Bobbi wakes up mid-afternoon to a grumbling stomach, and when she gets to the living room, she can hear Daisy ordering pizza. Bucky is napping, stretched out on the couch, in black pants that sit low on his hips and another of those form-fitting ribbed undershirts, pecs practically bursting out the edges.
"And one vegetarian," Daisy says into the phone. "Peppers, onions, and mushroom."
Tearing her gaze away from the exquisite male specimen in front of her, Bobbi sinks into the empty couch and looks around. Daisy's standing in the kitchen, leaning on the marble counter of the pass-through window, her long side bangs hanging down and obscuring her face as she gives over their address. Right now, she looks like kid she is, instead of a disgraced ex-director of an international spy organization who's had the weight of the world on her shoulders since she was fourteen.
After hanging up, Daisy hops up and slides through the pass-through, then seats herself in a stuffed chair between the couches. "Twenty minutes," she says.
"Twenty minutes what?" Bucky mumbles from his couch, eyes still closed.
By the time the pizza arrives, Bucky's awake. Daisy pays the delivery guy, while Bobbi brings the boxes to the kitchen table, and the three of them dig into the pizzas like they've barely eaten anything in the past 24 hours, which is true.
"About tomorrow," Daisy says, after they've settled in. "Keep in mind: we have all day, and blowing our cover will make the whole thing useless. Make sure you get in there before the first person shows up for work, and do not attract attention. You're looking for a very specific workstation. Don't stray from the mission parameters."
"Got it." Bobbi nods.
"The computers used for this project are cut off from the rest of the network, so there's not much to copy," Daisy continues. "But that's all we need. Your actual time in the open should be no more than five minutes."
"Sounds fun."
"Again, the specific intel we're looking for will not be so much as referenced in any of their computers aside from these two laptops whose owners bring back and forth with them to work, so don't risk getting caught by wandering around early in the morning before you expect people show up."
Bobbi rolls her eyes. "Also known as, 'don't stray from the mission parameters.' I got it, boss. I'm a professional."
"Okay, okay." Daisy brushes her bangs out of her eyes and exhales.
Bobbi hands her another slice of pizza. "Relax. It'll be fine."
"Thanks," Daisy says, biting into the peace offering.
"Rest of today is free, right?" Bucky asks Daisy, and at her nod, he continues, "We should get some sparring in. Bobbi, you up for it?"
She's stiff from mostly sitting still for nearly a day. "Definitely. Just need to warm up first. Daisy?"
"I've got winners."
"I look forward to taking you both down, then." She grins.
Daisy suggests a park down the block as a location, which turns out to be perfect. It's a big space, with a playground at one end, a baseball diamond at another, and a big open grassy area surrounded by trees. Daisy sets up a blanket while Bobbi and Bucky do some dynamic stretches to warm up.
The advantage of not having superpowers or bionic extremities is that she doesn't need to pull her punches to the same extent that the others do when sparring, which is how she ends up beating both Bucky and Daisy, as promised. Afterwards, her victims face off against each other and go for a good long time, as Bobbi cheers them both on. By the end, they're just having fun, and neither one goes down. When they're finally bored, they join her on the grass, and they all watch the sun set through the trees before heading back to the apartment.
They veg out and watch television for a few hours, until Daisy turns off the TV and orders them to go to sleep, saying to Bobbi, "You don't want to be captured and tortured because some evil scientist heard you snoring in the ceiling vents."
"Fury will tease you mercilessly about that," Bucky adds. "And since you're both going to live forever, that might get annoying after a while."
"Two-hundred-year-old Fury and Mockingbird as odd-couple roommates." Daisy laughs. "I'd watch that sitcom."
Bobbi throws a shoe at her.
After brushing her teeth and dressing down, Bobbi rolls up the throw rug in the bedroom and lays out her yoga mat. She'd never tried yoga until Hawaii, and it's very different than any other exercise she does, but she likes it. And while technically, she doesn't need a mat for these meditations, the cerulean color of the mat always cheers her up, and the squishy texture makes her toes happy.
