"Hey, I'm looking for my… uhm… that.. " Hunter looked up to see Fitz coming into the common room of the base looking around hesitantly until he could locate the little squeeze ball he used to exercise his bum hand. Despite the fact that the two of them could not have been more different, he felt a strange connection to the young Scot. It could have been the fact that he was someone from the home country, or maybe that they seemed to share the same unfortunate fate when it came to being ensorcelled by she-devils, who happened to return to the base on the same day bringing awkwardness and complication along the way.
"Why don't you sit down, mate?" Hunter looked at Fitz, extending a bottle of beer to sweeten the invitation. "I need some reinforcements, because big Mack here doesn't get the importance of watching the Euro Cup semis. And it pains me that he's so uncultured that he cannot appreciate football." Fitz smiled tentatively, then plopped down between Hunter and Mack on the couch, holding the beer in one hand and the therapy ball in the other.
"I appreciate football alright. But this is soccer and I find no joy in watching players rolling around in the grass clutching their knees." grumbled Mack dismissively.
"OK, let's make one thing clear – the game that you play with your feet and an actual ball is football – what you are talking about is an abomination that should be called hand-egg. Am I not right, Fitz?" Hunter clarified.
"Obviously, I have to agree with you…" Fitz said with a pained expression, glancing apologetically at Mack.
"Fine. I let you two pretend that this is an actual sport." Mack got up and left them on the couch.
Hunter turned back his attention to the screen, then yelled. "Oh, can you believe this twat? Giving a free kick for that?"
Fitz nodded in agreement. "Yeah, total wanker." When the free kick missed the goal by a mile, he yelled "What a tosser. Obviously, he is not Rooney."
Hunter stared at him incredulously "Wait, don't tell me, you're actually rooting for MU."
Fitz looked back at him nonchalantly. "Yeah. I mean I'm all the way Celtic, but Man U is my second team."
"Talk about the guys who gave a new meaning to bunker-football." Hunter hissed between his teeth.
"There is nothing wrong with playing smart tactics…" Fitz argued.
"…by which you mean totally unwatchable crap…" Hunter interjected.
"OK, while you root for the guys who prefer banging their heads against the wall mindlessly…"
"Hey, watch that now." Hunter warned him. "if you are going to talk trash about Liverpool, you'll have to find yourself another wingman."
Fitz looked at him confused. "A wingman for what?"
"You and Simmons…" Hunter said suggestively wiggling an eye-brow.
"Wh-what about.. me… and Simmons?" Fitz turned pink and started to stutter. Then he looked away dejectedly. "uhm… There's no.. you're wrong."
"Oh, come on Fitzy. You two are not subtle…" Hunter said patting Fitz's shoulder. "The whole base just wants to lock you in a room and bash your heads together until.."
"I.. there… is, it's nothing." Fitz insisted, looking mortified "I mean… with my brain thing and … the trouble with talking…"
"You had absolutely no problems in fluency when it came to trash-talking my team. Are you sure this not just the unresolved tension with Simmons?" Hunter looked at Fitz curiously. "You know, maybe you just need to make some big plays to woo her, mate." he added with an encouraging grin.
"Let's just watch the game…" said Fitz grumpily, fixating his eyes back on the screen.
"If you say so…" Hunter shrugged.
Fitz mindlessly lifted a magazine that was lying between them on the couch and leafed through it. "What is this crap you're reading – Ballblaster Hooligan? Is this a thing?"
Hunter looked slightly offended. "It is a fanzine, thank you very much. I've been a subscriber since forever… Some traditions are worth cherishing…"
"Yeah? I mean look at these idiots writing letters – "the midfield needs some serious reinforcement and the management has not made the wisest decisions when it came to transfers" Fitz read the quote out loud making dramatic air-quotes with his finger. "I mean they have no idea how this game is played – you cannot dream about winning anything until they find a decent goalie."
"Well, you know, I'm sure you can impart your wisdom much better than these guys."
"For starters, I'd use the right vocabulary." Fitz shrugged.
"You know, a good friend of mine and I used to pass secret messages to each other through the letters section." Hunter observed.
Fitz raised a sceptical eyebrow at him, "You mean like in code?"
"Well, if obscenity counts as code – then yeah, sure, we'll go with code." Hunter replied.
"Interesting." Fitz pondered. "I bet I could make a code out of this no one could break."
"I bet you could." Hunter muttered. "But why the hell would you?"
"Hunter, can you talk to Fitz? He hasn't slept or eaten or showered for that matter, for three days." Bobbi said as she limped into the room.
Hunter looked back at her, taking in the worry in her eyes – they all had been shaken by Simmons' disappearance, but Bobbi especially took it to heart. Hunter knew she felt a connection to Jemma, maybe a carried-over sense of responsibility for her from the undercover days in Hydra, when she was protecting her. By extension, she also cared about Fitz and has been fussing over him for the past days as he worked frantically trying to figure out what happened with the monolith.
