Chapter Text
[Year: 2011]
Coughing and spluttering, she pulls herself slowly out of the rubble. Purple mist clouds her vision, and she gasps in horror as she looks to her right and sees what was once her colleague—turned inexplicably, now, to stone.
Whimpering, she crawls toward Theresa. She gently touches her face and screams when the other girl turns, slowly, into dust.
“Agent Simmons,” a calm voice sounds behind her.
She whips her head around and sees a stern-looking Asian woman that she vaguely recognizes from somewhere.
“My name is Agent May,” the woman says calmly. “I need you to follow me. Right now.”
Agent May. The Cavalry. That’s how she knows this woman’s face.
Agent May grabs her hand and begins running, tugging Jemma along. A panicked feeling rises up inside of her, and then her entire body starts to feel like her stomach does when she looks down from a tall height. The same whooshing feeling crashes over her, repeatedly, and she notices that the air around them has become volatile. Wind whips around them, violently, and small tornados begin to form.
“Agent Simmons, I need you to calm down,” May manages through gritted teeth. “We need to get you out of here.”
“What?” Jemma breathes. “Where…what’s happening?”
“I’m so sorry,” May replies. Before Jemma can react, Agent May is sticking a needle into the side of her neck.
The last thing she sees before the blackness is May’s glassy eyes, full of regret and apologies as her arms reach out to catch her.
She wakes up in a cold facility that will be her nightmare for the next three hundred and seventy days.
***
[Year: 2014]
She pulls the hood up over her head as she rounds a corner, the street lamp illuminating her on the dark street. Jemma forces herself to relax her shoulders and neck, shoving her hands into the pockets of her jacket. The uncomfortable sensation of being watched continues, but that’s nothing new.
What she doesn’t know is whether it’s Hydra or Cal that’s watching her. The crazed doctor has been trying to recruit him into his strange revenge fantasy against Phil Coulson, which Jemma knows is insane because Phil Coulson died, shortly before her…accident. All she’s sure of is that whoever is chasing her isn’t SHIELD, because SHIELD doesn’t exist. She’s not sure if it ever did, despite having attended their Academy and even started a job at SciOps. Jemma momentarily lets her guard down, thoughts wandering to her partner for those sweet, blissful years at the Academy. She thinks of the apartment they got when they first got stationed at SciOps.
She shakes herself of this train of thought. That was before, before the explosion in the lab and the inexplicable purple mist clouding the biology lab that only she walked out of.
Footsteps grow progressively closer as she hustles down the street, senses piqued and alert. It's been years since she’d become…whatever it is that she is now and these people, these organizations, they won’t leave her alone.
She wants to use all of this power built up inside her for good, but more often than not she’s too busy running.
A scream breaks through the quiet and she rushes forward toward the alley where it came from. All thoughts of her potential captors leave her mind as she focuses on the female scream.
“PLEASE! LEAVE ME ALONE!”
This spurns her forward, and the little boost of speed that came with her altered biology takes her to the mouth of the alleyway in record time. She raises her hand, shuts her eyes, and focus on the oxygen molecules around her.
With just the smallest bit of alteration, she’s able to manipulate them into a strong and focused gust of wind, sending the man flying backward against the opposite wall. Jemma runs to the girl, a pretty brunette a couple of years younger than herself.
“Are you okay? I promise I won’t hurt you,” Jemma says, approaching the woman cautiously.
She smiles. “I’m fine. Thank you so much. That was—what you just did was incredible.”
“I’m going to need you to not tell anyone about that,” Jemma winces. She moves over toward the man, checking his pulse and letting out a small hum of relief to find that he’s just knocked unconscious. “Feel free to call the police, have this man arrested.”
The brunette flinches. “About that. He’s actually—my colleague.”
“Your what?”
“My co-worker,” she admits awkwardly. Her hand hovers near her ear and suddenly, Jemma understands. The scared woman was not scared after all.
They had drawn her here on purpose.
“My name is Skye. I’m with SHIELD and I’m here to help.”
Jemma’s eyes grow wide. “SHIELD doesn’t exist.”
