Sunshine (On A Cloudy Day)
1: Mary Isabelle
How can Bobbi be expected to save the world when she couldn't even save one life?
So she quits... Not that she has anything to quit; she hadn't been in the business for over two years, not officially at least.
But after Daisy... She can't do it anymore. So, she tells Hunter that she's putting down her escrima sticks for good now.
They argue.
Until they don't argue.
Bobbi finds out two months later when she realises she hasn't had a period since before Hunter left. She feels lost and empty - despite being anything but empty - and confused and alone. Once an Agent, always an Agent, Bobbi muses when hits dial and waits for Mack to answer.
Coulson greets her with a casual, "Agent Morse," and it makes her sick to her stomach, but she can blame it on morning sickness now. She didn't want to become an Agent again, to work for the Agency that Daisy died for - Daisy, Trip, Izzy, Idaho, so many of friends had died for S.H.I.E.L.D - but this was the rest of her family.
"You left." May was in the doorway of the bathroom with her arms crossed and an accusing glare in her eyes.
"I was disavowed, remember?" Bobbi shot back bitterly.
"You came back for her." May didn't need to say who the 'her' was. No-one ever needed to say who the 'her' was. But, she was Bobbi's 'her' before she'd been anyone elses 'her'.
"Look how well that turned out." Had it really only been five months? It made her want to be sick again.
"She left you something." Bobbi's breath caught in her throat. "But, you left."
Simmons had told her it was on the bed in Daisy's old bunk, and it took an hour of standing in the hall before she finally got up the nerve to go inside. A box; plain and unassuming, but it was from Daisy. The last thing Daisy had wanted her to have.
It takes her another three months before she can open the box.
Hunter has come back and when he finds out she's pregnant they argue again - why didn't she tell him? Was she ever going to tell him? How could she keep something as big as a child from him? Of course she was going to tell him, don't be so dramatic, Hunter! He's the one that wouln't answer her calls! How could she tell him when he wouldn' listen to her?
On the top of the box is an old, faded hat with a purple P on it that brings back memories of Texas and Summers with her Aunt and cousin,
An old flannel shirt, a hair ribbon she'd lost when she was 10 - she can still hear her Grandmother telling her off for that - a scrap of paper with her own handwriting, the broken pieces of a computer won in a bar poker game in Georgia.
Bobbi can remember every instance, every interaction, every moment associated with each item. The baby kicks against her kidneys and she silently swears to tell the baby all about every item when it's older.
By the 8th month she's engaged to Hunter again and she doesn't know if it'll be as big of a mistake as the first two engagements and one marriage between them. She knows it won't because something good has already come of it this time in the form of their baby.
It's a sunny August day and she's working in the lab with Simmons when her water breaks.
She's cradling their daughter and Hunter is squeezed onto the bed next to her with tears in his eyes as he holds them both close. The baby is perfect with fuzzy tufts of blonde hair, wide blue eyes and porcelain skin.
"Mary." Bobbi whispers to her tiny daughter with all ten fingers and all ten toes.
2: Skye Jemma
The second baby is just as much of a surprise as Mary Isabelle had been. Belle has just turned 4 and Bobbi is getting her annual physical done when Jemma congratulates her. Bobbi furrows her brow and holds onto Belle when she tries to reach for the stethoscope around the Englishwoman's neck.
"You don't know?" Simmons looked surprised, then she blushed, then she just looked awkward.
No. Bobbi did not know, she had no idea, she and Lance hadn't even been in the same country for a month since he'd gone to England to see his mother. That's what they told her, and she let them think she believed it, but she knew he was on a mission despite them both saying their field work would be non-existent now that they had Belle.
When Hunter gets back it's to his wife and daughter sleeping in their bed and a tiny pair of baby booties on the dresser which confuses him to no end because Belle has definitely grown out of baby booties, and those booties are new anyway.
It takes three more weeks before they sit Belle down and tell her she's going to be a big sister. Bobbi watches as Belle drags her thumb across her bottom lip - they've been trying to stop her sucking her thumb - and it reminds Bobbi of hiding under a table when she was 10 with the girl Belle - Mary Isabelle - had been named after.
Then the tiny blonde breaks into a smile and declares she'll be the best big sister in the world and the moment is gone.
