AN: I'm so glad that this is finally finished. This fic is written in backwards order. I'll say in advance that the backwards narrative might not be for everyone, but hey, it's sure to be someone's cup of tea. Because this is set in the time between S1 and S2, Daisy is referred to as Skye.

A huge thank you to Taylor, Georgia, and Madeline for encouraging me to finish this.

I hope you enjoy! I would love to hear what you think.

Please note: This could be distressing for someone that can be triggered by suicide. Please tread carefully.

It doesn't end with a jump, but more of a step.

If an alarm goes off when he opens the hold, he doesn't hear it. The sound is lost in the harsh wind of the dark, stormy night. He doesn't look down, and he doesn't feel afraid.

She stands before him with a small smile on her face, eyes open wide, and he steps forward to embrace her.

She catches him.

The pain in his chest finally subsides, and he closes his eyes.

-x-x-

The Bus is still, and his mind is set.

Skye's asleep in her room, he heard her cry herself out like she normally does. Sometimes he regrets leaving her to cry alone, but he doesn't want to let himself break down with her. Even though he already knows that somewhere deep down inside him, something is already broken beyond repair.

He thinks of Jemma as he slowly makes his way to the hold, absently rubbing his hand over his throbbing chest in a vain attempt to soothe the never-ending dull ache.

The lab looks so empty once he's down there, and he can't bear to look at it.

-x-x-

He expects her to be in his room, but she's not.

May left to go back to the cockpit and Coulson went to his office to make some calls, but Skye stayed.

They kept him sat in the common area with a blanket draped over his shoulders. She sat beside him for hours, only getting up to make him cups of tea, just holding his hand and talking to him about anything that came to mind. Doctor Who, lab work, 'some asshole' she ran into on a Minecraft server, but he didn't really participate in the conversation. He offered the occasional grunt or nod, which seemed to make her happy enough.

They were still sat there late at night. Skye fell asleep with her head on his shoulder, and Coulson woke her up to make them go to bed. She told him she wanted to stay with him, but he refused.

He'd then walked into his room, expecting to see her, but she was nowhere to be seen.

He lies awake listening to Skye cry for a while. He's clearly not the only one that needs help working through his issues, but she doesn't always cry quite as much as she used to. She's improving, slowly, but he's been stuck in the exact same place since the funeral. A deep, dark pit that he just can't escape from.

"I'm never gonna move on, am I? Not really." he asks aloud, hoping she'll come and answer him.

She doesn't.

He suspects they'll land tomorrow, and he probably won't be allowed back on the Bus for a while. As long as it takes, they'll probably say. But he has a gut feeling that he won't ever be coming back.

Jemma would want him to live, he thinks. But she would also want him to be happy, and he's not sure if he can live a happy life without her anymore.

He loved her. Jemma reminded him of every good day he'd ever had. Every summer spent in a field of flowers. Every sunrise, and every sunset. Her smile was one of the brightest lights in his life, and her laughter was the most beautiful song. He thinks back to when his mother would sing him to sleep as a child - his favourite was always You Are My Sunshine. She sang it to him every night, and as he grew up he would often catch himself wondering what it would be like to have such a person in his life. What it would be like to have his very own sunshine, and be someone else's in turn.

With Jemma, he finally knew how that felt. But now the skies are grey, and he feels barren of hope.

"I can't live without you," he whispers into the night.

"So don't." comes a quiet reply.

-x-x-

He finally sees her again a few nights later, in the bathroom. He nearly jumps out of his skin when he feels someone breathe on his neck, but when he spots Jemma peeping over his shoulder his eyes widen. Before he can speak, she's tracing her fingertips down his forearm and closing her fingers around his wrist. She guides his hand over to the shaving razor on the side of the sink, left from when he'd shaved that morning, and he picks it up.

She doesn't say a word, but he knows what she wants him to do. There's no easy way to pop out a razor blade from a shaving razor, he already knows that - it's probably for this exact reason.

He struggles with it, and as time goes by he starts to grow agitated. So does she. Jemma digs her nails into his skin, and hisses into his ear that he needs to try harder and he clearly doesn't want it if he's struggling this much.

Before he can stop himself, he turns around and yells at her.

"I do want it!" he screams. She glares at him with a smirk on her face, cocking her head to the side. He lets out another yell and lunges at her, but he sails right through her and slams into the wall.

He isn't sure when exactly they get to him, but he remembers May grabbing him and lugging him out of the bathroom. He's trying to fight her off, kicking and yelling, and he can only calm down when Skye sits in front of him and takes his face in her hands.

