A/N: So, I'm still editing the next chapter of Curves and Edges, but this story pretty much consumed my entire mind for several days. I hoped if I wrote it out I would be able to have a better focus on the other chapter.
About this story: I've seen several prompts since starting on tumblr calling for a soulmate tattoo. Basically, each child is born with a tattoo with their soul mate's name so they will know each other when they find each other. Honestly, it never really clicked with me. I guess, however, that I needed a good cry this week, and this was my fix. :D
Please R&R, in between all your holiday prep. :)
(More notes below)
Maria Christina Hill was born February 13, 1993 in Chicago, IL. Her mother succumbed to complications from the birth in the early hours of the next morning. Maria's father never let her forget.
The years went by and Maria finally started to school. She loved school and did exceedingly well. Her second favorite place was the library. In neither place did she often encounter her father. It was going home that terrified her. Nothing Maria could do was good enough. She couldn't cook well, she couldn't clean right. Even her straight 'A' report cards and numerous accolades from teachers and school leaders weren't enough for the bitter, self-absorbed man; they were, to him, proof of her arrogance.
As the years went by, Maria learned it was just easier to shut herself off emotionally from all people. The pain her father inflicted was enough, she didn't think she could stand to be hurt by anyone else.
She did, however, have one glimmer of hope. As almost all children were, Maria was born with a name on her upper left arm. That name was the name of her soul mate, the one with whom she would spend the rest of her life, once she found him. Some nights, after her father would pass out drunk in his recliner, Maria would quietly sneak into the bathroom and lock the door. She would remove her shirt and, ignoring the bruises and scars, would stare at the name. She'd rub her hand gently across the letters and whisper the name and wonder what it would feel like once she found him, once she knew love. She spent nights lying awake in her bed, planning her search. As she grew older, her plans solidified. She would spend the summer after she graduated high school looking for the one who matched the name. He would be the one who had her name on his arm.
Two weeks before said graduation, her father flew into such a rage that Maria ended up in the hospital with a broken arm, multiple lacerations, and a concussion. It was the latter that made her too bold, she would tell herself later.
The state no longer cared what happened to her because she was already of legal age. The police took the report and arrested her father, but he posted the low bail easily and was back in his apartment before Maria was out of the hospital. When her concussion was improved, she was released. She had no place to go but back to her father, and she didn't think it would be so bad, because in less than two weeks, she would leave and never return.
But she was bold enough to have her final say, to tell her father off by reminding him that she was leaving and that once she found her soul mate, she would never need her father again. Her father's reaction wasn't exactly what she'd pictured. She had assumed he'd glare at her, maybe spit, or perhaps even hit her across the face. Laughing so hard he could not stand was nothing near any of those things.
"Your soul mate," he gasped as he tried to catch his breath. "Do you even know? I thought you were a fucking genius, turns out you're just the stupid bitch I always thought."
Maria tilted her chin up and took a deep breath before responding. This was one thing she knew her father could not ruin for her.
"I can read," she said.
That only sent him into more peals of laughter.
"Steven." He gasped for more air. "Grant." He half-laughed, half-gasped. "Rogers." He snorted then looked at her in cruel amusement. "You really don't know."
He stood from his seat and Maria braced herself for a blow, but he only raised his hand to place it on her shoulder.
"Captain America," he said, so close she felt his alcohol laced breath brushed across her face.
Maria mouthed the words noiselessly.
"But," she started to say, "But he died before I was even born." But her father began laughing at her again.
He fell back onto the chair he'd just risen from and finally caught his breath, then his look turned mean.
"Serves you right, you no-good, bitch, for killing my soul mate," he told her.
Maria changed her plans after that. She walked out of the apartment and to the nearest recruiting center to sign on with the Marines. If anything would make her impervious to more pain, it would be the work it took to become a good Marine. The day after graduation, when her classmates were sleeping off their hangovers, Maria boarded a bus to start her training.
