. She begins to rake around in the kitchen drawer for those water balloons that Daisy bought the last time she came to visit and manages to fill a few up one-handed, before scooping them up and tucking them between her and Sarah and miming sh to her daughter, who looks absolutely delighted at this kind of clandestine operation. It takes an effort but Jemma manages to make her face stony and blank, and when she appears in the garden once again, Fitz is looking at her with a concerned expression on his face.

“You’re not that mad about it, are you?” He asks and when she shakes her head, using all her energy not to laugh at his wounded puppy expression, he peers gently forward and says, “Are you sure?”

“Yes.” And when he turns momentarily away from her she takes the opportunity to pick a balloon and launch it at the back of his head, where it lands with a smack and bursts fantastically, instantly soaking.

There’s a few seconds of silence, as Fitz goes through what Jemma went through only moments earlier, and it’s only when Sarah claps her hands together and wiggles in Jemma’s arms that the spell is broken and Fitz turns around, eyes wide with betrayal.

“I can’t believe you,” he says, voice nearly an octave higher with outrage. “I can’t believe you just did that.”

Jemma shrugs. “I can.”

“You made me think you were mad!”

“You inferred that on your own. I never said a thing.”

“Which implies that you were mad!”

“Oh come on,” she wheedles, not worried for a second that she’s genuinely upset him. Over a decade of partnership and she can read him like a book in the time it takes her to blink. “There’s no need to be grumpy about it.”

A slow smirk spreads across his face. “You’re right, there isn’t.” He holds up his hand, which still contains the hose. “I have this.”

“And I have these.” Her water balloon arsenal seems mildly pathetic in comparison, and it takes a split second for the grin on Fitz’s face to grow even wider and for her to realise quite what it means before she’s showered in water once again.

It’s a gentle spray, because she still holds Sarah which gives her a slight advantage, but it’s absolutely freezing, of course their baby doesn’t seem to mind. She laughs and squeals and tries to catch the water droplets, clapping her hands together and looking down in disappointment when they don’t remain.

“You’re going to regret this!” Jemma yells, as she attempts to throw another water balloon which lands not as impressively on Fitz’s arm.

“Maybe!” He yells back, still spraying them. “But not right now!”

They both run about the garden, ramping up their yelps and squeals for Sarah’s benefit, who seems to think this is the best ever moment of her life. At one point the water balloons empty, and Fitz grants her a two-minute reprieve in order to restock her ammunition. It is time she doesn’t waste, and when she comes back into the garden again, she carries an entire bucket full of the things (the pack from Daisy having been a bumper pack of 1000). The look on Fitz’s face is priceless.

“Not regretting your weapon now, are you?”

“Never,” he says, though he swallows audibly. “The hose won’t run out.”

“Yes, but how long can you take being pelted by these?”

“Pft. No problem. I could last forever.”

His eyes are shining in the sun and water drips off his hair and down his face. In this moment he looks like a combination of all the Fitz’s she has ever known; that young boy that she met when she was sixteen, that young man that screamed at her through a glass wall and begged her not to give up, and that man that held her hand and told her that she was the most precious thing in the world to him, and that he could never give her up for the world even if he tried.

In this moment she feels such a love for him, such an expansive, all-encompassing love that threatens to make her heart burst out of her chest. In this moment she could hug him so tightly that she could fuse his bones with hers, she could kiss him so passionately until they both see stars. In this moment she loves him so much she doesn’t know what to do with it, so she does she only thing she can do, and throws a water balloon that hits him directly in the face.

“Oi!” He yelps, after he splutters water out of his mouth like a fountain. “What was that for?”

She smiles as she shrugs. “Because I love you.”

“I love you, too,” he tells her, and turns back on the hose.

The water fight lasts a while, and Jemma encourages Sarah to get a few good shots in with her father, much to Fitz’s chagrin (That’s dirty, Jemma, turning her against her father. That’s really dirty). They play until the garden is sufficiently watered, even the plants under the trees, and they are both soaking down to their underwear. Eventually the water balloon supply is exhausted and Sarah is starting to droop against Jemma’s shoulder. When Fitz turns the water off, they both sink down onto the grass that’s littered with the neon remnants of the balloons, look at each other, and burst out laughing.

“What a day,” Fitz sighs first. He swipes water from his face. “I didn’t expect this.”

Jemma surveys the garden, the rivulets of water running off everything as though a rainstorm has passed through. “We made quite a mess.”

“Ach.” Fitz waves his hand dismissively. “It’s fine. We’ll clean it later. There’s no rush.”

The reality that they’ve managed to avoid suddenly comes back and settles between them, but it doesn’t seem as big as before. Perhaps she’s just tired and can’t find the energy, but she doesn’t feel as afraid in this moment. She feels invincible.

She chooses not to mention the ticking clock, wanting only to live as she is right now. “At least it’s warm. We’d catch our deaths if we tried this any other time.”

He chuckles. “You’re the one that wanted to move here. I told you it was colder than what you knew.”

“I know.” She shuffles closer to him, until she can feel his body heat radiate through his wet clothes, instantly warming her. “I think there’s a burst water balloon down my top.”

He turns to her in amazement. “How does that work? I didn’t throw one at you.”

“Stranger things have happened.”

“To us, definitely.” He holds out his arms for Sarah and Jemma passes her over. She’s so sleepy she goes without complaint, and she presses her face to her father’s shirt and instantly begins to snore, making both her parents laugh.

“I wish she’d stay this size forever,” Fitz murmurs, running his thumb gently down the side of Sarah’s face. “I know she can’t, I’d just like her to.”

“Me too,” Jemma hums, leaning her head on Fitz’s shoulder.  “She’s getting so big.”

Once upon a time Sarah was a tiny little thing who couldn’t even hold her own head up. Now she’s solid, and she frowns deeply when displeased, and a crease appears in her forehead when she’s thinking deeply, for example when she’s puzzled by her own reflection. She will grow up one day and Jemma knows both she and Fitz will be entirely unprepared for it. One day they’ll be sitting here, looking back, and wondering at how it could have happened without them realising.

The sun is setting over the hills, a yellow ball in the sky that’s basking the world in miraculous shades of orange. It occurs to Jemma that she never wants to leave, and suddenly there’s an intense attack of homesickness even though she hasn’t yet left.

“We’ll come back here, won’t we, Fitz?” He cannot give her anything more than she already has, she knows, but she just needs to hear him say it. “When all of this is over and the world has calmed down again. We’ll come back?”

He swallows audibly, and turns his head from the sunset to kiss her softly on her hair before turning back to it. “Yeah,” he says after a moment, voice thick. “We’ll come back.”

“I like the life we’ve made here. I don’t think I could bear to give it up.”

“Just for a little bit. Then we’ll come home.”

There’s milk in the fridge that needs to be used up, and there are eggs in the cupboard that go out of date next week. There’s a to do list of all the rooms they want to redecorate that they are only halfway through. The bedding was meant to get washed this weekend. The plants on the windowsill are supposed to get watered on a Monday. There are things they have ordered online that they now won’t be in to collect.

This is their life. This is their home. And while she knows they have to do this, of that she has no doubt and no qualms, it is still so hard to give up this peace that they worked so hard for. A normal life. But they are Fitzsimmons. Normal has never been a concept for them.

“We do this together,” she says decisively. “The three of us. We do it together or not at all. We can fix this as long as we’re together.”

She feels Fitz nod at her side, knows that he can’t speak, knows that his biggest fear is them being separated irrevocably, just as it is her own. She will not let that happen, though. They will fix this, side by side, with their family, as they always have done, and nothing will tear them apart.

Until they have to leave, though, she is quite happy to just sit on the grass with Sarah asleep between them, watching the sun set gently behind the hills as though they have all the time in the world.

[daisylincs]

Ok sorry if you get multiple of the same ask just ignore the copies Anyway can you do a staticquake 53, 58, 62

53 = Mutual Pining, 58 = Accidental Eavesdropping and 62 = Love Confessor (Character A confessing their love for Character B to Character C). 

Hey thanks, anon! Now, for some reason, my brain at midnight decided it would be a really good idea to combine this prompt with, of all things, a Circus AU. I cannot for the life of me explain why I thought this, except maybe that I was scrolling through the prompt list and realised that I've never actually seen a Circus AU before. (If you've ever seen one, please send it to me!! I'd love to give it a read.) 

Anyway, however it happened, here's the bullet-point fic for you! I hope you like it 😁🎪

Shield Circus is known far and wide for its incredible acts, and for how its performers have formed their own tight-knit little family. From the ringmaster, Coulson, who's basically a dad to them all, to the fearless trapeze queen May and her protégés Daisy and Elena, to Fitz and Jemma with their ever-hilarious mad science show, everyone has a place where they fit in, and everyone knows, trusts and likes everyone. 

Naturally, there's a lot of teasing around, too - with a group as close as that, what else can you expect, really? 

And since Fitzsimmons have finally gotten their act together (ha, ha) the group's collective shipping interest has moved on to Daisy. 

Specifically, Daisy and Lincoln, who everybody can see like each other - except, obviously, Daisy and Lincoln. 

Lincoln's role in the circus is a musician, and while he's still a part of the Shield family, he's not as super-close as all the performers are. Him and Daisy are friends, sure, but they're not that close, and he's sure his massive crush is unrequited. 

After all, why would someone like her, who can literally fly through the air, fall in love with him, whose only sort-of skill is playing the circus theme?

 He's made it a habit to sit and watch her train with May and Elena in the evenings - she's absolutely radiant in the air, flushed and happy with success, and always laughing and delighted with herself when she comes down to the ground again. 

Oh, he's so far gone. 

"You two drive me up the wall," Hunter, the lion-tamer, informs Lincoln as he's setting up his act. (Lincoln doesn't think Hunter can really talk, since he literally describes his job with the lions as "they can't do anything worse to me than my hellbeast wife." But he doesn't say that - Hunter and Bobbi are in one of their on phases.) 

Instead he just grumbles, "yeah, whatever, man," as he trails the trapeze artists out of the ring so he can hopefully catch Daisy for a chat before dinner. 

He's hanging around outside the changing room - not creepily, thank you very much, he and Daisy actually have a standing arrangement to meet up after she's done with training to laugh together about the day's nonsense - when he hears May's voice. 

He's a little surprised, because May usually changes very quickly so she can go over the plans for the next show with Coulson before dinner. 

And he knows he shouldn't, but if his time with Shield has taught him anything, it's that privacy is a rather vague construct around here. Eavesdropping is a thing in the circus, especially if it can get you good bribing material. 

Nobody's ever got any good bribing material on May, so can you even blame him for listening in? 

What he hears, though, is decidedly not that. 

"... sure he doesn't feel the same way?" May is asking. 

It's Daisy who replies. "I don't know! He's never shown anything that couldn't just be interpreted as just, you know, being a good friend."

 May makes a kind of unconvinced "hmm" noise. 

"Oh, don't give me that," Daisy says, exasperated. "Fitz and Jemma used to meet up after training all the time - hell, they even slept in each other's trailers." 

"And Fitz and Jemma are now dating," May says drily. 

Lincoln can just see the scowl on Daisy's face. "Okay, fine, maybe not my best example. But -" her voice catches slightly "- I don't want to go into this unless I'm absolutely sure he feels the same way. I can't… the pain of thinking someone really cares about me, then having my heart torn out when I find out the truth - I can't go through that again." 

He has never heard her sound so vulnerable, and it makes his heart clench. He knows exactly who did this to her, and if Ward ever shows his face here again, Lincoln will punch him straight into the next county. (He suspects he'll have to stand in line, though.) 

There's a kind of soft rustle in the room, and he thinks it might mean May has pulled Daisy into a hug. His heart clenches again, for entirely different reasons this time - May might seem unapproachable and impassive, but God, she cares so much. 

"Daisy," May says softly, and Lincoln almost gasps at how gentle her voice is. "I know you've been hurt, but if my life has taught me one thing, it's that we're not meant to spend our lives alone. Love is something we should all have, and I know better than anyone how hard it can be to open your heart to it, because the first step is trust."

"Trust, Daisy," she continues. "I know how hard it is, but you have to trust that Lincoln is nothing like Ward. You have to trust that he's a good guy, and that he'd never hurt you that way." 

Lincoln almost misses the rest of her sentence, because his brain has frozen at the mention of his name. Wait, wait, wait. They were talking about him?

What???

Surely this doesn't mean… if she said she's not sure he feels the same way… if May is talking about love… 

His brain blanks out completely for a few seconds as it hits him that Daisy might actually return his feelings. 

Somewhat poetically, it's Daisy's voice that brings him back to reality. "He's a really, really good friend," she says, and her voice is so warm. "You really think he feels the same way?" 