She leans forward, resting their foreheads together. He doesn't realise she's crying at first. He thinks he is too for a moment, but it's all her. It takes quite a while, but before long his heart rate goes down and his breathing evens out. He's shaking, but it's manageable. It's not a cause for concern, he thinks.

"What happened?" Skye whispers, her voice wavering.

All he can manage is, "I want her to come back…"

"You said her name a lot." May comments from where she's standing, arms folded. He doesn't look up at her, he doesn't want to see the look that he knows is on her face.

Skye swallows hard. "She's not coming back, Fitz. You know that."

"She has to," he murmurs, shaking his head. "She was there. She was right behind me. She made me pick up the-... the razor." A dry sob catches in his throat, but he doesn't let himself cry. "But I can't have her back, not really. She needs me to go to her. And I want to, but I couldn't do it. I couldn't..."

It all comes out in a rush, and he doesn't quite realise what he's said until it's already out there. Coulson's jaw tightens, and he shares a look with May. Skye and Fitz watch the exchange. Eventually, he crouches down beside them and places a hand on Fitz's shoulder.

"We're going to get you the help you need."

A pain shoots through his chest, but he ignores it.

-x-x-

He goes back to spending most of his time in his room. He barely eats, and his weight drops. His chest pains come back once or twice every two days, but he's learned to bite his tongue.

Coulson stops asking him to do lab work, and starts talking to him about psych evals instead.

"I'm not crazy." he insists adamantly one afternoon, upon being called into his office.

"Nobody's saying that."

"Yeah, but you're thinking it."

He sighs. "No, I'm not." They fall into silence. Coulson speaks up again. "I think that you don't know how to handle what you're feeling."

Fitz slams his fist down on the desk, but he doesn't even flinch. "I lost my best friend, Coulson! I'm sorry if I have trouble dealing with that!"

"I know, but you're not dealing with it properly." He gets up at that, pacing around the room and running his fingers through his curls. "Nobody's saying you're crazy, because you're not. But-"

"Oh, you have no idea," he hisses.

-x-x-

A particularly bad chest pain comes one night while he's using the bathroom. He's about to grab his toothbrush when a blinding flash of white hot pain comes out of nowhere; he lets out a cry and doubles over, hanging onto the sink to keep himself standing.

"Fitz?" Skye hammers on the door. "Fitz, are you alright?" She sounds scared. "Open the door!"

He pushes himself forward and manages to unlock the door before he falls to his knees. Skye bursts in and grabs him, holding him in her arms. She tries her best to keep him upright as the pain continues.

"May! Coulson!"

He's vaguely aware of running footsteps, and a hand on his shoulder that pulls him away from Skye. May's face is close to his, and she quickly turns to look at Coulson. Before she can speak, Fitz manages to choke out a few words.

"S'normal…!"

"No, Fitz, that is not normal!" Skye protests, sounding almost annoyed with him.

"S'fading…" He swallows hard, and repeats himself. "It's fading."

Skye sits back on her haunches and watches him, clearly shaken. May stays crouched beside her, and Coulson hovers in the doorway with a concerned look on his face. It takes a few minutes, but before long he's breathing normally and the intense pain has faded to a few dull twinges. He runs his fingers through his curls and reaches up to grab the damp washcloth off the side of the sink, scrubbing at his face.

May's hand catches his wrist.

"Stop it."

She takes it from him and gently dabs at his face, trying to help him cool off. He's never seen her be so gentle with anything or anyone, and the last month has definitely been an eye-opener regarding the side of May that isn't just an emotionless "Ice Queen". He compliantly stays still for her, and when she's done, she sits back with a sigh and gets to her feet to sling it into the washbasket.

May disappears without another word, leaving Coulson and Skye alone with him. He stays for a while, before telling him once more to take it easy and turning on his heel to leave. Skye watches him while he brushes his teeth, and she stays by his side until he gets into bed. When he's curled up on his side with his back to her, faking sleep, he finally hears her go and leave the door ajar behind her.

She cries longer than usual that night.

-x-x-

Jemma doesn't come back for a while after that, and he would have been lying if he said that he didn't miss her. He often tried to conjure her up, but he just couldn't quite manage it. She wasn't really there, not like she had been before.

His chest had been hurting a lot more than usual. He hadn't mentioned it to anyone to avoid worrying them unnecessarily, but it was getting harder to make up excuses for why he'd randomly double over in pain and clutch his chest. He'd caught Skye looking up his symptoms on WebMD once, but he'd quickly put a stop to that before she could find any real results.

