Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. fic: Loyalties (1/5)
Title: Loyalties
Pairing/Fandom: FitzSimmons/Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Rating: Mostly PG/PG-13. One scene’s R-ish.
Summary: AU. Jemma Simmons’ loyalties are to science and nothing else matters. Until she meets someone - or something - who changes her mind.
Spoilers: References to canon events through at least 2x03
Jemma tried not to gape too much as she walked up the ramp. It wasn’t like she hadn’t been on a plane before, after all.
But who was she fooling? This was hardly squeezing down the center aisle until she got to her tiny coach seat, usually in the middle with a view of the wing and two overweight guys on either side hogging the armrests. This plane was better than her apartment, better than most hotels she stayed in, even the ones her bosses occasionally sprung for when she went to fancy conferences. And it would, essentially, be her new home. She kind of wanted to pinch herself.
After so many long, hard years, she had finally made it. No more sitting on her lab stool, bored out of her skull as she waited for the centrifuge to stop spinning or silently seething as she watched her supervisor be the one to report all her findings. Jemma wouldn’t have been surprised if it turned out he took all the credit too. Only, her new bosses somehow must have known about her work and recognized her value. Recognized that she could be doing so much more.
And now she finally had access to truly fantastic knowledge and technology and samples. And she’d get to see the world on top of it!
Life couldn’t be better.
“Simmons?”
Jemma spun around at the voice, plastering on the friendliest smile she could muster. She would ingratiate herself to this team, if it was the last thing she did. She wasn’t about to mess this up. So, OK. Maybe she’s never had fantastic social skills. She’d find them.
“Yes. Hi. I’m Simmons. Jemma. Jemma Simmons. Is…me.”
Not the greatest start.
Agent Tall, Dark and Handsome gave her a look somewhere between confused and annoyed. Jemma inhaled and exhaled quickly, before trying the whole smile thing again.
“I’m Grant Ward. Get settled in. Briefing in ten.”
“Oh…OK.”
And with that, he turned and walked away.
Apparently, no one in Hydra had the greatest social skills. At least she’d fit right in.
***
Jemma was pretty sure she was losing her mind. Or perhaps was the victim of some hopefully-friendly hazing. She was exceptionally organized (anal, some people had called it), and so she was starting to get simultaneously annoyed and confused every time she found some piece of lab equipment or supplies on a table or in a cupboard far, far away from where she knew she had put them.
She didn’t know who could be doing it, though. The only people who regularly spent any time in the lab at all were her and Donnie. And Donnie was much too…dull…to do anything like hazing. He just went about his work, almost mindlessly complying with any orders sent down from Garrett or Ward.
At that moment, she was opening drawers left and right. She had just been working with the samples that morning! The GH formula was important, both for Hydra in general and Garrett specifically. She and Ward were the only ones who knew it was basically the only thing keeping him alive at this point. She needed to figure out its composition and how to synthesize it already. There simply was no way she would have been so careless about the vials filled with possible replications that were waiting on analysis.
“Aha!” Jemma exclaimed suddenly. There they were, tucked away in the corner of the table, almost hidden behind the incubator. “What are you doing there? You silly little buggers.”
But before she could grab them and begin her analyses, Ward’s voice came over the speaker. They had arrived at their destination, and she needed to get ready to disembark. Jemma almost jumped up and down with excitement - her first field mission!
Jemma hurried out of the room, flipping off the light switch. She didn’t bother looking back, but if she had, she might have seen the samples moving again, apparently all on their own. The fridge door opened and the vials floated to the back corner behind a couple stacks of agar plates.
***
“How’s it going, Donnie?” Jemma asked a few weeks later.
She needed a break. The last samples weren’t replicated well enough - which she figured out after spending almost an hour trying to find them. In the fridge! What was going on?! (What was wrong with her?) The next batch she made after that was even worse. She was beginning to think she’d never duplicate the serum. She had overheard Ward and Garrett talking once; apparently, the original source had been destroyed by that guy Coulson. Typical S.H.I.E.L.D. - they think something shouldn’t be used so they destroy it. How did any scientific advancements ever get achieved under their watch? Honestly.
Anyway. Distraction. Donnie.
“Oh, pretty well,” Donnie finally replied. “I think I figured out the larger version of the weather device.”
“Oh, that’s great! I mean, the prototype was pretty impressive itself.”
“Yeah,” Donnie agreed, not looking up from where he was tinkering with some piece of machinery. “But obviously, we’ll need the real thing eventually. But I think it’s almost there. Thanks to you, of course.”
