7063/The ex-Commanders of the Framwork

The ex-Commanders of the Framwork
Date of Scene:	24 July 2021
Location:	Gym - Playground
Synopsis:	Bobbi and May run in to each other in the gym and have some time to chat. Bobbi makes sure they're good. Phil appears when his name is mentioned, but he's not at all happy with Bobbi's answers about the strange medical equipment used to save Peggy's life.
Cast of Characters:	Melinda May, Bobbi Morse, Phil Coulson

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Melinda May has posed:
It's Saturday. Mid-Afternoon. Doesn't mean work stops at the Playground. There's always something to be done. And when the paperwork is done, there's training and conditioning. Melinda May has never been a fan of paperwork. Even when she spent some time in Admin, pushing out intel reports for L3's and L4's. If anything, that just made her hate it all the more. She's learned, of course, a Commander almost always has paperwork to do.

Until she doesn't.

Turns out, if you spend enough time burying yourself in the paperwork, as well as everything else, you actually do eventually get on top of it. Which means that, this particular Saturday afternoon, May's choices are flight hours in the Quinjet or continuing to get herself back into shape after weeks of enforced immobility inside the damned Framework pod. Given she doesn't want to do the paperwork for the jet fuel, PT it is.

The physical reminders of the pod have faded from her skin. No more tracings of circuitry lines or rashy clusters of microinjection points. And her muscle tone and coordination are still good.

She just still feels a little off-kilter. She suspects it's all in her head. She also suspects it's going to last for a while. Thus, in an epic effort to ignore that particular elephant in the room, she stands in the middle of the training mats alone. Her arms sweep in long, slow motions -- almost a dancer's motions -- as she goes through a series of slow tai chi katas to allow her to refocus herself and find a quieter center.

Bobbi Morse has posed:
    Bobbi knows they're in the eye of the storm. The catalyst for HYDRA's rise is on the horizon. They know where. They know when. They just don't know who. Someone who can cause mass structural damage - that's the best they've got. A mission is being assembled to capture Sunil Bakshi and ideally make him talk. The odds of him actually doing that? low. He's a HYDRA die hard loyalist who would have jumped off a cliff for Whitehall.. and damn List actually complements him on his work.

    To get over that frustration, Bobbi has been going for jogs. It's post-jog time now and she enters the gym. She misses the running machines, they meant she didn't have to leave the Triskelion for exercise. Nor did she have to bump in to May. It's not that she was deliberately avoiding her but subconsciously? probably. She enters the dojo and stretches out her arms and legs. The heart rate monitor has a few blips on its screen from time to time but it seems she's managing.

    The ever present stream of kree knowledge, thus far inaccessible to her due to a lack of knowing the language, is getting easier to suppress. It's about her. She's figured out that much. If she could understand it then may be should fix her heart. At least in the framework she was free of that condition. Back in the real world she must steadyfastly monitor herself once again.

    Dressed in a gym top and pants, she's barely broken a sweat from the long jog she did. Her eyes fall upon May and she approaches, "I'm surprised there's no junior agents here." Bad opener, she knows that. There's no such thing as a good opener. But like May she's had a long time to think about what the framework was and what happened. The upshot? until a few weeks prior to their rescue nothing they did was really them.

    It's a weird thing to be handed a backstory that's not your own and made to think it's your own. The problem was, when that backstory is so convincing that you keep playing the part until someone comes along and tells you it's all fake. She really did murder Jiaying to strike fear and terror in to the hearts of the Inhumans they had captured. It had worked and she felt like she had done the world a great service.

    What she reminds herself again and again is as soon as Lance made it in to her brain and she began to question the nature of her reality - her behaviour changed. Changed back to the way Bobbi Morse really was. Changed away from what AIDA wanted in her narrative. She knows who she _could_ be, but she also knows who she _is_. The revelations are carried in her emotions. Regret, but not guilt.

Melinda May has posed:
May glances around as Bobbi makes her observation, continuing through her kata at an even pace. "Better things to do on a Saturday," she suggests. She'd give a shrug, but it would disrupt the line of her movements. It's not like she didn't know the room was empty, after all. Indeed, it was a good reason for her to use it, at the time she started.

Beyond that comment, however, she doesn't ask Bobbi how she's feeling. She can already tell, after all. Nor does she challenge the interruption. There's simply no reason to. It's not really an interruption.

But, in the days since their return to duty, May has fallen back into her longtime habit of saying nothing without cause. Whereas before she might have responded to the prompting of her new(ish) Inhuman gift to draw someone out, draw them into conversation, that has ceased to be something she indulges any longer.