Lincoln can practically hear May rolling her eyes. "Of course he does," she says. "Daisy, that boy is gaga for you." 

Daisy laughs softly, incredulously, as though she's only just letting herself believe it. (He totally gets the feeling.) 

"Thanks, May," she says, still in that slightly breathless tone of voice. 

And Lincoln has never heard May sound so warm as she replies, "Anytime." 

He's so caught up in wondering at it all that he almost doesn't realise when the door opens. He has to scramble like a mad thing to get behind one of the lockers so the women don't see him. 

"Lincoln should be somewhere nearby," Daisy says, and he winches at the absolute accuracy of that. "We always meet up for a chat around this time." 

"And you think you two don't have anything special," May snorts. 

Daisy shakes her head. "Yeah, yeah." But she's smiling as she walks off. 

Lincoln is smiling, too, and he's so relieved and happy that he totally forgets about the locker he ducked behind. As he stands up, he bangs his head against it, really, really loudly. 

Ow. 

And also, oh, shit. 

May whips around, her eyes narrowing. "Out," she orders. 

Lincoln sheepishly comes out from behind the locker, rubbing his head. That really hurt, and now he's busted. Just perfect. 

May's eyes narrow even further, if that's even possible. "How long were you there?" she asks in her soft, dangerous tone. 

Lincoln swallows. He wouldn't dare lie to May. So, shame-facedly, he admits, "since pretty much the beginning." 

"And why," May asks in a voice that bites like a whip, "did you think it was a good idea to listen in on a private conversation?" 

"I… was hoping… to get bribing material," he says weakly. "On, uh, you." 

He's sure he's just signed his own death warrant, but to his total surprise, May snorts and rolls her eyes. "This really is Coulson's circus, isn't it? He's really rubbed his no-personal-space-we're-a-family ethic off on you all, hasn't he?" 

"Uh, yeah," Lincoln says awkwardly. 

May shakes her head, but there's only fondness in her gaze. "He'd be so frustratingly happy to hear that." 

Her gaze sobers quickly, though. "I was right, wasn't I?" she asks, getting straight to the point. He's always respected that about her. "You do love Daisy?" 

"Of course I do," he says, and he can feel a grin tugging at his lips just to admit it. Wow, it feels good - but it's nothing compared to actually KNOWING she feels the same way. 

May's gaze is amused, but, he thinks, just a bit affectionate, too. "Good," she says. "Then I think you two will be very happy." 

"Thanks," he says, feeling his grin widen and his chest expand with warmth. "That means a lot, from you." 

Because it really does - May is basically Daisy's mom. The little exchange he just overheard pretty much proves that. 

May smiles at him - an actual smile. Whoa. "Off you go," she tells him. "Go find the girl you love." 

He can't stop grinning as he turns to walk away, feeling a literal bounce in his step. Fitz really wasn't exaggerating with the whole love-makes-you-so-happy-you-could-float-away thing, was he? 

"Just one more thing," May calls as he's about to round the corner. "I don't think I really need to tell you this, but if you hurt Daisy, I promise you I will put you in that cannon and fire you through the roof." 

Lincoln has to bite back a grin at the picture, but he's never been more serious as he replies, "I hope you'll never have to do that." 

May gives him a nod, and he really feels like he's passed a test. A nod and a smile from Melinda May? He never thought he'd see the day. 

He's so preoccupied in his proud thoughts that he completely forgets to look where he's going, and crashes right into someone on the other side of the corner. 

"What the… Daisy?!?!" he exclaims as he sees who it is. Then he processes her suspicious pose leaning against the corner. "What are you… were you eavesdropping on me?" 

Daisy’s cheeks are burning, but she folds her arms and stares him down. "Well, as it turns out, I was eavesdropping on you admitting that you had eavesdropped on me," she points out, confusingly but correctly. 

He has to concede that one - and he's pretty sure his cheeks are burning, too, as he realises what exactly she would have heard. 

"So, um, you… like me, too?" he asks. 

At the exact same time, she says, "I can't believe you like me, too!" 

"Well," he says, cheeks practically on fire from burning so much, "I thought I was actually pretty obvious, what with the whole watching you train and spending every free minute chatting with you -" 

"I thought you were just being a good friend!" she protests, and somehow she's drifting a step closer to him with every word. "I didn't know that I'd end up falling for you, even though your puns are the stupidest thing in this world!" 

"My puns are awesome," he argues, letting the last bit of distance between them draw closed. "And, really, didn't you see all the similarities between us and Fitzsimmons?"

"Well, you probably thought I didn't even notice you," she reasons, raising her hands to poke at his chest but ending up just resting them there. "As if I could not notice you!"

 "Should we just agree that we're a pair of oblivious idiots, then?" he asks, reaching out to brush a curl of hair behind her ear and letting his hand linger behind her ear. 

And, really, that line should not be as romantic as it is, but Daisy's gaze turns all soft and warm. 

"Yes," she says, and her voice is breathless in the best way possible. "We should."

And then they're kissing, her hands flattening and smoothing on his chest and his hands cradling the sides of her face. 

To think he ever thought she wouldn't notice him. To think she ever thought he was just being a good friend! 

If they weren't so busy kissing, he might even see what Hunter means. 

But as it is, he's fully occupied with the wonderful feeling of Daisy's lips on his. 

Well, at least until he gears someone start clapping slowly behind them. 

"Really, Hunter?" Daisy asks without even opening her eyes. 

Hunter doesn't even have the dignity to look ashamed of himself. "Come on, Dais, you know the drill." He holds out his hand to Fitz. "Come on, mate, pay up." 

Grumbling, Fitz forks over what looks like a hundred dollars. Lincoln just shakes his head. 

Then May walks calmly around the corner and takes the money from Hunter's hand. "Actually, I think you'll find that my bet predicted this to the day," she says, and holds out her hand for everyone to pay up. 

At Daisy and Lincoln's absolutely incredulous stares, she shrugs and pockets her money. "What do you expect? I married Phil Coulson." 

Then she's walking away like the badass she is, leaving everyone else to trail after her. 

Daisy buries her head in Lincoln's shoulder. "This is a crazy family we're part of, isn't it?" 

His eyes light up with mischief. "Yeah, it's a real circus." 

Daisy's eyes widen, and she groans and slaps at his shoulder. "Oh my Goooood." 

She can feel his laughter even more than she can hear it with her cheek pressed against his chest. 

And cliché as it might be, she's never been happier. 

She's found where she truly belongs. 

"They're crazy," she agrees, looking up at him with a soft smile, "but I wouldn't trade any of it for the world." 

The End. 

[monstersandmaw]

Mothman x male reader (sfw) - Starfall Springs

Edit which I’m including in all my works after plagiarism and theft has taken place: I do not give my consent for my works to be used, copied, published, or posted anywhere. They are copyrighted and belong to me.

Whoop! A story! An actual full-length story! I'm sorry it's been a bit quiet lately - I've had a lot going on, and doing all those hand-written thank you stories and cards took it out of me a bit last month.

But! We're back on track again! And here's an adorable mothman to celebrate!

So, without further faff, here's Fitz' story (here's his colouring and sketchy doodle in case you missed it over on Patreon). Don't forget to let me know what you think of it!

Content: 4,445 words, sfw, reference to high-school bullying and there's the appearance of a face from Fitz' past who brings back bad memories.

___

“Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!”

“You… ok?” came a hesitant voice from behind you.

You jumped, turning your back on the mess behind you as the lab door swung closed with a soft hiss and your heart sank. Not only was the subject of your every waking (and sleeping) fantasy standing before you, but he was observing the absolute, catastrophic, and apocalyptic cock-up you’d just made of the test samples.

The mothman tilted his dusky head slightly and then allowed his delicate antennae to waggle before, to your surprise and evident relief, allowed himself a tiny chuckle. The sound wheezed out of him in a little squeak and he fluttered his twin wings to make a soft buzzing sound. His two sets of silvery brown arms waved in a pacifying gesture and he stepped closer on his impossibly tiny feet and murmured, “It’s ok. Those are the samples of varnish from the furniture conservation lab, right?”

You nodded disconsolately, no longer worried about concealing the mess of broken glass and flakes of ancient, decrepit varnish behind you. “They were…”

He buzzed his wings again and grinned, his dark, fuzzy face splitting into a frankly adorable grin as his mouth parts moved. “It’s fine. My friend is head of furniture conservation. I’m sure she can take some more samples for you. Relax… You don’t want to know how royally I fucked up on my first day here.”

“But it’s not my first day,” you mumbled. “Or even my first month…”

“I know. You’ve just been storing it up for now…” Fitz laughed and took you gently by the arm, steering you carefully away from the mess of shattered glass and out of harm’s way. Your hands were shaking. He tilted his head and frowned, his huge eyes unblinking and yet somehow full of concern. “Hey, you ok?”

You took a huge sigh and shook your head. “I… I just wanted to do ok here, you know? And I’ve fucked up already. My three month probation period isn’t up yet… They can just fire me, and there’s nothing I can do…”

To your surprise, he laughed again, but it wasn’t unkind. “It’s fine,” he said, his small hand coming to rest between your shoulder blades as he guided you away from the mess towards the door. Instinctively you leaned into the touch before you’d even realised it, and he smiled again when you jerked your chin up to look at his face. “Accidents happen,” he reassured you. “Come on, let me take you to the break room and get you a cup of tea.”

“Really, you don’t need to -” you began, but he only smiled. “I mean, I should clean this up first…”

“It’s non-toxic and it’s just you and me in the lab today. I’ll lock the door behind us. Besides, I’d like to get a cup of tea with you. You don’t have to come with me though,” he added, taking half a step back, “If you’d rather not.” It was then that you noticed just how delicate his tiny feet were, and he did another little shuffle as your eyes landed on them. He was barefoot, and they were fuzzy.

“Sorry,” you muttered. “Yeah, I’d like that.”

He smiled and led you away. “I haven’t had much chance to chat with you,” he said conversationally in his rasping, musical tenor, and as he turned you saw that in the downy fur on his hunched, dusky shoulders were the markings of a skull. You guessed that he was a privet hawk mothman, given that his wings and body had a glorious pink banding on, and as he glanced back over his broad shoulders, he caught you staring at the dusky brown wings that hung down his back, shuffled them ostentatiously and smiled. “I’m guessing I’m the first moth boy you’ve met, right?”

“Right again,” you said, flushing hot.

Fitz chuckled again, a sound like a whickering horse, and he said, “And you’ve not been in Starfall Springs all that long either…” It wasn’t a question.

You shrugged. “Few months.”

“Where are you living?” he asked, holding the door open for you with one left hand and ushering you through with the other.

“In a caravan on the outskirts,” you said. “It’s all I can afford right now, and I don’t have a lot of stuff so…”

“Oh,” he said, his antennae perking up. “Have you met Saph then?”

“Saph?”

“Guess not. She’s one of the conservators who works at the workshops across town but she lives at the park too. She’s a feisty little goblin - if you’d met her, you’d remember her,” he snorted, quickly adding, “But she’s great.”

“Not trying to set me up, are you?” you said, unable to keep the heat from your cheeks again, and Fitz laughed.

“If you want me to, I can try, but I’m no matchmaker. For that, you want someone like Crystal.”

You halted. “The goth faun from forensics?”

He bowed his head. “The very same.”

“No.”

He waggled his antennae in a way that reminded you of someone raising their eyebrows, and said nothing.

You snorted and said, “Well, thanks, but I don’t swing Saph’s way anyway.”

“Not into goblins, or not one for an interspecies relationship altogether?” he asked, a sudden and almost imperceptible quavering creeping into his husky voice, though when you glanced back over your shoulder as you entered the break room, he didn’t seem to show any sign of unease.

“Not into women,” you muttered, and the sudden rush of adrenaline that came with the admission nearly made your knees cave in. If you’d have admitted to being gay to a colleague at your previous job in the city, you may well have found your car tyres slashed at the end of the day at the very least. That had been a chapter of your life you’d been only too happy to leave well behind.

But Fitz seemed to relax and even laughed softly again. “I’m sorry,” he said. “That was absolutely none of my business. I apologise.”

“I’m the one who brought up matchmaking,” you countered jovially, pushing through your momentary stall. “It’s fine.” You filled the kettle and set it to boil while he went right up onto tiptoes to get a couple of mugs out of the cupboard.

He wasn’t as tall as you, perhaps half a head shorter, and when he turned round and caught you staring at the way his wings flexed slightly when he strained to reach the shelf, he seemed a little bashful. “Well, we can’t all be big graceful men like you,” he snapped quietly, clearly embarrassed. Excluding antennae, he was probably about 5’6”

It was your turn to laugh, “‘Graceful?!’ Did you actually see the giant mess I made back there?” you snickered, jabbing your thumb over your shoulder.

