(Open) I miss the taste of a sweeter life

[onthefitz]

Who: Leo Fitz Lawrence Frederick
Where: His home and a brief stint around Storybrooke
When: Throughout the event
Rating: PG-13ish?
Summary: Lawrence has never had an easy life simply because people don't understand. But it gets worse when he realizes there's another part to his life he never knew about.

The Story:
October 24th:

Lawrence rarely left his home anymore. It had gotten harder and harder to make people understand what he was talking about, his intelligence making it hard for people to really grasp the strange things he came up with and talked about; the way he could break down something visually and put it back together as if it were nothing. His temper had gotten worse the more people got confused with him and he eventually quit his job as a professor in favor of doing his own work without being hindered by shortcomings. His study was his sanctuary, books and notebooks scattered all over the place, one wall covered in clippings and notes that he had written, a map of something that he couldn't explain conveyed through the connected images and script. Another wall was covered in formulas and equations, things that came to him that he couldn't express to people in any other way but they had to come out. He had to get them out of his head before they drove him insane. And there was something to it all, a mystery that he couldn't yet reach but he knew was there. An explanation for something that he couldn't put into words.

No wonder people rarely visit.


October 25th-26th:

Something was off about his formulas. They were different now, more schematics than anything but schematics for what, he wasn't sure. Most of them were things he'd never encountered before; that couldn't exist. It was stressing him out. Where was this coming from? And what about the names that he had started to write down, people that he was writing about that he had never met before?


October 27th-28th:

It was like his mind was more broken than it had ever been before. There were two people--Leo Fitz and Lawrence Frederick--both smart, both scientists, but one could function--did function prior to an...to an accident? Whatever was going on was making his head throb and everything was different now, moreso than it had been. SHIELD was a prominent acronym in his writings as was HYDRA and a part of him knew that they were connected, that they were one in the same.

But that didn't make sense.

Because of the onslaught and the confusion that he couldn't pull himself out of, Lawrence...Leo?..had decided to seek help from his old colleagues. Maybe they could help him figure this mess out...if they would even talk to him, given how he'd treated them once upon a time.

Comments

October 28

[conscientiae]

It's taken longer for Julia -- Jemma, whoever she is -- to sift through the memories of Wonderland, layered on top of the memories from back home. She might have another life, yes, alright, but that her father (her boss) or her friend might be on a different timeline of that life -- that's a bit trickier to come to terms with. While Jemma is enthusiastic about the opportunities this other life might afford her, what really causes her to stumble is that she would have to give up her father, in a sense, and Lawrence...

Lawrence had said, too, that Jemma was HYDRA, undercover. Maybe Jemma had thought she'd had a life she wanted, but is Julia sure that breaking out of Storybrooke would be worth the pain it would cause someone like Lawrence if it were true?

She knocks on his door, and she folds her arms over her chest. She'd wanted to come by and show him the new experiments she'd started in the lab, but that had been two days ago, and today... Today things are very different from that sudden surge of enthusiasm and hope.

[onthefitz]

He had been planning on leaving, maybe tracking down Julia himself because she might be able to help him figure this out. But it seemed as though they had similar trains of thought because lo and behold, she was on his doorstep.

Pulling the door open, Lawr--Fitz?--stared at her for a second, feeling an odd tremor in his hands before he jerked them away from the door and stepped back to make room for her to enter.

"You don't look so good," he murmured, his usual snark there but it was shaky at best. He didn't have it in him to be his normal, annoyed with everyone self. Instead he just felt...unsure.

[conscientiae]

She gives a short laugh and rolls her eyes as she comes inside.

"Nice to see you too."

As rude as it is -- and she truly isn't offended -- it's a nice break from the tangle of feelings she's been going through, a mixture of excitement at the possibilities and pangs over the potential loss that all of this represents. She notices the tremor in his hands, and it only makes her think of what he told her, of why he's like this in Jemma's life.

"How are you doing?"

[onthefitz]

"I've been better. Would be better if I wasn't going crazy," Fitz replied rather irritably, shoving his hands into his pockets to try and still the shaking as he tilted his head. "But according to most I've already been there. Never had another person in my head though."

Because that's what he was chalking this up to. And if it were anyone else? He probably wouldn't have admitted it but this was..she had always been....lying to her was never something he was good at.

"What about you?"

[conscientiae]

She gives him a reproachful look when he says people have always thought he was crazy -- perhaps, but Julia would've gladly stomped on their toes for saying as much to his face. It's a brief distraction from how she feels otherwise, which is not all that great, really.

"Confused, mostly, I think." She sighs and sinks down onto his couch, her hands in her lap. "Jemma's life sounds amazing, except for the part where my dad isn't my dad but my boss, and my friend Marissa isn't even from my same universe, and we..." She glances over at Lawrence, and she's a little hesitant to bring it up; it seems so new for Jemma and her Fitz.

"Something's not right with us, I don't think. I guess it goes to show that you can't have everything, no matter what life you lead."

[onthefitz]

"I was in an accident--he. He was in an accident," Lawrence mused, correcting himself as he went as he paced across the floor in front of where Julia was sitting. "Your Jemma was involved. I--the details are all a bit fuzzy still."

But it hadn't been good. He knew that much and it would explain why this other version of him--this Fitz--was so twitchy.

"That would involve life being fair and you and I both know life is never fair," he drawled, looking rather disgusted honestly as he stopped pacing and focused on her. "This all has something to do with SHEILD though, whatever that is."

[conscientiae]

"I know," she says quietly, looking down at her hands. Well, she doesn't know through Jemma's memories of the actual event; she knows from what the other Fitz told Jemma, and now Julia has it secondhand, or thirdhand, or something. Fitz suffered terribly in some other time and place, and Jemma had done her best, but ultimately her best hadn't been what he needed.

And if she remembers correctly, an "accident" is a nice way of putting it, but she'll keep words like "attempted murder" to herself until she's more sure of how Lawrence is doing.

"It's something that was very important to the other us," she says, looking up finally. "If there's one thing I do envy, it's Jemma's time at that Academy."