Jemma narrowed her eyes in confusion and turned to look at her lab mate. “Me? What did I do?”
Donnie finally looked at her and smiled. “Don’t be coy. Who else would have done it?”
“Done what?”
“Oh come on.” Donnie held up the tablet in front of him. “Are you telling me you didn’t add the final piece of the puzzle to my specs? The fix to the power source?”
Speechless for a moment, Jemma just stared at him with her mouth wide open. Obviously she wouldn’t have had any clue how to fix Donnie’s problem, and he knew it. But he also knew as well as she did, they were the only two people ever inside that lab. She wasn’t about to admit the near-constant confusion she had been feeling the last several weeks and risk her place on this team. So she smiled and forced a laugh.
“Yeah, it was me. Sorry, it just flashed into my head and I knew.”
“No need to apologize! Feel free to finish all my projects.” Donnie laughed as he turned away.
Jemma felt the smile fall off her face as she faced her own work again.
***
Jemma blinked rapidly several times and stifled a yawn. It was late - or early, technically - and the plane was quiet and dark as it sliced through the sky towards their next destination. She was exhausted, but they had encountered a man who could absorb any material into his body and it was too fascinating to try and explore why.
“Absorbo-Man,” she muttered to herself, trying out nicknames. If S.H.I.E.L.D. could have Iron Man and Captain America, then Hydra could have its own gifteds with corny names. “The Living Sponge.”
“Sir Sucks-a-Lot.”
Jemma gasped, turning around on her stool quickly. She hoped to see Donnie, or even Ward, someone. But no one on the plane spoke with a Scottish accent…
And there was no one there anyway.
“I’m going crazy,” she whispered to herself.
“Going?” came the voice again. “You work for Hydra; I’d say you’re already there.”
Jemma stood up quickly, toppling her stool as she spun again.
Standing in the corner was a young man around her age, wearing a slight smirk and entirely too much plaid. She had never seen him before.
“Who…who are you?” she asked, backing up slowly and trying not to be too obvious that she was feeling around for the alarm button. “What are you doing here?”
“Hey! You’re the squatters! This is a S.H.I.E.L.D. plane.”
“It has been commandeered by Hydra,” Jemma clarified haughtily. “Who. Are. You?”
“I’m…I…” The guy looked scared suddenly, which made Jemma feel less afraid, somehow. “You know, I don’t remember,” he concluded.
It was at that moment that two things happened: Jemma found the alarm button behind her. But before she could press it, she finally noticed that he wasn’t leaning against the corner of the lab table. He was standing in the middle of it.
He was…a ghost?
***
Jemma refused to simply give in and speak to the figment of her imagination. It was bad enough that she was leaving things in random places and forgetting about them. She wasn’t going to start talking to herself too.
That didn’t stop him from asking her silly questions, or staring at her while she was trying to work, or humming annoying tunes - right now, Henry the 8th, or poking at things in the lab (How? How was he able to manipulate some things and walk right through others? How? The laws of physics - no. No, Jemma. He wasn’t real. He wasn’t doing anything.)
The…manifestation of her subconscious, perhaps…took a deep breath and, with a sly glance at her, started humming that damn song again from the beginning. Jemma groaned and faceplanted on the lab table. She took a deep breath and sat up again.
“Stop. Please stop,” she finally said.
He glanced up at the clock with an exaggerated expression. “Only took 48 hours to crack you. Not much of a supervillain, are you?”
“I’m not any kind of villain at all,” Jemma replied with forced cheeriness. “I’m a biochemist.”
“Who works for Hydra.”
“Indeed.”
“Nazis intent on world domination.”
“Oh, come on. This is the 21st century.”
“Oh, OK, sure. No possible way crazy bigots with insatiable thirsts for power could still exist.”
“Lots of good things have grown out of organizations and movements with questionable pasts.”
“Pasts? Two months ago, they tried to send helicarriers up into the sky that could target and kill millions of innocent people.”
Jemma stood up and turned her back on the specter. She pretended she needed a new set of gloves, but really this conversation was far too familiar. She had had it with her parents, with her friends, with herself. But none of them had been able to drown out the hopes she had for her own future, the lies she told herself so she could answer all the questions she had.
“According to Captain America,” she finally said.
“You don’t trust Captain America?” came the reply. He was right beside her suddenly, and Jemma jumped. How could he move like that? (Because he wasn’t real.)
“No,” Jemma said, not sounding particularly confident. She took a breath and repeated more firmly. “No. No one is that good. That righteous. The people in Hydra might not be saints but they don’t hide who they are through nostalgic patriotism and aw-shucks attitudes. They’re pragmatists. Like me.”