Bobbi Morse has posed:
    "They should enjoy it while they can," Bobbi replies dryly. Bobbi takes a bit of empty space and drops down in to pushups. Her long blonde hair is in a ponytail and it is flopped over the left side of her face. She begins to mentally count them out as she goes. But something odd happens to her emotions when she's doing it.

    Her eyes keep glancing at her heart rate monitor pensively but her mind is elsewhere. It's like she's in the lab, in science mode, because in a way she is. She's watching in her minds eye the way the Kree language changes as she pushes herself. She's trying to push herself to the limit just to study what happens.

    "I noticed," she says between pushups, "that you've thrown yourself in to work. Trying not to think about things or talk about things or acknowledge things." Somewhat out of character for Bobbi, she did the exact opposite. She got married. She bought land and a house. She put in a request for leave right before Peggy got shot and they had to go on a crazy mission in to the Triskelion.

    Would Bobbi ever truly quit? she was on the tipping point in the first few days out of the framework. May, Bobbi, and Fitz took the brunt of the damage from that place. They were forced to play the part of the villain, the very people they have been fighting against most of their lives in the real world. Bobbi has been undercover in HYDRA a few times - her cover is well and truly blown since ending Whitehall. That old notion of undercover work taking you over, the character replacing your life, is exactly what happened. She's been drawing on the manuals to understand it better.

Melinda May has posed:
May feels that emotional shift -- the curiosity and focus. "Just because I haven't spoken about things publically," she says dryly, "doesn't mean I've not spoken about it." A beat. "Or had to acknowledge it." Her expression remains tightly controlled. "But there's been a lot of work to catch up on, too."

She glances over to the woman as she pushes herself off the ground repeatedly. "You ran off and married the man who pulled you out." Not so much a criticism as an observation. Diff'rent strokes and all that... "Congratulations, by the way." That last is quite sincere, in fact.

She slowly brings herself through to the end of her kata and relaxes her stance. After a moment, she moves to collect both a towel, which she uses to wipe down her face and neck, and a water bottle.

Bobbi Morse has posed:
    The pushups don't stop. It's been a reminder to Bobbi that Steve can still beat her at the pushups game. A small smirk and a hmm at the way May describes her marriage choice. "Thank you," she says with a touch of amusement in her voice. "It'd been a long time coming. We'd discussed getting married once before. But this time. We're both ready now."

    Concern, fear, creep in to her mind as she loses focus on the study of her Inhuman ability. "Are we okay May?" Because this was the woman who refined her martial arts in to utter asskickery. This was the woman who taught her how to enter a building filled with enemy combatants and lay them all to waste. They are very different people but that doesn't change the way Bobbi sees her.

    May has, and always will be, a pivotal mentor in her life. The events of the framework truly put that friendship in jeopardy. Or perhaps reinforced it. The awakened Bobbi was the one who walked in to that cell and busted May out. Unlike the joke about the wild west, the cavalry this time didn't come too late. It has been on Bobbi's mind just how close they all were to succumbing to that place.

    "We're doing a house warming, moving in, assembling Ikea furniture thing. I'd really like you to come."

Melinda May has posed:
The question stops May. And the emotions finally make sense. She lets out a soft breath, crossing over to the younger woman where she can crouch down beside her. "We're good," she says, laying a hand on her shoulder as she rises up on one of those pushes. "Of course, I'll come."

Yes, there's still tension about May, but it's not aimed at Bobbi particularly. She hasn't resolved the Framework in her mind, but she has gotten to the point where she understands it wasn't real. But, as Coulson says -- Just because the events weren't real doesn't mean the emotions weren't. And for May, that's the really heavy point. Irony is a bitch.

She knows Bobbi's narrative was as horrible as her own. But she does still bear the conviction that a lot of that world was predicated on her unique regret -- the life and death of Eva Belyakov. At least, Bobbi can say she was brainwashed. May chose her actions freely.

It occurs to her... they need to check in with Fitz.

Bobbi Morse has posed:
    Bobbi feels that hand on her shoulder. The Kree she was studying in her mind was her own but now it's May's. A large and loud signal filled with information she wishes she could see, could understand. She sits on the cusp of a knowledge breakthrough about humanity and alien technology but yet she is so far from grasping any of it.

    The change in focus of her gift peaks the emotion of discomfort just briefly, followed by curiosity. "Thanks," she says. She needed to hear it, to know it. In this case, also, to feel it. She resumes the pushups, a little harder perhaps to push through the brief swirl of emotional turmoil as she images how things would have been if May had said no.

