Greetings! I hope all of you are well :) Sorry about the delay on this chapter; my birthday was on Sunday and I'm leaving for college for the first time this Friday, so my life's been a bit hectic as of late.

Also, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is back in less than a week! It kinda snuck up on me this year ;) If you wanna review season 3 in a really fun way, let me give a shoutout to a post by inkasrain on Twitter who created an ingenious rhyming recap of the show. It's hilarious, so I highly recommend you check it out. (Search "agents of shield season 3 rhyme" on Google.)

Onward!

Fallout

"Mommy, mommy, look at that!" Isabelle tugged on her pant leg. "The cup is vibrating!"

"What?" Bobbi shook her head without lifting it, still staring down at the charts Simmons had given her. "Give me a second, Isabelle." She scanned the last part quickly, but Simmons had been right-Skye's bloodwork was all normal. Not even her white blood cell count was up, or any other signs that her immune system had been kicked into high gear recently by an alien pathogen. Nothing like what they had seen in Mack's charts, with T-cells and hormones completely out of whack. Skye was utterly normal. Thank God.

"Hmm?" Bobbi turned to Isabelle. "Did you say something about vibrating?"

"It's not doing it anymore now," Isabelle pouted, staring at her cup of hot chocolate. "I wanted you to see. It was really cool; I wasn't touching it or anything!"

"You sure you weren't kicking the table leg?" she smiled knowingly.

For some reason, Isabelle's frown turned into a scowl. "No! I said I wasn't doing it!"

"Well, cups don't vibrate on their own," Bobbi laughed. She glanced at Skye, who was sitting across from Isabelle and still behind the containment glass. The hacker dropped her gaze almost immediately, returning it to her cocoa and seeming to shrink into herself for some reason. "Why don't you finish up your tea party with Skye so she can get some rest before Jemma comes and confirms the results?"

"It's not a tea party, it's a hot chocolate party," Isabelle told her, still trying hard to keep her small eyebrows in an angry V.

"So...was nothing off in my bloodwork?" Skye asked Bobbi, disbelief clear in her voice.

"Unless Simmons has found something new, no," Bobbi smiled at her. "I'll go tell her I agree with her initial assessment now. Isabelle, stay here, okay?"

"Okay," Isabelle said, lifting her cup to her mouth. "But Mommy, is Skye not sick after all?"

"She's gotten a lot better," Bobbi replied evasively, pressing a kiss to the top of her daughter's head. Isabelle's arm unexpectedly snaked around her neck, pulling her ear close to her face.

"But...she still has to rest? And her face is white, just like my mommy's was after Daddy got sick," Isabelle whispered. "Are you sure she's okay? 'M almost five; you can tell me." She jutted out her bottom lip, trying to look tough.

Bobbi wondered where she'd copied that expression from. It was adorable. "Let's just let Jemma do her job. I'll be right back." She stepped away towards the door.

"Bobbi, can you find Fitz and tell him to meet me here?" Skye asked. "I just...need to talk to him."

"Sure," she replied with a nod. "I'll be back as soon as I can."

She headed to the lab where she'd picked up the test results from Simmons in the first place. Coulson and Fitz were also inside-just the people she need to see. "Simmons, anything new on Skye's condition?"

"Not a thing," the young Brit shook her head. "Was I right that there was absolutely nothing off about her blood? It just seemed too good to be true…"

"I agree, but that's what I see as well," Bobbi shrugged, handing her back Skye's chart. "After what happened to Trip, maybe the universe decided we all deserved a lucky break."

"I hope so," Simmons said. "I'm very glad to be able to deliver the good news and release Skye from quarantine though. If that's all right, sir?"

"She's been in there long enough," Coulson gave his permission.

Bobbi turned to the only person in the room who had yet to say anything. "Fitz, Skye also said she wants to talk to you."

"Okay, I'll come down with you," he nodded. Simmons hugged Skye's chart to her chest like the miracle it was as she made a beeline for the door, obviously intent on getting to quarantine and releasing Skye as soon as possible.

