Who: Maria Hill and Steve Rogers What: Maria has to talk about her feels When: Friday Where: Her house Warnings: none Status: Closed/completed gdoc
Children. She had them. Somehow. Maria was pretty sure they were from alternate universes so far removed from her own that they were the impossible things that could never be. To start with, she’d have to be in a relationship with any of their dads (Peter not included), and she really didn’t see that happening. Rogers was married, and Barnes…even if he was single she didn’t think that would ever work for more than five minutes.
What didn’t help at all was that her kids seemed to prefer the company of their fathers to her. That touched buttons from her childhood that were still and always would be tender. The relationship she had with her own father had been unpleasant to say the least. Nothing quite like being reminded that you killed your mother every year on your birthday. Her greatest fear was that she would turn into her father to her own children…which was one reason why she had promised herself she would never have them.
All of this meant that ever since she made Thor look like a kicked puppy Maria had fallen back into being anti-social. She’d even skipped out on a few manicure appointments with Sue and Pepper, claiming they needed her at work. She was prepared for one of them to corner her, or Nat, so when she opened the door to find Rogers was the one who knocked she was caught off guard.
“Steve,” she said with a blink then stepped back to hold the door open. “Come on in.”
***
Steve was a lot more perceptive than people seemed to realize. He saw a lot that he chose not to respond to, but what he’d seen when Hill had shown up at the house with a pair of teenagers wasn’t going to be ignored. They might not be incredibly close, but they were friends, and something more than just kids was going on. He was going to look into it, fix it if he could. He’d gotten not so bad with women and their emotions in the last couple of years.
“What’s going on with you?” He asked. No point in beating around the subject. It would just give Hill more time to retreat and distract him from his purpose. She was a lot better at that kind of thing than he was, and Steve knew it. But he also knew he could catch her off guard and, hopefully, get something out of her.
***
Maria knew how perceptive Rogers was. It was in his SHIELD profile. She’d seen it in action for herself. She just never expected it to be turned on her so his blunt question had her blinked for a moment and looking like a landed fish.
“What…?” It took a moment before she blinked into a frown and shut the door. “Nothing.” Which was true. All too true, but she knew that wasn’t what he meant. She was just trying to avoid this conversation. “Why? What did the kids tell you?” The ungrateful heathens better not have snitched on her…
***
“They didn’t have to tell me anything.” He knew her well enough to know when something was wrong. They’d known each other long enough, worked together often enough, and Steve wasn’t stupid. He was, in fact, a master of avoiding himself. Never to protect himself as much as to protect someone else, when his own feelings were less important than the people close to him. He buried a lot under that reasoning.
“What’s going on?” he asked again. Steve was even more stubborn than he was perceptive. He wasn’t just going to accept avoidances.
***
Maria sighed. Anyone else she would continue hedging until she wore out their patience. Steve had that in spades. So did Nat, but Romanoff would come at her sideways, fool Maria into talking anyway. There was no point in trying to avoid this with Steve. She might end up pissing him off. That never ended well. Not that he’d get angry and yell at her, but he’d pull out that disappointed look or worse. The disapproving one.
“Have you seen Thor?” Maria’s face lost that cold, Agent of SHIELD mask. Guilt, regret and no small amount of her own pain was left behind as she shut the door. “Have you noticed how our kids look at me?”
She walked toward the kitchen. If they were going to do this she needed some liquid courage. “Everything you need to know is there, Steve.” She used his first name, not his last. It was a big clue that indicated he was talking to Maria, not Agent Hill.
***
It wasn’t as there as she thought.
“The kids look at you like they’re teenagers.” She really should take his word for that one. He knew better than just about anyone in their extended group. He was the one who had spent the last couple of years bringing one up, more so in the last one than before but he’d always been around and a part of her life. And he’d been on the receiving end of looks like the ones Maria was getting from the alternate reality kids plenty of times. It was the look parents got, especially the ones who had to play the bad guy. He’d noticed Bucky got a lot fewer.
