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Pretty Pictures
"You're sure you've never played this game before?" Bobbi asked, looking down at her daughter on the couch next to her.
"Nope!" Isabelle insisted, grinning as she twisted the controller. Bobbi returned her attention to the game, where her little kart was being fished out of the oblivion of Rainbow Road and set back on the track. From the bottom left corner of the screen, she could see Isabelle's kart—she was playing as "the cute turtle-guy" Koopa Troopa—zooming across the finish line. "Yay, I win!" Isabelle shouted happily.
Yes, a four-year-old was currently kicking their asses at a driving game.
Bobbi hit the button to floor the gas pedal as she was placed back on the colorful road from hell; maybe she could at least beat Hunter in this race. He was the only one falling off the track more than she was...seriously, why couldn't the edges of the course have bumpers or something? She spotted him up ahead and managed to complete the turn safely this time. After bouncing through yet another turn, she tried desperately to catch up with him only to see the finish line looming ahead.
"Sorry, Bob," Hunter said, setting his controller down as his kart sped across it. "You're just not fast enough to catch me." He glanced back at the screen. "Wait, Lap 3? Oh, sh—"
Bobbi smirked as her kart whirled by him at full speed, leaving him behind in the pixelated dust.
A few minutes and many fallings-off later, Bobbi finished in third behind Isabelle and Triplett—who had obviously played many times before—and Hunter in fourth, far enough behind that the game cut him off at the end once his placing was decided. Isabelle just grinned and clapped her hands and selected the next race, one called "Bowser's Castle." With one look at the course Bobbi knew she was done for again.
"So you know how I was complaining about hitting the cows in that course we first started with?" Hunter asked sometime during their second lap.
"Hmm?" Bobbi replied, concentrating on navigating the bend.
"I'd take cows over moats of lava any day," he said, his portion of the screen going black as he fell off the track again.
"We can do the shopping mall one next, Hunter, is that more your speed?" Trip asked with a grin.
"Yes, thank you," Hunter quipped back. At Isabelle's insistence they were all playing as characters they looked like, and despite his protests he'd been stuck with Luigi. Trip was Donkey Kong, but he didn't seem offended in the slightest. Bobbi was Rosalina, because, according to the girl, Isabelle "couldn't see her wearing that much pink like Princess Peach." Bobbi laughed and made no complaints.
They played a few more courses until their gas button fingers were well and truly sore, and to her surprise when Bobbi looked up it was already the afternoon. "I'm hungry!" Isabelle said, right on cue. Hunter and Triplett stayed with them throughout lunch but left after they finished eating. "We have to look like we did something productive for Coulson today," Trip explained to Bobbi with a wink.
"Can we color?" Isabelle asked, draining the last of her juice.
"We don't have any coloring books, but if you want to draw and then color it in, sure," Bobbi smiled.
"Okay!" the girl agreed happily, jumping up from the table. Bobbi led her to a kid-safe supply closet and pulled out the crayons and paper. Bobbi didn't know when the rest of the team might be taking a break from Ward-hunting to have lunch, so she elected for them to color on the floor of the common area instead of at the table, an adjustment to which Isabelle seemed perfectly amenable.
"What do you want me to draw?" Bobbi asked.
Her daughter shrugged. "Whatever you want!"
She had already started on her drawing, so Bobbi leaned over and asked, "What are you drawing?"
"A dinosaur," Isabelle replied. Bobbi smiled at the thought of a dinosaur drawn with various shades of pink crayon and set to work on her own drawing. Most of the images she had in her head were not of a kid appropriate nature—everything she set her mind to in the last five years seemed to be mission-related—so she choose an innocuous New York skyline as her picture. Besides, New York had a lot of rectangles. Buildings, windows. Bobbi could draw rectangles. On second thought she added the Empire State Building and Stark Tower in the distance. Glancing over at Isabelle's, she saw her daughter hard at work on a spined tail, so she smiled to herself and added a little figure with a small bow and tiny quiver to the top of one of the buildings, small and silhouetted enough to be barely noticeable unless you were searching him out. She added herself on the next building over, facing him.
Now it reminded her of their mission there seven years ago, before Romanoff was part of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Strike Team Delta was formed. The picture needed a little color, so she made it sunset.
"All done!" Isabelle announced. She held her drawing up proudly for Bobbi to see. Bobbi laughed at the pink dinosaur with purple polka dots.
"What about dragons?" she asked. "That's a pretty good dinosaur; can you draw dragons too?"
"Yeah!" Isabelle grinned. "Dragons are even cooler than dinosaurs." She put the paper back down on the table and drew two semi-straight lines across it, extending from the dinosaur's back. "Dragons are just dinosaurs with wings. I'll add wings."
"Good idea," Bobbi smiled, putting the finishing touches into hers. It wasn't a bad drawing, really—for crayon.
