TW for brief mentions of kidnapping/GSW, swearing
She and Natasha spent the rest of the afternoon hanging out in Natasha's room. Bobbi had decided she'd rather be distracted from the events of the day, so they filled their time with as many other things as they could find – fooling around on Natasha's phone, laughing about stupid, meaningless things, and talking, talking about anything they could find to keep Bobbi's mind off of how off-kilter she felt under the surface.
As evening fell, a soft knock came on the door, drawing them both back to the world. A woman's voice drifted their way.
"Natasha? Bobbi? Would you like to have something to eat? Dinner is ready." The voice was gentle, a little raspy, like Natasha's got sometimes, and bore the same lilting accent as Pietro's, just a little thicker.
Natasha stood up from where she'd been dangling off the bed, unfolding her limbs and sliding her phone back into her pocket.
"Da, my idem, sestra," she called through the door with a smile.
"You call her 'sister?'" Bobbi asked, joining Natasha and following her down the hall.
"It's more of an endearment thing," Natasha shrugged. "There's not really a word for cousin in Russian, so a version of brother or sister gets thrown around a lot. Plus we don't exactly have the most normal of living situations. They're my cousins, but we're close enough to be siblings, and they've raised me since I was ten, so they're kind of like second parents, too."
"I like it," Bobbi smiled. "Anytime you can feel closer to a person… that seems like a good thing to me."
They reached the end of the hall and spilled out into the living room, where Pietro was waiting with a young woman with dark hair. Bobbi recognized her from the pictures on Natasha's door.
"You must be Bobbi," the woman said kindly. She fiddled with the silver bracelets that adorned her wrists, but her eyes were warm and her nose crinkled up a little as she smiled. Happy face. Welcoming face. "I'm Wanda, Pietro's sister."
"Younger sister," Pietro interrupted, a playful gleam in his eye.
"Twin," clarified Wanda with a smirk. "He is only older by a few minutes, but he has never let it go. Always in such a rush to be first, Pietro."
"Life moves fast," Pietro chuckled. "I have to be faster."
"I know the circumstances are not ideal," Wanda said turning to Bobbi, "but we are happy to have you here. Natasha has spoken of you often. You are a good friend to her."
"She's a good friend to me too," Bobbi said shyly. "Thank you for letting me stay here. I'm really glad I didn't have to go somewhere totally new."
"You are very welcome," Pietro grinned. "Now let's eat, hmm? I'm hungry and Wanda's paprikash is always best when it is hot."
They all followed Wanda into the kitchen, where she doled out bowls of a reddish stew – paprikash, Bobbi assumed. Bobbi inhaled deeply, savoring the sweet, smoky aroma drifting toward her from the stove, and her stomach rumbled. She wasn't sure how long it had been since she'd eaten the vending machine muffin back the hospital, but it was certainly long enough that she would have devoured anything put in front of her. Lucky for her, the paprikash looked delicious and, Bobbi was delighted to find, after they had taken their seats at the simple wooden table squeezed in the corner of the kitchen, it tasted as good as it looked.
They were about halfway through their food when there was a clatter from the back of the house, like something large falling from a considerable height. Against her will, Bobbi jumped, sending her spoonful of paprikash sloshing down her front, and her muscles all tensed. Her knuckles went white as she gripped the edge of the table in one hand and her spoon in the other.
"That had better not be who I think it is," Pietro warned Natasha, although the twinkle in his eye didn't match the words he was saying. He didn't seem to be upset or worried, which surprised Bobbi almost as much as the sudden noise had.
"I do not understand why he doesn't just use the front door like a normal person," Wanda said, shaking her head.
"He's an idiot, that's why," Natasha smirked. "And he thinks it's funny to be a secret agent. Which it kind of is."
"You encourage him too much," Wanda laughed as Pietro stood up from the table and headed down the hall in the direction of the noise. Natasha got up from the table, too, and began ladling out another bowl of food.
"Sorry, what's…?" Bobbi looked around, confused.
"Clint's here," Natasha explained, returning to the table, bowl in hand. "He likes to come in through my window even though the door's obviously a much easier option. He's a dork."
"He's destructive," Pietro clarified. He had come back into the kitchen, this time pulling Clint along with him by the scruff of his neck. Clint was grinning, though, and Pietro was biting back a laugh. Bobbi got the sense that this was somewhat of a routine for them, and that no one was actually bothered by Clint's behavior. She felt herself start to relax. "He knocked your shelf off the wall this time, Natasha."
