Maria Hill ~ Acting Director (shield_2ic) wrote in newalliance, @ 2014-01-02 11:12:00 |
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Entry tags: | maria hill, nick fury |
Who: Maria Hill and Nick Fury, Directors of SHIELD
When: 1/2/14
Where: Washington, DC, Vietnam Memorial
What: The torch is formally passed from one Director to another.
Rating: Highish for language.
There were days when Maria couldn't imagine how Luthor had gotten into power last year. Then she dealt with Congress - the Senate Intelligence Committee today - and realized that voters elected all sorts of evil, self-serving liars into office, and it was more a miracle that Luthor had been too greedy to bide his time and go slow with his plans. If he'd given more of a lead-in time, he could have set up a good little fascist state and Washington, at least, wouldn't really have noticed the difference.
She wasn't quite sure what it meant that Congress moved at a snail's pace; they would claim that they didn't want to rush into something, that all angles needed to be considered and debated, and occasionally constituents checked with, but she didn't doubt that it was just as important for them to have enough time to figure out the benefit to themselves, how it helped them achieve their end goal of fame and power, while blocking their rivals.
She couldn't say she didn't understand the idea, even if - all accusations to the contrary - she was interested in neither for herself.
By the time she finished dancing around the Committee's questions, Maria had a sore throat and a headache, and a low need for a cigarette which would help one of them. It was cold enough in the city for the National Mall to be all but deserted, giving her a bit of privacy to get her head on straight. After a year, SHIELD was steady, perusing all threats to worldwide security, and she'd done a damn good job as head of the division; the Intelligence Committee was just reluctant to agree about that, possibly because they didn't know much more than a few headers as to what SHIELD had actually done all year.
Maria couldn't help the smile as she headed down the Mall for the war memorials; SHIELD answered to very few people, and it always annoyed the Committee that they weren't the first people on the list.
There was a reason she went to the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial, and it had very little to do with the nice long walk along a pretty green lawn, and only a little to do with sentiment. No, as she stopped in front of a section, pulled out a battered pack of cigarettes, fished out one of the last, she could look up at the shiny black rock in front of her, and the white names didn't mar the reflection behind her. She could see if she was safe, or being tailed, even while she stood in quiet contemplation of something rather like the deaths inscribed on the Wall.