The only response she got was spluttering, disbelieving laughter. She turned away again.
***
Jemma growled in frustration as she finally found her latest attempts at synthesizing the GH formula. Her frustration only grew when she heard him chuckling behind her.
“I don’t know why,” she said through gritted teeth as she carried the samples back to the main counter, “you insist on trying to sabotage me. Don’t you care about the advancement of science?”
“Not at the expense of, you know, the survival of the world.”
“Right. Hydra and its evil plans.”
He sidled up next to her, leaning back against the table and smirking. Jemma reminded herself she found him infuriating, no matter how unexpectedly attractive that - annoying! It was an annoying smirk. Not attractive. Not at all. And really, he wasn’t her type anyway. She liked bigger guys, more built. He was far too boyish, with those curls that were just a little too long and his…his ears. And his naïve views on right and wrong.
“I need something to call you,” she said to change the subject.
“Huh?”
“A name.”
He frowned and looked away. “I told you. I don’t remember my name.”
(Because you don’t exist, Jemma reminded herself.)
“Just…pick something.”
“You can call me whatever you want, darling,” he drawled with affected innuendo.
Jemma couldn’t help but break into laughter.
“Stop it.”
He smiled at her then, a rare genuine smile, and Jemma had to look away. Honestly, her social life was pretty sad when she had to start hallucinating guys to flirt with her.
“Well, you’re Scottish. We can go with something Scottish.”
“Hamish? Angus? Lachlan? Mungo?”
“I hate you.”
“What about Mack?”
“Mack?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. It just…seems familiar, somehow.”
“Mack,” she said again, testing it on her tongue. “It’s not quite right, I don’t think, but it’ll do.”
Mack turned around, this time leaning on his forearms as he looked at the vials. Jemma took the opportunity to quickly check out his backside and then focused on her work again.
“Why don’t you go sabotage Donnie’s project, for a change?”
“Eh,” he laughed. “He’s sabotaging himself enough already.”
She furrowed her brow in confusion. But before she could ask him to explain, the lab door opened and Ward walked in. And she was only further surprised and confused when Mack stiffened next to her, his breath suddenly turning shallow and quick. She spared a glance at him, only to discover his eyes were wide and glassy with terror. And then he flickered and disappeared.
To Be Continued
Pairing/Fandom: FitzSimmons/Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Rating: Mostly PG/PG-13. One scene’s R-ish.
Summary: AU. Jemma Simmons’ loyalties are to science and nothing else matters. Until she meets someone - or something - who changes her mind.
Spoilers: References to canon events through at least 2x03
Jemma tried not to gape too much as she walked up the ramp. It wasn’t like she hadn’t been on a plane before, after all.
But who was she fooling? This was hardly squeezing down the center aisle until she got to her tiny coach seat, usually in the middle with a view of the wing and two overweight guys on either side hogging the armrests. This plane was better than her apartment, better than most hotels she stayed in, even the ones her bosses occasionally sprung for when she went to fancy conferences. And it would, essentially, be her new home. She kind of wanted to pinch herself.
After so many long, hard years, she had finally made it. No more sitting on her lab stool, bored out of her skull as she waited for the centrifuge to stop spinning or silently seething as she watched her supervisor be the one to report all her findings. Jemma wouldn’t have been surprised if it turned out he took all the credit too. Only, her new bosses somehow must have known about her work and recognized her value. Recognized that she could be doing so much more.
And now she finally had access to truly fantastic knowledge and technology and samples. And she’d get to see the world on top of it!
Life couldn’t be better.
“Simmons?”
Jemma spun around at the voice, plastering on the friendliest smile she could muster. She would ingratiate herself to this team, if it was the last thing she did. She wasn’t about to mess this up. So, OK. Maybe she’s never had fantastic social skills. She’d find them.
“Yes. Hi. I’m Simmons. Jemma. Jemma Simmons. Is…me.”
Not the greatest start.
Agent Tall, Dark and Handsome gave her a look somewhere between confused and annoyed. Jemma inhaled and exhaled quickly, before trying the whole smile thing again.
“I’m Grant Ward. Get settled in. Briefing in ten.”
“Oh…OK.”
And with that, he turned and walked away.
Apparently, no one in Hydra had the greatest social skills. At least she’d fit right in.
***
Jemma was pretty sure she was losing her mind. Or perhaps was the victim of some hopefully-friendly hazing. She was exceptionally organized (anal, some people had called it), and so she was starting to get simultaneously annoyed and confused every time she found some piece of lab equipment or supplies on a table or in a cupboard far, far away from where she knew she had put them.