Months later she graduated at the top of her class and went right to work. It didn't take long for her to rise through the ranks, but, without a college education, she knew sergeant was as high as she'd ever achieve. Still, it was better than following after her original dreams of possibly becoming a doctor or a chemist, because that dream had involved meeting the man she'd only imagined and settling down to start a family.
Then, Madripoor happened, and, weeks later, a plain and unobtrusive man in a non-descript charcoal grey suit came to her. He introduced himself as Phil Coulson, an agent of SHIELD. She listened politely as he explained why they wanted to recruit her and what her job would entail, but when he told her that there was more opportunity for advancement, Maria took note. As much as she liked the Marines, she had reached her limit, and she'd only been in for four years. SHIELD would offer her a new challenge, and more ways to keep her mind off that constant ache inside.
Maria was as driven at SHIELD as she had ever been in the Marines. As she had in school and the Marines, she graduated at the top of her class at the SHIELD academy. After, she quickly rose through the ranks, obtaining the position of Deputy Director in less than ten years. Maria felt good; for the first time in her life she finally felt that she would truly be OK. The work was interesting and challenging. SHIELD Director Nick Fury didn't treat her as an inferior; instead, whether he would agree with her or not, would hear her out. She knew the talk, that the Director chair would one day be hers, but she never allowed it to go to her head. One day was a day in the distance and for that moment, it was enough to have made it this far.
End of May 2011
Fury summoned Maria back to DC from New Mexico where she and Coulson were still dealing with the fallout from a visit from a demi-god.
"I'll be going to the Arctic for a month," he informed her. "I'm leaving you in charge."
"The Arctic?" she asked. "What's in the Arctic?"
He had a glint in his eye and smiled a rare smile for her. He looked like the proverbial kid at Christmas. It made Maria very nervous. But it never prepared her for what he said next.
"We found Captain America," he said.
Maria felt her face fall into a hard frown.
"Why?" she asked. She saw the surprise on the director's face.
"Why?" he repeated.
"Yes," she said. "Why were you looking?"
She was angry now. She'd spent her last week of high school in the library archives learning everything thing she could about Steven Grant Rogers, aka Captain America. She'd mourned her loss, accepted that he was in a cold grave in the ice, and moved on. Now, in the very place she'd sought refuge from that pain, she would have to face it again.
"I'm not sure why it should even be important to you," Fury said, becoming clearly aggravated with her.
Maria tried to tell him, but no words would come out, instead she stood and began to unbutton her uniform top.
"Hill, what are you doing?" Fury exclaimed, as he jumped out of his chair. He hurried around his desk most likely to stop her but she had her shirt off before he could get to her. He froze in his tracks as he looked at the name on her arm.
She stood stock still, more rigid than if she was at attention, while Fury gaped in surprise. He wouldn't have known. It was illegal for any medical professional or organization to record or pass along the name, punishable, some thought, by death, because the few who had ever tried had disappeared, and were never heard from again.
Finally, he relaxed a bit and walked back around his desk. He punched a button on his phone and his assistant answered.
"Change of plans," he told the man on the line. "Hill is going to the Arctic. Set it up for me."
He pressed the button again after he'd received the accepted reply and Maria shook her head vigorously.
"No, sir, please," she pleaded. "That's not what I want. Please, I can't…"
"You need to, Hill," he told her, somewhat forcefully. Then his face softened and he returned to his seat and waved his hand at her to indicate she should redress and do the same. After a minute, he continued.
"I have always wondered what drove you, how you could work the way you do; without a break; almost day and night; barely stopping to eat or sleep; never taking a vacation," he said. "I knew about your father, that's in the record. But it just didn't seem adequate. Now that I understand, I know that you need true closure."
He stared at her for several minutes.
"When you arrive, the medical team will explain their plans and you can make your decision as to what to do with the body, if need be," he told her.
Maria didn't understand what Fury meant by "if need be." Obviously, Steve would need to be buried, what else would be done? Or, maybe there was other family she hadn't been able to locate. Maybe someone else had a claim to him. But Maria only nodded and walked out of the office to pick up her travel itinerary from Fury's secretary.
