won't let them get the best of me
In the evening, Natasha printed out the picture she’d found on the Internet earlier. She had hoped to catch Hill on the Helicarrier at some point but she’d learned that the Deputy Director had left for a field mission and would be gone until the next day. Natasha didn’t think that that was a particularly good idea since the other woman was clearly not doing great at the moment, but it’s not like she really had a say in it. She’d just print out the picture and wait until she saw the woman again, hoping it would be sooner rather than later. Some part of her was worried about the older woman, despite her clear attempts at not letting herself care too much.
Maria knew, logically, that her being on this mission could potentially be considered a safety hazard. She hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in days, nightmares and flashbacks still plaguing her every moment. She had thought about telling Fury she couldn’t go in the field, but she’d ultimately decided against it. She needed to be in the field if she wanted to hold onto any hope she still had of clearing her mind. Thoughts were still swirling around in her head when May called out that she was starting the descent. The Quinjet was faster than any other plane out there. Maria loved taking the Quinjet to go on field missions. The feeling it brought her was priceless. It was peace incarnate, she’d thought the first time she’d travelled in one. It had been a few years ago, when Fury had first recruited her. It helped her quiet the worried voices in her mind, helped her feel lighter than air itself, flying so high above ground. It helped her focus on her breathing and relax her always too-tense muscles. Going down was her least favourite part of flying in a Quinjet though. It was smooth, so much smoother than a normal plane’s landing phase, but it usually meant the peace and quiet were over. May’s voice crackled in her ear again, announcing that they’d landed successfully. May would be waiting here with the Quinjet (although no one would know it was there since she would put up the Cloaking Umbrella, some sort of invisibility thing that allowed them to keep their presence mostly secret). Maria signalled to her team to move, and they all made their way out of the Quinjet and then out of the clearing they’d landed in.
The mission should be fairly easy. Walk in, retrieve the asset, walk out. Don’t get hurt, don’t get killed. Nothing hard about that. Maria loved these field missions. She loved them a lot more than those that implied spy work. She was pretty damn good at all the spy stuff, don’t get her wrong, but there was something about it that wasn’t nearly as natural to her as army-like missions. She was a soldier, through and through. SHIELD had turned her into a more than decent spy, but she’d always been better at going in head-first, like a soldier would.
Her team for this mission was a pretty good one. She knew most of the men on it from her army days. She’d had the privilege of choosing who to take with her, and given the nature of the mission she’d thought having a team formed of ex-soldiers was the best move. They communicated well, all of them. They knew the others’ language, shared the same military knowledge and hard-learned reflexes.
In the end, they achieved the mission objective easily, meeting very little enemy fire, be it on their way in or on their way out. The asset was a hard drive. Maria was the only one who knew why the hard drive was important, thanks to her level 9 clearance, way above anyone else’s on the team. The only person at SHIELD with a higher level clearance than her own was Fury himself. The hard drive contained classified information on some of their highest agents, including Fury, herself, and level 7 and above SHIELD agents. If it had fallen into the wrong hands before they’d gotten to it, Maria couldn’t even imagine the bloodbath it would have led to. The information on the drive pertained to agents’ families, personal home addresses, … . All in all, a lot of very dangerous information, should it be known by the wrong people.
Heading back to the Quinjet proved to be just as easy as the rest of the mission had been. Maria was grateful the mission had gone as smoothly as it had. It allowed her to relax a little, cut herself some slack.
As soon as all of her team had boarded, May’s voice crackled in Maria’s ear, asking if they were good to go, and to head back to the Helicarrier. Maria replied, letting the other woman know that they could go, and she soon felt the faint thrumming of the engines, indicating take off. With a somewhat peaceful smile, the brunette allowed herself to close her eyes and doze off.
She shot up a while later, her breathing erratic and her eyes darting around the place, unfocused. It took her a couple of seconds to remember where she was and gather herself. The members of her team sitting in the cabin with her were looking at her but, thankfully, no one commented on her behaviour. Maria stood up and walked away, needing a moment to collect herself. She checked her SHIELD-issued watch and realised she had gotten a little bit over an hour of sleep. That was good, she thought. She had to welcome any moment of sleep she could get. Hopefully, no one on her team would think about adding her having a nightmare on the way back to their reports since they all most likely had nightmares fairly regularly. Maria was startled out of her thoughts by May’s voice in her ear, warning people to strap in for landing. It was smooth, but they still had to sit and fasten their safety belts, just in case. Maria found herself making her way back to the main cabin, meeting some of her team members on the way, and they all sat and strapped themselves in. Barely a couple of minutes later, May’s voice crackled again, letting everyone know that they had safely landed and that everyone could get out. Maria took her earpiece out and unfastened her seatbelt before heading out of the Quinjet through the open boarding bridge. She wasted no time in heading to Fury’s office, hard drive safely in hand.
