Chapter 7
Maria Hill manages to slip out of the room sometime after Natasha and Tony reenter after taking a few moments to calm down.
She doesn’t know when things got so out of hand.
She worked for SHIELD. Secrets were part of the package. She had kept each and every one of Nick Fury’s secrets, even if it meant lying to her friends.
Maria had originally tried to keep her colleges at an arms length because when feelings got involved then things got complicated.
But then Phil Coulson managed to wiggle his way close and the others saw their opportunities.
Maria Hill can count the people she explicitly trusted on both of her hands and still have fingers. She learned to put her feelings aside whenever her coworkers lied to her or kept information from her because they simply couldn’t tell her.
But then coworkers became friends and she struggled to keep her feelings from clouding her judgment.
Nick Fury faked his death and Maria was the only person he trusted to tell. She lied to her friends and watched them mourn. Watched them cry.
Maria lied to them and they were angry at her when they found out the truth but they never once blamed her.
It was just what happened in their line of work. Maria was quickly forgiven and it was like nothing happened.
Then aliens invaded New York and Phil Coulson was stabbed through the chest and bled out in the helicarrier.
Maria had believed him to be dead. She mourned him until Nick slides a file across her desk before dragging her down to show her Phil Coulson in a coma, recovering from being dead.
“They can’t know.” He tells Maria.
Maria glances at him. “When can they?” She asked.
Nick glances at her and Maria understands instantly before he speaks. “Never.”
It was the most that Nick had ever asked from her. It was one thing to fake his own death when he had plans to reveal it. She could understand that.
It was another to lie to her friend's faces after seeing the toll that Phil’s death had on them. Maria watched as Natasha and Clint seem to collapse in on themselves, lost in grief over his death.
Clint blamed himself. If only he had been better, faster, stronger, smarter. Anything.
Maria wants to tell him. To give some hint that Phil was okay. Alive. Living and healthy.
Instead, she sits with him on nights that got bad and he gets reckless. She talks him back from the ledge and lies to his face.
Clint mistakes her guilt for grief.
Natasha picked up mission after mission after the news of Phil’s death. She threw herself into work and came back bloodied and blank.
Phil was the one that dealt with the ‘assassin twins’ whenever they had bad days. Phil wasn’t able to do that anymore and nobody else seemed to want to step up to do it.
So Maria does.
She starts waiting for Natasha to touch down after each mission and will support her as they head to Maria’s office. Natasha will sit still and let Maria strip her down and bandage her wounds. Maria will pull out the spare uniform she kept in her office for Natasha to dress in and then open the drawer where she hid her favorite comfort food for bad days and force Natasha to eat.
Natasha will fall asleep on the couch that Maria kept in her office for long days when she just had too much work to make it back to her room. Maria will watch over her as she does her work.
“The Red Room never taught me how to grieve,” Natasha whispers to Maria after a particularly bad mission. “I can’t stop this ache in my chest no matter what I do.”
Maria is struck with more guilt. She buys Natasha a book on how to properly grieve because she can’t tell Natasha what she did to deal with Phil’s death. How she didn’t mourn a man because he wasn’t dead.
Phil asks about the assassin twins and Maria tells him and Phil tells her how he handled them on bad days.
Maria can’t handle being around Phil more than she has to. She can’t keep facing Natasha and Clint each day and lie to their faces as she helps them grieve a man that’s not even dead. She can’t lie to Phil that the two assassins are getting better.
They’re not.
Maria does what she always does when she doesn’t know how to handle her own emotions. She throws herself into her work.
Nick can tell she gets weary. She knows that her body is starting to reflect just how tired she was.
Clint will seek her out on bad nights and sit with her to protect her from threats that aren’t there. To save her because he couldn’t save Phil. Maria will share her alcohol with him and they will speak of better times.
Natasha will appear at random points during the night just to sleep on her couch. Maria started keeping a knitted blanket in her office that Natasha will cocoon herself in when she enters before curling up on the couch and falling asleep.
Maria finally breaks one night. Clint finds her curled up on the floor of her office with a bottle of half-drunk whiskey and tears in her eyes. He tries to ask her what’s wrong and she just falls apart.
Clint disappears and Maria feels lost and abandoned. He returns moments later with Natasha and the two sit with Maria as she has a meltdown on the floor of her office that had been a long time coming.
They support her and Maria feels lost in her guilt as Clint lets her lean on him and Natasha wraps her up in the soft knitted blanket that Maria kept just for her.
Maria Hill is a human and humans are flawed.
SHIELD falls and Maria is out of a job. Tony Stark hires her to keep her from getting prosecuted with all of her secrets out in the open.
All her secrets except Phil Coulson. That one was off the books.
Tony Stark protects her and opens his home to her.
Maria sees Natasha and Clint less and less. Clint goes home to his wife and children and Maria tries to keep tabs on Natasha.
Natasha still occasionally shows up. Usually only after a bad mission where Natasha doesn’t trust anyone else to have her back while she’s vulnerable.
Maria still opens her door and welcomes the assassin in with open arms. She will ask no questions as she patches her up and forces her to eat and sleep.
SHIELD starts back up again and Maria is invited back. Maria leaves Tony Stark and the man grins at her and asks no questions about where she is going.
Phil is part of the small section of SHIELD that had been renewed. Maria sees him every day.
Natasha sees her on the day the Avengers broke apart. She talks about Phil and his hopes for the Avengers and how if only Phil could see them now.
Maria doesn’t know why she hugged Natasha before she left. Maybe some part of her rationally knew that it couldn’t end well.
