Conundrum

Maria chuckled at the irony of her phone ringing.

No, it wasn’t funny that someone was calling her. It was hilarious that Nick was calling her after mandating she had one week offshore leave.

“This is Hill,” She answered. “Currently forced on leave without access to my S.H.I.E.L.D accounts.”

“Very funny, smartass.” The Director snarked. “I’m calling about Barton and Romanoff.”

“What about them? They dropped me off here, then proceeded with their op.”

“That’s why I’m calling you. You’re the closest trained field agent to them. They achieved their objectives but were separated before the Cessna 172 they hijacked crashed. Barton has checked in, he has a pretty severe concussion.”

It didn’t take brains to know where this was going. “Send the crash site coordinates to my phone. I’ll just make a quick shopping trip and will be right there, sir.”

“Be quick, Hill. You won’t be the only one looking for her.” He said, needing to have the last word before hanging up.

The coordinates to the approximate location of the crash site was right on the edge of a forest about an hours drive from where she was currently and to make things more rushed, it was already late afternoon. 

It would be a bitch to try to search for the agent after nightfall.

Time to hit a camping shop then and pick a few things up.

*

She took the time to survey the immediate area of the crashed plane. From what she was able to gather, the plane crashed heading into the direction of the forest and even found what appeared to be signs of a smaller impact about forty metres away in the form of snapped sticks, scattered indentations in the dirt and lastly a patch of hardened dirt.

Maria kneeled down to inspect the lump and felt its texture. It was almost dry, though there was some slight gooeyness to it.

Congealed blood.

Romanoff must have jumped out of the plane right before impact. Whether or not she was injured before the jump couldn’t be concluded here.

The knowledge that the Russian was injured, had her standing up and visually surveying her surroundings. It was likely with an injury, that the woman went into the forest rather than stay out in the open out here - that’s to say it’d be safer to do that if people were hunting her.

Maria readjusted her hiking backpack on her shoulders and walked into the forest.

It didn’t take long to find signs of human activity. A couple of somethings on the ground shone brightly. A closer look showed a few fallen 5.56mm shell casings.

Great. An assault rifle was exactly what she hoped to encounter without the safety of a vest.

She scanned the ground just to be thorough and spotted a partial boot print. Too big to be Romanoff’s. That woman was tiny.

Farther ahead there were broken tree branches too high to be broken by the animals around here. 

When it got too dark to do anything, Maria hesitated. She wanted to continue searching for the Russian, but didn’t want to risk losing any ground based on lack of light.

It was a moot point in the long run as she rolled out her sleeping bag and tried to settle in. Because when nightfall hit, there was an orange flickering glow in the distance, and the smell of smoke.

So naturally she crawled out of her sleeping bag, rolled it up and headed towards the fire with her glock drawn and at the ready. 

The fire was quite visible in what looked to be a shallow cave. What alarmed Maria was the torn and bloody clothing tossed off to the side of it. She approached it. It was a bloody undershirt definitely belonging to Romanoff. It was littered with jagged looking tears.

From the jump out of the plane? Something else? 

At least these weren’t clean cuts from a knife or some kind of manufactured blade.

A sharp pain hit Maria’s leg and before she could do anything the agent’s voice broke the silence from somewhere behind her. “The next thing to hit you will be the blade of a knife. Put the gun down.”

Lovely. This is what she gets for not wearing her S.H.I.E.L.D uniform for once.

Whatever relief she may have felt, was quickly cut short by yet another party joining this newfound meeting spot. “Why doesn’t everyone put their toys down before people get hurt? You by the fire, what are you doing here?”

Maria slowly made a show of unloading her gun, lowering it to the ground and tossing the magazine blindly behind her. “I saw the explosion from the plane, I wanted to find any survivors and try to help. I saw blood and followed the broken branches. The fire caught my attention.”

“Oh shit.” Natasha exclaimed softly with surprise.

“And the gun?” The man asked.

“I found bullet casings. I didn’t feel safe.” She explained simply.

There was a beat of silence. “Get out of here, we have no beef with you.”

“-You’re just going to let her go?” Yet another new voice joined in.

Fantastic. Now there were a minimum of two armed men.

“-She hasn’t seen our faces and just take a look at her. She’s a goddamn do-gooder hiker. Go on, get!”

She refrained from letting out a huff at being spoken to like that, and circled around the fire so she was facing them. 

Maria took note of Romanoff slumped against a rather large tree just outside of the cave amongst some foliage cradling her shoulder, then counted four perps. Only one had their gun ready.

“Bad move, sweetheart -”

She kicked the fire up high in their direction to blind them briefly with burning wood and coal, then drove herself forward to disarm the guy with his gun out. Natasha let her knife fly loosely and it lodged into one of the men’s throats, in return Maria quickly threw the rifle to her before being slammed to the ground. There was no not letting out a pained noise as the coals from the fire burned through her khaki pants and then her skin.

The fight was over before it really got started, she managed to take down one, by the time the Russian shot the remaining two, but not before Maria managed to get slashed from the same knife the agent initially threw.

A septic shower was not a fun way to go down.

*

“I can’t believe you’re dressed casually!” Natasha teased. “How did you get here so quickly?”