"I lost my footing on the windowsill—"
"You know, one of these days, the neighbors are going to mistake you for a burglar," Wanda chided as Clint took his seat and began eating heartily, as if this were the most normal thing in the world. "You are lucky no one has called the police on you."
"I think the neighbors have seen enough of Clint to know he's not a burglar," Natasha pointed out. "You didn't break anything on my shelf, did you?"
"Just knocked some stuff over. Books, that big rock from the lake that looks like Jabba the Hutt. Nothing fragile," Clint promised around a full mouth. "Hi, Bobbi," he added, noticing for the first time that there was an extra person at the table. "What are you doing here? You weren't at school today."
Bobbi couldn't do much but gape, trying to keep up with the speed of the new developments and Clint's questions. She opened her mouth, but no words came. She didn't know how to explain.
"She's staying with us for a little while," Natasha told him, once it was clear that Bobbi wasn't going to answer. "Things got complicated."
Clint squinched his brows together – curious face – but didn't press. Instead, he flashed her a gentle smile. "You're in good hands here. Wanda and Pietro take better care of me than my own parents—"
"Hence why you are always climbing through our windows," teased Pietro.
"—so they'll definitely look out for you," Clint finished, ignoring Pietro. "I'm sure Natasha has already given away my bed, but for the record, I would have let you take it anyway. Couch works for me, too."
"Just share with me, dummy," Natasha rolled her eyes. "There's no reason to sleep on the couch."
"I wouldn't dare be so presumptuous," Clint said, pretending to be aghast. Natasha gave him a playful shove.
"Just don't touch me with your icicle feet and we'll be fine."
"Excuse you, my feet are perfectly toasty," Clint protested. "Your feet, on the other hand, are subzero."
"I'm Russian," said Natasha, sticking out her tongue at him. "We were built for the cold. What's your excuse?"
"You could just sleep with socks on," Wanda pointed out, but she was immediately met with a resounding chorus of "no's" from Pietro, Natasha, and Clint, who all looked appalled.
"I'm not subjecting myself to a sweaty foot prison all night," Natasha said stubbornly.
"Every time you bring this up, I wonder if we're actually related," Pietro added, shaking his head with playful solemnity. "That my own flesh and blood would really spend the whole night with socks on under the blanket…"
"They are cozy," Wanda insisted. "Plus your feet stay warm when you get out of bed."
"What about you, Bobbi?" Clint asked. "Please tell me you're on the side of sanity, here."
Bobbi shrugged and felt her face grow warm. Suddenly, inexplicably, she was feeling very shy with everyone's eyes on her, waiting for an opinion. "They're okay sometimes, I guess. Like when it's really cold. It's hard to fall asleep with cold feet. I usually lose them during the night, though. Kick them off, I guess."
"Ha!" Pietro said triumphantly, waggling his finger in the air. "Off by morning. One more for anti-sock."
"Do not be silly, she chooses to put them on before bed, which is a clear pro-sock behavior," Wanda teased back. She gave Bobbi a smile to let her know that none of them were taking the debate too seriously. No one was upset with her answer.
"You're both wrong," Natasha laughed. "Bobbi's obviously Switzerland, and she's just too polite to tell us we're all being ridiculous."
"It has been so long since someone was polite in this house, I almost forgot what it looks like," Wanda chuckled. She stood up from the table then and began clearing away the now empty dishes. Bobbi tried to hop up and join her, but Wanda gently bossed her back to her seat. "You do not need to do that. We have a system."
"Wanda clears," Pietro explained as he stood and stretched his long arms over his head before crossing to the sink. "I wash. Clint dries. Natasha puts away. The cleaning goes very quickly this way."
"You're welcome to take my spot if you want," Clint offered with a grin. Natasha rolled her eyes at him.
"Nice try, lazybones."
With all four of them working, it only took a few minutes to clean the kitchen. Bobbi felt bad just sitting there watching them, and she tried more than once to find a way to be helpful. Eventually Wanda took pity on her and handed her the Tupperware bowl that contained the paprikash leftovers.
