”No," he said.
”Couldn’t have said it better myself," she thought.
Jemma was no fool — she was a genius, even. She knew what she was signing up for when she had begged Fitz to come and enlist with her for this mission. Her mum thought it was suicide. She could work in the labs and get a Nobel Prize or two, make Marie Curie and Tony Stark look like amateurs. There were dreams for Jemma Simmons — and Jemma Simmons had dreams all her own. Hopeful, she had liked to think she was. Brave, maybe.
She didn’t realise that cowardice and dread would come in the form of a dead white rat. That was never in the hypothesis.
”No," he said.
”I’m so sorry," she thought.
Sorry that she even dared to dream she could do this in the first place. She wasn’t Hermione, she can’t save the world. Sorry about this now, that maybe if she had never done this then she might still be back home. Sorry. That’s all she was, really. Sorry, so very sorry.
[ Downcast eyes. A resigned sigh. ]
Jemma knew what she had to do. If only her fingers would stop shaking. If only she could remember how to breathe again—- after all, she could count home many more she had left. She was fighting the heat behind her eyes, fighting the urge to run and hide and curl into a corner and wait for her mum to wake her up and tell her—- “No, Jemma baby, it’s all a bad dream.”
”No," he had said.
”This is no bad dream," she thought.
Her footsteps were heavy. Her stomach was heavy. Everything about her was weighing her down—- including all the days that she knew now would never come. Days that never will be. Days that could have been. And she was sorry, so sorry, that this was the last one and she didn’t even know it. Her very last sunrise and she was inside a lab, dissecting some poor dead man’s brain cells, without realising she wasn’t looking at a test subject—- she was looking at her own fate, her own future.
[ A defeated smile — or was it hopeless? ]
”Sir—- I know the protocol in these circumstances but could you please—- tell my dad first." It wasn’t a request. She didn’t know what it was anymore, really. She was never very good with words that weren’t written down in theory. "I just think my mum would take it better if it comes from him.”
Jemma didn’t tell him to say goodbye to them. They knew. She’d told them so when she left for this mission, whatever the missions, that she might not come back. They knew—- and now they would have to know. She didn’t have to say goodbye. She already had.
”We’re not there yet. There’s still time.”
“—-Sir, please." She wanted to laugh. Coulson was right.
There was time. Hers was over.
She wasn’t about to kid around anymore. Time to grow up, Jemma. This is where the dream ends. But not for them and she knew they couldn’t, wouldn’t, do it. They might go down with her, if she knew them as well as she thought she did. Jemma Simmons loved life enough to give them theirs.
This was her goodbye to them, in so many ways and in so many words. You don’t want to see this, it said. You don’t want to be here for this, it said. You don’t have to kill me, it said. You don’t have to watch this, it said. None of this is your fault, it said. Goodbye, it said. And I’m sorry.
”—-Would you mind if I had a brief moment alone with Fitz?”
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