Notes:
Hey, y'all, I changed my name. I'm just trying on different names for no reason except I'm changing my real one.
Anyway, I apologize that this story has absolutely nothing to do any of my story arcs. A prompt come across my Facebook, "When your protagonist dies, a mysterious person leaves flowers on the grave. Who leaves them?" and my brain exploded. :D
So this story takes place in the far future where, due to Chris Evans' contract, I assume the MCU writers will have killed Captain America. Ugh, I can hardly stand to think of it.
November 2020
It wasn't the first time Natasha had visited, and it wasn't the first time there were flowers. There were always flowers. It was really no surprise. The world loved Captain America. His death over two years ago had been a blow to everyone.
Many of the flowers were delivered, more were brought by hand. Usually, they were all the store-bought variety. Some, though, did seem to bring their own picked flowers. Usually those were brought by children.
But the daffodils were significant. Not for their meaning, in a Victorian context, but for their constant presence. Hand cut bunches of daffodils, every time she visited.
It was November, now. Yet, there in the ice and snow, rested fresh, hand-cut daffodils. Natasha's curiosity finally had to be satisfied.
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"Who brings the daffodils?" She smiled at the guard she'd been flirting with at the front entrance kiosk.
"Have no idea." He shrugged and his smile let her know he didn't believe her come on had anything to do with him.
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"There are always fresh cut daffodils," she told Sharon.
"Really?" Sharon commented in an uninterested way. "Is that significant?"
"I was just wondering who brought them," Natasha said.
"Hmm," and a slight shake of her head, was Sharon's only reply as her number was called and she left Natasha behind for the firing range.
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"Daffodils?" Pepper asked. "I wonder what they mean."
"They symbolize rebirth and new beginnings," Natasha said.
Pepper looked at her.
"I read it on Wikipedia," Natasha told her.
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The guys were equally useless and even less interested.
"So," Clint said, growing annoyed. "Someone cared enough for Cap that he or she brings him flowers."
"Aren't you curious?" she asked.
"What does it matter now?"
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Having found no help there, Natasha decided to stake out the grave site. She spent a week sitting all day in the late December snow and cold. No one came. One morning, when she arrived as the gates opened, she discovered the fresh daffodils had been placed overnight.
"I'm not going to help you stake out a grave," Tony said. "Especially not at night."
"Loan me one of your suits, then," Natasha said.
Tony gave her a look that definitely said no.
"I can't believe you don't want to know," Natasha admonished.
"Someone obviously wants to remain anonymous," Tony said. "I guess I can just understand that these days."
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Natasha all but gave up at that point. She decided to give it a rest, at least until the weather was warmer. No use catching pneumonia to satisfy this itch.
In March, Pepper called her in tears. There had been a robbery at a store on Long Island. Maria had been there and tried to stop the men who were threatening the manager. They'd taken Maria instead. Her body had been found in the stolen getaway car a few blocks away.
Natasha was almost as stunned as she'd been when Cap had died.
The next 48 hours were a blur as she and Tony and Bucky, the only current and former Avengers who had been in the area at the time hunted down the men who had killed Maria. It hadn't been pleasant, at least not for the killers.
Pepper called a few days later with details for the funeral. As Natasha hung up the phone, there was a knock at her door. She opened it to find Phil Coulson and gave him a sad smile.
"Sorry to see you under such sad circumstances," Phil said as Natasha invited him in.
They sat down for a drink and talked a while, mostly about the old days, and shared memories of Maria. As Phil excused himself to leave, he pulled an envelope from his jacket.
"Maria wanted you to have this," he said.
Natasha was surprised.
"What is it?" she asked.
Phil only shrugged.
"I only know that she brought it to me in December," he explained. "Said if anything happened to her she wanted you to have it."
Natasha nodded and said her goodbyes. She returned to the table and opened the envelope wondering what Maria would leave her that she'd had no knowledge of beforehand. Inside was a key and a paper with a Long Island address on it. A quiet gasp escaped her lips. The address wasn't far from where Maria had been killed.
