TW for mentions of violence/abuse

She felt horrible about it, but Bobbi had been avoiding Skye. Ever since Skye had come home safe on Friday night, Bobbi could barely make herself look at the younger girl, and it made her feel that terrible, termite-y kind of guilt that ate you up from the inside out. She was happy that Skye was home – the relief that had washed over her when Jemma had knocked on her door that night to say that Skye was safe confirmed that – and she wanted to be able to talk and laugh with Skye the way they had before the whole thing had happened. But she just couldn't make herself do it.

She couldn't do it, because every time she looked at Skye, she remembered the icy fear that had slid into her stomach and coated her insides when she first saw Phil's ashen face in the hallway. She remembered the anvil of dread that had weighed down her bones at the words "she's gone." She remembered how frantic and distraught Jemma had seemed when she and Phil had arrived at the principal's office, how Jemma had seemed a thousand light years away from the rest of the world as she fought to keep a secret that wounded her soul to hold.

Bobbi had understood Jemma in that moment. She had understood the need to squeeze her eyes shut and press her hands against her ears and move only to the rhythm of her own body, all just to keep the world at bay as she tried to grapple with just how overwhelming it was to exist. She understood the desperation that came with trying to hide the truth about something terrible, because you didn't know what else to do. What she didn't understand – what she couldn't understand – was what Skye had done.

At first, when they thought maybe Skye had run away, she couldn't understand how anyone would walk away from a home like May and Phil's. Bobbi had never dreamed she could live in a place where no one sneered at her very existence, where no one took a swing at her just because she was there, where no one made her feel worthless for being herself. She thought Skye had understood what a gift a house like May and Phil's was. Skye had said herself that it was the best place she'd ever lived.

Later, once they had started putting the pieces together and the truth had come out that Skye was on some secret mission to find her birthparents, Bobbi still struggled to understand how Skye could focus so intently on only her own desires and just throw away the concerns and feelings of everyone else around her. She couldn't understand, and she hated herself for it.

She knew she wasn't being fair to Skye. Skye had made a mistake, and she hadn't known it would get so out of hand. Bobbi knew Skye hadn't meant to scare them, and she hadn't meant to almost run away. Everyone else had understood. Everyone else had forgiven Skye. But Bobbi hadn't found a way to do that yet, even though she wished she could. It was a bad feeling to carry around with her, but she didn't know how to shake it.

The bad feeling stayed with her all though the weekend, and was still stewing around inside by lunchtime on Monday. That particular day, it was just her and Natasha sitting at their usual table, since the boys were all off at a soccer team meeting. The vagueness with which they had responded when Natasha and Bobbi had asked them if the meeting was an officially sanctioned one or not didn't instill a lot of confidence in them, leaving Bobbi to suspect that it was more likely a strategy session for their next move in the war with Ward. The Great Football Feud, as she had started calling it in her head.

"Penny for your thoughts?"

"Huh?" Bobbi blinked herself back to reality and realized Natasha was staring at her expectantly.

"You're a million miles away, Bobbi. What's up?" Bobbi blushed. She hadn't meant for her feelings to be on such an obvious display.

"It's… nothing. Just thinking about Skye, I guess," she shrugged, suddenly very interested in the uneaten sandwich in front of her.

"I thought you said Skye came home safe?" Natasha asked. All of her friends had heard about Skye going missing last week, since Phil left in the middle of the school day to go find her, and Bobbi had filled everyone in on Skye's return earlier that morning.

"She did," Bobbi said slowly. "That's not exactly… She's fine. I'm just being dumb."

"If whatever's on your mind has you thinking about it that hard, then I bet it's not dumb," Natasha smiled comfortingly. "You want to talk about it?" Talk. Talk. Talk. Maybe she should just talk.

"I don't know." Bobbi shrugged again. "Nothing's very organized. I feel like if I tried to talk about it, it'd just come spilling out in a big mess."

