Fitz and Simmons are staring at her mostly in fear, and just a little in shock. May is glaring, more in disapproval and disappointment than actual anger. Skye is just staring at her, eyes wide, lips red, chest heaving. Bobbi has a need deep in her bones to kiss her again.

"Skye." May is the one to speak, voice steady and controlled. "Come here." Bobbi wants to stop her, to demand that her Soulmate stay with her. She wants her answers, and she wants her Skye, and she wants her heart to stop racing a thousand beats a minute.

An actual growl rumbles low in her throats and Skye freezes as if she were a dog ready to attack.

"Skye." May repeats, not taking her eyes off the blonde. "Go to your bunk." Skye takes another step, Bobbi takes a step after her. "Morse." Blue eyes snap to May, "let the girl go." She hadn't noticed her hand gripping Skye's wrist until then, forcing her fingers to uncurl and reveal a red ring around the younger woman's hand. Skye takes another step, and this time Bobbi is held in place by the horror of the marks she's left on her Soulmate.

A mark on her chest, a mark on her wrist, a mark on her lips; where the fuck is her Mark on Skye?

Skye is gone before she can make more demands, and Bobbi growls again at the loss. "Morse." May catches her attention again. "Gym, now."

Sparring between Agents have three unspoken rules; the fight starts as soon as all participants are on the mats and if anyone is stupid enough to get on the mats mid-fight then they're in the fight too, all fighting styles and nothing is too dirty, fight to first blood or until someone taps out.

Bobbi is angry, her heart is racing, rage is burning in her blood, and May has just offered herself up as an outlet.

Bobbi isn't stupid, she knows what May is doing; getting her out of lab and away from FitzSimmons as well as the surveillance of Coulson interrogating Randolph, she sent Skye to her bunk to be as far away as possible, and she's isolating the damage Bobbi can do in her current state.

Bobbi is already in yoga pants and a sports bra from Simmons' probing, and already worked up enough that she does three aerials on the mat whilst waiting for May. May takes her time to throw her hair into a loser ponytail, toe her shoes off, and do a quick stretch before carefully stepping onto the blue workout mats. As soon as her second foot touches the mat, Bobbi lunges.

Bobbi's fingers are still very broken from being told that she wasn't Skye's S.O anymore, and her head is throbbing from when she passed out after finding Randolph, and she knows that whatever that staff was, it's affecting her on an adrenal level if nothing else. But all that matters in that moment is that May is in front of her offering to be her outlet so punches and kicks and dodges and keeps punching and punching, and taking hit after hit, until she draws first blood from a cut on Mays lip.

Then she's on her knees on the mats and her body is heaving with violent, angry, frustrated sobs that she can't stop.

Because Lance left her, because the one person who is supposed to love her doesn't give a shit, because she gives everything to S.H.I.E.L.D and it's never enough, because her parents never should have been in New York if it weren't for her, because her brother blames her and she blames herself too. Because how many times is she meant to ignored by her Soulmate before she loses her mind, because, because, because, because…

May is keeping her mostly upright, and her sobs are nearly loud enough to block out the buzzing in her ears and fire in her blood.

Almost.


Bobbi picks herself up, showers, puts on her big girl panties and goes to Coulson to take herself off the case until she can get herself under control.

It doesn't go exactly to plan and Bobbi finds herself in the interrogation room with Randolph, a knife tucked into her waistband, and Coulson's theory that Randolph's knowledge of Norse myth is more than he learned from books.

The man at the table is unassuming, looking more bored than anything as he recites lines about Coulson and not knowing anything.

If Coulson is right the knife in her waistband will bend to the mans skin, if he's wrong… Bobbi won't hurt him too badly.

Bobbi circles the table, checks that the door is closed, eyes the handcuffs on the professor. "Are you going to keep lying, or are we going to have force the truth out of you?" The knife clangs on the metal table, Randolph eyes first the blade, then Bobbi, then the door. A sigh.

"I don't-" the metal slices through the air before he can finish. Bobbi's muscles flex in anger, the metal groans as its bent, and Randolph lets out another sigh.

"Wanna try that again?" The door opens and Coulson doesn't look the least bit surprised.

The story Randolph spins is a fanciful one full of a mason who joined an army out of boredom and left it for the butterflies and unicorns of Earth. Bobbi only half listens, instead watching for signs of lies or half truths, or anything else they may need to get the third piece of the staff and reclaim the other two. Power and rage go hand in hand with the Berserker army and their weapons, and Randolph preferred the peaceful life on Earth. Bobbi touched a third of the staff for only a few seconds and the effects haven't left her even hours later, willingly taking that; the darkness and destruction, even in double the strength she had it, Bobbi knew they were seriously out of their minds to seek it out. And that would make the fight to get the pieces of the staff back even harder because they would be stronger, angrier, and clearly insane.

Ireland

A church in Ireland.

Bobbi catches sight of Skye disembarking from the Bus as they're heading to get the last piece of the staff and Randolph isn't far behind. "The effects." Her grip on his arm is tight, but she knows he could break it. "How long do they last?" Hours at least, days is a probability. Anything more than that and she'll be a walking liability to the entire Agency.

"The strength wears off eventually." Eventually wasn't a time frame. "You will feel exhausted afterwards, you will need sleep, probably best to keep away from anyone you're fond of-"

"How. Long?" She grabbed him with her broken fingers, and they're throbbing painfully, but she ignores it.

