We're mixing it up these next 2 (or 3?) chapters! See Author's Note at the bottom for info.
Contains scenes from 1x19 – "The Dirty Half Dozen", 1x20 – "Scars" and the first half of the season finale (2x21) – "SOS Part 1".
Bobbi had mixed feelings about Kara Palamas coming to the Playground. On one hand, she had been an excellent field agent, but on the other hand she had been HYDRA – brainwashed with Whitehall's Faustus method, which had never failed on record after his decades of perfecting the technique. It didn't help Bobbi's conscience that she personally had been the one to hand Agent Palamas, albeit unknowingly and indirectly, over to Bakshi and Whitehall in the first place.
Bobbi had been working with Clint as her sole partner for a few years when he was sent on a mission to Europe to take out a Red Room Asset. He had failed to kill Natasha and brought her in instead, and Fury had replaced Bobbi's role as Clint's partner with Natasha. At first Bobbi had been frustrated with Fury's decisions, but eventually she had to admit that Clint and Natasha worked better together than Clint and herself ever had. Strike Team Delta was deadly, and always got the job done.
And, when her bird-brained brother had finally managed to introduce her and Natasha, they had gotten along like life-long friends, with Clint cursing his luck as they pointed out his many annoying traits and quirks over a couple of glasses of wine at the safehouse. Bobbi couldn't bring herself to resent the woman after that.
So Bobbi moved on with her career, still working with Clint occasionally, but usually with others or on her own missions. It was on one of the solo missions she had met Hunter (originally a target she needed to get intel from, who ended up becoming a bit more), and she had met Kara when Fury partnered them together to lead a team in South America.
They had taken down the thugs who were planning to bomb the Argentine president's villa in almost record time, and Fury had gone on to partner the two of them together every so often. They weren't the best of friends, but they would get the job done and share a beer or two afterwards.
Bobbi remembered the guilt she had felt when Bakshi had informed her of their "new arrival" in the form of Agent 33 of SHIELD. She had immediately recognized the number and felt horrible that it was her intel that had gotten the woman captured.
Her only consolation was that Kara would never know it was Bobbi who had "given away" her location. Even if she still felt guilty for everything that had happened to the woman, she knew it had been her only option of getting an in with HYDRA without outing Coulson's or Gonzales' teams, neither of which was an option.
It wasn't until Coulson's team headed off to the Arctic that Bobbi found enough courage to meet Kara. She wasn't even sure if the woman would remember her from before the brainwashing, but Bobbi needed closure, and the only way she was going to get that was by actually talking to her.
She passed Mack and Hunter in the kitchen-slash-living room and felt a tightness take over her chest. Lance hadn't even looked at her since getting back, and there he was, laughing with Mack like it was old times, before Gonzales' SHIELD had come out in the open.
Sighing, Bobbi continued down to the lab.
When she got there Kara was just finishing having her blood taken, not for the first time more than likely. They knew Whitehall had brainwashed her, but Bobbi hadn't been able to give them any intel on whether he had enhanced her or not.
It seemed likely, especially with the man's fixation on experimentation with the obelisk and powered people in general, and SHIELD needed to make sure, just in case.
"It's funny," she said from the doorway of the small room, "I don't mind blood, but needles?" she shook her head, "Not a fan."
"I'm trying not to look at any of it," Kara said, sounding exactly like the woman Bobbi had worked with all those years ago, but the movements and presence were wrong, almost more disconcerting to witness than when she had been serving Whitehall, completely brainwashed. At least then she had been acting like her normal self, just loyal to HYDRA and not to SHIELD.
She laid on the bed, putting pressure on the gauze on her arm, and Bobbi couldn't help but feel like the way Kara was acting felt wrong.
"But, this isn't really about tests, right?" Kara continued. "This is you guys keeping an eye on me where I can't leave."
Bobbi couldn't deny that – SHIELD was still wary of both Ward and Kara's intentions, knowing that both of them had been allied with HYDRA.
