TW for mentions of fighting, bullying

It didn't surprise Bobbi that Skye and Jemma were nowhere to be seen when she and Phil walked through the front door that afternoon. May was in the living room, though, and she smiled softly when she saw them.

"Hi," May greeted them. "How was your day, Bobbi?"

"Fine," Bobbi said, setting down her backpack and kicking off her shoes by the door. She only had to brace herself against the wall for a moment to navigate her knee, which made her happy. "Better than Skye and Jemma's, I bet."

Phil had told her a little in the car what had happened at school with Skye and Jemma and their friend Fitz. She didn't know the younger Ward, but she suspected that if he was anything like Christian, the hallway brawl had been an unmitigated disaster.

"Probably so," agreed May. Her mouth stretched into a tight line and her eyes looked heavy. A tired face or maybe even a sad one. Bobbi didn't want to press too hard on the subject and risk upsetting May and Phil, but there was one thing she needed to check on, to put her own nerves at ease.

"Are they in trouble? Skye and Jemma, I mean? Are you… you're not mad at them, are you?"

May paused before answering, pursed her lips thoughtfully. "It's a complicated situation…" she began. Complicated. Complicated. Complicated wasn't usually a good sign.

"We're not mad at them," Phil clarified quickly. He flicked his gaze over to May quickly to check that she agreed with him, and May nodded.

"No, we're not mad. Like I said, it's… complicated. Skye shouldn't have gotten involved in a fight like that, and they shouldn't have been cooking up a cockamamie plot to get that kid in trouble, but there's also a lot more to the story than that. He's just as responsible as they are. More so, if you ask me."

"We didn't get all of the details," Phil explained, "but it sounds like they've been having trouble with Grant Ward for a while, and I guess today things just kind of… snapped. Obviously we're not happy about what happened, but we can understand that things got out of hand. We know the girls weren't trying to hurt anybody. They're in trouble with the school, of course, but I think here at home we need to practice some patience and understanding more than discipline."

"Okay," Bobbi said. "That's good. I'm glad you're not being too hard on them, especially if Ward was, you know…" She trailed off. "And Fitz? Is he—?"

"I haven't heard anything," Phil said with a shake of his head. "And I'm not sure that I will. If I was Mrs. Fitz, I don't think I'd be thinking about calling other parents to give them updates right now. We heard that he was awake and talking, but that's about it."

"Okay," she said again, a little quieter this time. "Is it okay if I go up to my room for a while before supper?"

"Of course," May said. "We'll be down here if you need anything. We'll probably eat around 7, okay?"

Bobbi nodded and turned towards the stairs, grabbing her backpack off the floor before she left. She had plenty of homework to keep herself busy until then, but geometry problems and French conjugations weren't exactly on the forefront of her mind, not that May and Phil needed to know that. They had enough to worry about right now and didn't need to be concerned with her now racing pulse or the tightness that was slowly closing in on her chest, crushing around her heart. She wasn't even really sure why her heartrate was spiking so drastically, just that thinking about Skye and Jemma getting into a fight with Ward, thinking about funny little Fitz knocked unconscious, thinking about anger and closed fists and discipline – thinking about all of it together, just made everything a little more narrow, a little more constricted, a little more sharp.

She reached her room, eased the door shut and sank weakly onto the foot of her bed. Closing her eyes, Bobbi forced herself to draw in a breath as long and slow as she could make it, thinking back to the advice Dr. Garner had given her the last time they had met, just a few days ago. Count as high as you can with the first inhale, wait two seconds, then count to the same number with the exhale. She only made it to three the first time, but she made it to four on her next breath, then five.

Pleased with herself, Bobbi opened her eyes, still trying hard to breathe slow, and grabbed her batons from off her desk where she now kept them. A couple quick pumps of the baton, the wood spinning against her palm, the rhythm lining up with her heartbeat, and she could feel the tension in her muscles start to slip away. Everything was going to be okay. No one was fighting right now, Skye and Jemma weren't in trouble with May and Phil. She was in her room, at their house, and she was safe. It hadn't been the biggest flareup of anxiety she'd ever had by any means, but the fact that she'd managed to weather it smoothly and all on her own caused a little sprout of pride to unfurl its leaves in her heart.

