Finally finished with the first half of my summer courses, so I thought I'd post this. Just a drabble, but one I think fits Maria Hill well.
Maria Hill, ex-Deputy Director of SHIELD, had three rules of thumb that she lived by.
The first of them: don't miss.
It was as short statement, but simple and effective, not to mention wide-spreading.
Not missing class allowed her to earn top marks in school, and with life with an alcoholic father at home, she preferred being a teacher's pet.
Not missing pathetically easy questions on the SAT allowed her to pick the college of her choice to get away from the hell she'd known.
Not missing targets in the shooting range allowed her to rapidly advance in the hierarchy of SHIELD, let alone become an agent in the first place.
And finally, not missing critical blunders in her line of work was the difference between the stability of the world and utter destruction and chaos. So yea, it paid not to miss, both literally and metaphorically.
Second rule of thumb: shit happens.
She'd known that as soon as her mother gave her life for her child. Her father, unable to bear it, viewed the child of their union as the ultimate scapegoat.
So much for daddy's little girl. She didn't need nice things anyways. And people wondered why she was such a cold-hearted bitch.
Her childhood was a cycle of "you're the reason you don't have a mother" and "keep yourself together while your father drowns himself in another bottle". That, and a good amount of belt lashes, enough to give her uneasy flashbacks of various beatings whenever one came into view.
Once college started and she got herself a boyfriend, she thought the worst was behind her. Or so she thought.
Her SHIELD boyfriend happened to get himself killed in a rescue mission in the Middle East. Her anchor, gone in a heartbeat.
It made the slashing of wrists a little more understandable.
Shit happened, even now. The fall SHIELD thanks to a rogue Nazi division proved that for Maria. Years of hard work and dedication were wiped cleaned with the flip of a switch. The other half of the switch included hounding by the governments of the world, not to mention dozens of professional rivals that wanted her head.
Shit happens. It happens to everyone. For Maria Hill, it happened a little more than she would have liked.
That led to her third rule of thumb: things get better.
Because, though hell and high water, though wading through the shit of life to get by, life did get better, if one gave it a chance to do so.
Maria Hill only realized that when she tried to off herself. The pain of dying was worse than the pain of living. She realized that life, with all its down moments, was still preferable to ending it all.
So she started believing in herself. Life got better when she was accepted to SHIELD, when she was promoted to Deputy Director, to be second in command of a world peacekeeping agency.
It got better when a man she least expected to swept her off her feet, and re-instilled in her faith in humanity and the belief that life was more that battling the past.
And it got better when she played her small part in saving the world multiple times, even if the world saw her in a negative light.
After all, it was a thankless job.
Maria Hill had three rules of thumb, and she never let go of them.
Interpret the man as whomever you wish: Steve Rogers, Phil Coulson or, if you've been reading my other stories, Frank Castle. Tell me what you thought.
-Jokerang