Thank you so much for all the support I received for the first chapter! As I said, I'm aiming for short but frequent updates, so here you are :) Guest reviews will be answered at the end!
Flight
The next few minutes were a blur for Bobbi. She remembered uttering her daughter's name like a ghost, "Isabelle?" and the confirmation that followed. She remembered the words "adoptive parents" and "fell through" and "twenty-four hours" and finally, "foster care." She remembered saying, "Thank you," and "Bye."
She remembered Mack staring at her with the same stricken expression, her fear reflected on his face. "Barbara?" His voice was low and taut.
"Mack," was all she could say in reply. Her eyes drifted to the concerned gaze of Coulson and the cautious one of May, who was carefully stepping off the ramp of the Quinjet. "I—I got to go." She made a beeline for the door, vaguely aware of Mack's calls behind her and his eventual pursuit when he saw she wasn't going to stop.
Bobbi passed by the lab in a daze, Simmons's cheery words of greeting and Hunter's not-so-subtle jab falling on deaf ears. Her mindless flight continued until all that was left was a locked door and a gray stone wall, the edge of the facility, the end of her tether. She pressed her back against it as the tears began to fill her eyes and waves of guilt and anguish wracked her body. She slid downward until her elbows were sharp points digging into the flesh of her knees.
"Barbara," Mack said again, coming to a swift stop in front of her. Through a haze of salt water and disheveled golden hair she could see him approach her, the softness in his eyes as he placed a large, warm hand on her arm. She entered his embrace without a second thought, soaking his thin T-shirt as his strong, safe arms wrapped around her. "Isabelle?" he asked gently, holding her close. "You mean..."
"Yes," Bobbi choked out. "And he's here, and there's S.H.I.E.L.D., and..." If anything Mack's embrace tightened.
"We'll get through it, Barbara," he promised. "I'm here for you, whatever you need. You know that."
"I know," she said softly. Footsteps echoed down the otherwise empty hallway and she sprang away from Mack, catching a fleeting glimpse of Hunter approaching and quickly blinking her tears away in the way only a specialist knows how. "So, yeah, six dead," she said loudly in the best imitation she could manage of her normal confident tone. "Coulson's going to be hurting for manpower soon, if Hydra keeps this up." She dared not look at him, as she knew her eyes were red-rimmed and her hair a mess. Her eyes met Mack's instead and she trusted her old friend to play along.
"Let's just hope it's not us next time," Mack said, giving her a small nod.
"Ankle's fine, by the way," Hunter stated cockily, coasting to a stop behind her. "Guess I wasn't as screwed over by saving your arse this time around."
"I already thanked you for that, Hunter; just let it go," Bobbi said testily. Her composure remained in place by a thread, her hard exterior one pin prick away from cracking open in front of him.
"Actually, I don't seem to remember a thank-you, just an acknowledgement." She could see in her mind's eye the beginnings of that self-satisfied grin of his, but Bobbi was in no mood to humor their dance.
"Go away, Hunter," she warned through clenched teeth.
"You shove off," he countered, growing annoyed. "What are you two doing down here anyways?"
"Having a conversation between two civilized people," Bobbi spat back. "What are you doing down here?"
"You're standing in front of my room, love," Hunter said, stepping forward. Shit, he was right. She shifted to the side slightly, she and Mack clearing a pathway to the aforementioned door. Hunter slammed it behind him for effect, and Bobbi let out a heavy breath, immediately stepping closer to Mack again.
"What do I do?" she whispered, exerting control over her own faculties by sheer force of will. She would not cry again, not in a public area, not when someone like Lance Hunter-the absolute last one she'd want to see-could walk by.
"We," Mack reminded her, "are going to lock ourselves in the front of the van just like old times, and you are going to tell me exactly what happened."
"But I don't know!" Bobbi protested, shaking her head. "She was talking and talking but all I could think about was Isabelle and... I should've been able to do this in my sleep, Mack; it's what I've been trained to do. Gather intel, no matter what that intel is or how much impact it has on me. But with her I just can't...I can't..."
"Come on," Mack said, steering her back towards the garage and glancing furtively down each hallway. As they passed Coulson's office, they could just make out the director and his second-in-command discussing the Bruges tragedy. "Just like old times," Mack repeated, opening the driver's side door and getting in. Bobbi climbed in on the other side and, despite everything, couldn't help but scoff at his words.
"I never let you drive."
Mack gave her a half-smile and nodded his agreement. "Now, what exactly did the person on the phone say?"
"Um..." Bobbi thought back desperately. "That Isabelle's foster parents aren't able to keep her anymore, and-"
"Jesus, Barbara, you had me thinking Isabelle was dead!" Mack swore.
"What? No, she's fine," Bobbi said quickly. "But they're going to put her in foster care, and failing that, an orphanage. I have twenty-four hours to make a request if I want to arrange other options for her."
"Then should do that," Mack told her, still shaking off the remnants of misplaced grief.
"My parents aren't equipped to raise another kid right now, and I was an only child," Bobbi said. "I've no family to give her to."
"That's not what I meant," Mack said in a low voice. "You could adopt Isabelle yourself, you know. Give her a proper home."
"A proper home?" Bobbi repeated. "What about any part of my life is 'proper'? We work for a secret organization that arose from the ashes of another secret organization that fell because the evil group Hydra had secretly been infiltrating their ranks, starting with the Nazis in the 1940s. The director who saved New York from our own nuclear missile launch with the Avengers program is now dead, and in his place we've got a good man with the unfortunate yet uncontrollable compulsion to carve mysterious patterns on the walls. Until three weeks ago we were all labeled terrorists by our own government. And I won't even get started on Hunter. You really think this is any sort of proper place to raise a child?"
Mack growled deep in his throat. "When you put it like that..."
"There is no other way to put it," Bobbi said.
"You could think of it as adopting her into a tight-knit family that's been through tough times together and only come out stronger."
"A family of trained killers," Bobbi muttered. "Isabelle'd be better off in foster care. As good of an agent as he was, Coulson's not all there anymore. May's smiled exactly twice in the years I've known her. Fitz's brain is still damaged from the Hydra psycho we have locked up in the basement-"
"They're shipping Ward out to his brother today," Mack informed her.
"Still," Bobbi said. "And me...I'm about as motherly as Romanoff, and you saw her when Sitwell introduced her to his kids."
Mack cracked a smile. "White as a sheet. But Barbara..."
"I just...twenty-four hours, okay?" Bobbi sighed, hand on the door handle. "I need some time to think about it." She stepped down from the van, turning to close the door.
"What do I tell Coulson?" Mack asked, not moving from his seat.
"Nothing." The car door slammed a little harder than she meant it to. But Bobbi couldn't bring herself to care.
She had bigger things to worry about.
Thanks for reading! As always, I would love to know what you thought. Please leave a review if you can spare the time. Why the daughter is named Isabelle will be explained in the next chapter, but I am open to suggestions on her middle name. Remember it should go well with Isabelle and Morse ;)
Responses to Guest reviews:
Andy: Thank you for your support! I hope you continue to read and enjoy it!
Shawn: I hope you liked Hunter in this chapter as much as last. He'll have a big part to play here (obviously)!
Guest: Thank you! I am continuing :)
Grace: I couldn't believe no one had written a fic like this either, so I decided to give it a go. How am I doing so far? ;)
Holly: Thanks! It means a lot.
Guest: I haven't decided yet whether I will keep the real S.H.I.E.L.D. storyline in this story. I'm leaning toward no as it will just complicate the plot unnecessarily, unless one of you has a strong feeling the other way. Thanks for your interest!