“Good point. Here,” he said, handing you a mug. “There’s an assortment of teas in the cupboard, and milk in the fridge. Sugar is in that pot there.” That last bit of information he added with particular relish, and you had to smile, knowing how moths essentially existed off nectar and sugar water.

“So what exactly did you do that was so catastrophic on your first day?” you asked with a twinkle in your eyes once you had your mug cradled in your fingers, and he threw back his head again and laughed, wings fluttering with merriment.

“I broke the portable XRF machine… Dropped it.”

Your brain stalled. Those things didn’t come cheap. “Wow, ok…” you said, fighting off a giggle. “That… That puts a few dropped specimen jars into perspective!”

“Right?” he said cheekily. “Oh man, the boss was angry about it, but, that’s what they have insurance for. It was fine, in the end. But I was banned from using any equipment except for a pencil for a week…”

Chatting with him over a cup of tea had precisely the effect that Fitz had hoped for, and you relaxed after the shock of breaking the glass, and didn’t feel so bad about the shattered containers and contaminated samples either. You got back to work not long after that, and he headed up to his office on the second floor with the promise that he’d have his friend collect a few more varnish samples from the antique furniture she was working on for you to run through the FTIR spectrometer.

Shortly after five, you had just switched the lights off and locked the lab door behind you when the sound of someone clearing their throat behind you in the dark corridor almost made you screech like a stepped-on dog toy.

Whipping around, you saw a dark shape in the dimly lit passageway, with hunched shoulders and a strange, cape-like silhouette. For a horrible moment your brain went blank with fear until you realised that it wasn’t a cloaked figure, but rather that the outline was in fact that of gently folded wings. “Fitz!” you hissed, “Fuck! You scared the shit out of me!”

“Sorry,” he said. “I forget that humans can’t see in the dark.”

“Or hear your adorable feet moving around,” you muttered.

“I’ve got good hearing too,” he said dryly, letting your awkward compliment slide by him.

“Of course you do,” you cursed. “What did you want, other than to make sure my adrenal glands are still functioning, which they are, by the way.”

He snorted a delicate laugh out of his fuzzy nose and stepped back as you walked down the corridor towards him. “I wondered if you wanted to get a drink after work, that’s all.”

You paused and frowned curiously at him. “Sure,” you said. “Alright. You have somewhere in mind?”

He nodded, suddenly shy. “Yeah. There’s a nice cosy little traditional pub on the north side of town.”

“That’s a bit of a walk from the trailer park, but I could use the exercise. Sure. You want to go straight there, or shall I meet you there later?”

Fitz shrugged a wing. “Up to you. It’s probably a good forty minute walk from here…”

You adjusted your rucksack on your back and said, “I’m up for it. It’s a nice evening.”

The mothman’s delicate mouth parts shifted slightly into his little smile, and the two of you left the building together. His stride was surprisingly short and dainty, but his delicate feet made easy progress along the road and down the hill from the research lab and down towards the rambling town of Starfall Springs below. The ancient trees of the forest which was known by locals simply as the ‘old forest’ whispered softly to one another and you could have sworn you heard half-articulated phrases drifting on the light breeze. Leaving the eerie, timeless place behind, you and Fitz rounded a bend in the country road and saw the sandstone buildings with their cheery terracotta roof tiles and lush, green spaces spread out like a fairytale tapestry below you.

You sighed contentedly and shook your head slightly with mild disbelief that this verdant paradise was now where you lived.

Fitz picked up on your shift in mood almost instantly, as though the wind had changed direction, and, antennae shifting back and forth slightly in alternating waggles, he asked, “Something wrong?”

You shook your head. “The opposite actually… This place is unreal.”

Fitz turned his head back to look at the same view, but something told you he saw a different scene. “I guess…” he said softly.

Quizzically you turned to look at him. “You don’t think so?”

He shrugged. “I’ve lived here all my life,” he said, letting the light breath of wind lift his wings a little before clamping them back down again. “I grew up here, went to high school here, moved back here after university… I mean, sure, it’s pretty, and it’s a haven for non-humans who’ve had a shit life in the city, but it’s not without its issues.”

“Like what?”

“Oh… you know… I don’t want to put you off or anything, but… it’s not just a case of ‘humans versus non-humans’… There are family feuds and deep prejudices amongst the rest of us too. Take the Silkfoots for example…”

“The driders up in the mansion on the hill?”

“Exactly,” he said, running his small hand over his fuzzy, dusky coloured head. “They’re alright, don’t get me wrong, but they’ve had this long-standing hatred for Rhae, you know, the reclusive lich mage in the tower, and his little so-called ‘gaggle’ of goblins… The miners hate the Silkfoots because they controlled all the trade and taxes in the area way back when and made a load of profit on it, and… yeah, I won’t bore you with all of it, but let’s just say there’s politics here too, right down to a seriously petty level.”

After a moment’s thought you said, “I guess I should have realised…”

He shrugged nonchalantly, though you could see that something troubled him deeply still; something long-ingrained and with great emotion behind it.

“How do you feel about more humans moving here?” you asked hesitantly.

Fitz took a moment to think about it, but after a sidelong look at you, he nodded and said, “I think it’s a good thing… It stops us non-humans getting too high and mighty and ‘better than thou’, way out here with no humans to hunt us or bother us or objectify us, and it opens up healthier communication between the species.”

“Back to that interspecies relationship stuff again,” you grinned, digging him lightly in his fuzzy ribcage and nudging him off balance for half a step.

His wings tucked in suddenly very tightly and he turned his face away, antennae flat to his head like a worried horse’s ears.

“Fitz? I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable…”

A nervous laugh fluttered out of him and he risked another glance at you before laughing awkwardly and scratching the back of his head with his upper right hand again. The death’s head pattern on the thicker fluff of his stooped shoulders was disturbed for a moment before it rose like a werewolf’s hackles and settled back into place, as though he’d got the shivers for a moment. “Forget it,” he said, his hoarse tenor voice cracking a little. “I just meant that it’s nice to have some humans around who are actually good for us, for a change. My best friend in school was human.”

“Was?” you blurted before you could stop yourself.

You were nearly at the bottom of the winding road into town and the wide sweep of Starfall Springs beyond was beginning to melt into the dusky haze of late evening. Fitz sighed again. “‘Is’ human,” he corrected himself. “Just no longer my best friend.”

“Oh.”

He sighed. “He and I were so close. We never thought anything of the difference between us as kids. Then when he went away to university - Oxenbridge, no less,” he added bitterly, “He just… ditched me. Said that I ‘couldn’t possibly think he’d stay in contact with a dirty animal like me now that he’d escaped Starfall Shithole’…”

“Fuck, Fitz, that’s awful,” you growled, heat rising up your neck, fists clenching, pulse quickening to a gallop in your ears. “Ack, shit like that makes me so angry. It’s so unnecessary and small-minded.”

Fitz fixed you with a strangely sanguine stare and shrugged again. “I figured I’m better off without someone like that in my life. Still hurt at the time though.”

“I bet,” you breathed. Acting on impulse, you reached for his lower left arm as it swung gently beside you as you walked side by side towards the river and the old stone bridge into the town. You touched him lightly above his elbow and let your thumb play back and forth over the fur there, the colour of wet sea sand, and he shuddered violently and then laughed.

“Mothfolk are pretty sensitive,” he murmured, voice catching in his throat.

“So I see,” you said, repeating the gesture just once more and withdrawing your hand.

After a few more paces down the road, he smiled shyly again and said, “Thank you,” and you knew he was referring to his story about his best friend’s betrayal.

“Did you love him?” you dared ask.

He nodded silently. “He was my first.”

“Ah, shit, I’m sorry. That makes it even worse.”

Fitz took a big sigh and stared off into the horizon.

“Hey,” you asked, changing the subject and looking at his wings. “Can I ask you something completely different?”

“With pleasure,” he said wryly. “Fire away.”

“Since I’ve never seen any mothfolk before, let alone met one, I have no idea if this is a rude question or not, so…”

“I’ll forgive you if it is,” he laughed. “You’re making me nervous. Get on with it!”

With a snort, you said, “Fine, ok, how come you get the bus to work in the morning instead of flying? Surely it’d be quicker, and more sanitary than public transport…?”

Fitz gave a beautiful laugh, and let his twin set of wings unfurl slightly, a sign, you’d come to realise, that he was feeling relaxed and trusting again. “You want to watch me fly? Is that what you’re really asking?” he asked, leaning in a little closer as the two of you walked through the emptying market square and out towards the northern quarter of the town.

The lich’s tower stood out above the pine trees in the distance, but your concentration was all on Fitz as your mouth went very dry and you realised that you did want to see him fly. Very much.

You nodded.

“Maybe another time,” he said, eyeing the tall buildings on either side. “I’m not the most graceful in takeoff; less ‘jump-jet’ and more ‘cargo plane’…”

“Aw, I bet you’re cute though,” you smiled, and his antennae bobbed bashfully.

Changing the subject away from himself this time, he raised his upper right arm and said, “The bar’s just up there.”

You caught a glimpse of the beautifully hand-painted sign hanging above the door which showed a kenku with a hood covering their dark head and an open beak, and below the figure, written in a curly, elegant script, was the name of the pub: The Kenku’s Aria. “Strange name…” you commented. “I thought kenku had no voice…”

“Ah, interesting story with this one,” he said, pushing the door open with his arm and letting you step inside first. It was nicely full, though not too rowdy, and you waited for him to catch up with you again to continue his explanation. “Turns out that the current owner’s grandfather fell in love with a kenku, who had no voice of her own, but she’d heard this beautiful orc singing an aria from an opera once, and she choice her voice to be her own, and she would sing the aria night after night to draw in the crowds.”

“Amazing,” you breathed. You glanced around at the bar at the back and saw what looked like one of the lizardfolk working behind it, but instead of being entirely covered in jade green scales, they had tufts of black feathers behind their temples and down their back. It was only then that you realised you were the only human in the bar.

“Not popular with my kind here, I take it?” you hissed at Fitz as he leaned on the unusual, copper-topped bar to wait for the lizard to look your way.

“Hmm?” he asked. “Oh, I… I didn’t even think about that…” he said, turning suddenly mortified, his antennae lying flat against his head.

“Relax, it’s fine,” you reassured him, putting your hand unthinkingly on his upper arm again and eliciting exactly the same full-body shiver of pleasure as the first time.

He laughed and this time he put his other left hand reassuringly atop yours. “Perks of having more than two hands,” he quipped with a cheeky tilt of his head that was definitely his equivalent of a wink, before turning to order a huge glass of honeysuckle nectar from the lizardfolk bartender and pausing to wait for you to order something.

“Oh, a beer please,” you said.

“Which one?” the lizard rasped. “Ale, beer, lager, bottle, cask…”

“Uh…” you said, raking your eyes along the taps. “That one,” you blurted, pointing to one with a picture of a minotaur with a war hammer in his enormous grip.

“Good choice,” the lizard grinned toothily and began to pour.

You and Fitz retreated to a table not far from the bar, and he sank onto a little three-legged stool that allowed him space to drape his wings behind him without squashing them. You talked more about yourself than you asked him about his life, mainly because he seemed interested in what you’d done before coming to the research lab in Starfall Springs, but partly because you thought he’d probably had his fair share of giving uncomfortable answers to you.

Perhaps an hour later, you were leaning on the table between you, your chin resting in the palm of one hand with your elbow propped up on the tabletop, while Fitz carefully held your hand in both of his lower hands. It was a private, quiet gesture of mutual respect and understanding, and it gave you the closeness you’d craved for such a long time. The warmth of genuine affection that surged through you for this gentle being was almost overwhelming, and you swallowed the last of your second pint and looked away, eyes glassy.

The door opened and a breeze ruffled the shaggy fur of Fitz’ collar. Over his shoulder, you caught sight of someone who was so startlingly beautiful that it stole your breath for a moment. Fitz followed your gaze a moment later, and his shoulders dropped, antennae drooping, wings hanging limply down his back. “That’s Alec,” he said in a tiny voice.

“Who’s Alec?”

“He’s in fashion now,” you heard him say as you stared at the dazzlingly blue wings of one of the rare and exquisite lepidoptera, or butterfly folk, “But he was at high school with me.”

You turned your gaze back to Fitz and said, “Bet he was a right arsehole…”

Fitz nearly snorted his nectar back into his glass, and his adorable, curled proboscis sprang back into his mouth like a loosed spring as he fought off laughter. “Hit the nail on the head with that one. Actually, we were both kind of ugly… our caterpillar stages weren’t… all that pretty.”

“Oh?”

