TW for discussion of kidnapping, gun/GSW, hospital, some swearing
"Bobbi, this is Pietro," Miss Hand said as Bobbi stepped out of the car. Deep in her coat pocket, Bobbi gripped her batons tightly, forcing herself to stay steady and normal in front of this new person who was supposed to be taking care of her. "He and his sister Wanda are going to be looking after you for a little while. I knew them when they were in the foster care system as teenagers, and I know they'll take good care of you."
"Hello Bobbi," Pietro smiled. His voice was accented, somewhere between Russian and something Eastern European. She was good with languages, and she could mimic accents without much trouble, but labeling them was a little trickier. "We've heard a lot about you."
"You have?" asked Bobbi, as Miss Hand shut the door behind her. Bobbi did her best to stay focused on Pietro, although it was hard to ignore Skye's curious face peering through the window. Bobbi hoped Skye had believed the things Bobbi had said in the car. She didn't want Skye going back to that awful place feeling like she was alone and unwanted, but Bobbi had a sinking feeling that was precisely the headspace Skye was hurtling towards.
"Oh yes," Pietro chuckled. "Natasha talks about you often."
"Natasha?" Bobbi's eyebrows shot up her forehead. She swung her gaze between Pietro and Miss Hand, searching for more information. Natasha. Natasha. Did they know Natasha?
"She is our cousin," explained Pietro kindly. "We all came to America together almost ten years ago. Once my sister and I turned 18, Miss Hand helped us get custody of Natasha, so we could be together as a family. The foster system was not… not always good for us. But Miss Hand helped us often."
"Pietro and Wanda aged out when they turned 18," elaborated Miss Hand. "I knew how important it was to them to be reunited with Natasha, and she hadn't had a lot of luck in the system up to that point, so we worked together to get Wanda and Pietro licensed to foster and eventually ready to become Natasha's legal guardians. I've encouraged them to keep their foster license up to date over the years, at least while Natasha's still a minor, just so there was no chance of something taking us by surprise or disrupting their family."
"And now we can put it to use," Pietro said proudly. "Wanda is still at work, but she is eager to meet you. And Natasha will be very happy to see you, too."
"I… I didn't know you were her social worker," Bobbi spluttered, looking to Miss Hand, a little dumbfounded. "I knew she had been in foster care, and that she lived with her cousins, but…"
"You'll have to forgive me for not being more forthcoming about that information," admitted Miss Hand. "I don't usually talk about my other cases with the kids I work with."
"She is always so serious about confidentiality, that one," teased Pietro. "A good trait to have in her line of work, but not the best for socializing."
Miss Hand chuckled lightly and waved a 'shushing' hand in his direction. "Bobbi, the routine here is the same as before. Pietro and Wanda are your guardians for as long as you're staying here. Follow their rules, go to them if you have questions, or give me a call. I'll try to bring you some of your things from May and Phil's and I'll update you as I learn more. Thank you for your flexibility. I know today has been unpredictable and unnerving."
"I'm just glad everyone's okay," Bobbi said softly. "And I want things to go back to normal as soon as they can."
"Then it sounds like you and I have the same goal," said Miss Hand, gracing Bobbi with a rare smile. "I'll be in touch. See you soon, Bobbi."
Miss Hand turned to go back to her car then, and Pietro indicated that Bobbi should follow him up the path towards the house. Natasha's house, Bobbi realized. Her mind was still reeling somewhat from the reveal that her new foster home was also the home of one of her closest friends, and it took her a second to process that Pietro was talking to her. He spoke quickly, like his words were racing each other to leave his mouth, and he used his hands a lot when he spoke. They blurred as he gestured animatedly, flashes of color punctuating his speech.
"Miss Hand said a little on the phone about what happened. I'm so sorry you and your sisters went through that. It can be frightening to be so close to something as dangerous as a gun, especially when you have seen what it can do. I don't think I will ever forget the first time I saw a man shot," he said quietly. "If you would like to talk about it, any of us would be more than happy to—"
"That's okay. Thank you," murmured Bobbi, shaking her head. Right now she'd rather not think about any of it, especially the cold, sick feeling she'd had in her stomach the whole time Skye's dad had the gun trained on her or the electric, incapacitating terror that had flooded her body when she realized just how much trouble Jemma and Skye were in. She wanted to push it out of her brain for good, although she wasn't sure that would ever be possible, and she certainly wasn't ready to talk about it.