"Better than a cell, I guess," Bobbi commented, walking forward to take the seat that had just been vacated by the scientist. "Plus, we want to make sure they didn't mess with you physically, just-"
"Messed with my head," Kara cut in, sounding more like her old self. "I know." Kara had always been an independent soul, questioning orders much like Bobbi and Clint did. They had joked about it several times while sharing post-mission drinks – how they would be the ones who finally caused Fury to blow his top.
"How much do you remember, from before?" Bobbi asked, testing the waters. Brainwashed people could sometimes remember their past, but not always. She didn't want to force any memories on Kara – Bobbi knew too well just how frustrating that could be, from her relationship with Hunter – but wanted to at least see if she remembered anything, if she could help the woman remember that SHIELD wasn't a terrible place after HYDRA had been found within.
"Pieces, missing some details," Kara said. But Bobbi could tell the woman was lying. At best she remembered some pieces of some years – most likely faces of family members or key bits of information that had been drilled into her head for years. She likely had no idea who Bobbi was.
Bobbi could only hope that the same sort of memories held true for Kara's time at HYDRA – as the head of security at Whitehall's base, Bobbi had met with her a few times while she was brainwashed, and it wouldn't help her recovery to recognize Bobbi's face from HYDRA in a SHIELD setting.
"You know, you and I met a few times," Bobbi said with a smile, trying to play down their relationship. Kara didn't need to know the full backstory until she was ready, and keeping it vague made it easy to warp the truth. "So, I'm here for you. If you start remembering, come to me. I'll help you out."
"Thank you," Kara said sincerely, with a small nod. "You're the first one here to treat me like a person."
Bobbi wanted to explain it was because she knew Kara from before HYDRA, from before the brainwashing, and knew that she hadn't been a bad person. The others hadn't, and only saw the brainwashed woman in front of them.
"What Whitehall did to you, it's unthinkable," she said in an attempt to be sympathetic. Gone was their playful banter from their missions.
"Yeah," Kara said, looking down. "But at least one good thing came out of it."
She looked up to meet Bobbi's eyes again. "I met Grant."
Bobbi wasn't sure how much of a "good thing" that was – the man was a traitor and had swaggered around like he owned the place ever since he arrived at the Playground, who cared about Bakshi's intel, the man was a psychopath – and it must've shown on her face.
"No, just wait," Kara said, sounding sure of herself. "He'll get Bakshi to help. You'll see the Grant I do."
It was painfully obvious she had latched onto the man, and had seemingly transferred her allegiance from Whitehall to Ward, but Bobbi nodded with a false smile dragged onto her face.
"We'll see," she said, keeping her voice even. "But until then, remember my offer, yeah? I'll be here if you want to talk."
She only had a few minutes before she'd be called to oversee the mission to the Arctic in the main office, and stood to leave.
"I'll remember," Kara said with a smile, and Bobbi left the lab to head to Coulson's office.
She didn't speak to Hunter or the other agents as she passed them listening around Mack's impromptu transceiver, instead hurrying up the stairs to where Gonzales and Mack were waiting.
"Bobbi, Coulson wants us to scout ahead," May said, coming up to Bobbi from down the hall, "already locked in the coordinates."
She felt a thrill that she was going to do something, even if it was just scouting. Though she wondered why May was coming with her, and not another agent. But Bobbi had more things on her mind that distracted her as she geared up and headed to one of the Quinjets, strapped in and readied to take off.
First was the discovery that Mack had decided to leave SHIELD, which in all truth wasn't much of a surprise. He hadn't been entirely the same after his experience with the mind control in San Juan and with his already-established mistrust of anything supernatural or alien it had morphed his opinions into even stronger ones. He hadn't trusted Coulson before, and certainly didn't trust him after being possessed or whatever had happened.
Then there was the mission to talk with the Inhumans, as Skye had told them her people were called. Bobbi had a bad feeling about it as a whole, and she guessed it had something to do with Gonzales' smug grin and his overall attitude toward powered people.