    "Counter-operation to stop HYDRA's big catastrophe. I'm recommending we put the SHIELD logo back on our uniforms and quinjets. If there's one thing I learnt it's that we can't let them take the spot light. If we're going to do the right thing anyway we might as well brand it."

    She pauses and sits up and looks at May. "And there's an even bigger issue we need to think about too. Everything Reina said at Afterlife has so far come true. But her final warning was of blue angels coming with scythes to destroy us all. I don't believe she was making this stuff up." She pauses, "Well, almost everything - Caretaker." A small amused smirk. Yet, was that not exactly what May just did?

Melinda May has posed:
"Caretaker," May snirks. "Yeah. More like Janitor. My job's to take out the trash." There's actually some humour in her voice as she says it. A hint that maybe she's not completely swallowed by guilt and depression.

She doesn't let her hand linger on Bobbi's shoulder, however. The shift in the other woman's emotions isn't something she can miss, hand on her shoulder like that. So, pulling her hand away is a blessing to both of them, really. Softens the sharpness of each of their abilities.

She rises back to her feet, however, tugging on that towel across her shoulders. "I agree, though. It's time to stop hiding. And I'd be very surprised if Peggy didn't back us up on that one." They've all reached their limit, now. "If HYDRA thinks we're going to let them create a real world Cambridge incident, they've got another think coming. Bakshi. List. Mallick -- both of them. If I could, I'd send teams in on a simulataneous operation to take them all out." She knows she can't. Not enough personnel. Not enough intel. They don't even know where List is, right now. Nor, conclusively, the Mallicks.

"Hell, if I thought he'd play ball, I'd give Talbot a list of every HYDRA base and outpost we know about and have him decend on them like holy hell incarnate."

Bobbi Morse has posed:
    Bobbi's smirk extends just a little more and she nods her head, "Yeah I've been thinking about that too." She stands back up and says, "I think that's exactly what we need. Talbot's arrest of Hale hasn't made it to the news yet. That is probably a good thing for us. He has the authority and the fire power to arrest even the SecDef. And they're planning their attack hours before the vote on whether to re-open the investigation in to Feavets and Iron Fortitude and their connections to HYDRA."

    She lifts her chin. "If we succeed, we will be giving both the UN and Talbot the ammunition needed to go after HYDRA. We have all the intel. We can read him in. If Phil agrees.. I think he'd be perfect for the Talbot approach. He's primed after Hale tried to have him killed."

    "So.. we kind of have to succeed. The opportunity is too perfect."

Melinda May has posed:
"Opportunity," May nods. "And motivation." Everyone, she knows, is jonesing to get in on some serious HYDRA butt-kicking action. She retreats back a step or two towards a weightlifting bench. She straddles the end of it, not so much interested in pulling reps as continuing the conversation without prolonging her own katas.

"I expect Phil will agree," she says. "Peggy, too. Playing ball with government authority will go a long way to re-legitimizing us."

Phil Coulson has posed:
Restive.

That'd be a good word for the usually calm Phil Coulson.

Ever since coming to Delaware, ever since the rescue of Peggy and her subsequent healing and discharge from medical services, there's been something under the surface that isn't sitting quite right with the man. It's only gotten worse, really, a day or so ago when he's been haunting the halls; the medical section, the labs, and back to his office, door closed. (Which is also not decorated with any of the memorabilia that the Triskelion's office has. Had. (It better be there when he gets back!!)

Why would Phil find his way to the gym? He does actually work out, though no one has really caught him in the act. So, dressed in suit and tie, his hair combed back and looking as dapper as he normally does, he pushes on the door to enter, one hand still in pants pocket.

Blue eyes land on those within, he looks both vaguely apologetic and relieved all in one. "May.. I was told I could find you here." There's a pause encompassing only the time it takes for him to take another breath to greet Bobbi as well, "Commander Morse."

Bobbi Morse has posed:
    "Speak of the Coulson and he shall appear," Bobbi says with another small smile when he enters. He seems to be looking for May. Perhaps Saturday is a work day after all. "Coulson, Morse is just fine. Even Bobbi works. Just never Barbara, please. I had over a decade of that from Gonzales," she says to him. There's a spikey pang of loss in her emotions when she makes a small joke about Gonzales.

    "If Coulson is interested then it'll be a matter for the Chief to decide. If she's not too busy running around being young again." Bobbi raises an eyebrow. The ins and outs of what Jemma and Bobbi did are extremely classified but there's no doubting the outcome. Peggy might not be their junior in lived years but she certainly is in aged years.

Melinda May has posed:
"Always," May says, with regard to Phil's timing. Still, she rises from her seat on the bench, feeling his restiveness. It's like a bowstring quivering in the air, and not something she generally associates with him. Her concern isn't on her face. It's in her body.

