Hey all! This chapter was written in snippets here and there in between classes, but I finally managed to finish it. Enjoy :)

Of Pancakes, Assassins, and M&Ms

Bobbi woke up with hair tickling her chin. Hunter? No, Hunter didn't have that much hair. Her eyes opened. Isabelle. "What are you doing in here?" Bobbi mumbled. There was no answer, not that she really expected one. She sighed, rolling over onto her back and blinking up at the ceiling.

"She musta crawled in here during the night," came Hunter's sleep-slurred voice. "'S okay, Bob. Go back to sleep."

Somehow, she did, and when her eyes opened again the bed was empty of both Hunter and Isabelle. Except...she was currently hugging Thor the Monkey. How had…? She was guessing Isabelle again.

Stretching, Bobbi slipped her legs out of bed and stood up, blinking in the bright sunlight shining in through the window. It was almost odd waking up to actual natural light, as opposed to the artificial brightening set on a per-room basis at the Playground. She sniffed the air. Pancakes.

Bobbi pulled on a pair of jeans and a shirt and discarded her sleepwear before investigating the scent, which was getting more appetizing by the minute. She entered the kitchen quietly to see Isabelle hoisted up on Hunter's hip with her arms around his neck, staring transfixed into the pan on the stove. "Good morning," she greeted them. Hunter twisted around and almost immediately Isabelle wriggled out of his arms and ran over to her.

Bobbi hugged her and picked her up, carrying her much as Hunter had been. "I noticed you snuck into our bed last night," she said lightly, bopping Isabelle on the nose. "When did that happen?" The girl shrugged and avoided her gaze, pressing her face into Bobbi's neck instead. What Bobbi had been about to say died in her throat and she stroked Isabelle's hair. "You can come to our bed if you need to. I'm just saying you could've woken one of us up if you were scared. Sound good?"

"'kay," she mumbled.

"We're making pancakes," Hunter said brightly.

She gave him a good-morning kiss, quick and chaste. "I can see that."

"We were going to bring you breakfast in bed, but I should've known you wouldn't stay asleep that long," he told her ruefully.

"It's the thought that counts," Bobbi said. "But these do look delicious," she complimented Isabelle.

Both she and Hunter smiled when Isabelle did.

The day before the social worker was scheduled to visit, the house was pretty much in order. Isabelle's room was decorated. The living room had books and toys on the shelves, both ones age-appropriate for their daughter and ones up high for the two of them. They had discovered that the S.H.I.E.L.D. cable package included the PBS Kids channel with its regular stations and high-speed internet. Bobbi had spent her final day using her tablet on the couch researching potential questions and their respective correct answers, and switching off with Hunter playing with Isabelle. She suspected her ex-husband was doing something similar during his downtime.

She'd gotten just desperate enough to go searching through S.H.I.E.L.D.'s old personnel files, the ones that had been updated after the fall of S.H.I.E.L.D. and were certified HYDRA-free. She came across an old friend-acquaintance from her days at the Triskelion with Barton who had transitioned into social work, and in the spur of the moment picked up the phone. Her friend—Agent Karen Sanders—had patiently answered her queries, but in the end laughed and told Bobbi that no, she couldn't ethically take over Isabelle's case.

That would have made their lives infinitely easier. Karen knew about the Playground; this entire playing-house charade wouldn't have been necessary. They also wouldn't have to worry about what might slip out of Isabelle's mouth during the visit...which is what they should be worrying about right now.

Bobbi set her tablet down on the coffee table and snapped her fingers to get Hunter's attention. At the moment he too was surfing the web, sitting in the lounge chair. Their eyes connected and he nodded, locking the screen and setting it aside.

"Say hi to Skye!" Isabelle said as she came over, thrusting the device up at her from where she was seated on the floor.

"Hi, Skye," Bobbi laughed, and the hacker greeted her back with equal mirth on the other end. "Everything good back at the base?" she asked, gently taking the tablet from Isabelle. Yes, their four-year-old daughter had a tablet. No, they weren't going to be those parents—it was going straight back to S.H.I.E.L.D. once they had no more need for Skype calls.

"Yeah, no action here yet," Skye informed her. "Don't worry about us."

"Good," Bobbi nodded. "Going to have to hang up now; we've got some things to discuss before tomorrow."

"Good luck," Skye told her sincerely. "Just let me say goodbye to Isabelle." Bobbi turned the tablet towards her daughter, watching as the young agent waved to her.