Isabelle had just finished the last of her hot chocolate as Bobbi returned, so she cleared saucers and cups for Isabelle, Thor the monkey, and Hoppity the bunny but was unable to do so for Skye, the fourth member of the tea party, because hers was on the other side of the glass. Simmons finished explaining her findings in detail to Skye, who Bobbi was saddened to see hadn't regained any of her usual color to her pale cheeks at the good news. Perhaps she was still in shock. Bobbi knew how much she had truly believed something had changed about her.

Coulson inputted a passcode on the quarantine door look, and it unsealed with a small whooshing sound. Still in a hospital gown, Skye stepped out of her glass box on somewhat unsteady feet. Fitz reached out for a comforting hug about the same time as Simmons did, but they were both beaten by the little blonde ninja zipping between their legs to engulf Skye first in a giant bear hug.

A sudden stabbing weight plunging down upon her abdomen caused Bobbi to jolt awake to find a pair of bony knees planted in her stomach, petite hands pressed into the mattress behind her ears and tugging uncomfortably on stray strands of her hair, and a small face gazing into hers from just a few inches away. "Ow! Isabelle," Bobbi grunted, shifting. She freed her arms from the mess of bedding to lift Isabelle into a less painful position laying on top of her.

"Did I hurt you?" Isabelle asked, blue eyes wide and worried.

"It's okay now," Bobbi rasped, "but remember, I'm not a jungle gym, okay?"

"Okay, sorry, Mommy," the girl said, snuggling in and propping her arms up against the bottom of Bobbi's ribcage.

"Why didn't the alarm go off when you went out of your room, bear?" Bobbi asked, slowly becoming aware of the pounding headache in her skull.

"It is going off," Isabelle informed her, and Bobbi felt all of the air whoosh out of her chest as Isabelle uncrossed her arms and let herself down with a fwump!, reaching for the phone on the nightstand. She was right, Bobbi could hear the shrill tones of the alarm now, but not for long as Isabelle's little fingers danced against the screen and it abruptly shut up.

"Where did you learn that?" Bobbi croaked as Isabelle let it ban are the nightstand.

Isabelle laughed. "It's easy." The girl resettled herself over Bobbi, gazing down at her. "You don't look good, Mommy."

"Thanks, Isabelle," Bobbi coughed derisively, feeling each word scrape against her suddenly raw throat as she said it. "I feel bad too."

Isabelle frowned and her eyebrows drew together, evaluating her carefully. "You look white like Skye did in quaranthing and like Mommy did before."

"I think I might have caught a bit of a cold," Bobbi said with visible effort.

"So Skye is contay...contay-gee-ous after all?" Isabelle asked.

"Contagious," Bobbi told her. "And no, it has nothing to do with Skye. But if you don't want to get sick too, you should probably go find Hunter and stay with him for a while."

"I wanna stay with you," Isabelle snuggled up against her further.

Bobbi tapped her on the nose. "No, bear, then you might get sick too."

"I don't care," Isabelle placed her head on Bobbi's chest, ear close to the pumping of her heart.

"Trust me, you will-having a cold is no fun," she groaned.

Isabelle lifted herself up on her elbows again to gaze at her face, evaluating carefully. "I like your cheeks better pink."

"So do I," Bobbi laughed. "And you know what? I like your cheeks pink too. So why don't you go and find Hunter and tell him I said he should make you whatever you want for breakfast?"

"Whatever I want?"

"Within reason," Bobbi amended quickly. She remembered Isabelle's words from the day before. "And since you're almost five now, I'll even let you go by yourself. But straight from here to his room, okay? You know how to get there?"

"Yeah!" Isabelle grinned, looking proud of herself. She clamored off of Bobbi and the bed. "See you later, Mommy!" The door slammed shut behind her in her excitement and Bobbi groped for the phone. She found her ex-husband's contact and sent a quick text.

