bravejemma | IC Inbox

[The workspace has been pretty quiet as of late, communicating only when necessary and when the work can't speak for itself. She glances up from her hastily scribbled notes, and notes he looks better than he had. Hopefully it was so; the Christmas event had taken so much out of them.]

Of course, Fitz.

[Is her slight smile reassuring? She can only hope so.]

[It seems like every event takes more out of them than the one before. How many times can they be hollowed out and refilled? Are they even the same people they were when they arrived?]

Jane's latest project made me think we ought to adapt some of our power suppression theories to an area here. Sort of like a panic room, in case things go badly. Do these compounds look similar enough to what we had at home?

Right, of course.

[What, were they just going to start talking about difficult things now? Pfft.

She looks at what he's scribbled down.]

To my memory, it looks awfully close. [She takes her pencil and corrects a number -- they'd had a lot of trouble with that one.] Maybe just that adjustment.

[What is communication and why would they ever start doing it?]

There might be a new margin of error to accommodate for all the magic bollocks that go on here. Have you gotten to chatting with any of that lot? Absolutely mental, the lot of them.

The ones on the floor?

[She smiles, a bit tiredly.]

Is it any more mental than rocks that are portals to far off planets, or anything we've seen?

We can tear that apart and understand it. It's not covered in all that rubbish about "being one with nature."

[INFINITE EYEROLLS.

But then, something unrelated slips out. He can't help but say whatever's on his mind, when Jemma's near.]

Besides, we've seen quite a bit. Are you sure we ought to believe everything without testing?

Of course not. Skepticism is the cornerstone of sound, scientific principles, we know that.

["Being one with nature," though... well, she feels like she might understand that a little better.]

So you've already dismissed that hypothesis about being forced forward in spacetime.

[Because that's what Fitz is talking about now. He just neglected to announce that he'd already changed subjects without announcing it. Considering magic leads to the idea that events are constructed under magical parameters, which alters the likely probability of events. It's just that he didn't express that direction out loud. Leo Fitz is not great at conversations.]

I--

[She doesn't know what to think about it, to be honest.]

I don't know. I suppose it's a possibility but there are too many questions. Why were we alone in our understanding of the leap? Why were there no memories of home at all?

The Sam Beckett effect on quantum displacement.

[He fusses with papers that don't require additional fuss. It's just something to do with his hands.]

Explain?

[Her brain isn't putting two and two together like it should.]

Quantum Leap -- American science fiction. [Jemma's too big of a Whovian to branch out into other speculative fiction. Alas.]

Because Dr. Beckett was essentially displaced into a time that wasn't his native space, he was the only one aware of the disturbance he created. Thus, when we stepped into a different time, we didn't stop being ourselves. Even if that time reflects a space where we've all ceased to be who we are.

[She gives a huff of impatience at herself. She should have recognized the reference, maybe would have, given a few more minutes.]

Except instead of "leaping" into different people, we were leaping into different versions of ourselves.

[She almost can't believe she's having this conversation.]

Versions of ourselves which had undergone severe lobotimization.

One imagines that it may have been a warning.

A very tempting warning.

[Between them is the awkward dissonance between the proposed future and their present. She doesn't know, but suspects -- if his alternate was anything like hers, the temptation of something that beautiful and uncomplicated was great.]

You think so?

[Had they already spoken about this while the event was at its worst? He's still not sure which Jemma said what.]

[Truthfully, she's not sure, either. After that much sleep deprivation, the only way she knew if she was in this world or the other was the ring she wore.

She doesn't look up at him, lest she give some of her guilty conscience away.]

An anxiety-free existence, even if you're not sure what's going on or why? Of course it is. Or it can be.

You understand the theories. There's a strong possibility that it'll happen regardless of what we do to circumvent it.

[Would that be preferable? He's not sure.]

I don't believe things are predestined, Fitz.

Oh, destiny is what the uncultured call it. You know better than that.

And I don't believe it, whatever you want to call it.

[Fate, destiny, George, there's not a name you could give it that would make Jemma its pupil.]

Then you're entirely too married to Euclidean three-dimensional theory.

[He shakes his head, huffing.]

And you're entirely too married to your stubborn, Calvinist-inspired Scottish cultural identity to look past your own nose.

[Not the greatest comeback, but hey, if you're going to spring an argument on her you're going to have to work with what she comes up with.]

Questioning the validity of religious norms has absolutely nothing to do with acknowledging the high probability that fourth-dimensional spatial awareness is potentially validated by our very existence in this space.

[They don't question that Daisy's place in the timeline is valid. Why is this such a sticking point?]

And that doesn't have anything to do with what will or won't be. Fre will in human beings makes it much more complicated than that.

[She pauses only briefly.]

Why are you picking a fight?

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