"Jess?"
Bobbi freezes. The guy sounds about as broken on that one word as Bobbi feels hearing it.
She had waited for their parents to come and go, she had waited until it was almost dark before she got out of the cloaked Quinjet and made her way into the cemetery. Apparently, she hadn't waited long enough.
"No," Bobbi says, impressed when her voice doesn't even waiver.
She turns, it's Sam Winchester. Jessica's college boyfriend. She'd seen pictures, seen him in surveillance photos, done a background check and been unimpressed by what she found. Of course they never met. Deep cover meant deep cover. Bobbi had thought Jess would be safe from the darkness of her life, if she just stayed away. It hadn't helped. It hadn't helped Jess, or this tall lanky kid who's now a man. She still doesn't know if it was AIM, where she had been in working a long-haul op at the time, or Hydra, or some other bad guy she pissed off over the years. But whatever or whoever it was that took Jess from her ten years ago, it looks like they took her from Sam too.
Sam frowns, looks like he's going to challenge her. He doesn't look scared though. Just ready for anything, ready for her to be anything.
"I'm Bobbi," she tells him.
"Jess said you died? When you were 19. You don't look like a teenager?"
That's an odd way to put it. Like her being dead isn't odd but her aging is. Her own grave is only one plot over.
"I didn't die. I… I went away for a while. I thought it would be, I don't know, better that way. Jess would have known, if I really died. She would have known the moment it happened. Felt it..." But Jess had known how to keep a secret too, just as well as her spy of a sister. Maybe better.
Bobbi lets her fingers trail over Jessica's gravestone. Lets herself feel the chill of the stone. Hopes it will sooth the burning hole where her twin used to be, it doesn't. It never does. She really had thought her leaving was for the best. She'd had a lot of trouble, in her youth. Jess was the good one. Bobbi didn't have anything good going for her except the Army, and when SHIELD offered her a chance to go black ops she'd thought it was redemption. She'd been wrong.
Sam's still frowning at her. He's got his weight perfectly balanced. Like he's ready for a fight, and isn't that interesting.
Bobbi's eyes narrow, could it have been him? Could he be some kind of sleeper? Who would have known her well enough, back then of all times, to want to curse her life like this? Her hand twitches for the batton hidden in her coat, but she resists the urge.
If he killed her why is he here? Ten years later. That's a long time to mourn anyone. Especially if you're Hydra and you killed them.
Bobbi forces herself to breathe.
He might not be Hydra but he's something. Which means, maybe-
"Do you know who killed her?" Bobbi asks.
Sam looks surprised by her question but she can also tell he trusts her a little more because of it.
Bobbi's heart almost stops when he whispers "Yes."
There's a gasping moment of silence between them. She feels like the world has narrowed down to this moment, this possibility. And god she has so much vengeance built up inside her already, but this one, this one would wash all the rest of it away.
"He's dead. They all are." Sam tells her, maybe he thinks it helps, he doesn't sound like it helped him.
Bobbi laughs, cold and a little broken but it's a laugh.
"We thought Hydra was dead too." She looks him in the eye, waits for his reaction.
"You were SHIELD?" Sam says, and it's more statement than question. He's quick, she'll give him that. And he passed that test, maybe took that warning too.
Bobbi just shrugs her acknowledgment. It's not like that's a secret anymore, not since Romanov dumped all their files on the internet.
"Are you with the- the new one, the ATC- whatever?" Sam asks.
"The ATCU?" Bobbi clarifies. "No, not quite."
She can't help another slight smile. At least she knows he's not either, if he's asking her like that. Somehow talking to Sam makes her feel closer to Jess than she has in years. She'll never be Moore instead of Morse again, but this is almost nice.
"Well." Sam walks over to the other side of Jess's grave, like he's only now decided she's not going to kill him. Now he knows she's a spy he's less scared of her. That's a turn up for the books.
Bobbi waits but when he still doesn't elaborate she raises both eyebrows at him as a prompt.
He makes a pained sound in the back of his throat. Sometimes she forgets how alike she and Jess once were. She almost says sorry, but he brushes it off and continues.
"It was demons," Sam says. Matter-of-fact, the same way Bobbi says things like breakfast, or aliens, or Russian sleeper agent. It isn't that he doesn't have an understanding of what he's implying, it's that he knows the threat of it all too well.
"Demons?" Bobbi asks, and despite reading his tone she can't help the incredulity in her own.
"Demons."
"Wow."
"Yeah. That's what I said after the Battle of New York," Sam says, with a soft smile, a shared joke. She's got Chitauri, he's got demons. Maybe that makes sense. After everything she's seen and felt and fought, why not demons?
"Are there any left?" Bobbi asks. Her fingers are digging into the solid granite of Jess's tombstone now she's got a chance to get her hands on something a bit more satisfying.
"Yeah, and that's not even the start of what's out there. There's always more demons."
He sounds tired. Tired in a way that you sound after war and disaster. Tired like a soldier with another year or ten on his tour. Tired in a way that can't give up, and maybe doesn't even know how to anymore. Bobbi knows that kind of tired like she knows her own name. Like she knows Jessica's. Like part of her.
"How do I kill demons, Sam?"
She knows he'll know. She knows, now, what this is. It's her chance. The one she's been waiting for for almost ten, long, empty years.
He smiles at her, it's a half smile, because of where they are and what they share, but it's real.
"I can show you?" he says.
Bobbi smiles too. Vengeance always did heal her wounds the best. And this wound has been bleeding open for far too long.