"I'm pretty organized," teased Natasha. "I've cleaned out Clint's locker for him since middle school. Somehow he always manages to fill it with useless junk and gym socks and old food by the time I clean it out again, but once I finish it always looks functional, at least for a few days. Maybe I can help you clean out your thoughts."

"Old food?" Bobbi asked, wrinkling up her nose.

Natasha grimaced. "He's disgusting. I won't scar you with the details, but let's just say I've found some colors of mold that were previously unseen by human eyes." Bobbi shuddered. She wasn't exactly the paragon of neatness, but she'd never cultured mold in her locker, as far as she knew.

"All that to say," Natasha pressed, "if I can handle Clint's fungus farm, I think I can handle whatever's rolling around in that head of yours." Bobbi's fingers twitched, and she wrapped them instinctively around the handles of her crutches. She was eager to start walking around on her own, but she was going to miss having something to grab onto when she wanted to twirl at school. She was trying to decide if she could tell Natasha what was bothering her without revealing some of the deeper reasons behind it. Natasha was sitting there patiently, her face open and calm. Kind face. Waiting face. Bobbi took a deep breath. She might as well try.

"I was really scared when Skye was missing last week," she began. She kept her eyes on her hands, which were squeezing and releasing her crutch handles. It would be so much easier to talk if she had her batons in her hands. "And everyone else was too, of course. I've never seen Phil so pale."

"It's really frightening when you think you've lost someone you care about," Natasha said quietly, not unkindly. Bobbi nodded.

"And even after we found out she was okay, and she was home… I don't know, I didn't feel better like I thought I would."

"It's a pretty big thing to just automatically feel better about," Natasha conceded. "I'm sure it was a rollercoaster waiting to see if your aunt and uncle could find her." Aunt and Uncle. Right.

"I just can't believe she'd do that to them," Bobbi said quietly. Shame bubbled up in her throat. "I'm mad at her for doing that to them, I think. I'm mad that she would just throw that away. Living with May and Phil is the best thing that's ever happened to me and—" Bobbi stopped and the feeling drained out of her whole body. Her face was numb. Her arms felt like spaghetti noodles. Her legs were leaden logs. She wanted to reach out and grab her words out of the air, shove them back into her mouth, and swallow them down into the pit of her stomach where they belonged. What had she just done?

Natasha's face didn't change. Maybe she hadn't heard her. Maybe she misunderstood. Maybe Bobbi was still safe.

"I can't pretend to know exactly what Skye was thinking," Natasha said finally, once it was clear Bobbi didn't have anything else to say. "But I know I've made plenty of stupid decisions that hurt people over the years. When you don't come from a stable home, it can make you do things you wouldn't ordinarily do. Keeping secrets, running off, being reckless… You can see how good things are with Mr. Coulson and his wife. Maybe it's just taking Skye a little longer to figure out how good the thing she's got in front of her is." Good. Good. Things could be good.

"You're probably right," admitted Bobbi. "I think I know that. I just… haven't been able to let it go, yet. I want to. I feel bad that I'm mad at her."

"You don't have to feel bad for having emotions," Natasha plied gently. "Feelings are complicated. You can't control them all the time. Just focus on the things you can control. Your actions, the way you treat people, stuff like that. Help Skye see what you see. Help her see how lucky she is."

Natasha was so calm, so sure of herself. And she was understanding, not just of Bobbi, but of Skye, of their friends. Her words were echoing in Bobbi's ears. There had been so many things out of Bobbi's control for so long. Some things still were, but Natasha was right – there were things she could take back. She had to treat people better, starting with her friends. She had to do the right thing. She had to tell the truth.

"There's… there's something else," Bobbi said timorously. She felt warm, and her stomach was clenched with the empty feeling you got right at the start of a big drop on a roller coaster. She squeezed her crutches. She had to do this. Something just felt right, even if her body was telling her it felt wrong.

