Memory (All Alone In The Moonlight)
1: 10
Bobbi is staying with her grandparents on her fathers side for a whole month until she has to go back to school after Winter break. Staying with her grandparents meant dressing up in fancy dresses, wearing uncomfortable shoes, and going to parties where the adults either ignored her or treated her like a toddler. As a result she spent a lot of time hiding under tables or in empty rooms whenever she could.
There were never many children (if any) so she usually tried to sneak a book in, but this time she hadn't. Bobbi had always wanted a younger sibling so at the Christmas party when the little girl under the table had stared at her with stars in her eyes she felt oddly proud.
The little girl wasn't at the New Years party, Grandmother said she was probably too young, and Bobbi could believe that because at 10 she was the youngest person there and that was only because she convinced Grandfather she was old enough to stay up and Grandmother didn't have the heart to argue against both of them.
It had taken numerous questions and bugging before Grandmother finally told her who the little girl belonged to - with her dark hair, wide brown eyes and her nervous want to suck her thumb - the Kings. She'd asked Mrs. King about the girl at the New Years party, hoping to see her again, if only to alleviate her own boredom. "Mary's with the housekeeper." Bobbi had huffed at that, but at least now she knew the girls name since she hadn't learnt it at the Christmas party.
There was another party a week and a half after New Years, and it was relatively early in the evening, some sort of charity thing, Bobbi thought. There were more children there, maybe 6 or 7 - one of them could have been twins, but she wasn't sure - but for all her examining of the children, none of them were Mary and it made Bobbi feel inexplicably sad.
"Excuse me, Mrs. King." Bobbi made sure to be her most politest, and to look her most innocent when she found Mrs. King at a table. "I can't seem to find Mary and I wondered where you had seen her last."
"Mary?" Mrs. King looked a little sad. "Oh, Barbara, it just didn't work out with Mary." Didn't work out? What did that mean? Could parents just give away their kids if they didn't like them? "We were so sad, we were thinking about fostering her for longer, but the state said she had to go back. They even took her a week early. Poor thing didn't even have time to pack her gifts."
"Oh." Bobbi looked down, muttering a quiet thank-you before walking away. Mary hadn't been the Kings, she'd been a foster child, Bobbi would never see her again.
Bobbi crawled under an empty table near the back of the room and pouted at the table-cloth as if waiting for the little girl to appear. It was silly, really, they hadn't even had a real conversation, and she was at least half Bobbi's age... But, the way the little girl smiled at her and giggled when she did impressions of her Grandmother made her feel warm, and now she was oddly cold at the thought of never seeing her again.
2: 14
Every year after school finished for the Summer Bobbi's parents would go visit her Aunt in Texas for a couple of months. Bobbi's school finished a couple of weeks before the small-town Texas school did though, so she had to spend her days bored and alone whilst her cousin was still in school. It wasn't so bad, she could walk around the neighbourhood and explore, there was no-one to fight with for the remote if she wanted to watch TV, and if she went for a walk in the afternoon she could usually meet her cousin on her way back from school.
Except for the day she spotted the neighbourhood bully chasing a little girl.
The girl for her part wasn't backing down, she was talking back, glaring, and had her fists up for a fight. Bobbi knew the boy would do it too, she'd once seen him beat up a boy half his age. He was a thug, he didn't care who he hurt as long as he got what he wanted. Bobbi hoped he would get arrested soon, but not at the expense of the girl.
Walking the girl home - she didn't know the Brody's had a kid! - had been nice, the way the girl had said she was awesome, the way she'd been all shy before admitting that she'd antagonised a boy nearly twice her age to stand up for someone else, the way she'd scoffed at being in a class with kids nearly twice her age, as though it wasn't a big deal. Bobbi found herself planning that maybe she would go to the school tomorrow and walk the girl home again-just to make sure the bully didn't try to hurt her again.
Except she'd gone to put a hat on the girl so she wouldn't get burnt in the hot Summer sun, and she'd flinched back. Everything clicked into place; the Brody's never used to have a kid, but they suddenly had a 9-year-old now, the girl was a fighter, she jumpy, she was adopted or a foster kid.
That just made the blonde want to protect her from the bully even more. Just so she had someone to protect her from at least one thing.
At least the Brody's were a nice couple.
Two weeks later Bobbi went by the Brody's to see the girl, make sure that bully hadn't gotten to her when Bobbi wasn't around to protect her.
The girl wasn't there.
Mrs. Brody told her that they'd gone to file for adoption and the state had denied them and taken the girl away instead.
3: 17
When her mother had decided to move to San Diego after the divorce Bobbi had been reluctant, but it wasn't so bad; her Mom had bought her a car as a bribe, she'd made a few friends, her Dad bought her a bribe-cell phone, and there was a cute guy she was thinking about asking out - who says boys have to be the ones to ask girls out?