Skye puffs out an annoyed breath. “Okay, it does, but whatever, we don’t have time right now. Listen, there’s someone else looking for you, and—“
“Cal?” Jemma laughs humorlessly. “Yes, I am quite well acquainted with Cal. He’s only been hunting me ever since the fall of your supposed organization. I’m going to ask you one more time. Let me go, because I do not want to hurt you.”
Boots smack hard against the pavement, and another man, this one slimmer and shorter, slides to a stop in the alleyway. The lighting is poor, but she can just see the outline of his profile. Skye makes a move toward her and Jemma gives her a warning glance
She raises her hand, prepared to alter the molecules around her however she needs to in order to get out of this, when his brogue cuts through the heavy quiet of the alley.
“Simmons?” a voice she knows better than her own asks hesitantly. She’s never heard that much anguish in his voice and the sheer heartbreak in the sound is stifling.
Her hand immediately falls. “Fitz?”
He moves swiftly, but she can’t do this right now. There’s too much at stake and too many lives in the balance, so she quickly gusts Skye toward Fitz before concentrating as much as she can at her hand.
A tiny flame arises on her palm and it makes her smile, as it always does, because even though she’s a human disaster, sometimes her powers feel extraordinarily beautiful. She builds a quick wall of fire between herself and the SHIELD agents. Then she runs, climbing the fence at the end of the alley and jumping over it.
She doesn’t look back, and she sure as hell does not stop running.
***
She escapes and evades them for weeks after that but they catch up with her at a motel in Montana that she’s been hiding out in.
Only this time, it’s worse than whoever Skye and Fitz are working for, because it’s Cal. Insane, crazy, hellbent on destruction Cal.
“There she is,” he cheers when he finds her in the ice room. She’s wearing pajamas, barefoot and vaguely shivering in the cold. She glances down at the bucket of ice in her hands and concentrates on the oxygen molecules once again, frozen in their current state. She imagines the one oxygen molecule for every two hydrogen, and watches as the ice melts. She throws it in front of her, freezing cold, and attempts to freeze it. A woman steps up behind him, knives for nails, and slashes through it with a high-pitched squeaking noise.
Jemma flinches as the nails slice her chest, from her heart up across her collarbone. She uses what little momentum the oxygen has in the room to create a heavy gust that pushes Cal and the woman backward.
“Cal!” a male voice barks. The sound of guns cocking is a strangely welcome distraction, as it forces Cal and his companion to turn away from Jemma and into the hallway. Her eyes scan the tiny ice room for any way out, but she finds none.
“Why don’t we talk?”
She’s only met Skye once, and it was very brief, but she recognizes the voice and apparently so does Cal.
“Daisy,” he sighs, shuffling forward. The girl with the knife nails glares back toward Jemma, who raises her hands in innocent surrender. At least, it would be innocent surrender if her hands weren’t weapons.
She uses the opportunity of tense silence in the hallway to gust the woman across the hallway, toward where Skye and a few other people dressed in all black with their guns drawn.
Jemma slams her body through the door to her motel room, locking it behind her and quickly gathering her things. She doesn’t have much, just enough for a backpack, but she can’t risk leaving anything behind. It’s become more and more difficult to come across money.
She changes faster than she ever has in her life, slipping in to her jeans, tank, and hoodie as she shoves her feet into her black boots. What she wouldn’t give for a new pair of bloody shoes…
Jemma runs to the window, blinking down at the height and shutting her eyes in a panicked breath of air.
“Come on, you can do this. Just five stories.”
Her door swings open quickly, and the slim build of Leo Fitz slips in before he quickly closes it again.
“How did you do that?” she rushes out. He stares at her, gaping, for a long moment.
“I’m the gadget guy,” he eventually breathes. “I—Jemma, they—they told me you were dead.”
She wonders how he’d taken the news. What he’d done with all of her stuff that was in their apartment. She wants to tell him how relieved she is to see that he’s alive and well, that he’s whole. He’s different than he was before. A bit more filled out, stubble creating shadows on his cheeks. He’s in tact gear, too, which she never would have expected to see her best friend in before. She wonders if she looks as different to him as he does to her.
Mostly, she wonders how the hell she never knew he was Hydra.
“I’m surprised they didn’t tell you,” Jemma bites out.
His brow furrows. “Why would they have told me, and not anyone else?”