"I… I said that living with May and Phil is the best thing that's ever happened to me, and… that's true. But they're not my aunt and uncle. That's not true. I've been lying to you. To all of you. I wasn't in a car accident before I came here, and I'm not waiting here until my dad recovers from any injuries. Phil's not my uncle, he's… my foster father. And May's my foster mother. I'm in foster care."

There was an agonizing silence between the two for the longest time. Natasha's face hadn't changed before, but it changed now. Her eyebrows sunk, settling over her eyes, knit together. The corners of her mouth tightened. She was mad. Or maybe just serious. Probably mad, though. Bobbi felt sick. Weeks of careful construction and coverups had all been smashed to pieces in one single second of blind stupidity. She never should have said anything.

"I know."

Bobbi's jaw went slack. "You… you know? How?"

Natasha shifted uncomfortably in her seat. Her mouth wasn't so tight, and Bobbi decided that her face wasn't mad, it was more solemn, maybe even a little sheepish.

"Just a hunch for a while. You barely ever talked about your life before you moved here. You always got a little weird when anyone called Mr. Coulson your uncle. And then, after I met your foster sisters at tutoring… well, it just made a little more sense."

"Did they say something?" Bobbi's head was swimming. She thought she had been so careful. She wasn't mad at Skye and Jemma, but she had thought they understood why she wanted to hide the truth.

"No," Natasha said quickly. "They didn't tell me anything. Not exactly. They got really excited when I told them about me being in foster care and said that I should tell you too, because it would make you 'feel better.'" She smiled a little then, but it didn't make Bobbi feel any more at ease. "They were looking out for you."

"Wait, you told them… You were in foster care?" Bobbi asked.

"For a few years."

"But why didn't… I mean, you never said…"

Natasha arched an eyebrow. "I'm not the only one." Bobbi flushed. "I guess maybe I should have said something, but I didn't want to make you uncomfortable. I didn't want you to think that I was trying to get you to confess or something. You never seemed like you wanted to talk about it, so I was trying to respect your privacy."

"Oh." Bobbi didn't know what to say. "Um, thanks, I guess." Natasha didn't seem upset at all. She didn't accuse Bobbi of being a liar or of betraying their trust. She didn't even seem to mind that she had kept Bobbi's secret right along with her for weeks.

"How long have you been in foster care? If you want to talk about it, I mean." Natasha leaned back slightly in her chair, opening her shoulders up. It wasn't like she was pulling away, like Bobbi had feared she might. Instead, it was like her entire self was inviting Bobbi to be really and truly honest for the first time since they'd met.

"This is my first time," Bobbi said, her cheeks growing warm. "I lived with my dad before. That part was true. He… he wasn't very good at taking care of me, so this woman from social services came and brought me here. She said it was temporary, until they find somewhere else for me to stay, but… I don't know if I really want to go anywhere else."

"That's good," Natasha smiled. "Not everybody gets so lucky on their first foster home. You should tell your social worker that you like it here. If she's good, she'll listen to you, maybe find something that works."

"You think so?"

"I do," she nodded. "I had a crummy one for a while, when I was a kid. Got put in some nasty homes. But later I got switched to this really cool lady, and she helped me find my cousins. She helped them get everything lined up so they could become my guardians once they turned 18."

"So you're not in foster care anymore?"

"No, my cousins were able to take custody of me when I was 10. That was after two years of all three of us bouncing around the system. They were able to stay together usually, which was nice for them. They're twins, so they've never really been apart. I wasn't quite so lucky. None of us spoke English at first, since we all got shipped here to get us away from the war with Russia, so that didn't help either. It's hard to tell your social worker you're being abused when the only English words you know are cuss words and 'no.'" Despite the seriousness of her words, Natasha's eyes had turned soft, and she was smiling again. Bobbi couldn't wrap her head around how she could be so at peace with the painful things she was recounting.

