Hello all! I know, insanely long time, no see. This is a little one-shot about Fitz I've been working on. I'm not sure if I'm gonna add on at all. It starts right as Fitz is recovering from being dropped in the ocean, and ends with the encounter with Ward (not sure if I'm gonna add more, because as you've all seen, we know how he reacts.) I just thought I would throw this out there as a babystep since I've been gone for about two years! Please comment or DM me if you wanna talk!

Nighttime was the worst, by far.

He dreamed.

They weren't usual dreams though. Instead of flying or being chased, Leopold Fitz dreamed with his senses. That was new, but not necessarily unwelcome...at first.

It started with a buzz. No, it wasn't even a buzz, but more of a whisper of notes, always buzzing in his head. It wasn't uncomfortable- anything to take away the silence. But it was unfamiliar. It reminded him of a quiet violin, but covered by a layer of thick fog which slurred the notes together. It was...nice. The blurred quality to the music was still pleasant. It was almost as if he was listening to a violin from the room next door-muffled, but still beautiful.

It was much fainter during the day. That didn't matter. Finally the awkward silence and hushed stares of his peers were drowned out by the music in his head. When he worked in the lab all he heard was the melody, and when he went to sleep in the wee hours of the morning the music lulled him to sleep. So every day, Fitz looked forward to the night, to the dreaming. He wanted to hear the music more clearly. And every night, the sonata returned, soothing him.

Eventually, the constant stream of notes wrapped around his head and his heart and buried itself deep down inside his soul. Every night was a violin solo and for once after the incident he felt at peace. He felt as if he knew what was going on. He felt in control.

But Fitz was a scientist- that was both his strength and his tragic flaw. He wanted to know more. More data, more information, who, what, when, where, why, how. The unquenchable thirst for knowledge eventually overcame the thirst for the peaceful melody.

So the next night, when the soft sonata began to hum louder in his ears and his heart was calm, he didn't just listen. He dove into the darkness of his mind with strained his ears. He was walking through a black expanse, the sound gently rebounding off the walls. The violin softly continued, but he still couldn't understand. Something so beautiful yet mysterious must have an origin. He strained his ears even more, hoping for the foggy tone of the melody to disappear, to become clear, crisp notes.

It seemed the more he tried to understand the louder and more unintelligible the notes echoes increased in volume and rebounded off the tiny walls in his mind more rapidly. The once soothing tones evolved into harsh sharps and shrill pitches, making his head spin and ears ring. But now the sound wasn't just there, it was an active creature. The soft whispers of the violin morphed into bats, bats that were attacking him and completely engulfed him. And yet, the beady red eyes and leathery wings were nothing, nothing, compared to the harsh, overwhelming sounds they made.

He was frozen on the spot. He slowly sank to the floor, clutching his head to cover his ears. He couldn't speak. He couldn't even think. Except for one prevailing thought.

Make it stop.

Make it stop.

Please make it stop.

And suddenly, everything was quiet.

Fitz woke up with a gasp, thankful for the quiet. He would never want to hear that god-awful noise again. The only thing he heard was...nothing. Or rather, the only thing he felt was the cold absence of her. Jemma.

He was alone.

So maybe he slept less. The noise had stopped, and to be frank, that was all that mattered.

The relief was short lived. His hands shook and his heart sank lower every second his eyes were open. Now he would have to deal with the silence, with the team walking on eggshells around him. He couldn't fill the silence, but worst of all, his teammates refused to. But it was an incomplete team.

Simmons, his brilliant Jemma, had left, and it was his fault. The one person who understood him, the one person who ought be able to help him, was gone.

It's my fault.

Leopold Fitz knew the first time he saw her apparition in his lab that it wasn't real, that she wasn't real. That was the one thing Coulson and May and Skye and Tripp got wrong. They thought he had really lost it, that he truly believed he was talking to her. He knew differently; he was smarter than that. He knew that if he turned around too suddenly Jemma would disappear. He knew.

Because as insane as it might have seemed, he would pretend she was real for as long as he could get away with. It was nice, having someone to fill in the words that his brain couldn't come up with, to help him see his problems from a different light. But he knew.

"I d...don't know w...tie, my, why...the...the um...the..." He banged his hand on the desk in frustration. He could see Jemma out of the corner of his eye waiting patiently for his thoughts to come together. "The..."

"Stabilizer?" Jemma offered softly.