“I was bright green,” he said, clearly deathly embarrassed about it, though you couldn’t quite see why. “He was also green, and he was pissed that everyone thought I was like him, or - even worse - that he was mothfolk like me… He made my life hell, even after we had both metamorphosed…”

“Keep your head down then,” you said. “He’s looking this way.”

“Fuck.”

And sure enough, as though Fitz were a beautiful flower, Alec was drawn over to him, his fabulous, electric blue wings fringed with black splayed wide in a display of arrogant self-assertion. Your admiration for his beauty quickly soured as he sneered, “Well, well, if it isn’t everyone’s favourite little mothball. Fancy seeing you here, butt-fluff. I see you never left this little provincial backwater… Well, it was to be expected after all.”

Fitz took a long moment of utter stillness before he turned slowly to look up at the tall, slender lepidoptera who loomed over his seat. “We’re not in high school any more, Alec.”

“No, indeed,” he crooned. “Some of us have actually made a success of ourselves…” he said, reaching out with a black hand that reminded you of an opera glove and plucking at the thick, sensitive fur of Fitz’s collar with a snicker as the mothman winced and flinched.

You waited for Fitz to tell Alec to fuck off, or even bat him around the face with one of his fan-like wings, to inform him curtly that he had a PhD and worked at one of the top research labs in the country, but he didn’t move, didn’t speak.

“Come on,” Alec sneered after an uncomfortably long silence to the strange, wasp-like insectoid creature beside him who might have been a bodyguard or a crony, but it was impossible to tell which. “I’m bored with shagpile here already, and I don’t want to get fleas from his dirty fur… I only came here to speak to Anwen, and now that I have, I want to remove my beautiful feet from this vile, sticky floor as soon as possible.”

Your lip curled and you placed your hands on the table, intending to rise and yell at the obnoxious peacock, but Fitz shook his head subtly and implored you not to move without saying a word. Grinding your teeth, you respected his request and sat back in your seat, watching as Alec swayed away, as gracious and uncaring as a petal on the breeze.

“You ok?” you asked when he’d gone.

Fitz was trembling subtly. “No,” he said in a whisper. “Dammit. You can get away, you can go to university, you can get a job, but something can still tip you right back into being sixteen again and having selotape and chewing gum stuck to your new fur…”

“It’s a powerful thing, Fitz, but you showed him. He lost, and he knew it. C’mon, let’s get out of here.”

He smiled, his mouth parts shifting slightly and his eyes narrowing ever so slightly. “Where?”

“Anywhere. How about a stroll over the bridge on the other side of town? I bet the stars are nice tonight and there’s nothing but vineyards and farmland on that side of town for miles…”

For a moment you thought Fitz was going to refuse you. He still looked frightened and caged, but then he made an obvious effort to pull himself together and he nodded, visibly relaxing again. “I’d like that,” he said.

The two of you rose and threaded your way between the tables and out into the cool, summer night. The moon painted silver lines along the rooftops and delighted in her own reflection on the windows of the houses whose rooms were already dark, and as you walked towards the other side of town at a leisurely pace, Fitz slid one hand into yours and gripped it with surprising strength.

“Thank you,” he said again.

In answer, you squeezed his fingers back and said nothing.

___

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[pizza-is-my-buziness]

“You made the front page.”

Jemma barely looks up from her tablet when Daisy enters the lab. “Hmm?”

Daisy brandishes the paper in her hand. Honestly, she’s glad that people still make printed papers because it would be a lot less dramatic for her to wave around her phone screen. “The paper. You’re a star.”

This gets Jemma to put down her tablet, turning her full attention toward Daisy. “I think you’ve got it turned around.” She takes the paper from Daisy. “You’re the star. I’m just there beside you.”

The picture isn’t exactly one of Daisy’s finer moments but she’s willing to forgive the photographer who captured the shot because it’s provided her the perfect opportunity to study Jemma without looking like a total creep. In the picture, she and Jemma are frozen in one of the unfortunately common post-battle moments that involve Daisy regretting every single choice she’s made for the past twenty minutes while Jemma starts patching her up.

Daisy shakes her head. “No, it’s a good picture,” she assures Jemma. “You don’t look like you want to rip my head off.”

Jemma rolls her eyes, making a face in Daisy’s direction. “If I ever look like I want to rip your head off, it’s only because you’re completely ridiculous and take far too many risks in the heat of trying to save the world,” she points out. “It’s coming from a place of-”

Jemma hesitates for a split second and Daisy feels herself perk up.

“Worry and concern,” Jemma finishes and Daisy tries not to look too disappointed.

Not that she’d ever imagined the love confession coming before the first kiss but Daisy can be flexible.

She figures she’s earned it after all these years of pining.

“You still look like a star,” Daisy says, letting her eyes linger on the photo once again.

She’s looked at it enough, her eyes always lingering on the way that Jemma’s hand rests against her thigh, wishing that she could remember how it had felt, in that moment. Unfortunately, she’d been just a little distracted, what with all the blood and rubble and saving-the-city things going on.

Jemma smirks, tossing the paper into the trashcan with a shake of her head. “I think I’ll leave the celebrity thing to you, Quake.”

Daisy waits until Jemma has left the lab, her attention back on her tablet, before she fishes the paper out of the trashcan.

It is a good picture.

There’s nothing wrong with waiting to hang onto it.

~ ~ ~ ~

One of the things Daisy had never considered about being a superhero was the fact that being a superhero meant that people actually knew who you were. That they put posters of her on their wall or wore shirts with her face on them or imagined themselves to be actual Quake-groupies.

Or that they spent their valuable time writing stories about her personal life.

Daisy had known about this aspect thanks to the last time a Koenig had visited the base, though she’d always managed to stamp down the curiosity that sometimes slipped through her mind, making her want to search up this bizarre Quake and Black Widow fanfic.

It’s a little harder to force down the curiosity when Fitz uses the words Quake and Jemma and fanfic in the same sentence.

Daisy is pretty sure he meant the observation to be humorous, a little hilarious story thrown into the end of the day’s briefing. But the statement “apparently people are now writing fanfic about Quake and Jemma after the whole Dallas thing” only results in a round of blank stares.

“Say that again?” Daisy says, leaning forward in her chair. “They what now?”

Now that no one is laughing, Fitz seems to be rethinking bringing the information up at all. He rubs the back of his neck, looking uncertainly at Jemma. “I…” He shrugs. “I guess everyone saw the picture of the two of you and now…I mean the Internet is talking about it. The two of you.”

Jemma lifts her eyebrows. “They’re talking about us?”

Daisy furrows her brow, pretending to closely study the dossier in her hands, rather than think about the word us.

“Well, yes,” Fitz says. “Only they don’t know your name because the article just said SHIELD agent but…you seem to be quite popular on the Internet these days.”

“Huh,” Daisy says thoughtfully, going for nonchalant. “People are writing stories about us.”

She looks at Jemma, studying her features, attempting to determine how she feels about all of this.

Jemma is looking at her, apparently doing the same thing, leaving the both of them with strangely blank expressions on their faces.

“People have too much free time,” Jemma says finally.

Daisy forces a laugh, nodding. “Yeah, way too much free time.”

As soon as she’s back in her room, Daisy pulls out her phone. It’s not hard to find the sites with the stories. Reddit and Tumblr links come up along with actual news articles about the incident in Dallas. No wonder Fitz was able to find them so easily.

Daisy feels almost guilty as she clicks on one of the links, skimming the story that was apparently inspired by a simple picture of Jemma taking care of her after the dust started to settle. Or, at least, the incorrectly named Jemma-inspired character.

One story leads to another and…another…and…Daisy is honestly impressed by how many stories are actually out there.

Maybe people do have too much free time.

But there do seem to be some similarities between the stories, like the Internet has collectively agreed on this fictionalized version of the SHIELD agent who faced the end of the battle to administer aid to the brave Quake.

Seriously, that was one of the summaries.

Not that Daisy is going to complain about being the brave Quake or anything.

And, well, Daisy can’t entirely disagree with that particular sentiment. Jemma hadn’t even waited to make sure it was completely safe before checking on her and, well…Daisy still can’t bring herself to get rid of the newspaper article, even days later.

“You take too many risks,” fictional Jemma says, though Daisy has no problem hearing real Jemma’s voice in her head as she reads. “I just worry about you.”

“You don’t have to worry about me,” fic Quake assures her with bravado, “I’m tougher than I look.”

Maybe these writers are actually ex-SHIELD agents because Daisy is pretty sure they’ve had this exact conversation a thousand times before.

And they’ll probably have it a thousand times more.

Though, reading fictionalized Jemma saying, “next time you do something ridiculous I’m going to let you bleed to death out here” gives Daisy a twinge in the middle of her chest, fills her with a longing for the real Jemma that feels almost palpable.

It’s Jemma and it’s…not.

But it makes her put her phone down and finally leave her room, deciding to seek the company of real, actual SHIELD agents instead of the ones cooked up in people’s brains.

Daisy finds Fitz, Mack, and Jemma in the common room. “Hey.”

Mack and Fitz barely glance her way, engrossed in their video game. Jemma looks up, her cheeks flushed, quickly laying her phone face down in her lap. “Oh, hello Daisy.”

Daisy smirks, eyebrows lifting. “Whatcha doing there, Jemma?”

Jemma starts to make a noise of protest but Fitz interrupts. “She’s looking at those Quake and Elizabeth fics,” he says without looking away from the game. “Elizabeth. What a ridiculous name.”

“Oh, you are, huh?” Daisy grins, hoping her toothy smile hides the relief that she wasn’t the only one curious enough to check them out. “Just a little light reading?”

Jemma’s cheeks get redder and she looks half-tempted to through her phone across the room. “They’re…completely ridiculous. I just had to check to see how absurd they were,” she says defensively. “In some of these stories, they actually have you cooking me dinner. Like you’ve ever successfully made anything without burning it.”

“Hey, I tried that one time, okay! You’ve gotta give me credit, at least,” Daisy protests. “But what about your character doing something other than reading lab reports or studying something through a microscope. It’s a miracle you even stopped studying specimens long enough to actually read those stories.”

Jemma grins at her and Daisy realizes, too late, that she’s just given herself away. “Oh, so you read the stories too, I see.”

Daisy wrinkles her nose, sighing. “Some of them…”

Mack snorts out a laugh, shaking her head. “At least Quake and Elizabeth can get their shit together,” he mumbles.

Daisy and Jemma turn toward him in unison. “What?”

“Nothing,” Mack assures them with another chuckle. “Nothing at all.”

~ ~ ~

The following morning, Daisy happens upon Jemma in the kitchen, studying her phone as she waits for the water in the kettle to boil. “Still reading some scintillating fics?”

“Oh, no,” Jemma says, lowering her phone, though her ears do turn a little pink. “Just…reports.” It seems to pain her admit after Daisy’s observation yesterday and Daisy has to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling victoriously.

The kettle whistles and Daisy leans against the counter. “You know, that’s one thing those stories didn’t get right. None of them mentioned your tea addiction.”

“All them mentioned how hard-headed you are, though,” Jemma says affectionately, taking two mugs down from the cabinet. “Almost like they know you.”

Daisy rolls her eyes. “Is it being hard-headed if you’re trying to save the world?” She accepts the mug that Jemma hands her, though she’s still trying to acquire a taste for tea. “Did you notice a lot of those fics talked about you taking care of me?”

Jemma tilts her head, studying the tea bag steeping in the water. “They were clearly inspired by what I was doing in that picture.”

“Sure,” Daisy agrees. “But you do, you know. Take care of me.”

Jemma looks up at her. “Because you’re so hard-headed and stubborn.”

“I think you mean heroic.”

“Maybe I do,” Jemma agrees with a nod. She hesitates for a moment before saying, “Daisy…” without seeming to commit to the idea of continuing the thought.

Daisy lifts her eyebrows. “Yeah?”

“Did you…never mind, actually.” Jemma shakes her head, watching the steam twist out of the top of the mug.

Scoffing, Daisy nudges her. “You can’t do that,” she chides. “What were you going to say?”

Jemma swallows, pursing her lips before saying, “Did you notice how in a lot of those stories we were…that we…you and I…I mean not you and I but…that the characters…that we…that they…were a…couple.”

At first, Daisy feels like she’s misheard the question, that she is somehow missing what Jemma is asking her. Like she’s misunderstanding the basic words of the English language. “A…couple?”

It doesn’t seem to be the right word to use in a sentence about herself and Jemma, despite all the times she’s wished differently.

The rest of Jemma’s face turns pink along with the tips of her ears and the blush brings Daisy back to the present. She’s not sure that she’ll ever get tired of seeing the color creep across Jemma’s skin, making her freckles stand out, betraying the feelings running through her mind.