"Would you put that in the fridge for me?" she asked, even though she was standing just as close to the fridge as Bobbi was. Bobbi didn't mind. She was just happy to have something to do. Wanda watched her curiously as she found a spot on the top shelf to slide the bowl in. "You do not like to be idle, do you?" Bobbi blushed and felt her eyes pull downwards to the floor as she shut the fridge gingerly.
"Pietro is the same way," Wanda said kindly, with a warmth that drew Bobbi's gaze back up until she was watching Wanda's hands twist around her bracelets instead of staring at the pattern in the linoleum. "I don't think he ever stops moving."
"I am not the only one," Pietro pointed out with a laugh. "But fidgeting with your hands is less obvious than zipping around the room."
"Durnaya golova nogam pokoya ne dayot. No resting feet or idle hands among us."
"I just like to help," Bobbi shrugged. "I'm used to it. I did a lot of the cooking and cleaning when I lived with my dad, and we took turns with the chores at May and Phil's. I want to pull my weight."
"You do not need to worry about that," Wanda assured her. "We are here to do the heavy lifting for you right now. But if it would make you feel better, you are always welcome to help."
Pietro handed Clint the last bowl, dried his hands, and stifled a yawn. "I am off to bed. Spokoynoy nochi, sestry. Good night Clint, Bobbi."
"Spokoynoy nochi," Wanda echoed, bidding him good night as he drifted out of the kitchen and down the hall.
"He does deliveries for a produce company," Natasha explained as she received the now dry last bowl from Clint and put it away with a soft click of the cupboard door. "Their farms supply a lot of restaurants and stuff, and they do deliveries early in the morning, which means he gets up before the sun."
"He might have the right idea about an early bedtime," Wanda said thoughtfully as she eyed Bobbi, who was trying and failing to suppress the yawn she had caught from Pietro. "It has been a busy day. We could all use some rest."
It didn't take long for Bobbi, Natasha, and Clint to get ready for bed, even with all three of them taking turns in the bathroom. Bobbi appreciated the opportunity to wash up – it felt good to shower and wash away all of the parts of her day. By the time she was finished, there was no trace of hospital or warehouse left on Bobbi, and the pajamas Natasha lent her, while a little short around the ankles, were soft and comfortable.
"So what's the story?" Clint asked, once they had all settled in Natasha's room. "I'm stoked you're here of course, but this seems like it came kind of out of the blue." He was dangling off Natasha's bed, flipping through a comic book that he apparently had stashed in her desk. Natasha had convinced Bobbi to let her braid her still damp hair, so the two of them sat on the floor, Natasha behind Bobbi, working her fingers through the waves and tangles, but never pulling. Bobbi couldn't remember the last time someone had touched her hair, much less brushed and braided it for her, but something about Natasha's soft, relaxed approach made it feel like the most natural thing in the world.
"Long or short version?"
"Short's fine," Clint decided. "No need to go into all the gritty details tonight."
"Short version, Skye and Jemma went to go see Skye's father, who kidnapped them. Hunter and I went to go track them down. Jemma got shot. CPS got called at the hospital, and May and Phil are under investigation until further notice, so my social worker brought me here."
"That's the short version?" Clint gaped. His brow furrowed for a second, and he set down the comic book, turning himself right side up. A thunderclap kind of face. "Wait, did you say your foster sister got shot? What the hell? Is she okay?"
"I think so," Bobbi said quietly. She stared hard at her hands in her lap, which were cradling her batons, and blinked a few times to ward off any potentially oncoming tears. Her grip tightened and she ran a thumb along the side of the wood. "I got moved away from the rest of the group before May could come back and tell us how Jemma's surgery went, but I think if something bad had happened, they would have told us." Behind her, Natasha inhaled stiffly through her nose, and one of her hands rested briefly on Bobbi's shoulder before returning to her hair.
"Maybe we can ask Miss Hand the next time she comes by," Natasha suggested. "She wouldn't want you in the dark this whole time."
"Dark, dark, dark," Bobbi nodded as she echoed, not much above a whisper. Her gaze drifted up to Natasha's window, to the dark sky outside it. It had been so cloudy the last few days there weren't many stars to see. Not much light in the sky at all. She wondered if Jemma had a window in her hospital room, if she could see any stars. She wondered if Skye had any light around her, either. Something dull and achy gnawed in the pit of her stomach, and she forced herself to look away.