She spun the batons a few more times, more just to feel the pleasant sensation of them than anything, and stood up to start pacing as she twirled. She wished she could start running again, but walking would do for now. Her knee was still stiff and lacking in strength after being underused for two and a half months, but her steps grew a little more natural, a little more confident every day. She was supposed to see Dr. Gambhir later this week, and she was hoping that he would finally give her the approval to shed the brace for good, maybe start working up to a jog before long. She was feeling strong, physically at least, and she was ready to start pushing herself, to see if she still had the toughness in her, the fight that had once made her so fearsome on the soccer field.

She paced and twirled for a few more minutes as the last coils of stress melted away from her chest, replaced with the satisfaction and comfort that movement so often gave her, and eventually set down the batons back on her desk. She grabbed her backpack, intending to force herself to start working on her Spanish composition or her reading for English, but something stopped her short before she unzipped the bag. Normally, they all worked on their homework together down at the kitchen table while Phil graded or cooked or something. She didn't think Skye and Jemma would be all that interested in going downstairs for family bonding time after what had happened, but it just felt wrong to be starting her homework without them. Plus, if she had been freaked out just hearing about the fight, there was no telling how they might be feeling right now, shuttered away and dwelling on everything that had gone wrong that day. In an instant, Bobbi made a decision and swung her backpack over her shoulder, marching stoutly out of her room and across the hall. She tapped lightly on Skye and Jemma's closed door, and didn't wait for an answer before calling out:

"Skye? Jemma? It's Bobbi."

There was a brief pause, no sound coming from the other side of the door beyond a slight rustling, then the door cracked open and a sliver of Jemma's face peered through the gap.

"Can I come in?" Bobbi asked, tugging the corner of her mouth in a half-smile. "I was going to do some homework and was hoping for a little company."

The door swung open the rest of the way, revealing a reserved Jemma standing in the doorway, shuffling her feet and staring more at the doorknob than at Bobbi. Still, her expression wasn't pinched in the way Bobbi had assumed it might be, just a little furrowed. Bobbi took a step in and swung her eyes around to find Skye, who was wedged on the back corner of her bed in between the wall and the headboard, arms wrapped around her knees, which were drawn up to her chest. Bobbi had to force herself not to stare at the state of Skye's face – a puffy, purpling eye, bruises mottling the skin up and down her cheeks and jaw, a red and raw chin that looked like it had been raked across concrete. Her knuckles were discolored and tender-looking, too, so Bobbi assumed Skye had gotten a few good licks in herself. The thought didn't comfort her as much as she thought it would.

"I know it looks bad," Skye mumbled, not looking up from the spot on her quilt where her eyes had been fixed from the minute Bobbi had stepped into the room. "You don't have to pretend not to stare."

"I'm not staring," Bobbi said quickly. "I always hated it when people looked at me too long when I was banged up. Felt like they were examining me, or like I was something at the zoo." She paused, shrugged one shoulder congenially. "It doesn't look that bad."

"Liar," Skye said, flicking her eyes up to Bobbi, daring her to commit to the falsehood.

"Okay, yeah, it looks pretty bad," Bobbi admitted, cracking a small smile. Skye's expression softened, and her lips twitched as she tried and failed to contain her own smile. "Have you put any ice on it? It helps keep the swelling down."

"That's what I said," Jemma piped. She turned a knowing look on Bobbi. "She's too stubborn for ice."

"It doesn't hurt," Skye insisted. "It looks worse than it feels." She straightened up on the bed to prove her point, but she was considerably undercut by the wince that escaped onto her face as she moved. Bobbi arched an eyebrow at her.

"Doesn't hurt, huh? I've used that line way too many times before to not know a lie when I hear it."

"Ward just got a couple lucky punches in," Skye grumbled. "Gut punches should be off-limits."