Twenty-four hours later, Maria was in the bitter cold of the Arctic. Even the temporary buildings the staff had erected to keep them out of the elements were constantly hovering around freezing. She walked into the medical building after refusing to be shown her quarters, insisting she wanted to get started as soon as possible. The agent that showed her in smiled knowingly, only Maria knew he actually had no idea. It wasn't the cold she wanted to get away from, it was the man they were trying to dig out of the ice.
She handed the orders from Fury to the head of the medical team then the doctor and she got hot coffee and sat in his office as he detailed their plans to resuscitate Captain Rogers. Maria thought she did a very good job at hiding her shock. In reality, she was fortunate she hadn't dropped the cup to the floor.
"Do you really think that will work?" she asked, though she thought it a waste of time and tax-payer money.
"We're not sure," he said. "We'll have to recover the body first, then run some tests. But we think it is possible that it might have worked like cryogenics is purported."
"Cryogenics is a pipe dream, doctor," she scoffed.
"Well, Captain Rogers isn't a normal human being," he reminded her. "His entire being was enhanced."
Maria walked away from the meeting with nothing more than feelings of frustration. The only thing she felt she'd accomplished well was to convey the need for the utmost secrecy and to therefore cut the staff down to a skeleton crew of only the most needed once Steve's body was recovered. The last thing she wanted was for a slew of SHIELD personnel knowing that she was Captain America's soul mate.
It took two weeks to recover the body. The team moved him carefully into a specially contained building where they could start the thawing process before they transferred him to New York for more specific treatment. Maria was allowed full rights to visitation and Fury had given her the authority to cut the video and audio feed to the building if she needed.
She only visited him alone once. She stood, shivering in the cold, and stared at the huge block of ice. Steve had known he was going to die, it was surmised, because he'd laid himself out, shield on his chest. Maria couldn't see his features well, which was fine, she already knew what he looked like. She mostly stared at his left arm and worried about what would happen when it was discovered. There was no use grieving. She'd done that already and she was not the type to dwell on it or to feel self-pity.
She traveled with the body to New York and oversaw the project. It was, as far as she knew, the most top secret thing SHIELD had ever engaged in. There were only a small number of people who even knew of the event, and less who knew about the plans the medical team had in hopes to revive the super-soldier.
The time it took to finally thaw all the ice seemed an eternity to Maria, though it was only a few months. She refused to be present when they cut his uniform off his body, instead she stood outside, waiting. When the two doctors came out, neither seemed to look at her unusually. They locked the room, then turned into an office down the hall as if nothing major had just occurred. Maria wasn't sure what to make of it. She didn't think they could be that discreet. She walked to the door and keyed in her code.
The first room was simply an observation room. To actually go into the room with the body required you be covered in a suit that would have made Hazmat proud. But Maria didn't want to go in, she only wanted to see the name. A sheet draped the lower half of his body to give him some modesty. But, and Maria shouldn't have been surprised, his left side was toward the opposite wall, the side no one could see. Sighing, she pulled on a suit and keyed in yet another code and walked in to see the man that should have been her love for life, but never would be.
She took a deep breath and walked over to Steve's left side. She furrowed her brows. There appeared to have been a name once, but it was faded. She stepped closer to see if she could make it out and choked on her emotion when she saw the first letter definitely looked like an 'M.' She walked over to a small table and picked up a magnifying glass, suddenly gaining a morbid fascination to see the rest of the letters. The first three definitely looked like 'M-A-R.' After that, however, the letters were too faint to read until the other end of the name. Those letters were faint, but Maria could just make them out. 'T-E-R.' Her heart sank. Margaret Carter. Maria was sure that was the name. The woman who had helped found SHIELD. She had heard a story or two since joining SHIELD about the woman and Captain America. They had made her immensely envious.
For several moments she stood, staring at the letters, trying to consider the implications. She'd known he was the one the moment her father had pointed it out. The more she'd learned of Steve, the more her heart had confirmed it. There wasn't a lot of information about how soul mates found each other, it was a taboo subject to speak of in public. But Maria had been able to find a few archived articles that explained it was more than the name, that there was emotion each would feel, that they would know that this was indeed the right person.
