My World's On Fire, How About Yours?

Maria Hill vanished. She sees her hand break away into dust. The cold feeling that seems to spread from the inside out. It’s as if her insides are the first things that go. She feels hollow, cold. She’s not a person. If she weren’t dying she would find it funny that being cold on the inside and not a person is what all her agents would consider how she normally is. But she is dying so that thought only gets a small smirk from a place deep in her brain and that’s in. All other parts of her brain have more important things to focus on.

She is a tactician and the head brain cell of SHEILD. Every plan she carries out is by her own design and she makes sure her agents follow her orders to a “T”. She’s Fury’s second, and damnit if she doesn’t know everything that he does.

So this feeling isn’t just whatever’s happening to her body, it’s the confusion that gets her. She hasn’t been confused for a while. Nothing’s a mystery to her. Hell she could probably predict the lottery if she actually gave a damn. But she has no idea what’s happening to her body and why she can’t see her hand. Where the fuck is her hand? She locks eyes with Fury’s and that’s the last she sees before those blue eyes she uses disappear into dust. This is the end. Anticlimactic as fuck if you ask her. She always thought it would take a group of hitmen to finally take her down. But Maria guesses disappearing into some weird dust isn’t the worst way she could go.

And so ex-Commander Maria Hill, Deputy Director of nonexistent SHIELD, is reduced to insignificant atoms and nothing more than one of the millions of names on a plaque.

That is until she’s standing back on the ground, hands attached and everything. Except it’s not in the same place. Or maybe it is? The road is overgrown and unkempt. It looks like something out of a dystopian novel. This whole place is. Rubble is everywhere as she looks around. Like she’s stuck in a time capsule that’s only slightly begun to rebuild. The familiar New York City skyline is no longer so familiar.

To her left is Fury. He looks at her. He’s confused. She knows this because it’s the one expression on his face that she doesn’t recognize. She’s never seen it before. He quickly wipes it off his face and moves into his thinking face. This one she’s quite familiar with.

“Thanos” they say to each other at the same time.

“Hill, we need to get to the Avengers right away.” Fury commands. Maria, like always, is already a few steps ahead of him, searching for any sort of transportation. She sees an SUV amongst the crowd of confused people. It looks like it was parked before people began appearing out of the blue.

She just needs to reach the SUV and hot wire it if she has to. The Helicarrier should still have its base over a few blocks away, it would be a five-minute drive max.

“Sir, SUV at eight o’clock!” Maria shouts over the civilians’ confused screaming to Fury. She begins to run to the car, not checking to see if Fury follows. She knows he will be.

She gets maybe three strides in before two large creatures stand directly in her path. Maria’s never seen anything like these things. They’re definitely not from their planet, with their green scaly skin and large pointed ears. They peer straight through her, probably looking at Fury who she can sense is right behind her. What in the hell are these things? Every fiber in Maria’s body is telling her that they’re hostile but she knows better than to fire before being provoked.

“Nicolas J Fury, Talos requests your presence,” the first creature speaks. Its green hand reaches out to grab Fury’s and that’s all Maria needs to give into her uneasy feelings. In no time at all, Maria reaches for her gun and fires at him.

Her target is right in front of her, yet she misses the mark. The two bullets fly off center, just grazing the creature in front of her. Perhaps there are side effects of turning into dust that she should’ve considered The adrenaline and confusion were masking the feeling of her nervous system completely rewiring. Stupid mistake. Stupid. This is what she gets for being too impulsive, if she would’ve just stopped for a few seconds to collect herself she would’ve realized this. Maybe being dust has messed with her mentally too.

But now she has bigger problems than dwelling over past mistakes that she can’t change; the two creatures are finally looking at her instead. They don’t seem happy.

“Talos never said anything about extending the invite to include a plus one,” the other creature says, its mouth twisting into a deformed grimace. Maria can take the hint: they want Fury but she’s expendable. Expendable means that it’s a bullet for bullet transaction. Since she’s already shot two bullets at them, she knows it’s only a matter of seconds before two bullets will be implanted in her chest. She’s a goner for sure. How unfortunate to die because her aim was off from coming back from the dead. Maria feels like they cheated but then again it seems like she also cheated death from dust. Guess death also works like a transaction.

Sure enough they both pull out some type of gun on her. They look like a blaster from a laser tag game. Of course she dies from something resembling a cheap laser tag toy. At least it’s better than suddenly disintegrating into dust.