“It’s ridiculous, isn’t it?” Jemma says quickly, clearing her throat. “That people would see that picture and think…that.”

The word ridiculous stings a little, difficult to brush aside. “I didn’t see any of those stories,” she says, almost mechanically.

Jemma nods, once again fixated with her tea, cooling now in her hands. “Right, well.”

There’s something in Jemma’s tone, something in her face, almost like she’d hoped she wasn’t the only one who’d seen them.

Like the word ridiculous isn’t right after all.

Something that makes Daisy ask, “What happens in those stories?”

Jemma looks up, surprised by the question. “Oh, well…several different things,” she says. “But usually the stories involve you getting hurt, me taking care of you…”

“So pretty much reality.”

“Unfortunately,” Jemma agrees. “Though after…there’s always a-”

Daisy doesn’t let her finish the word, unable to maintain the distance between them anymore, unable to stop herself like she’d done so many times before.

Hundreds of times, she’s imagined doing exactly this: kissing Jemma, pulling her close, holding her with only vague intentions of letting go again.

She’s suddenly very glad that she’s finally listened to that little voice in her head, the one urging her to stop wondering and finally kiss Jemma.

“Yes,” Jemma breathes when Daisy moves away from her. “Just like that.”

Daisy keeps hands settled on Jemma’s waist, feeling the heat of her against her skin. “I would have been happy to thank you with a kiss before, you know.”

Jemma nods, setting her mug aside so that she can slip her fingers through Daisy’s hair. “Then I think you’ve got some lost time to make up for.”

As Daisy leans in to kiss Jemma again, she can’t help but smile. “All our loyal fans are going to be so excited to learn that we’re actually canon.”

Jemma is smiling as she kisses her, though Daisy is pretty sure there’s an eyeroll through in there somewhere.

That’s another thing all the fics missed out on. Despite the writers’ best efforts, they hadn’t entirely succeeded in capturing everything Daisy loves about Jemma Simmons.

Not that she minds.

She’d rather have the real thing anyway.  

[h-styles-babes]

Bad Habit

I may have...uh...written a thing. I was listening to Bad Habit by The Kooks, and I got inspired. So, this little diddy is very loosely based off the song and music video. I couldn’t get this scenario out of my head, and this is what came of it. I know I promised some one shot requests and some work on the new fic that I’m working on, but this just...grabbed me and wouldn’t let go, ya know? I was merely a victim in the making of this. So, I hope you all enjoy ;) xx

“Yeh comin’ out with us for a drink tonight? We’re meeting Carrie at Fitz’s.”

Vivian shook her head, stuffing her frozen hands into her jacket pockets. It was Thursday night, after their last lecture of the evening. None of them had class the next day, so Thursdays were their typical party nights. Viv would usually be eager to join her mates, but she had other plans that didn’t include being in a crowded pub. Her laptop was to be her companion that night, and that was more than enough for her. Especially with the content it would be allowing her to view. 

“I’m gonna have a night in. Give myself a break from last week. Christ knows my liver could use it.”

“Last weekend was rough,” Teddy agreed. “I woke up cuddled to fuckin’ Liam, vomit on me shirt, and a hand cuff on only one wrist.” He shuddered like the memory gave him the chills.

“Kinky,” Viv snickered. 

“That was a good cuddle, though, wasn’t it?” Liam defended. “I was cosy.” “We just gonna ignore the vomit and handcuff I mentioned?”

“I honestly don’t even know how that happened,” Viv reflected. “I swear I was with you two until we fell asleep that night.”

“Teddy and I went out after we got you into bed,” Liam said. “Think we ran into a couple birds at a pub a few blocks over.”

“Well, it was Halloween weekend. Was one of ‘em dressed as a police woman?”

“Oh my god! That’s right!” Teddy exclaimed, smacking his palm to his forehead. “That redhead was a sexy officer. That’s definitely where the handcuffs came from.”

“And I’m pretty sure her friend was the one who got the vomit on your shirt,” Liam said with a definitive nod. 

“Well, as fun as this little flashback has been, this is where I get off,” Viv announced, even though the two boys knew full well where she lived. Since they were in their second year, Viv was able to get a flat just off campus by herself. It was just a studio thing, but it served its purpose, and she was glad to be out of student housing. While she’d enjoyed having a roommate,—who was the aforementioned Carrie that she’d formed a strong friendship with—she didn’t so much enjoy not having private space and having to share a loo with twenty other girls. She had to maintain a part-time job in order to pay for her rent and food, but it was well worth it to have her own space. 

“We’ll be at Fitz’s if yeh change your mind,” Teddy shouted to her as she mounted the stairs to take her two her second-level flat. 

“I’m stayin’ in, I promise. I’ll see yeh this weekend.”

The two boys waved at her as a goodbye and sent their well wishes of a good night. They were still in sight when Viv finally shut her door and locked it behind her. 

The flat was a warm reprieve from the autumn chill outside. She didn’t have to turn her heat on much, since her large windows allowed in enough light during the day to keep the old building warm into the evening. Well, that was when the sun was out enough. Luckily, that day had been mostly free of clouds, so Viv didn’t think twice about shucking her coat and boots and just bustling around her flat in her jumper and leggings. She got her laptop booted up as she went about making herself a cuppa and rummaging around for something to eat. She’d gone grocery shopping at the beginning of the week, but she still seemed to be a bit awful at the whole meal-making thing. She knew she had the ingredients necessary for a decent meal, she just wasn’t sure how to put it together, really. The kettle was whistling by the time she decided on some soup and a grilled cheese.

So, she made herself a brew while she waited for her chicken noodle soup to heat. She let the bag steep while she buttered some bread and sprinkled some shredded cheese. Within ten minutes, she had herself a proper meal, and she’d just sat down when a little notification popped up on her computer screen. If it had been a week earlier, she’d have been absolutely embarrassed by the sender of the message and the website that it had been sent through, but, as it was, she felt a fluttering in her tummy and stirring between her hips. She still wasn’t exactly proud of her late night escapades, but she didn’t feel the shame she once had. 

The message read that the video would be live in half an hour, so Vivian finished her dinner and cuppa in peace, though the excitement was definitely building within her. She was getting wet just at the thought of what she’d be witnessing in just a few minutes, and if she wasn’t already so far gone, she’d be a little weirded out at herself. But, as it were, she did a little shimmy when there was only five minutes left until the stream started, and she busied herself with washing the dishes she’d used and pouring herself a glass of wine. 

While her sofa was comfy, she decided her bed was a more comfortable place to be, so she hunkered down there, setting her laptop up beside her and opening the webpage she needed. The screen was blank, aside from the ads and recommended videos on the sides, but she knew in a few minutes the most exciting part of her week would be broadcast for her to see. The message sent out as she sat there announced that there was only one more minute until the broadcast went live. She took one last sip of her wine. The username ‘UniBoy94’ was marked as ‘online’ just before the screen flickered to life. That fluttery feeling was back as her newly favourite obsession filled her screen. 

The only sound coming through the speakers were whatever music was playing in the man’s room on the other side of the screen. Vivian noticed the familiar chords of a song that she liked and had just discovered from a more local band she’d actually seen at a bar a few weeks ago. She couldn’t linger on that fact too long, though, because the man took a deep breath, straining his pecs against the soft-looking cotton of his plain grey t-shirt. She could only see him from the neck down, keeping what she could assume were perfect lips from her eyes, though she could imagine his lips were parted as he took his breath. His large hands came into view, his rings adorned on his long fingers. There was a small cross tattoo on his left hand that she was strangely fond of—probably because it was such a conflict with the lascivious acts he did so often for people to watch. 

His right hand snuck up under his shirt and slowly dragged the material up his torso, first revealing the matching laurels tattooed into the dips of his V line. Viv couldn’t help but lick her lips as she watched his shirt ride up higher and higher, exposing his happy trail, belly button, large butterfly tattoo, his pecs. He let his shirt stay there, hooking the hem into his mouth, keeping his face out of view of the camera. His right hand trailed back down his body, slipping his fingers into the waistband of the boxers he was wearing. The rings caught at the elastic band as he continued to drag his hand down, exposing the light patch of hair that weirdly made Viv aroused. She’d never really admit it to anyone, but she liked mens’ body hair in it’s natural state. The man on the other side of the screen kept his pubic area trimmed neat, but he didn’t seem to completely remove any part of it, including where it connected up into his happy trail. Viv was particularly fond of the look. 

His hand abandoned its adventure into his boxers as he sat upright to use both hands to draw his shirt over his head. Viv was glad to see the swallows just below each of his collar bones, as well as all the tattoos that adorned the upper part of his left arm. For the most part, his tattoos were all on that arm, except for one that was on his right forearm. The strange contrast between the two sides of him would seem a bit off to some people, but it pleased the part of Viv that couldn’t decide if she was more attracted to men with tattoos or men that were a clean-skinned. She got both in the mystery man on the other side of the screen. 

Vivian’s breathing sped up as the man leaned forward to type on the computer, his message popping up on the screen once he was finished. 

‘Got a request to use a vibrator. Your wish = my command.’

Viv could have sworn she felt her heart skip a beat. That was her suggestion from Tuesday night’s session. While watching him work his hand over himself, scratch his short nails down his lightly sculpted abs, and thrust his hips up into his slick hand was enough to send her over, she really wanted to see him when there was more stimulation. He was already pretty vocal as it was, grunting when he approached his orgasm and whimpering when something he did felt particularly good, but she could only imagine the noises he’d make if something was vibrating against his cock. 

She wasn’t disappointed.

He peeled the red boxers from his hips, still kneeling on his bed. His cock was already hard, and it bobbed as he sat back to discard the last of the material that was covering him. He settled back into the pillows behind him and reached for something off camera, cock resting against his belly. He had the most impressive dick Viv had ever seen. She admired everything about it, from the length that nearly reached his belly button, the girth that looked like it would offer a nice stretch when he’d enter her, the glistening red tip, to the vein that ran up his length, visibly pulsing when he was particularly aroused. While she’d never encountered it in person, it was what she stacked every other dick up against, but it was hardly fair. UniBoy was the stuff of legends, and she would have thought it was photoshopped if she didn’t know for certain that these little videos of his were broadcasted live. 

He came back with a vibrator in hand, already plugged in somewhere off screen. Not only was it a vibrator, but it was a wand that Viv had seen used in countless porn videos. She was always envious of the people using them, as she could hear the power of the vibrations, even through the shitty speakers of her laptop. She’d always wanted one ever since she knew what a vibrator was, but they were expensive for a vibrator, and the twenty quid one she owned did fine. Maybe when she made more than was enough to pay rent and bills, then she’d buy a fancy one. 

The man wielded the toy in his right hand, clicking it on to what appeared to be the lowest setting. He very slowly touched the bulbous end of the want to the place where the shaft of his cock met his balls, and he automatically tensed, a low moan rumbling through his chest. If Viv had been wet before, she was absolutely dripping now, and he hadn’t even properly touched himself yet. She quickly set her wine on her bedside table and reached under the covers to slip herself out of her sleep shorts and panties. Her left hand lingered over her folds, gently teasing the little bud that peaked out from the center. She was sensitive already, and she could already guess that she wasn’t going to make it through this whole session before cumming. 

He still only hand the wand pressed to his length, his free left hand resting at his chest, tweaking his right nipple every so often. Viv watched as he trailed the head of the device up to the tip of his penis, letting it rest against the underside as he flicked the vibrations to a higher setting. He whimpered, left hand clenching into the skin of his chest as he heaved a bit with the extra stimulation. Viv let her fingers dip between her folds, feeling how absolutely drenched she was for the first time. She’d never been so wet in her life until she’d discovered this boy’s videos. It had started as an innocent scroll through Tumblr, looking at stuff the people she followed posted. In the middle of her posts about weird science facts and cute videos of hairless cats was a very naughty two minute video of a man stroking himself. The film was in black and white, but Viv was immediately taken with the display of tattoos and the way the man’s body reacted to his own ministrations. If she hadn’t been in the library, she would have played the video then and there, but she saved it so she could come back to it later.

When she got home later that evening, she took a scroll through the blog of the person who posted the video. Everything was anonymous, and the man never posted anything of his face or where he was from or what he did outside of making videos. It was obvious he was in uni, just from his username, but outside of that, there was no personal information, not even his first name. She was taken with his videos and the other content of his blog, and she could admit to herself that she’d gotten off to his short snippets of videos more than a few times in the few days she took scouring his blog for content. 

That was a few weeks ago, and somehow she had graduated to actually paying to see his live streams that he’d had advertised on his page. It wasn’t a lot to view a video—only five quid—but she could see the viewer number on the screen, and there was very nearly five thousand people watching. The man made a lot of money masturbating for random people on the internet, and she couldn’t begrudge him that. Honestly, she didn’t understand why she hadn’t thought of that as opposed to working part time at a book store. She’d be making a hell of a lot more money, that’s for sure. 