"Can I?" Bobbi asked, taking a step towards Skye and gesturing to Skye's stomach. Begrudgingly, Skye lifted the hem of her shirt up a little ways, showing off a pale section of midriff that was dappled with dark, plum-colored shadows of bruises. Bobbi let out a low whistle, and behind her, she heard Jemma inhale sharply through her nose, followed immediately by the sound of a finger tapping on the bedpost.

"Ward did this?" Bobbi struggled to keep her voice steady, and she heard the tone dip low and dangerous against her will. She was trying her hardest not to get angry at a kid two years younger than her, a kid she'd never met, but the sight of Skye's injuries and the nonchalant way Skye was trying to brush the pain off like it was nothing stung too much for Bobbi not to feel herself seething at the thought of the scumbag who had done this, who had hurt her. "The same Ward who's been saying all that terrible stuff to you? And picking on Hunter's cousin?"

"I got him pretty good, too," Skye said, her own voice dropping low, somewhere halfway between something defensive and a confession. "I'm not exactly innocent in all this. And Fitz got it the worst out of any of us. He's…" Skye's face twisted a little, her mouth curdling downward and her eyebrows pulling low over her eyes. A hurt face. A scared, guilty, sad face.

"I don't exactly know what happened, but I'm sure it wasn't your fault," Bobbi told Skye quickly, retracting her anger as fast as she could. She didn't want Skye to think it was directed at her. "I know you would never hurt your friend. I'm sure Fitz knows it, too."

"It's my fault he fell. I'm the one who tackled Ward and knocked Fitz down."

"Skye, you only did that because Ward was choking Fitz," Jemma said sternly, taking Bobbi a little by surprise. "You can't blame yourself for that. Whatever happens to Fitz is Ward's responsibility. Not yours."

"And what exactly did happen to Fitz?" Bobbi wanted to know. The information Phil had given her had been so sparse.

"We don't really know," Jemma murmured. "He passed out when he hit his head. He wasn't awake the last time we saw him, and no one's been able to tell us anything. We don't even know if he's all right." Jemma's voice cracked a little on her last word, and her eyes swam. "I thought, maybe, we could call or something, but… they probably don't want to be bothered."

"We don't even know his phone number," Skye added. "So we couldn't call if we wanted to."

"I have it," Bobbi realized suddenly. She dropped her backpack to the floor and began rummaging around in it until she pulled out her history notebook. Flipping it open to the back cover, she presented the cardboard corner where, scrawled in Hunter's loose handwriting, was their home phone number. "Hunter wrote it down for me ages ago," Bobbi said softly, dragging a finger over the ridges where the pen had left indentations as it marked out the numbers. "Back when we were working out schedules to go to soccer games and stuff. Back when we were… you know…" she trailed off.

"Is he still not talking to you?" Skye asked incredulously.

Bobbi shrugged, dull sadness blurring her senses for a moment. "As far as I can tell. I guess I can't really blame him."

"I can," Skye scoffed. "He's being dumb. The silent treatment is stupid and staying mad over a fib is stupid, too."

"It was a little bit more than a fib," Bobbi pointed out. "I basically hid everything about my life from him."

"So what?" countered Skye. "People have been hiding everything about my life from me since the day I was born. You get over it."

Jemma raised her eyebrows and gave Skye a pointed look. "'You get over it?'"

Skye stuck out her tongue at Jemma playfully. "Whatever. You know what I mean. That was a bad example." Both girls giggled slightly at the irony of Skye's comment, and Bobbi felt her own chest lighten at the sound of their laughter.

"Well, whatever," she said with a wave of her hand. "Hunter probably wouldn't answer if he knew it was me calling, but I'm sure the rest of them wouldn't mind if you used the number to check on Fitz. If they can't talk right now, they just won't answer."

"Do you think May and Phil would let us use the phone?" Jemma asked, apprehension sneaking back into her tone.

"Definitely," nodded Bobbi stoutly. She turned to look at Skye then, couldn't resist the opportunity to poke a little fun, now that the curtain of ice had broken around them. "And I bet they'd let you use a cold pack or some frozen peas, too."

"Maybe later," Skye conceded. "If it still hurts after dinner, I'll think about it."