"Of course." He gave her a small smile. "You are very like Wanda and Natasha in that way, I think. They aren't much for talking, at least not at first. Me, I like to talk. But I have learned not to push too much. I can show you where you will be sleeping, if you like, or I can find you something to eat? There's no tutoring today, since it's the day before break, so Natasha should be home before too long."
Almost as if on cue, the front door banged open then, causing Bobbi to jump slightly, and Natasha barreled into the house. She was looking down at her phone, so she didn't notice them standing there, and she called out to Pietro as she shed her coat and kicked off her boots.
"Pietro, vy ne mozhete prosto napisat' mne vazhnyye novosti i ne ob yasnit', chto eto znachit," she half-yelled as she pulled her gloves off with her teeth. It took Bobbi a second to process that Natasha was speaking Russian. Natasha was speaking too quickly for Bobbi to catch all of the words, but she was pretty sure the phrases "important news" and "explain" were mixed in there somewhere.
"Natasha, yest' gost," Pietro said, clearing his throat pointedly. Guest. Bobbi knew that one. Natasha looked up then, finally realizing that Pietro was on the other side of the room, not the other side of the house.
"Kto? O chem ty govorish'?" Natasha was confused. She paused, swung her eyes away from Pietro and over to the place where Bobbi was standing awkwardly, doing her best to keep up with the conversation with her elementary understanding of Russian. Apparently Natasha hadn't known she was coming, but the surprise wasn't an unwelcome one, because her face broke into a smile as she registered Bobbi's presence. "Bobbi, chto ty—" She caught herself, paused, and started again, in English this time. "Bobbi, what are you doing here? What's going on? You and Hunter missed school and I heard a rumor that you manhandled Raina…"
"I… it's a long story," Bobbi said lamely. "And I didn't manhandle Raina. I didn't actually touch her. Kind of backed her against a wall, but she was fine."
"Bobbi will be staying with us for a little while," Pietro explained. "Did you know Miss Hand is her social worker? She called me today to see if we could help, since she knew you and Bobbi were friends." Friends. Friends. Friends. At least she was among friends.
Natasha's face darkened, eyes stormy, brow furrowed, mouth pinched. Serious face. Concerned face. "What happened? Did something go wrong at Mr. Coulson's house? Are you okay?"
Bobbi swallowed hard, and her hands inched their way towards her coat pocket, finding her batons again. She gave them a surreptitious squeeze out of sight, trying to force her heart rate to slow. Natasha noticed.
"I'm sorry," she shook her head. "That's too many questions at once. Are you okay?" Okay. Okay. No. Not okay. Nothing about today had been okay, and as the seconds ticked by, that fact was becoming more and more salient in Bobbi's mind and in her body. Her muscles felt tight, like her whole body was being squeezed.
"I…" Bobbi's throat snagged. She didn't know what to say, or how to explain that, physically, there was nothing wrong with her besides a stiff knee and some flaring anxiety. How the ones who had been through a nightmare were Skye and Jemma, and they were the ones who deserved Natasha's fierce concern. How, even though she hadn't been through nearly as much as they had, she was still feeling more emotions than she could process, nearly all of them bad, and that was almost worse than a physical pain. She meant to lie. It was easier to pretend that she was fine, would be fine. But she didn't have the strength, and, she realized, Natasha would see right through her anyway. So instead she did the only thing she could muster and shook her head. No. She wasn't okay. Nothing was okay.
"That's all right," Natasha said quietly. "You're allowed not to be okay. I'm glad you're staying with us."
"Maybe you could take Bobbi to your room," Pietro suggested. "Show her where she will be sleeping." Bobbi got the sense that he was trying to be nice and give them an excuse to go and be alone, which she appreciated more than she had expected to. Natasha flicked her gaze over to Bobbi, checking to see if that was okay, and Bobbi nodded.
"Okay, yeah, let's go," Natasha said, grabbing her backpack up from the floor, where she'd abandoned it a moment ago. "It's back this way, Bobbi."
