Budapest » [Clintasha]

Chapter Fifty-nine: New Horizons

That kiss spelled disaster, and the downwards spiral, and eventual, demise of my career.

My fatal flaw? Affection.

Like a pauper pursues prosperity, I will go to inordinate lengths and concoct convoluted contrivances to obtain love. The sensation of Bobbi's lips on my bruise-inflated cheek was a smidgeon of the abundance of love she had to give. Her nectar-lips; becoming of the gods, not to be trifled with by mortal man. For love, I would sacrifice anything: sanity, salubriousness and solace. And like the pauper, famished of fortune, were it offered, I would hungrily hunt it. And Bobbi was a well of love, parched for so long, I made her the centre of my life: my goals, my purpose, my salvation.

And it led to an untimely self-destruction. Affection is an affliction that morphs your outlook, alters your actions, and angles your aims. It was a distraction: Bobbi was a distraction.

On the running track, circulating the oval like water does in the gutter, no focus was divided to the task at hand. My feet mindlessly kept themselves within the white boundaries between lanes as sprinters shot down either side of me like Sonic the Hedgehog - and I swear to god, the day I get my first pay packet out of this tight-ass organisation, I'm buying myself a SEGA Megadrive - and my attention was diverted to the buxom blonde ahead.

My god, even with sweat-glazed skin, in the grey of the autumn drizzle, hair tangled into a ponytail, she looked divine. Her hair swished rhythmically at her spaced strides and she kept pace like a metronome. Although graced with all of the swooping curves of the female figure, she had all the hard angles of an athletic physique. Gazing, I was the idiot who splashed through the puddles pooling in the potholes of the tarmac to catch up with her, only for my toes to catch, and land me face-first. As water spilled into my clothes, all of my dignity spilled out. Attempting to impress her with my athleticism, I flopped fantastically.

Her walkman covering her ears, it took her a few moments to register my yelps; she soon plodded to a halt. Removing the foam-ended headphones and slinging them around her neck, she stalked trendily over. Dank and dismal rain water dripping down my face; I saw a hand thrust to me: an olive branch, of sorts. And she certainly was a dove.

Bobbi was unjudgemental. She'd never once tried to excavate my secrets, unlike how Coulson and Fury had tried to take a pickaxe to past to uncover what was concealed under years of emotional sediment. And they had cracked and crumbled my facade. I heralded her as a saint for her sheer sympathy and amicability.

My hands grazed from the fall and my knee - then I realised - dripping with blood from the impact where my joggers had been torn open, stained crimson and claret around the ripped fibres, I took her hand. She hauled me to my feet, and with wordless empathy helped me across to one of the sport supervisors.

And it wasn't just her physical form that distracted me - as bewitching as that is - its her talents that truly hypnotise me. The intellect she's amassed could rival Einstein - I'd swear it in court; I'd never heard a question she couldn't answer, or at least stitch together a credible solution to on the spot. Resilience or raw intellect, I was unsure; but the time for contemplating it wasn't whilst bench pressing a hundred kilos, as I soon worked out.

I wasn't sure if it was because she'd sensed me ogling her that she came to my aid as my arms were crushed to my chest and my fingers cramped and mangled, or out of the unadulterated kindness of her heart. She dismissed herself from a duel with Rollins and scrambled to my attention like a sprinter when they hear the gun at the starting line: and I was anything but silent, gargling, gagging and gasping. And no one opted out of a fight with the S.T.R.I.K.E Squad; people had a reputation to maintain at S.H.I.E.L.D. Academy! And Bobbi was reputable and renowned for her abilities - top of the class.