Chapter Text
When cares, with time have worn away, will you come and sit and stay by my side and chat with me of days gone by and yet to be?
Gravestone inscription
Do you want to know a secret? Old gods never die. They just change form. They’re still worshiped, they’re still revered. We just don’t always see that’s what we’re doing. Ever cross yourself when you pass by a graveyard? Hold your breath and say a prayer in passing for the dead? To whom was that sent? To your ancestors? To a god who watches over the dead? Think about it.
J.P. Anthony
~*~
She arrived a month after May left.
A month after the monolith had changed his alchemical structure leaving him bereft of almost half of his molecular weight.
He'd grown... Well, not used to new faces, that wasn't the right word, but as none of the new faces had even a tenth of what he'd needed to find her, he ignored them and largely everyone else. Bobbi couldn't help, not really, but she tried to make up for who was missing in the lab. Coulson just wanted him to build, and that was a distraction, but he whipped off plans for him anyway. Anything to get him off of his back. To let him look. Everyone else, even Mack and Sk--Daisy had given up on finding Jemma. He was grateful that at the very least they let him work.
But the new faces were mostly a nuisance. He didn't bother learning one from the next, and he might have gone on that way if Bobbi hadn't forced an introduction. Spooky, Bobbi called her, even as the woman winced. "She's a friend of mine from --"
"A ways back," the woman said quietly. She wasn’t as tall as statuesque, blonde Bobbi, but not many were. Even so, this friend of Bobbi’s in her flat boots had an inch on him, at least, not that he was looking. “Please, don’t call me that. Bobbi likes to perpetuate cruel jokes.” She shook her head, dark curls bouncing. Standing there together, they looked like light and dark personified.
Not that Bobbi’s friend was as dark as Mack. But, the harsh lights of the lab, which cast everyone in a sickly light, tarnished her skin making her look like a Saint-Gaudens sculpture he’d seen on a trip to D.C. -- eerie and somewhere between old bronze and old brass. Certainly befitting the title “Spooky.” If she’d come to him wearing a hood, his heart probably would have stopped wondering if Death had found him.
“If I wanted to perpetuate cruel jokes, I would have introduced you as the Patron Saint of Lost Things, Anthony.” At that, the woman’s lips twisted up. “And I know how you feel about Judith.” That earned Bobbi a laugh from the woman, a sound that was expansive and startling. A flock of interns jumped and darted off at the sound. Such sounds had seemed to profane this place. No one was used to it anymore. It hit him like a like a shaft of light in the eyes and he had to reassess who was light and who was dark. He grunted.
But, the conversation between Bobbi and the stranger continued without paying him mind. “And I’m sorry, I’m just never going to get used to calling you Dr. Anthony,” Bobbi was saying. The woman snorted.
"Please," she told him, "Call me Seph. Or Anthony. Either is preferable." She put out a hand to shake and he just stared at her dumbly, not letting go of the parts in his hand for some thing he could care very little for that Coulson had insisted was a priority over fruitless attempts to figure out how to make the monolith give up its secrets.
She didn't seem offended, dark eyes as impassive as the rock in storage as she lowered her hand. "A pleasure to meet you regardless Dr. Fitz.”
“It’s Agent Fitz.”
She blinked. Slowly. She appeared to be digesting the correction rather than hurt by its swift sharpness. “Pardon me. Agent Fitz," She amended herself.
Bobbi tried to encourage him to speak with one of those prodding looks of hers. But, no. He had other secrets to plumb than whatever was meant by Bobbi's less than subtle nudge. And Seph.... After a long moment, she nodded to him and looked to Bobbi with a shade more warmth. He was dismissed. He could almost feel strings snap as she did it. “You’re busy. Maybe another time then.” She smiled. But there was something behind the twist of her lips. Something probing. Sad. She turned and was gone from the lab in an economy of strides that Bobbi, hobbled as she was with walking casts and crutches scrambled to match.
He put her - and light - out of his mind before the door had closed.
*