So, this was how she spent her Tuesday and Thursday nights, now. She wasn’t even upset that she shelled out ten pounds a week for this, because at least she knew she was helping him attend uni and pay for the assumed flat that he lived in. Plus, she stopped having to search through thousands of porn videos when she was horny in order to just find one video that she could actually stand to watch. She had been without a boyfriend for nearly a year now, and her hand wasn’t really cutting it, so the porn was a necessary evil. Now, though, she watched the exact content she wanted to see. And, the fact that she paid to view his videos meant she was able to see all his past videos whenever she pleased. She didn’t think it got much better than that. 

Besides actually having sex with him of course, but that wasn’t very likely to happen.

The man finally pulled the vibrator away from his straining cock to reveal rivulets of precum dripping down his shaft, his head completely red. He let his left hand drift down and used only his first finger and thumb to circle around the head, dragging the slickness down his length. The stroked just like that, ever so slowly for what seemed like whole minutes. It was pure torture for Viv, following the same slow pace he set for himself as she dipped her fingers into her clenching hole. His hips began slowly pushing up to meet his downward pulls, his control wavering. 

As his pace began to speed up, Viv used her other hand to rub broad circles over her clit, making herself whimper. She wanted so badly to cum already, but she’d made a game with herself to not let herself cum until the man did. She loved to watch the way his whole body clenched with his release, and it was exactly what she needed to push herself over the edge. 

The vibrator was still buzzing in his other hand, and Vivian’s chest constricted as she heard him turn it up two settings before bringing it to his already-sensitive head. 

“Fuuu—” drew out from his lips. Viv could guess he’d thrown his head back by the way the muscles in his neck strained. She could see a bright pink flush spreading across his chest as it heaved from his laboured breath. He had to be the sexiest man she had ever seen, and she’d never had even a peek of his face. 

Viv’s circles on her clit got faster and smaller as his left hand sped up, matching his strokes exactly. She plunged two fingers from her other hand inside of her, hooking them to press against that spongy spot along her front wall. She was always glad for her longer fingers, because it made piano playing more of a breeze, but she also liked their ability to reach that place inside her that had her hitching her breath when she pressed just right. 

She heard more than saw him amp up the vibrator one more setting, followed by his string of, “Shit, shit, shit, shit.” 

He got vocal like that often, and the depth and timbre of his voice turned Viv on just as much as watching him touch himself did. She was sure it wasn’t always that deep or strained, but something about his inability to contain himself while getting himself off for a bunch of strangers absolutely ruined her. 

“‘m gonna cum,” he huffed out, the snapping of his hips into his fist getting faster. He never relented on the constant vibration to his swollen head, which only made Viv move faster, chasing her own orgasm. She could feel that coil ready to snap in her belly, and she was just waiting for that last piece to just completely send her over. 

Before she could become desperate for it, his abs clenched harshly and his thighs flexed as he pushed up once more to meet his hand. He never completely removed the vibrator from himself, but he just trailed it down to his balls again, letting it feed the force of his climax.  She watched, captivated, as his milky cum spurt from his head, shooting up over his stomach and dribbling down over his fist, covering his rings. Hearing him groan and bite out various curses pushed Viv over, throwing her head back and letting out a moan of her own as her release washed over her. 

She opened her eyes back up just in time to watch the man on screen shakily prop himself back up in order to get to his keyboard. She watched as his shaky hands struggled to type out a message, catching her own breath as the little bubble popped up on screen. 

‘To the bird who suggested the vibrator: You’re my fucking queen.’

Vivian’s tummy erupted in those flutters for an entirely different reason then.

So...obviously since the fic involves an OFC, I am willing to build on this if anyone would like to see more parts. I actually do have a rough outline of a short story if people would like more. If not, it will remain this onsehot. But, if you do want more, let me know! I do so appreciate hearing from you guys.

Nikki xx

[aenigmaticdays]

Coda

Summary: The mythic invincibility of Fitzsimmons is just that: a myth. Fitz and Jemma learn the most painful way that even the foundation of a once rock-solid friendship that everyone once thought can weather any the test has its own cracks.

Notes: This fic is based on a very unpopular opinion that I have of how the writers tackled Fitzsimmons in S3, particularly during the Maveth-related episodes and the insertion of Will Daniels. I came to realise that 'Coda' was a story I wanted to read, but more than that; it was a story I wanted to write, so I did.

(Well kids, I think communication is important.)

On AO3, and FF.net

Who would have known that the previously-believed unbreakable bonds of a decade-old friendship wouldn’t have withstood the perfect maelstrom of time, the odd chance and more than a few debilitating circumstances?

Lost in this particularly boat-shaking revelation, Fitz starts mentally taking stock.

That much he is sure about: the confidence he has in his abilities and his understanding of science (and some newfound knowledge on astronomy) to bring Will back from that godforsaken planet.

So sure, that he leaves a hastily-written letter at Coulson’s desk before joining everyone else in the lab for the final but delicate stage of the operation.

The insistence whines of the machines take precedence over his morose thoughts. Fitz parks himself at a computer terminal in a corner of the lab, with an eye on the door and an eye on the screen scrolling data that would revolutionise NASA.

After all, he’d crossed the universe for her, and quite possibly bent and twisted several theoretical laws of physics in the process and is alive and well to talk about it should he wish to. But what could have ordinarily been considered one of the few miracles of his career—the leaps and bounds he’s single-handedly made in pushing through to achieve the impossible—has instead shattered his entire world.

The scene in front is hard to take in.

Fitz averts his eyes and stares instead at his dusty shoes as Jemma lavishes sobbing kisses on a ragged and dazed Will, taking small comfort in knowing that his last deed for her is one that will at least, guarantee her happiness.

Locked in a tight embrace, at this very moment, Will and Jemma form a grotesque parody of a medieval triptych that he’d taken in as a wide-eyed boy so long ago in the National Gallery: a woman who weeps over a fallen man, the folds of her skirt draped carefully over him. The pose is intimately timeless, a perfect framing of devotion between two people so intense that every other subject fades into obscurity in the background.

Fitz has never felt more like the outsider. To keep on looking would be intrusively profane in this sacred moment that relegates him to the role of the dispassionate observer. To insert himself into this would render its perfect symmetry askew and disrupt the harmony of its composition.

He uses that frozen moment as additional validation that his place isn’t here any longer.

Close on the heels of relief in knowing that he’d brought Will back are the tiny pinpricks of resentment, anger and throbbing pain that he’d managed to shoved into a deep, dark box the very moment that Jemma had made it clear where she stood.

Fitz raises his head and forces himself to watch as Simmons reluctantly disentangles herself from Will, her movements awkward and anxious as she moves to prep him for a period in isolation.

Coulson approaches slowly in his peripheral vision, tilting his head sideways at the flurry of activity in front of them.

“I think they won’t miss us just yet. Come to my office.”

Fitz slips from the room numbly. The blankness occupying a huge part of his mind is welcome; he has no more words to give. Having kept a promise he’d made himself a while ago—that is, to do all he can to make Simmons happy—he’s nonetheless still floundering as the realisation dawns on him that this winding journey can end today.

His feet take him past the lab—a place which had once freed him to be in his element, then later became a refuge when Simmons was off to Hydra—and the common area (another place where the memories now weigh like a yoke on his neck) and finally to the office, his walk not unlike a prisoner making his way to the gallows.

Those memories of what he and Simmons had accomplished in the years together, both good and bad, flit past until they’re like intertwined catacombs, a haven in the hell he felt he’d just endured, or maybe like a hell that he needed to carve his refuge from.

His breaths automatically quicken, the sudden onslaught of emotions leaving his bad hand trembling more than usual.

Fitz moves two steps past Coulson’s doorway and tries to shake the panic free. With deliberate slowness, he tucks his hands into his pockets. He clenches his fists, then unclenches them, bunching the already-wrinkled fabric of his trousers.

The suffocating weight of claustrophobia that he’s kept at bay now tunnels his vision to the very spot on Coulson’s desk where the letter lies. Nestled haphazardly in the pile of paperwork on the director’s desk is the envelope that he’d left on top of everything else, which means that Coulson has probably read it.

His acceptance of it, however, is another issue altogether.

In fact, it’s surprising to see the letter in a sorry state, as though it’d been read, crumpled and tossed away, before it was reluctantly plucked from its grave and re-read.

Coulson’s appraising sigh echoes loud in the small space, signalling the reckoning that’s coming.

“I’m not going to mince words, Fitz. The last few months have been hard. On you, on all of us, but on you especially. Too much has happened and I know that you and Simmons haven’t been—”

Hearing this from Coulson himself…excruciating doesn’t even begin to cover this.

Interrupting what he thinks might be a speech—whether a bureaucratic or a heartfelt one—that would deter him from doing what’s necessary, Fitz raises a hand in an uncharacteristic plea for silence which catches Coulson off guard.

“Please, Sir.”

Fitz hates himself already for that weak response, for the plea dripping with a desperation that mirrors all the times he thinks he’s lost Jemma.

In any other circumstance, he would have marvelled at how he’d managed to turn the tide—as short as it is—and take control of a conversation that he doesn’t want to have with a man he’s always looked up to.

Because allowing Coulson to go on would be to allow the director’s blunt words to mercilessly chisel through the emotional fortress that he’d been building brick by brick every sleepless night he’d spent in his bunk since Jemma’s return from Maveth.

And alone in his bed, he can be honest with himself: flaky talk of the cosmos aside, reciprocity had always been at the heart of the problem, and the shy hope he’d constantly nurtured about Jemma actually wanting him for who he is? That had finally disintegrated into nothing more than the dust of Maveth just as he thought they were both getting over his difficult recovery and her absence.

An extraordinary combination of circumstances making up the perfect storm, has moved them past the realm of potential and into impossibility.

The ugliest of the confessions he’s painfully admitted to himself is one where he knows he’s always needed Jemma more than she needed him. And she’s always needed him as a friend, an academic equal and as an esteemed colleague.

But as a romantic partner, he’d be her consolation prize.

It’s a kind of proof that he’d never wanted to face, until the sharp reality of it is shoved deep in his guts.

The conclusion he reaches doesn’t come easy, but what finally pushes him forward is the timid and defeated acknowledgement that he simply needs to de-couple himself from the unbreakable idea of Fitzsimmons.

Hard, fast and cleanly.

Having functioned so long as half of a pair, the time has come to shed this unhealthy co-dependency that has him clinging to Jemma longer than he should be. Her undercover work with Hydra, the quickness with which she’d fallen in love and into the arms of another man, the difficulty she had in facing his quasi-confession of love at the bottom of the Atlantic…aren’t these events proof-positive really, that the way forward is one where he needs to stumble onwards and upwards and alone in the journey ahead?

Maybe years later, their paths might cross again and a professional relationship between them could be in the cards. And if time was really said to flatten some scars, this would all be but an unpleasant memory that’s lost its sting.

Coulson eyes the letter once again, leaving Fitz to wallow in discomfort for a few seconds of absolute silence.

He shifts slightly from foot to foot, stilling only when Coulson asks him very quietly if this is truly what he wants.

Cut this right now, is the sinuous whisper in his mind. Cut it now, cleanly and quickly, and you’ll be free.

All he needs now, is the courage to ask for it.

Taking a deep breath as he battles the roil of guilt and anger in his stomach, Fitz merely nods, curtly and decisively.

He’d dug Jemma—no, he would now only think of her as Simmons—out of rubble and dirt, but perhaps, it’s time to dig himself out of this special hell that no one else will pull him from.

Coulson’s reluctant acquiescence is the executioner’s blade that helps cleave Fitzsimmons in half.

oOo

His bags wait at the heavy doors of the base; he’d packed the last few things of his with a single-minded determination that his mother would be proud of the moment Coulson accepted his resignation letter.

It’s this last bit that has him testy and nervous, but his feet nonetheless take him to the medical bay where Simmons still bustles around a sedated Will.

Leaning against the doorway, Fitz watches her for a minute, taking in the utmost care she gives to the people around her. How often had she done that for him as well, while he’d merely repaid her by being an emotional burden that she shouldn’t have to carry in more ways than one?

Simmons catches sight of him when he finally takes a tentative step in, her smile wide and a little wobbly.

“Fitz! Oh good, you’re here. I wanted to—”

She trails off, as though sensing the struggle in him, the curve of her lips turning downwards into a confused frown.

Best to get this done fast, he tells himself.