She didn’t know who could be doing it, though. The only people who regularly spent any time in the lab at all were her and Donnie. And Donnie was much too…dull…to do anything like hazing. He just went about his work, almost mindlessly complying with any orders sent down from Garrett or Ward.
At that moment, she was opening drawers left and right. She had just been working with the samples that morning! The GH formula was important, both for Hydra in general and Garrett specifically. She and Ward were the only ones who knew it was basically the only thing keeping him alive at this point. She needed to figure out its composition and how to synthesize it already. There simply was no way she would have been so careless about the vials filled with possible replications that were waiting on analysis.
“Aha!” Jemma exclaimed suddenly. There they were, tucked away in the corner of the table, almost hidden behind the incubator. “What are you doing there? You silly little buggers.”
But before she could grab them and begin her analyses, Ward’s voice came over the speaker. They had arrived at their destination, and she needed to get ready to disembark. Jemma almost jumped up and down with excitement - her first field mission!
Jemma hurried out of the room, flipping off the light switch. She didn’t bother looking back, but if she had, she might have seen the samples moving again, apparently all on their own. The fridge door opened and the vials floated to the back corner behind a couple stacks of agar plates.
***
“How’s it going, Donnie?” Jemma asked a few weeks later.
She needed a break. The last samples weren’t replicated well enough - which she figured out after spending almost an hour trying to find them. In the fridge! What was going on?! (What was wrong with her?) The next batch she made after that was even worse. She was beginning to think she’d never duplicate the serum. She had overheard Ward and Garrett talking once; apparently, the original source had been destroyed by that guy Coulson. Typical S.H.I.E.L.D. - they think something shouldn’t be used so they destroy it. How did any scientific advancements ever get achieved under their watch? Honestly.
Anyway. Distraction. Donnie.
“Oh, pretty well,” Donnie finally replied. “I think I figured out the larger version of the weather device.”
“Oh, that’s great! I mean, the prototype was pretty impressive itself.”
“Yeah,” Donnie agreed, not looking up from where he was tinkering with some piece of machinery. “But obviously, we’ll need the real thing eventually. But I think it’s almost there. Thanks to you, of course.”
Jemma narrowed her eyes in confusion and turned to look at her lab mate. “Me? What did I do?”
Donnie finally looked at her and smiled. “Don’t be coy. Who else would have done it?”
“Done what?”
“Oh come on.” Donnie held up the tablet in front of him. “Are you telling me you didn’t add the final piece of the puzzle to my specs? The fix to the power source?”
Speechless for a moment, Jemma just stared at him with her mouth wide open. Obviously she wouldn’t have had any clue how to fix Donnie’s problem, and he knew it. But he also knew as well as she did, they were the only two people ever inside that lab. She wasn’t about to admit the near-constant confusion she had been feeling the last several weeks and risk her place on this team. So she smiled and forced a laugh.
“Yeah, it was me. Sorry, it just flashed into my head and I knew.”
“No need to apologize! Feel free to finish all my projects.” Donnie laughed as he turned away.
Jemma felt the smile fall off her face as she faced her own work again.
***
Jemma blinked rapidly several times and stifled a yawn. It was late - or early, technically - and the plane was quiet and dark as it sliced through the sky towards their next destination. She was exhausted, but they had encountered a man who could absorb any material into his body and it was too fascinating to try and explore why.
“Absorbo-Man,” she muttered to herself, trying out nicknames. If S.H.I.E.L.D. could have Iron Man and Captain America, then Hydra could have its own gifteds with corny names. “The Living Sponge.”
“Sir Sucks-a-Lot.”
Jemma gasped, turning around on her stool quickly. She hoped to see Donnie, or even Ward, someone. But no one on the plane spoke with a Scottish accent…
And there was no one there anyway.
“I’m going crazy,” she whispered to herself.
“Going?” came the voice again. “You work for Hydra; I’d say you’re already there.”
Jemma stood up quickly, toppling her stool as she spun again.
Standing in the corner was a young man around her age, wearing a slight smirk and entirely too much plaid. She had never seen him before.
“Who…who are you?” she asked, backing up slowly and trying not to be too obvious that she was feeling around for the alarm button. “What are you doing here?”
“Hey! You’re the squatters! This is a S.H.I.E.L.D. plane.”
“It has been commandeered by Hydra,” Jemma clarified haughtily. “Who. Are. You?”
“I’m…I…” The guy looked scared suddenly, which made Jemma feel less afraid, somehow. “You know, I don’t remember,” he concluded.