“Something about all of this is bothering you, and you need to tell me what it is.” He didn’t have the patience for guessing games or for making mistakes based on his own conclusions. Military tactics and people were very, very different.
Steve was only good at one of them.
***
Steve had never been on the very short list of people who knew Maria’s history. After today he would, apparently. Maria wasn’t comfortable with that, but she recognized that he was being a friend who was reaching out. She had few enough of those as it was. She couldn’t turn it away. Mostly because if Captain America was trying to be a friend you’d have to be a harder person than she was to say no, and that was saying something.
She pulled some sweet tea she’d made from the refrigerator and poured a glass for Steve as she started. “You don’t know where I came from so in order for you to understand what’s going on, you have to understand my past.” The tea was put on the table then she went to retrieve the bottle of scotch she kept in a cabinet for herself.
“My mom died giving birth to me,” she said as she poured herself a tall glass. “Dad never forgave me for it. Other kids got parties and new dolls for their birthdays. I got a drunk father who would remind me that I killed my mom on that day. I didn’t have any other family so you can understand how year after year of that turned me into the charming person I am.” She grimaced as she sat down at the table then took a big drink.
“I never wanted kids,” she continued. “Never wanted a family life. I knew I’d be shit at it. Fury profiled me when I was in training for the CIA. That lack of a maternal or familial instinct made me perfect for SHIELD and an even better Assistant Director.” She frowned as she looked at her glass. “Then I came here and I had to know how to do civilian life.”
The chuckled that came out of her was dripping with sarcasm. “Turns out I’m as bad at it as I thought. Peter and I didn’t last. I broke Thor’s heart.” Now came the rough part. “And now what I see in those kids is what I was afraid of. Did I turn into my dad? Is that why they look at me like they do? And worse? I got a taste of what it could be like to be happy with someone in my life then Peter...and Thor…” She huffed as she pushed her hand through her hair. “Those kids represent everything I can’t ever have. Not with you. Not with Barnes...oh god, not with Barnes. He hates me. And it all just….”
She couldn’t say it. Maria couldn’t say that it hurt. That would be showing too much weakness for her.
***
For a moment, Steve stayed quiet when she finished talking, letting her words sink in, processing them before speaking so he didn’t wind up putting his foot in his mouth. That was the last thing needed right now.
“I think you’re probably taking too much of everything going on on yourself,” he said finally, gently, understanding what doing that was like; he did the same thing, all the time, chose to shoulder things because some part of him had decided doing it would mean someone else wouldn’t have to. He didn’t offer any sympathies, everyone had stories, some worse than others, and they wouldn’t be any use anyway; she hadn’t told him anything to garner his sympathy.
“Things happen between people. Relationships don’t always last.” None of his had ended because they didn’t get along, yet, his marriage was still to be determined, but he knew a lot about people breaking up anyway. “That has nothing to do with being good or bad at being a civilian. If Thor’s heartbroken, that has nothing to do with you.” Though maybe Steve should reach out to him and tell him to get his head out of his overly sensitive ass if he was. “This place does things to people. I know you’re both too new around here to just accept that the way some of us can, but a lot of the time it doesn’t mean anything and there’s nothing you can do about it. And as for the kids? They’re teenagers.”
He’d said that, but it was so true. “Attitude comes with the territory. You know what I see in them? A couple of kids who’ve grown up safe and healthy,” the latter was more than he could say for one or two of his own every time this happened, “with parents who care. This place sent them to you first; that can’t mean nothing.”
A beat, and he added: “And for what it’s worth, SHIELD profiles are crap.”
He knew what his said, and it was what he’d wanted people to see, for the most part, at the time it was written. People could, did, change.
***
Maria listened to what Steve had to say. He knew more about this than she did. He’d been here longer, had far more experience with it. She wasn’t sure she agreed with everything he said, but she could and would think on what she questioned. Thor being hurt was partially her fault. She’d shut the door on what could have been. The rest of it...she couldn’t say.
