6953/The Framework: The Enemy Within

The Framework: The Enemy Within
Date of Scene:	15 July 2021
Location:	07 Lance's Suite - Playground
Synopsis:	As Bobbi struggles to reconcile what is and isn't real and who she is - she makes a proposal to Lance that he accepts.
Cast of Characters:	Bobbi Morse, Lance Hunter

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Bobbi Morse has posed:
    Bobbi sits upright suddenly, cold sweats, heavy breathing. Even this room is too small. She grips the sheets tightly and tries to calm herself. She's experienced PTSD before and knew this kind of thing was coming. It's not like there's many shrinks she can explain what happened to her to though.

    The last few fading images that got her heart racing still linger in her mind. Pulling the trigger on Lance. On Jia. On so many Inhumans. But it's the claustrophobia that's getting to her. Being trapped in the pod, being trapped in the framework, being trapped in this room.

    She gets out of bed and pushes the door open and gets out in to the corridor. Leaning against the wall in her sleeping shorts and shirt. The clock on the bedside says 3:33am.

Lance Hunter has posed:
As Bobbi sits suddenly Lance's hand shoots for the ICER on the bedside table as he comes up beside her weapon trained on the door of their small room in the Playground. "Bobs?" he asks looking over at her clutching the sheet. "You alright?" he asks reaching for the light but by the time it's on she's out the door and into the hall. Lance puts the ICER down and follows her, in his own shorts and t-shirt combo, making a noise of complaint as his bare feet touch the cold concrete of the corridor. "Bobs, what's wrong?" he asks quietly joining her in leaning against the wall.

Bobbi Morse has posed:
    It's a rare enough thing to see Bobbi crying. She's not sniffling, but there are tears running down her cheeks. As Lance follows her out of the room she wraps her arms about him and hugs him. Simply holding on to him for a long moment, she eventually whispers, "Come on."

    She finds his hand and leads him down the corridor past bewildered night shift agents wondering why they're up in their jammies. She enters the elevator and that takes them up to the carpark of a generic looking office building. She wanders out to the quiet evening streets. A distant highway carries the noise of cars, but Bobbi is looking up.

    Not just at the stars, but the cool evening wind beats against them. "The thing about the framework. It was missing all kinds of details, but it told your brain everything was normal. Everything was there that was meant to be there."

Lance Hunter has posed:
Hunter wraps Bobbi up tightly in her arms not speaking about the tears running down her cheeks, but the look in his eyes says clearly that they've been seen and he's worried. Still when she takes his hand he follows without words, and without complaint, walking past the other agents without so much as a look then outside into the night air, and the sounds of distant traffic. "Makes sense, heard our brains hate holes like that and fill them in on their own," he says, though by his tone he hasn't quite figured out where this was going.

Bobbi Morse has posed:
    Bobbi cuts the air with a hand and says, "I can't.. figure out.. where the line was. Between brain washing and me just being me." She squeezes his hand just a little bit. "The whole time .. after I killed you. I couldn't shoot anyone with my right hand anymore. It'd just start shaking. So I got used to tossing my gun to my left hand to finish the job."

    "Did I ever tell you about my time in the savage lands?," she says and finds a bench to sit down on with Lance. "It was near the end of Operation Gladiator. Allen had just been caught out working for AIM but even then he believed I was on his side. I had no idea until that moment how powerful undercover identities could be."

    "He used the super soldier serum on Ted. Well, not just him, Allen and Brandt were working together - they were both AIM. Ted, he wasn't. Look we were trying to recreate the serum not fix it. You might remember the file on Man-Thing. That's what Ted became. The serum.. it broke him."

    She frowns, "I was ordered to stick with Allen, so I went to the Savage Lands with him. He wanted to marry me," she says with an amused laugh. "He was really in love with me but all I could see was the monster inside of him. The man willing to use the serum on a fellow colleague just to escape, just to prove his theories."

    "... Ted caught up with us. I could tell he was hurt to see me there like I had betrayed him. I was undercover, there was nothing I could do. But Ted, he tried to kill Allen. Vengeance. I didn't..." She winces like she's glitching in her own head. "In one life I let him kill Allen. In the other I stopped him and saved Allen." She shakes her head, "And I can't tell which was real and which wasn't."

