Chapter Text
“Dinner.”
“Fast approaching, yes, and we’ll eat it, I’m sure.”
“Yea, no, no, no, but uh… Me and you, maybe we could eat somewhere else. You know, somewhere… nice.”
Jemma went still as she processed Fitz’s words.
“Oh,” she said simply, feeling her face get warm. Any other words failed her. All she could do was smile in a way that hopefully didn’t look too stupid and nod in a way that wasn’t too jerky.
Fitz nodded along with her, a small, adorable smile appearing on his face. “Good. Okay. Uh, well, uh… You should come find me when you’re finished here, and uh, I’ll start working on options to run by you for that.”
With that, he walked away and closed the door, leaving Jemma alone in the lab. Coming out of the surprise and (endearing) awkwardness of that interaction, Jemma felt a smile reach her eyes as she fully processed what that meant. Fitz, asking her out on a lovely dinner date! As much as Bobbi grilled her on her feelings, she didn’t quite realize how happy that idea made her until it was made into an imminent reality. For the longest time, she hadn’t allowed herself to acknowledge those kinds of feelings at all.
After months of hell, things finally felt like they were looking up.
Now eager to finish things up in the lab as fast as possible, Jemma quickly sorted out the remaining things they’d gotten from the Afterlife as fast as she could. Not too quickly that the job would be done poorly, of course, but efficiently with no time to dawdle and leave Fitz (or herself) waiting. But as she moved some things aside, a stack of books caught her eye and made her pause for a moment.
Upon closer inspection, she realized that these books must have been the records of Inhuman history that Skye’s- Daisy’s, Jemma mentally corrected herself- mother had kept. Jemma recalled Agent Coulson mentioning potentially sending those books to Dr. Garner to study further. She wondered what they were doing in the lab. The historical side of things certainly wasn’t Jemma’s expertise, nor was it Fitz’s. But still, something drew her to those books.
Surely, Coulson and Garner wouldn’t mind if she took a look.
Curiously, she opened the book at the top of the stack, eyeing the various drawings with interest. She didn’t read too closely, figuring it would be best to leave scrutiny to Dr. Garner, but it was still interesting to catch a glimpse.
Then, upon turning another page, she was suddenly hit with a puff of light colored gas that shot out from the center of the book.
A split second moment of confusion- had Jiaying poisoned the book? What was that?- was followed by panic. Instinctively, Jemma backed away, trying her best to not breathe in any more than she already had. To her surprise, her movement grew slower as her legs stiffened. As she watched a stone-like layer of black travel up her legs and held up her hand to see it forming there, too, the dreadful realization sank deep into her stomach of what that gas was.
Terrigen mist. The book had been trapped with terrigen mist.
Her heart raced, but there was nothing she could do except helplessly watch as the blackness slowly crept over her body. The thought crossed her mind to scream, call out for help, but her vocal cords were paralyzed. It wouldn’t make a difference anyway, and she knew that.
A rapid tidal wave of thoughts and memories crashed through her mind. Being put to bed by her mother, watching the stars with her father, her days at the academy, meeting Fitz…
Oh, Fitz. A film of tears couldn’t help forming over her eyes. She hoped that he wouldn’t be the one to find her crumbled body there. After all he’d been through, he deserved to find out in a gentler way.
As the layer of stone completely covered her face, all she could think about was her family, her friends, and hope that Coulson remembered the request she made to him another time when she was sure she was about to die and tell her father first.
Then, suddenly, light cracked the black that had consumed her vision.
As the cocoon fell away, she took a few shocked, skeptical breaths, hardly believing that this was real, as she watched her outstretched hand break free as well. After only a few moments, the seemingly deadly substance that had formed over her body was a pile of black dust on the ground at her feet, and she was alive, still standing, still breathing.
That meant-
No, no, it couldn’t possibly be that. Surely, this was a fluke of some kind. Perhaps it wasn’t real Terrigen mist. Something meant to imitate it, maybe? Or perhaps it was in that old, dusty book for so long that it had somehow lost its effectiveness. A million other possibilities worked their way into Jemma’s mind, and she was willing to believe just about any of them, because the alternative made no sense to her.