"Do you stay over here every night?" she asked Clint suddenly, settling on something that would hopefully change the subject and get Clint and Natasha talking so that she wouldn't have to anymore.
"Not every night," Clint shook his head. "But a lot of the time, yeah. Things are better over here. Less shouting, less guilt tripping, less 'why can't you be like your brother'-ing."
"I didn't know you had a brother."
"Barney, yeah. He's older. A senior over at U of Iowa. He's a major dickhead and he just got home for Thanksgiving break."
"Ah, so that's why you came over tonight," Natasha said sagely. "I was wondering. You're usually in a car over to Waverly to do the holiday thing with your cousins by this point."
"Barney wanted to come home, and the cousins are at some dumb rowing thing over in Clear Lake, so my folks decided to skip the festivities and stay here. Lucky me."
"Lucky me, you mean," Natasha said, a smile in her voice. "Now I get to have two of my best friends here for the holidays." She reached the end of Bobbi's braid and quickly cinched it with a hair tie. "Does that feel okay?" Bobbi nodded, then swung her head from side to side slightly, feeling the tail of her braid sway against her back. Every hair stayed in place.
"Looks good," Clint grinned. "Way better than the time she tried to braid my hair."
"I can't see that going well," Bobbi said dubiously, flicking her eyes over to Clint's very short hair.
"We were 12, and Clint had longer hair then."
"Not long enough for braiding."
"It was one padawan braid!" Natasha protested, laughing. "You still haven't let it go."
"I'm just saying, the Hannah-Montana-extension was not a good look for me," Clint said cheekily. Natasha scooped up a pillow from the floor and chucked it at Clint's head. He just laughed and ducked, so the pillow flopped harmlessly against the wall behind him, then grabbed another pillow and tossed it their way, side-arming it like a frisbee. The pillow spun and would have smacked Natasha in the face, had she not grabbed it out of the air before it could reach her.
"You can't trick-shot me," she teased. "Your aim is good, but my reflexes are better. You always forget."
"She's so cocky," Clint joshed, shaking his head Bobbi's way, like they were in on the joke together. Bobbi rolled her eyes at him and caught the slight look Natasha flashed her way. A faintly raised eyebrow, a tiny inclination of the chin. Scheming face. Let's-get-him face. Bobbi tucked her batons under her leg and casually took the pillow from Natasha's hands.
"You're one to talk," Natasha shot back with a snort. "Mr. Never-Misses-A-Shot-And-Makes-Sure-Everyone-Knows-It."
"Okay, first of all, that's a terrible nickname, even as a jab," Clint snickered. He stretched his top half down off the bed as far as he could without falling, leaning in close to Natasha's face. "And second of all, you know that's all a part of my charm. A carefully crafted veneer of confidence and capability to mask my inner pain." They were both laughing, and neither one paid much notice as Bobbi shifted slightly to get a better angle, pillow still in hand. "I'm really just a tortured soul on the inside, who's only joy is sinking goals and hitting bulls—"
Clint was cut off midsentence as Bobbi struck, her sneak attack going off without a hitch. She swung the pillow up from the floor and flumped it directly into Clint's stomach. He let out a surprised wheeze and lost his balance, toppling off the bed into a heap. Natasha howled with laughter, and when Clint popped back up from the floor, he was cracking up.
"Oh my god, she totally got you," Natasha crowed, holding up a hand for Bobbi to high-five. "You didn't see her coming at all."
"You distracted me," he said with an accusatory finger pointed Natasha's way. He shook his head like he couldn't believe he'd been so caught off guard. "Who knew Bobbi was part ninja?"
"That's what you get for trying to pit us against each other," Bobbi smirked. Clint held up his hands in surrender.
"Okay, okay, uncle. Lesson learned. I vow never to make the mistake of thinking you'd pick me over Nat ever again."
"She can pick you sometimes," Natasha told him placatingly. "Just not when you're throwing pillows at me."
"You literally started it." Clint shook his head, still chortling, and clambered back onto the bed. "I'm using one of these pillows to sleep on now. I'm tired. No sneak attacks while I'm out."
"That's just unsportsmanlike," agreed Natasha as she passed the other pillow up to him. "Sweet dreams, sleepyhead." Clint arranged the pillows just so, punching them into place, then fiddled with his hearing aids, removing them and setting them down on the corner of Natasha's desk in a little empty space that Bobbi suspected was left open for him. Then he burrowed under the blankets and rolled so he was curled on one side, facing the wall, with only a tuft of his blonde hair visible from Bobbi's vantage point, poking out from under the quilt.
