Work Text:
one.
The first time, Maria is nearly twenty-four, and Nick still won’t admit how old he is, and her eyes are wide with the newness of the world he’s begun to introduce to her.
They’re on a train from San Francisco to Los Angeles – it’s the easiest way to remain out of the way when you have to make a meeting but you’re also on several international groups’ hitlists – and they have a lot of time to kill while they try not to get themselves killed.
It’s become habit for Fury to tell Maria stories on their trips together, and today, he’s picked one about his mother, about a game they used to play and how Mrs. Fury found out about his first relationship. Maria wonders, but doesn’t ask, if he’s so good at knowing a liar when he sees one because of the woman who raised him.
“So, why don’t we play?” he asks after a moment of silence, after it becomes clear that Hill has something on her mind. He’s good at knowing these things about her, too. “Go a few rounds?”
Maria nods, twenty-three and only half-toughened so far, searching for his approval. It’s been a long time since she cared what anybody thought, but Nick Fury is different. She thinks he’ll always be a little bit different to her. It’s odd – to have such trust in somebody she’s only known for a few months now – but he came to recruit her right after her honorable discharge from the Marines, right after her last tour, when she got out because she couldn’t take it anymore. In a way, she liked that he didn’t wait. He didn’t coddle. He didn’t comfort.
He asked, and she answered. He expects, and she delivers. And because of this, he cares, and she lets him. It’s nice. It’s been a long time since somebody cared.
“Alright. Tell me something I don’t know about kid Maria.”
Maria freezes, trying for a smile. She takes a sip of her water instead of answering. “You don’t want to know about kid Maria,” she laughs after a moment.
“It’s the game, Agent Hill,” Fury reminds, tipping his own bottle towards her. “Tell me something I don’t know. It’s kind of in the name.”
“We were having such a good time though,” she jokes, sighing a little.
“Wow, that bad?” he asks, raising an eyebrow at her.
The corner of her mouth barely turns up into a sad smile. It doesn’t reach her eyes. “Yeah,” she says with as much dull humor as she can muster, looking out the window.
When nobody asks, it’s easy to pretend like her childhood never happened, like she was always this person, this woman who knew her own mind, this soldier whose entire job is to strangle fear with her bare hands. But she wasn’t always this. She was a scared eleven years old, once, staying late at school and arriving early to avoid her father. There was a time where Maria thought she might always be scared that way, a terrified little kid with nowhere to go. But recently–
“Things have been better since I left. And it’s been years since I left,” she says, continuing to try to deflect. He tilts his head at her, clearly expecting her to say more. Maria can see his expression without even turning back towards him. “It’s just…” She swallows hard, searching for the right words before finally settling on: “It’s a long story.”
But of course, Nick won’t accept that. Deep down, Maria knew he wouldn’t. That’s why she’s even here with him, hiding in a train car on the way to Los Angeles to avoid some operatives of God-knows-what organization.
“Hey.” He leans forward gently. “Do I look like I have anywhere to be?” Looking around dramatically, Nick gestures widely with his arms. “I’ve got time.”
Warmth blooming in her chest, Maria finally manages to meet his gaze, her own bright with emotion. “Okay,” she concedes. And then she begins, because it’s easier than resistance, because it’s okay to trust this man, she thinks. And so she tells him where she came from, about the first scars on her body, about the ones she still has. Some wounds take longer to heal; Maria’s story always begins with the ones that never truly did.
She tells him about sneaking out at night so she wouldn’t have to hear her father crack open a beer, because she knew what came after. She tells him about never having much, and dreaming of having everything, and that she does now. In so many ways, she has everything she wanted. She’s free where there was no freedom. She’s living where there was no life before. She’s loved where there was little love. Sometimes, she wonders if her father, if Ed – she’s started calling him by his name in the last few years – loved her at all.
“I know,” she sighs when Nick doesn’t say anything at first, when he just looks at her, his singular, piercing eye trained on her face. “I know, but I’m better now.” She always feels the need to say so, to promise that she’s alright, that the world was once unkind to her but it is now learning to be kind.