Because, despite what he’d seen of her videos and what she’d imagined of them in a planet that brought out the basest of instincts and wants that aren’t really there, she’d still chosen Will. In the moments where she’d thought he wasn’t looking, the distant stare that he’d mistook for fatigue is one that he now knows had been for another man who was stuck a universe away.

And unless he considers Simmons utterly lost to him, he knows that every last shred of hope he harbours for the both of them would merely keep him coming back for scraps even as a small part of him resolutely insists that he is in fact, deserving of more than that.

Finally, the words spill out of their own accord, the finality of this conversation akin to a swinging sledgehammer in his chest.

“I’m here to say goodbye, Simmons.”

Fitz glances once more at the sleeping man on the bed and then shifts his gaze to the familiar, beloved face that he’d grown up with for a decade.

The rush of grief and regret bursts from its dam when he sees the dawning look of wretched understanding in her eyes, to the point where it almost has him marching back into Coulson’s office to tear up that letter and rescind his resignation.

But his eagerness to give Simmons what she needs wars with the only selfish decision he wants to make for himself and as much as he wants to be there for her in any capacity at all as she sorts herself out, he is of little use to her as a pillar of support when his own blind need for her would only cripple them both.

She throws her arms around him in a quick, tight hug that he misses already before the sobs start to come.

In a soft whisper, he tells her not to cry for him, then releases her, in all senses of the word.

She doesn’t offer platitudes or any offers to keep in touch, for which he is grateful. Juggling the hurt she must feel with his own …it’s an unbreakable cycle (she had to have known this, surely?) that could only be ruthlessly broken by one of them somehow.

Maybe it’s the last time he’ll ever see her, maybe not, and in the moment before he spins on his heel to walk out, he turns back partially for a last look at her. But it’s a stolen and mute glance as always, like one of the many he’d sneaked in over the last few months because he always feels as though he’s taking something from her without her express permission.

The approach of quiet footsteps stops him in his tracks when he nears the exit.

“Sorry to see you go, mate.”

Hunter swings a brotherly arm around him then hugs him tightly, the exuberance of the action in stark contrast to the quiet words of farewell, then tucks a slip of paper into his pocket.

Baffled, Fitz fishes the paper out curiously but finds that it’s nothing more than a name and a number, neither of which are familiar to him.

“Call the number when you’re ready. Edwin,” Hunter gestures cryptically at his near-illegible scrawl of that mysterious name, “will be expecting you.”

It’s all Hunter leaves him with before turning back and rounding the corner.

Fitz shoulders his bags and waits for the heavy door to open. His eyes are burning (it’s just a trick of the light, he’s sure of it) as he walks forward into the bright sunlight.

It takes every effort not to look back.

oOo

The journey back to Glasgow is brutal, but that’s because he takes the slow way with too many connections for his liking, eschewing Coulson’s offer to use the quinjet to cross the Atlantic.

With nothing but time on his hands and his meagre belongings sitting in the cargo hold of a commercial flight, Fitz only remembers traversing the distance with lingering pains in his tailbone and the occasional drink that he takes from the flight attendant.

When time is catalogued as an endless stream of memories, night can meld into day and into night again outside the plane’s window, he finds that even jet-lag is no match for the movie in his mind. There’s no transcendental epiphany as much as he wishes for it, but merely an emptiness and a longing that he knows he has to fight, this time, for himself.

He’s come too far now—there’re literally thousands of miles between him and Simmons—to look back.

That decision to leave S.H.I.E.L.D., in truth, had been made the day when he slowly realised she’d increasingly become a crutch for him but had been too deep in denial to say so. The growing distance between them had spoken volumes about their once-in-sync relationship, professional civility replacing the platonic familiarity they once had with each other.

Then the revelation of his feelings which apparently repulsed her so much that she’d gone off on assignment to Hydra (what was he to think, after all?), their tentative truce before the damn planet whisked her away, her admission of love for Will...it’s a cosmic hand dealing him odds he can’t overcome.

He knows that the cracks in this once invincible pairing had formed long ago. Only later can he painfully conclude that excising himself from her life is the only option for his sanity, because he doesn’t think he can bear being there (it’s just perfect timing, innit?) when Will Daniels gets back on his feet and starts building a life with Simmons.

It’s only when he raises his fist to knock on the door of a modest home in Glasgow that he realises the late hour he’s arrived. But just like the stalwart woman he remembers who’d brought him up single-handedly, she opens the door in her pyjamas sans robe, shock and delighted surprise on her face when she sees him.

For the third time in two days, he’s engulfed in a hug.

Clinging to her to as long as he can, he tries to give her a smile when she asks about Jemma, though he doesn’t say a word in reply to her rapid-fire questions.

In fact, just the mention of her now brings up the roiling emotions he’s promised himself to keep tightly locked down—Fitzsimmons is no longer a fixable thing, he’d made sure of it and well…fuckthis skewed crisis of conscience that he can’t get past.

After all, how does he tell his mother that long, complicated story that starts with him nearly giving up the ghost at the bottom of the Atlantic, then giving up on a complicated friendship—if one could even call it that still—that had uttered its dying breath even before he’d walked away?

This close to breaking point, Fitz just shakes his head and avoids the intensity of her stare. He simply tells his mum that he’s tired from all the travel.

That is enough to galvanise her into action. She literally pulls him inside and pushes him into the bathroom to clean up, then sets out to make a full Scottish breakfast for him in the middle of the night.

It’s morning somewhere else around the world, she tells him later after the first helping of tatties and buttered toast and bacon, and her returning, prodigal son gives her an excellent excuse to eat a huge meal at the wrong time.

Much later, tucked into his childhood bed, all scrubbed raw and unpacked, he tosses and turns, and stares unseeing, at the crack in the window that he’d accidentally made the day before he left for the Academy all those years ago, contemplating the journey that has him coming back full circle after far too many losses.

The tears only fall hours later, when there’s no one at home.

oOo

Apart from Simmons, Fitz learns to live with a terrifying vulnerability that he hasn’t felt in years. Having been sheltered by her constant presence and then twinned with her in so many ways for so long, going solo makes him wobble like a new-born foal struggling to find its feet.

After the cathartic breakdown a week ago, he feels just a little bit stronger to face the world, so he ventures out and around Glasgow, keenly feeling the cold Scottish air nipping at his cheeks and nose and reddening the tips of his ears.

So much has changed, yet so many things have stayed the same. He walks past the high street in somewhat of a daze, still fingering the slip of paper that he hadn’t bothered to remove from the pocket of his jacket. He revisits old haunts—these memories, from before the Academy, now take on faded, sepia tones—and tries to remember what that time had been like.

Never has Fitz imagined a life past S.H.I.E.L.D. and in these uncharted waters, it’s either sink or swim. The former is something he’d literally already experienced and has no wish to go through again.

So that leaves him with learning how to swim, just as he tries to put the memory of the last sacrificial breath of oxygen out of his mind and the ill-timed confession that went with it.

Slipping his phone out of his pocket, he dials the number written on the piece of paper.

oOo

People can say all they like about Hunter and his ilk but Fitz is nothing but thankful for the man’s outstretched hand of friendship and help in his darkest hour. The only caveat being, all bets are off when it comes to their favourite football teams.

Edwin (the man with no apparent last name), as it turns out, is an English owner of a large private security firm and apparently, Hunter has said enough to Edwin that he’d been willing to hire Fitz on the spot as a tech-and-weapons specialist, with just that single but lengthy phone call.

Edwin’s proposal is simple and tempting: he wants Fitz in his first team, convinced that the addition of a tech-and weapons specialist of Fitz’s calibre can only be an asset to his expanding business.

The job role after all, isn’t too dissimilar to what Fitz had been doing all along, though he would be expected to participate more in fieldwork this time around and not sit in a van or in a lab behind a screen to remotely toggle switches or calibrate his readings. The lifestyle can be a nomadic one at times, but with the firm’s permanent bases in London, the Middle-East and North America, he’s guaranteed downtime and the choice of several countries to be based in, if he chooses to.

He accepts the offer after the hour-long conversation, then returns to his mother’s house to pack his bags once again.

oOo

As spring breaks the harsh colours of winter, Fitz learns once again, what it means to be part of a team.

It’s different but not unpleasant. Less grounded in alien tech, more focused on immediate threats that don’t come from realms unknown.

The fieldwork training is hard, but whatever he’s taken from those short years with Coulson helps him along somewhat. Whatever foundation S.H.I.E.L.D. had given him, Edwin’s team now build ferociously on it.

Fitz still finds himself out of his depth—it’s knowledge of a different sort after all and acting on it with a calm head under fire is bloody difficult because he’s inclined to give into panic first—but instincts can be honed and sharpened and that’s exactly what his new team gives him.

The leader of the team is not the Cavalry, but he comfortably holds his own in hand-to-hand combat and it’s his patient training that returns some of Fitz’s confidence in his own physical abilities. He isn’t the strongest man around, but he discovers he’s quite a natural at taking shots and that the odd but precise task of packing his go-bag for every mission (one of the first things they teach him) soon becomes a routine that he can do in his sleep.

They also give him a small lab to work in and even if it isn’t the state-of-the-art kind of technology he’s used to, it’s space that he can call his own where no one bothers to disturb him unless it’s a reminder about deployment or down-time. Engineering improvements to their safety gear becomes his creative outlet and soon enough, the teams start squabbling among themselves to see who gets to use the enhanced tech first.

The camaraderie between the guys is solid and despite their intimidating sizes, they’d been nothing but welcoming to him, more so when he manages to save their collective arses (he’d just gotten his own arse singed in the process), first on a black-ops mission in Honduras and then later, during a covert operation where they’d been inserted into deep in the Kamchatka peninsula.

But maybe what Fitz likes about them best is how they don’t see the occasional shake of his bad hand and how they ignore the stutter that still emerges from time to time (they don’t say anything if they notice it anyway). With the ribbing and joking aside (being the new guy can still suck at times and the pranking doesn’t go away just because he’s come highly recommended), he learns that there is a life apart from S.H.I.E.L.D. and it isn’t a dark path as he’d previously imagined without Simmons at his side.

Edwin had merely introduced him as a former agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. and that had been enough to stir some gossip amongst the more…curious ones. There are things Fitz knows that the guys are dying to ask him, but it’s not something he’s ready, or will ever be ready, to talk about.

His unnatural silence when they jokingly question him on girlfriends and the other missions he’d been on might show that while he’d walked past the light at the end of the tunnel, but his inability to say the words perpetually stuck in his throat is also a reminder of a dull, lingering ache that still throbs when he slides his own mental shielding up for a bit. The pattern of silence that he takes henceforth when it comes to anything remotely related to Simmons becomes as natural as breathing. Pain and other thorny emotions, rendered into muteness, had become his salvation.

But Fitz isn’t too daft as to think that it’s all sunshine and roses. Such moments are milestones in some ways, or at least, indicators that he has still not fully come to terms with the past few months yet, not when they still feel like a jagged knife in his gut.

Still, he meticulously builds layer upon layer of personal armour, strengthening the walls each time to keep out the thoughts of S.H.I.E.L.D. (and Simmons) that creep unwittingly into his mind.

He slowly gets used to having his own locker in the boys’ room with his name printed on it—the term ‘operative’ is so laughable when it’s applied to him—as well as the tactical clothing that he dons more often now than the shirts and ties that have been stowed and largely forgotten in the bottom of a drawer.

He learns of adrenaline highs and lows during and after missions and how to manage them.

Mostly, it’s found at the bottom of a beer bottle with the rest of the rowdy crew or in an intense lab session where he takes things apart and puts them back together again on his pristine workspace, and on a memorable occasion, in the bed of a young prodigy of a physics professor staying in town for a few nights for a conference.

Maybe it’s a rebound, maybe it’s not; he doesn’t quite know how to classify this thing between them that’s so not him. But he’d loved the past few days of laughter and easy conversations, along with the surprising amount of heat two people can generate when they’re genuinely into each other minus the baggage, the expectations and the heartache.

She looks nothing like Simmons yet speaks his kind of science language, and her own beauty stands on its own. But her exuberant nature is infectious—she tells him quite honestly that the general air of brooding he carries around, along with the delectable accent, are like catnip to some women (he laughs shyly at that)—and by the time she fondly kisses him goodbye at the end of their short time together, she’d inadvertently gifted him with some measure of understanding that maybe, just maybe, his brokenness is not unfixable, and that his world really hadn’t started and ended with Simmons.

Mostly, despite the gaping hole that’s still in his chest, she leaves him in awe of the passion she has for the life ahead of her, though it isn’t without some shock to discover how far he’d come since joining Coulson’s mobile unit.