"Bye-bye!" Isabelle said, bouncing up and waving vigorously back.

"See you soon," Bobbi said before ending the call. She put the tablet away before turning to Isabelle. "What were you doing talking to Skye? I thought Fitz was helping you practice the alphabet."

Isabelle just shrugged, giving her mother a cutely guilty look.

"Get used to it," Bobbi smiled. "They'll be teaching you a lot more later, I'm sure."

"But for now, Isabelle, we want to talk to you about tomorrow," Hunter cut in. They all sat down on the couch, with the girl in between the two adults. Then Hunter promptly looked at Bobbi to begin. Bastard.

"Well, we want you to… Isabelle, do you know what a secret is?" she asked, changing tactics.

She nodded. "You're not supposed to tell. But secrets are bad."

"I'm going to let you in on a grown-up secret, Isabelle," Bobbi told her. "We keep secrets sometimes, and they're not all bad. Sometimes they're necessary to keep people safe."

"Safe from bad people? Like Ward?" Isabelle asked, looking up at her.

She smiled, pulling the four-year-old in for a quick hug or reassurance. "Yes, like that. Lance and I, we keep a lot of secrets for that reason that other people can't know. Our job is to protect people, but in order to do that, we have to keep a lot of things about our lives a secret."

"Like where we really live," Hunter provided. "Or what we do." Isabelle looked between them confusedly and Bobbi knew they had to be clearer with her.

"These are things we have to keep from the guest who comes to visit tomorrow," she said. "We love you, and we really want to keep you with us. But they won't let us if they find out about where we really live."

"I want to stay with you too," the girl mumbled, looping her arms around Bobbi's stomach.

She smiled, glancing up at Hunter. "Thank you, Isabelle. For tomorrow this is our house, and we've lived here for a few weeks."

"But that's lying."

She and Hunter looked at each other. "We're not telling you to lie, exactly, love," he said uneasily. "But the only way we will be able to go back to the base with you and see Skye and Leo and Jemma and Trip again is if the social worker believes we're trying to become a normal family. Normal families live in houses and not on bases. They have a dad and a mum and an amazing little kid like you—" He kissed the top of her head. "—and don't live with a team like we do."

"So it's like pretend," Isabelle nodded.

"Yes," Hunter confirmed, latching onto that.

She looked up at them. "Can I talk about watching Tangled with Skye?"

"I know that was a lot of fun, but no," Bobbi shook her head. "You can say you watched Tangled with us though. You can show the social worker the poster on your wall if you want."

"It's probably best you don't mention the others at all," Hunter added.

Isabelle squirmed in her seat thinking about it. "And then we go back and I can sing more songs with Skye and Leo can do more science and Jemma can use M&Ms when we do math?" Bobbi and Hunter looked at each other questioningly. "She promised," Isabelle clarified. "She said two M&Ms plus three M&Ms equals five M&Ms and I could eat them all."

"Okay," Bobbi laughed. "Yes, after this we all get to go back to the base."

"Okay," Isabelle agreed with a smile.

"And don't mention to the social worker that we told you to do this, yeah?" Hunter added. "That's a secret too."

Isabelle scrunched up her nose. "We have lots of secrets."

Bobbi laughed. "Yes, yes, we do."

Their conversation, as well as it seemed to have gone, made Bobbi uneasy for the rest of the day. After dinner, she started on the dishes before Hunter could, needing some time on her own to think. Or worry. No difference, really. "Hunter, could you give Isabelle a bath tonight and get her ready for bed?" she requested.

"Me?" He seemed uncertain. "Is that...I mean, I can…?"

"Bubbles!" Isabelle tugged on his hand in the direction of the bathroom.

"She's your daughter; it's perfectly normal," Bobbi said, giving him a nod. Hunter let himself be led away, and she turned back to the sink, scrubbing a particularly tough smudge of food off one of their dinner plates. She had a sinking feeling they'd just made a huge parenting mistake encouraging Isabelle to lie and keep secrets. They were trying to raise a daughter, not a spy. And yet the life they led forced them to make some compromises in that regard; she simply couldn't see a way around it. Not without forging adoption documents and fudging the whole process—while Bobbi had little doubt Skye had the skill to pull it off, they'd always be watching their backs to make sure no one discovered the ruse, living in constant fear that someone would discover their wrongdoing and Isabelle would be taken from them. That wasn't the way Bobbi wanted to live. Besides, she'd been using S.H.I.E.L.D. loopholes and shortcuts for most of her adult life, including when she gave Isabelle up in the first place and vetted the adoptive parents with an investigation that made an FBI or CIA background check pale in comparison. Now that she had Isabelle back again, she wanted to do it right as much as they could.