For the third time, the cosmos had played a cruel trick on her.
She walked from the room and from the building, went home, packed a bag, and headed to DC. She knew Margaret "Peggy" Carter was in a nursing home there and, consequences be damned, she was going to tell the woman that her soul mate had been recovered.
Four hours later, she was ushered into the former agent's room. The woman was sitting in an old-fashioned armchair by the window. Maria introduced herself and told her she was with SHIELD.
"And what would SHIELD want with an old woman like me?" her accent made her sound far more serious than the glint in her eye and the slight grin on her face conveyed.
"I've come to inform you that we have recovered your soul mate," Maria said as emotionless as possible.
"My soul mate?" she asked hesitantly.
"Yes, ma'am," Maria told her, still maintaining her official air. "SHIELD recovered Steve Rogers' body from the crash site in the Arctic last month."
"Steve Rogers'?" the old woman chuckled, and Maria was unsure what to make of that. It hardly seemed like something to laugh about.
"My dear young woman," she continued. "Steve Rogers hasn't been my soul mate for, well, since a few years after the war."
Maria furrowed her brow and Carter nodded.
"It's a little known fact, to be honest, I had no idea until the name faded and another appeared," she said. "That if you lose your soul mate, in rare instances, you will be given another."
Maria didn't know what to do with this information. She was obviously not one of the rare instances. Of course, who would ever think they'd be born with the name of a person long dead?
"What was he like?" Maria asked before she could think better of it.
"Stephen? Oh, he was such an incredibly strong man," she said. "Even before the serum. He had such a good character, such a will to do what was right."
She stopped and smiled a sad smile.
"Even if it weren't for the names, I think we still would have known we were meant to be together," she said.
Maria stood and excused herself.
"I'm sorry to have bothered you," she told the woman.
"Oh, no bother at all," she assured Maria.
Maria left the meeting more confused than ever. The only thing she knew for certain was that she had to prevent Steve waking. If he woke and discovered that the woman he was soul mates with had grown old and even acquired another soul mate, well, Maria felt she could well imagine his pain. With Margaret Carter's name still on Steve's arm, Maria had no legal ground to prevent any sort of health care performed on him, but she could talk to Director Fury. He would realize this couldn't happen.
"I'm not stopping it," he told her.
Maria opened her mouth to argue but he cut her off with a slice in the air of his hand.
"This is not open to argument," he said. "It might be difficult for him, but his skills will be invaluable to this organization."
With those words, Maria felt as if he had slapped her. But he didn't give her time to recover.
"If you don't feel up to the challenge, Deputy Director," he said, emphasizing her title. "I will move you to something else."
She nodded in ascent and he sighed and shook his head.
"Fine, you will oversee the hellicarrier from now on and I will take over Rogers' care."
And so it was that Maria intentionally pulled herself out of the information loop until Fury pulled her back in with his ridiculous Avengers Initiative. Steve's name and photo were in the file. She wondered how he was adjusting, wondered if he'd gone to see Peggy, wondered if his heart ached the way hers had when she'd learned that her hope in the name on her arm had all been for nothing. But she showed nothing outside.
April 2012
Fury told her he was coming, she could feel the director's one eye boring into her back as Steve Rogers walked past her and she eyed him as coldly as she could. She was relieved when Fury didn't introduce them. She wasn't sure what she would do if she was forced to speak to the man.
The next day, she stood in the middle of the meeting of the so-called Avengers and had to restrain from cutting down Tony Stark physically for the way he was treating Steve. She'd had no idea how painful it was for someone to hurt your soul mate. As the group broke, she caught Steve looking at her with a strange look. But she turned away and returned to her post.