“That’s not what I was going to ask,” Fury says, his voice flat with anger, but not at her. Never at her.
“What were you going to ask, then?” She looks over at him curiously.
His mouth turns up in disdain for a moment before he does his best to school his expression. Nick Fury never did well with bullies, especially grown-ass men who don’t know better than to beat their daughters, and everyone in his class of operatives knows that. Maria is about to find out.
“Agent Hill, where is he now?” he asks, his voice remarkably even.
“I’m– I’m sorry?”
“You heard me. Where is Ed now?” Fury repeats.
Maria doesn’t hesitate to answer this time. “In the ground. A cemetery in Chicago.”
“Good,” Nick replies, giving a singular nod of approval. He huffs out a dangerous laugh. It’s barely a laugh at all. “Otherwise he’d have another thing coming to him.”
Maria only doesn’t hug him because she doesn’t know if he would like it. He doesn’t seem like the type of person who particularly enjoys hugs.
***
two.
The train from London to Paris is just over two hours. Maria and Nick barely make it thirty minutes before they start eating their snacks.
“Tell me something I don’t know about being in the Marines.” Fury speaks around a bite of popcorn. This game is routine between them by now: every time they have a train car to themselves, they’ve played.
Maria laughs, the right corner of her mouth turning up as she takes a sip of the soda she packed, one of those expensive ones from the organic grocery store they stopped by. It’s packaged in a glass bottle.
“You know nothing about being in the Marines, Director.”
Nobody does, not really. Not unless they've been one.
“So, tell me something I don’t know, then,” he presses gently, curious. He’s always been curious when it comes to Maria; it’s only as time has gone on that she’s realized that the kind of care he shows to hear what she has to say isn’t something he has the time or patience to afford to every one of his agents.
Maria thinks for a moment, trying to find the right thing. There’s so much she could say: that she has medals for moments she would rather forget, that war followed her home. That it sleeps next to her in bed, that it’s the only companion she’s never worried about leaving her – and how she always wishes that it would.
“You never stop being a Marine,” she says, finally. “Wherever you go, it’s always part of you.” She pulls her dogtags from under her shirt. “You know, I’ve been out long enough that I don’t use the length of a tour to measure time anymore.” She smiles, wry and a little broken; nobody makes it out whole. “But I still can’t bring myself to take these off.”
Nick doesn’t say anything. There’s nothing to say. There’s nothing more to know.
***
three.
“Tell me something I don’t know about adult Maria.”
“Wow, Fury, I almost think you want to get to know me,” Maria jokes, taking a sip of her beer. They’re in a dive bar in New Jersey. It’s quiet, and the back is totally empty. “We’re not even on a train.”
“Hill, we’ve worked together for almost five years,” he says, as casual and offhanded as he can manage, but there’s clearly something on his mind. “You know you can tell me things, right?”
“You’re basically the world’s best secret keeper.” She huffs out a laugh. “Of course I know that.”
“Then why are you deflecting?” Fury asks.
God. Sometimes, Maria forgets how easy it is for him to back her into this corner. Because he already knows her. The fluff and faux-shock is all just for show, is all for the appearance that they aren’t as close as they are because they’re both aware of what it means to be compromised, and they don’t want to compromise each other.
“Because adult Maria is kind of boring.” Deflecting. Again. She knows it. So does he.
“Who said that?” Nick turns his head to the side like he always does, turning to her a little more so he can see her better out of his good eye.
“My–” Maria stops herself. She remembers where they are, who she is, what she is, the country she serves, and how sometimes, she isn’t always proud of it. “My ex,” she corrects herself.
“I didn’t know you have somebody,” Nick admits.
“Had,” Maria corrects. “And you don’t know everything about me.” She takes a longer drink, swallowing hard, letting the alcohol sit in the back of her throat for a moment. “There are some things you can’t know.”
