After Heartbreak

Author: @eclecticmuses​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ Rating: Explicit Chapters: 15 Relationships/Characters: Leo Fitz/Jemma Simmons, Leo Fitz’s Mother, Jemma’s Parents, Milton, Other Original Characters Additional Tags: Alternate Universe, Romance and Angst, Childhood Sweethearts, Second Chances, Class Differences, Angst With A Happy Ending, Explicit Sexual Content Summary: February, 1945. Jemma Simmons is working as a nurse at a Red Cross convalescent hospital in the south of England caring for wounded soldiers when she runs into a ghost from her past: Leo Fitz, her childhood sweetheart, who was cruelly ripped away from her by her disapproving parents several years prior. Can they rekindle their friendship and find something new? Or will Jemma’s responsibilities and family ruin their chance at love once and for all?

Excerpt from Chapter 10:

Jemma sat on the edge of her bed the next morning fully dressed and ready for work with the box of Fitz’s letters sitting in her lap. She couldn’t bring herself to look at any of them, but she also couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that he’d tried to keep writing to her after he’d left all those years ago. 

Their lives could have been so much different if only they’d reached her. It was painful to consider, and as a result her engagement ring sat heavy on her finger. It was a reminder that, no matter what she wished, she was promised to another man, even if she didn’t love him—and she didn’t, not one bit. Her looming marriage to Milton, which she now felt closing around her like a prison, would be nothing but a sham. What she had once felt for Fitz—and still felt, if she was being honest with herself—was real. Her memories of the past mixed with her current scrambled emotions alongside Nancy’s warning to be careful with Fitz. They’d already had their chance at love cruelly dashed, and their circumstances prevented anything more now. There was nothing left for them, wasn’t there?

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After Heartbreak

Author: @eclecticmuses​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ Rating: Explicit Chapters: 15 Relationships/Characters: Leo Fitz/Jemma Simmons, Leo Fitz’s Mother, Jemma’s Parents, Milton, Other Original Characters Additional Tags: Alternate Universe, Romance and Angst, Childhood Sweethearts, Second Chances, Class Differences, Angst With A Happy Ending, Explicit Sexual Content Summary: February, 1945. Jemma Simmons is working as a nurse at a Red Cross convalescent hospital in the south of England caring for wounded soldiers when she runs into a ghost from her past: Leo Fitz, her childhood sweetheart, who was cruelly ripped away from her by her disapproving parents several years prior. Can they rekindle their friendship and find something new? Or will Jemma’s responsibilities and family ruin their chance at love once and for all?

Excerpt from Chapter 9:

“What do you think of the new Matron?” Nancy asked as she walked with Jemma from the staff room to the kitchen.

“Betty?” Jemma pursed her lips. “Well… I’ll miss Clara. I probably shouldn’t say more than that.”

Nancy laughed underneath her breath as they turned a corner. “I won’t tell anyone if you won’t. She seems worse than Edna—what a taskmaster. She’ll run a tight ship, at the very least.”

“And we’ll have to keep on our toes,” Jemma reminded her. “I don’t think a single thing will escape her eye. She’ll demand the very best from us.” Which she aimed to provide at all times anyway—but there would be no room for mistakes, not under Matron Betty.

Read the rest on AO3!

After Heartbreak

Author: @eclecticmuses​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ Rating: Explicit Chapters: 15 Relationships/Characters: Leo Fitz/Jemma Simmons, Leo Fitz’s Mother, Jemma’s Parents, Milton, Other Original Characters Additional Tags: Alternate Universe, Romance and Angst, Childhood Sweethearts, Second Chances, Class Differences, Angst With A Happy Ending, Explicit Sexual Content Summary: February, 1945. Jemma Simmons is working as a nurse at a Red Cross convalescent hospital in the south of England caring for wounded soldiers when she runs into a ghost from her past: Leo Fitz, her childhood sweetheart, who was cruelly ripped away from her by her disapproving parents several years prior. Can they rekindle their friendship and find something new? Or will Jemma’s responsibilities and family ruin their chance at love once and for all?

Excerpt from Chapter 8:

This was not how Jemma wanted to spend her Easter Sunday.

Despite telling Milton she couldn’t get time away from the hospital to come to London, he’d wheedled about it endlessly in his next letter, guilt had set in, and then the universe had aligned so she had her monthly day off right at the start of the month, on Easter. She had no feasible excuse not to go. She’d used the Stewarts’ phone to ring him with her acceptance of his invitation and thought that was that—just one interminable party to get through—until the letter from her mother had arrived, joyful over the news of her excursion to London and asking (demanding, really) that Jemma join her for lunch before she left for Milton’s work party.

She’d seethed. Her fiancé was a snitch, it seemed.

Read the rest on AO3!

After Heartbreak

Author: @eclecticmuses​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ Rating: Explicit Chapters: 15 Relationships/Characters: Leo Fitz/Jemma Simmons, Leo Fitz’s Mother, Jemma’s Parents, Milton, Other Original Characters Additional Tags: Alternate Universe, Romance and Angst, Childhood Sweethearts, Second Chances, Class Differences, Angst With A Happy Ending, Explicit Sexual Content Summary: February, 1945. Jemma Simmons is working as a nurse at a Red Cross convalescent hospital in the south of England caring for wounded soldiers when she runs into a ghost from her past: Leo Fitz, her childhood sweetheart, who was cruelly ripped away from her by her disapproving parents several years prior. Can they rekindle their friendship and find something new? Or will Jemma’s responsibilities and family ruin their chance at love once and for all?

Excerpt from Chapter 7:

“My mother has gone absolutely raving mad about all this,” Jemma said, pacing back and forth across the grass beneath the willow tree. “I can barely breathe or even think without her appearing at my shoulder to criticize me over something having to do with this damn ball!”

Fitz, who was sitting on the grass, leaning against the tree trunk with his legs crossed while he watched her pace, frowned. “What has she got to criticize?” he asked.

Jemma sighed dramatically, then tugged at a lock of her long hair. “This,” she said. “I haven’t been allowed to cut it since I went off to Switzerland last year, all so it can be put up into some fancy updo, and she’s still not happy with it. And she’s paid for a brand-new dress to be made so I’ll ‘stand out’, as she put it, and new shoes, and she complained about how I look in it—my posture is off, the cut of the dress doesn’t flatter me, that sort of thing. She even said the year I spent at bloody finishing school was wasted.” Her shoulders sagged. “My mother wants me to be the best of the best and I’m afraid I’m just really not.”

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