Fitz and Simmons reunite — sort of — in Agents of SHIELD Season 6 Episode 6. Atarah has the pair mentally linked together in an attempt to create a single brain trust to pull from as the two work to find a way to recreate time travel, which Atarah plans to use to go back in time and save the Chronicom homeworld from destruction. Enoch warns that while this process has been used effectively with two Chronicoms in the past, it is dangerous and unethical to attempt with humans. Enoch warns that humans are emotionally complex and that giving Fitz and Simmons full access to one another’s minds and memories may lead to madness. While Atarah is unconcerned with their mental well-being, Enoch points out that if their minds are broken, then they can’t find a solution to Atarah’s problem.
Memories and Monsters
Fitz and Simmons are trapped in a mental prison cell that will conjure whatever tools they need to assist them. Rather than jumping right to work, the pair conjure a couch and some food and catch up on what has happened since Fitz went into cryostasis. Fitz proposes to Simmons, who says that yes, she will marry him. There is a lot that Simmons isn’t telling Fitz, which upsets him. What if something that she’s holding back is the key to unlocking time travel? He presses forward, relentless. As he does, Simmons regresses to a little girl and scurries away from Fitz.
Fitz follows Simmons to her childhood bedroom. The two continue to butt heads, with Simmons refusing to share what she’s afraid of. A music box clatters on her dresser, which is where her father told Simmons to lock away all of her negative feelings like anger and fear. Simmons convinces Fitz to read her a story, which is a stylized version of their own story, with Fitz as Le Petit Prince. When Fitz checks the book’s cover to find the name of the story, he sees “Leopold” stamped on the front.
Back in the cell, Fitz tries to get Atarah to change Simmons back, but Simmons has done this to herself. Fitz gets a rise out of Simmons, mentioning that since he can conjure anything he wants in this space, then maybe he’ll conjure AIDA. Simmons returns to herself and argues with Fitz. Fitz asks what she’s so afraid of, which conjures Mack, looking upset. Fitz follows Mack, with Simmons dragging herself behind him, saying that she didn’t want him to see this. Fitz watches as the SHIELD team assembles to receive his corpse. During the memory, Fitz learns that he and Simmons were married and that Coulson was sick and died. Coulson comforts Simmons by telling her to get to work finding Fitz.
Simmons encounters Yo-Yo and May discussing how Mack is pushing himself too hard as director, which is not a memory but her subconscious telling her where to go next. Simmons meets Fitz in the memory they both shared of the first time they met. Fitz is upset when Simmons suggests that he is pushing too hard and may be on the verge of cracking. That conjures Fitz’s darkest part of himself, Simmons’s greatest fear, Leopold. The pair run from Leopold’s approach back into Simmons’s childhood bedroom, where the music box crashes to the floor, releasing a demon made of Simmons’s suppressed negativity.
The demon attacks Fitz, driving the pair from the bedroom into the shared memory of the first time they met Coulson and were recruited to his SHIELD field team. Though Simmons was inspired by Coulson and proud to join the team, Fitz say that was the moment that everythign started going bad for them. Simmons disputes his assessment, causing a rift between the two. Separated, Leopold is able to trap Simmons while the demon stalks and catches Fitz. Both are tortured by the other’s dark side until both realize that this is all in their heads. Both also realize that not only do they have one another to rely upon, but that they have the best memories of their friends as well. Simmons conjures Daisy to save her from Leopold and the Hydra agents while Fitz conjures Mack to release him and to take on the demon.
The pair flee to a container, where they are trapped with one another while Leopold and the demon circle them outside the container. The two confront one another and the fact that they have crossed time and space to be with one another. Each would do it all over again, because they love one another, darkness and all. The two emerge from the container ready to confront the darkness, but Leopold and the demon are no longer interested in a fight. The two dark halves of Fitz and Simmons’s personalities are making out with one another.
Back in the cell, Fitz and Simmons refuse to help Atarah because of the paradoxes and danger that time travel creates. As long as they are trapped together, they’re happy. Atarah threatens to separate the two, but is cut short. Enoch takes the bold action of incapacitating the Chronicoms and freeing Fitz and Simmons from the mind prison. The three escape the ship together.
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