The first gun goes off and she leaps over to her left where she knows Fury is. Just as she thought, they fire to her right so that they wouldn’t get Fury in the fire. The purple that fires out of the blaster singes her side and it hurts. Maria winces as she lands of the ground near Fury’s feet. She tries to do a roll to get back up on her feet but her right side is mangled. Her muscles refuse to listen to her and she just ends up plopping unceremoniously on the ground.

Maria’s entire body feels like it’s on fire and her body was already not in the best shape. The only movement she can do is look up to the two creatures aiming their guns once again at her.

“Talos wants me to cooperate,” Fury says, breaking his silent streak he seems to have going on with these creatures. It’s about damn time this man says something, considering they’re after him, not Maria.

“He just wants to talk,” the creature says, taking its eyes off Maria. The other one does not and is looking at her dead in the eyes. Of course that one was the one who has a faint graze on its shoulder from Maria’s bullet. She knows that it will kill her as soon as it can. Fury may be able to talk himself out of this one, but she knows that the seconds of her life are ticking and she needs to act fast. She looks through the creature’s legs to the SUV. It’s right there. It’s so close. She just needs to reach it and her chances of getting out of this alive will increase drastically.

“Then you should know damn well that if anything happens to any of my people then I won’t be saying shit to him,” Fury spits out, “if you crazy sons of bitches take out my Second, then there’s no way in ever living hell I’m going anywhere with you.”

The two creatures look over at each other, debating with their eyes whether or not they should let Maria live. Maria knows better than to stick around and wait for their decision when this is her one chance at escaping. So with her left hand she quietly grabs the gun lying close and fires at them.

She channels all the energy she can from her one good side and throws herself up. She runs unsteadily to the SUV before crashing into it. Maria grips the handle and throws open the door. Her eyes immediately look for the ignition. If the keys aren’t in there then she’s fucked, there’s no way she has enough time to hot wire a car. Sure enough, they’re sticking out, just waiting for her to use.

Maria lets out a breath she wasn’t aware she was holding. At least something’s looking up for her today. She jumps in the car and slams the door shut. As she turns the ignition, she quickly glances to the two creatures getting up off the ground. Fury is still standing there. She would’ve expected him to be in the seat next to her. In fact, he should be the one driving considering the only feeling she has in her right foot is pain. Not saying that she can’t drive with her left, it’s just inconvenient.

What is he planning? Usually she can read Fury like a book, side effects from being around one person for so long, but right now she’s not sure what his intentions are. Does he actually want to go with these reptile people? He sure isn’t putting any effort into escaping. Granted they also hadn’t made any attempts to kill him and hold him in some regard. Maria didn’t have the luxury of those things to consider leaving her the only option on escaping. Sometimes it really sucks to be his second. Sure he’s always the target but she is always in the cross hairs of that. Plus, no one seems to ever hold her in any regard so she doesn’t even have that going for her. It’s a real lose-lose situation now that she’s thinking about it. Maybe that’s why she always seems to get herself in a situation where she ends up almost dead. Or in case of the dust, actually dead.

No matter how much Fury may infuriate her, she’ll sooner be dead herself than see him dead. If that wasn’t evident by her shooting at those creatures the second they asked for Fury. So once the engine starts up she drives over to where the creatures are, hoping to pick up Fury and maybe run a few of them over.

She really should’ve picked a better strategy but how was she supposed to know the power of those laser tag guns?

One shot from the gun was enough to send her car flipping through the streets, tumbling over itself. Thankfully the mass of people running around had started running away from them once the first shots were fired.

So Maria is stuck in the driver’s seat as the car flips over itself, smashing herself into the ceiling during every roll. Every roll her body is smashed onto the fractures left of the windows. Since her entire right side is already burned and raw, the pieces just seem to stick to her as if they were glitter particles. Absolutely perfect.

When the car finally stops, Maria tries to get up and go through the broken window, but the most of her body that she could lift out of the car is her left arm. The rest of her body refuses to move and she collapses. She hears the crunch of glass and looks out at the two pairs of boots approaching her.

It takes all her effort to look up at the creatures who now have their guns aimed at her head. She looks them dead in the eyes; looks fate dead in the eyes. This is it for sure.

“Consider yourself lucky that Nicholas Fury seems to have some value of you,” one hisses out as he swings his blaster at her. It connects with her head and her vision goes black and head drops to the ground.

Maybe knowing Fury can have its cons. And with that final thought her head gets bashed again and her mind goes dark.