She couldn’t have possibly gone through Terrigenesis. She was not an Inhuman. There was no possible way! Daisy made sense. Her mother was an Inhuman; it was in her blood. Jemma was just a plain, normal, human girl from Sheffield with plain, normal, human parents.
With numb, wobbling legs, Jemma walked around the lab in search of a reflective surface. The glass casing of one of the artifacts did well enough. She studied her faint reflection, looking for any abnormality, but she found none. Her face, her eyes, her hair, everything was normal. Then again, Skye still looked like a normal human, too.
Jemma then looked around to see if anything in her environment was changing. She wasn’t sure what to look for (things starting on fire? The air changing? Materials shifting physical or chemical properties?), but regardless, nothing appeared to be happening. Everything looked normal. She felt normal. At least, she was fairly sure she felt normal.
The Terrigen mist must not have been real, or it had degraded, or any of the possibilities that weren’t Jemma becoming an Inhuman were true. One of those things had to be the case, because Jemma was not an Inhuman and whatever just happened to her was not Terrigenesis.
Still, though, there was a strange feeling about this occurrence that she couldn’t shake.
Jemma’s still rubbery legs took her out of the lab with hardly a conscious thought as she moved through the hallways. She wasn’t sure whether she was looking for Fitz to forget about what just happened and go on a dinner date, or if she was looking for Coulson, or May, or anyone, really, to inform them of what happened. Real and functioning Terrigen mist or not, who knew what else those books could have been trapped with? Maybe another one held actual Terrigen mist. In that case, Dr. Garner had to be warned before those books were sent to him.
As she passed through busier parts of the Playground where various agents were still moving about, Jemma felt a sudden dull ache in her head as a faint buzzing noise filled her ears. She slowed down and took a look around. What the hell was that sound? Had an electronic device of some kind broken?
The buzzing got a little louder as someone else was about to pass by, who she quickly realized was Hunter. A bit relieved at a familiar face, Jemma was about to approach him and ask if he, too, heard the noise, but a change in the nature of the noise distracted her. A strange… whispering noise of some kind overtook the buzzing and began to fill her head. With it, various images flashed through her mind that she couldn’t make any sense of.
Hunter paused, looked at her for a moment, and said something to her, but she could hardly make out his voice over the noise.
“I’m sorry,” she said, smiling politely through the increasing pain in her head, “what did you say?”
“I asked if you were alright,” Hunter replied. “You look like you’re seein’ a ghost.”
“Um, sorry, just…” Jemma had to put all her focus into talking, getting her bearings straight. “Um, just looking for Fitz.”
Hunter’s eyes lit up and, despite the sudden sensory overload, Jemma felt a hint of… excitement?
“Yea? He told me that he was finally making a move,” he said with a huge smile. “Congratulations. Don’t break the man’s heart, alright? And don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
With a wink, Hunter walked away, and thankfully, the buzzing and whispers went away along with him. As she stood alone in the hallway again, the realization slowly sank in that the Terrigen mist definitely did something to Jemma. Her legs grew unsteady again. She was an Inhuman. She had gone through Terrigenesis. She was an Inhuman.
What was she going to do? She had to tell someone about this. What would happen to her then? She remembered how Skye- Daisy, damnit!- was after her own Terrigenesis. She could hardly control her powers. How long would it take Jemma to control hers? What even were her powers? Were those Hunter’s thoughts she was hearing? That was a terrible power to have unchecked. What if she was stuck hearing everyone’s thoughts uncontrollably for the rest of her life? How would Fitz feel about that? Or Daisy? Or anyone?
Jemma took a deep breath in, closed her eyes, and exhaled with a long sigh. She would search for Fitz first. He, at the very least, had to know that their dinner date needed to be postponed.
Thankfully, Fitz was in his quarters with the door open a crack and Jemma didn’t have to search through the Playground and deal with more people’s thoughts. Fitz’s mind was far calmer than Hunter’s, thankfully. It was actually quite peaceful in that moment, almost… warm. There seemed to be a song of some kind stuck in his head, one that Jemma didn’t know, but found to sound quite pleasant. There were images of her, images of both of them…
She stopped herself from focusing on that, trying her hardest to block it out. How could she intrude upon him like that? God, she needed to get these awful powers in check as soon as possible.