She knocked on the door and heard Fury’s gruff reply reach her through the thick wood. She opened the door and made her way to his desk, unceremoniously dropping the hard drive on it. He raised an eyebrow but didn’t comment, choosing instead to gesture for her to sit. Maria lowered herself on one of the leather chairs and waited for her superior to speak.
“I take it the mission went well?”
“It did. Almost no enemy fire, it was in and out.”
Fury nodded in acknowledgement and waited a beat before he spoke up again.
“Alright. Good. You have the rest of the week off.”
“Sir?”
“Yes, Hill?”
“It’s only Wednesday.”
“And?”
“You’re putting me on the bench until next Monday?”
“Yes, I am. Is that a problem, Hill?”
Maria bit her lip to stop an answer she hadn’t had the time to think through and slightly shook her head.
“No sir.”
He nodded absently and Maria took that as her cue to leave, getting up from her chair and walking to the door. After one last glance at her one-eyed superior, Maria left the room and closed the door behind her, before she made her way back to her own office. Fury had benched her for the rest of the week, but that didn’t mean she didn’t have some paperwork left to finish. She’d finished most of her paperwork two nights before, when she couldn’t sleep, but she still had the paperwork of the day’s mission and some finishing touches to do.
As soon as she stepped foot into her office, Maria let her shoulders drop, relieving them of some of the tension that had been accumulating. She let herself plop down into her chair and turned on her computer, turning on the little radio post on her desk to get some music while she was waiting for the computer to power on. She got to work, fully focused on her screen until she heard her stomach rumble. Maria checked the time and let out an exasperated sigh when she noticed it was already well past 10 at night.
‘Crap’.
The brunette quickly made her way to the cafeteria, praying to whatever deity would listen to her that it would still be open. Thankfully, they were just about to close and happily let her take some things to go. Maria thanked them profusely before she headed back to her room to eat in relative tranquillity.
As soon as she was done, she changed into her workout gear and made her way to the gym, hoping she wouldn’t run into the redhead. To her utmost pleasure, the gym was empty when she got there and Maria immediately stretched before she started focusing her attention on the punching bags at the far end of the gym, just right of the lifting weight. She put protective straps on her hands and let her mind drift away as she focused on her punches alone.
She had always found it somewhat therapeutic to be able to hit something as hard and as many times as she needed to to evacuate whatever feelings were crowding her head and bothering her. In the end, she didn’t even know how long she’d been at it that night when she heard steps getting closer. With a satisfied sigh, Maria unstrapped her hands and headed out the door, towards her room. She met Natasha on her way out and only gratified her of a quick nod before she rushed all the way back to her room. Some part of her was terrified of having to confront the redhead, and she was intent on staying as far away as was possible when you were stuck on the same freaking aircraft. Maria had never been so grateful for her level 9 advantages, one of them being that no one except herself and Fury could access the corridor leading to her room. It felt wrong, feeling relieved at the idea that the redhead did not have a high enough clearance level to reach her, but it mostly kept her worries at bay, so Maria didn’t let herself dwell on it too much.
That night ended up being the same as every night for the previous week, and Maria only got a handful of hours of sleep. It wasn’t enough for her to feel fully rested when she woke up the next morning but it was, surprisingly, enough to lessen the bags under her eyes. Reinvigorated, the brunette tried to think of a way to occupy her day, since she was all but benched until the end of the week. Coming up empty, she settled on getting some breakfast as the first step. She figured she could always go back to Fury’s office and ask him for an assignment but that somehow didn’t sound like a good idea at all. Maria was no idiot, and she knew Fury had noticed something was amiss with her. If it seemed like she needed a new mission, he’d know she was trying to busy herself with work and would most likely force her to take a longer leave, off of the Helicarrier. This was one of his stupid tests, nothing more, and Maria would pass. She promised herself that.
The day ended up being the longest of Maria’s life, and she more than once almost relented and went to Fury’s office, only to stop herself halfway there and head back where she came from. She knew, deep down, that going to him right now would only make matters worse, and that was something she absolutely did not need. She was surprised to see the redhead woman plaguing her thoughts since their encounter in the gym leave with her go-bag in hand, walking confidently towards the boarding bay.