It was at that moment that two things happened: Jemma found the alarm button behind her. But before she could press it, she finally noticed that he wasn’t leaning against the corner of the lab table. He was standing in the middle of it.
He was…a ghost?
***
Jemma refused to simply give in and speak to the figment of her imagination. It was bad enough that she was leaving things in random places and forgetting about them. She wasn’t going to start talking to herself too.
That didn’t stop him from asking her silly questions, or staring at her while she was trying to work, or humming annoying tunes - right now, Henry the 8th, or poking at things in the lab (How? How was he able to manipulate some things and walk right through others? How? The laws of physics - no. No, Jemma. He wasn’t real. He wasn’t doing anything.)
The…manifestation of her subconscious, perhaps…took a deep breath and, with a sly glance at her, started humming that damn song again from the beginning. Jemma groaned and faceplanted on the lab table. She took a deep breath and sat up again.
“Stop. Please stop,” she finally said.
He glanced up at the clock with an exaggerated expression. “Only took 48 hours to crack you. Not much of a supervillain, are you?”
“I’m not any kind of villain at all,” Jemma replied with forced cheeriness. “I’m a biochemist.”
“Who works for Hydra.”
“Indeed.”
“Nazis intent on world domination.”
“Oh, come on. This is the 21st century.”
“Oh, OK, sure. No possible way crazy bigots with insatiable thirsts for power could still exist.”
“Lots of good things have grown out of organizations and movements with questionable pasts.”
“Pasts? Two months ago, they tried to send helicarriers up into the sky that could target and kill millions of innocent people.”
Jemma stood up and turned her back on the specter. She pretended she needed a new set of gloves, but really this conversation was far too familiar. She had had it with her parents, with her friends, with herself. But none of them had been able to drown out the hopes she had for her own future, the lies she told herself so she could answer all the questions she had.
“According to Captain America,” she finally said.
“You don’t trust Captain America?” came the reply. He was right beside her suddenly, and Jemma jumped. How could he move like that? (Because he wasn’t real.)
“No,” Jemma said, not sounding particularly confident. She took a breath and repeated more firmly. “No. No one is that good. That righteous. The people in Hydra might not be saints but they don’t hide who they are through nostalgic patriotism and aw-shucks attitudes. They’re pragmatists. Like me.”
The only response she got was spluttering, disbelieving laughter. She turned away again.
***
Jemma growled in frustration as she finally found her latest attempts at synthesizing the GH formula. Her frustration only grew when she heard him chuckling behind her.
“I don’t know why,” she said through gritted teeth as she carried the samples back to the main counter, “you insist on trying to sabotage me. Don’t you care about the advancement of science?”
“Not at the expense of, you know, the survival of the world.”
“Right. Hydra and its evil plans.”
He sidled up next to her, leaning back against the table and smirking. Jemma reminded herself she found him infuriating, no matter how unexpectedly attractive that - annoying! It was an annoying smirk. Not attractive. Not at all. And really, he wasn’t her type anyway. She liked bigger guys, more built. He was far too boyish, with those curls that were just a little too long and his…his ears. And his naïve views on right and wrong.
“I need something to call you,” she said to change the subject.
“Huh?”
“A name.”
He frowned and looked away. “I told you. I don’t remember my name.”
(Because you don’t exist, Jemma reminded herself.)
“Just…pick something.”
“You can call me whatever you want, darling,” he drawled with affected innuendo.
Jemma couldn’t help but break into laughter.
“Stop it.”
He smiled at her then, a rare genuine smile, and Jemma had to look away. Honestly, her social life was pretty sad when she had to start hallucinating guys to flirt with her.
“Well, you’re Scottish. We can go with something Scottish.”
“Hamish? Angus? Lachlan? Mungo?”
“I hate you.”
“What about Mack?”
“Mack?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. It just…seems familiar, somehow.”
“Mack,” she said again, testing it on her tongue. “It’s not quite right, I don’t think, but it’ll do.”
Mack turned around, this time leaning on his forearms as he looked at the vials. Jemma took the opportunity to quickly check out his backside and then focused on her work again.
“Why don’t you go sabotage Donnie’s project, for a change?”
“Eh,” he laughed. “He’s sabotaging himself enough already.”
She furrowed her brow in confusion. But before she could ask him to explain, the lab door opened and Ward walked in. And she was only further surprised and confused when Mack stiffened next to her, his breath suddenly turning shallow and quick. She spared a glance at him, only to discover his eyes were wide and glassy with terror. And then he flickered and disappeared.
To Be Continued