"She worries about you. We all do." Coulson had informed him when he'd brought it up, offering Fitz a sad smile. "Everybody grieves differently. When my dad died, I threw myself into finishing off fixing up this old car he'd been working on. Helped me through a lot of stuff."

"Yeah," he'd replied non-committally. "I've looked over some of her research in the lab. Stuff she never got to complete."

"You're doing good, Fitz. You're very strong."

Am I? he'd thought.

-x-x-

He sinks his head into his hands, and leans against the worktable. Jemma glances up at him from where she's been sat doing nothing but drum her fingers on the table all day, raising an eyebrow.

"Everything alright?"

"No, Jemma." He slams his hands down on the table and turns to look at her. "Everything is not alright."

"Well... tell me. Maybe I can help."

"You can't help, you're not even real."

She sighs heavily, playing with her hands in her lap. Jemma gets up to wander around the lab, inspecting the various bits and bobs he's left lying around. He doesn't even bother to watch her. She surely can't do any damage if she's not real.

"Don't think like that." she says suddenly, making him look up with a furrowed brow.

"You can hear my thoughts?" he asks in disbelief, narrowing his eyes at her.

Jemma rolls hers in response. "I am your thoughts. Sort of."

He can't really argue with that. She's like Jemma in every way, aside from one thing - she seems to share a lot more of his opinions. She says what he's thinking. And now, she really can read his mind in the way they used to joke about back at the academy. It's exhausting to think about. It's as though she really is an extension of him now.

"Go away, I need to think." he says after a while, waving her off with his hand. She pouts at him, and before he can even blink, her lips are right by his ear.

"You can't ignore it forever." she hisses, sounding almost aggressive.

When he turns to look at her, she's gone.

-x-x-

"Were you talking in your sleep last night?"

Fitz looks up from where he's been nursing a coffee for the last ten minutes. Coulson's looking at him with a concerned expression, his brow furrowed.

"Why do you ask?"

"You sounded like you were talking to Jemma."

May and Skye, who were having a quiet conversation about the day's plans for training, both fall silent. They exchange a quick glance, and their eyes fix on him. He shifts uncomfortably in his chair, and scratches the back of his head.

"Yeah. Must've been, then. Sorry, was I loud? Did I say anything weird?" he replies apologetically, whilst making a mental note to ignore Jemma if she ever turns up at night in his bunk from now on.

"Nope." Coulson shakes his head, and has some of his coffee. "Just thought I'd say."

He hears Jemma snort from the other side of the room, and it takes a ridiculous amount of willpower not to look over at her.

-x-x-

It may have been almost three weeks since the funeral, but he's still having trouble sleeping at night.

It's gone two in the morning, but he's staring up at the ceiling completely wide awake. Skye stopped crying about half an hour ago, he heard someone go in and comfort her. It sounded like May, but he can't say for sure.

He can feel her eyes on him, but he doesn't say anything. Doesn't address her presence. She doesn't really say anything either, she's just sat on the floor with her back against the wall. Having her around, even if it's not really her, has been more comforting than he'd expected. He's not sure where she came from seeing as he never put any conscious effort into conjuring her up, but he can't really complain. Even if she annoys him at the best of times.

"Remember when you played dead, to prank Ward?"

He lets out a heavy sigh, and rolls onto his front with his pillow held over his head. Sometimes, if he just ignores her when she speaks to him, she either goes away or stays silent until he initiates conversation. After a brief silence, however, the pillow is yanked off his head and her face is suddenly close to his.

"You can't ignore me forever, Fitz."

"You're not. Even. Real." he says moodily, grabbing the pillow from where she dropped it to the bed and launching it at her. She dodges it effortlessly, and it hits the wall with a dull thud.

"That wasn't very nice." She sighs, feining being hurt by his actions. "Is it because I mentioned Ward?"

"Partly." he mumbles, looking away. Jemma clambers onto the end of his bed and sits cross-legged, watching him curiously. "I don't really want to think about the man that killed you, funnily enough. Though you seem to be very flippant about it."

She sighs again, and shrugs her shoulders. He glances at her, and she's looking over at the wall. "Well, technically, he didn't kill me. I died from lack of oxygen."

He shakes his head. "Only you would be so pedantic as to correct me on that."

Jemma smiles fondly and turns to lean her back against the wall again, still sat on the bed. "That's why you love me, isn't it?"

He doesn't say anything to that.