"The strength?" Randolph shrugs, brushing her hand off his arm. "Hard to say with humans, you're all so fragile; maybe a few weeks, a few months, who knows." Weeks. Months. Maybe. "The rage, that dark nasty ache in the pit of your stomach; it's worse on humans, but…" a raise if his eyebrows, another shrug, a slight frown as he thinks about it. "Give it a few decades and it should wear off too."

Decades.


The monastery is dark, lit only by a few candles, and covered with dust. Clearly someone still came there to light the candles, but not many people observed there in recent years. The monastery is quiet. It could be Bobbi's paranoia, but it feels too quiet.

The piece of alien metal sticking out of Randolph is right there, and so is Nystrom. Right there. With the strength and rage and darkness and insanity of the Berserker staff coursing through his veins, and ready to fight.

Bobbi's fingers wrap around the alien metal covered in alien blood, and it lights up red in response.

Skye, Hunter, Skye, her parents, Skye, Ben.

Fighting Nystrom is purely on anger, none of her training is put to use at all.

Hunter left her. Rage filled her veins.

Her parents had been in New York when the Chitauri attacked to visit her. Woods splintered and broke.

Ben never forgave her, and hated her for their parents. Footsteps in the back of her mind.

"Bobbi." Skye. Her Mark hummed in response to the voice, but it wasn't enough to drown out the darkness.

"Skye, get back here." May wasn't far behind, but the other footsteps were getting closer too. Where Nystrom was, the others would be as well.

"Bobbi," Skye wasn't backing down. "Drop the staff." Steps closer, a lower voice, brown eyes peaking up at her. "This isn't you."

May grabbed Skye from behind, "Get her back." Bobbi ordered; Skye. She could protect Skye. If it from herself, then at least from these psychopaths.

The second piece of the staff lit up in red as May dragged Skye away. Two pieces, if possible, felt even worse than holding one. The first one goes down with barely a fight. The second. The third.

There's at least ten of them of.

Her mind flashes with her parents, with Ben, fighting with Hunter, Skye, Skye, Skye…

they're all either dead or unconscious and the scary part is that Bobbi can't remember. Pieces of the staff clang to the stone floor as she falls to her knees, and she's fully aware of Skye running to her side, but S.H.I.E.L.D has taken everything from her, and it's not about to stop taking now.

Petra.

Bobbi reaches for the pieces again, a hand grabs her arm. "Let me help." Bobbi has heard rumours about Bahrain -she takes them all with a grain of salt - she's also heard stories about May before, and she's seen May after. Mays demons, whatever they, probably haunt her without Asgardian help. Bobbi couldn't let anyone else take what she's feeling, no matter how much she wants to.

Her hand falters for a moment. Just a moment. And then she reaches for the staff again.

Petra drops her piece of the staff after only a few hits, but she knows it's not enough to stop her. The pieces of the staff are drawn to each other like magnets, sealing back together as they fall into place and the staff glows a bright red in her hands before fading back.

Petra stands, the staff feels alive under her fingertips, the back of her mind registers May keeping Skye back. "I am not afraid of you." The words barely leave Petra's lips before Bobbi swings, the staff thunks against bone and Petra flies back, hits a wall and crumples.

The staff feels magnetised to her hands as she drops to the stone floor. Her fingers won't uncurl from it, and then she feels hands on top of her own. Her fingers open to Skye's touch and the staff drops to the ground


Bobbi is at the bar when Skye finds her, and Skye is number 1 out of the 4 people she doesn't want to see right now. "Hey." She's also number 1 out of the people she does want to see. Bobbi looks up from her drink, in this lighting Skye is glowing, she looks back to her scotch. "I could get used to turndown service and little mints on my pillow." A smirk pulls at her lips.

"Overnights aren't a standard." The scotch burns it's way down her throat.

"Kinda figured, I've been here, like, three months, and the closest I've been to turndown is quarantine." It's said with half a smile, but Bobbi can't help but think that this is the first time, or at least only one of a handful of times in Skye's life that she's had little mints on her pillow. "How're you feeling?"

"Not great." It's an understatement, but it's the best she's going to feel in a long time. Decades according to Randolph. Skye shifts on her barstool and the light shifts with her, catching the long bruise visible at the neckline of her shirt. "I'm sorry." The words tumble out as she stairs at the mark she left. "For-" she can't even bring herself to say it, "-before, for hurting you, for-" for taking from her without consent. "I-"

"You save lives, I can handle a little rage." Skye shrugs, but the light isn't in her eyes. "No harm no foul." Yes harm, yes foul.

"Does everything just roll off your back?" She's sure Skye must have at least grazed the staff when she was making her let it go. How could she not be affected at all?

"If it helped, I'd rage all the time, but I learned pretty early that it doesn't." Another shrug, light fingers tearing at a napkin, the first hint of justified anger at the world for the hand she'd been dealt in life. "So you gotta choose what to hold onto." A hand swiped out stole her scotch, taking a sip.

"How can I choose when it's all just. Right. There." An earnest question, the darkness is still there, the rage, and fire… she's broken three scotch glasses so far on accident just from holding the, too tightly.

"Well," Skye slides her scotch back in front of her. "What's the closest right now?"

"You." The word was out without a thought and Skye sucked in a harsh breath. "Why won't you admit we're Soulmates?" There. She finally said it. It was finally out loud and real and there were no take backsies. "Why are you ignoring me? Why is our Bond so easy for you to push away like I mean nothing to you?"


mwa ha ha ha

sorry it was a month :(