Isabelle on her way to you. Not feeling well.

He only took a few seconds to reply. Okay, I'll be on the lookout. You all right, Bob?

She gave a small smile. Just a cold. I'll be fine in a few hours.

I believe you mean six to seven days, super-healing-woman. No mission, so you have time to rest. Stay in bed.

That's likely.

I'm serious, Bob. Before she had a chance to reply, a second text came through. Isabelle just arrived. Gtg. Don't you dare get up! Will bring breakfast to you.

You spoil me, she wrote, then erased it. The affectionate sarcasm wouldn't necessarily come across in a text. Going to medical for a thermometer, she said instead, adding a :P at the end just for him.

Now she just had to drag herself down there...

Pushing open the door to the lab, Bobbi moved slowly and weightily inside, letting it shut behind her with a slight bang against the plastic frame fitted with glass. A few scientists were working at their stations with microscopes and centrifuges and the like, but it was Simmons who looked up from her work when Bobbi began making her way across the lab floor, letting herself go slow in case she started to feel woozy again. God, she hated being sick.

"Are you all right, Bobbi?" Simmons asked, stripping off her blue latex gloves and coming nearer concernedly.

"I'm fine," Bobbi waved her off. "Just a little under the weather, I think. I was just headed to the med bay to take my temperature."

"You feel like you have a fever?" the young scientist asked, reaching up to press her hand against Bobbi's hot forehead. She swatted her hand away before she could get that far.

"Yeah, but it's probably no big deal. I don't feel that hot. Just taking it to make sure."

"Ah, of course, I'm sure there's nothing seriously wrong with you," Simmons shook her head. "After all, before this you were the very picture of health!" She caught Bobbi's eye. "Right, I'll come with you and help you out."

"Totally not necessary," Bobbi told her with a smile, moving to go past her to medical. "I've got a Biology degree, Jemma; I think I can take my own temperature."

"A Biology degree, though admirable, is not a degree in medicine!" Simmons called after her.

"Neither is a Ph.D in Biochem!" she replied without looking back, pushing through the opposite glass door to make it to the hallway adjoining the med bay.

The door closed rapidly behind her but not before she heard her friend reply something that sounded suspiciously like, "That's two , Agent Morse!"

She smiled to herself again before grimacing as she swallowed and was suddenly overcome with the urge to cough. That only served to rough up her already tender throat more as she located the temporal thermometer in one of the drawers. Pressing the central button, she placed it against her forehead when it beeped and listened to it trill as she slid it all the way down one side just past her left temple. 101.2 degrees. She did the same on the right side. 100.9 degrees. Either way, a decent-magnitude fever.

Damn.

Bobbi sterilized the head of the thermometer and set it back where she'd found it. With all the hectic things going on and having a four-year-old in the midst of it all-and having as her other caretaker a man who oftentimes acted like a six-year-old himself-there was only one thing she could do at this point.

She headed for the garage.

When she arrived she was glad to find neither Fitz nor Mack inside, not really in the mood for company right now. She crossed over to the black van in the corner permanently out of commission due to it being riddled with bullet holes. In addition to embedding themselves in every single one of its tires, they had also cut through the lines for getting gasoline to the engine, for getting gas to the tank, for power steering, for braking, for pretty much everything a car was ever supposed to do. As such, it was such a costly and time consuming job for Mack to repair, so it had been sitting in a corner ever since and being occasionally raided for spare parts whenever Coulson cut down on a machinery order. The agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.-well, particularly Bobbi, Hunter, and previously Isabelle Hartley-had taken to stashing stuff in there, although she could never tell if Hunter knew his hiding spot had been compromised by the two of them.

Bobbi heaved open the door with one hand-usually that was a tug, but apparently not today in her current state-and lifted the floormat of the right side to reveal two cases of beer nestled beneath. She removed them and set them on the seat, then reached forward into the cavity originally used for weapons stashing when traveling across national borders to pull out a cardboard box half-full of Cactus Cooler. Pulling one out and setting everything back, Bobbi had to admit that she wasn't sure Hunter didn't know about her stash but she'd never found any missing-possibly because he knew if he stole some of hers she'd steal some of his and his favorite beer was much more precious to him anyway.