-x-x-

"You're not real!" he snaps at her.

She's been annoying him for the better part of an hour, telling him that what he's doing is wrong and how everything'll only go tits-up if he continues. She looks slightly taken aback at the harshness of his tone, and she sighs heavily.

"Is that supposed to hurt me?"

He groans, leaning over his worktable with his head in his hands. "I must be going mad." As he speaks, a pain shoots through his chest and he gasps.

Jemma rolls her eyes, and perches beside him. "There's no need to be so over-dramatic."

"I'm hallucinating my dead best friend. I think my reaction is pretty justified, Jemma."

She raises an eyebrow. "Do you care?"

He pauses, only to let out a heavy sigh. "Not nearly as much as I should."

-x-x-

She appears again one afternoon while he's watching Doctor Who with Skye on her laptop. He recognises the happy gasp from beside him, and when he looks over, Jemma smiles at him.

"Weeping Angels. My favourite."

"Yeah." he responds distractedly, furrowing his brow.

"Did you say something?" Skye asks, glancing over at him. He just shakes his head, and she returns her attention to the screen.

He watches Jemma for a while. She sticks around this time, but when Coulson comes in she's gone.

-x-x-

He sees her for the first time about a week after the funeral.

He isn't quite back to work yet, but he's tinkering with something in the lab when a familiar voice pipes up from behind him.

"You dropped something."

He spins around so quickly he almost stumbles and falls. She's standing there before him, labcoat and all, as if nothing ever changed. Jemma raises an eyebrow at him, and gestures to the floor. When he looks, he spots a tiny little screw that must have rolled off the table.

"Thanks?" he mumbles. When he straightens up, she's gone.

-x-x-

May makes him breakfast when he's back on the Bus. She makes breakfast for all of them, but only she and Fitz eat together. She takes Coulson's to his office, and Skye's to the lab where she's been working on a task he set her to. There's no real reason why she should be there of all places, but they don't say anything about it.

She doesn't try to make him talk, so they both stay quiet. The silence is comfortable at first, but as time goes on it becomes apparent that something is missing. She should be there with them, telling Fitz off for playing with his food and babbling on about that interesting study she read about online before she nodded off the night before.

Eventually, she gets up to wash up her plate. Before she leaves, she gives Fitz's shoulder a gentle squeeze.

"Chin up."

He wants to laugh coldly in response, but nothing comes. Instead, he just numbly nods his head.

-x-x-

Honestly, he'd been hoping that Jemma's parents had forgotten about their offer of letting him stay the night with them.

He lies awake all night, listening to the sound of her mother crying. It hurts a lot more than hearing Skye. It's way past midnight when she finally stops, and the silence is too much for him to bear.

He pushes off the covers and clambers out of bed, leaving his room to walk down the landing to Jemma's old bedroom. He's quiet when he opens the door and steps inside, being sure to close it behind him.

Jemma, throughout the time he'd known her, had never been very girly - so the appearance of her old room never ceased to surprise him. It looked like something taken straight out of a doll's house, keeping to a strictly pink and white colour scheme. Not a single thing in there indicated that she was a scientist, or that she even had any interest in science - when he'd first seen it she'd explained to him that she'd taken everything with her to the academy. Posters, books, little scale models. She had a few trophies and medals, but they were kept downstairs. It looked more like a ballerina's bedroom than a biochemist's.

He hadn't intended to fall asleep on her bed. All he'd done was rest his head on her pillow, and the sheets that still smelled of her had somehow lulled him into a slumber.

-x-x-

He separates from the crowd when they're back at Jemma's parents' house for the reception. May goes back to the Bus without a word, and after giving him a quick hug, Skye follows. Coulson opts to stay for a while, talking to her parents about all of the work they did together and how wonderful of a person she was.

Alone, he mills about aimlessly with a cup of tea in his hands, looking around. He's been to Jemma's parents' home before, he paid her a visit while they were home for Christmas back at the academy, but it feels so much different now. The smiling little girl and the happy (but awkward) teenager in the pictures on the walls is gone, and he feels a white-hot flash of pain shoot through his chest. It subsides quickly, but it's enough to make him drop his tea. Coulson rushes to his side, and he stays sat down for the rest of the afternoon.

-x-x-

He goes to sit with the rest of the team in the chapel, but as soon as Jemma's mother, Claire, sees him she rushes over to pull him into a tight embrace. Fitz's arms slowly curl around her in return, and he looks over her shoulder at Jemma's watery-eyed father. He always thought she was the perfect mix of her parents, and when she pulls back and looks at him with his best friend's eyes, it's almost a bit jarring.