When she's 7 months pregnant Bobbi is laying on her bed with Hunter watching some soccer - he still insists it's football - game next to her and Belle is on her hands and knees talking to the baby. It's cute. It's adorable. It's everything Bobbi never imagined herself having. The baby kicks with every other word from the little girl and it's making Bobbi ache, but she can't bring herself to make any of it stop.
"Mama?" Belle peaks up at her with one little hand still on the swell of her stomach.
"Yeah, Baby?" Bobbi hums.
"How comes you don't call me my name?" The air is filled with the tensions and it sucks the breath out of Bobbi. Hunter deftly turns the soccer game down and helps Bobbi sit up. "Are gonna call the baby a wrong name too?"
Whatever Bobbi had been expecting it wasn't this. Belle has always been Belle to them. "You know how Daddy calls me Bobbi, but Mack sometimes calls me Barbara?" The woman started slowly, Belle nodded, silent and obedient. Since she could talk she'd been taught how to dial all the emergency numbers - her emergency number, Hunters, Coulson and May's direct lines, and the Avengers direct line - and tell the right people who she was and her parents names and Bobbi's callsign. "Well, it's just like that except Belle is a short for Isabelle."
"But, it's my middle name, huh? Why's not my real name?"
"You mean Mary?" The tiny blonde nodded again. "Because you're our Mary Isabelle, but that's such a big name we had to shorten it, and Belle means beautiful so it fit perfectly for you, Beautiful Belle."
Because when she'd been born it was only 11 months after Daisy had been burried and it still hurt to say her name. Any of her names. And thinking of Daisy brought the scars of Izzy's death to the surface too, so Belle was the only option that didn't make her want to cry with her post-natal hormones.
"How comes I got my name anyways?" Bobbi didn't know where Belle's sudden interest in names came from. Hunter was still uncharacteristically silent next to her, brown eyes watching her carefully. It had been 5 years. She could handle this now.
"You were named after two very special, strong, smart, amazing women, Mary Isabelle." Stupid hormones, at least she could blame the tears on the pregnancy hormones. "I met Mary when she wasn't much older than you, and she was one of the most special people in my world." Bobbi leaned over to the bedside table, opening the drawer and easily finding the pictures. "See this one here is Izzy, we met in the Academy and were very good friends, almost like family." The picture was old and faded, from her and Hunters first wedding on the beach with Izzy on her right and Idaho on Hunters left.
"Like how Auntie Jemma and Uncle Leo is?" Belle's blue eyes surveyed the picture, taking special note of the woman her Mama was pointing to.
"Yeah, like Auntie Jemma and Uncle Leo." This picture seemed so long ago. A lifetime.
"Pretty Mama."
"The prettiest." Hunter finally spoke, Bobbi rolled her eyes, but smiled none-the-less. "Isn't she, Belle?"
"Uh-huh!" The girl climbed over her Mama to settle in her Daddy's arms. "What 'bout Mary? Who's that?"
The second picture stared at her with mirth-filled brown eyes and a smirk playing at her lips. It was a selfie Skye had taken with her phone one day when she'd left it unattended along with a complicated string of obstacles she'd had to get through before actually being able to use her phone. She supposed she shouldn't have left her phone laying around with a Hacker in the midst.
"This is Skye, I was ten when I met her and she was five, except when she was little her name was Mary."
"Like me!" Belle looked to Hunter for confirmation. "How come she got a different name?" The little girl held the picture gently, knowing it was something special to her Mama and special things had to be held with gentle hands.
"When she got older she decided she wanted a new name and she chose Skye." From Mary in New York to Mary in Texas to Mary in San Diego to Skye in Georgia and Skye in New York again and Skye with S.H.I.E.L.D until finally it was Daisy... Daisy was where it ended.
"Can I change my name too?"
"Maybe when you're older, Belle." Hunter indulged.
"Can we name the baby after her too?" Hunter sucked in a breath, eyes darting to Bobbi who was staring at the picture her little girl was holding.
The baby is born two months later at exactly 9 months, right on her due date on April 29th. Simmons is still fluttering around the room, Hunter was sitting beside her, and May was the one to bring Belle in after everything had been cleaned up.
