She should have seen him coming; the only reason he got to continue to live was because he had enough sense not to show up on her blindside. After all this time, Maria still wasn't sure if it was because he'd actually recognized that it would be bad to startle a wounded spy, or completely blundered into it by accident.
As it was, his casual appropriation of the chair next to her, even if it also came with another drink, had her bristling. She'd always been primed for a fight, but these days, her temper rode sharper than usual these days. "Fuck off Queen," Maria said, managing to snarl and enunciate at the same time.
Not that she had any force behind the actual words; far besides the whiskey, the world kept moving under her feet at odd moments, the loss of the eye and the depth perception screwing with her balance. She'd been told, somewhat gently, that her fighting days were done.
Her instinct was to prove them wrong, which she couldn't do, which just made her feeling all kinds of useless and vulnerable and bitter. At least in a ratty bar in NYC, she got left alone.
Except by annoying sometimes-assets who had appeared out of nowhere and were making every noise of staying put whether she wanted him to or not. It was almost a blessing, someone to fight with, to keep her mind off everything else, keep her nice and sloshed.
"I don't need your help," she said with what dignity she could scrape up. And she'd bet that the ex-Marine would keep serving another war-wounded Marine.
There was one question that, brooding a while, she finally had to ask. "How did you find me?" That was important because even if she couldn't do her job, she should have had the sense not to be sloppy. On the other hand, she was drunk.