Natasha led her down a short hallway, and Bobbi did her best to pay attention to where things were. The kitchen branched off from the living room, where they'd been, and they passed a couple of closed doors as they made their way down the hall.
"That's Wanda's room," Natasha informed her in her best impression of a tour guide, nodding at a doorway that had a curtain instead of a door. "It was supposed to be a dining room, but we turned it into a bedroom. Wanda doesn't mind the curtain-for-a-door, because she got a bay window in exchange." She said that last part like it was supposed to be funny, but Bobbi wasn't sure she understood the joke. Maybe she was just too tired and emotionally exhausted to get it.
"Bathroom's here," Natasha continued, pointing to the next door, "Pietro's across the hall, and I'm here in the back." They arrived at the end of the hallway, in front of a simple brown door. The interior panel of the door was papered in what looked like an artistically haphazard collage of photographs, drawings, and magazine pictures. Bobbi studied it, picking out as many small details as she could. Snow-covered pines, ballet shoes, a polaroid of Natasha, Pietro, and a dark-haired woman Bobbi could only assume was Wanda. Large, mismatched letters danced across the middle, declaring the door as "Natasha's Room."
"I didn't know you were a dog person," Bobbi murmured, pointing to several pictures of golden retrievers that populated a bottom corner. Natasha smirked.
"Clint added those. He's helped me fill this thing out over the years. The bullseye and Robin Hood pictures are his too."
"That's supposed to be Robin Hood?" She looked dubiously at a drawing of a stick figure with a goatee and a green hat, and Natasha laughed for real this time.
"He's not exactly an artist," she shrugged. "Plus he was, like, thirteen when he added that. He went through a whole archery phase right before we started high school."
"Are the spiders his, too?"
"No," Natasha grinned. "Those are mine."
"What about the ballet shoes? Do you dance?"
"Not as much right now, but I used to every chance I got when I was younger. I like the way I feel when I dance, plus it's a good way to work through a lot of shit. Stuff doesn't feel as… crushing… if I'm moving and working my muscles, I guess."
Bobbi nodded. She got it. It was one of the reasons why she worked so hard on the soccer field, why she never gave the sport up even when it made her schedule hectic or irritated her dad. It was why she had felt like a person totally reborn this morning when she'd run – flew, really – all the way to school. She reached out and traced a light finger across some of the pictures: Natasha and Clint, dripping wet and clinging to a raft in the middle of what looked like Lake Michigan; the two of them again, this time standing in front of giant Star Wars poster outside a movie theater; an older photograph, faded and creased, showing a group of people Bobbi didn't immediately recognize until she realized that the little red-haired girl sitting on the shoulders of a bearded man and laughing wildly at something the woman next to him had said was probably a very small Natasha. That meant that the lanky kids, one blonde and one dark-haired, sandwiched in a tight hug between another man and woman were probably Pietro and Wanda.
"That's the only picture I have with my parents in it," Natasha said quietly. "We didn't bring much stuff with us when we came to America, and I lost plenty of it while I was in foster care. But I always made sure to hold onto that."
"Everyone looks so happy."
"We were," Natasha smiled. "It was a good day. Good thing to have a picture of."
"Do you miss them?"
"Of course." Natasha paused, tightened her mouth and brow into a thoughtful face. "I miss a lot of things. But there's a lot of stuff I don't miss, too. And I've got a new life here, a good life. That's part of why I've got all this stuff on here. So I can look at it and see how things have changed, what pieces are still the same. I've got my parents on here, but I've got Wanda and Pietro and Clint, and movie tickets and a program to my ninth-grade dance recital and the map to a corn maze we all got lost in last year. It's messy, but it's life. My life."
"Messy," Bobbi murmured, almost under her breath, not quite realizing that the words were slipping out of her mouth instead of settling softly inside her brain, but not quite minding either. "Messy, messy. Life is messy, isn't it?"
"I've never seen one that wasn't," Natasha smiled. She stretched out a hand and lighted it on the doorknob. "Ready to see your fabulous accommodations at dom Romanova?"
"The Romanoff house?" Bobbi checked, making sure her translation was on track.
"Da," grinned Natasha. "Very nice."
