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At the beginning it takes them a time to begin to draw up a plan since the surviving agents are badly injured and the escape from the Lighthouse is was not totally free of fire and explosions, so when the survivor team is on board the plane, they allowed themself to breathe before start planning. But the breath doesn't last much, once they are over the clouds, Pipper's call for help reaches them.
"The temple has been destroyed." Pipper informs. "No- I couldn't... there are no survivors besides Flint." Her voice cracks at the end and all agents look at each other in shock.
"As I told you before, hunters seek to destroy the SHIELD threat completely." Enoch repets but, despite his warnings Jemma cannot prevent her tears from falling.
First they lost Coulson and then May was stabbed by Serge right in front of them and they weren't being able to do anything to stop it and then, all the team was gone. Their whole family being destroyed in the temple.
It's too much.
“Ah! NO-AHGG ”- Fitz, prisoner of impotence begins to hit the nearest operating table, causing the agents around him to disperse with fear.
"Fitz please stop, don't do this!" Jemma begs.
"It's was my fault" Fitz hits again. “I was dumb enough to let myself capture in a mental prision and now everyone is dead. Because of me."
"I was there too!"
"If we only - if we had escaped before - if I hadn't been so stupid- now they are all gone." Fitz stutters when Jemma reaches him. He hides his head against the operating table, crying.
"Everyone, leave us a moment." Jemma orders to the agents and they leave, giving them worried looks.
What kind of Shield will it be now that the Director along with the most important field Agents are gone?
“Fitz, listen to me, Enoch is right Yes, we were in a mental prison and it was a mistake but we can still find a solution and avoid the invasion in the first place." Jemma tries to lift his head up. "But now we have much urgent problems, most of our people are injured and Flint need us, he is in this new place full of pathogens and is a child but most important we need find a base that is not in any SHIELD record or in the tolbox, a safe place to hide us- "
Fitz's head rises and then runs to the nearest computer.
"A base that neither you or I knew before ..." he begins to type.
"Exactly and after that, we need begin to study how to improve this mess."
Fitz laughs without humor. "Say something new"
"We will solve it, Fitz."
They are recomposed. There is a tacit understanding about them now, none of them wanted it or expected it when they woke up this morning but now they are the head of SHIELD and must resist the threat.
"Fitz that is-" Jemma's mouth opens when she sees the coordinates Fitz enters the panel.
“I was keeping it as a…, it was a surprise. It was Deke's idea really.” Fitz's eyes get wet again to mention Deke. "And back then it sounded ridiculous but then I felt it could work for us, like a home."
"But it is-"
"Perthshire yes, and is big enough to contain us all, after implement cloaking in the surroundings."
"But Chronicom knows about that." Jemma scans the area that Fitz shows her, if it weren't for their extracted minds, she's sure it could work.
“They don't know about this house. We had a conversation in the past about this and I always thought we would eventually get there but I didn't make any plans until Deke mentioned the idea of buying a castle for us a few days ago and look, it's not a castle- it's ... it's just a house with enough land where I thought we could install a laboratory in the future but now I think it will work like a base, don't you think? ”
Jemma smiles a little.
Between mountains and forests the new SHIELD base is called Taigh Dùthchail.
At the beginning it is hard, to act as Directors and have an iron facade all the time while they learn what its lose agents -good people-, in the field and what a sacrifice means compared to millions of lifes in places where Chronicoms attack mercilessly.
And of course, there is always the threat of being captured again, together or separately, Chronicoms deciphering all the research that both have achieved so they decide that it is better to start working separately.
And as time passes, it still hard, Jemma does not deny it. Losing Daisy's ingenuity, Mack's muscles or May's calm is a constant pain to both but if Enoch is right and the solution to prevent the Chronicom invasion is in SHIELD's story, Jemma knows that they will be there sooner or later and that they can return in time to save the team. It is she who returned from a timeline where the earth was destroyed and she saw with her own eyes how to create a time machine.
But Fitz refuses save the team.
“We need our entire team, Fitz. And eventually we will be solving the past so what could go wrong with having them with us?”
"You mean besides the problem of make another paradox?"
Jemma rolls her eyes towards Enoch but the anthropologist pretends not to be listening their conversation.
"Look, this is a masive risk. If Hunters catch us doing that, then we can never save the team by avoiding the Chronyca-2 extinsion in the first place.“
“But they already know about the time machine, Fitz. It was with me all the time and they know we have tools to save our common history but they still walk around taking cities and crushing our defense lines.”
“They crush our lines for the same reason Jemma! They want to eliminate you and me, and with that make this planet their home-3 or whatever like they did it before or the name 2 doesn't tell you anything? they don't seek to save their history, Chronicoms are just crazy -no offense Enoch.”
“Crazy or not, we have to protect the world and we can't do it alone. We need Mack, Daisy, Yoyo, May and even Deke. ”
Fitz's gaze cracks quickly before recomposing.
"Besides Flint can help me with the machine, its not necessary that you know all of that plan part."
"Right now, just hearing about it is a risk." Fitz rubs his head, overwhelmed.
“They already knew that we know how to travel in time but they are currently so focused on settling on Earth that we can use the advantage! We just have to make sure we reduce the failures and everything will be fine, belive me. ”
"And if you let me add." Enoch interrupts them and they both turn to look at him. "If you are planning to put the team back on the table, I suggest you reconsider my idea of adding the SHIELD history expert."
