Even when you're running away, you're chasing it

A few days after Simmons returned, May told her that she should let off some steam and waved her hand in the direction of a punching bag. So Simmons did exactly that. Well, maybe not exactly the way May was thinking of.

Now, she was standing in Coulson's office, breathing heavily from exhaustion, her throat burned by shouts that left it just a few seconds ago. Yes, May definitely didn't have in mind yelling at the Director when she was giving her advice. But that was exactly what Simmons needed.

"You lied to me, sir!" She yelled again, trying to remember that it was her superior she was yelling at, so she should at least try to stay polite, even if she was shouting. "I've seen the monitoring. He wasn't getting better at all. I was doing everything I could to help you. I could have died there. And you lied about the only thing that was important to me!"

"Then why didn't you ever ask?" He said with a slightly surprised look and a hint of something she couldn't name.

She wanted to scream that she had, many times, but she couldn't. Because the truth was, she wanted to ask but never really vocalised the question. She asked about the team in general, about work and S.H.I.E.L.D. Coulson always just guessed the meaning and spoke his comforting words.

Which were lies.

"Why would I even have to ask?!" She decided to follow her fury. "You knew, sir, and you never said a thing. You said he's doing well. He was talking to himself! All you did was ask about the cloaking and then you even let him confront Ward! No sir, don't even try, the security should have been better, this should have never happened. He had a panic attack and a nervous breakdown there, all alone, while being on strong meds and with a weapon in his hand! No, a tablet with access to the control panel is as much a weapon in Fitz's hands as a gun is in May's, and you know that very well! You promised! You promised that you would take care of him!..."

Her screams and shouts continued and Coulson just sat there, letting her get it all out, until her throat was hoarse and she had nothing left to say.

She left Coulson's office feeling only a tiny bit better. Then her eyes caught Fitz. He saw her too, and quickly turned into the closest side corridor. He was avoiding her. She wanted to scream and punch Coulson and run after Fitz and lock herself in her room and cry, all at the same time.

During the first few days after Fitz's questions and her running away instead of giving him answers, she thought that he would let it drop and wouldn't ask again. She should have known better- between the two of them Fitz was always the courageous one who wasn't running away from things just because they were hard and hurtful. So, of course he gave her a few days to rest and asked again. Yet again she had nothing to tell him and looked around, searching for a way to escape.

Fitz looked at her, his eyes surprisingly calm and sad.

"I'm not a k-kid Simmons. I'm no-not the same, but I'm not a kid that needs to... to be protected."

She took a relieved breath, because finally, even if just this once, he wasn't trying to insult himself because of what happened to him.

"I don't know what to say." She admitted.

"You could try the truth for a... a change." Fitz didn't sound angry. Just tired.

"I haven't lied to you."

"Not lying is not e-equ... It's not the same...Well, you weren't exactly speaking your mind. Not honest. Omitting the truth. Just spit it out."

She couldn't say it. It would hurt him.

But then she thought about it for a while. Last year he saw her ill because of an alien virus and risked the infection himself, saw his best friend jumping of the plane, went on a field mission without an extraction plan, had his teammate trying to shoot him in the chest and head, was threatened to either work for enemy or be tortured, dropped into the ocean by someone he considered a friend, went through hypoxia and a coma, suffered from aphasia and temporal lobe damage, not to mention his heart being broken. By his best friend.

He could handle a few words. She owed him.

But again, she wasn't strong enough to give them to him, not yet.

She was talking with Skye in the kitchen, happy that they could talk again about meaningless things, like why she wouldn't wear a blouse showing a little more of her body or undo some buttons and how dresses are not so comfortable to wear in the lab.

It was nice to be back and safe, to talk with friends and not have to worry about giving away classified information or destroy her cover. It was nice to curl her hair and do her make up with looking pretty in mind, instead of concealing the paleness of her cheeks and bags under her eyes. It was nice to see Fitz look at her and smile when he thought she wouldn't notice.