"Spasibo," Bobbi thanked her, returning the smile shyly.
Natasha pushed open the door and gestured with mock grandeur at the room. It was small and comfortable, a lot like the rest of the house, and it immediately felt like a safe place to Bobbi, kind of the way she felt around Natasha in general. The bed was made up, although hastily so, with a patchwork quilt, and a stuffed spider rested on top of the pillows. A few pictures and posters dotted the walls, many displaying continued themes from Natasha's door, and the top of the dresser was filled with odds and ends that began to show Bobbi bits and pieces of Natasha's life – a couple pairs of dance shoes, a few loose-leaf pages harboring silly doodles of superheroes or science-fiction characters that she and Clint had undoubtedly drawn up surreptitiously during class one day, a little glass dish holding buttons and coins and a spool of red thread.
"It's not much," Natasha admitted, dropping her backpack down at the foot of the bed, "but it serves its purpose."
"It's perfect," Bobbi assured her.
"Oh, here," Natasha said suddenly, diving under the bed. She emerged, rolling a second bed out from below. A trundle, Bobbi realized. "This is where you sleep. Or you can take the top and I'll sleep down here, it doesn't matter."
"No, this is good." Bobbi looked down at the trundle bed and smiled. "Star Wars sheets?"
"It's normally Clint's bed," Natasha explained. "He sleeps over a lot, especially when… well, he just spends a lot of time here. He picked those out ages ago, kind of as a joke, but he totally loves them now."
"He won't mind that I'm using his bed?"
"He won't," promised Natasha. "And if he decides to be a baby about it, I'll just threaten to take away his waffle privileges in the morning."
"That sounds serious," Bobbi teased.
"Oh, it is. We don't joke about waffles around here." Natasha's eyes were sparking with playfulness. It felt good to joke around, to laugh and smile. A few hours ago, Bobbi would have said she might never smile again, there was so much sadness and dismay swirling around her and everyone else at the hospital. The thought sobered her, and she felt the laughter drain away as she remembered just how awful a day they had all been through. She thought of Jemma, probably still lying in a hospital bed, wondering where everyone had gone, Skye, stuck back with the nuns and feeling like the world had given up on her again. Bobbi didn't know a lot about Skye's time at St. Agnes, but every time she mentioned a little detail about what life had been like for her there, it made Bobbi want to kick something. She couldn't imagine what it would do to a kid to grow up in a place like that, and she hadn't exactly grown up in the most nurturing of homes herself. Bobbi felt her face twist sourly, and the back of her throat burned as the urge to cry swelled inside her chest.
"What exactly happened, Bobbi?" Natasha asked quietly, sinking onto the bed and looking up at her with eyes full of questions. "If you feel like saying, of course. I thought things were going well with Mr. Coulson…"
"They are," Bobbi said. She winced and corrected herself. "They were, I guess. It's… it's a long story. Complicated. And I don't even know all of the parts of it."
"You don't have to—"
"No, you ought to know," Bobbi cut her off. She cleared her throat, looked down at the floor. There were flecks of red dotting around the cuffs of her jeans. Her stomach felt like someone had slid a big codfish down her throat and her hands twitched. She wished she had her batons to twirl, but she had taken her coat off by the front door, and the wooden sticks were still tucked away in the pockets, down the hall from where she now stood, so she settled for flexing her fingers instead, squeezing them into fists and releasing them slowly. "You're close with Skye and Jemma, and I'm crashing at your house, so you ought to know what happened."
It took almost an hour for Bobbi to get out the whole story. She told Natasha about how oddly Skye had been acting after they had found her being cornered by Raina in the hallway yesterday, and about how she had woken up to find Skye and Jemma's beds empty.
"I still don't know exactly what Raina said that made Skye think she had to leave," Bobbi admitted. She was siting next to Natasha on the bed now, not looking at her as she drummed her fingers on the bedpost in an attempt to keep herself from spiraling out of control. "There was so much going on after we found them that we didn't really get to talk about that part, and we had to give our police statements separately. But I guess whatever it was, it had to do with her father, because that's who Skye went to go see."
"Her father?"