“You’re a really good friend, Maria,” Natasha murmurs into Maria’s shoulder, sinking into the hug as she holds Maria just as tightly. “Thank you for looking after me. I know it’s not easy.”
Later that day Natasha Romanoff is declared a national fugitive and Maria feels empty.
She’s so relieved that she doesn’t have to lie to their faces every time she sees them but she’s so empty because now that she doesn’t have them to look after then her own feelings pop up.
Nick asks her to keep more secrets. Maria sucks up her emotions and shoves them away and becomes the Commander she is known to be once again.
And then Yelena Belova gets involved.
Shit gets messy and Maria finds out that Yelena is related to Natasha.
Maria remembers late nights of sitting on the couch with Natasha under the knitted blanket she kept as the assassin leaned against her warily and let Maria hold the weight of the world for a while. She remembers the trust that Natasha had put in her each and every time she came to Maria because she needed someone she trusted to watch her back.
Maria finally decides that this was one secret of Nick’s that she couldn’t keep. She refuses to lie about another death of someone to Natasha.
Natasha is angry at her. She hits Maria hard across the face and Maria lets her. Natasha yells at Nick and Maria watches with a bloodied nose.
For reasons beyond Maria’s understanding, Yelena talks her sister back.
Maria is yelled at by Nick when they leave. She’s screamed at for giving a wanted fugitive their location and how she let the assassin killing their men go.
Maria lets Nick yell at her until he’s finished and dismisses her. Maria tries to tell him that he’d gone too far but he brushes her off.
Nick looks up at her and slowly shakes his head. “I’m disappointed in you, Maria.”
Maria wants to yell. To scream at him that she’s kept every one of his secrets and had lied to her friends and had taken every hit and insult and worked tirelessly to do exactly what he had asked of her.
She’s loyal to him. She’s his most trusted. But at what cost?
Maria cuts her ties with Phil and keeps him at a distance. Maria learned not to make friends.
She can’t allow herself the comfort of friends. She drinks alone on the floor of her office wrapped up in the knitted blanket that still smells like Natasha. She drinks the scotch that Clint brought back to her from Budapest as a gag gift.
Maria gets word that the assassin that had killed their men had come back and she finally decides that she can’t let it happen. She moves and collects the teenager from Nick so she can deliver her back to Natasha.
Natasha screams at her on the phone when she calls. She threatens and makes a promise to kill Maria should Yelena even have a scratch on her.
Yelena tells Maria that Natasha spoke of her time at SHIELD fondly. Natasha told Yelena all about Maria. She had the group picture on the wall of her bedroom.
And then because fate hates Maria, they run across Phil who wasn’t supposed to be there. Yelena recognizes him immediately.
Phil breaks Nick’s rule about his death and reveals himself to Natasha when she shows up with Tony and Pepper.
Maria can pinpoint the moment that Natasha’s heart breaks. Natasha hits Phil and yells at him before turning toward Maria.
Maria can see it all on her face. She doesn’t need Natasha to scream it at her. She lets Natasha shove her against the wall over and over, her fingers curling into Maria’s suit as she tries to hurt her.
I trusted you. I let my guard down. You lied to me. I thought we were friends.
Maria lets herself be manhandled and jerked around. She lets Natasha scream at her and accuse her of kidnapping Yelena again.
(As if she thought Maria would purposefully do that to hurt her. As if all of their years working together meant nothing to the type of person Maria was)
Maria stands stiffly near the door as Natasha goes round two with Nick. As she yells at Phil about how much she needed him.
Maria never told Phil how bad it got. She never told him just how hard things were for the two assassins. She never told Phil how much they needed him because she knew that he would break protocol.
Maria slips from the room and moves toward her office where Yelena was waiting with Melinda May.
Yelena’s head jerks up when Maria enters, her face falling when she doesn’t see Natasha.
“How are things going?” Melinda questioned dryly as Maria pulls open a drawer on her desk.
Maria pours a glass of scotch and knocks it back without a word. She misses the look of concern that flickers over Melinda’s face at the action.
“You know, that knitted blanket there was your sister’s favorite,” Maria tells Yelena, glancing at the neatly folded blanket draped over the arm of the couch. It had become faded and soft from years of use and was starting to fall apart from how much Maria used it.
“You were good friends with her?” Yelena looks at the blanket, reaching out to run her fingers over a hole near one of the corners. “She talked about you. Sometimes it sounded like you were friends. Sometimes it sounded like more. Sometimes it sounded like you were just colleges. Sometimes it sounded like you hated her.”
Maria remembers back to a point in her life when she first met Natasha and ignored her. Back when she knew emotions could get messy in their line of work.
“We were friends.” Maria thinks back to the day that the Avengers fell apart.
“You’re a really good friend, Maria. Thank you for looking after me. I know it’s not easy.”
“I think she still wants to be your friend,” Yelena comments, rubbing the knitted blanket between her fingers. “She just doesn’t know how.”
Maria doesn’t have an answer. The door opens and Natasha steps into the room, pausing when she sees the knitted blanket in Yelena’s grip. Her eyes briefly meet Maria’s before she clenched her jaw and stepped forward to wrap around Yelena.
Maria looks away from the scene that feels too private for her to be witnessing, her shoulders and back aching from where Natasha had repeatedly slammed her against the wall and a migraine forming from all the yelling that had been done.
Maria Hill doesn’t have friends anymore, her relationships fractured upon lies and deceit, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t want them.
Maria can’t remember the last time someone had touched her kindly.
(She can. It was a hug on the day that the Avengers broke apart and left Maria feeling helpless and alone)