Bobbi agreed to that, not mentioning the fact that there was no way Skye was going to be pain-free in a few hours. It was more likely that her bruises would start to hurt more as the night wore on – Bobbi had found that the day after the fight was usually the sorest – but she figured there was no use in trying to convince Skye to go get some ice now. Jemma was right, Skye was stubborn, and Bobbi wasn't interested in forcing Skye into another fight today, even if a good-natured back-and-forth about ice wasn't nearly as serious as a full-scale brawl with Ward.

She settled herself on the floor, taking care to move her knee the right way as she lowered her body to the ground, and pulled her backpack close, determined to knock out some homework while she was here with the other two. As she did so, Jemma drifted towards the door.

"I think I want to try calling," she said gingerly. "Do you want to come, Skye?"

Skye shook her head. "You go. It's probably better if it's just one person, and I don't think Fitz would want to talk to me that much right now, anyway. He'll be happy to hear from you, though."

Jemma frowned, and she looked like she was about to argue back, but Skye didn't give her the chance. She arranged her face quickly into a relaxed, earnest smile. It didn't escape Bobbi's notice, however, that Skye's eyes didn't lose their hollowness. "Seriously, go talk to him," she insisted. "And report back. I still want to know how he's doing."

"Okay," Jemma relented, her frown still very much present.

"Do you need this?" Bobbi asked, holding out her history notebook with Hunter's number. Jemma shook her head.

"I remember it," she smiled. Bobbi had to smile back. Of course she remembered. Bobbi should have known better than to doubt Jemma's steel trap of a memory.

A tentative silence settled over Bobbi and Skye once Jemma left the room. A part of Bobbi wanted to keep asking Skye questions about everything that had happened, to try and get to the root of it all, but she thought better of it when she cut her eyes over to Skye and saw the stony scowl settle on the younger girl's face. Skye didn't really seem to be in a talking kind of mood, so instead, Bobbi slid her bio homework out and began flipping through her textbook to find the information she needed to fill in the blanks on her worksheet.

"What are you working on?" Skye finally asked, after the quiet had hung in the air for a hair too long. The stoniness had chipped away, and now Skye wore her curious face, a familiar expression.

"We just started studying cnidarians."

"Night what?"

"Cnidarians," Bobbi corrected. "Like coral and sea anemones and jellyfish, mostly, I think. We just started, so I haven't learned very much about them yet. So far, all I've got written down is that they're more complex than sponges, and they have radial symmetry."

"Like the last things you learned about," Skye pointed out. "The starfish and sea urchins. They had that radio symmetry, too."

"The echinoderms, yeah," Bobbi grinned. "Good memory. I wish I had you with me when we had our unit test on them last week."

"No you don't," Skye said with a grimace. "You know I'm lousy at tests."

Bobbi shrugged. "Sounds like you've got it to me. Maybe your teachers just aren't asking you the right questions. Or they're not asking you in a way that you can answer."

"They keep saying I'm going to start getting accommodations soon," Skye said slowly. "Stuff to make tests easier. I don't really know if I want it or not, though."

"Why not?"

Skye shrugged one shoulder, fiddled with a loose thread on her bedspread. "I just don't know if I want it anymore. I don't really think it'll help that much, and it'd just be one more thing that made me… it's just better if I don't stick out so much. It's better if I lay low for a while. They'd make me go to a different room. Everybody would see, they'd know I'm… Whatever. It doesn't really matter."

"Have you told May or Phil that you're changing your mind?" Bobbi asked. She didn't want to jump down Skye's throat and tell her this was a bad idea, especially because it seemed like Skye might be on the verge of opening up a little, but she also didn't want to encourage Skye to stop trying to get help in school.

Skye gave Bobbi a withering look. An of-course-I-haven't-said-anything kind of look. The look of a person who's spent her whole life making sure people didn't find out things and who wasn't about to just start flipping the switch and sharing her thoughts and feelings left and right. A look Bobbi had probably shot off many times herself.