When Skye decided to finally drop the silly conversation subjects and went back to work, Trip came in and sat next to her, putting his mug on the table and handing her another one. She thanked him and took a sip. It was too sweet and not her favourite flavour, but still warm and the gesture was nice. They talked a while about living in a base and how they couldn't even go shopping without authorisation, not to mention recreational walks. Then Trip joked about organising a movie theatre in one of the Playgroud's vaults and invited her to join, or even grab something better to eat.

She froze for a second and took another sip of her tea, thoughts running through analysis and conclusions, searching for the right thing to say.

A year ago she'd have been happy if some tall, muscled man expressed his interest in her. She would be awkward and smiling and trying to figure out if it meant anything or if she was just overanalysing and reading too much into things. That was before she understood how blind and oblivious she was. Now Fitz's aversion to him at the beginning made a lot more sense, now that she knew that Trip was not only friendly but also flirty. Her priorities changed too: now she'd rather sit with Fitz and watch Doctor Who instead of playing complicated social games with double meaning.

So she told Trip that she would rather join them during one of the evening video gaming session and get to know the new teammates better.

She didn't add that she was curious to see how Fitz's hands were doing with operating the control pad, and if his coordination improved, just excused herself and walked out of the kitchen, heading to her bunk.

She was passing through the Playground's corridors when she ran into Fitz, who had to be coming back to his room from the pantry, since his hands were full of snacks; a bowl of popcorn, a few packs of chips and pretzels, some chocolate biscuits and a bottle of coke. The evidence was clear and could mean only one thing: a movie night.

"Hi, Simmons," he said, surprised, even thought they'd already seen each other a few times during the day.

"Hi. You're going to watch something?" Congratulations brain, you've just asked an obvious question.

"Yes," he admitted. "Do you want to acco.. to watch too?" He was looking pointedly at the floor and furrowing his brows, trying to focus.

"Oh! Oh, no, no, I... I still have something to do in the lab..." She knew it sounded bad, but she was not ready for watching something together in awkward silence, not when she still remembered how it used to look and feel. Not when she still yearned for what they had. "What are you planning to watch?"

"The Asylum of the Daleks." He looked at her again. "You sure you don't want to...?"

"No, no. I'd love to." It wasn't a lie. It wasn't. She wanted to, but she was just too afraid of breaking something by accident. Again. "But I really should be going now. Maybe another time." She smiled and went on her way.

At least now Fitz was watching the Doctor Who episode with a happy lovers' reunion instead of the one ending with a suicide. This was progress.

She tried to work with Fitz, just like they used to. She tried to engage him in her projects, but somehow it hadn't worked. She couldn't understand, why? They were Fitzsimmons, surely there had to be a part of her work where Fitz could feel included and provide some input. Yet, no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't manage to create a situation where the two of them worked together well. Each time she tried to share her work with him it ended in a fiasco. He couldn't explain his ideas to her and she couldn't guess them. She tried to give him some engineering parts to do, but his hands were shaky and he was getting frustrated when he couldn't get his job done as fast as he used to. She was making him worse, there was no denying it. Even Mack saw that and tried to let her know, maybe not in the subtlest of ways, but with good intentions. As if she wasn't aware of it on her own. The situation barely changed in that department since she had left.

When Coulson showed them the notebook found during one of the missions, she didn't even know where to start. Grabbing a dictionary and some textbooks looked like a good idea. It had 30 pages, mostly sketches, some math symbols and equations. Some of the pages were burned or ripped, and Coulson wanted them to identify the device and build it if it's useful. She was guessing that it was some kind of force field, but that was as far as she could go.

"Well, that would be..." She wanted to explain that the Director couldn't expect them to just take bits and pieces of an old blueprint and make it happen. How was she going to work on this and aid Fitz in finding a solution?

"That's about Lorentz fo.. force." Fitz pointed his fingers at a half burned page "Quite clever. But it won't work e-eff... work well that way, there has to be... be some, some better... thing. And t-the material, seriously, iron? That's way too heavy to be con...conv... good. But if we changed this... piece..." He took a propelling pencil, a 2B, out of his pencil case and draw a few lines on the blueprint, crossing others off. He then took another one, a 0.4 2H and added a few new elements.