She meets his eyes and hopes he understands. Hopes a man like him can see that there are some secrets you keep for everyone’s sake. Not because God is watching, but because He isn’t. Because it’s not fair. Because Maria knows who and how she loves, but if anybody else does, they go down with her. It shouldn’t be this way, but it is: the way you can be stripped of your status for settling down with something, someone, more important than the fight.
But Maria has been keeping this to herself for too long, and at this point, hiding feels like breathing.
And the last girl she loved couldn’t take it anymore, didn’t want to hide, and Maria understood. So she left, and Maria let her.
“I pride myself on knowing everything, Hill,” Fury says, trying for light, but they both know it’s true. He is a bit of a know-it-all.
“Like I said, better if you let this one slip of your radar.” Maria shrugs, looking away.
“Maybe I shouldn’t have used the word tell?” Nick guesses, and she freezes.
“Nick.”
“Because I certainly wasn’t asking,” he continues, kindness in his eyes, spreading his hands out gently on the table, palms up, in case she wants to take one.
“How long have you–” Maria clears her throat. “How long have you not known?”
“You’ve kept me in the dark probably a year,” he says, keeping his voice very even. “And I’m content to stay in the dark. As long as you know I’m not content that you have to keep me here. But I’m not asking, and you’re not telling, so that’s what counts, right?”
Maria's heart stutters in her chest.
“Yes, sir,” she says softly. “Thank you.”
“For what?” he asks, his eyes so kind that Maria almost wants to cry – but she’s only had one beer, so that isn’t going to happen quite yet. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
She takes his hand, squeezing.
***
four.
“Tell me… something I don’t know about my agents,” Nick suggests when Maria joins him in his office for lunch.
She hesitates visibly, odd after so many years of training, but there’s obviously something top of mind.
“Oh, so I’m right?” He leans back in his chair, steepling his pointer fingers. “Because I could feel some of you keeping a secret, hm? You, Romanoff, Barton, 19. Even May and Coulson seem like they’re trying their damndest not to talk about something in front of me, so what is it?”
“With all due respect, sir, it’s not my secret to share,” Maria replies, cool. “If it were, I could keep playing the game.”
“Is everything okay?” Fury asks, his concern betraying him. More than anything, when his agents, especially those closest to him keep something from him, his mind goes to the worst case scenario.
Maria hesitates for even longer than before, and then, finally, she nods. “It is. It’s just–”
Nick raises his eyebrows at her. “It’s just…?”
“Do you know how much a house costs?” she blurts out. “Because weirdly, it’s actually really difficult to get one, especially if you have five different fake names and minimal credit and debit history due to your line of work.”
“Are you asking I buy you a house, Agent Hill?” Fury asks, incredulous.
“No, of course not. I’m good with my life here,” Maria assures him; having somewhere to go on the helicarrier is enough for her, especially since it’s private. It’s one of the benefits of rising in the ranks of S.H.I.E.L.D. “But not everybody is, sir. They’re growing up.”
“And you’re not?” Nick seems disbelieving of such a fact. After all, he’s watched her grow and change so much in the last several years.
“I’m already grown,” Maria reasons, lips twitching in faint, affectionate amusement. “I know what I want. And what I don’t. Some people are just finding out for themselves.”
Months later, when Nick takes Clint and Laura to a farm far remote from any S.H.I.E.L.D. operation, Maria receives an invitation not even a week later to come for Sunday dinner. Barton agreed to join the Avengers Initiative on this condition: that he’d have somewhere to go home to, somewhere that would be safe for his friends and future family.
Maria never told them what she’d done to make this happen, and she likes it that way. She doesn’t like to feel like Fury’s second with Clint, Natasha, and Laura. There are some things more important than rank.
Together, they drink and eat, laughing, happy, like they aren’t the same people who are assigned to make sure the world doesn’t end on their watch – or maybe they are only more joyful because of that. Because they know, firsthand, just how short life is.