The rest of the council had cited Coulson's attachment to Skye as the reason he shouldn't be their liaison, which Bobbi agreed with, but she didn't feel comfortable with Gonzales as their ambassador either. Her conversation with him after Skye and Lincoln had ended up in their basement stuck in her mind, not to mention his many references to Skye as less than human because of her powers. It was obvious Gonzales held little respect for powered people, as he had proved it to Bobbi time and time again.
Coulson might be too close to the situation, but she was pretty sure Gonzales was too antagonistic to be a proper representative for SHIELD.
Then there was his whole comparison to Tony Stark creating Ultron. Bobbi had been in contact with two of the Avengers, and she knew they hadn't just laid down and let Tony Stark do what he pleased – no one in their right mind would do that. In fact, Clint had expressly complained about Stark's secrecy with regards to Ultron and why it had been a terrible idea, causing the problem in the first place.
In other words, Gonzales' comparison was a moot point – their own situation was nothing like that of the Avengers. And who was to say that Gonzales was the right choice, to let him do as he pleased?
Unfortunately, Bobbi wouldn't have been able to express her thoughts or knowledge without an extensive explanation – one they didn't have time for in their situation. And she didn't even want to think of Coulson's or Gonzales' faces when they discovered she'd been in contact with two of the Avengers for going on a few months.
And then there was Hunter. His silent treatment was understandable, but that didn't mean it hurt any less. They had gone longer without speaking to each other, but never had they been so close in proximity, while being so far away in their relationship at the same time.
While he had made up with Mack (and Bobbi knew it was only to spite her – she didn't need Mack reminding her), the most he had given her since returning with Coulson and Fitz was a side-eye on the main deck of the Iliad earlier that morning. She had told Mack it would be a while, as she had expected, but she hoped it would be sooner rather than later that Hunter would at least speak to her again.
She wasn't sure how long she could stand the sort of isolation he specialized in dealing out.
Her thoughts turned to the view of clouds outside the window of the cockpit, the rolling hills of white against the blue sky and the serenity they gave her before Bobbi thought about her revelation to Mack while they were in the training room at the Playground.
It wasn't really secret that she kept her feelings to herself – it was part of being a field agent. You had to learn to only show what was necessary for the mission, and keep personal matters aside. But that was where she and Hunter really had their differences. Her ex-husband had always worn his emotions proudly on his sleeve, letting his anger, frustration, or lust guide his actions, while Bobbi had always been the more level-headed of the two.
What Bobbi hadn't meant to tell Mack was that she felt like something was wrong with her because of her ability to lock it all up. She hardly ever found it difficult to cut off emotional ties when necessary, had always pushed her feelings to the back of her mind for her to process at a later time. In fact, most of the time, it was downright easy to cut herself off, and that was what worried her.
May hadn't said anything since they'd gotten in the plane, but it wasn't as if the two of them had much to talk about, Bobbi reminded herself.
She let the silence drag on for a few more minutes, then attempted to start a conversation. Bobbi knew May was conflicted about who to follow – Coulson or Gonzales – even if the older woman never let anyone in to her most private thoughts.
"Mack quit today," she said. They shared a look. "You ever wonder where you'd be without SHIELD?" she asked.
"Actually, been giving that a lot of thought recently," May said. Bobbi couldn't blame her. "You?"
"Hunter asked me to leave once, to be with him," she admitted, thinking back to that night, right after they had both finished missions and had been able to meet up. "It was the one time I was tempted to walk away."
They had laid in bed, her head on his chest, eyes still red from tears she had shed for the two agents on her team she had lost. Her muscles had ached pleasantly, but she remembered cuts along her arms and a bandage tied around her shin where a deep gash hadn't stopped seeping, even after a couple of hours.
They had been curled together under the sheets, and he had asked her to leave. She'd thought he was joking at first, but he had insisted he was serious. He had even been sweet about it, saying how he didn't want to see her hurt or in pain from her missions. "You've saved enough people," he'd said, dropping a kiss on top of her hair. "Why don't you let them save themselves for a change?"