"I'm just saying," Bobbi backpedaled quickly, "you might not want to make that decision by yourself. Or at least, not without talking it through with somebody else. I mean, it's your life, you should get to say, but…"

"I know," Skye grumbled. "I'm supposed to be talking to them. That was part of our deal today. We're supposed to be more honest. But I don't want to. Or, more like, I don't know how, I guess. I can't just walk up and say 'hey, I hate feeling stupid and I think getting pulled out to take a special version of the test in front of everybody is going to make me feel stupid and make other kids know that I'm too dumb to be in class with them.'"

"I mean, technically you could," Bobbi pointed out, smiling slightly to try and let Skye know that she was teasing, just a little bit.

"Sure," Skye scoffed, playing along. "And then right after that I'll sit down and tell them about how Grant Ward makes me feel pathetic and worthless and how sick I feel every time he's around because all I can think about is how he knows all the things that I already hate about myself, and about how useless and weak I am compared to him." Skye froze, her mouth still open, and Bobbi looked up to see the horror of realization slide onto Skye's face. "I mean…" Skye spluttered. "I just meant… that was a joke. Like an exaggeration. I don't really…"

"Is that why you hit him today?" Bobbi asked quietly. Skye didn't look at her, didn't say anything, but she didn't deny it either. "It wasn't just about Fitz, was it?"

"No," Skye murmured. "I mean, mostly it was. That's why I tackled him at first. To make him let Fitz go. But once I started, I… I couldn't stop. I was just so mad, Bobbi. Ward, he… I'm nothing to him. And he treats me like it. And I was so sick of it. I was tired of feeling like nothing, and I was tired of being afraid, and I… I wanted to do something about it. Stand up to him. So I did. But I couldn't even do that right. Fitz got hurt, I didn't stand a chance against Ward. The whole thing was pointless."

"It's not pointless," Bobbi assured her. "Maybe you didn't go about it in the best way, but standing up for yourself, for other people, is never pointless. Standing up for yourself matters, even if it doesn't go the way you planned, because it shows the world that you matter. It… it forces us to remember that we matter, even if it's just for ourselves. We have to believe we're worth fighting for."

Something in Skye's eyes flared, a spark of defiance that Bobbi had just rekindled, maybe against her better judgement.

"That's what I was trying to do," she said in a rush. There was almost an excitement to her words, like Bobbi had uncovered some kind of understanding that Skye had been missing. "I was fighting for Fitz and Jemma, and I guess for me too. I don't get why that's such a bad thing. Why May and Phil got so upset. Aren't we supposed to fight for people? Isn't that what good people do – stand up against bullies?"

Bobbi paused for a moment before she answered, considering Skye's words carefully. She never would have considered herself some great conduit of wisdom, but she could tell that Skye was waiting, looking for some kind of answer that confirmed what she thought about the world. Bobbi didn't want to take that away from her, didn't want to tear down Skye's spirit for fervent defending, but she felt the weight of responsibility ladening her shoulders. She had to do something no one had done for her. She had to keep Skye safe.

"It's… complicated," Bobbi began. "It's important to stand up for yourself and protect people, but you can't use that as an excuse to go flinging yourself into every fight that comes your way. Does that make sense?"

Skye's brow furrowed and her chin jutted out, almost in a pout. "I didn't go flinging… Ward's different. It's not just that he's a jerk, or that he was hurting my friends. He… he doesn't see a person when he looks at me." Skye's voice fell to barely more than a breath. "He called me nothing, Bobbi. I wanted to show him that nothing can still hit back."

Bobbi's heart seized painfully, her chest aching for Skye. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. She twisted around so that she could give Skye her full attention as she spoke, and she was reassured by the fact that Skye didn't turn away from her.

"I hear you," she said quietly. "I understand, at least a little bit. I know what it's like to feel worthless, to have somebody who thinks you're nothing and who treats you that way. It sucks, and it hurts, and it's wrong. We should be able to stand up to people who make us feel like that, should be able to fight back and take up space and prove that we're worth something. But it doesn't always work that way. People like us, we have to walk this line between proving people wrong when they tell us we're nothing and treating ourselves like we're something that matters, something that's worth protecting. Because there's no point in standing up if you have to throw yourself away to do it – that just proves them right, even if we're trying to do the opposite. You have to know you matter enough not to throw yourself away on a fight or a risky decision."

