Maria Hill
“Cap—Steve,” she protests. “You can’t do this.”
“I’m Captain America,” he bristles. “The hell I can’t.”
“Steve, listen to me—”
“Goddamnit, Hill! My friend is dying!” Over his shoulder, Wilson’s white eyes go wide.
“Steve…Steve please. he’s a wanted man. By the World Peace Council. By SHIELD. By every major government organization in the world. You bring Barnes on the Quinjet, and he’s good as dead.” Or worse. Prison wasn’t the only place for a cybernetic assassin. The Winter Soldier’s resume was long and intimidating. There wasn’t a world power that wouldn’t vie for the chance to claim him. On a planet of seven billion people, only Steve “Naive Idealist” Rogers was too stupid, too stubborn to see it.
“Hill, please—“ And it wasn’t Captain America anymore, not the Soldier, not the Shield, not America’s Greatest Hero…it was just Steve Rogers, Steve Rogers kneeling on the tarmac clutching the broken body of a broken boy. And Steve Rogers was sobbing. “Please. He’s dying.”
“Can’t do this, Cap,” she sets her jaw. “I can’t let you. As far as I’m concerned I lost radio contact, you and Sam were never here, and James Buchanan Barnes died in 1945.”
[1945 or 2014. The outcome was the same.]
He might hate her. Think she was only protecting her country, her career…but the truth was Barnes needed all the protection he could get. SHIELD couldn’t give it. The US government wouldn’t give it. Cap could.
“Call Stark,” she told Wilson. “Call Stark now.”