For a brief moment she'd been tempted to let it all go, to leave SHIELD behind and run away with him – elope where even Fury wouldn't be able to track them down – but she had declined, knowing that SHIELD was the biggest part of her life. She couldn't just give it up. That had led to a round of shouting at eleven at night, followed by another round of intense lovemaking, but after that the question had always lingered. Would she give up SHIELD to be with him?
The answer had always been no.
An hour or so later, after a lot of uncomfortable silence, the autopilot announced they were ten minutes out. May went to the back of the Quinjet to check something, and Bobbi stayed up to cover the silent comms. It was strange – she had expected Gonzales and Weaver to contact them after they took off, to check in, but May had been given orders, and Bobbi went along with them.
She got very suspicious however, when autopilot set to descend and they were nowhere near any sort of civilization, if the satellite imaging was anything to go by. There were two heat signature blips, more than likely animals if the trees for miles around were anything to go by.
"Hey, May, autopilot has us descending. You sure about those coordinates?"
But the other woman pulled a gun on her as she approached. "Funny how you're so broken up about betraying Hunter," she simpered, "'Cause it seems like you couldn't care less about what you did to me."
The flash of realization was almost painful. "Kara."
One touch to the nano mask revealed the true identity of the woman in front of her.
"You just sat there, pretending to comfort me," Kara said in her own voice, still aiming a gun at Bobbi. "But you were just trying to see if I remembered. Well I do."
Well, that wasn't what Bobbi had meant, but the woman seemed to be deluded. Bobbi lunged forward, pushing the gun away so it fired into the wall behind her and kneeing Kara in the gut.
She forced the piece of metal back to hit Kara in the forehead then pushed it to the floor. A punch to the side of the face sent Kara spinning, and Bobbi ducked under Kara's own fist that had come toward her head.
Grabbing Kara's arms that were up in a block, Bobbi threw the other woman off balance, and threw another punch, which she ducked under. Kara ran at Bobbi, throwing her back, and caught her ribs with a punch, but when she reset to deal a blow Bobbi was able to jump back, dodging it.
Bobbi grabbed the other woman's head and pushed her to the side, stumbling a bit due to the turbulence of landing, and forced her into the display screen mounted on the wall, shattering it.
They fell together to the floor, and Bobbi scrambled up, the slick floor sliding beneath her boots. She kicked high as the other woman stood, but she dropped to avoid it. Bobbi grabbed the railing above her head and spun her body around, her feet hitting Kara's left shoulder and knocking her sideways. Bobbi let the momentum carry her around again and drove her heels into the woman's face, knocking her out so she fell backward onto the seats.
Bobbi panted heavily, brushing her hair out of her face with one hand. Her ribs ached and there were a few bumps and bruises from the fight, but Kara hadn't been a tough opponent. If they hadn't been on a descending plane, Bobbi could have had her down in thirty seconds.
The Quinjet settled on uneven ground, and Bobbi took a moment to regain her footing before checking the equipment. Kara had disabled the GPS and they were far out of cell phone service. The best Bobbi would be able to do was scan her surroundings to gauge where she was (apparently in some forest somewhere), and use the sun's position to give her a general direction of where to head to get back to the Playground.
She jumped out the side exit of the plane and scanned her surroundings, though she didn't see anything familiar. Why had Kara brought them here? Just to have an empty place to bury her?
The sight of a male figure in Bobbi's peripheral vision caught her eye and she turned, only to feel the deep bite of a bullet in her thigh. She only just registered the icy, burning pain of the ICER dendrotoxin radiating from the wound before she sank into blackness.
"Have you had any contact with Bobbi?" May asked them through the video link. "Her Quinjet still hasn't arrived, and she's not answering communications."
Hunter felt his heart shoot into his throat, the blood rushing through his veins almost deafening him. Fitz and Coulson looked over at him, with pity and dismissal accordingly, and he rushed down to the main control area. Even if Bobbi wasn't responding on comms, that could be explained away by system malfunctions or something else. But she always answered her phone, unless she was in the middle of a mission.