"We should probably get some sleep, too," Natasha said quietly, getting up from the floor. "Do you need anything? Another pillow, extra blanket?"
"I'm fine," Bobbi said. "Thank you." She stretched her mouth outwards, trying to force it into a confident smile. It didn't feel natural, and it probably didn't look natural, either. Graciously, Natasha chose not to comment.
"Okay. Well, good night. Let me know if you need something in the night, okay? Seriously, Bobbi, I mean it. You can wake me up for anything."
"Anything, anything," Bobbi agreed reflexively, although she had no intention of waking anyone up if she could help it. She felt her cheeks grow warm, realizing that by copying out loud, she had probably just signaled to Natasha that she wasn't as fine as she claimed to be. Oh well. It couldn't be helped. And truth be told, she wasn't fine. As they climbed into bed, Bobbi in the trundle and Natasha next to Clint, nestled up against his back as if it was the most natural place in the world for her to fit, and darkness and stillness settled over the room, Bobbi became increasingly aware of how not fine she really was.
It had been easier to pretend when everyone else was around, when they were laughing and joking and all she had to do was watch. It had been easier when she was listening to Clint talk about his family, or when they had been playing around with the pillows. She had let her mind drift, had let the untetheredness of playful distraction lull her senses into a false state of peace. But now, with nothing but the shadows of an unfamiliar room spiking across the walls, the foreign feeling of new sheets and clothes rubbing the wrong ways across her skin, the slow, deep sounds of Natasha and Clint's breathing, slipping further and further into a sleep she wasn't sure she'd be able to reach, her mind was resharpening. The memories were crawling back, clawing away at her brain. Her thoughts flooded in, saturating every nook and cranny of her head.
She had done impossible things today. She had run on a once shattered knee. She had tracked down two missing children, two people she had called sister when she had never imagined she'd have a sibling. She had stood face to face with a man wielding a gun and lived to tell the tale. She had stopped a father from hurting his daughter. She hadn't stopped him from hurting someone else's daughter, though. Something acrid burst in her mouth, and her chest tightened. She squeezed her eyes shut against the picture of Jemma, cradled in her arms. Jemma, fluttery breaths, hot, sticky redness across her stomach, streaking Skye's hands. Slow down, she scolded herself. Slow, slow, slow. She forced herself to measure her breaths as she stretched out a nervous hand and wrapped it around her baton, which had been sitting on the floor next to her bed, waiting.
She hadn't been able to protect Jemma from him, just like no one had been able to protect her at that age. But at least they were both still alive. They weren't okay, okay, okay, but they were alive. The doctors had seen to that. They had seen to other things, too.
Deep down, Bobbi knew it wasn't their fault. They were trying to do the right thing. If they hadn't been so careful about stuff like that, she probably would have never gone to May and Phil's in the first place, but still, she couldn't help but feel bitter, resentful tears climbing up the back of her throat as she remembered the shattered look on Skye's face, the regret in Miss Hand's voice as she explained that the thing they had been fighting for, the thing she had done impossible things for, the thing she had thought was impossible itself and was finally starting to realize could be more than a fantasy, wasn't meant to be.
She glanced over at the clock perched on the top of Natasha's dresser. Somehow it was the middle of the night. Time had slipped away from her, and she was still no closer to sleep than she had been hours ago, despite the aching tiredness that was slowly weighing her bones down. She still couldn't see any stars out of the window, and her heart seized with sorrow, with the pang of missing the people who had started to fill in the missing pieces of her heart, with a longing for things to go back to the way they were. She had never felt homesick before – she'd never really been away from home, and even if she had, Bobbi didn't think she would have missed it – but lying there, in the dark, unfamiliar room, surrounded by friends but feeling more alone than ever, Bobbi was sure she finally understood what homesickness really was.
The little saying Wanda says while they're clearing up the kitchen is supposed to be the Russian equivalent of the English idiom "idle hands are the devil's plaything" (in other words, it's unwise to sit still/not have things to do). If my understanding is correct, the literal translation is something along the lines of "the bad/foolish head does not let the feet rest," but again, my Russian knowledge is basically nonexistent (and idioms are confusing in any language), so I might have made some errors!