She sits down on the mat with her legs folded, and places her hands on her thighs, palms up. Careful to be mindful of her breathing, she closes her eyes and starts to focus on each body part, one at a time. Her head—there's a slight ache to it, which paradoxically becomes more bearable the more she allows herself to feel it. Moving on to her jaw, which she consciously relaxes, her neck, her shoulders, which she always needs to adjust, her torso, back, abdomen, pelvis, legs, and toes. She times her breath as she does this: five seconds in through the nose, five seconds out through the mouth. When she finishes, she adjusts her pose, setting her feet flat on the floor, knees up in the air, back slightly curled.
With this, she begins her kirtan kriya exercises, making the prescribed sounds, aligning her fingers using the pattern Bucky taught her. He learned the techniques when he'd first regained his memories, and he said that the daily meditations had helped his brain make sense of everything that had originally seemed overwhelming.
When she finishes, she takes a longer inhale, for a full ten seconds, and stretches up her arms. She brings her palms together and down to her chest, exhales, and opens her eyes.
The room is dim, with just a small lamp on the nightstand to add some light. She feels better, like she's wrapped in a warm blanket and doesn't want to move. But she has a job in a few hours, so she gets up, turns off the lamp, and crawls into bed.
Two o'clock Eastern Time is 8 PM in Hawaii, so she has no problem waking up when her alarm goes off. She practically jumps out of bed, ready to get to work. After a quick, cold shower, she dresses in a black jumpsuit, covers it up with a sweatshirt, and heads out to the living room, where Bucky is putting on his shoes. There's a white lab coat folded up on the couch, with a brown wig laid out on top of it, so she can walk right out the front door when they finish up, and Bobbi takes them and packs them into a briefcase. Daisy is still sleeping, since she won't be needed until they're in place.
The drive to Edison is about an hour long, and they stop for snacks, as planned, so that by the time they arrive, it's almost four. Bobbi takes the bag with her equipment, and they walk around the building until they find an open window six floors up, and Bobbi takes out the suction cup scaling equipment from the briefcase, wraps two around her knees and takes two in her hands, and starts to climb.
Once she gets inside, the first step is to find the surveillance equipment and set it to loop to cover her tracks, which she does with practiced ease. When that's done, she finds the shared office of Theresa North and Derek Paul, two of the scientists working on whatever this project is; seems to be some sort of biological weapon that A.I.M. has exciting plans for, based on the way Daisy talks. The door is locked, but it's easy enough to let herself into the paneled ceiling and crawl over to a more convenient location where she can see into the office from the tiny holes in the ceiling. She makes herself comfortable, and turns on her comm.
"This is Mockingbird; I'm in," she reports.
Daisy's voice comes on. "Excellent. Let me know when the assets show up."
"Asset" is used loosely, as these guys have no idea that they're—hopefully—providing the good guys with crucial information, but it works.
While the building is empty, Bobbi and Bucky chat over the comms. Once people show up, she needs to stay quiet. The first workers show up around six: early birds who set their own hours, cleaners, and security guards. Afterwards, it's a steady trickle of voices and footsteps until around nine, which is when North and Paul show up, ten minutes apart. Bobbi switches to text and lets the group know that their targets are on site.
There are no good opportunities. They sit at their desks, some people come in to talk to them, one gets coffee or goes to the bathroom while the other analyzes data or sends emails, they go to a meeting and take their laptops with them, and after a few hours, Bobbi gets restless. She's been trying to read over their shoulders, but the screens are too far away to make anything out.
Finally, she sends out a message to Bucky: SOS boring myself to death.
His voice comes over the comm link. "Need some entertainment?"
Pls.
"Okay, I've got a few books here. Let me know what you want me to read to you. Uh, I have a Dark Tower book, I'm not sure which, it has a purple cover; Good Omens; Parable of the Sower, and an Archie comic book."
She muffles her laugh with her palm, then sends back, Let's start with Good Omens.
"Gotcha. One second. Okay, I'm ready. You ready? If you're ready, don't say anything."
She doesn't say anything.
"In the Beginning: It was a nice day," he begins.
Hours and hours later, including a lunch break where the assets take their computers with them, he's still reading.
"So Archie and Jughead are in the Lodges' living room, I guess, and Mr. Lodge says to Archie, 'You need more culture in your life!' And then Jughead says—"
She cuts him off. "They just left the room to get coffee. They're walking together. Should be passing window 32 now. Do you see them?"