"You can do this?" Asked Coulson.

"Yeah, just have to make some... some changes, here and... and there." He took a piece of paper and switched his pencil to a traditional 2H before he started writing some mathematic symbols and equations with more letters than numbers. "I will just ...check Maxwell's..." He murmured and kept writing while the rest of them remained silent.

Simmons watched him and couldn't stop a smile of pride from showing on her face. Because Fitz was sitting by his desk, so busy with his work that he couldn't see anything around him, and the rest of the team was standing around in a circle, waiting for his answer, because they were sure that he would solve their problem.

Pride was replaced by something else when she looked at his hand writing and drawing and making corrections, because she had no idea what he was doing, but he did. Fitz was back, he was working and he was having fun with it while the rest of them were lost about what any of it meant, and he was the smartest person she had ever met and the world was a better place with him in it.

There was a blue and yellow book lying on his desk that caught her eye, stuffed with papers full of equations and integrals written in a shaky handwriting. Very similar to what Fitz was producing right now, with a hand that was far more sure and steady.

He had written four pages in three minutes.

It reminded her yet again that Fitz was amazing and fully capable of doing anything he wanted without her helping and guiding him. She couldn't tear her eyes from him even when Skye nudged her with her elbow for staring.

Later that evening, when she was still smiling a little while preparing to sleep, it occurred to her that she still had the tendency to be an ivy and entangle him instead of letting him stand on his own. But she was sure that she would figure out a way to help Fitz without weakening him. She was making progress. Fitz was making huge progress. They were making progress. They just needed to stop being Fitzsimmons and be Fitz and Simmons for a while. Be individuals first and then when they were both complete they could come back to their great partnership. Maybe this change in their relationship wasn't so bad, maybe it was simply necessary.

There were things she hadn't noticed before. They had to rebuild their relationship, fix all the cracks and misunderstandings that were hiding and growing through years. The ones that made them look stable but not durable enough under pressure.

Like how they could finish each other's sentences but never really listened, never let the other say what exactly they had in mind. How their communication was based on assumptions. How they never let the other speak long enough, always jumping forward into guessing and relying on the other to just get the meaning without having to express it. How there was a huge mass of things they'd never talked about, little cracks that were never addressed and ignored through years in a foolish hope that they would simply disappear and leave things clear. Like sodium hydroxide would almost disappear leaving pure looking water after some time. She should have remembered how highly exothermic this dissolution was, how serious the burns it may leave were, if it was not held with caution.

Maybe them being a little less close to each other than they used to be would actually turn out to be good and healthy. Maybe it would make both them and their bond stronger.

She just had to find a way to set things straight, to clean every misunderstanding, to make him understand her reasons and how she still wanted to be with him. How it didn't bother her at all that he wasn't the same, because for her he was still Fitz and that was all that's important.

After Fitz told her that he was moving to the garage, she wanted to tell him that this decision was terrible and insane and would't help anything, but she just couldn't find the words. Couldn't tell him with his sad, broken eyes that he was wrong, so she focused on keeping her tears at bay instead.

Fitz wanted to be away from her. He needed it. She should let him move on.

She couldn't.

It was self-centered. It was, there was no denying that. But she just couldn't let him go without a fight.

Because he might not have seen this, refused to see it, but she cared. She had waited too long for him to recover and come back to her to just give up.

So she was stubborn.

She would show him that they could still work together. That as far as she was concerned, he was still fully capable of doing anything he wanted. That it should be them running the science division, not her.

She pushed him into operating the D.W.A.R.F.s in Puerto Rico, let him give Coulson his report and finished his sentence when he couldn't do it. She let him go alone with the explosives even though she broke all her nails in nervousness while waiting for his return. Since he refused to believe her words, she was determined toshow him that she believed in him instead and still considered him a perfectly capable scientist.

