Who: Maria and Carol Where: Ferris Airfield When: Monday, 5/7 What: Maria recruits Carol for the Avengers...but is mostly touching base with a friend. Rating: Safe for work. Might be swearing.
Maria found herself automatically critiquing the airfield as she swung into the drive and backed into a spot; given that she commanded a flight deck, she knew what to look for when it came to a well-run field, even if this one had only a fraction of the pilots and birds she did, and roughly twice the length. It meant there was far less chaos, comparatively.
Which further meant that she could pick out exactly who she was looking for fairly quickly. For an agent, taking a moment - or longer - in quiet and secret to evaluate a situation was standard; for Maria, for this particular target, it was necessary for her own emotions.
She had few friends in SHIELD: command made that necessary. But when SHIELD had first been officially formed, she and Carol Danvers had been friendly. Certainly they had understood each other, as one militarywoman who'd been in combat to another. They'd been there at the beginning of SHIELD, and then Carol had been their first serious loss; certainly, she'd been Maria's first real loss since war, and in case she needed more parallels, being the one to haul her body back to base had felt uncomfortably like making sure everyone came home, even in a coffin. And being in a hospital bed in a coma was far too close to a coffin.
She'd never expected Carol to wake, and certainly not suddenly two years later. She'd done what she felt was right and stuck her in New Mexico to get her bearings, because of course she'd go back to being an agent and everything would be just fine: no one else she'd cared about had come back from the dead.
But then Stark had stepped in, and at least she didn't have to fly out to New Mexico now. She was no longer sure of her footing with Carol, but it also wasn't on a rooftop at night in Gotham.
Getting out, she crossed the parking lot to the hangers, and waited to be recognized.