The scene many of you have been waiting for... Thanks so much for all of your comments! Reading them gives me a warm fuzzy feeling inside :)

A more severe swearing warning on this chapter, if it matters to anyone.

Father

Bobbi's expression immediately hardened at his outburst, all sympathy and guilt she felt toward him dissipating in an instant. "Hunter!" she snarled in warning. Beside her, Isabelle bit her lip, eyes threatening to fill with tears. Bobbi looked down at her daughter, putting a hand on her back and gently leading her out of the room as the team looked on in a shocked silence. The glare she shot over her shoulder at her idiot of an ex-husband could have melted metal.

"Does anyone else get the feeling that Hunter's the fa..." Simmons whispered to Skye behind them. Bobbi's jaw clenched; this was not how she had imagined this all going down. Of course, as a specialist, she considered all the possibilities, but...she'd really been hoping to avoid this particular scenario altogether. Luckily, no one but Skye and Simmons seemed to be privy to their little side conversation.

Isabelle clutched both Hoppity and Thor tightly as Bobbi turned them around a corner into the residential area. "It's okay," Bobbi assured her blindly.

"Why doesn't he like me?" Isabelle asked, a waver in her voice.

"He was just surprised to see you, Isabelle," Bobbi told her. "You didn't do anything wrong." They reached the door to Bobbi's room and she let them in, stopping short suddenly at the sight of another, smaller bed a few feet away from hers in the far right corner. It was done up with floral pink sheets instead of the standard navy blue ones and Bobbi wondered idly who she would have to thank for the shopping trip later. She guided Isabelle to the bed.

There was a light knock on the door and Bobbi crossed over to it, opening it to find Isabelle's suitcase right outside and Fitz's retreating back. Lurking a few feet away was Hunter, storm clouds brewing in his dark brown eyes. He looked at her, she looked at him, and neither of them said anything as she pulled the suitcase inside and closed the door. Hunter would have to wait.

Bobbi placed the suitcase at the foot of Isabelle's bed and then took a seat next to her daughter. As she did so, she was alarmed to see the streaks of silent tears beginning to make their way down the four-year-old's face. "Hey," she said gently. She tentatively placed her hand on her daughter's back and, when she didn't shy away, looped her arm around her small shoulders. "Hey, don't let Hunter make you cry. It's okay, really." Isabelle's crying only worsened, with soft, quiet sobs emanating from the girl. Bobbi pulled her closer, hugging her into her side and beginning to stroke her hair with her other hand. After a few minutes the sniffles had stopped, but tears still coursed down Isabelle's face.

"I don't care about Hunter," the girl said finally, voice muffled by Bobbi's shirt. That stopped Bobbi in her tracks for a moment. It was her insensitive idiot of an ex-husband who had set her off—but that wasn't what Isabelle was upset about?

"Okay then, what's wrong?" Bobbi asked. "You can tell me anything, I promise."

"I want to go home." The words cut into her life a knife, freezing her insides solid.

"Isabelle...I'm sorry, you can't. It doesn't work that way," Bobbi said. "This has to be your new home now."

Her daughter's hands fisted and she pulled away from Bobbi's embrace, indignation and hurt present in her blue eyes. "Please let me go home. I don't like it here. I want to go home to my real mommy and daddy."

"You can't do that." Isabelle's arms crossed defiantly. "I'm sorry."

"I want to go home." It was then Bobbi realized a dam had broken inside her daughter, one built when she'd first been taken away from her family a few days ago that had persisted until now. Hunter had broken it, and now every fear, insecurity, and other negative emotion the child had was pouring out. Until now, she'd been putting on a brave face—keeping a stiff upper lip until she couldn't hold it all in anymore.

"I know," Bobbi tried to say, but her daughter crawled away from her, climbing to the head of the bed and pulling the covers over herself.

"I don't like it here," she insisted, tugging them up to her chin. "I don't wanna stay." Her eyes darted around the dark gray walls of the windowless room before fixing them again on Bobbi.

"Go to sleep," Bobbi murmured. The girl's eyes were already fluttering, obviously worn out by her emotional outburst. "Maybe it'll look better in the morning." She ghosted one hand over her daughter's forehead.

"You're not my real mommy," Isabelle said, eyes slipping closed for the final time. Bobbi got up from the bed, hands fisted in her own hair. Deep, shuddering breaths didn't provide enough oxygen, and as hard as she tried to blink them away there were tears present in her own eyes. She knew Isabelle didn't mean to be—didn't even know she was being—cruel, but that knowledge only twisted Bobbi's gut further, caused the trembling in her hands and the aching in her heart. It would have been easier if the words had been meant to her, had been the girl lashing out about a difficult situation… This was worse. It was honesty.

And now on top of it she had Hunter to deal with.

