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

[captain_rogers]

Beyond the mission of Bucky, of attempting to find a balance between his own desire to hunt for his friend to remind him of who he was and what they had lost, of what was not necessarily lost, and the understanding for the need patience, Steve was something at a loss. The presence of friends he had made in recent years, and that of the opportunity for more, or at least new interactions without his past weighing heavily on both sides of the equation, kept his days from dragging in between the windows of the feeling of being watched.

His needs were simple: that of the hunger that had become an ever-present thing in his life, rarely uncomfortable though it seemed to gnaw at him at a low-level throughout all he did, as if he could never quite get enough to eat; and that of the need to then burn off the energy that buzzed through him, unspent on battle or fights outside of those organized in matches against those who could take him at more than a half-level.

Steve was on his way back from satiating the first, emptying plate after plate at the buffet and trying not to draw too much attention to himself as he did, when he heard the sound it took him a moment to recognize. A muffled sob, a ghost of a thing half-swallowed, but carrying enough weight to it that he could not help but stop there in the hallway and look for the source of that sound. The breadth of his hearing had him needing to search around several corners before he was able to trace the soft, high sound back to its owner. When he caught sight of her, a slip of a woman who looked as if she were a second away from shaking apart with what she was holding inside her, he slowed but did not falter as he moved in toward her.

"Miss?" He called, attempting to make himself as non-threatening a shape as he could as he spoke to her in a voice kept gentle. "Are you alright? Do you need any help?"