And then New York happened, and the Chitauri, and the hellicarrier nearly falling out of the sky, and Coulson. And Maria found herself with another opportunity to drown herself in her work. She didn't go with the Avengers when they returned Thor and Loki, she stayed and worked. The team split up and went in different directions. Fury, she was certain, had tails on them, or some way of tracking them. But she didn't want to know where Steve was or what he was doing or with whom he was doing it. She simply took on more work and more often than not, she could be found falling asleep at her desk in the middle of the night.
Finally, one night not long after Thor and Loki had returned to Asgard, Fury had enough. He threw open the door of Hill's office rather loudly and, at the top of his lungs, summoned her out of her sleep and ordered her home to her apartment. To assure her compliance, she had a driver take her.
The DC streets were nearly empty at two in the morning, so they arrived quickly. She pulled the key to the front entrance out and, once he saw Maria was inside, the driver left.
It was either a testament to how exhausted she was or how good he was that Maria didn't even notice him until the super soldier uttered the words that both thrilled and terrified her.
"Maria Christina Hill."
His voice floated over her, caressing her soul the way a hand caressed a body. She'd heard it enough over the past several days and she knew she would never forget it. She turned and he stepped out of the shadows.
Steve crossed to her. His face so full of hope and something she'd never seen before, not directed toward her, that is. He reached out when he approached her and touched her left arm, running his fingers along the part where his name was etched in her skin with the same tenderness she'd used as a child in his touch.
"How?" Maria started, but she wasn't really sure what she wanted to ask.
He took her right hand and pressed it to his left arm in answer.
"No," she shook her head. "That's impossible."
His face that had been so full of hope and love the instant before, now appeared unsure.
"Oh," he said and gently dropped her hand. "It's not…"
He couldn't get whatever words out he wanted to say and instead started to back away.
"I'm so sorry," he said. "I thought…"
He took a deep shuddering breath and Maria felt her heart break.
"No, Steve, that's not what I meant," she said.
He stopped but he still looked so sad.
"I saw your arm," she said. "When they removed your old uniform."
He nodded though he wouldn't have known.
"The name," she said. "It was Margaret Carter."
Steve cocked his head and furrowed his brow.
"It was still there when I was found?"
"It was faded, but it seemed fairly plain to me," she said.
He got a faraway look before he spoke again. His voice was quiet, almost a whisper.
"There was nothing there when I woke," he said.
This almost surprised Maria, but she was getting to the point where nothing about soul mates could surprise her anymore.
"I thought she was dead," he told Maria. "But she had just…"
Again, he couldn't complete his sentence. He closed his eyes for a moment to collect himself.
"I'm sorry I didn't mean to…" he stopped again before offering her a good night and turning to the door.
"Wait, Steve," she said. She could see the way he reacted to her saying his name that he felt it. Now she stepped over to him.
Standing in front of him, Maria took his hand and placed it on her left arm.
"When I found out who you were, who this name belonged to, it hurt so badly," she said.
"Say it," he said.
She looked up at him and found that the hope had returned to his face. She couldn't help but smile.
"Steven Grant Rogers."
He smiled at that and it was then Maria realized that she'd only seen his smile in old photos and news reals. He slid his hand down her left arm and slowly pulled her into his embrace. It was so strong and perfect and more than anything Maria had ever dreamed as a girl.
"I'm so glad I found you," the words were out of her mouth before she could think better of it.
She pulled out of his embrace, then led him by the hand up the stairs to her apartment. As they entered, Maria's first thought was to need a bigger bed than the double she had. She smiled at the quirkiness of the thought.
"I can sleep on the sofa, if you're more comfortable with that," he said.
"I'm too tired for anything to happen tonight, even as much as I'd like," she told him.
He nodded and followed her to the threshold of the bedroom.
She turned back to him when she realized he hadn't followed her.
"I, um, I think I'd like to know more about you first," he said.
She smiled hugely at him then.
"Me too, but I'm tired and I've been waiting for this for my whole life," she told him.
She shucked her shoes and her jacket and grabbed some pajamas from the dresser.
"I don't have anything your size," she said. "But if you'll strip down to your shorts and get under the covers, I won't see anything."
He opened his mouth possibly to argue but she cocked an eyebrow.