"So, what, we just roll over and take it?"

"No," Bobbi frowned. "That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that sometimes there are other ways of fighting back that don't put you at risk. I wish I had been able to stand up to my dad and fight back. All the years I lived with him, I never fought back, except for the last time, and that landed me in the hospital. And maybe that makes me a coward, but maybe it doesn't. Maybe it just means that, in that situation, standing up to him doesn't look like throwing a punch, because I know that's not a fight I can win. In that situation, maybe standing up looks like survival. Like perseverance. Like getting out and getting to a place where I can start to be my own person… a person who matters."

"Well, how are you supposed to know the difference?" Skye asked. "How are you supposed to know when it's the right decision to fight and when it's the right decision to just survive?"

"I don't know," Bobbi admitted. "I guess I'm still figuring that part out. I'm open to suggestions, though," she smiled.

"Do you think I shouldn't have gone after Ward?" Skye asked softly, after a long pause. "Do you think I made the wrong choice?"

"I don't know that either," Bobbi told her. "I know that your friends needed help, and it took a lot of guts to jump in, but you did it. I know that Fitz was in danger and your options were limited. But I also know that a lot of people got hurt, including you, even if you're pretending like that's not the case."

She flicked her eyes down to Skye's scraped chin, her purpling knuckles, and gave Skye a tight smile. Skye's cheeks flushed, and she stuck her hands under her knees, hiding them from Bobbi's view.

"Did you lecture Hunter like this after he fought a Ward?" Skye said playfully, deflecting away from a conversation about her injuries. Bobbi gave a short, humorless laugh.

"Hunter wouldn't have listened to me even if we were still talking," she said. "He's too bullheaded to take my advice, anyway."

"Not me, though?"

"You, there's still hope for," Bobbi smiled. "There's always hope for you."

The beginnings of a beam had just started creeping onto Skye's face when the door eased open and Jemma reemerged, looking forlorn. Skye blanched, and the happy expression slid quickly from her face.

"What is it?" she wanted to know. "Is it Fitz? Is he okay?"

"I don't know," Jemma fretted. "No one answered. I was too nervous to leave a message the first time, but Phil helped me write out what to say, so we called back and I left one the next time. I told them we wanted to know how Fitz was doing and that we hoped he was all right. I told them how sorry we were, too," she finished softly.

"I think that's probably all you can do for now," Bobbi soothed. She tried to offer a comforting look, but she wasn't exactly sure what shape to arrange her face into to put Jemma at ease.

"Probably," echoed Jemma. "I just wish I knew if he was all right or not. I… I don't like not knowing things."

"Not everything can be known," sighed Bobbi, settling for distraction over comfort. She gestured to her biology homework. "The answers to this worksheet, for example. Totally unknowable. The book doesn't line up with the questions."

"What are you studying?" Jemma asked, her interest piqued by the allure of Bobbi's bio textbook. She stepped closer to Bobbi and settled herself on the floor, leaning into Bobbi's side slightly to get a better look at the page. Almost unthinkingly, Jemma's finger drifted up to her face, nestling just under her ear and tapping out a gentle focusing pattern.

"Cnidarians," Bobbi informed her. "Know anything about them?"

"Lots," breathed Jemma excitedly. Apparently the distraction had worked well enough. "Cnidaria is a phylum containing aquatic animals, mainly marine. There are two main types – the medusae ones are free-swimming, like jellyfish, and the polyps don't have any way of moving independently, like coral and sea anemones. They're typically low-level predators, and some of the most venomous ones, like the sea wasp, come from the Cubozoan class. Box jellies," Jemma clarified, noticing the bemused expression Bobbi now wore.

"No kidding," Bobbi said, smiling. She was writing as fast as she could, trying to capture Jemma's sage spring of knowledge before it seeped away.

"There's this particular genus included in the phylum," Jemma continued, tapping faster as her enthusiasm brimmed and bubbled up further, "—Hydra. They're absolutely fascinating. They don't age," she said, eyes wide. "They're functionally immortal, and no one can quite understand how or why it happens."