It was one of those things he had learned about Bobbi – as unreliable as she could be, she always had her phone on her person. She would answer it if the situation permitted, or let the call be directed to voicemail if it didn't.
However, after he had dialed her number three times, the phone ringing and ringing until the line cut out, Hunter was getting anxious. Coulson had sent Fitz down to help him figure out where Bobbi was by checking the records, and he was going through the Playground's flight log, attempting to see if something was off with Bobbi's departure.
"Her phone's not picking up – not even voicemail!" he exclaimed after the fourth failed call. If he was honest with himself, he really wasn't angry with Bobbi, just resentful that she'd hidden such a large secret from him. Every time they had a falling out he was determined that he'd show her, that they wouldn't be getting back together until she apologized to him.
He'd been following the same pattern, even if it wasn't the usual long-distance silence he typically kept up, but a more personal silent treatment that was almost childish in nature. He had even gone to Mack first to forgive him, even though Mack had been much more involved in Hunter's kidnapping as it was.
"Flight records suggest that Bobbi's Quinjet left before the other three," Fitz said, pulling up the stats for the plane Bobbi had piloted.
It was just supposed to be a scouting sweep before Gonzales and May approached, Hunter thought to himself. Why had she left before them, and why wasn't she answering any form of communication. If it was any other agent, Hunter would suspect them of going rogue, but not Bobbi.
Her devotion to SHIELD, to her job, was something that had both impressed him and irritated him for the duration of their relationship. He never understood why she would want to tie herself to such an organization as SHIELD with all their rules and regulations. Mercenary work had always appealed to him more – the freedom, the risk…
"There's no indication of a crash, the transponder's offline," Fitz continued, drawing Hunter out of his thoughts and into the present as he looked over Fitz's shoulder at the specs. "Uh, it's possible that somebody disconnected it, but…"
The engineer waved his hands vaguely, and Hunter knew what they were both thinking: Bobbi was the only one flying the plane, and why would she disconnect the communications relay?
Unless something was making her act strangely…
"Forget about the plane, could you pull up the-"
"-footage of Bobbi, from the base," Fitz snapped his fingers, "from before she left. Good idea."
Hunter was glad he and Fitz were on the same wavelength, but he really didn't need the curly-hair Scot to do that.
"You know I am capable of finishing my own-"
"-sentences. Yes you are. I'm sorry," Fitz said, only sounding a little sorry in Hunter's opinion. Maybe Coulson was right and they were spending too much time together.
Fitz typed a few lines of code, opening the archives of footage from the base.
"Okay, that's May," he said, pointing out the woman on the feed.
"And that's the woman that once set my 1967 convertible GTO on fire," Hunter snapped, feeling frustrated. That had been his favorite car. Of course, Bobbi'd had a pretty good reason for blowing it up. "The question on the table is not who, but where?"
And why, Hunter added in his head. None of it made any sense.
"No, that's what I'm saying," Fitz said, pausing the video, and running a facial recognition scan. "Facial recognition tagged this footage, and ten minutes later, see?"
Two different timestamps of the same hallway came up side-by-side on the screen. "That's May leaving the base. Again."
Hunter contemplated the two stills of footage with a furrowed brow, then it came to him. "It's Agent 33!"
They might not have discovered why or where, but they had a who. And that was a start.
"What would she want with Bobbi?"
Hunter shook his head, eyes fixated on the blonde curls that framed the face of the only woman he had ever loved and hated enough to marry.
"No idea, mate. But I can guess that whatever it is, it's not good. Let's show this to Coulson."
"Clint, calm down."
"My sister is not picking up her phone, and it's unnatural. There's no reason for me to calm down, Nat!"
"Bobbi said that she might not call you for a while," Natasha reminded him, trailing her fingers down his arm. "She's probably been busy."
Clint had been calling Bobbi every ten minutes since they had finished dinner in Stark's elaborate dining room, repaired as it was from the damage Ultron had dealt to it. She hadn't answered any of them, and even though Natasha was trying to reason with him, she couldn't help but feel like something was off about the situation.
