#or well the twinings english breakfast teabags are good enough for me

[eye-in-the-wall]

the more tea i drink the more im like. dont think im a tea guy. lol.

[fanfoolishness]

a scattering of stars (AoS)

Agents of SHIELD, 2240 words.  Jemma and Daisy talk about what the future holds.  Full spoilers for 5x22.  FitzSimmons, angst, and a little bit of hope.

***

Sleep does not come easily in space.

Jemma hadn’t given it much thought before they left.  How many years of her life has she spent now in underground bunkers, in windowless laboratories, lost beneath the moons of Maveth?  If anything, she thought she would have been used to the lack of a circadian rhythm.

But raw space is a different beast, with a cruel and beautiful scattering of stars against the deepening dark, and the void presses on her.  So she paces instead of sleeps, a tight and steady circuit about the Zephyr.  Something about the quiet soothes.

Fitz’s ring fits passably around her middle finger; it is not loose enough to slip.  She worries it, spinning it so it clinks against her own as she walks.  Soft steps on the deck, the faint tinking sound of metal on metal.  In the endless dark she is aware of the plane -- no, ship now -- humming around her, aware of how thin the barrier is between her beating heart and the absolute vacuum of space.  She spins the ring round and round.

In the end, it had been Daisy who had brought him home to her.  Daisy, shaky on her feet, face flushed with the effects of the serum, her eyes swimming with tears; she had been the one to raise the rubble with a gesture and keep the ship from collapsing around them.  Even after everything, she pulled him free for Mack to carry, and she held Jemma as she sobbed.

And yet it was not the end.

Jemma finds herself in the cramped galley.  She rummages through the cupboard, reaching for the Twining’s English Breakfast tea she has kept stocked on every S.H.I.E.L.D. vessel since the Bus.  Her watch tells her it is three in the morning, Lighthouse time, but her mind tells her it doesn’t matter.  She’ll take the tea and never mind the caffeine.

The water boils quickly in the electric kettle Fitz installed ages back.  It is such a tiny thing compared with the scope of his genius and abilities, but it is something she appreciates with every use.  The scent of sharp black tea cuts through the metallic air, a breath of home.

“Morning,” says a tired voice behind her.  “You sharing?”

Jemma smiles.  “Of course, Daisy.  Though I thought you preferred coffee.”  She pulls another metal mug down from the cupboard and makes a second cuppa.  She turns to face the other woman, wondering if she has slept at all.

“Coffee’s good, but every once in a while I’ll go for tea.  It smells pretty good.”  She sighs. “Besides, you put enough sugar in something, it’s going to taste all right.”

Jemma chuckles.  She’ll never quite get over American sensibilities regarding tea and sugar.  “True enough, I suppose.  Are you having trouble sleeping as well?”

“Yeah.  I can’t seem to figure out when I should be sleeping, or when I should be awake.  And I keep thinking about Coulson.”  She shakes her head.  “But I know May will take care of him.”  

“Maybe he’ll have more time.  Maybe I was wrong,” says Jemma.  She says it without conviction.  She knows her exam findings backwards and forwards, much as it tears at her.

“I don’t think you were.”  Daisy lets out a long, shuddering breath.  “But this is what he wanted, right?  I’m starting to accept it, though some days are better than others.”  She manages a dry laugh.  “Of course, it’s hard to tell what’s day and night here.  Space is weird, right?”

Daisy’s normally sleek hair is rumpled, and there are shadows beneath her eyes.  She rubs at the side of her head and Jemma flinches, remembering Daisy’s neck slicked with blood, the scalpel in Fitz’s hand.  

She blinks the image away, realizing that Daisy has kept talking.   “Kind of cool at first, but… weird.  I thought I got used to it in the future, but nope.”

Jemma nods.  “I was just thinking that.  We’ve never exactly kept regular hours, but this is something different altogether, isn’t it?  New territory, at least for the human race.”

Daisy looks thoughtful, reaching for her mug of tea.  She swirls the teabag, and Jemma remembers to remove her own.  She’s let it go too long and it’s going to be overbitter now.  She rummages in one of the drawers for sugar.