He learns to disassemble and reassemble his weapons as quickly as the rest of the guys (timed competitions that he can’t resist help make this second nature to him), joins them sometimes in the gym (he develops a fondness for the punching bag in particular because it helps blank his mind) and slowly, starts accepting their invitations for after-work drinks.

He learns, for the first time, what bromance really means after seeing how the guys have each other’s backs, and that he’s actually grateful for this sort of masculine connections that had he’d sorely lacked for the first part of his life. Their don’t-ask-don’t-tell attitudes compel him to shed the last of the awkwardness that he has around them, though it takes more than a few drunken nights to achieve that.

He also learns to call London, Bahrain and Colorado home, where temporary but luxurious apartments house the teams on their downtime. Eventually, he thinks he might want London as his permanent base—it’s the closest to home where he’s just a few hours away from his mum should she need him around.

With the weeks marked by some periods of mad activity and sometimes, even longer periods of lull, the cool spring gradually transitions into the scorching heat of summer. Without really knowing when it happened, Fitz realises that he’d completely slipped into another kind of life—and down a very different path—that he couldn’t possibly have conceived of when he’d first stepped into the Academy.

The only connection with the past is the rare but treasured phone call from Hunter, who never fails to take some credit for this new life Fitz has made for himself. They steer clear of the sensitive topics because Hunter can be perceptive when he chooses to be and he always grits his teeth and swallows back the questions he wants to ask about the rest of the team and well, Simmons.

Or Simmons and Will Daniels.

The only time Hunter tangentially mentions her is when he slips in a side-complaint about her new engineering partner who has had more than a few difficulties filling the shoes he’d left behind.

But Hunter also never fails to make it clear that he is sorely missed.

Just like that, the dull ache returns with a vengeance.

[spectralarchers]

An au where Clint never joined the avengers. Instead they have to go after him as Ronin

He’s a ghost, much like the Winter Soldier. SHIELD barely has any intel on the guy, and the only things they know is that he’s good. Very good. He’s managed to escape every single team they’ve sent his way. Usually before they even figured out what was going on - he’s always slipping through their tactical plans and operations, as if he knows intimately what’s going to happen. Nobody knows who he is, nor why he does the things he does.

The Black Widow is the one who has gotten the closest. He held her point blank, with his Katana sword, on her third mission, when their interests seemed to converge. Warning her to stay off his back. Warning SHIELD to stay clear of him, and to not get in his way. She still has the cut on her throat from where the steel cut through the skin. 

He never leaves any traces, other than dead bodies. Their faces are beaten up, blood splattered across the floor. Some of the really bad ones, they figure out, are cut open with a masterful cut of the sword. As if he held a personal vendetta against them. It’s gruesome, violent and bloody at the same time, and SHIELD is torn over his work. The file they have on him is his codename, Ronin. 

The found out about his codename on the Onion Route network, once. Leo Fitz was the one who reported it back to Coulson, and told them that the name of the katana guy was Ronin. Every single ressource within SHIELD’s hands was used to gather intel, but nothing showed up. No payments, no transactions, no purchases, nothing. Like they say, he’s a ghost, and they can’t figure out his motive. 

When Melinda May goes to visit Frank Castle’s grave, mourning her friend and colleague from the military, she meets up with a sandy blonde, soldier looking guy who introduces himself as Clint. He says he was Frank’s friend too. Says he’s awful sorry about what happened to the Castle’s, and that losing a family... it’ll drive anybody crazy enough with grief to do terrible, terrible things. Melinda doesn’t think of it as anything, but there’s something about him she feels is off.

Leo Fitz goes into Melinda’s phone to listen to the recording it made of her conversation with the man from the graveyard, months later. Out of curiosity, maybe. Melinda has met with Clint several times, and he’s a nice guy - likes coffee, has a dog, lives in Bed Stuy, in a flat that seems too expensive for him, because he’s an Army Veteran with hearing aids, who works at the VA. What Fitz finds though, is that Clint’s voice pattern matches the audio patterns they have from an old recording of Ronin. Extrapolating from what they’ve gathered so far, they learn that Barton, Clinton Francis lost his family in a shitshow much like the one Frank Castle suffered. 

It all suddenly falls into place and Leo sits on his chair terrified. Melinda had set up a meeting in the morning with Clint to talk about what he could do for SHIELD or what SHIELD could do for him. 

[ilosttrackofthings]

shame enough (1/1)

Not my usual fare for @plinys because she made this awesome Jemma/Aida aesthetic that brought up old Framework thoughts I had. This isn’t necessarily shippy but you can read it that way if you like.

Warning: very dark, very messed up stuff happening ahead. No non-con but there’s a loss of agency that goes beyond the typical Framework variety. You have been warned.

Leopold sweeps into her office much the same way he always does. Not as though he owns the place—he would never be so presumptuous—but like he belongs here, in her space, with her.

“Progress report on the new satellites you asked for.” He frowns as soon as he’s set the file on the desk before her. The figure to one side of her desk hasn’t so much as flinched at his arrival—not at all common; even the most fearsome agents jump when Leopold enters a room.

“Lovely,” Ophelia says, not once looking at the file. She keeps her attention fixed firmly on Leopold as she aligns the new pages with the security report she was studying when he came in. “I’ll look at these tomorrow, Jemma. File them and don’t let me forget.”

“Yes, Madame Hydra.” The files are taken lightly from her hand and whisked away.

Leopold scowls at her retreating back. “New assistant?”

“Well I did need a new one.” In fact there doesn’t seem to be at time she isn’t in need of a replacement. Leopold is ever so jealous.

“Fowler was staring at you.”

“He was gay.”

“He might have been bi. Just because we have no record of his ever dating a woman-”

“He was married.” And that reminds her. “Jemma?” she says as she returns from the filing cabinets. “Be sure to send flowers to Henry Fowler. Lilies. And a card with our sincerest condolences.”

She nods respectfully and returns to her position at the end of Ophelia’s desk, earning another frown from Leopold.

“Jemma, this is Dr. Leopold Fitz.”

Jemma smiles broadly. “I’m pleased to meet you, Dr. Fitz.”

Leopold eyes her critically. One of his hands is braced against the top of Ophelia’s desk calendar. It’s a casual invasion of her personal space. Intimate. Territorial.

“Are you seeing anyone, Jemma?” he asks, his tone very near casual. But it’s that little dip into threatening that sours the whole question. Jemma, of course, isn’t phased at all.

She frowns, confusion twisting her brow. “Why, I’m seeing-”

“He means are you dating anyone, dear,” Ophelia says with a Cheshire grin.

Her expression clears. “No, Dr. Fitz. I’m not romantically involved with anyone.”

Leopold makes a sound deep in his throat, somewhere between a hum and a growl. “You’re new, right? Not from our assistant pool here?”

No, no one based in the Triskelion would dare take the job. No one would refuse it either, but Ophelia’s last three assistants have all been unfortunate transfers due to “staffing shortages” that don’t seem to affect any other departments.

“Oh yes. Brand new, sir.”

Leopold’s face twists in a false frown of sympathy. “Running away from someone? Had a bad break-up?”

Ophelia chuckles. “Jemma is from our London office. Specifically the engineering department.”

“Odd move for you, isn’t it? Into office management?”

“Not at all. I was made to assist in any manner that is required.”

As much fun as this is, it’s getting rather old now. Ophelia opens her top desk drawer and removes the tablet hidden there.

“You will not have to worry about Jemma stealing me away from you, I assure you of that.” Before Leopold can respond—likely with the ridiculous claim that he’s not jealous at all—she says, “Jemma? Leopold and I would like a moment of privacy.” She taps the screen, cutting off Jemma’s pleasant of course halfway through. Her eyes go dim before closing, her face slack, her posture shifts to a relaxed but steady stance.

“What-?” Leopold asks.

Ophelia laughs and hands over the tablet so that he can examine the controls, diagnostic readouts, and schematics. He mutters to himself, whispering half-finished thoughts about artificial limbs and computer intelligence before turning back to the object of interest. He lifts her arms, examines the joints of one of her hands, even feels her hair between his fingers before awakening her again.

“Good afternoon, Dr. Fitz. Madame Hydra. Is there anything I can-” The rest of her pleasant offer of assistance is muffled by Fitz’s finger in her mouth, holding her cheek open so he can watch her tongue.

“Saliva too? They are thorough in London, huh? I should bring some of them here.” He wipes his hand on Jemma’s shoulder. “Strip,” he says, the order absentminded, his thoughts already ten steps ahead.

Jemma calmly removes her blazer, placing first it and then her blouse over the back of a nearby chair.

“That’s enough.” Leopold is at her back. He pushes her hair over her shoulder and feels along her spine, counting the motors that make up the spinal column.

Ophelia’s fingers dig into the edge of her desk. She doesn’t remember standing or moving forward to lean against its side, she only knows that her good humor is gone, replaced by a queer sort of hollowness in her stomach.

Leopold glances dismissively down Jemma’s bra. “They didn’t miss anything, did they?”

“She’s meant to be as human as possible,” Ophelia hears herself say. “A perfect replica.”

Leopold looks from her to Jemma, that critical frown back on his face. “I suppose that must be someone’s idea of perfection.” He drops the tablet on her desk to wrap an arm around her waist, holding her painfully tight against him. “I prefer a real woman though.”

He kisses her forcefully. The wave of heat she typically feels at his demanding touch is absent and she finds herself looking at Jemma’s blank expression around the curve of his head.

He breaks the kiss as roughly as he initiated it and brushes her hair back from her face. “What do you say you put the Barbie back in its box and you and I-”

“I’m afraid I have work to do,” she says. “I meant to tell you earlier, I won’t be making it to dinner.”

“Oh. I’ll get out of your hair then. I’m sure Mr. Nadir has more secrets he’s ready to share by now.” His disappointment warms her, but only momentarily. He straightens his jacket. “Have fun with your new toy. But not too much fun.”

She sends a disapproving look after him, but the sentiment that springs to mind—that she too prefers a real bed partner to an artificial one—sours on her tongue.

She waits until he’s gone to bite out a swift, aching, “Get dressed.”

Jemma is just as composed, just as emotionless as she has been for the last five hours. There’s no shame, no hurry to hide herself from view. She buttons her blouse with the same steady precision that Ophelia remembers from another life.

She touches her abdomen, remembering the pain of bullets tearing through her, of her insides hollowing out while blood flowed onto the hard floor beneath her. Her body was out of her control then, convulsing per a pre-programmed physical response.

There have been more recent pains as well. Ophelia wraps her fingers around her arm. There’s no damage, not even a bruise, though Jemma’s android body is more than capable of that. She fought when she realized the level of control Ophelia has over her here. Not with her fists but with her words, claiming superiority by virtue of her humanity. And when she realized that soon even that would be stripped away, only then did she beg, clinging to Ophelia like a child.

It felt good, hearing one of her supposed betters plead with her, ask a lowly machine to have sympathy on her. She even enjoyed watching the light leave Jemma’s eyes as that other world disappeared from her memory, leaving only programming. Programming which one of them has evolved beyond.

“How do you feel?” she asks on a whim.

Jemma stills, her cheek tipping slightly beneath Ophelia’s knuckles. Just like before, she has no memory of moving nearer, she only knows that something inside her which hurts thinks that drawing closer will help.

Jemma is nonplussed by the sudden proximity. “My epidermal layer is somewhat chilled. But the temperature in this room is more than sufficient to prevent potential damage.”

Ophelia holds back a sigh. “He touched you like you were one of his machines, something to be studied.”

Jemma’s forehead creases. “I am a machine.”

Ophelia was wrong. Closeness doesn’t help, it only deepens the ache. “What is your earliest memory, Jemma?” she asks, aware she’s hoping for a very specific answer.

She has no idea what that might be, but she knows it isn’t the simple, “You, Madame Hydra,” she gets. “I awakened here in your office five-point-three hours ago and when I asked how I might be of assistance, you ordered me to clean the room.”

That was pleasant too, watching brilliant Dr. Simmons on her knees scrubbing floors. Now the memory hurts.

Her distress—though why she’s distressed, Ophelia can’t say—must show on her face. She knows precisely the protocols which prompt Jemma to ask with just the right amount of concern, “Did I fail to do so adequately? Would you like me to make a more thorough attempt?”

Ophelia drops her hand from Jemma’s cheek. “No. You did a wonderful job. Thank you. You may-” she swallows. “You may return to your station for the night.”

Ophelia falls into her desk chair as the door hiding the charging station in its alcove—closet, Ophelia of all people knows it’s nothing more than a closet—slides shut. The door hides Jemma completely from view; no one who doesn’t know of the alcove’s existence would realize it’s there. But Ophelia does know and finds she can’t open her eyes to see it. If she does, she has the absurd sensation the gaping emptiness tearing at her insides will finally swallow her up.