"Her biological father. She'd been trying to find whatever information she could on her biological parents, and I guess Raina knew things… She got in Skye's head, made some kind of threat. Skye snuck out in the middle of the night to go find him, and Jemma went with her. They left clues – a location on the internet browser history, Jemma's bracelet."
"Smart kids."
"Yeah," Bobbi agreed. "They are. Lucky, too. I don't know how they managed to stay alive, honestly. There were so many ways things could have ended badly."
"It sounds to me like they still ended kind of badly," Natasha said quietly. "But I'm glad they weren't worse."
"Me too."
Bobbi explained how May and Phil had gone off searching, leaving Bobbi to man the phone, but how she realized that Raina was the one she needed to talk to if they wanted any real concrete information on where Skye and Jemma might have gone.
"You ran to school?" Natasha asked, a little impressed. "How did your knee take it?"
"It's a little sore," Bobbi confessed sheepishly, massaging it without thinking. "I don't think I did any real damage, but I probably pushed it a little hard too fast."
"We can get you some ice at some point tonight," Natasha smiled. "Wouldn't want to set back your recovery."
"I found Raina pretty quickly," Bobbi continued. Her cheeks grew warm as she approached the part of the story she was the most embarrassed about. While she was satisfied with her results – she would do it the same way if she had to do it all over again – she still felt guilty for the intimidation tactics she'd pulled. It was one thing to get in the face of another player on the soccer field, or to stand up against a jerk like Ward in the hallway. It was another to channel her father, to threaten and scare information out of a person just because she could. "I cornered her. Shook her down for info about Skye and Jemma, about where Cal – that's her dad – where he might have taken them."
"I heard you did a number on her."
"I'm not proud of it," Bobbi mumbled. Now the beck of her neck was hot, too. "I didn't hurt her, but I got in her face. Used my batons. I scared her."
"Skye and Jemma's safety was at stake. You did what you had to, to make sure they came home safe. Alive. And Raina's not exactly innocent in all this."
"Still… that's not the kind of person I want to be. And now it's all over the whole school that I was… that I…"
"I'm pretty sure our current student body has the collective memory of a goldfish, so I'm sure they've forgotten and moved onto another scandal by now," Natasha assured her. "Some cheerleader cheated on a basketball player with the chess club president, or the band kids got caught smuggling weed in their tuba cases."
"You know, goldfish actually have decent memories," Bobbi said with a chuckle. "Jemma told me that once. Like, at least five months, according to her."
"I'll have to remember that. And do my best not to slight any goldfish in the future," Natasha joked. "The point is, with everything else that's happening right now, the way you got Raina to spill about Skye and Jemma should be pretty low on your list of worries."
"I guess," Bobbi shrugged. "Hunter found me interrogating her. I think it freaked him out a little, but once he figured out what was going on, he… he was really nice."
"He finally pulled his head out of his ass?"
"He did," Bobbi smiled. "Raina told us Cal had a place, a warehouse, in Two Rivers, not that far from where I grew up. Hunter drove me up there, wanted to help. He apologized, too."
"Good," Natasha said stoutly. Her eyes crinkled up into a happy face, though, and Bobbi could tell she was pleased. "It was about time."
"He told me you talked some sense into him."
"I just reminded him how much of an idiot he was being," Natasha said with a wave of her hand. "I've had to have that same talk with Clint plenty of times. They forget that other people get hurt by their stubborn pride sometimes, and that having actual human friends means sometimes people make mistakes. You can't hold onto grudges or expect other people to act the way you want them to all the time. People screw up, and you have to decide if the thing that matters more to you is the mistake or the person who made it. If it's the mistake, if it's something bad that you really can't forgive, fine. You can make that choice to cut away the hurt if it's the right thing for you. But if it's the person, then sometimes you have to swallow your pride and accept an apology."
"You sound like you're speaking from experience."
"I don't make friends easily," Natasha said quietly. "So I've had to work hard to hold onto the ones I've got. Clint and I, we both have our mulish streaks. I've screwed up plenty of times with him before, too, but we always find a way to work it out. Life's too short and we matter too much to each other to let little things trip us up anymore."
"Life's too short," Bobbi echoed, nodding slightly. "Too short. I forget that sometimes, but after today, with Jemma being…" She stopped, swallowed hard and tried not to think of Jemma's sheet-white face and the shining scarlet that stood out so sharply against it.