She immediately drove to what turned out to be a small house in a suburban neighborhood. She parked her car at the curb and gazed at the little blue house with white trim, and even a white picket fence around the front yard. Natasha opened the gate and walked up the short path to the house. She slipped the key into the lock. It turned and she opened the door.
Inside, the house was as typical middle-class suburban as the outside. The furniture was comfortable and used. It looked nothing like Maria's Manhattan apartment.
There was a coat rack by the door with both women's and men's coats, though the men's coats didn't appear as worn as the women's. Natasha lifted one off the hook that she recognized immediately as Maria's. On the hook below,, Natasha saw a brown leather jacket that looked vaguely familiar. She shook the image of Steve Rogers placing a similar jacket on Maria's shoulders one night at Stark's from her mind, then replaced the jacket and stepped into the living room.
Nothing much surprised Natasha, first Alien invasion aside, but what she found in this room caused her eyes to open wide and her jaw to drop slightly.
On the mantle over the fire place were half a dozen framed photos, all with one couple in them, Maria and Steve. She picked one up, it had been taken in Paris, in front of the Eiffel tower. The most surprising part, after the fact that they were of Steve and Maria together, was that they were both smiling. Natasha was certain she could count on one hand the times combined she'd seen both of them truly smile. But in every one of these photos they looked incredibly happy.
She picked up another, of the two of them gazing into each other's eyes, and that alone would have been enough to shock Natasha, a formal rose garden in the background. Turning the frame over, Natasha slid open the back. Sure enough she found Steve's writing on the back, just as people had done in the old days.
"Honeymoon, May 2013, Descanso Gardens, Los Angeles, CA"
Natasha stared at the words as if by re-reading them it would help her accept the reality.
Finally, she shook off her odd feelings and restored the photograph to its place.
She walked to the back of the house and into the bedroom.
On the bureau she found a box frame containing a marriage certificate for Maria Christina Hill and Stephen Grant Rogers dated May 4, 2013. In a jewelry box next to the frame, Natasha found a ring set consisting of a man's and a woman's wedding ring and an engagement ring.
She took a deep breath as she looked into the closet which had Maria's clothing on one side, and Steve's on the other. Natasha realized that the two must have lived here and Maria possibly hadn't changed anything since Steve had died three years ago.
She left the room and walked into the bathroom where she wasn't surprised to find two toothbrushes and two robes. Then into the kitchen. She smiled at the matching name mugs she saw on the counter. This entire place was so far from what she'd ever expected of Maria.
She shook her head as she started to relax and tried to imagine how this all came to be. There was a door in the back of the kitchen. And, truly, Natasha wasn't surprised when she opened and the humidity from the sun room hit her. The room was filled with plant shelves, each with several pots of daffodils in pots.
The next day, Natasha was not as surprised as their friends to find that Maria was to be interred next to Steve. In fact, only one other person was as unsurprised as she.
"You knew," Natasha said to Tony.
He only nodded, his face grim.
"How long?" she asked.
"Did I know?" he asked to clarify.
She nodded.
"Since around the time Cap died," Tony admitted.
"I never caught it," Natasha said.
"She never thought you would," Tony said. "Her name never crossed your mind when you were trying to fix Steve up all those years ago."
"I never would have pictured Maria with Steve," she admitted. "They just seem so different."
"Like Pepper and me," Tony said.
Natasha looked up at him.
"We're good for each other," Tony said. "They were good for each other."
Natasha nodded. From what she'd seen at the house, it was obvious Maria loved Steve deeply and equally obvious that he had been very happy with her.
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It took only moments for Natasha's eyes to adjust to the darkened bar and less time to find her quarry.
"Barnes," Natasha said.
She sat down in the chair across from him, uninvited.
Bucky only stared at her. His haggard appearance certainly a reflection of his inner turmoil.