"Phil," she greets him, crossing towards him. Her head tilts faintly, chin rising in question. "What's up?" If he's looking for her, something must be up. The real question, given his odd mood, is whether it's something he'll share with the class or with her alone, later.

Phil Coulson has posed:
"I thought that was usually 'the devil'," Phil returns with his usual deadpanned humor. "I mean, I'll take it." He pauses, again something that is well within his usual pattern, and a ghost of a smile appears, "Helps keep the other Agents off balance. I think I like that."

He does nod his acknowledgment, and acquiescence, "Morse, then." Last names always work! The mention of Gonzales, though, does cause that smile to be a little more shortlived than it would have been, and he nods in empathy. The loss of a colleague is never easy, even in this business.

"If I'm interested, what?" Oh look! Shiny!

Phil closes the door, his other hand dropping into his pocket, and even while looking 'casual', there is still something of an unsettledness. He crosses into the room a touch deeper, and with a cursory glance around the room, his gaze encompasses the two of them into one. "I need to know what happened with Chief Carter. How.. what that machine is." That very familiar but can't place it //machine//. He shakes his head, smile tightly and adds, "No one's talking."

Bobbi Morse has posed:
    "People like it when a Coulson appears though. Less so with the devil. Or as you tend to say 'not so much'." Bobbi says. She begins to stretch her arms up and out. She really wants to talk about the upcoming mission but suddenly it dawns on her just what machine he's asking about. The significance of why goes complete over her head though.

    "It's classified. Nothing untoward. It was designed by Jemma years ago. It'll be going back in to storage real soon." She raises an eyebrow and moves on. "We think HYDRA is using their upcoming attack not only to kick off their grande scheme, but also to distract the UN from voting on re-opening the case against Senator Feavits and the Iron Fortitude private military company. Feavits tests AIM weapons around the world and moves them about on his ships for HYDRA. He's in deep, we just don't know how deep."

    "During our mission to the Triskelion we had an encounter with Colonel Talbot. Plan T, flip Talbot. It was going okay until Hale decided to assassinate him and us. Then it went swimmingly. He's half way there. We think you've got the right kind of personality to take him the rest of the way. We need his authority and manpower to take down Mallick's HYDRA."

Melinda May has posed:
May knows nothing about the machine, or really the procedure in general that saved Peggy. Well. She knows it was medical in nature, involved some sort of genetics magic only Jemma could possibly have pulled off -- with Bobbi's help. And she knows Peggy now looks and feels much like she did when May went back to the turning of the year 1948 into 1949. Beyond that?

It's magic, as far as she's concerned. With less standing in potholes talking to thin air. (Most of the time.)

In typical fashion, she fall silent as the lengthy discussion starts. At least, it's a relatively comfortable silence -- for what it is, anyway. She can still feel Phil's restiveness. And she knows It's classifed won't sit any better with him than it does with her, but she also knows pushing Bobbi for the information is futile.

Still, as she considers Phil's emotional response to talk of that machine... a little niggle of speculation starts to quiver in the back of her skull.

Phil Coulson has posed:
Those words, 'It's classified' haven't been leveled at Coulson for YEARS. Decade, two decades? He's been the one to say them, and mean it with the full force of Authority (with a capital A) of Nick Fury behind him. To have them spoken to him by someone who only comparitively recently received about the same clearance level as he (or there abouts)?

Phil politely listens to the rest of the conversation, but all the rest can wait for a 'sit down' in an office over a cup of coffee.

"Yeah, of course." That's for that Talbot bit, again, over a cup of coffee. The response is given a wave of a pulled hand from its spot before he levels those blues back and fully on Bobbi.

"Classified. Morse, there is nothing that happens on this base that I don't know about, down to and including the fact the delivery for the keurig cups was late, and that May's tea was backordered. But, I'm getting the feeling that //something// is going on. When you tell me that I'm not cleared to know about it, and it's been around for years?" He shakes his head, and he adds, "Then we have a real problem."

There's a glance given towards May, and it lingers there, studyingly. From their relationships over the years, while he may be something of an open book to her, he gets those 'feelings' when things aren't quite sitting right with her either. It's just a matter of whether or not it's a proper time to call her out on them is all.

Bobbi Morse has posed:
    Bobbi first got a taste for saying "It's Classified" when she was promoted to Level 7. She was the youngest level 7 to be fair and may be the power went to her head a bit. But she casually tucks her hands behind her back as Phil artfully redirects the conversation back to his primary concern.

