NOTES: Written for the "into a bar" challenge - Maria Hill walks into a bar and meets Steven Caldwell!
Heroes Are Hell On The Décor
Maria has never really questioned why the televisions are never playing the news stations when she walks into this place. It's never mattered before – the news doesn't usually cover the work she does and he doesn't have the clearance.
In fact, last she checked, he doesn't appear on any of the military lists to which she has access.
Which should be a red flag, but isn't.
Both of those things – the missing man and her internal lack of alarm regarding it – tells her all about this place.
So she doesn't question why nobody is talking about the hole in the sky over New York city, or the aliens who trashed half the city, or the superheroes who saved them. She just rocks up to the bar, takes the empty seat beside him and orders a hard cider.
"Really bad week, huh?"
He's tall – about Fury's height. Just about as bald – he doesn't affect a goatee, but he's got a grey fringe of hair around his pate – not as old. He dresses old-fashioned – rather like Rogers, now she comes to think of it: button-down shirts and slacks rather than jeans and t-shirts.
And he listens to the silence, which she appreciates.
"There was an attack. We lost a lot of good people – including one of my mentors."
She doesn't have to elaborate. He understands. She was there the night he came in and drank half a bottle of whiskey straight – in memory, he said, of a fine leader who sacrificed herself for a whole bunch of people.
The cider comes with a beer for him. They don't talk; that's one thing she likes about coming here – about him – he knows not to fill the silence with chatter, but to wait for what she needs to say.
Maria drinks half the cider, hardly tasting it, just needing something to wash the dirt and smoke and blood from her tastebuds, just needing some space with someone who won't ask questions, won't require anything of her, won't push her.
"Have you ever thought about superheroes?"
His brows lift, amused. "Not since I was a kid."
"How about heroes?"
Now he snorts. "Yeah, we've got enough of those around my command. Lone-Rangers or Team Trouble?"
The succinct description makes her smile a little. She can just see Phil's grin now. "Both. They've all caused their own crises in their time and place. But now they've worked together and it's Team Trouble. You?"
"Team Trouble with a Sacrifical Hero Complex leading them." He shakes his head. "Thank God they're not my responsibility most of the time."
"And when they are?"
He leans forward on his elbows a little, framing his beer. "Then I usually arrive in time to get them out of the aftermath." A glance at her. "How many do you have to deal with?"
"Six. Hero, Lone Ranger, Monster, God, and a Terrible Twosome when they put their minds to it."
"Just four," he says, a touch smug. Then, quizzically,"God?"
"Technically alien."
His expression hardens – stiffens and sharpens. "Snakes in the head? Seeking worship?"
"No," Maria says, alarmed by his reaction. "The old Norse gods. No worship expected." At least, not by the sane ones.
That makes him blink. "Really?"
"Dead serious."
"Roswell alien Norse gods?"
That makes her blink. "Roswell aliens?"
And it's his turn to stare at her. "Roswell, New Mexico – child-sized, grey, oversized head, big dark eyes—Okay," he says when Maria shakes her head. "Aliens, but not that kind."
She'd asks what kind of aliens he does get, but she doesn't think she wants to know. Norse Gods and Chitauri are bad enough, and she doesn't want to think about what else lies out in the universe, biding its time until it comes to bite humanity in the ass.
When it does, S.H.I.E.L.D. will be waiting.
"So does your lot cause alien invasions or fix them? Or both?"
She thinks about that for a moment. "Both. Cause and cure, all in one."
Which pisses Maria off – because what the world sees is that the Avengers saved them, ending the Chitauri invasion.
They didn't watch the deadly glow of blue-tinged eyes staring back at them as they fought to keep an object of power out of the hands of evil – the eyes of a friend and trusted companion. They didn't see the infighting, the arguing, the posturing. They weren't left to count the dead on the helicarrier.
Sure, they fixed the problem, but they caused it, too.
So far as Maria is concerned, the balance of heroics when it comes to the Avengers is zero, not in credit. They started it, they finished it.
She doesn't realise she's muttered that last bit to the man sitting next to her until he stirs, a half-smile hovering on his mouth. "Heroes, huh?"
"Oh yeah. They're hell on the décor."
fin