She backs up against the window, gripping the tiny lock and turning it slowly. “Given that you’re Hydra, of course.”
Fitz gapes openly at her. “Simmons, you’ve got the wrong idea.”
“I don’t think I do,” she says simply. “I was held in a facility for an entire year, Fitz. An entire year before I managed to get out. What SHIELD—what Hydra, did to me—“
He gulps heavily and moves toward her wearily. “Jemma, I swear to you, that is not us. We’re SHIELD. Really SHIELD, and we’re here to help you. There was a Hydra sleeper on my team, and he escaped our custody. He knows who you are. We need to get you back to our base, where you’ll be safe—“
Jemma snorts derisively. “Safe? You think I’ll ever be safe?”
“Let me help you,” he pleads. His blue eyes are so incredibly sincere that she almost believes him.
She shakes her head. “I just want to be left alone, Fitz. That’s all I want.”
His jaw twitches at her words, but he nods resolutely. She chooses to ignore the tears floating in his eyes. “Fine. But let me help you with that cut, okay? Then—then I’ll help you get out of here.”
Now that he mentions it, the blood is starting to drip into her shirt and it’s one of the only ones she has. It also burns hot, so she nods weakly and sits on the edge of the bed. He kneels down in front of her, rummaging through his backpack and pulling out a small first aid kit.
“You were always better at this,” he warns, voice gruff as he swipes some disinfectant over the cut. She hisses against the acidic burn and grasps at his hand balancing on her knee.
“I can see that,” she groans. “What the hell is that?”
“Rubbing alcohol?”
“Ugh, Fitz!” Jemma exclaims. “Hydrogen peroxide! Not rubbing alcohol!”
He chuckles, low and warm, and even though she’s supposed to hate him, he was her best friend for so long. Butterflies flutter in her gut as he places gauze along her injury, taping it up gently.
“Should be proper now,” he grins, giving her a little wink. The smile slides right off of his face when he meets her eyes. “Jemma?”
She shakes herself and stands rapidly. “Nothing. Sorry. I need to get out of here. It sounds like they’re getting closer.”
Fitz stills, listening to the commotion in the hallway. From the sound of it, Cal has a couple of extra friends with him. They probably have a couple of minutes before Skye comes barging in. He reaches over onto the desk and jots down an address and a phone number.
“If you change your mind, if you’re willing to hear me out, meet me here in eight days. 9 p.m. Or you can call that number, any time.”
She licks her lips and nods shortly, shoving the paper into her backpack as she hoists it over her shoulder. “Wait. We need to make it look like I got away.”
They overturn a few items and Jemma insists on tying his hands together with a pillow case, much to his chagrin. Just as she’s finished, the door explodes inward. Jemma looks down at the height, five stories down, and takes a deep breath.
“Jemma?” Fitz asks. He seems to be putting it together, what she’s about to do. “Jemma, no! JEMMA!”
She looks back one last time before she falls, honing in on the molecules surrounding her. It’s a bit more difficult than it usually is, given the speed with which she’s moving and the fact that she’s never tried this particular trick before. Angling her palms downward, she focuses on creating a gust. When it kicks up, it works against the force of gravity.
It hurts a little bit, the pressure building up from her palms up toward her shoulders. In fact, it hurts a lot. Her landing is a little squirelly and a lot graceless, but when she glances back up at the window when her feet touch the ground, she sees Fitz, hanging out of it and staring down at her in a combination of awe and amusement.
She shoots him a wink and takes off running.
****
It doesn’t take long for Jemma to start wondering if she should have listened to what Fitz had to say. He had always been honest with her, even when he didn’t want to be. Friends since their first project, they’d been frequently mashed into one long name—FitzSimmons—and sometimes she swore he knew her mind better than she did.
She remembers his favorite color (a dusty shade of greyish blue), the way he takes his tea, his mother and her amazing cooking, his favorite beer, the way his thick-knit cardigans felt wrapped around her…
She remembers a lot about him, actually, and she finds herself feeling an intense pull of nostalgia as she thinks about it all. All of these little facts, the bits and pieces of who he is and who they were together, overwhelm her somewhere along the road on Day 5.
