TW for fighting, bullying, ableism, minor swearing
The mood the next morning was somewhat gloomy, mirrored perfectly by the bleak, steely skies and snap of cold that clipped through the air. A grey and grim November morning for a grey and grim day. Skye didn't seem nervous about her in-school suspension the way Jemma did, but Bobbi could tell that the stiff soreness of her bruises wasn't half as painful as the injustice Skye felt she was facing.
They had heard no news from Fitz's family, and there was little conversation at the breakfast table or in the car on the way to school. Bobbi couldn't say she was surprised by that fact, but it didn't stop her from flashing a sympathetic smile in the rearview mirror as Skye and Jemma piled out of the car and trudged up the front steps of the school to report to the office.
"They'll be okay," Phil said, his eyes never leaving their backs until the front door of the school swung shut behind them. Bobbi could tell he was saying it more to himself than to her, so she didn't say anything back, but she couldn't help but murmur a chorus of "okay, okay, okay" under her breath. It certainly couldn't hurt to put a few more assertions of 'okay' into the world, as far as she was concerned.
When she slid onto her stool next to Mack in homeroom ten minutes later, she didn't wait for their usual exchange of greetings before launching into the question she might regret asking.
"Have you seen Hunter today?"
Mack blinked in surprise before registering her question and breaking into a teasing smile. "Good morning to you, too."
"Sorry," Bobbi said quickly. "Hi."
"Hi," Mack returned cheerily. "And no, I haven't seen him. Not that that's particularly unusual these days. I'm pretty sure he takes the long way to his homeroom to avoid passing my locker. Why, what's up?"
"I wanted to ask him…" Bobbi faltered. "I mean, who knows if he'd even listen, but I wanted to check on him. Ask him about how Fitz is doing."
"Turbo?" Mack's expression darkened quickly. "What about Turbo? What happened?"
Bobbi explained as best she could, trying to fill in all of the holes without really having all of the dirt. "We haven't heard anything from them," she finished, once the story had reached its conclusion, "so I was just wondering if Hunter could tell me anything about Fitz. For Jemma and Skye."
"And you wanted to make sure Hunter was holding up okay, too, right?" Mack asked, giving her a very knowing look. Bobbi felt her cheeks grow warm.
"Wouldn't you be a little shaken up if somebody pummeled your little brother?" she countered, with as much nonchalance as she could muster.
"I'm not a violent guy, but I'd clobber anybody who laid a hand on Ruben," Mack said seriously. "I'm honestly considering clobbering Ward for touching Turbo."
"I think you'd have to get in line behind Hunter," Bobbi pointed out. "Which is another thing I'm worried about. Hunter already got suspended for fighting once. I don't want him doing something stupid just because he's upset about what happened to Fitz."
"You and me both," grumbled Mack. "Not that he'd let us help him right now either way."
"Doesn't mean we shouldn't still be on the lookout."
"I'll keep my eyes peeled if you will," Mack said, a small smile returning to his face. She could tell he was trying to make her feel better. "Bet you I can find him causing trouble before you do."
"You're terrible," Bobbi laughed. "And you're on."
Mack lost his bet. Bobbi had just walked out of Spanish and was on her way back down the hall to bio when the rumblings of angry voices drifted down the hall and snaked into her ear, sending a cold chill from her skull all the way down her spine. Even if she hadn't recognized the voices, she would have known who it was. Her pulse quickened in time with her steps as she hurried down the hall as fast as she could without tweaking her knee. Hunter wouldn't be happy to see her, but she had to keep him from getting expelled, which is exactly where she feared he would be heading if left to confront Ward on his own.
The scene in the middle of the hallway was exactly what Bobbi worried it might be. A small cluster of kids were gathering around, watching the theatrics as Hunter, red in the face and as upset as Bobbi had ever seen, was doing his best to stare down a sneering Christian Ward.
"Families are supposed to be off-limits!" Hunter shouted, sticking a warning finger in Ward's chest.
Ward slapped Hunter's hand away and took a threatening step towards him. "You don't know what you're talking about, Hunter, as usual. Get out of my face before I rearrange yours."
"You bloody well know what I'm talking about!" bellowed Hunter. "Your lunatic brother nearly killed my cousin, and if I find out you had anything to do with—"
"Your cousin got his ass handed to him because he messed with the wrong people. It's not my fault Grant knows how to defend himself and your scrawny spaz of a cousin can't hold his own—"
"Don't call him that!"
"Besides," Ward added, a sickening, slithery look of gleeful malice sliding across his face, "it sounded like the little twerp had it coming. He could use a little toughening up. Runs in the family, I guess."
"You absolute, loathsome—" Hunter was spitting mad, so beside himself that his words fizzled into angry spluttering. In almost slow-motion, Bobbi watched as his muscles tensed, and she could tell that he was about to lunge at Ward. Before he had a chance, before she had fully registered what she was doing, Bobbi jumped forward and grabbed Hunter from behind, wrapping her arms tightly around his chest and restraining him from making a horrible mistake.
"Hunter, don't!"
"What the—?" Hunter twisted around, arm already flailing out to defend himself against a new attacker. Bobbi steeled herself for a good pop on the side of her face, but as soon as he saw it was her, Hunter dropped his arm immediately and tried instead to wriggle out of her grasp. "Let me go, Bobbi."
"Not until you can walk away," she said firmly, holding tight to him as he struggled. "Don't do something you'll regret."
"Yeah Hunter, listen to your girlfriend," Ward jeered. "Just walk away, like a good little boy."