    As much as she was Gonzales's 2nd in S.P.O.T. for many years she was still an operative and still also under Coulson's command for many more. Her blue eyes stare back in to Phil's for a moment wondering what his gut is telling him about the machine. From her perspective, it seems wholly unwarranted.

    "Sir, I'd love to tell you but it's classified.." she elaborates this time, "Level 10 by Director Fury." Their beloved Director who put Chief Carter in charge and is rarely ever seen about. What is it he gets up to? o one knows.

    "But if you're worried about base security or something similar, I can assure you the device is perfectly safe." She considers if it's even okay for her to mention genetic recombinatory mechanics or modified CRISPr techniques. But she gives a small shake of her head. Fury was explicit.

    "I can have it out of here today if that'd mamke you feel better?"

Melinda May has posed:
May can only speculate as to why Phil is feeling restive. She can only speculate as to why the machine is 'classified'. And she can only speculate whether or not the two are linked. At this point? She doesn't actually have enough speculation one way or another to even give her a solid gut feeling on the matter.

All of which means that Phil's reading of her probably comes up as 'inconclusive'. She just doesn't have enough to know. But, given the faint cant to her head and the slight lift of one brow, it's likely she's as curious as he is.

The more the machine gets brought into the discussion, however... the less she knows what to think about any of it. And that *never* sits well with Melinda May.

Phil Coulson has posed:
Phil takes a deep breath, his other hand coming from his pocket as his lips form a tight line. Level 10. His Director. The man he'd die for, and almost did.

And he'd do it again, so loyal is Agent Coulson. Commander Coulson.

"Right." It's a single word, and behind it is a whole host of emotions that play even while he keeps his features (mostly) neutral. "I actually am a little worried about base security." Though that certainly isn't the main reason. He shakes his head, this time the gesture almost looking as if he's trying to dislodge some spiderwebs that are taking hold there. He exhales again, and nods, more an answer to thoughts in his head than anything happening between the three. More research, more information... and if there's anyone who can dig deep into secrets?

He still has friends in different places.

"Oh, May." He'd almost forgotten as to why he came in! "Forty-eight hours, I'm gonna need wheels up on The Bus. I sent the parameters to you." Though he hasn't yet come up with a team.

Deliberately.

Bobbi Morse has posed:
    It's rare to see Coulson like this. At least for Bobbi. She expects May may have seen it more than she has. Gonzales? sure, totally. He presented his worry in a different way though. Now she's starting to doubt herself. Did she miss something? what could possibly be so dangerous about that machine. "Consider it gone Sir." Bobbi says having fallen back to 'Sir' the moment he asserted his displeasure at being told it's classified.

    "Is that about the Bakshi mission?" She asks. Seeming to have gotten away, for now, with telling Coulson it's classified, she walks over to one of the metal hang beams and jumps up, gripping it and starting to do pull ups. It doesn't look terribly hard for her, but she is putting in a concerted effort.

    Word got around about what Daisy found after they interrogated Agent House. List, here in the states. Bakshi driving from New York to Orlando. Capturing his cell phone conversation. It's the kind of break they'd been hoping for all along.

Melinda May has posed:
May watches the emotions she feels emmanating from her friend flit and disappear in sequence across his face in microexpressions that she knows simply because of years of exposure to them. She hardly needs her 'sixth sense' to be able to read them. Hell, even if his face were perfectly stoic and her powers completely non-existant, she'd still know what he was feeling in this moment. That's what thirty-some-odd years of partnership in the field will get a girl.

"Forty-eight hours works," she says mildly to the man. Hell, she'd be wheels up in 4 minutes, if he asked. Providing they're not refuelling from an empty tank.

She doesn't immediately ask about the mission. That'll come later.

Phil Coulson has posed:
Phil doesn't want it gone. He wants to know what the hell it is and //how// it can be used to benefit others. Bucky had come with him about a damned SERUM from AIM and/or Hydra. And if Cap had been affected by it, couldn't that machine have helped too? It seems like, in the words of Fury, 'A goddamned god send' the way it sits there.

So familiar, and yet not. Like..

Phil pauses and nods his head, murmuring, "Right," before he goes to answer the next question from Bobbi. "No, no it's not. I'm going to meet up and have lunch with a friend." On the other side of the world.

A tight smile is given to May, a nod in acknowledgment of her response; he knows she'll be good for it. And when she finds out //who// they're visiting?

Phil takes a couple of steps back, though he's not filling in with 'good talk', headed to the door. Nope, which may be somewhat out of character. Instead, he gives a wave, his expression thoughtful with a side-order of distracted. "See you later then. Morse, see you."