"Where were you?" Natasha asked.
"I couldn't go back," he said. "I couldn't stand to see his grave."
"So you went to his funeral out of respect?" She quirked an eyebrow.
"You know why I went," Bucky said, a smirk forming on his face.
"Do I?" she asked, nonchalantly, though she was fairly certain he was right.
"You do now, or else you wouldn't be here looking for answers."
He swallowed down the last of his beer and waved over for another.
"You went for her?" Natasha asked.
"Steve wouldn't have wanted Maria to be alone that day," he replied, his voice tight and strained.
"So you've known?"
The waitress interrupted with another beer for Bucky and asked Natasha if she'd like something. Natasha ordered a beer as well and Bucky finally answered her as the waitress walked away.
"Not always," he said.
They were quiet a moment. Then the waitress returned with Natasha's drink and she and Barnes briefly toasted their lost friends.
"I don't have the answers you want," Bucky told her. "All I know is they were married in 2013."
"They never told you anything?" Natasha found that hard to believe.
Bucky shook his head.
"They were extremely private about their relationship," he explained. "About everything in their relationship."
"How did you know they were married?" she asked.
"Right place at the right time," he said.
Natasha waited a moment before Bucky breathed out the one word explanation.
"Morocco."
She nodded in understanding.
"I knew there was someone and that it was serious," he said. "But I never suspected it was her."
"I never knew there was anyone," Natasha admitted.
Bucky chuckled.
"And there you were trying to set him up with girls from accounting." Bucky's tone and look were teasing and Natasha allowed herself a small smile.
"I figured that was the kind of girl he wanted." She felt the need to explain.
"Yeah, I always thought that way, too," he said.
Natasha cocked an eyebrow to ask for an explanation.
"When we were kids I always pictured him with some nice little girl, real motherly type."
Bucky shook his head and swallowed down the rest of his beer.
"I was pretty shocked when I got to know Peggy Carter," he admitted. "Definitely not the type of dame I thought Steve would go for.
"When I figured out his girl was Maria, things started to make more sense."
"How'd you know there was someone?" Natasha asked as she waved to the waitress for another round.
"He was never at that apartment in Brooklyn. I'd stop by and I'd never find him home, even when he'd just said he was going home. I asked around like I was a detective or something and no one in the building could remember seeing anyone there, only a cleaning lady once a week.
"Anyway, I was with him when the call came through from Stark after Maria went missing in Morocco, when we thought she was dead. He just dropped into a chair. It was...I'd never seen him like that. It was despair and I'd never known Steve to despair."
He finished and took a long drink.
Natasha nodded, but she didn't tell Bucky she knew the look on Steve, that she'd seen it on his face after they saw Bucky on that DC street all those years ago.
They sat in silence until Natasha decided she'd had enough to drink and called for a cab.
Bucky waited on the curb with her.
"She knew you were asking around about the daffodils," he said.
Natasha heard the words with a twinge of guilt. She'd never asked Maria.
"Is that why she left me the key?" Natasha asked.
Bucky shrugged.
"She had a twisted sense of humor," he grinned as the cab pulled up.
"What do you mean?" Natasha asked and Barned opened the cab door for her to enter.
"Well, now you know the "who," but you'll never know the "why" and the "how,"" he laughed as Natasha sat down in the cab and he shut the door behind her.
She groaned and leaned her head back on the seat as the cab drove off leaving an amused Bucky Barnes behind.
Two days later, Natasha stood in the cemetery, two bunches of daffodils in her hands. She knelt down and lay one each on each headstone. Then she smiled a wry smile.
"Maria Hill," Natasha said to the newest headstone. "For a quiet woman, you certainly know how to get in the last word."
A/N:
Did you catch the brown leather jacket reference? Yeah. I just couldn't resist.
And, yes, I have an entire head cannon for this story...but I doubt it will be written and edited any time soon. I barely have time to concentrate on my current stories. Full-time single-momming is serious work.