Agent Hill believes in the system. (agenthill) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2012-08-06 23:24:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, maria hill |
"Agent Coulson is down."
Who: Maria Hill.
What: A dream of loss.
Where: Her bedroom.
When: Monday evening.
Rating: PG-13 for violence, blood, dream!character 'death'.
Status: Narrative/complete.
There were moments that all the training in the world couldn't prepare you for. No matter how hard you trained, how many contingencies you planned for, or how well you braced yourself, they'd still come along along and kick your feet out from under you. Maria had experienced them before, those utter moments of panic– it was one those moments in Madripoor that had gotten her noticed by S.H.I.E.L.D in the first place.
But the shitstorm in Madripoor had nothing on this. This wasn't just a moment of everything gone FUBAR. This was chaos, plain and simple, as it could only be implemented by a trickster god. There were agents in SHIELD gear firing at her, she'd nearly gotten blown up by a grenade, and the Hulk was tearing through her barely-in-the-air Helicarrier.
Loki escaped. The Hulk cage had dropped, presumably with Thor in it. The Hulk had taken out an aircraft and had gone crashing to the ground. Maria thought the worst was over. It was time to regroup. And then Fury's voice had come over the comm.
"Agent Coulson is down."
There were other moments, moments where your entire world stopped dead. They were moments where even drawing breath felt painful, because it meant time was still ticking, that this wasn't a dream. By most logical reasoning, they should be easier than the screaming madness, but they weren't. They were moments full of such an agonizing stillness that you wished so hard for the chaos to come back.
In the loss of her closest friend, Maria Hill discovered, pushing the medic away from her in a slow sort of shock, that those frozen moments were so, so much worse.
Maria jolted upright in bed, gasping for air.
Her face was white as a ghost, her eyes stung, and all she could feel was dread as cold as the sweat on her forehead. Coulson's fine, she tried to assure herself; tried to calm down her heartbeat. It was just a dream. It hadn't happened here. Her friend was still alive. There was no reason to bother him, that'd be stupid.
Her hand shook as she reached for her phone. Stupid or not, she had to be sure.