"You shut up," Bobbi growled, glaring daggers at Ward. "You're lucky your brother didn't hurt my sisters the way he hurt Fitz, or I'd be coming after you myself."
"Oh, like I'm so intimidated by that threat," laughed Ward cruelly. "Even if you weren't hobbling around on a gimpy leg, there's nothing about you that scares me. What are you going to do, chant some weird little repetitions at me until I give in?"
"You don't want to find out," Bobbi warned. Ward laughed again.
"Why don't you just stick to being Hunter's ringside girl, instead, huh? It's better if the eye candy doesn't talk."
"Shut it!" Hunter barked, renewing his attempts to extricate himself from Bobbi's hold. "Let me go, Bobbi, I swear to god—" Go. Go. Let me go.
As much as Bobbi wanted to let him go, as much as she wanted to go and plant her knee, brace or not, directly below Ward's belt and watch him howl, Bobbi forced herself to stay strong, to stand there stoically and take Ward's crass insults and Hunter's desperate efforts to go after him. This wasn't a fight worth having, especially not after everything that had happened and the thin ice they were all on. This was exactly the sort of thing she had tried to steer Skye away from, and she knew it wouldn't be setting much of an example if she didn't take her own advice.
"You know who the real lucky ones are?" Ward asked, inclining his chin towards them in a smug, disdainful perusal. "It's you two. You're lucky Coach Garrett and my parents were able to convince the school board to overturn that whack-job principal's suspension of Grant. Him not getting unfairly punished by the system when he was the one who was attacked by your crazy families is the kind of justice that puts me in a good mood. And since I'm in such a good mood, I'm not going to grind your face into the ground. As a gift. So you're welcome, Hunter. Enjoy putting your cousin's scrambled egg, Humpty-Dumpty brain back together again. You always seemed like a good fit for a nursemaid."
And with that he oozed away, grinning like a coyote that had just finished mauling a rabbit, although at least a coyote had the excuse of hunting for survival, Bobbi thought. Hunter struggled against her grasp once more, finally wrenching himself free once Ward had disappeared around the corner and the crowd had dissipated, drifting off to their next classes.
"You should have let me at him," Hunter glowered, massaging his shoulder a little from where Bobbi had been holding him tight. "Why the hell did you stop me?"
"Would have thought that was pretty obvious," Bobbi said shortly. "Going after Ward is a stupid thing to do, Hunter. Do you want to get expelled?"
Hunter didn't answer her, glared at the floor. He crossed over to where his backpack was lying previously abandoned on the floor and swung it back onto his shoulders.
"You're just going to ignore me?" she asked. She tried, and failed, to mask the incredulity that had crept into her tone. She wasn't a foolish optimist, she didn't expect that this would be some great bonding moment where they'd suddenly make up and go back to being friends, but she'd at least thought he might stop freezing her out entirely. Undeterred, she changed tact.
"Is Fitz okay? Can you at least tell me that? We're… worried about him. Skye and Jemma, they… they want to know how he is." Hunter didn't turn around, but at least he had stopped walking away from her. "Please, Hunter. I need to be able to give them some news."
"My aunt took him to the hospital last night," Hunter said, his voice low and flat. A hurting voice, a helpless voice. Bobbi's heart ached at Hunter's dismay, but she knew better than to close the distance between them or to enter his line of sight. "Got him a CT scan. No bleeding, no broken bones. He's got a mild TBI though, nasty concussion. He can't remember the fight, or much right after it either. He's… he's going to be okay, but he's… not like himself. He's dizzy and drowsy and he keeps getting confused. My aunt's keeping him home the rest of the week, and he's going back to the doctor in a day or two."
"Hunter…"
"And now that monster of a kid, who choked Fitz and knocked him unconscious, who broke his big, brilliant brain, is going to get away with it, no time served." Hunter let out a strangled kind of laugh, the sound of someone so at loose ends with a horrible situation that there was nothing to do but laugh instead of crying. Above them, the bell rang, but neither one made any kind of mad dash to class.
"We won't let him get away with it," Bobbi started to say. "He's done way too much to just be let off without so much as a warning. And Fitz, he's… he's resilient. He'll pull through—"
"Please don't try and be nice to me," Hunter cut her off. He turned around to look at her full-on for the first time since their falling out. His face was wan and empty. Pain. Heartbreak. Her fault, Ward's fault, the world's fault. "I'm still mad at you, and I can't take you being nice. I just can't deal with that right now."
"Okay," Bobbi said softly. "I'll back off. I'm sorry."
"It's fine. We just need to go back to not talking, okay? You've got your update, and we're late for class."
He turned then, trudging away towards biology. Bobbi watched him go and was overwhelmed by the feeling that she should have handled that differently, but not entirely sure what she should have done or said instead. Ward had called Fitz Humpty-Dumpty, but he wasn't the only thing that needed to be put back together again. She was confident that Fitz could heal, but the fractures between her and Hunter were something that she was starting to worry had no fix, not if he still didn't even want to talk. Still, she felt like she owed it to him to keep trying, especially now that he was hurting and alone.
"Hey Hunter?" she called, a thought occurring to her. He stiffened, and Bobbi saw his head twitch around towards her ever so slightly. "It's exhausting being the one on the outside. The one in the crosshairs. If… if you decide you want a change of pace, someone to be nice to you for a little bit, you know where to find me."
He didn't look back, but the sound of his voice bounced down the empty hall towards her, sliding along the linoleum and straight up to her ears. Two simple words, but somehow the best thing she'd heard all week. Two words that meant maybe she had done something that all the king's men couldn't, that maybe not all hope was lost for them yet: "I know."