"She's beautiful." May murmured as the baby snuffled. "She got a name?"
"Skye." Hunter is the one that says it and Bobbi shoots him a surprised look because they never actually agreed on a name. May's breath hitches.
"That's a good name." The older woman nods before leaving the family the family with a sad smile.
Mary Isabelle and Skye Jemma. Her babies are beautiful.
She wishes Daisy was here to see them.
3: Daisy May
Four years, Bobbi realised with a sense of bitter-sweetness.
Belle was 8, and S.J would be 4 by the time she was due. Her babies were four years apart. Her meetings with Daisy had been four years apart too.
She'd locked herself in the bathroom after making the connection.
Belle, ever the attentive 8-year-old had kept her baby sister entertained and called Dad when Mom hadn't come out of the bathroom after 10 minutes and she could hear crying noises from the other side of the door.
Bobbi is only two months in when they go to the adoption day at the animal clinic. Dr Winslow is still there, cheerfully - ignorantly unaware about his Daisy - tending to the animals. It's Christmas and they've finally decided to let Belle and S.J get a puppy.
"Such beautiful girls, you're lucky, I'd love a daughter." Dr Winslow says as the girls are running from animal to animal in search of the perfect one. Bobbi stares at him sadly because he had a daughter, who he loved more than anything, who he loved so much he'd given up everything. "What're their names? If-if you don't mind me asking." Sometimes it was hard to reconcile this man from the one in all the S.H.I.E.L.D files. She'd never met the man - she could thank Ward for that - but the mild-mannered vet was anything but a psychopath on a rampage.
"Mary, Skye and-" Bobbi swallowed thickly, one hand falling to her still flat stomach. "-and Daisy."
Her names. Her names, not abbreviations or variations. Because he was her father and he deserved to hear his daughters names, and meet her namesakes.
"Beautiful names." Dr Winslow smiled as Belle ran up to her, dragging S.J by her hand.
"Mom, come see, there's a puppy!" The puppy is closer to a grown, but not quite an adult, trembling in its cage, and it's tail wagging happily.
S.J names it Tremors after something she picked up from Mack and Bobbi almost wants to laugh because apparently no new member of her family can have an original name. It always comes back to her, even if it was unintentional.
The third pregnancy seems a lot faster until suddenly Bobbi and Hunter are counting the days until the baby comes and Bobbi is counting the days until her birthday. The baby isn't due until the 10th, but she has a feeling.
Her feeling is right.
Her water breaks on July 1st
Daisy May is born on July 2nd. It's the day Coulson retires, the day May cries for the first time in 8 years, the day she and Hunter decide three is the magic number.
1: Her
It's Christmas Eve and Bobbi can see her breath coming out in puffs of white.
Mary Isabelle is 12, Skye Jemma is 8, and Daisy May is 4 (and a half).
Hunter stays at home and wraps Christmas presents, Bobbi takes the girls and Tremors to the graveyard.
It's 13 years to the day since Bobbi had to make the decision.
Daisy's grave in clean and there's already two fresh bouquets of flowers propped against it - both are bunches of Daisy's - and Daisy-May squeals when she recognises her name on the marble.
It's 37 years to the day since they met.
Tremors lays across the ground next to the grave, head resting on his paws as Bobbi stares at the marble, at the ground in front of it. At what was underneath.
A chance meeting under the table during a Christmas parting when she'd been 5 and Bobbi was 10. Now Bobbi is 47 with three daughters and a dog named after the girl she couldn't save 13 years ago.
"Mama?" Daisy-May tugs on her hand after sensing that recognising her name was something serious. "Daisy?"
"Yeah, Baby." Bobbi slowly lowers herself to the ground in front of the grave, urging her girls to sit too. "That's Daisy... Before she was Daisy her name was Skye." S.J whipped her head around, 8-years-old and full of as much fire as the 9-year-old who had tried to fight a bully nearly twice her age. "And before that her name was Mary, and I met her was I was ten, and she was five... It was Christmas Eve, just like today, and my Grandmother had dragged me to a Christmas party..."
That's how it started, under a table of Christmas Eve 37 years ago.
It ends with a girl she couldn't save 13 years ago, three daughters named after her and a dog called Tremors.
Well... I mean, at least no-one died in this one right?