"I know it sounds terrible, but things worked out in the end. I have a good family now, and we haven't had to move since they adopted me. I have friends. I'm going to go to college next year, as long as I get accepted somewhere. My life is good. I think yours can be good, too, if you give it a chance." Chance. Take a chance.

"It is good," Bobbi said softly. "Or at least, I think it is. It's kind of confusing sometimes, but everything is so much better here than what it was before. My dad…" Her throat snagged. This was the part that she still didn't know how to say. How did you tell someone that your own father hurt you, just because he didn't like you? "I tried to pretend for a long time that things were fine with him, but that was a lie, too. Things with him were really, really bad."

The lump in her throat grew bigger, and she could hear her voice cracking. Her hands were shaking a little. The crutches weren't helping. She brought her hands up to the table and tried to press her fists into the hard flatness to steady them. Natasha reached out very slowly, deliberately, and placed her hand on the table next to Bobbi's. She didn't touch her, just lined her own fingers up parallel to Bobbi's. It was just about the nicest thing Bobbi could have ever imagined someone doing, and she had to take a shuddery breath to keep from bursting into tears.

"I'm sorry you had to live through that," Natasha murmured. "And I'm glad you're not with him anymore. I'm glad you're here with us." Something came over Bobbi, a rush of stillness and boldness all blurred together, and she felt herself sliding her clenched hand over towards Natasha's. She unfurled her fingers until they were laying flat against the table, then closed the rest of the distance between their two hands, resting the long line from her pinky to wrist right against Natasha's. It wasn't much, she knew, but somehow she could tell that Natasha understood just how much it meant to Bobbi for even the sides of their hands to touch.

"I think maybe that's why Skye running off like that bothers me so much," Bobbi admitted after a minute. "Everything with Phil and May is like living in a dream to me, and I know Skye's lived in bad places, too. She should know better than to throw that away. She should know not to take them for granted. They were so worried about her. Phil left school to find her. May drove all around Sheboygan just to bring her home. My parents would never have done anything like that."

"I think it's okay to be mad about that," Natasha told her. "It's okay to want Skye to understand how lucky she is. I also think I can understand how hard it probably is for Skye to see that. If she's been in foster care her whole life, it's probably difficult for her to believe that anything good is going to last. Maybe she was just trying to take back a little control, you know? Make something good for herself that no one could take away. I'm not saying she went about it the right way, but she's just a kid. She's not going to see things as clearly as someone older."

"You're right," Bobbi said. "I guess I'm still just trying to reconcile the knowing of all that with the feeling of… I don't know what."

"She hurt you," Natasha said simply. "She didn't intend to, I bet, but she did. She took something that mattered to you and didn't treat it with the same level of respect. There's pain in that kind of betrayal of trust. Just because you understand the reason behind it doesn't mean you can't still hurt from it."

"Has anybody ever told you that you're a genius?" Bobbi asked, a faint smile finally cracking through her rough exterior.

"God, I wish," Natasha snorted. "Clint should be telling me that every single day, but he refuses to acknowledge my gifts." She looked at Bobbi seriously then. "I'm not really a genius. I just get people, I think. One of the perks of having so much life experience at such a young age."

"Well, whatever you want to call it, thank you," Bobbi said. "For helping me sort through everything. And for not hating me for lying to you for so long."

"I'm just glad you felt like you could trust me," Natasha smiled. "I won't say anything, by the way. I'll let you tell the guys on your own time. But, for the record, I don't think they'd hate you either."

Almost as if on cue, the doors to the cafeteria banged open, and Mack, Hunter, and Clint spilled into the room, all of them giggling and shoving each other around playfully. They were still acting like goofballs by the time they reached the table and all plunked down around Bobbi and Natasha.

"I take it the soccer meeting went well?" Natasha asked with a smirk.

"Christian Ward isn't going to know what hit him," Hunter said gleefully. "This is going to blow the Jell-O thing out of the water."

"Hey, the Jell-O thing was awesome," Clint pouted. Mack laughed and clapped him on the shoulder.