"Why me, Bob?" Hunter felt his voice sounding whiny. It's not that he didn't feel for Fitz – it was that he felt too much – the pain, the rage – all of it. Anyways, Fitz was doing all the things that Hunter would have been doing in his place – well, perhaps with more science and less bashing heads.
"Maybe you can get through to him." Bobbi pleaded, placing a hand on Hunter's chest and batting her eyelashes. "You can be persuasive."
"Don't flatter me, sweetheart. You know that it doesn't get you anything." Hunter sniggered, but felt a pleasant warmth spread inside him. He could never resist her.
"Of course, it does." Bobbi smiled suggestively and leaned closer, brushing her lips against his. Hunter deepened the kiss hungrily; he still could not get enough her, after almost losing her – realizing again that despite all the shit that went down between them, he was as helplessly in love with her as when they first met. She was the light, he was the moth. "Go, and we'll continue this later." she whispered.
He reluctantly tore himself away from her and walked over to the lab. He ducked as a piece of crumpled paper flew towards his head. "Hey, don't shoot me, mate." he raised his hands in mock surrender.
"What do you want?" growled Fitz. "I told Bobbi, I'm fine."
"You don't look fine." Hunter said. "You are exhausted, haven't slept and not really coherent. You'll have a better chance of finding her, if you can think straight."
"I… I have to find her." Fitz said staring at the wall. "I'm missing something." he whispered with a haunted look in his eyes. Hunter felt his gut-wrenching pain. He was so close to losing Bobbi not long ago, and whenever he thought about it, he just felt the blind rage boiling over inside him. He wanted to find Ward and bash his head in. At least his enemy had a face – someone he would eventually track down and kill. Fitz was fighting something or someone he didn't quite understand yet.
He extended a hand and pulled Fitz to his feet. "Come on, Fitz. You look like hell. You need a shower and a bed."
To Hunter's surprise, Fitz let himself to be led to his room, where Hunter pushed him into the shower and closed the door. He waited until Fitz emerged, clad in T-shirt and sweatpants, and stumbled towards the bed. He could see from the redness in his eyes that he was crying.
"You don't need to babysit me." Fitz mumbled, half asleep.
"Good, because I wasn't planning on it." Hunter replied.
"I asked her out." he said, barely audibly.
"What?" Hunter asked, for a moment not understanding.
"For a date. I actually asked her out and she agreed." Fitz muttered, more to himself.
Of course, she agreed, you moron – Hunter thought. It was evident for everyone but them by now how far gone they were for each other. But he censored himself and simply said with as much conviction as he could fake before leaving the room "You'll find her."
"You are just saying that…" he heard Fitz's sleepy voice before he closed the door.
"Damn straight." Hunter muttered under his breath. Still he found himself believing against all rational thought that his awkward friend would find a way to save the love of his life, because the alternative was too bleak. Some people just belonged together.
Mercenary work was kind of soul sucking, Hunter thought when he finally arrived back to the tiny apartment he had rented in Dhaka to serve as a base of his operations. He turned on the TV in the hopes of finding something that could provide mindless distraction so he didn't have to think of the scumbags he was working for or the last fight they had had with Bobbi, after which she left in an angry huff. She would come back, he thought – she always came back eventually.
Then he lost his train of thought as he stared at the obscure piece of information on the screen that captured his attention "The international manhunt for the missing top-level SHIELD operatives continues after 3 months." How the bloody hell they missed that the first time around? – he wondered. They were, of course, not allowed to be in contact with their former colleagues, and often went dark for long periods of time during missions – but to miss that something happened to them again?
He got online and tried to piece the information he found: SHIELD apparently going rogue again, the burnt-out base, finding the new director dead, Daisy Johnson attempting to murder General Talbot, the manhunt for Coulson, May, Daisy, Mack, Elena and Simmons. He paused and looked at the names again. Someone was missing from the list. What the hell happened to Fitz? A kind of icy fear shot through his veins. Why would Fitz not be on the list? Could he have died? Then he kept scouring the articles in the hopes of finding something, but there was nothing.
Some of the articles referred to a source – it could be Fitz, Hunter thought hopefully - maybe he was just captured. He dialled Bobbi, but all he got was her voicemail. She was on a job, so probably was already operating undercover. He thought for a while then dialled a phone number he had not called in a long while. "Hey, Dad…. Yeah, I'm OK. Do you still get my Ballblaster Hooligan subscription?... Yeah, could you send them over to me – the most recent issues… Thanks, Pa."