"It hasn't gone to voicemail once," Clint said for the hundredth time. "I'm telling you, something's not right."
"Just because someone's phone dies, doesn't mean it's the end of the world."
"You don't know Bobbi like I do!" Clint raved, springing up from the couch where he'd sat bouncing his leg erratically for the last few minutes. "She said she'd call back later tonight, and she never forgets to charge her phone. It's ridiculous, the amount of stuff she remembers – little things, like-"
"Clint, you being upset isn't going to help Bobbi at all," Natasha said finally, standing up herself to get on an even level with him. "I know you're worried, but you're not going anywhere in this state. Calm down."
He obediently took a few deep breaths, rolling his eyes as he did so, but it accomplished what Natasha had wanted it to. He was no longer ranting about Bobbi.
"Like I said, Bobbi's probably just been busy," Natasha repeated. "Especially with everything that's going on."
"She'd still never turn off her phone," Clint grumbled before staring straight at his girlfriend. "Hang on, what do you mean 'with everything that's going on'?"
Shit.
"Ultron's takeover, the resulting destruction," Natasha faked, playing it off coolly. "You know Bobbi. She's got a big heart, she's probably over in Sokovia helping the refugees. She's got nothing better to do now."
"That still wouldn't explain why she hasn't called back yet," Clint argued, though he still had a skeptical eyebrow raised at Natasha. She knew that look and it wasn't good. Natasha prided herself on being good at hiding her feelings, but Clint always seemed to work them out in the end, no matter what she did.
"I can't help you," Natasha said, holding back most of the truth. "But don't forget – Bobbi's a big girl. She can take care of herself."
"The Mockingbird and all that," Clint muttered. "But she can't take care of herself all the time."
"And I'm sure you'll be there when she needs you," Natasha assured him, glancing over at the clock as it changed to half-past midnight. "For now let's get some sleep and we can figure it out in the morning."
"I'm not tired," Clint said, even as he yawned.
"And I'm not Russian," Natasha scoffed, rolling her eyes. "That's not even to mention the fact that you've been stressing over this for almost four hours now. Find something else to focus on for a few hours, like sleep, and I'll let you call her again after that."
"Fine," he muttered, disgruntled, as he stumbled off to bed.
As soon as he was out of the room, Natasha had her computer open and started the task of hacking into the Playground's base (Fury always did have stupid names for things).
"Where are you, Bobbi?" she murmured, fingers flying over the keyboard.
Do you guys hate me for leaving off there? I might hate me, in your position... *evil laugh*
So Clint's suspicious, Natasha's secretly worried, and Hunter's still in love (of course).
I was going to get more into the season finale, but I also felt like the lead-up to it was super important, even though we didn't get the whole, cohesive story in the show because of the Inhumans' storyline. So there I was, nearly 5,000 words in, and I basically said: "Okay, I need to cut this off somewhere."
But that also means we get to start off the next chapter with some lovely torture. And end it with some fluff. Unless my brain and writing spirals out of control again (I might do the whole mission from contrasting Hunter/Bobbi views, would you like that?), then it'll end with quite a bit of angst and we'll have some fluff to make up for it afterwards! (I just know you guys are going to love what I have planned! ;)
Sorry, also, for having this up later than expected! I was teaching preschoolers about space all morning yesterday and my computer overheated last night (for absolutely NO reason, let me tell you), and I might have fallen asleep rewriting the last portion of this chapter.
Also, to the two Guests who asked about when I update (and anyone else who's new to this ride who wants to know):
-I try and update Tuesdays in the late afternoon/evening/night, since the show aired on Tuesdays and I wanted to have each episode out a week after it aired. This one's late because of reasons stated above, but I will always endeavor to keep to that schedule!
Thanks to everyone who had read, followed, favorited, or reviewed! You guys are all amazing!
Give me feedback (positive or negative) in a review, and thanks for stopping by!
See you next week,
~Dancer