"It totally was," he agreed, "but this is bigger than gelatinous desserts."

"Do we even want to know what you've cooked up this time?" Bobbi asked.

"Mum's the word, Bob, but you'll find out soon enough," grinned Hunter with a wink. Mack pumped his head up and down excitedly.

"I thought you were a reluctant participant in the prank war," Natasha pointed out, eyeing Mack with intrigue.

"They messed with my nets, Nat. It's on, now," he said seriously. "You don't mess with a goalie's nets."

"It's just not done," Hunter added. "Not sporting at all."

While Bobbi had to agree that the net was a sacred thing, she wasn't entirely sure she felt comfortable with the level of excitement the boys seemed to share over their latest plot against Christian Ward. She was prevented from expressing the sentiment, however, by the ringing of the bell.

"Come on, Bobbi," Natasha called as they all got to their feet and started drifting off towards class. "Le français n'attend personne."

"Ne demandez pas pour qui sonne la cloche; ça sonne pour le français," Bobbi returned with a dramatic wave of her crutch. Hunter rolled his eyes at the both of them.

"I have no idea why I even bother with you lot, sometimes."

After school, Bobbi found herself alone with Phil in his classroom while Skye went to tutoring. She and Jemma had been basically inseparable since Skye's return, so it didn't surprise Bobbi that Jemma had gone with her today.

"Anything interesting happen today?" Phil asked absentmindedly, as he looked over some of the worksheets on the Monroe Doctrine that Bobbi's class had turned in that morning.

"Not really, I guess," Bobbi shrugged. "We started a unit on echinoderms in bio. You know, starfish and sea urchins and stuff like that. Did you know that all echinoderms have radial symmetry? All of them, totally symmetrical."

"I did not know that," Phil chuckled. "You should ask Jemma when you see her. See if you can stump her."

"I don't think that's possible," smiled Bobbi. Phil's eyes caught her expression, and he mirrored it.

"It's nice to see that smile of yours come back," he said casually. "I've missed it." Bobbi blushed furiously and ducked her head. It had never occurred to her that someone would notice that she'd stopped smiling, but to hear Phil point it out made her feel a little self-conscious, and maybe a little touched, too.

"I guess I've been a little preoccupied," Bobbi said. "A lot on my mind."

"Like what?"

"Just… I don't know, school, friends… all that stuff with Skye."

"That is a lot," Phil said sympathetically. He paused for a moment, like he was considering whether to say something or not. "Skye's been on my mind recently, too. And you and Jemma. That was a pretty intense situation for all of you to be in the last couple of days. I've talked with the other two, but you and I haven't really had a chance to go through it all."

"That's okay," Bobbi tried to interject. It was one thing to confess all of her guilt and frustration over the situation to Natasha, but another entirely to say it to someone like Phil.

"No, I should have checked in with you sooner. I'm sorry for not doing that," he said seriously. "Your feelings are just as important as everyone else's in our family." Family. Family. Family.

"It's okay," Bobbi said again. "I talked about it with Natasha a little bit."

"She's a good egg," smiled Phil. "I'm really glad the two of you have become friends."

"I told her that you were my foster dad, not my uncle," Bobbi admitted. "She was really nice about it. She used to be in foster care, too, a long time ago, so she kind of understood everything that was going on."

"Bobbi, that's great. I'm so proud of you."

"What for?" Bobbi was confused. Coming clean after weeks of lying wasn't something to be proud of, it was something to chastise, to question why it had taken so long or why she hadn't just been honest in the first place.

"For opening up. For being honest. It didn't bother me to pretend to be your uncle, of course, but I'm really happy you found someone who you trust enough with the real truth. It can be scary to be so vulnerable with another person."

"So you weren't upset that I was lying? Or that I made you have to lie, too?"

"No," Phil said gently. "I understood why you wanted to keep that part of your story private. I just wanted to help you feel more comfortable here. I was hoping that you would make some friends, and if protecting part of your past helped you do that, I wasn't going to interfere."