She’s managed to hitchhike her way closer to the address. It’s in Washington; or at least, that’s what she learns from a rest-stop map. When she figures out exactly how far it is, she realizes that she may just have to do the unthinkable.
She waits until the truck driver finds a decent-sized town somewhere in Idaho. Jemma waves goodbye to him and climbs out in the parking lot of a mall. She looks around, trying to find a car that she won’t feel too bad about taking. Any of the ones with carseats are out. So are the ones with textbooks strewn across the backseats.
“Bingo,” she whispers as she peers into the window of a Mercedes. It looks like it belongs to a real jerk—or at least that’s what she’s going to choose to believe. Picking locks has never been her thing, but she manages to use enough concentrated air pressure to make the door pop open. Sliding inside, she focuses her palms onto the dashboard, shutting her eyes in concentration and letting out a small squeak of victory when the car starts.
Hastily buckling up, she speeds out of the parking lot and turns on the car’s radio.
That’s when it occurs to her that the car has a GPS system. For a moment, she’s breathlessly excited because she won’t have to rely on gas station maps to make her way to this address, but on the other hand—this car can probably be tracked, and the owner will most likely not be pleased to find it missing when he returns from shopping.
She does her best to keep her eyes on the road while she reads the numbers off of the scrap of paper, dialing on her burner phone in the dim light.
He picks up after only a couple of rings. “Jemma?”
“How’d you know it was me?” she smiles.
“Just did,” he hums. She can tell that he’s grinning and it makes her own smile widen.
“So listen, I need your help.”
“With what?” he asks immediately. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine, I just—I kind of stole something, and I need some help lying low.”
There’s a long pause.
“What did you steal, Simmons?”
“I may or may not be currently driving a stolen car. It’s a Mercedes, it has a GPS in it. I don’t want to be tracked.”
He heaves a bereaved sigh. “Let me get Skye. She can figure out how to disable it.”
She hears him calling for the other agent, and then the bouncy voice of Skye. “What’s up, Dr. Fitzy?”
It occurs to Jemma, suddenly and powerfully, that perhaps Fitz is somehow involved with Skye, beyond the label of co-workers. It makes her a little bit nauseous and she smashes it down.
“Hey there,” Skye greets after a brief tussle for the phone. “I see Fitz is trying to hog you from the rest of us.”
“I wouldn’t exactly call it that. Did he tell you—“
“That you stole a Mercedes and need some help? You bet your British ass he did. Pull over when you can. I just need the license plate.”
“Okay. What are you going to do?”
“Just some quick hack magic. I’ll register the car to you. Or, someone who looks like you. How’s the name Jennifer Simon?”
“It sounds great, Skye. Thank you.”
“Great. I’ll disable the tracking capabilities on the GPS, too. You should still be able to use it though. If you have any problems, just call Fitz’s super secret phone and ask for me.”
Jemma laughs as she thanks Skye once again. She goes to hang up, but Fitz’s voice freezes her.
“Hey,” he pants. “Sorry about her. She’s…a character.”
“She seems like it. So are you two—um—like, are you--?”
She huffs in frustration at her own awkwardness.
“Are we…?” Fitz asks, confused. Then she hears it click in his mind. “Oh. Ooh. God, no. She’s like the younger sister I never wanted.”
“Oh please, you would have loved to have a little sister,” Jemma teases. “Oh, great, a petrol station! Let me hop out and I’ll read off the plate.”
She rattles it off to him and listens to him repeat the numbers and letters to Skye.
“Have you given any thought to that—that address?” he stumbles. She bites down on her smile.
“Why do you think I stole a car, Fitz? You gave me an address in Washington…while we were in Montana. Not all of us have access to a jump jet.”
He curses. “I didn’t even think of that, Jemma. We can—“
“Stop,” she laughs. “I’ve already committed grand theft auto. I might as well keep going. Keep your phone on. Y’know, just in case my crime spree gets out of hand.”
“Just promise not to…I don’t know, shoot anyone, okay?”
“I’m an outlaw now, Fitz,” she says cheekily. “See you in three days.”
“Three days,” he repeats. She waits a moment, listening for the line to click off. It doesn’t.
Her smile grows as she flips her crappy convenience store cell phone shut.