The last bit made her smile. “Your profile states that’s what you would think of profiles.” Maria chuckled quietly before she took another drink then went serious again.
“This place scares me,” she admitted in a voice gone small. “I haven’t been scared…” since she saw Fury laying on that operating table, but before that, “...in a long time. Most times I feel like I’m alone in a very crowded room. I spent my whole life, like since I was eight, training to be the best martial artist, the best agent, the best Assistant Director. I don’t know how to be,” she looked around the room with a vague gesture, “this.”
She looked back to Steve with something of a defeated smile on her face. “But there is some place in the multiverse where I do know. Otherwise we wouldn’t have had enough of something to have a kid.” Rogers wouldn’t be with someone as unfeeling as Maria was, as cold. At least in her opinion. For all she knew he was what thawed her out. “I just don’t know how to get to a point where I am that person. But right now, those kids are the priority because I don’t want them to ever feel about me the way I felt about my father.”
***
“Knowing you like I do,” admittedly not through and through the way he knew some, but well enough, “I don’t think you have anything to worry about. You just had the bad luck of being thrown right into that age.” He, at least, had gotten a couple years knowing his kid before the worst of it. And he knew, too, that he was lucky that Molly was actually a lot more grown up than she made herself out to be. Than she should be at her age. Thanks to where she’d come from and the things that had happened to her there.
“Look, I know this place can be….” He didn’t bother finding the right word, just gestured vaguely. “Don’t feel like you’ve got to be perfect all at once. Take it a little at a time. That’s the only way you’re going to get comfortable being a civilian.”
He, too, had needed time, hadn’t known what to do with himself when he’d first come here. He’d made his way over the last few years, but no one could expect to do that overnight.
***
Maria hadn’t been your typical teenager. She had avoided kids her own age, unless it was to face off against them on the tournament mat. She hadn’t gone on dates, hadn’t gone to prom. In short, she had absolutely no idea what a normal teenage girl did. “I’ll do what I can but keep your phone handy in case I have a panic attack,” she chuckled quietly.
Then she snorted, a wry smirk forming on her face. “What, you expect me to be okay with not being perfect at something in my life? And you think you know me.” She took a drink of scotch, but reached out to give Steve’s forearm a squeeze. “I’ll try to have more patience with myself, but I might need a kick in the ass once in a while.” She didn’t have Fury here to hold a mirror to her face.
***
Luckily, Steve knew a little too well what teenage girls did. And what it was like to have to try to control one a little. Where that was concerned, at least, he was as close to an expert as a man of about a hundred could be.
He smirked right back, pausing long enough to cover her hand with his for a second.
“You know me; always happy to kick.” There was a twinkle of humour in his expression, that came out a lot easier now that he really was a civilian, had a lot less to carry on his shoulders. Worries never really went away, but they were quieter ones. What his kid was up to, how she was doing, was she safe; were things with his wife working out, was Bucky happy. They were all very personal concerns now, not the weight of the world.
***
It was good to see that glint in Steve’s eyes. Married life, at least to Veronica, seemed to suit him. Maria was glad for him. She gave him a more easy smile and another squeeze of her hand before she took it back.
“Enough about me,” she said with a wave of her hand. “How’s unexpected married life working out?” Maria didn’t know Veronica very well, but what she saw of the new Mrs. Rogers reminded her of what she knew of Peggy Carter. Tough. No nonsense, but with an edge of whimsy. In Peggy that had been more hidden, but it had been there.
***
“That…” Steve shook his head. “Is a big can of worms you’re looking to open up.”
It wasn’t going badly by any stretch, it wasn’t like Steve and his new wife didn’t get along, didn’t like each other, didn’t want to make it work. But they weren’t close enough to be married yet, were still trying to get to know each other, still trying to make sure they were a good fit for each other. They still had a lot to work out.