Maria wakes up on the ground. Okay “wakes up” is a strong way of putting it. What’s closer is that her eyes open a tiny bit, barely even a sliver. That little bit of opening is enough to cause her to shut them again. The light coming through them is too much.

Her head is pounding, like her brain is threatening to pop out at any second. It feels like the worse hangover ever. Maybe this is why her dad was always upset, she can only imagine the monster hangovers he must’ve had every day. Granted the pounding in her head didn’t give her any stronger a desire to beat children, but hey, maybe it’s different for everyone.

Maria’s mouth twists in a self-depreciating smile, amused at her own thoughts. She quickly stops once it starts hurting. If it hurts to even move her facial muscles Maria can’t even imagine the battle it will be to remove her body off the ground.

She has to be concussed. Her head is throbbing. She wouldn’t be surprised if there was a gash there too.

She can’t really remember what really led to here. Everything has a faint fuzz to it. Was it all just a weird dream? Maria doesn’t trust any of her thoughts. Turning into dust? Now that seem crazy. And then regenerating? These vague green things getting her? Maybe she just made them up? They seemed sort of people like. She hopes it’s a dream. Maria has never done well with sitting on the side lines. She always has to be in control. She’s used to being an eye; all seeing and all knowing. She watches over all the missions, plans the missions. So she hopes that it’s all just a bad dream.

But for her, the bad dreams are never dreams; they’re memories. Maria sure hopes this is the one that turns out not to be real. Please let it not be real.

But in the likelihood that it is, she needs to haul her ass off the ground and get going. So she has a little head damage, wouldn’t be the first time. This is basically routine; she’s been concussed regularly her whole life.

Every muscle screams at her in protest as she places her hands firmly on the ground. She can only barely get her torso off the ground. Her right side is too mangled to do much good. She can’t even move her right arm at all.

There’s a wall just a few feet away from her face. Her own reflection stares back at her. With her legs still lying on the ground she looks like she’s Ariel the mermaid about to sing a song on a rock.

Except she looks like crap. Definitely not a princess in any capacity.

Her legs follow her body and she’s finally standing. As she stands and stretches out her back she looks around the room. A typical scene for a prisoner. Which is unfortunate considering all the information she’s gathering seems to fit with the hazy depiction of an abduction happening by two green creatures.

Fury’s not anywhere around but it figures they wouldn’t be locked up together. Fury is rarely ever locked up. Even when people hate him, the want him to like them. He has everyone’s utmost respect and damn it if that doesn’t piss her off sometimes. Yet it also makes her respect him even more and therein is the cycle that keeps replaying for the better half of a decade.

Maria is feeling a weird sort of calm being trapped. Honestly she’s surprising herself with the lack of any emotion surrounding the events that just occurred, but honestly the only feeling she has right now is that head throbbing. That’s not going anyway soon and there’s really nothing that can stop it. Maybe it’s because she’s typically thrown in situations where the best plan is to wait things out.

Maria prides herself on her ability to recognize what’s in her control. Does she want to be able to have everything controlled by herself? Obviously. Does she know that some things just can’t be controlled? For sure.

And so Maria sits on the edge of the bed and patiently waits.

Actually scratch that. Scratch everything Maria thought about how she can give up control and all that peaceful acceptance shit; call it off. There’s no way she’s leaving her fate in someone else’s hand. Sit on a bed and wait? That really was her best plan? She must’ve hit her head harder than she originally thought. That’s quitter’s talk and Maria is no quitter. She’s a fighter. And what do fighters do? They fight.

She didn’t take on two aliens with a singular gun moments after vanishing into dust, she’s still not too sure about the dust part she’s really hoping that was the concussion speaking, just to give up now. So her head hurts a little? Like she said, she’s used to this by now. She’s fought on with far worse injuries.

She needs to find Fury. That’s her first step. She knows he has answers. He wasn’t at all confused by the creatures that showed up. The moment before they showed up, now that was him confused, but after that he seemed all knowing once again. No matter how deep down Maria is peeved that he didn’t immediately tell her what they were dealing with, she trusts him. If he thought she needed to know what they were dealing with, he would’ve told her.

Maria doesn’t trust freely. Hence the need to have eyes and ears on every mission. She doesn’t have complete trust that her people will get the job done correctly. People just don’t usually come through on things for her.

Even her trust in Fury stopped when he wasn’t right behind her in that SUV the other day. That was a new experience.