But for now, they are young, and Maria loves her friends, and Laura keeps to water because she and Clint are trying for their first. For now, Maria sinks into the night, with Nat at one shoulder and Barton against her other. All evening, they’ve been poking fun at each other, at the mere idea that Clint settled down first, and what on Earth Romanoff and Hill are going to do now that their wingman will be MIA taking care of a baby at home.
“Well, you’ll always have each other,” Clint jokes, leaning against Laura now, her fingers playing with his short hair.
“Please,” Maria laughs. “They always go for Nat. And then it’s just me and my whiskey.”
“They always go for me because I know how to be friendly,” Nat jabs her in the side with her pointer finger.
“I’m friendly!” she protests. “I’m the only reason Fury lets these two send him a Christmas card.” She points at 19 and Barton.
“It’s true, she is,” Laura chimes in.
“Clint, I’m stealing your wife,” Maria tells her friend before she gestures at Laura and takes a sip of her beer. “Listen, I don’t have much, but I am very good in bed. And I’ve been given a great pension plan.”
“Better than Clint’s?” Laura asks, eyes bright with teasing amusement.
“Seriously?!” Clint complains, and then they’re all laughing again.
Sometimes, amongst the chaos, life can be beautiful, and it sneaks up on you.
***
five.
“Tell me something I don’t know about the time we were gone,” Nick asks softly, because the first part of grief is helping somebody to say it out loud. Nick Fury has grieved many people.
Now, he’s only given silence in return, though.
“Hill?” he prompts.
“Are you serious right now?” Maria scrubs at her face, her elbows propped against her knees as she leans over on the couch at Sam and Bucky’s place. They're letting them crash for a few days. “Nat is dead, Nick.” Her voice cracks, tears already starting to fall again; this is the most Maria has ever cried. “Tony is dead. Vision is dead. Steve is… gone. They’re gone, Nick. My friends. Our friends. They’re dead. And you’re asking me to play your stupid game like you don’t fucking know that already?”
“There you are,” Nick says, as gently as he can muster.
But Maria isn’t having it. “Oh, don’t do that,” she practically spits, and she knows their hosts can probably hear her, but she also doesn’t care. “Don’t do that right now. Don’t try to father me.”
She hasn’t been herself since the new broke, since she came back and learned what she’d missed. It’s almost better to hear the fire than to think it’s burned out forever. There was a time when this was all she wanted from Nick: to be able to lay down their weapons and their plans and just talk, but it feels like it’s too late for those things right now. It’s years too late.
“My friends are dead,” she repeats, quieter this time. So much quieter. “My friends are dead, and you are not my father. My father is buried in a cemetery in Chicago. That son of a bitch is dead too. He couldn’t even stick around long enough to see this–“ she gestures to her own self, to her body and her mind and her heart, everything Ed once shattered, learning to be whole– “to see what I’ve become.”
She doesn’t know why she’s saying these things. Nick is a better father to her than Ed ever was, and they both know that. Truthfully, Ed wasn’t her father at all, but it’s easy to blame him now for dying. It’s easy to blame him for her grief, to recognize him as the reason that her body knows how to hold pain and refuses to let it go. Because she could never put that on Nick. If anything, he was the first person who taught her how to let all of the hurt go. The first person who taught her how to use it.
“I’m not your father,” Nick agrees, quiet. Even though sometimes, I wish I were, goes unsaid, but they both hear it in the way his voice shakes. He’s uncertain in a way she has never heard, but these are times they’ve never been through and these are lives they never could have predicted leading. “But I’ve damn well tried hard for you, Maria.” He softens. He so rarely calls her Maria. It makes her calm a little bit, too. “And I’ve been happy to. I’m glad that you’re still alive. I’m glad that you’re still here.”
In an instant, Maria is off the couch and hugging him. Really hugging him. She doesn’t think she ever has, at least not that she can remember. “I’m sorry,” she whispers, shaking apart as he holds her.
“I know,” he says. It’s all he needs to say.