Then she'd met the girl... Met is a strong word, she'd hit the girl on her bike with her car. It was an accident, Bobbi swears, she would have stopped at the stop sign, but there was no-one there, and then suddenly there was and Bobbi felt like she might throw up because she hurt a kid on a bike.
The Jakobi's! Everyone in town knows the Jakobi's are the worst sort of foster parents; the kind that hurts the kids, and starves them, and there's never any evidence when Social Services do inspections so they get away with it.
Bobbi spends three days staring at her phone and sitting in her car across the road from the Jakobi house. The girl never comes out and it takes her a day and a half of that time to realise that it's the girl from Texas that the Brody's wanted to adopt, who she also recognised back then as little Mary from under the table at Christmas time when she was 10. Mary the foster kid from New York was Mary the fighter that the Brody's wanted to adopt in Texas and now she was Mary the independant teenager victimised by the Jakobi's in San Diego.
Bobbi knew if she made the call she'd never see the girl again - once was a happenstance, twice a coincidence, three times was astronomical odds, she knew it wouldn't happen again, but she knew this was her chance to do right by the girl who had once looked at her with stars in her eyes.
Someone was yelling in the Jakobi house and Bobbi heard something crash, if she squinted she could see a flash of brown hair fly past the broken window and that made her decision for her.
The police got there first and Bobbi watched from across the road as Mr. and Mrs. Jakobi were put in the back of separate police cars. Social Services arrived second and that's when Bobbi drove away, knowing that Mary was finally away from those monsters. Hopefully the system would do better for her next time.
4: 22
Four years, Bobbi determined, it was always four years.
When she was 10 in New York for Christmas.
When she was 14 in Texas for the Summer.
When she was 17 (before he birthday) in San Diego when she called Social Services.
Now she's 22 in her second year at the Strategic Homeland Intervention Enforcement and Logistics Division Academy and the girl had just strolled into the same bar a group of fellow recruits were playing poker in.
The others probably don't want some civillian joining the game, but Bobbi takes the chance to check on the girl - she can't be 18 yet let alone 21 - and make sure she wasn't put somewhere worse than the Jakobi's.
The girl has a poker face right up until she hits an unbeatable hand and Bobbi knows she has nothing left to bet, but the comic book and Captain America cards she'd won earlier are worth thousands according to the internet and they easilly cover Kaminsky's bet.
When the game is over and Mary is still cradling her computer Bobbi watches her; hair long and slightly wavy, skin a little pale, eye dark, lips pink. She wonders idly what those lips would taste like and then wonders if she's had too much to drink because all she's wanted is to protect this girl and now she wants to kiss her in a very unprotective way.
She knows if she comes back to the bar tomorrow or in a week or a month there will be no trace of the girl sitting next to her so she wants to savour it while she can. She's getting closer as she talks to Mary and she can feel her breath on her face. The other recruits call to her, tell her to stop fucking in the bar and she wants to kill them at that point, but Mary is still just so close.
"You're worth so much more." So much more than a bike and a cut arm and a computer or a car or a cheap bar near the Academy. So much more than poker and underaged drinking and getting lost in the system. So much more than drunk sex and knowing it's a mistake in the morning.
Mary's skin is warm to the touch when she kisses her forehead, and she has to force herself to leave as the girl calls out a thanks after her. At least this time she left her with something tangible to help her, Bobbi muses as she follows the recruits in the parking lot. Money and a computer and a Stark phone, at least that should help her for a while at least - especially when she sees a car in the lot that matches the keys Mary had handed over in the game and it's clear that she's been living there.
5: 26
It's meant to be a check to make sure no-one is trespassing on Stark while he's MIA, make sure it's not the Mandarin or someone trying to hack their way or steal something dangerous.
Turns out it's a familiar computer being used by a familiar face in a storage closet, at least it was her and not someone else sent to check it out.
The coffee shop is a quiet place that lets her talk to Skye - Skye now, not Mary anymore, not the Mary she'd met 16 years ago under a table at Christmas time - without S.H.I.E.L.D looking over her shoulder. Bobbi finds it hard to reconcile the 21-year-old hacker in front of her now with the 5-year-old trying not to suck her thumb under the table. It's definitely her, Bobbi has watched her grow up, getting a glimpse of her every four years for the last 16.
The blonde had been surprised when she was 14 that she even remembered the girl under the table, let alone recognised her in the fiesty 9-year-old. She never would have thought a chance meeting under the table would lead to 16-years of encounters and hoping against hope the girl would have had a better 4 years than the last time they met.
