Chapter Text
This story starts immediately after Fitz and Jemma are hurled back through the monolith portal.
"Fitz," Jemma mumbled and rolled back into his shoulder.
The forty-eight hours following the explosive plummet back through the monolith portal were a blur of squeaky haz-mat suits and forensic science, blindingly bright lights and cold laboratory instruments. Jemma was poked and prodded, her jagged nails trimmed, her sand-scuffed skin scraped. She was swabbed, inspected, auscultated, percussed, and palpated. Blood, hair, sweat, and saliva were all harvested using precise scientific method, so that specimens could be evaluated, interpreted. She submitted in silence to the technicians who worked tirelessly to gather all of the data her body carried like a vessel.
The forensic technicians collecting the various samples from her broken body were exceedingly professional, telling her exactly what they were going to do prior to starting, explaining each step as they went, and quietly apologizing to her when they inflicted pain to her battered body. Jemma never flinched or cried out in pain, never pulled away or screamed in anguish. She never spoke, never even looked at them. She yielded noiselessly, turning herself over to the process, knowing her consent for everything to come had been given the moment she joined SHIELD.
She heard the hushed gasps of surprise uttered from the mouths of her former colleagues, who for the first time were inspecting her stark nudity. Her hair was dusty and matted, secured with a strip of fabric at the nape of her neck. Her cheeks were chapped and dry, her lips split and bleeding. Every place skin stretched over bone was bruised and pulsating with pain. Skin had been torn from her knees, which left sticky blood oozing. Her knuckles were open, weeping. Her finger tips were raw, sensitive from clawing her away across the sand. Injuries dominated her entire left side. A purple bruise extended from her fifth rib to her hip bone. Her left thigh displayed a baseball-sized wine-colored hematoma that radiated warmth. She did not cry. She did not seek the temporary respite of unconsciousness. She endured hours of imaging and scans and needles, always obeying the technicians' requests, passive, but cooperative.
Jemma was reminded of another time her co-workers were stunned by her physical appearance. She recalled the memory from years before, pulling forth its details, escaping the blistering pain in mind only.
Agent Jemma Simmons seemed to have an infallible professional fashion formula. She wore long-sleeved button-up shirts closed at the collar. Lint-free sweaters (or sweater vests, if it was warm) layered over the top. Smooth, above-the-knee skirts, paired with opaque tights and polished, sensible flats completed her look. Several patterns and colors were incorporated into her wardrobe, but Jemma's recipe was always the same. She was described at the academy as wholesome and beautiful and intelligent, fresh-faced and eager.
Their mission was to gather information about an upcoming meeting between different, powerful, Centipede financial backers. SHIELD had information indicating that a smaller gathering of proxies would be taking place beforehand, to discuss the coordination of security details. SHIELD had identified one of the proxy attendees. The team was shadowing the target from their mobile unit, using live traffic and surrounding security feeds, readying themselves to act as soon as the time and location of the proxy meeting was revealed.
Agent Ward was to wear a pair of "smart" glasses, similar to those he wore during the Akela Amador mission. This pair outfitted, by Agent Fitz, with facial recognition software, and auto-sync, the ability to hear real time verbal conversations taking place outside normal hearing range, by interfacing SHIELD lip reading technology with the eyewear's live video feed input. Agent May was to plant mini-trackers on as many attendees as possible. Agents Fitz and Simmons (Fitzsimmons) had created self-imbedding, undetectable, subcutaneous beacons. They were sesame seed sized mini-chips (Fitz) that were suspended in a hypoallergenic anesthetic gel (Simmons), which meant they were pain-free and would not cause any allergic responses, itching or hives, in those tagged. May would place them by simply touching a area of exposed skin, like applying a sticker, using a nitrile-based finger pad that would be adhered to May's right index finger. After sliding each mini-tracker from its dispenser (Fitz) hidden behind her right ear, she merely needed to touch her fingertip to a target, and the mini-tracker would painlessly self-imbed into the unsuspecting target's subcutaneous skin layer. The tracker would self-activate after coming into contact with the target's capillary blood (Simmons), and begin transmitting its location to the bus' mainframe (Fitz). Thirteen days later, the trackers would naturally break down to nothingness within the target's body (Fitzsimmons). Skye was to monitor Agent Ward and provide tech support as needed. Agents Fitzsimmons would monitor the mini-trackers, and Agent Coulson would direct it all from the Winnebago that they were all squeezed into for the moment.
Eventually, the target pulled out his phone, dialed a number, and said "Ten minutes. Tell the others." He then ducked into the one place stealthy Ward and May would be unable to blend in undetected, Inkredible Times. Inkredible Times was a rough, punk, segregated, ink bar, that only admitted fellow punk-inkers. Of course there were agents out there who fit the physical description needed for entry into this particular establishment, but ten minutes would not be enough time to secure one.