When she was done with the dishes, Bobbi dried off her hands and pulled her phone out of her pocket. Her fingers dialed his number without even bothering with a contact list, knowing it by heart the way she knew her own birthday. "Barton," her old partner answered on the other end of the line.

"Hey, Clint, it's Bobbi," she greeted him. "Do you have time to talk?"

"I have about...a minute thirty seconds before such an action has the potential to get me killed," Clint said, half joking and half absolutely serious.

"All right, I'll keep it quick," she responded. "I only had a few questions."

"Ask away."

"How old was Natasha when she was inducted into the Red Room?"

There was an audible pause. "Quite young. I'm not sure she herself knows the exact age. Around five, maybe six?"

"And they started training her right away?" she checked.

"Bobbi, isn't this the kind of thing you should be asking Natasha?" Clint asked.

"I don't want to bother her with this, or dredge up old memories...it's not that important," Bobbi told him.

"Then why do you ask?"

"It's...mission-related," she lied, the first plausible thing that popped into her head.

The last semblance of joking left his voice. "If that mission has something to do with the Red Room, she'd want to know."

"It has nothing to do with the Red Room," Bobbi promised. "I'm sorry; I can't tell you more than that." She didn't know why she was keeping Isabelle a secret from Clint exactly—maybe because it wasn't the kind of small news she would want to break to him in less than a minute and a half. "All right, I'll let you go now," she said. "Thanks. Don't get killed."

"Yes ma'am," Clint replied snarkily before the line clicked dead. She allowed herself a brief smile at talking to her partner again, then focused on what had actually been said.

Five or six. Isabelle was almost five, would be this Christmas. Bobbi refused to let Isabelle grow up like that—she knew the parallels she was drawing between Natasha and Isabelle were strained, but at the same time she was certain they were there. As much as she loved Natasha, she had to admit that she hadn't emerged unscathed in any sense of the word from her harsh upbringing, where the first thing Red Room students learned from their so-called teachers was how to lie and the first thing they learned from each other was the value of keeping secrets in keeping themselves alive. She still could see no other option in regards to the social worker, but she and Hunter could at least make sure that for Isabelle, it was as far from living a double life as possible.

She came into Isabelle's room just in time for the end of Hunter's bedtime story. "'Nutmeg,' whispered Piggy. 'Is that the secret ingredient?' asked Fox," he read, changing his voice for each of the characters. "'That,' said Piggy…" Hunter flipped the page. "'...and a little bit of love.'" There was a moment of silence—that wonderful second of bliss after finishing a good book—before Isabelle noticed her presence.

"You missed the story," Isabelle accused her as Bobbi sat down on the edge of the bed next to her ex-husband. She looked at Lance mischievously. "You have to read it again!" Bobbi noticed that the front of his shirt was soaked with water from Isabelle's bath. She'd have to remind him that practice makes perfect later.

"Nope, one bedtime story a night, love," Hunter told her. "Now it's time for you to go to sleep."

"Just a minute," Bobbi interrupted, and Hunter looked at her questioningly. They had decided the night before that it would probably be best if only one of them was there to read a story each night as much as they both loved to do it, seeing as back at the Playground it was highly likely that only one often would be available to do so at a time. "Isabelle, I know we told you that you might have to keep some secrets and tell a few lies tomorrow." The girl gave a slight nod and scrunched down in her bed. "But I want to make it clear to you that you never have to keep secrets or not tell the truth to us, to Lance and I. There's nothing you can't tell us. We don't have to keep secrets from each other, ever."

"Why?" Isabelle asked.

Bobbi glanced at Hunter. "Because we're family. And because Lance and I love you very much. Okay?"

"Okay," Isabelle said, reaching up to give Bobbi a hug.

"Goodnight, love," Hunter said.

"Goodnight, Isabelle." She placed a small kiss on her daughter's forehead, and they closed the door softly behind them.

Don't ask me how Barton (and by reference Romanoff) wound up in here...blame severe lack of sleep ;) Until next time!

I'd love to know what you thought!