Armed with the soda, she made her way back to her room to fashion her patented concoction, for which Cactus Cooler was the principal ingredient. Raiding the emergency rations they all kept under their beds, she pulled out a packet of orange-flavored Vitamin C powder and dumped into into the sugar-infused soda. Bobbi downed it with a couple ibuprofen. The intensity of the taste was electrifying from when it hit her tongue-almost stinging with sensation-all the way down to three minutes later when her fatigue was all but gone. Bobbi smiled, reassured again of the usefulness of her own formula. It was a hundred times better than Red Bull-the strongest concoction she'd drunk since college when she was downing the equivalent of caffeine-infused sludge to keep up with all of her classes and to pull consecutive all-nighters in order to graduate on time with a double major in Biology and Foreign Relations as well as minors in Spanish and Mandarin.

She'd been a bit of an overachiever at that point in her life, but she couldn't deny it served her well now.

Coming out of her room, she spotted Hunter and Isabelle coming towards her down the hallway carrying a large tray and a fistful of silverware and napkins, respectively.

The Earth tipped and Bobbi nearly lost her balance, knees threatening to buckle underneath her as she tried desperately to remain upright. A moment later everything steadied-fat lot of good her conviction was doing her if she was still having random bouts of dizziness. But then she looked up and saw that Hunter and Isabelle looked equally shaken.

"What was that?" Isabelle demanded.

"Earthquake," Hunter replied.

She looked up in alarm. "Is the ceiling going to fall down?"

"No, no, of course not; it wasn't a big one," Bobbi assured her. To Hunter, she added, "Thought I'd grown used to those from the two years we spent in California, but that one still startled me."

Hunter shrugged, holding up the tray. "Breakfast survived."

"Hey!" Fitz came hurrying towards them. "It didn't hurt any of you, did it?"

"The quake?" Bobbi shook her head. "No, thanks for asking. Why are you in such a hurry?"

"Just, ah, have to check the power relays, make sure none of them were damaged," the engineer said, beginning to edge past them down the hallway.

"The lights are still on, so I think we're all good on that count, mate," Hunter pointed out.

"Well, if you want the base to potentially blow up because of a crushed circuit in the main breakers, by all means, do a bloody systems analysis based on the fluorescent lights!" Fitz burst out.

"Hey, chill, mate, I was just trying to be helpful," Hunter said, looking bewildered as Bobbi at Fitz's outburst. "You were right; the breakers probably aren't made to withstand this sort of thing. We were just saying how odd it is to get an earthquake here, right, Bob?"

If anything, Fitz seemed to become more flustered by this statement. "It's not strange at all. More fault lines exist than you think, all across the North American continent! And don't get me started on how climate change is affecting the movement of tectonic plates—"

"That's okay, Fitz, we're good," Bobbi replied quickly. "Go check the breakers."

Without another word, Fitz sped off again. "What was that about?" Hunter asked, staring after him.

"Is the base okay?" Isabelle asked. "Is it really gonna blow up?"

"No, of course not, Leo was just making a point," Bobbi responded immediately. "He's a lot more careful than Daddy, and that's a good thing."

Isabelle turned to him. "Mommy says you need to be more careful."

"I heard her, love," Hunter said, shooting Bobbi a somewhat nasty look. "Here, have some breakfast."

Thanks for reading! Sadly, this story is coming to an end soon, probably around Chapter 40 mostly because I like round numbers. I do have a to-do list of things to get to before it does, though, including a few snippets through the years to provide some closure on what happens with Isabelle, Bobbi and Hunter, and the team as she grows up. If any of you have ideas for things you'd like to see in these last few chapters, drop me a line because I would love to hear them :)