"They just walked by," Bucky confirms.
"Good. I'm going in."
Their separate coffee breaks this morning were about ten minutes each, and she's really hoping they stick to that pattern. Noiselessly, she moves the ceiling panel, grabs the frame, swings down, and replaces the panel at the exact second she lets go, dropping to the floor. After shaking the dust out of her hair and assembling her disguise, she pulls the flash drives out of her pocket and checks the computer monitors—both of these guys left their computers unlocked. It baffles her sometimes how so many well-educated scientists are so ignorant about anything computer-related that they didn't learn in a classroom. Although, to be fair, they probably didn't expect that anyone was hiding in their ceiling, waiting for the opportunity.
She plugs in the flash drives and uses the specialized software to copy the contents of the hard drives over—it's faster and more efficient than copying and pasting, leaves no trail for anyone who doesn't know exactly what to look for, and best of all, it knows how to handle a situation where the drive suddenly gets pulled out of the computer and the transfer isn't complete.
"Copy is in progress," she reports to Bucky and Daisy, looking back and forth between the two computers.
"How much time?" Daisy asks. "Winter Soldier, do you have a location on the assets?"
"I see them. They're in the kitchen."
She tunes them out, focusing on the screens in front of her, and taps her fingers on her thighs, whispering, "Go go go go go."
"Mock! Paul's on his way back. Fifteen seconds until the door is in his line of sight."
"How much left to go?" Daisy asks.
"Seventy three percent here, eighty five, nine-okay, done… and done! Got it, got it, leaving!" She grabs the drives, takes a quick look around the room to make sure she didn't forget anything, and strolls leisurely to the office door. She smiles at a handful of people who make eye contact with her on her way out of the building, and walks back to the car, getting into the passenger side.
Bucky is ready to go, pulling out and driving off before she even gets her seat belt buckled. She needs a few minutes to decompress, so, after throwing the wig into the backseat, she closes her eyes and lets the first few minutes of the ride home pass in silence.
The first few minutes turns into an hour as she drifts into sleep, and the next thing she remembers, they're back in Philly, pulling into a parking spot.
"Ugh," she groans, "my mouth tastes like ass."
He pops open the glove compartment, and there's a pack of Orbit that they'd picked up that morning. "Welcome back," he says.
She yawns and takes a stick of gum out of the package. "You're a lifesaver."
They get out of the car, and Bucky says, "Actually, I saw a store a few blocks over and thought I could pick up some groceries. You don't have to come, but if you want..."
"No, I'll join you." She needs to stretch her legs anyway. Nine hours lying down in a ceiling vent makes her feel like a caged dog, especially after all the flying.
The "store" turns out to be a liquor store, and the "groceries" turns out to be beer, but she doesn't mind. She worked hard all day lying on her ass and doing nothing; she deserves some beer.
The weather is perfect as they walk back, beers in hand. Warm, but with a slight breeze that makes it enjoyable. She has the flash drives in her pocket, a payoff of an annoying but successful mission, and she's feeling a lot better than she has in quite a while.
Her mind is wandering again, when Bucky elbows her in the side and says, "Oh, so then Jughead says, 'The closest he gets to culture is when he eats yogurt!'"
It takes her a second to remember what he's talking about, but when she gets it, she snorts out loud, in very undignified way. "That's awful. Awful. Did they have Archie when you were a kid?"
"It started with all the other comics, around the beginning of the war," he says. "But I didn't read them at the time."
They're at the building now, and he reaches into his pocket for a key, then opens the door and holds it for her.
"Thanks. So when did you read your first Archie, then?"
"Would you believe me if I told you that Luke and Jessica have a whole collection? They each deny that it came from them, so either one of them is a liar or they both are."
"Ha. Or it came from Danny."
They've reached the door, and Bobbi uses her own key to unlock it and open the door. She freezes when she hears the voice of Natasha Romanova, the Black Widow, saying, "...was a bullshit deal and you know it, Johnson. You have to fix him."
Bobbi and Bucky exchange speculative glances. They walk into the apartment, and the voices go silent, as Daisy, Natasha, and her own ex-husband turn to look at them.
"Bobbi?" Clint says, the surprise evident on his face. "What are you doing here?"