“Jemma?” he softly called from inside. She could feel the smile on his face before she even saw it, and felt a pang of guilt as she realized that that smile likely wouldn’t be on his face for very long. Nevertheless, she smiled back out of sheer habit, though hers was far more nervous than his. “Have you, uh, have you decided where you want to eat?”
With an awkward chuckle, Jemma tried her best to focus on anything but the thoughts that slowly encroached upon her head as she walked into the room and replied, “We’re going to need to take a rain check.”
There was disappointment, anxiety, a hint of Is she being serious right now? and a Is there something wr- No. She had to stop listening in on that. She had to focus on his actual voice.
“What do you mean?” is what his actual voice said, trying to sound calm, but still colored by those thoughts despite Jemma’s best efforts to drown them out.
She felt a pang in her head as his thoughts became a buzz. The headache mingled with the anxiety and made her nauseous and hardly able to bring herself to speak at all. Her head felt so tight all of a sudden. How was she going to explain this?
“Jemma, what’s- what’s happening?” Fitz asked, pointing behind her and staring with wide eyes. She felt his fear. His thoughts buzzed louder and louder.
Slowly, Jemma turned her head. A water bottle and notebook on his nightstand were floating in the air. His pillow and blanket were floating as well, along with a painting above his bed.
He said something that she couldn’t hear verbally, but she could hear the corresponding thought. What is going on?
She could hardly even process that, definitely not enough to adequately answer his question. Her head kept aching, the constricting pain intensified by the fear, the concern, the worrying, the buzzing, the increasingly louder mental blaring of What the hell is going on? as he said things she couldn't hear or understand.
”Stop yelling!” she suddenly shouted, throwing her hands over her ears. A bit of the tight feeling in her head loosened up in an instant as she heard the things that were floating drop, the painting crashing onto the headboard. At the same instant, the increasingly frantic stream of Fitz’s consciousness grew quieter.
“I wasn’t yelling,” he said, stepping closer and gently holding her wrists, slowly guiding her hands away from her ears and holding them. “Jemma, please, talk to me. What’s going on?”
A fresh wave of tears gathered in Jemma’s eyes as she finally said in a small voice, “The books Daisy’s mum kept were trapped with Terrigen mist.”
Even if she couldn’t hear his thoughts, Jemma could see the gears turn in Fitz’s brain as the realization slowly hit him and his eyes went wide once more.
“And you-” He freed one hand from hers and pointed to her.
She nodded her head.
“And… you can do-” He pointed to all the things that had just been floating in the air.
Jemma shrugged. “I don’t know. I-” She cut herself off, almost ashamed to admit it. But he had to know. “I can hear thoughts.”
She squeezed her eyes closed, letting the tears fall, and tried to think of anything to not listen to or feel whatever his internal reaction was.
“Oh,” he said flatly after a moment.
“I’m sorry,” she immediately said. “I-I’m trying not to, I swear.”
“It’s okay, Jemma.” Fitz wrapped his arms around her and held her close. “I’ve got nothing to hide, definitely not from you, right?”
Jemma breathed out a small laugh against his chest. She supposed if the roles were reversed, she’d rather him in her head than anyone else.
“And we’ll get through this, alright?” he continued. “Just like we always do. I’ll be by your side no matter what.”
She tried to drown out the pang of guilt she felt at that. Fitz was far too good for her, staying by her side with no hesitation when she left him in his moment of need. But they were together now, and if there was any upside to this newfound ability, it was that she could feel that he wholeheartedly believed what he was saying, that she would get through this. That they would get through this.
“Let’s find everyone else,” Fitz said.
The dread sank in as Jemma realized that she had to be bombarded with everyone else’s thoughts. If just Hunter’s alone, or even Fitz’s alone could give her such a headache, she couldn’t imagine how seven different minds all at once would affect her.
But still, she went with Fitz out the door and tried to focus on his comforting hand around hers rather than how very scared she was.