"Is… is she okay? What happened once you got to the warehouse?"
"I…" Bobbi faltered. She squeezed her eyes shut against the mental image, clenched and unclenched her hands. She could smell the gunmetal and thick odor of blood. She needed to twirl.
"Sorry, we don't have to talk about this part if—"
"No, it's okay. I want to tell you, I just… I think I need my batons." Dr. Garner had been encouraging her to use her techniques, to not be furtive about it or feel ashamed. Natasha was certainly trustworthy, and Bobbi wasn't sure how much longer she could go without the feeling of batons pumping in her hands. She needed to come back to Earth and get her head out of her memories.
"Your… what?"
"Batons," Bobbi said, a little more gruffly than she'd meant to. It wasn't directed at Natasha, of course. The words were just coming a little shorter and sharper, a little harder to make materialize on her tongue. She was seeing red, seeing light glinting off dark steel, seeing the sweaty, twisted face of Skye's father, threatening them. She couldn't breathe. "They're in my coat… I think I need to go get them."
"I'll go," Natasha said quickly. "Be back in a flash." And she was. Before Bobbi had time to do more than take a couple shallow, shaky breaths, Natasha had returned, batons in hand and a quirked eyebrow, open kind of expression on her face. Curious face. "Are these them?"
Bobbi nodded and accepted the batons gratefully. She gave them a couple quick spins – hard, fast twirls that grazed across her palms and danced through her fingers. They were solid in her hand, familiar, and the rhythm matched up to her heartbeat before she had time to even try and do it intentionally. She exhaled tremulously, and some of the anxiety unlatched out of her ribs.
"I've never seen those before," Natasha remarked as she watched Bobbi start to twirl faster, more expertly. "It's like what you do with your pen, though, isn't it?"
"You've noticed that?"
"I catch things," Natasha shrugged with a small smile. "Kind of my thing."
"I guess these are kind of my thing," Bobbi said thoughtfully. She got to her feet, pacing a little as she twirled. Even the few steps back and forth across Natasha's floor helped steady her breathing further, and Bobbi felt herself slowly start to reorient to the world around her. "I don't usually take them to school, but I always feel better when I've got them. I had them with me when I went looking for Skye and Jemma. Used them to get Raina talking, used them to break into the warehouse."
"That's pretty badass."
"I guess. They didn't do much good once I got inside, though. Skye's dad had a gun."
"A gun? Jesus."
"He had it pointed at me before I knew what I was doing. And Jemma…" Her throat went tight, but the steady spin of wood in her hand helped her focus. "She had been shot."
"…Oh my god."
"Skye was on top her, trying to apply pressure or whatever it is you're supposed to do for a gunshot wound. I had no idea if he was going to shoot me too or not, but since he'd already hurt her, I thought it was better not to take any chances."
"Of course not," Natasha whispered. "Jesus, Bobbi, I'm… I'm so sorry. That's… horrifying. I can't believe…"
"The cops got there soon. Hunter called them. I made him stay behind. And May got there, too. They arrested Cal, called the ambulance. We all went to the hospital. The same one my dad dropped me off at, actually. Jemma went into surgery. I think it went okay. Stuff went sideways before we got a chance to see her."
"What do you mean?"
"They called social services on us. Skye was beaten up, had a broken arm. Some cuts and scrapes, plus leftovers from her run in with little Ward last week. Jemma had a bullet in her. I can understand why the staff would be suspicious."
"They didn't know about the kidnapping? That's a pretty good explanation for all that…"
Bobbi shrugged, shook her head. "We tried to tell them, but they had to file reports. It went up the chain, I guess, and Miss Hand had to… had to take us away. Me and Skye. So I came here and Skye went back to the orphanage she and Jemma grew up at."
"Shit." Natasha sank weakly back onto her bed and pressed her hands into her eyes for a moment, like she was rubbing away a headache. "She's told me about that place before. She's got to be freaked out."
"Probably," Bobbi agreed somberly. "She was trying to put on a brave face in the car, but how could she not be? After everything she went through today, to end it all by being separated from the rest of us and sent back to a place that's done nothing but screw her up for years?"
