Amid energies of the cosmos, you gave as good as you got

[shes_biochem]

Everything is beginning to weigh on her with the weight of the ocean's pressure.

Not the best thought, but it's the right one. Simmons still feels like she hasn't left the ocean floor, with Fitz beside her, and even though she clings to old habits, every time she looks to her side to make sure Fitz is there and alive and his heart is beating, she remembers that he's not. On unsteady feet, she finds her way to a door to the Nexus, more relieved than she's been in so very long, and she takes herself to the luxury hotel, but keeps far away from the room she's been using as a lab.

She can't look at it without thinking of everything that's happened. She can't even breathe some moments without thinking that she wouldn't even have breath, if it weren't for Fitz -- who can't even remember, who's healing, who is...

She claps a hand over her mouth to stifle the sob that does its' level best to escape. She's not able to keep it in and when the weight of the last week (last few months) catches up to her, Simmons presses her back against the wall to keep herself upright, sliding down until she can wrap her arms around her knees and pretend, pretend, that she's not alone and that when she looks to her side, Fitz will be there, even though she knows he won't.

She can still hear her voice, hear the echo of panic in his all those months ago, and now she knows what he'd felt like when she'd jumped from the plane. It's like everything has changed and parts of her have been ripped out, only to be replaced by love and grief.

Comments

[shes_biochem]

That's enough to give Simmons a bit of hope. She perks up, looking at Captain Rogers curiously, wringing her fingers in her lap as she debates how to go about this. "Lost as in dead?" she clarifies. "Or simply lost to you in terms of distance." Either way, she feels that she's lost people far too much recently, between Fitz being in such a perilous condition and Ward having been the one to put him there.

[captain_rogers]

It's a difficult thing just then to look back at the memory of so much as that bombed out bar in Switzerland, the sound of Peggy's voice, salt and whiskey and smoke on his tongue as he had attempted to drink away the loss of the one person who had meant more to him than the rest of the whole world. Even in the understanding that the had not lost Bucky then entirely, that so much of what he had known in that moment where his whole body had ached down to his bones in sorrow and confusion had been lies, the memory was still too raw to touch.

He doesn't know this woman from Adam, knows nothing of her other than what had been shared in a few minutes in generalities that had not so much as given names beyond that of a much less known man whose death had been a lie. While something of that allows him to speak around the tightness of his chest without choking, he isn't fool enough to share his every waking thought on the subject with a stranger.

He can see that lift of hope in her eyes, in the lift of her chin and the straightening of her shoulders and wants to do anything but crush that again when he speaks. "I thought he'd died," he told her, his voice scraping a moment harsh around the thought before the tone settles once more. "I guess I need to start doubting those reports a little more now."

[shes_biochem]

"I'm very sorry," Simmons says, feeling as if the weight of empathy and sadness is in the small lines around her eyes, stress marks that she'd swear up and down didn't exist until only weeks ago. "I think we're all starting to doubt the things we're told," she confesses, hoping to bring something of a brighter tone to all this. "When the world around us isn't so easy to understand, doubt is the only reasonable safe harbour."

[captain_rogers]

"Maybe everything we see might not be exactly what it seems," he admitted, watching her as her expression shifted to a shade more pale and wan. "But doubting everything will just have you jumping at shadows. Sometimes it might be a matter of listening to not just what's being said, but who's saying it. Other times...maybe it's a matter of listening to your gut, not your head."

With all that had threatened to make him lose faith in past years, the recent reemergence of Hydra and things he had thought long laid to rest being in no way the least of them, holding onto his trust in the basic nature of people had been all that had kept his head above water. There would always be bad apples, maybe always another monster to fight, but there were - and of this he was sure - also always good people out in the world.