“I wonder if the Kree brought many Inhumans into space,” Daisy muses.  “After all the crazy shit we’ve seen, I still have the feeling sometimes that we’re only scratching the surface.”

“You’re telling me,” says Jemma.  “Aliens, space, time travel… it all gets a bit overwhelming, doesn’t it?”

“I knew joining S.H.I.E.L.D. was going to be an adventure, but no one ever mentioned any of this stuff in the orientation packet.”

“You only got an orientation packet?  We had twelve different binders we had to go through at the Academy,” says Jemma.  “Of course, I thought it was all fascinating, so I didn’t mind the reading or the exams at the end.  Somehow they still failed to mention time travel, though.”

“That’s the bureaucracy for you.”  Daisy tosses her teabag into the trash, and gratefully takes a handful of sugar packets Jemma offers.  “Any of those little creamer things in there?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“Oh well.  Sugar it is,” she says, and promptly adds four packets.  She picks up her mug and nods to the table.  “Want some company?”

“Any time,” says Jemma.  She and Daisy sit down, their mugs clinking against the slick surface.  For a moment they are silent, and the thrum of the Zephyr pulses at the edge of their hearing.

Daisy shifts in her chair, her mouth quirking into a frown.  “So… how are you, really?”

Jemma stares into her tea.  The rich, reddish-brown liquid glistens beneath the overhead lights, and she watches the steam uncurl, trying to find the words.  “We’re going to find him,” she tries.  There.  A good brave face.  Mum would be proud.

Daisy raises a skeptical eyebrow.  “But it -- it still happened.  You don’t have to pretend that it’s fine, you know.”

What does one say to that?  She’s fine.  

Though admittedly she hadn’t been fine that day.  His face had looked so peaceful again, dirty and blood-stained, his hair rumpled and dusty.  He hadn’t looked calm like that in such a long, long time.  Even when he’d slept she’d seen it there, the illness, the worry, in his face.  So she drank in his calm expression and brushed his hair back from his forehead.  Dust and blood stuck to her fingertips; she kissed him and closed his sightless eyes.  She told him, over and over, that she loved him.  

But she’s fine.  Of course she’s fine.

Yes, something happened, and yes, it’s terrible, but the universe is giving them an out.  This is not the end.  For once the universe is on their side, isn’t it?  Fitz is still out there, still loved, still loving, determined to find her -- only she is going to find him first.  And when she does --

Her eyes burn.  She’s crying again.  “Damn it,” she mutters.  “Sorry.”

“Hey,” says Daisy, her eyes tired but kind.  “Don’t do that.  You don’t have to pretend.”

“Don’t I?” Jemma hisses.  “Fitz died, and I wasn’t even there.  We broke our rule, after we promised each other!”  She scrubs at her eyes with the back of her hand, keeping her gaze on the table.  She can’t bear to look at Daisy, not like this.  “I was so worried for the civilians.  I wanted to help them, I wanted to make sure they were safe.  I forgot him.”

Daisy reaches out a cautious hand to touch her shoulder, but Jemma recoils, Daisy’s words ringing in her head.  I will never forgive you for this.  

“How you must hate us both,” she whispers.  “I shouldn’t even be bothering you with this.  I’m so sorry, Daisy, for what he did to you.  I know it saved us, but how it must have felt --”

The table trembles, just slightly.  Daisy is pale, clenching her fists.  “Sometimes it gets away from me,” she says.  “Ever since the serum.  I’m still figuring out how to adjust…”  The table calms, stills.  She swallows.  “That’s what I hate about everything.  He was right, in the end, but to wake up like that and see my friend hurting me… I don’t think I’ll ever forget the way his face looked.   Like the Doctor.  Except real.”

Jemma cautiously takes a drink of tea.  It’s hot, it scalds, but it’s better than the taste of salt on her lips.  She takes a deep breath.  