The team reacted to the new information, Ward and May and Skye talking about disabling security and using the ventilation system to get close enough to gather the data they needed, Fitzsimmons talking about using small, flying insect droids, miniaturized versions of the dwarfs, to place the trackers. Coulson calmly, but quickly, weighed his options. Then he turned to the team, looked at Jemma, and calmly stated, "Agent Simmons, you're up."
Among the muttered "Simmons?" leaking from her team mates, Agent Simmons spun around on her heal to face him, ears tipped in red. He simply stated, "identifiable markings."
She set her jaw and nodded once.
Coulson took a breath, addressing only Jemma and said, "What do you need? You now have... nine minutes," glancing at his watch.
"I need Fitz to start placing the mini-trackers and the finger pad... to me... NOW." Couslon nodded, and Fitz began working as he was told.
"I need Ward's glasses, Skye's boots, May's lipstick taser." Everyone burst into action, tossing down the requested items.
Fitz finished, and Jemma demanded his graphite lubricant and his neck tie, asked Coulson for the rubber band wrapped around the file folder he was holding in his hand, then grabbed everything up in her arms and ran into the Winnebago's cramped bathroom.
Jemma emerged less than four minutes later, exited the confines of the Winnebago, and headed on foot towards Inkredible Times, noting the stunned faces of her team members as she passed.
Coulson barked that he needed a visual, which Skye tossed up on the center screen in seconds.
"There she is. We got her. Skye, let her know we have her."
Skye typed the message into her laptop. Simmons should see her message in the lens like closed captioning. Within a second, Jemma extended her neck, raising her nose in the air and nodded her head once, as if casually acknowledging a passing friend, letting them know her message was received.
The mission was successful. Jemma did everything she was instructed to do and left the bar. She walked a block to an old blue S-10 that was described as her extraction vehicle, and casually climbed into the unlocked door on the passenger side. Coulson sat behind the wheel.
"I've got her. See you all at the bus." He said into comms.
"Great job, Jemma." He addressed her informally.
"Thank you, sir."
Back at the bus, Jemma ran up the spiral staircase and up to the holo-table for mission wrap-up. Skye started asking question after question, not waiting for any responses. Ward stared her down like a father-figure. Fitz mumbled to himself, avoiding eye-contact with her. May was silent.
Coulson quietly told Jemma that it was up to her whether or not she chose to share things from her personal life, but addressed the rest, when he added, "After wrap-up."
When they reviewed mission's footage, images of Jemma walking to the bar and addressing the door man flooded their screens. Jemma had stripped off her tights and sensible shoes and replaced them with Skye's black knee boots. Her skirt remained, but without the tights, it looked indecently short on her thighs. She had used the graphite lubricant to quickly shadow her eyes, applied the red lipstick that housed the hidden taser to her lips, pulled her hair up into a messy bun using the rubber band, and wrapped Fitz' tie around her head like a head band, tying it behind her right ear, tails strategically pulled forward over her shoulder, ending near her breasts. She had removed her sweater and button up shirt, leaving only her black lace push-up balconette bra, which exposed the upper third of each breast, and also revealed a beautiful skin mosaic, on her, swirling pieces of art.
Agent Jemma Simmons was a walking collage of depth and color. She had a tasteful snowflake tattooed on her upper-middle back, an anchor, a jeweled crown, and a compass were positioned off to its left, where a huge paisley dominated her left upper arm and shoulder, extending from her upper deltoid to the bend of her elbow. Blue birds were flying above the curve of each breast, and the Deathly Hallows were tucked away on her left inner arm. A beautiful fern frond curved across her back from her right shoulder to her left hip. Delicate rose petals and paper-thin butterflies dominated her right shoulder. Hearts and more butterflies and stars were tucked here and there, creating depth and beauty. She saw herself on the screen, remembering each piece that went into the whole. A small smile played at her lips. Her life story was on display, and noone knew how to read its text but her.
On the screen, as she approached the door man, she tugged down her skirt from its hem to sit lower on her hips, then looped her index fingers into the waistband at the back of her skirt and gently pulled up on the black lacy straps of her thong, clearly exposing them above her waistband, visible to anyone bothering to look. May smirked. Fitz gaped, "bloody hell." Ward's mouth dropped open, and Skye smiled and hit her arm, an exasperated "Jemma!" escaping her lips.
"Jemma was playing a part, and she did very well." Coulson stated.
Skye then turned to Coulson.
"How did you know what Jemma was hiding?"
"SHIELD agents are required to continually update their 'identifiable markings,' so we can identify them, if needed. Jemma submitted photos every time new piece of art was added."
Jemma mumbled that she was unaware anyone actually looked at those submissions, unless an agent was missing or presumed deceased.
Coulson had offered Jemma a warm smile, as Skye proclaimed that Jemma was "Hot. Super hot. Super-Sexy-Hot."
That day seemed so far away now, almost a dream.
So much had happened, not only to her, but to the team, to SHIELD.
Hydra had emerged. Ward betrayed them. Fitz drowned. Director Fury died, sort of. And Jemma, she traveled to another planet and back to Earth again.
(more to come)