“Everybody is really fucked up, Nick,” Maria continues, face against his shoulder. “Clearly, Bucky and Sam are having a hard time.”
Maria and Nick have been the ones holding down the fort, going grocery shopping, running the dishwasher, even doing laundry, because neither of Steve’s friends seem to know what to do. Maria hears rustling in the next room, like the two men were listening and are now trying to pretend like they weren't. Her heart lifts gently as she hears them bickering. It's a sign that maybe they're getting better.
“And Clint hasn’t– I haven’t heard from him yet, but Laura said he’s not up to much, that he doesn’t know how to be.”
In fairness, outside of what she has to do to make sure the friends that are still alive stay that way, Maria hasn’t been able to do anything either. Everything she wants to do is stuff she’d do with Nat.
“Pepper… it’s day to day. I try to talk to her most nights.”
But there are some days where Pepper doesn’t answer, where she has to be a mom and put her grief aside. Where she just might shake apart if she talks to Maria about everything in her head and heart. They’ve been friends for more than a decade, now, and the closeness sometimes only makes things harder: having somebody who knows what you feel without having to describe it.
“And Wanda….” Maria can’t explain everything she’s heard. “Remember when we met her?” she asks instead. “She was just a kid. And– and she loved Vis so much. She doesn’t deserve any of this.”
“I know,” Fury agrees softly. “None of them deserve this.”
“Yeah,” Maria laughs humorlessly, pulling away gently with a sad smile. “Nick?”
“Yes, Hill?”
“Tell me something I don’t know about how we make any of it better.”
Fury shrugs, his shoulders sagging a little. For the first time, Maria can see how old he is, how old he feels, in a way she never could before.
“That’s the thing,” he admits. “We can’t.”
There are some things you just can’t fix. No matter how hard you try. No matter how much you bleed. Sometimes, friends just die. Sometimes, time is just time. Sometimes, there is nowhere to go, not even forward, because it all hurts so much that it’s impossible to take even a single step.
Sometimes, what’s left is all there is.
***
( one.)
Nick is the last to salute Maria before she’s to be sent back stateside with Elizabeth, and he almost doesn’t know how to say goodbye. He’s used to not saying goodbye to her. It’s always see you soon or don’t be late, but now… now, she’s really gone. It’s the worst feeling in the world: losing a kid.
Because she was still a kid to him. She was always going to be. His kid, in her own way, in the way only she could be: youthful and challenging and honest. Maria was the most honest person he ever knew. Not many people are brave enough to be honest.
He places his hand down on the casket, and again, he’s back in Moscow, replaying it in his head: the way she died. Her blood on his hands. Her dogtags still peeking out from under her shirt. It’s how the paramedics knew who she was when they finally got to her. Maria was a Marine until the very end, but she spent the latter half of her service fighting wars that nobody could ever hear about. She’ll be known by few for what she did, but so many are in her debt. Nick tries not to dwell on this fact, but it’s difficult.
In a last ditch effort, he takes a knee, placing his forehead against the wood. “Tell me something I don’t know,” he whispers.
But for the first time in nearly two decades, he gets no answer. Nothing.
And he can only stay with her for so long before her guard finally interrupts, sympathy in their eyes and more softness in their stances than Nick would ever expect from the Marines that Maria described, but they just lost one of their own, and he knows the way death breaks anyone down into their most human parts.
“We have to take her, sir,” one of them says, his jaw clenched around his grief. He’s too old to be serving. He must have served with her, but there’s no way Nick can be sure.
I pride myself on knowing everything, he told Maria, once, but now, without her – his best agent, his favorite travel companion, too, if he’s honest – he just feels lost. Sometimes, what’s left is all there is – and right now, without Maria, Nick has nothing.
“I know.” Nodding, Nick takes a step back, wanting to say so much more than that. But he doesn’t.
Instead, he only watches and wonders if Maria knew he would have followed her to the gates of Hell and back, too, if she knew that he would go all the way to the edge of the Earth to bring her back right now if he could.