Author: clarahow // agentroxylancelots // charleybradburies (will be posted after challenge)
Fandom: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. / MCU / Marvel
Characters: Leo Fitz & Jemma Simmons
Pairing: Fitzsimmons (mostly platonic, no sexy or romancey parts)
Length: 910w
Rating: M
Summary: He'd be damned if he let her cry without a shoulder to cry upon.
Content Notes: Spoilers for 'The Dirty Half Dozen.' Emotional hurt/some comfort. Emotional, and a little physical, intimacy, but no romance. It hurts but I felt I needed to do it because I needed to get feelings out about the relevant parts of the episode. Discussion of morality, mortality, and voluntary manslaughter.
Author Notes: Written for challenge #40: Purgatory, and for 100_women prompt #94: Lost.

“I don’t know who I am,” she moans suddenly, almost too quiet to hear, and Fitz comes to full awareness. He can’t see Jemma given the darkness between his couch and hers, but he doesn’t need to see her to know how she’s feeling.

At least, he normally wouldn’t need to. But who knew with her recently?

Probably not him.

And apparently, not her either.

“What do you mean?” he asks as tenderly as he can manage, careful not to tread the paths of…rose-tinted fondness and admiration, or of anger.

He can hear her take a deep, shaky breath. It sucks the space out from between them.

“Jemma? You can tell me what’s going on with you, you always can,” he says, and as he hears her shifting to sit up he decides that he can tell the outline of the room well enough to stand and go over to her. He ends up sitting a little closer at her side than he’d planned, and she scoots away a bit, but it seems more a result of the silent, but slick and shining, tears that are slipping down her cheeks than of avoiding the potential of his touch.

Even after she scoots away, her tension is radiating from her, and Fitz has to stop himself from trying to console her without explicit permission. There were more boundaries now than ever, more awkwardness, different awkwardness, less trust…but he’d be damned if he let her cry without a shoulder to cry upon.

“I killed Bakshi.”

His heart skips a couple beats, and her grieving, welling within her and about to boil over, confirms that there’s a good bit more.

“And I tried to kill Ward.”

The words barely make it out of her mouth; both her voice and her body are trembling.

The thought crosses his mind, that they’d probably all be better off, or at least safer, with Ward dead rather than alive, but Fitz shoves it away.

“I started trying to use one of the splinter bombs when the two of us were in a room alone. Bakshi caught me and got in the way and he got…Fitz, he disintegrated. Just…properly turned to dust. And Ward - Ward just - he told me he was disappointed in me. And I’m not sure why that hurts so much, I just…Fitz, I would have killed him. And I…”

Jemma pauses, and though he can still just barely see the outline of her body he hears her gulp, still trembling with tears. He stretches his hand out to offer it to her, and she pulls away as though she’s afraid one of them will burn the other.

“I was okay with it.”

The words sit in the air for a moment, the pressure of everything that’s still within her practically choking her; unable to find anything suitable to say, it feels like the same is being done to him, and as guilty as he feels about it, he moves his attention toward reminding himself that his breathing isn’t actually being restricted.

“Not once I realized what I was really doing but…before that. Thinking about it, thinking about the mission, all of that, I didn’t even…flinch to myself at the thought of killing him. And now I’m, I’m horrified and it’s not…not about anyone else, not about Hydra, not about Ward, even. This is about me, Fitz. I’m the bad guy, the villain, the monster! I’m the senseless killer! I’m…”

“You’re not senseless, Jemma,” Fitz says, as forcefully as he can manage - which isn’t saying much, as it’s barely a whisper, but at least he got himself to speak.

Jemma finally looks at him, with the relieved, but disbelieving and fearful expression she seldom bears.

“It was wrong, so wrong of me, Fitz. I was wrong,” she attests, but she’s saying so much more - so, so much more, and the aching builds in his chest.

“You’re human, Jemma. You’re allowed to be wrong sometimes. You don’t have to - you shouldn’t hate yourself for it. For anything,” he says, his voice rising as he tries to be reassuring.

“How are you not freaking out about this?” she yelps. “You can’t possibly be okay with this!”

Fitz holds his breath.

“No. No, I’m not okay with it. I can’t say I’d be heartbroken and mournful if you had killed Ward, but I don’t support killing anyone without it being necessary, traitor or not. And I’m not going to pretend that I do, or that I understand precisely what drove you to that…but I also know that you were driven to it. That’s not you, not properly you, and you know that! But...if I were to focus on not approving of how you reacted, then you would focus on that, and you’d be even worse to yourself, and that won’t help you any...won’t help us any.”

“SHIELD us or…us us?” she says, looking away from him again, though he can’t tell quite where she is looking. He reaches for her hand, wrapping his own around the one that’s been resting on her thigh.

“I will always be here for you, Jemma.”

She turns her hand over so that it’s holding his, and her grip is tight. She doesn’t say anything in response, she only leans over into his shoulder, and as soon as he runs a hand through her hair, she presses her nose closer into the crook of his neck and lets herself cry.