"I'm too exhausted to argue with you right now," she said. "I just want…"
Now she became the one who wasn't sure how to say what she wanted to say.
She looked up at him and his look was so soft and so loving she thought she might lose herself in it. Then she realized that this man was safe. She could tell him exactly what she was feeling and he would, at the very least, try to understand.
"When I wake, I want you to be there so I won't think this was all just another dream," she said.
He smiled slightly and nodded, then walked toward the bed as she entered the bathroom to change. When she came back into the room, Steve was in her bed, taking up almost the whole thing.
"We're gonna need a bigger bed," he chuckled and Maria was sure she'd never heard anything so beautiful.
She turned the light off and crawled in next to him. He took her into his arms and in less than a minute she fell into the deepest sleep of her life.
When Maria's eyes fluttered open, she could see from the shadows in her room that it was closer to noon than she'd ever slept before. And the space next to her in her bed was empty. Her chest tightened. It had seemed so real. She'd never had a dream like it before, not where she could hear his voice and feel his touch.
"Afternoon," a voice jerked Maria out of her wallowing and she looked to see Steve leaning against the doorframe.
"I'm sorry I wasn't in the bed, but I needed something to eat," he told her, then pushed off the door and walked toward her. "And then I just wanted to watch you sleep and the view was better over there."
Maria smiled, more at herself than him. She had found his voice so soothing even in the midst of battle, that it was no surprise it would be so here.
He sat down on the bed and took her hand in his, then he slowly pushed her sleeve up her left arm. As he revealed his own name he smiled a surprised but happy smile.
"When I woke and found my arm had no name, I wondered if I'd dreamed Peggy, I wondered if maybe I wasn't insane and I'd never even had a soul mate," he told her as he caressed her arm. "Then, not much later, I woke one morning and saw something there again. At first I thought it was coming back, the original name, but by the next day I could see the whole name."
He looked up at her.
"It's a beautiful name," he said.
She gazed at him and thought she certainly could forget about the world for a few days, but that thought brought her back to reality.
"I need to get to work," she said and hoped she conveyed how disappointed she was, for a change, at that.
"No," he shook his head.
She was about to argue with him when he continued.
"I called Fury, told him we needed a few days," Steve told her, then cocked an amused eyebrow at her. "He said it was about time."
Maria blushed.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I told him when SHIELD found you."
"That's OK," he assured her. "If it gets me a week alone with you to get to know you, it's fine with me."
"A week?" Maria was surprised.
"Actually, he said to call if we needed more," Steve told her. "Something about you having ten years' worth of unused vacation time."
The look he gave her was probably meant to be withering but his blue eyes had such a glint of humor to them she knew he was joking.
"I haven't had a reason to take one," she said.
"I understand that," he told her. "But now we both do."
"So, where to?" she asked.
"I don't know, how about some place we won't run into any aliens, rogue demi-gods, assassins, green monsters, or men in flying suits," he said with a grin.
Maria laughed.
"Alaska might be safe," she said. "Banner's been there before so it's not likely he'll be back soon. Besides, it's warm there in summer, you might like it."
"Warm is my best friend," he joked again, then leaned in to give her a slow, beautiful kiss.
November 2012
Six months later, Maria's father received a parcel with a return post requested. He signed the card for the postman and, when he opened the package, found a wedding photo. Embossed at the bottom was "Maria Christina & Steven Grant Rogers."
Fury had a good laugh when he received the delivery notification as he imagined the man's face when he saw the happy couple.
A/N: The next chapter of HIMYM is coming up. I just have this one transition point that is really killing me. Honestly, it's just so freaking hard to rewrite lost works. I can never get back to whatever place had me write it earlier. :/ Oh, well, such is life. I hope to have it up by Christmas, though, my kids are all home for the holidays and I'm doing a "ritual" cleansing of the house, so ... :D
Anyway, if I don't post again before Christmas, I hope you all have a wonderful holiday and thanks so much for reading my little stories. I hope they make you happy, well, after they rip your emotions to shreds and make you cry for days on end. ;)