Bobbi glanced back at the sleeping girl and hesitated before pulling out her phone and fetching a second one—the one she had used while undercover as a HYDRA enforcer—from the dresser. She typed in her own number into the HYDRA version and called herself, answering on the other before the loud ringing could even start. She placed both on speaker, setting the HYDRA one on the nightstand in between their two beds and putting the other, muted, in her pocket.

She exited the room and closed the door behind her. Hunter was leaning up against the wall in the exact same position he'd been in thirty minutes ago, never a good sign. He was usually antsier than that. "Who is she, Bob?"

"Her name's Isabelle," she replied. Recognition flashed through Hunter's intent expression before he shut it down again.

"Who is she, Bob?"

Bobbi bit the inside of her lip hard enough to make it bleed, creating the familiar metallic taste in her mouth that was normally the product of a punch to the jaw. Right now, given the choice between this and the punch...she'd take the punch, no contest. "She's your daughter, Hunter."

"No, she's not." Confused by his statement, said with such surety, her eyebrows furrowed. "If I had a daughter," Hunter continued in that same confident tone, "I'm pretty sure I would know about her. I haven't slept with any woman even remotely heartless enough to keep the existence of my own child from me."

"Hunter…"

"You're being serious, aren't you." It wasn't a question, and he pressed his hand to his forehead, swearing violently. "I have a daught—how could you fucking keep this from me, Bobbi?"

"How could I keep this from you?" Bobbi exploded. "Do you remember how our marriage ended?!"

"I remember signing divorce papers, not you showing me a bloody pregnancy stick!"

"Well, you know what I remember? I remember us constantly screaming at each other! I remember you leaving for days at a time! I remember coming home to find you drunk and sitting in front of the—"

"Only 'cause it was the only reasonable way to deal with being married to you!" Hunter shot back. "I wasn't the one leaving for days at a time first, Bob. That was all you."

"Yeah, for my work!" Bobbi shouted back. "Oh, and S.H.I.E.L.D., too—you could never stop pestering me about where I went and who I was with. I bet you still don't know the meaning of 'classified'!"

"At least I wasn't keeping huge secrets like you always were! It was always more about you protecting S.H.I.E.L.D.'s precious secrets than me. And not just the small things, Bob—this is a pretty damn big thing! If I'd had your baby growing inside me—"

"You can't have a baby," Bobbi interrupted with a scoff.

"Fine, if I had gotten a...a dog, I sure as hell would have told you about it!"

"Are you comparing our daughter to a dog?"

"No!" Hunter screwed up his face, glaring at her. "I just—I can't even deal with you, with this, right now, Bob."

"Oh, right, that sounds like you," Bobbi spat. "First sign of something needing commitment and you go running off! Always have one foot out the door, don't you, Hunter?"

"Since when is this about me?" Hunter yelled. "This is about you operating S.H.I.E.L.D. methods when you should have had our best interests in mind. Ours!"

"What about Isabelle's?" Bobbi demanded. "Because that's what I did, Hunter, and that's what you can't see, can't accept. We were a wreck—dysfunctional, broken, shattered to pieces—long before I found out about Isabelle. We were never stable enough to raise a child! So I did the right thing—I sent her as far away from our toxic relationship as possible!"

"Pieces can be picked up," he growled. "Didn't you think a child—our child—would have made a difference? That maybe we could be adults for three seconds and raise her?"

"It wasn't her job to make a difference! Our problems were ours; I wasn't about to thrust them onto an innocent child. Technically, we were divorced anyways by the time I found out. I didn't even know where you were; last I'd seen you you were packing that stupid jalopy with a six-pack out of the fridge and driving off down I-5 toward god-knows-where in Mexico. I did what I thought was best. And if I had told you, you wouldn't have been able to let her go."

"No, I sure as hell wouldn't have!"

"Because you still don't get it."

"I get it just fine," Hunter spat. "I get it: you acted like a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent and took care of the problem. Swept it under the rug first chance you got." She fumed at him, fury in her eyes, but he pressed onward. "You don't seem to understand what you took from me, Bob. Four years. Four years of her life!"

"You say that like I kept them all for myself," Bobbi shouted back. "I didn't. Obviously I didn't get to spend those four years with her either."

"No, you just resumed life like normal," Hunter hissed. "You were never acting in anyone's best interests but yours, Bob. So you could be Fury's perfect little agent again. Not our family's, not Isabelle's. Look where she ended up! Not with a happy family of her own, but alone and scared back in this circus." He took a step forward, getting in her face. "You screwed this up, Bob. You." Hunter stopped, venom in his gaze. He opened his mouth again as if to say something, then promptly shut it again and stormed out of the room.