Maria stands up off of the bed, ready for a plan of action. There’s still not much that can be done.

The table and chairs won’t get her anywhere so she starts with the glass.

She goes over and traces her fingers gently along it. It almost feels like plastic, sort of like the kind Tony was developing a little bit ago in his lab. When she worked at Stark Industries she would sometimes have to go into his lab. Disastrous times those were. The amount of times she almost was sawed in half on melted or turned into an animal were far too many. She’s glad that those trips down there are finally paying off. It’s about damn time.

She tries to think back to anything he said to her down there. Quite frankly she’s tried to block those days out of her mind. Those days that came right after SHIELD fell. After her life burst into shambles. Those weren’t her best days.

Maria walked in on Stark making the glass around maybe her fifth week there? She thinks maybe that week was when Thor was visiting and Stark wanted to know about alien technology. So all this really gives her is confirmation that she’s dealing with aliens. That or someone on earth reinvented it, but if Stark only had a vague prototype, that’s highly unlikely. Although Maria isn’t the biggest fan of Stark, she can admit that he can sort of be smart on some various occasions. But she will gladly die before telling that to him.

Maria draws her arm back and strikes the wall. The plastic likeness of it covers most of the noise but it still has a vague echo from the hit.

Maria hits a few more places along the walls, trying to see if there are any weaknesses or inconsistencies.

After her sixth hit she moves once again to the left and begins to knock again when another sound calls out.

It’s faint. She can barely hear it, but it’s there. It’s right where her last hit was.

She walks back to where she was and hits the wall again.

Nothing is different about this wall from the others. Maybe she’s going crazy.

But there it is again. It’s calling back to her. Could there be another person standing on the opposite side of this wall?

Maria knocks twice and the wall knocks back twice as well.

The faint knocks begin to increase. Two, then three, then one, then five, and they keep going.

Maria knows this: Tap code.

Two then three
H
One and five
E
Three and one
L
Three and one
L
There better be an O after that
And there it is: three and four.
O
HELLO.

A simple message but one that she can work with. But then again it could all be a test and she’ll never know.

Maria responds back in code, “Who do you work for.” Always a good message.

“No one” is the response she gets back. Well that’s not very helpful.

So Maria gets straight to the point “What species are you?”

“Human, hoping you’re the same,” Still could be a trap. Maria and her lack of trust and all that.

“Prove it,” she knocks back.

There’s a pause and then, “Somebody once told me the world was gonna roll me.”

Maria is confused. That was not the reply she was expecting. What does that even mean? Is that a code for something else?

The knocks start up again after that, “I ain’t the sharpest tool in the shed.”

Is this a poem by a famous poet? Maria is racking her brain for any clues. She aced both junior year and senior year poetry and she can safely say that none of them ever wrote those lyrics. Maybe it’s from a song? Maria doesn’t really keep up with much music. She’s honestly stopped caring since the 90s.

“She was looking kind of dumb with her finger and her thumb in the shape of an ‘L’ on her forehead.”

That seems familiar and definitely human, but even if Maria is fairly certain that whoever is on the other side is in fact a human, now these it’s turned into a test of Maria proving herself human. Which is probably not going to end up well considering one of the main rumors around the Helicarrier used to be that she wasn’t actually a human.

More lyrics are knocked to her and she can’t seem to figure out what it’s from. Maria has almost a perfect memory but she can’t come up with anything other than a hazy memory. The concussion definitely isn’t helping things right now.

What are the odds that she knows a random specific song? It needs to be a popular song but she can’t think of anything. She’s drawing all the blanks. But somewhere it’s clicking. Deep in her brain she can feel that she knows this song. She can hear voices talking while the song is being played. It’s not like she has many friends to talk to so the voices she’s hearing must be the avengers. But the Helicarrier never plays any music. Maybe where she heard this song was at the tower?

“Hey now you’re an all-star get your game on go play”

Wait that’s familiar, that’s so familiar. She can hear Stark laughing and singing along. She can see the Avengers all spread out on couches facing a large screen. Stark’s Avengers bonding! That’s where she’s heard this.

The next round of knocks, Maria’s whispering them before they come in.

“Hey now you’re an all-star get the show on get paid.”

Maria finally knocks back the rest of her test. Apparently Stark’s insistence that they watch all the Shrek movies for mandatory Avengers bonding night is about to pay off.

“All that glitters is gold
Only shooting stars break the mold”