Claire takes his hand, pulling him to sit at the front with her and Jemma's father, James. She sits between them, and when the service starts she tenses slightly. James bows his head, and his shoulders begin to shake.

But for him, the tears he'd been expecting never come.

He resists the urge to roll his eyes when the priest mentions God, knowing that Jemma never believed in any kind of god. She relied too heavily on science to ever consider the true legitimacy of religion, adamantly believing in the Big Bang and Darwin's theory of evolution. Jemma's parents talk about their daughter, struggling to hold themselves together, and despite the fact that he's invited to speak after Coulson says a few words, he shakes his head. They don't push him.

His chest aches throughout the service.

If God really does exist, as far as he's concerned, He'll have to beg him for forgiveness.

-x-x-

He's discharged just in time for the funeral, and Jemma's family invite the team. May wordlessly agrees to fly them over to Devon in the Bus, but he doesn't stick around to ask about any of the plans. He just retreats to his room.

Coulson knocks, but he doesn't bother answering. After a few minutes, he hears him slowly walking back to his office.

At night, he hears Skye cry. She's quiet, but the sound of her muffled sobs cut through the silence of the night and he covers his head with his pillow to drown it out. It doesn't work. She cries herself out after around forty minutes, and as the clock on his bedside table ticks past 04:00 he drifts into an uneasy sleep.

May knows better than to try and get through to him just yet, but Coulson tries again and Skye follows hours later. Coulson talks to him for a little while and leaves him some breakfast, though he returns an hour later to find the food untouched.

Skye, however, sits outside his door and just talks for a while without trying to coax him into coming out. She tells him some details about the funeral - what time they'll be arriving in Devon, what time the funeral starts, and how Jemma's parents want him to stay the night with them after the reception. Her voice shakes as she speaks and she sounds dangerously close to crying, and when she finally breaks he opens the door and she falls into his arms.

Her sobs are painful, and it takes every ounce of his strength to keep him from breaking down with her. He's not ready to cry, not yet. He doesn't want himself to break - if he starts crying, he'll surely never stop.

He holds her for the longest time, rubbing her back like his mother used to do for him when he was a child. Slow, soothing circles, with his free hand gently holding the back of her head while she cries into his chest. Her hair feels like silk under his calloused fingers, and it reminds him of Jemma. He eventually allows himself to bury his face in her hair and close his eyes, shamelessly trying to pretend she's back with him again.

-x-x-

Skye stops by one day, while he's still in the med bay. She doesn't really say much, she just holds his hand and sits with him.

He can feel her eyes on him, but he doesn't look over. She very briefly fills him in on how the team are doing, but after a while it just fades into the background and he closes his eyes again.

When he opens them, she's gone.

A doctor later informs him that the pain in his chest seems to be without any physical cause, and he laughs coldly and remarks on it being a sign of a broken heart. The doctor doesn't answer, and he starts to wonder if there's actually some truth in the statement.

-x-x-

They let him see her.

She still looks like Jemma. Her eyes are closed, and for a second he considers opening them just to see them one last time. But it wouldn't be the same, and he knows that. The spark is gone, and all that's left is an empty shell.

Absently, he combs his fingers through her hair. She hates having messy hair, and despite everything he tries his best to be gentle when he encounters particularly troublesome tangles. With that done, he slowly begins to plait her hair - she taught him back at the academy, when she injured her shoulder and couldn't do it herself.

The silence screams, and the room is still. The pain in his chest comes back.

-x-x-

They're pulled from the waters after what feels like an eternity has passed. She's taken from his arms and rushed off somewhere, and he passes out from what he later assumes is exhaustion. They never really tell him, so he has to guess.

Or maybe they do. An unfamiliar man is waiting for him when he opens his eyes, but his words just blur together and make no sense. When he snaps out of his trance he quietly asks about her, and the man falls silent.

His body language says it all. He lies back down and closes his eyes, curling up tightly on his side in an attempt to dull the searing pain that courses through his chest.

It doesn't work.

-x-x-

She's too cold. Too still.

He clings to her for dear life, fighting to keep them both afloat. Her dead weight and wet, heavy clothes fight against him to drag her down into the depths of the ocean, but he doesn't let them win.

He can't.

-x-x-

"So, please…" she whispers, with tears in her eyes and a smile on her face.

Her next words, her final words, bring him to his knees. The action that follows, however, is the driving force behind the scream that tears from his throat.

"Let me show you."