Lance Hunter has posed:
Listening Hunter keeps Bobbi's hand in his. "Yeah, you told me," he confirms but doesn't stop her from telling the tale, just sitting beside her quietly. "You let Allen die," he confirms. "You told me this story awhile after we first got together to tell me how tricky the undercover stuff could get for you, anyhow, that's how it happened here, in the real world."

Bobbi Morse has posed:
    Bobbi nods her head just a little bit and squeezes his hand again. "Thank you." Her other hand wipes away tears from her cheeks and she says. "It's. It's one thing for HYDRA to indoctrinate a person with brainwashing. This was a whole different level. And worse still, they then also did that to me in there. I'm trying not to blame myself for shooting you. I know that wasn't really my choice. But after that? All those things I did?"

    She frowns and then looks back to Lance. "I'm the monster. Like Allen. I just didn't care. I towed the party line and did as I was told because I was good at it. And just like Reina I captured Inhumans and turned them over to a man who I knew would torture them in the name of science."

    She shakes her head, "All that effort we went to, tracking down and stopping Whitehall. Over there? He retired. The bastard retired because he was 'Proud of the F~~'" She stops and presses her lips together. "We're all so fucked now. I'm feeling anxious in small spaces. I think I've developed claustrophobia."

    She looks back to Lance, "Alls I could see in Allen was the monster. I don't understand how you can see anything different in me. HYDRA isn't just a bunch of guys out there. I was HYDRA. In my heart. I did those bad things and ... I was completely convinced I was doing them for a good cause."

Lance Hunter has posed:
Hunter keeps hold of that hand and doesn't dare let go as Bobbi speaks. "You're not a monster Bobs," he says. "The way I understand it, your brain got hijacked by a giant computer that told you, in this world you love HYDRA' and your brain had two choices, go insane because that makes no sense of fill in the gaps the Framework left with whatever shit would make sense to get you to where it wanted to go. That's not you Bobs, that's just your brain trying to survive the Framework. The real you, the woman I love, she's nothing like the Sky Commander."

Bobbi Morse has posed:
    The faint red lines of where the giant computer dug under Bobbi's skin are still visible. They're fading faster than the other victims of the framework. It gives her an almost comically alien look, like red whiskers on her cheeks or tribal tattoos in fresh henna.

    She looks back at Lance and kisses him deeply. "I think, sometimes, I'm going to need to hear that. I don't like who I was in there. They took you away from me. They knew you'd never let me go down that road... HYDRA knew you were my 'weakness'. Ugh. Garrett and his toxic 'soft' and 'hard' crap. I don't know how Ward survived him... heh, I guess he didn't really."

    "I don't want to lose you again. We always have these stupid arguments and take some cooling off time and that just stretches out because we're dumbasses. Marry me," she says as her other hand wipes away more tears.

Lance Hunter has posed:
Hunter returns the kiss gripping hard to Bobbi letting her know he was here and wasn't going anywhere even before she spoke words to those effect. "You can hear that any time, Bobs, because it's true,you're a good person, one of the best people I know as a matter of fact, and damn right I wouldn't have let you go down that road Bobs, just like you'd kick my ass if I ever started. It's why we work, we're there when we need each other."

Bobs final words leave Hunter blinking for a moment, but only a moment. "Absolutely," he tells her. "Know a judge awake at 3am? We'll go find him." There's humour in the words but at the core they're true, he'd marry her right this second if he could.

Bobbi Morse has posed:
    Now she sniffles. She wipes her nose with her sleeve and smiles at his complete lack of doubt about them. She chuckles, "3am. Not one that would appreciate it.. besides, both our civilian identities live in New York."

    She considers for a moment. "If we shower, pack some nice clothes, grab some food on the way we can be at the New York City Hall roughly when it opens..."

Lance Hunter has posed:
"Good point," Hunter remarks with a grin about the judge. "Though there is some fun at the idea of waking some poor judge up in the middle of the night to go marry us," he says with a grin.

Her suggestion has him letting go of her hand as he stands and offers his hand back to her. "Sounds like a plan to me," he says cheerfully, before he seeks out her eyes with his for a brief moment of sincerity. "Things will get better Bobs," he promises about the Framework and everything they've been through. "But come on, we've got a life to go start," he says, his grin returning.

Bobbi Morse has posed:
    Bobbi nods her head and wraps an arm about his as they head back inside the base.