Later, when the ground started shaking and he caught her to keep her close to his chest, she was determined to enjoy it and lock all the fear away, because his arms were always safe. Who knew when she would have another chance, so she tried to focus on every tiny detail she could. Like how his arms were broader than she remembered, and didn't shake at all, his hold steady and strong. Or how he smelled exactly the same, and how soft his shirt was against her cheek. And the stubble. She always hated men wearing stubble, which wasn't elegant at all and had to make certain activities in very close proximity simply itchy. But she couldn't help noticing how it made his jaw look and how it was affecting the appearance of his cheekbones and wishing he wouldn't get rid of it while wondering how it would feel against her hand. Or another part of her body. Like her cheek! Nothing improper about that, it's perfectly normal for a friend to wonder how touching cheeks with a friend would feel. Still, she wasn't sure enough of her own reasoning to raise her head and simply check. She just moved her head closer into his chest, feeling safe with him.

When the shaking stopped she looked up at his face. There were small cuts and bruises on his skin, some blood on his cheek and lots of white dust in his hair making it look like a matted mass of tangles and it hit her how handsome he looked like that- simply being alive.

Back there, with the world shaking all around them while he held her safe, for a moment she hoped they would stay that way. That he would see that together they were better and he would stay.

But he didn't. When the danger passed he let her go.

His eyes were concerned when he checked if she wasn't hurt and started stammering something between making sure she's all right and apologising, for what she had no idea. His hands left her arms and he looked around the cave, his eyes escaping into the direction of the tunnels. She moved away just a little bit and watched with sad eyes as he walked away from her, as if the last few seconds hadn't happened, or worse, as if they didn't matter. She knew him too well to believe it though. She saw it in the way he searched for something to occupy him, the way he tried not to look at her only to fail every few minutes.

Their relationship was rocky, but when everything was crumbling they both wanted to be close. That was what mattered.

She should let him leave, that's what she told herself, stealing nervous glances at him, when he packed his things from his lab bench and walked away with a box in his hands, turning at the door to look back at her and trying to smile when he tilted his head, muttering something about how he will be in the garage if she needs anything.

She needed him here, with her on a road to fix whatever was between them.

She didn't say anything, just nodded her head in return.

He drew a border between them and put the walls around him. She understood. It was hard to accept, but she understood that he felt the need to protect himself. That he was still vulnerable. Needed space. Needed some time away, on his own. It hurt but she understood.

So she respected his wishes, his borders, his walls.

She let him go.

But she didn't give up. She stayed just after the the thin line separating them. Just outside, so that she could cross it the very moment he would be ready. So he could see that's she's still here, near him, close enough if he needed her, and close enough if she needed him. She was there, waiting. Letting him have his time but refusing to go away.

Because, if someone's really important to you, you have to let them go in hope that they will come back to you.

She just had to be patient. She had to believe in this.

She repeated that every morning just after she woke up and every evening just before she fell asleep. Because that's what was giving her hope and strength and made her happier and better.

One day. Maybe today, maybe tomorrow, maybe in a month, or a year or five, but one day for sure, when they both were ready and strong on their own, when they learned how to help each other instead of making things worse, when they remembered to listen when the other needed to speak, when they would be willing to solve every issue and disagreement the moment it appeared instead of trying to ignore it. One day.

Fitz would come back to her.

A/N:

- The title is a quote from "You can't overcome love" (Nie pokonasz miłości) song from the Witcher, my translation. Lyrics are beautiful and it's a real shame that there's no English version of it.

- I wanted to make it all kisses and sunset kind of hapy ending, but this is the happiest I could make it with what's happening in the show. Actually this fic was supposed to tie with my another one with a real happy ending, but again, the show got in the way.

- This story is over, but as I've mentioned before, I will write another one, this time from Fitz's POV. I'm not promising chapter for chapter, but there will be definitely mentions about why Fitz is watching these Doctor Who episodes ;) Since I will be quite busy for a while, I think that it will be ready by June.

- Thanks to TheLateNightStoryTeller and amandajbruce for beta reading and helping me with this story :)

- Thank you all for reading this and for all the nice reviews :)