"What are we up to in here?" Coulson asked, walking in. His friendly tone told Bobbi that there was no emergency; he really was just checking in. "Hey, Isabelle—I didn't see you down there; I almost stepped on you!" Her daughter giggled, holding up her dino-turned-dragon for Coulson to see. "Wow, that's really impressive. Good job!" She smiled again, ducking back down with the paper shyly.
"Everything okay, sir?" Bobbi asked, just to make sure.
"Everything's fine," he confirmed, beginning to walk towards the kitchen. "You two have fun. And don't tell Skye what you're up to or she might get jealous."
"Does Skye want to draw?" Isabelle asked, looking up at Bobbi.
"She's busy right now, but she'll probably draw some other time with us," Bobbi told her.
"Okay," Isabelle replied agreeably. "What did you draw?"
"New York City," Bobbi answered, sliding it across the table to her. "Have you ever been there?"
"I don't think so," the girl cocked her head. "Is it big?"
"Very big," Bobbi laughed. "I'm sure you'll get to see it in person sometime."
"Can I have another piece of paper?" Isabelle requested. "I want to draw a cat!"
"A cat?" Bobbi questioned lightly, handing her one. "Why? Dogs are so much better."
"No they're not!" Isabelle protested cutely. "Cats are soft and they go meow."
"You're like my friend Natasha," Bobbi told her, lips quirking upwards at the thought. "She likes cats a lot better than dogs too." Actually, Natasha often compared men to dogs, but Bobbi wasn't going to repeat that tidbit to her four-year-old daughter. In fact, she probably shouldn't have mentioned Natasha at all, but...well, Strike Team Delta was apparently on the mind.
Fortunately, Isabelle didn't seem all that curious about the friend Natasha and was quite content to sit and draw her cat. "Does he have a name?" Bobbi asked when she was finished.
"Yeah," Isabelle nodded enthusiastically. "See, there's a tag here." She pointed. "Can you write it? It's 'Kitty.'"
"Why don't you try to write it?" Bobbi suggested. "I'll help you with the letters." She was curious to see the girl's writing skills, although she was pretty sure that little kids were lucky if they could do much more than write their name before they entered kindergarten.
Oh, school. Bobbi hadn't even started thinking about that. But it was still months away before the school year would start; she had time.
"Okay," Isabelle said uncertainly.
Bobbi handed her one of the sharper crayons—one that hasn't been worn down coloring in gray cat fur—and said, "The first letter is 'K'; do you remember how to make one of those?" Isabelle shook her head, so Bobbi wrote one down for her nice and large. "It's just one line down and two diagonal ones like that." The girl's brow furrowed, but she managed to make a lopsided 'K' in the tag. "The next one's 'I.'"
"I know that one!" Isabelle exclaimed happily. "My name starts with 'I.'"
"Can you write out your whole name?" Bobbi asked. 'Isabelle' was by no means short, although it did repeat the 'L' and 'E.'
The girl nodded and managed to write her name at the bottom of the paper with minimal help. Then they returned to 'KITTY,' which was completed at a painstaking slow pace but completed nonetheless. In the hours before dinner, they also added drawings of a bird, octopus, house, and a self-portrait to Isabelle's collection and she had learned to make three additional letters in the process: 'H,' 'M,' and 'O.' Bobbi had a wolf picture that wasn't half bad which she labeled Huntress and an unrecognizable sketch of a Quinjet—but hey, those things were oddly-shaped and had lots of parts.
After washing up before dinner back in their room, Bobbi noticed Isabelle had tucked her drawings away into her still-stuffed backpack, where they stuck out of the top. "Do you want to hang those on the wall by your bed?" she asked.
The girl glanced uncertainly between the papers, the wall, and Bobbi before shaking her head. "No, it's okay."
"You can; it's totally fine," Bobbi promised her. Her eyes shifted to the rest of the room, and she noticed for the first time how bare the rest of her walls were. If Isabelle hung up a drawing, it would literally be the only decoration in the room since she took her Star Wars poster down prior to Isabelle's arrival. A new home was scary enough, Skye had said, without Darth Vader glaring you down while you were trying to sleep. Bobbi had agreed. "Look, I'm putting one of mine up," Bobbi told her, pulling out a bit of tape and pasting her skyline picture above her headboard. "Are you sure you don't want to?"
Isabelle still shook her head, and Bobbi reluctantly let the matter drop.
"Okay, let's go to dinner," she said. Trying to ease the slight frown that creased her daughter's face regarding the drawings, she added, "You remember what's going to happen later tonight, right?"
The girl's face immediately lit up, causing an uncomfortable twist in Bobbi's stomach that she ignored completely. "Yes! Mommy's going to call. She's going to read me a bedtime story!"
"That's right," Bobbi smiled. She told herself that at this point anything that made Isabelle happy, she should be happy about as well.
With that, Isabelle grabbed Thor off the bed and bolted off toward dinner.
Reviews truly make my day if you have the time!
Also, if you enjoy Huntingbird (MUCH more Huntingbird than is in this story so far) I encourage you to check out my newest story, Huntingbird, A History that is completely written and posted fairly regularly after I edit each chapter.