“Fury placed me on mandatory leave. Hence my attire and the lack of proper equipment. According to him I was closest to your location.” Maria muttered, “Speaking of attire… Do you mind unzipping? I need to see to your wounds. Injuries?”

“Nothing major.”

“I thought you hated lies? That’s too much blood for a minor wound.”

The redhead tried to tug the zipper down only to flinch. “Lies are an inconvenient waste of my time. I always figure them out, haven’t you learned that by now, Hill?”

“Stop being tough shit, Romanoff.” She muttered, experimenting with trying to remove the fabric with as little pain as possible.

Silence was her only answer.

“Fuck it, we’ll just cut it off.” Maria said after much wincing and gritted teeth from her stubborn patient. 

She reached into her hiking pack and pulled out a clean knife and worked as quickly and gently as she could.

“I can’t believe you kicked the fire at them. Who knew you could fight so dirty?”

“You’re a bad influence. All I had to ask myself was: what would you do?”

Maria grimaced at the sight of the redhead’s body. 

“So you are corruptible.” The teasing continued.

Natasha hadn’t lied, there didn’t appear to be any big injuries - the injuries sustained were numerous. Her back was littered with embedded small rocks and splinters, there were a few abrasions and a lot of friction burn.

She glanced into the redhead’s face to try to find any indication of how severe the pain was. There was tension around her eyes and mouth, but otherwise there were no obvious signs of just how bad it felt. 

Maria reached in the backpack and searched blindly. Once she found what she was looking for, she handed the bottle to the woman. “Drink.”

“Trying to get me drunk, Commander?”

“Actually, yes. This will be less painful if you are.”

Romanoff flashed a smirk and opened her mouth to say something. She must have seen something in her face, because the redhead shut her mouth, nodded then started drinking the vodka.

Maria waited until a third of the liquid was gone, and then waited a further twenty minutes for the alcohol to take effect. After pouring water from her canteen over her back; with a flashlight in one hand and tweezers in another, she got to work on removing all of the debris she could from Natasha’s wounds.

“Can you tell me what happened?” She asked, tweezers still plucking things out of Romanoff’s skin.

“That’s low, Hill. We’re out of the danger zone and you want a debrief already.”

Maria sighed feeling the defeat she should be familiar with when it came to the agent. “Not a debrief, Romanoff. I just wanted to check in and see how you were doing.”

“I know how I’m doing.” The redhead snapped. “I don’t know how Barton is doing.”

“He’s fine. He has a concussion, but made it to a safehouse and contacted HQ. He wasn’t able to find you. So Fury called me in.”

“And how did you find me?”

She huffed. “Don’t insult me. You went out of your way to draw attention with the fire. If you didn’t want to be found, you wouldn’t have been.”

“Don’t you insult me, Hill. You were hours behind me. It took more than my fire to get you here.”

The tweezers in her hand hovered over the patchwork of blood and punctures. She searched for anything she may have overlooked and retrieved the canteen again to try and flush out the wounds again. “I have some basic tracking skills. No one seemed to be worried about covering their footsteps. I found the mess you made from where you jumped out of the plane - so I knew you were injured. Those guys obviously shot at you at some point. I found a few of their shells on the ground about two hundred metres back.”

“I almost didn’t recognise you without your uniform or formal wear on. Being out here makes you seem more human.”

“There are few worries out here.” Maria agreed.

Here, in this immediate situation, she didn’t have to worry about anything other than Natasha. There were no other missions to demand her attention, or political games she needed to play. There weren't ten different games of chess being played by this person or that person or the constant awareness of a hundred other things that awaited her attention.

She cocked her head as she considered how much less extreme Romanoff appeared to be here too. Almost like there was no need for an image that needed to be maintained.

“Nature is good for the soul. Yours too, FYI.”

“I have no soul.” The Russian replied, dryly.

“I think everyone has a soul, some are just a little more hidden and damaged than others.”

Silence and an air of discomfort was her only response.

She finished tending to Romanoff by applying some antiseptic and numbing cream onto her back and wrapping her up, making sure to reinforce the shoulder area. She turned her back to let the other woman get changed.

“There’s a can of baked beans in there if you’re hungry. I’m going to perch up there in that tree and take the first shift. Get some sleep.”

“Baked beans?” The disgust was both amusing and endearing.

“Obviously they don’t teach wilderness survival in spy school. Baked beans - high in protein and high in fibre, means slow digestion. You’ll feel fuller for longer.” Maria explained as she began climbing to a mid level branch that could support her weight.

“Well, I didn’t get much of a choice as to what I ate in ‘spy school’. Baked beans was one of those things I know I don’t like.”

“I’ll keep that in mind if there’s a next time.”

“Hey, Maria?” Natasha murmured, with the lack of confidence she usually emanated. “I think I like you better like this.”

“Yes,” She agreed. “I think I like it better without the mind games and sex jokes too.”

“Make sure you wake me up when you get tired.”

Maria hummed her agreement and settled as comfortably as she could on the branch.

She never did find it in herself to wake the Russian up, despite her promise to do so.

Natasha needed her rest and energy.