"I don't need you to save me." Skye snapped, and that may be true, but Bobbi needed to keep saving her. Until one day she wouldn't need saving anymore because Bobbi had finally done it right.
"Clearly you do, if it wasn't me, it would have been another Agent who would have arrested you on the spot." Is what she says instead, which is also true. Maybe she'd been designated as Skye's guardian Angel and she just hadn't been given the memo. If that was the case she was doing a really shitty job of it. Who is she kidding, Guardian Angels don't exist, if they did Skye would have a whole team of them assigned to her, she'd make sure of it.
And then for the first time in 16 years Bobbi sees the insecurities of the long lost foster kid burried deep inside Skye. A little girl just looking for her parents, wanting to know why she wasn't good enough for them, and it breaks her heart.
She might have told Skye to back off, that S.H.I.E.L.D had nothing for her, but that didn't mean she wouldn't look for herself. Because the Kings had wanted to foster her longer and she'd been taken away from them early, because the Brody's had filed to adopt and she'd been taken away from them, because Bobbi had never heard of a foster kid being moved around so much that they covered the entire continental U.S.
A quick message scrawled on a scrap of paper after Skye said she wasn't going to stop, Bobbi had to resist the urge to add words like 'love' to the end, instead settling for just her name.
1: 34
Bobbi didn't get the call until it was too late.
It was a number she kept only for her family, and they were already programmed in so the only person who would be calling from an unknown number would be the person with a scrap of paper that she'd met when she was 10 and the girl was 5.
Had it really been 24 years.
She supposes in a way it's poetic that she gets the call two days before Christmas. Just one day off the 24th anniversary of their first meeting. When she was 10 and hiding under the table from the boring grown ups party, and Daisy had been 5 and afraid of how loud the party was.
"Daisy?" The name is past her lips as soon as she answers, knowing that has to be who it is, that's the only other person who has that phone number. And if Daisy was calling then she needed saving - and that made sense (not the saving because she hoped Daisy was safe enough now) because it had been 2 years since they said goodbye, but it had been 4 years since they last met.
"Bobbi?" Except that isn't Daisy's voice. Daisy isn't English. Daisy wouldn't be surprised. Why does Simmons sound like she's both surprised and like she's been crying? "Bobbi, is that really you?" It really is and as much as she'd love to talk to Jemma, is Daisy okay?
Daisy isn't okay.
Bobbi calls in every favour she knows, ever resource she still has, breaks as many laws as she needs to, to get there and it's not enough.
The beep is steady, the vitals read healthy, Jemma says, but the damage was too great. Over-use of her powers, brain hemmorage... Bobbi's emergency number had been in Daisy's file for who to call to make the decision - no-one knew who the number lead to, just that it was Daisy's emergency number.
Daisy.
She looks like she could be sleeping, like she could wake up any minute.
Jemma tries to sugar-coat and say there's a possibility, Lincoln is more direct when he tells her the girl from under the table will never wake up. Bobbi knows they wouldn't have call unless it was the last hope. No alien blood or Inhuman power will save her this time, there's been too much damage.
May tells her Daisy went down fighting and that she ended up getting the bad guy. It's no consolation, not to Bobbi.
When Bobbi asks to be alone they slowly file out of the med-pod - even Hunter leaves with a sad look to the Inhuman who could have been asleep. Then it's Bobbi and the girl she couldn't save.
Bobbi cries.
Bobbi cries and please and begs and promises and swears and cries some more.
Daisy doesn't wake up.
She knows why they called her. Because Daisy said she was the one who had to make the decision. She wishes she had one more save that she could use. She wishes and prays and hopes and pleads with any diety that will listen.
Daisy doesn't wake up.
"I love you." The words are whispered against cold lips as tears drip from her eyes and Bobbi spends the entire night next to Daisy whispering the words over and over as if that would make her wake up.
Daisy doesn't wake up.
It's Christmas Eve, 24 years to the day after a little 5-year-old Mary crawled under the table Bobbi was already hiding under. Bobbi is the only one who can make the decision. Bobbi wishes so many things; that Mary had never left the Kings they would have taken good care of her, or the Brody's who had loved her, that she'd never gone to the Jakobi's or any of the other bad families, that she'd inherited Jiayings power to heal herself, that Bobbi could save her this one time, when it finally matters the most.
Daisy doesn't wake up.
The team is back and she knows she can't keep Daisy like this because it's selfish and she wouldn't want to be alive this way. Coulson is close to tears when he tells her she has to sign the paper saying she's made her choice. Bobbi has never hated her own signature so much.
The machines are switched off, but Bobbi doesn't stop clutching Daisy's cold hand.
So, I didn't mean to write this, I was writing a follow up to the Like A Stain series and then suddenly I was writing this and then suddenly I was super sad.
Uh... Sorry?