"Are you serious?" Skye asked, dangling off her bed to peer down at the picture in the book Jemma had located for them.

"Completely," Jemma told them. "They're capable of total tissue regeneration, and their stem cells can perform self-renewal indefinitely."

"So they just keep growing new body parts forever, never dying?" Bobbi scrunched her face up, trying to understand.

"They can," Jemma explained, "although that's only a small part of it. There's a theory that they have this special protein, this transcription factor, that is supposed to regulate the cellular life cycle. Normally the transcription proteins communicate with the DNA in a cell to tell it when and how much to grow, and when to die, but the TF in Hydra organisms doesn't seem to signal for cell death."

"So it's like their cells don't have an off-switch?" suggested Skye.

Jemma nodded. "Exactly. It's like how cancer cells are mutated to keep growing and spreading without stopping, only it doesn't damage the Hydra, it sustains its life indefinitely."

"Freaky," Bobbi murmured. "It sounds like something out of a Saturday cartoon."

"Even better," Jemma grinned, "it's science."

"Where did you learn about that?" Skye asked playfully. "The Big Book of Freaky Jellyfish Facts?"

"I did some extra research on transcription factors a few weeks ago," Jemma blushed. "Mr. DeRosa mentioned it in passing during our DNA unit, just as a remark about how DNA gets transmitted from old cells to new cells, and then Fitz was wondering…" She paused, her mouth twisting sourly. There was a moment where her breathing came a little sharper, a little more labored, like she was trying to keep herself from crying, and her tapping grew sharp and agitated. After a beat or two, however, her face softened again, and she spoke quietly:

"Fitz wondered if there was a way to safely manipulate transcription at a cellular level as a means of extending life. So I looked into it and found out the Hydras do it all on their own. But it's not well-understood, and it's not exactly an ethical pursuit at this point, to try and engineer the same phenomenon in humans. Not that Fitz was suggesting we do something unethical. He was just curious, just wanted to know if it was possible. He wasn't saying we should try and do it." She looked fiercely from Skye to Bobbi and back again, almost daring them to suggest that Fitz had been interested in unethical bioengineering. No one did.

"Of course he wasn't," Bobbi agreed. "There's a difference between studying the theory of something and actually doing it in practice."

"Plus it's not like a couple of eighth graders could just start doing mad science experiments in the school lab," Skye pointed out. "Even genius ones, like you two."

"I miss him," whispered Jemma suddenly. Her tone was fragile, and her eyes were welling. "What if he doesn't… what if he…"

"You can't think like that," Bobbi said softly. "You'll drive yourself crazy worrying over things you can't control."

"I should be able to." Jemma frowned. Her tapping finger migrated down to her knee and a single, frustrated tear slid down onto her cheek. "I don't get to control so many things, but I should be able to do something for Fitz. It's not fair. We should be able to fix things. Fix people."

Bobbi didn't know what to say to that. She had no soothing proverb or witty adage to ease the helplessness Jemma was feeling, so instead she said the only thing she could, the only thing that was true.

"I know."

Suddenly, before she had really registered the movement, Jemma's head was on her shoulder, cheek squished by shoulder bone and the wispy hairs on the top of her head tickling the side of Bobbi's neck. Bobbi stretched her arm out, fighting awkwardness, and wrapped it tightly around Jemma's shoulders, only to be joined quickly by Skye, who had clambered down from the bed and joined them on the floor. Silently, they sat there, all three tangled up in each other, Skye and Jemma pressed on either side of her, the two of them clasping hands somewhere in the middle of their human knot. It surprised Bobbi how much the closeness didn't bother her – rather than feel trapped or crowded, it was instead a deep, quiet comfort that settled over them. A comfort that didn't need her empty words, just the sigh of knowing, of understanding, of sharing worry and anger and pain. Together.

Hello again! I apologize for the long wait, but I very much appreciate your patience :) Four chapters this time, to thank you for sticking with me!

Thanks for being here and reading - you all bring me so much joy!