Hunter looked over at the corner where Robin was drawing, undoubtedly yet another vaguely terrifying prophecy. Despite his promise to Enoch, he had no idea what to do next. He still had access to some money and resources from various drop-boxes, but as Robin did not give a specific date with her prediction of Apocalypse, it was a bit difficult to plan around it. He figured that for now they were safe in the Lighthouse. He also felt utterly alone since he watched his friend climb into an icy coffin and helped a bold alien push it on board of a spaceship. He has been a soldier and a mercenary – he knew how to say good-bye, he has lost friends before. But with the looming Doomsday, it felt different.
His phone rang. "Hunter – everything is OK?" he heard Bobbi's slightly worried voice on the other end of the line. He let out a breath – the voice, the familiar cadence calmed and centered him.
"Hey, Bob. How was the mission?" he asked, itching to tell her everything.
"It was OK, routine stuff, nothing exciting. And yourself? It's very unlike you to check in only a week after a fallout…" Bobbi sounded suspicious. And she was right – their silent spells tended to last for weeks.
"Well, it's been pretty hectic. So basically, I had to spring Fitz from a prison by myself…" Hunter couldn't keep the bragging out of his voice.
"Wait… what? Fitz? Our Fitz - in a prison?" Bobbi asked surprised.
"Well, yes. You may have missed the news, but your beloved SHIELD is back in the shadows, and well, Fitz got left behind and taken to a secret military prison. And yours truly freed him."
"That sounds awfully nice of you. So, can I talk to him?" she asked. Of course, she would want to check on him, Bobbi always had a soft spot for Fitz.
"Talk to who?" Hunter asked.
"Fitz, of course."
"Not so much. He's – well - look, the thing is the rest of the team, including Simmons got taken into the future by a bald alien through a monolith. So, Fitz, went after them." he clarified, realizing as he said it that his story sounded completely ridiculous.
"You let him go through a monolith." Bobbi stated, apparently finding the rest of the story digestable.
"No, of course not, I'm not completely crazy." Hunter protested, then he added meekly "He went in a cryofreeze chamber."
"What? Hunter, you're not making any sense. Why would you let him do something so reckless?" she asked.
"Did you hear the part where Simmons was taken by a bloody monolith? Last time that happened, you couldn't even work up the courage to talk to him into taking a shower." Hunter said indignantly.
"If you say so." Bobbi acquiesced reluctantly at the other end of the line.
Hunter took a deep breath, his tone turning serious, "Bobbi, I need you to come here. To Lake Ontario."
"Why?"
"Because there's a little girl here who needs our protection and frankly, I'm out of my depth. Because the end of the world is approaching and really there is no one else I would spend it with." he said, surprising himself with the intensity of his confession.
"End of the world? Is this a joke because it's not a good one" Bobbi's voice sounded far away.
"No it's not a joke, sweetheart. Come on… Our love always had that forever after quality to it. You know, even Fitzsimmons got together." he added, feeling that somehow that was important.
"Did they now?" he could hear the smile in her voice.
"Yes, and if those two dorks can make it, we can too. Bob, I'm serious. The world is about to end and I want to hold you before it does." he pleaded.
"And you base this theory on the drawings of a little girl." she said, but he could hear that she was rattled.
"Fitz believed it." Hunter said quietly.
He heard her sigh. "I … I'm worried about you. I'll be there in two days."
The shaking wouldn't stop for days. People kept pouring into the Lighthouse and Hunter was exhausted trying to keep the place afloat. The screams, the terror, the torn-apart families – it all took their toll. He's been preparing mentally for months, but can you ever be prepared for the end of the world? He looked around and saw desperate faces. He closed the latch – that was it – the remnants of humanity inside the Lighthouse.
He slowly made his way back to the little space he shared with Bobbi. She was sitting on the floor, her exhausted face mirroring his own weariness. He buried his face into her blond curls taking in her scent. "Here we are" he muttered. "Together, until the end of forever."
When she didn't respond, he looked up. He saw the tears in her eyes – it was unsettling because no matter what they have been through, Bobbi never cried. Then he realized that she was holding a piece of paper; one of Robin's drawings- Hunter instantly recognized. It pictured them – a blond girl and a brunette guy, sitting together on the floor. The only difference was that the girl on the drawing had a baby inside her belly. Hunter raised his eyes to meet Bobbi's and he saw something he had never seen before – fear.
He took her hands into his and said with as much conviction as he could muster "It'll be alright, love. Because here we are at the end of the world, but we are alive and we are together." then he added seriously echoing a long time wow he still felt in his heart, no matter what the divorce papers said "Till death do us apart."
Bobbi nodded "There is no one I'd rather be with at the end of the world." she said quietly. She leaned closer, until their lips met and Hunter forgot about it all. There was no past or future with Bobbi – only the present moment. The only thing that ever mattered.