Fitz closes his eyes, breathing loudly while Jemma bites her finger. That is something they have not yet discusses, even though they both know, Enoch is right.
Fitz dismiss it with one hand. "Alright Jemma I accept your plan but with the condition that you will let me make everything to reduce those failures."
And so they do, it takes them another half year to carry out a plan, working separately, without telling the other about the investigations they are carrying but also trying to make their pieces fit together. The good thing is that they have had years of practice on how to read each other's mind.
When Jemma sees how Fitz has put a Jump on the Zepyr One she decides that she doesn't want to know more while when Fitz sees how his wife and Flint stay late, trying to track minerals to form a time monolith that could resists one travel until they find the original, Fitz shakes his head and moves away.
And of course they are exhausted, constantly fighting for solutions that they cannot communicate verbally while the agents look at them worried at the meeting tables. The nights are tense in the Taigh Dùthchail, with Jemma too busy investigating to notice the cup of tea that Fitz left for her at her laboratory desk hours ago or with Fitz not getting to bed at night because he was evacuating a city in Europe threatened by Chronicoms.
Pipper tries to comfort them when they lost agents but its not the same that a hug from Mack or a sarcastic comment from Daisy. Even Enoch tries to lighten the load by acting as an intermediary but Fitz misses the way May imposed calm order and how Coulson always used to know what to say before a mission and in conclusion everything is too much....Especially when the project "Avoid Chronyca-2's destruction" begins to reach the execution date.
Its was decided that it will be Jemma who will travel with Enoch and that she will do it to the day where Hunters destroyed the Lighthouse and that right after that the Taigh Dùthchail team would move out of dependencies and that way if Jemma was captured after extracting the team at temple, she would not expose Fitz's location.
"Excuse me, Jemma." Fitz tells her the day before she travels to save the team, they are both standing there, uncomfortable on the ramp of the new Zephyr One. Fitz can't stop thinking about how their lives have changed since they first stepped on the Bus or how it will even do it once Jemma ends her mission.
“You don't have to apologize Fitz, none of this was your fault. The Chronicom invasion, the mental prison, the temple destruction, nothing was.”Jemma reaches him, cradling his cheek with one hand. Fitz closes his eyes, memorizing her touch.
"Okay-uhm-Do you have everything?"
"Yes." Jemma smiles at him.
"The crio chamber for May?"
"Ready for a long time."
"And for Yo-yo t-"
“Fitz, stop worrying, everything is ready and controlled. I have it."
"Well ..." Fitz closes the distance and kisses her lips. "Just be careful out there, okay?"
"Of course."
Another kiss, one that feels like a million meanings more than just a goodbye. A goodbye for a lifetime and a goodbye for everything they've lived. Fitz does not know how all will finish based on what his research points out so that he crosses his fingers for everything goes well, humanity is safe and they ... they still know each other at first day of Academy.
"Ehem." Enoch interrupts them. "Everything ready with the expert, all is properly loaded and waiting for the final decision."
Fitz nods and moves away from the ramp, allowing Jemma to ascend to take position.
"Goodbye, Fitz." Jemma tells him when the ramp rises.
"Goodbye, Simmons."
The next day, when Fitz leaves Taigh Dùthchail with Pipper acting as his right hand, its doesn't take much when they find that the Time Jump generated by the rock that Flint managed to imitate was a success.
"Here code 56001 confirming arrival at the extraction point." Jemma says through the radio he designed to resist time-communication based on a common SHIELD satellite.
“Here code 98232 happy to hear that. Be careful, please. ”
He turns to look at Pipper who smiles with relief and then Fitz takes the control of the situation, entering the date he investigated.
Pipper approaches him, almost running. "Sir, is that correct?"
Fitz nods, still entering logarithms on the screen.
“Enoch provided the idea that the answer to solve Chronyca-2 extinsion and their Earth conflict is in SHIELD's history but he never specified a date so I did my own research and I realized that this goes beyond. Before the formation of SHIELD even. ”
"Oh man, that sound complicated."
Fitz laughs without humor. "And much more as you're imagine because according to my research everything gets even more frustrating."
"What are you saying, sir?"
"Everything indicates that a bloddy millon head octopus is involved in all this."
"Hydra?!" Pipper hisses in shock.
"Somehow, they always comes back to us." He scratches his neck, looking down.
"And Simmons doesn't know anything about this, right?"
"I couldn't tell her." Fitz looks at Pipper with guilt. "Not if I didn't want to risk all my research, but I'm confident that Jemma can deduce it in due course."
“I mean, she should be able to do it, isn't she a genius? Besides you are sending them to 1931, people had so much time to think back there.”
"It's not ancient Greece, Pipper." Fitz laughs humorlessly and then returns at the commands, hoping to know something about Jemma soon. "She knows the answer is in SHIELD past, I just don't think she imagines how far back I'm sending them."
"She won't blame you, Fitz." Pipper assures him and the engineer walks away, focusing his attention on an alarm showing a China city being attacked by Hunters.
"Go ahead code 98232." His wife's voice arrives. Relieved Fitz crawls to the command center. “Fitz, Zephyr One is in charge with the entire crew couting to launch. ”
"Copied that, Jemma." Fitz releases his shoulders. They have saved them. "Glad to hear it. Tell them I'm sorry. Prepared for launch. ”
And then he activates the Time Jump on the plane that contains his wife and friends, praying that things will work out well for once, for the team.