“I was horrified at what he was doing.  But I told myself the science made sense,” says Jemma, trying to regain some measure of control.  She spins the ring around her middle finger.  Deke had chosen well.  Tink.  Tink.  “And I let that blind me to how you felt.”

Daisy nods stiffly, taking a drink of her own tea.  She makes a face, presumably from the absence of milk, and sets the mug down.  “Neither of you would listen to me.  You took his side.  I understand now that he was -- he wasn’t himself.  But I don’t know if you’ll ever understand how much that hurt, that neither of you could apologize,” she says.  Daisy takes another drink of tea, her hands white-knuckled on the mug.

She should have said it ages ago.  But she had been so frightened about Fitz, so worried about his mental state, and she’d gone and let Daisy think she was alone.  “I know, Daisy.  I’m sorry.  I was wrong.”  

“Thanks,” says Daisy flatly.

The word hangs between them, heavy in its normalcy.  They drink their tea.

The silence stretches until Jemma can no longer bear it.  The words begin to come more easily, words that she had scarcely even let herself name in her own mind.  They spill from her mouth in a terrible truth.

“It’s not an excuse, but he’s sick.  Was sick.  Is sick.”  She folds her hands in her lap, bowing her head.  “He’s never fully recovered from what Ward did to him.  I knew better as a doctor.  Brain injuries… they can last a lifetime.”  

“Nobody blames him for that, Simmons, I promise --”

She ignores Daisy’s protests.  She has to explain.  “I told myself he’d gotten so much better, and he had, Daisy, truly he had!  But the Framework took so much of his progress, between the trauma of the life he lived there and the physical toll the machine connection took on his brain.  He let me check him in the Lighthouse after the -- the incident, and his scans, the damage they showed --  He’d broken by the end, you see.”  The words come out half-gulped between sobs, and she knows she’s losing control, but she doesn’t care, not anymore.  “Thank you for bringing him home.  Seeing him like that, it was the first time I’d seen him peaceful in so long, Daisy.  I will always be grateful to you for that.”

Her voice fades, a tremulous, miserable sound.  “I know he gets another chance, we get another chance through some miracle of time and science and the mysterious universe, but…”

Daisy finishes the sentence for her.  “Even when we find him, he’s still sick, isn’t he?”

She drinks her tea, and it is nothing but bitter dregs.  Her breaths slow back to normal, the tears drying on her cheeks in the cold recycled air.  “Yes,” says Jemma thickly.  “I love Fitz more than anything in this world, or beyond it, for that matter.  I will never stop loving him.  But he might never be the man he was before this all happened.”

Daisy reaches out, and this time, Jemma does not pull back.  Daisy’s hand is warm and strong, gripping her own.  Jemma squeezes, hard.

“I miss him too,” Daisy says quietly.  “I miss my friend, the person he was before the Framework, and the Doctor, and the end of the world.  And if there’s a chance to help him, to keep him from breaking again… I want to help you both.”

“Even after everything?” Jemma asks in disbelief.  Hope flares within her, a feeling that’s too long been mixed with guilt and fear.  But here with the scent of tea in the air and Daisy’s hand taking her own, hope feels truer than it has in months.  

“After what we’ve been through,what we’ve seen, I don’t want to give up on anyone,” says Daisy.  “Coulson wouldn’t.  I won’t, either.”  She manages a grin, though her eyes are too bright.

“Do you really think it’s going to be all right?” asks Jemma.  She holds out her other hand, and Daisy takes it, their fingers interlacing.  It’s startling, how such a simple touch can feel so heartening.

“I think we’ll keep fighting,” says Daisy.  “Together.”

The Zephyr breathes around them, its song a powerful, steady melody.  Jemma thinks of the scattered stars beyond its hull and what they hold.  

She imagines the man she loves waiting for her, and she does not know if his sleeping face shows peace, or fear.  There will be struggle, that much she knows, for even as the universe gives, it takes.  That has always been true.

But she looks into Daisy’s eyes and she sees friendship.  Family.  Even after everything.

“Together,” says Jemma.  “I quite like that idea.”