Bobbi took a half step forward and halted, running one hand through her hair as she tried to calm her pounding heart. Hunter was being stubborn and stupid as usual, but he wasn't entirely off point. Everything he said that hadn't been a blatant insult, as much as she hated to admit it, had been true. "Damn it, Hunter," she whispered, staring after him. She really didn't need a furious ex-husband to deal with while trying to work through everything with Isabelle. At the beginning of the argument she'd been planning to offer to introduce them properly, but now... Now it appeared he'd rather storm off and gnaw on his anger than meet Isabelle.

And after all that, that was perfectly fine with Bobbi.

She pulled her phone from her pocket and looked down at it, checking that her little makeshift baby monitor was still active. Peeking into her room, she saw that Isabelle was still fast asleep, so Bobbi decided that the best thing for her to do right now might be a good throwdown in the gym. It would help clear her head, and all she had to do was find a partner who wouldn't ask too many questions—just fight.

Bobbi had the perfect candidate in mind.

Walking quickly, Bobbi made a beeline for the gym. "Morse," someone said as she nearly flew by their door, and she turned around to see Coulson poking his head out of his office.

"Director," she nodded, itching to leave but unable to do so. "Do you need something?"

"Could you come here for a minute?" Coulson asked, gesturing her inside. She had no choice but to follow him. The director shut the door behind them—never a good sign, as if she needed any more signs to tell her she wasn't going to enjoy the upcoming conversation. There seemed to be bad signs popping up all over the place today.

Coulson walked to the center of the room, putting his hands together as if he wasn't exactly sure how best to put his thoughts into words. "We need to talk," he began.

Bobbi just waited.

"Since yesterday, when you told us that Hunter isn't the father, I have to admit I've been racking my brains trying to figure out who else it could be," said Coulson, "and the only person I could come up with was Clint Barton. I've known you for a while, Agent Morse, in person but especially by reputation. You don't exactly walk around S.H.I.E.L.D. blending in. It was big news down the grapevine when you and Barton were discovered as being a couple." He sighed. "The reason I'm telling you this is that I don't think Isabelle is something you should be keeping from him. He deserves to know."

"You think Isabelle's father is Clint?" Bobbi asked, incredulity laced in her voice. The idea was so ludicrous that she couldn't help but laugh. "It's not Clint." She sobered quickly. "I lied. Hunter is the father." Her confession was monotone, leaving no room for doubt.

Coulson blinked. "Why would you lie to us, Morse?"

"Because I wanted to tell him first, which worked out oh-so-well just a few minutes ago."

Sympathy entered Coulson's gaze, and whatever words he was about to use to tell her off over the subterfuge—he was Director, after all—died away. The moment of silence was abruptly broken as his laptop pinged on his desk. He frowned, rotating it toward him and lifting the lid. "You must have upset him a lot," Coulson said, turning it toward her. "He's leaving the base." The screen showed Hunter walking through the door to the garage before switching security cameras to show her ex starting the ignition of his personal car and driving out into the night.

"Figures," Bobbi muttered. "Probably gone to a bar or something. He'll be back, I'm sure. He always is."

"He's done this before?" the director questioned.

"Did I not mention he was a flight risk when I gave you his name for recruitment?" Bobbi sighed. "I would guess two or three days at the most, half a day at the least. It would surprise me if he showed up at breakfast tomorrow morning, but it's not outside the realm of possibility. This was...this was a pretty big bomb I dropped on him," she admitted.

"I have to admit, I wasn't a big fan of the man when you and Hartley first brought him on board," Coulson said. "But he's proven to be rather useful, and not at all as aggravating as you made him out to be in your initial report."

"I may have been somewhat biased."

A small smile tugged at the corners of Coulson's mouth. "He's become an integral part of this team over the last few months, and I would hate to lose another agent. Are you absolutely certain he'll come back? As you said...this isn't some small marital skirmish."

"Positive," Bobbi told him. "With him gone, things would be simpler. If there's one thing you can always count on Hunter to do, it's make things complicated again."

What did you think? I really want to know this time around, as I'm well aware this wasn't the happiest chapter I could have given you all. I hope you enjoyed it anyways...it will look up from here, but I'm not promising there won't be any more ups and downs. There's a lot of stuff to be worked out between all of them.

Responses to guest reviews:

Guest: How was that for Hunter's behavior? In his defense, she did keep this massive secret from him for four years...

Guest: Thank you so much for your support!

Guest: You'll get to see plenty of that before the story is out, trust me.

Holly: Exploring-the-base-time is definitely to come! With some shenanigans to ensue ;)

Shawn: Some of that here, some to come later. There's a bit of an emotional hump to get over first, as you saw.

Andy: No spoilers! But it would be a pretty depressing story if he didn't, now wouldn't it?

Ann: Thank you so much!

Guest: Thank you! I try. ;)