"I can't imagine." Natasha shook her head, stared off into space. "I landed in some pretty awful foster homes before Miss Hand found me and brought me to Wanda and Pietro. But at least I never had to go back to any of them."
"I just don't want her thinking that we're throwing her away," Bobbi murmured. The corners of her eyes stung, but she blinked the tears away. "I don't want her thinking that this is some kind of punishment for what happened, or that… that we don't want her. Kids have to feel wanted. Everybody needs to feel like somebody wants them." She meant to say more, but the tears she was trying to abate spilled over, and her breath caught ragged in her throat.
She didn't want Skye to feel like that, because she knew just how painful that feeling was. She knew how being unwanted carved out an empty space in your gut and filled it instead with sourness and despair that there was something really and truly wrong with you, something that made you not worth sticking around for, not worth people's kindness or their love. She knew, logically, that this wasn't the same, that this wasn't what was happening, that May and Phil hadn't kicked them to the curb. They weren't like her mother, who had walked out on her, suitcase already packed, never once looking back to see the terrified eight-year-old girl she was leaving behind. But the feelings that bubbled up like a bitter witch's brew in Bobbi's ribs didn't pay any attention to logic, and she didn't want Skye to feel how she herself was already starting to feel, a returning chorus that had followed her for so many years of her life. "She just needs to know somebody wants her."
"I think Skye knows," Natasha said quietly, interrupting Bobbi's racing thoughts. "She might not realize it right now, because of how much everything sucks, but she knows how you feel about her. She knows what you did for her, what you'd do for her. She's a smart kid. She won't forget."
Bobbi gulped down a few mouthfuls of air, trying to quiet her hiccup-y crying, and nodded.
"I also think it's important that you don't forget you're wanted, either," Natasha continued, even more quietly. "Skye's not the only one who's been through a lot today. Not the only one who lost a family."
Bobbi let out a strangled sort of sound, somewhere between a barking laugh and a helpless sob. She swiped her sleeve across her streaming eyes brusquely. "It's not the same. I'm fine, really, I don't know why I'm so…"
"You're allowed to be upset," Natasha soothed. She stood up from the bed and drew close to Bobbi's side, not touching her, but standing close enough that Bobbi could almost feel her anyway. "You're always allowed to be upset, but especially when you've had just about the shittiest, scariest day a person can have. You're allowed to feel whatever way you feel, but," she said, suddenly very serious, "I really want you to try and not let 'unwanted' be one of those feelings, if you can. Try to take the advice I'm sure you gave Skye. Try to remember that there are a lot of people who want you, too. Mr. Coulson and his wife, Skye and Jemma, all our knuckleheaded friends, me. We want you. We're glad you're safe. And I'm here for you, for whatever you need."
Bobbi tipped to the side slightly, leaning in towards Natasha. She was a lot taller than Natasha – Natasha's head barely cleared Bobbi's chin when they stood close to one another – but all that meant right now was that the top of Natasha's head was at the perfect height for Bobbi to rest her cheek on as they stood next to each other. Feeling the weight of Bobbi's touch, Natasha reached out and looped her arm in Bobbi's, locking their elbows together since Bobbi's hands were still full of batons and not exactly free for holding. Bobbi felt the muscles in Natasha's arm tense momentarily, like she was trying to give Bobbi a reassuring squeeze with her elbow, and Bobbi felt her own muscles relax into the gesture.
"It's going to be okay," Natasha murmured. She turned her head slightly and cast her eyes upward to Bobbi's probably now pink and splotchy face. "We might have to work for it, but it's going to be okay, Bobbi."
"Okay, okay, okay." And somehow, this time, as Bobbi listened to herself repeat the mantra she had been so desperate to speak into existence earlier in the day, she found herself actually believing that it just might be possible.
Translations are rough, and from google, but should hopefully be close to the following:
"Pietro, you can't just text me you have important news and then not explain what it means," she half-yelled as she pulled her gloves off with her teeth. [...] "Natasha, we have a guest," Pietro said, clearing his throat pointedly. [...] "Who? What are you talking about?" Natasha was confused.
I apologize if they're not correct! Anglicized/phonetic Russian is not my strong suit :/