"Yeah," Fitz said, ashamed that he needed her help. What would I do withou-

But all of a sudden the truth came slamming in, and he looked her dead in the eyes. They were empty. They weren't the bright shining eyes she really had. Her apparition had cold, empty pits for eyes. It was then that Fitz had started picking up on the discrepancies his mind had projected onto her ghost. This Jemma had empty eyes, had much paler skin, had a forced smile. But some days it was hard to tell.

Oh God, had he already forgotten what she looked like? Did she like wearing her hair up or down? Was it really that short? Did she like her white or navy blouse more? It was bad enough that he couldn't remember his words, but the way she looked? That was a sin. But it didn't even matter.

She wasn't real. And he knew that. But the lab felt cold and isolated and oh so empty without her.

So he would pretend.

Fitz had good and bad days. He knew that was a natural part of healing, that his brain just needed to reconnect with his mouth. Luckily, the rest of the team was so busy tracking down Ward that they didn't bother him down in the lab on his bad days.

Today was... A bit of a bad day. He woke up shaking with his head a giant mess. It was bad enough he could barely talk, but for his thoughts to be so discombobulated? That was a full out disaster. His brain was the one thing he valued- the one thing that would never fail him.

When he walked down to the lab, Jemma was there waiting for him. He didn't acknowledge her. He would, but he knew she wasn't real, and it was too early for his mouth to be working. What was even the point? Fitz sat in his chair, getting straight to work. He was still working on the cloaking shield for the Helicarrier. Coulson had said it was of upmost importance, but Fitz knew that they had a backup mechanism. Coulson just wanted to make Fitz feel like part of the team; it was busywork. It was both nice that Coulson cared, but also slightly patronizing. Fitz knew he wasn't needed any more. He could barely talk, let alone become part of missions.

Fitz was putting the metal frame on the device (or attempting to) when Jemma spoke up.

"Your hands are shaking."

"I kn...know th..cat, hat,mat, at...I know thAT Jem...Jemma." Fitz's face flushed in frustration.

"You should talk to someone."

Fitz scoffed, forcing the metal frame onto the device.

Talking. TALKING. I can't get a simple syllable out. How am I supposed to hold a conversation with a real person when I can't even talk to a hallucination? I can't. I can't...

"I CAN'T!" Fitz shouted. The statement rang through the empty lab.

Empty. Jemma's ghost had disappeared.

Fitz slumped in his chair, his blood pumping through his veins. His hands flew to his head, gripping his curly hair and pulling.

I won't cry. Jemma wouldn't want it. I let her down already. If she knew that I was here crying like a baby she would kill me. Not even her ghost wants to be around me. Why does it matter though? She. Isn't. Here. She left because I can't talk without stuttering every other word like a fucking idiot.

The funny thing is, he doesn't really remember her leaving. The memories of her real presence and her fake one were intertwined into one giant fantasy. He was in the medbay when she supposedly left, but they had him on some heavy painkillers. He wish he had some painkillers now. His head was throbbing and his heart ached.

"Fitz?" A familiar voice asked. Fitz swing around only to find Coulson at the doorway. "We're having a team dinner. Figured you'd like to join us?"

"Um...y-yeah," Fitz responded hesitantly. "I...I'll be..." Fitz bit his tongue, trying to get the word out. He knew what it was- it was looming over him like a taunting shadow. Fitz slowly pointed up, praying that Coulson would understand.

"Up in a minute?" Coulson asked.

Fitz nodded, slightly embarrassed. "It's...um...I h-have...to finish...it'll be a lon...g...long...bite...bit."

"No worries, I'll wait for you. We can walk up together," Coulson said softly.

Fitz inserted the final screws into the metal frame, knowing that Coulson was observing his every move.

He thinks I'm unstable. He knows that I'm losing it. At least he doesn't have the nerve to say it.

"You holding up alright?" Coulson asked, sitting on a metal stool.

"Ye-yeah... I'm..." Fitz snapped his fingers repeatedly. He had read about ways to recall the words he was looking for- physical actions, saying similar words, looking at a sudden object and recalling the name of it. They didn't help as much as he would have liked. He banged a fist against his other hand. "Mine...um...di...dine...fill...fine. Fine."

"That's good. I see you've made quite a bit of progress on that cloaking mechanism! I mean, I won't pretend to understand any of what you're doing, but it looks pretty cool." Coulson patted Fitz on the back.

Fitz hummed in affirmation. Coulson is gonna be a great dad someday. He has no idea what he's doing, but at least he tries. He tries. He'd better hurry up though.