"I've never met somebody quite like you before," Bobbi said quietly, after a minute. "You're… nice. I mean, not just nice. Way more than nice." She winced a little at the way she was mincing her words. This wasn't what she was trying to say. "You pay attention, and you listen, and you're calm and patient. I guess… you're just not what I was expecting. For a dad, I mean."

"Bobbi…" Phil sounded a little choked up, but he cleared his throat. "That's one of the nicest compliments I think I've ever received. Thank you."

"It's like…" Bobbi began. Her voice quavered slightly, but she forced herself to try again. She couldn't explain it, but she suddenly felt like she owed Phil the same honesty she'd given to Natasha earlier that day. "You're so much better than a normal person needs to be. You're letting me stay at your house. You're feeding me and giving me money, even though I used it to help Skye do something really reckless. You helped Jemma when that principal guy was antagonizing her. And you and May dropped everything once you'd heard Skye was missing. You spent the whole day looking for her. Not everybody would do that. My parents wouldn't do that."

"You know," Bobbi continued, somewhat dumbfounded at the rush of words coming out of her mouth. It was like she couldn't stop them. "I haven't heard a single thing from my mom since she walked out on us. Not one phone call or birthday card. I don't even know where she lives anymore. And my dad would never care about me enough to come looking for me if I disappeared, unless he wanted me to come back and make his dinner or something. He… he didn't even try to visit me when I was in the hospital, and he was the one that put me there."

"Bobbi…"

"I mean, it's not like I wanted him to, and he wouldn't have been allowed to anyway. But he didn't show up once, at least, not until he thought it was time to take me home. I heard him yelling at the nurses. He didn't want to pay for my surgeries, either. Sometimes… sometimes I'm not even sure he was happy that I was still alive. Maybe he thought things would be easier if I wasn't around, too, just like my mom." Her breathing was ragged in her chest with the effort to keep from crying. "I… I always thought he loved me, deep down, somewhere, but… I don't know if I believe that anymore. I don't think he loves me at all." She hadn't expected that to come out. She hadn't ever even fully formed the thought in her own head, but there it was, out in the open, a horrible, rotten, wad of shameful truth.

"I don't know your dad, Bobbi, and I can't pretend I know what he thinks or feels, but I do know this," Phil said. His eyes were heavy, and the lines on his face were straight. A very serious face. "I know that you are a spectacular young woman who is intelligent, and strong, and kind. I know that you did not deserve to be treated the way you were. I know that you do deserve to be loved and cared for by someone who sees you for the gift that you are. I don't know if your dad loves you or not, but if he doesn't, then he's wrong. And he's missing out on one of the greatest kids he could have ever known."

Tears were leaking down onto Bobbi's face, and she bent her head forward, her shoulders shaking with silent grief. She had tried for so long to get her father to give her even the slightest indication that he saw her as more than a cook or a maid or an odd-mannered annoyance or a waste of space. Years of time and energy and hope and longing had been poured into him, clinging to the desperate prayer that one day, he could want to see her for real. He never had, but Phil, after just a month of knowing her, and with a few simple words, had just shown her that the Bobbi he saw was a person. A real live, living, breathing, whole and human person who could be worthy of not just respect and decency, but of something as radical as love.

The sound of footsteps flooded her ears, and Bobbi realized that Phil had gotten up from his desk and had come to kneel right beside her. He checked to see if it was okay, then placed his hand gently on Bobbi's shoulder and held her close.

"I've got you," he said softly. "I've been looking for you, Bobbi, and I've finally got you."

If google translate hasn't failed me, then the French that Nat and Bobbi exchange should read thusly:

"'Come on, Bobbi,' Natasha called as they all got to their feet and started drifting off towards class. 'French waits for no one.'

'Ask not for whom the bell tolls, the bell tolls for French,' Bobbi returned..."

Not a super important detail, but a playful little conversation, I thought :)