The past year had really taken a strain on the director. Gray hair had started cropping up on the base of his neck, and his sighs seemed a little longer. In retrospect, he was the father or their little ragtag tram. And he did a damn good job...mostly. At least he tried.

Fitz tightened the last screw, the metal clanging in the empty lab. He put his tool away as fast as his hands would let him, eager for some food. He wasn't always best at remembering to eat. The work was all-consuming, which he didn't entirely mind. When he was finished, he and Coulson began the trek up the staircase. Luckily, Coulson wasn't a talkative man, which gave Fitz some reprieve.

"Don't worry about talking at dinner. The team understands," Coulson said.

Fitz nodded in gratitude. The two men continued trudging up the stairs. They went to the living room in the Quinjet where the team was waiting with beers and pizza.

"Hey Fitz!" Skye called, patting the seat next to her. The rest of the team offered enthusiastic greetings as he smiled for a brief second and sat down next to Skye. She handed him a paper plate with pizza on it. Fitz muttered a brief 'thanks.' Or something close enough.

Fitz ate quietly as he listened to Tripp tell a funny story about a mission he had been on recently. Surprisingly enough, no one treated Fitz any differently. It had gotten better over the past few weeks. No one forced him to talk. As old tales were recalled and laughs were abundant, Fitz slowly felt the stress in his shoulders dissipate. Skye's knee would gently brush against his, and he knew. It was a silent "relax, you're welcome here."

For the first time in a long time, Fitz smiled, laughed a bit, and forgot about the ghost lurking in the back of his head. He didn't look at the empty spot on the couch where Jemma should be sitting. Funnily enough, things started improving. They were small victories, but better than nothing.

So when Mack joined the team, Fitz was overjoyed. Well, not immediately.

He was hesitant at first. Mack was tall, well built, and confident. In short, he was everything that Fitz was not. Then Fitz saw him tinkering inside the engine of the Quinjet, and the two found their common ground- mechanics. Mack was engine mechanics, while Fitz was more focused on gadget engineering. It really didn't matter though. The two worked together silently. There was a sort of quiet understanding and appreciation for the other in the air. Mack, although funny, was not extremely talkative. They worked well together.

Fitz could tell Mack was making an effort to get him to open up. Mack would ask about Jemma (and receive no response,) ask about Fitz's parents, whatever he was working on, anything to get the younger man to open up. For such a large man, Fitz was surprised at how amiable he was.

Today they had been working on placing the cloaking device onto the actual Helicarrier. Mack did most of the work as Fitz knew nothing about planes, but he still could tell Mack which wires to cut and which ones to definitely not cut. They went like this for hours, so when Mack asked Fitz if he wanted to take a break, Fitz was more than relieved. He was shocked however when Mack led him to the game room, and handed him a beer as well as an Xbox controller.

A steady friendship followed. Mack would help Fitz fill in words where Jemma no longer did, and in return Fitz would offer new insight to whatever Mack had been working on. Fitz felt...happy. He didn't feel like a freak, an outcast on the team. His speech was slowly getting better. Mack worked with Fitz on his disability. He taught the scientist how to work around words, how to use synonyms, and most importantly, the value of patience.

Things were going pretty well. Until Fitz found out what, or rather who, Coulson was hiding in the basement.

He hadn't meant to find Ward. He was just going down for routine inventory checks, making sure that everything was ship-shape for their next mission.

He was frustrated. Skye kept getting information from an unknown source, and Fitz knew it had to be Ward. Ward, the same man that had captured he and Jemma, and then proceeded to throw them into the Atlantic Ocean. To die. He was Hydra! And yet Skye still felt the need to communicate with him, simply because he had good intel? Fitz was livid. Ward should be dead. He should have been the one at the bottom of the ocean, gasping for breath.

Fitz walked down the cement stairs, breathing out heavily. Maybe he'd stay down here a bit. It was cold and quiet and wasn't close to bubbly Skye. Regardless of love or intel or anything, she had no excuse to defend a monster like him.

Fitz froze. He had come down to do aluminum checks, but there was nothing there. There was a metal chair, a giant glass box, and a tablet on a stand. Curious, walked up to the tablet, picking it up and tapping the black screen. The screen lit up and the glass box's surface shimmered orange as the box became transparent.

Ward was sitting on the bed. The prisoner looked up immediately, slowly rising from the mattress.

Fitz could feel his throat closing up, his chest constricting, constricting, tighter, tighter, tighter…

"I imagine you've got a lot to say to me."