She was standing with her back to the door, arms crossed, facing the bed with its still form. Steve stepped up behind her softly, his eyes studying the sleeping director briefly before turning back to Maria. Fury looked pretty decent from here. It was strange, of course, to see him without his eye patch, and the idea of Nick Fury unconscious in a hospital bed was rather ludicrous anyway, but for being just out of surgery, he looked pretty decent. Maria looked physically just fine, but her body language suggested otherwise to Steve.
"You look cold, ma'am," he murmured. She didn't turn.
"I'm fine, Captain." She called him that all the time. She hadn't called him anything else before he'd started seeing her outside of SHIELD, and she never called him anything else while on the clock. Off the clock he was Steve – or Cap, if she felt like it. Now, though, she just sounded numb, and he wasn't comfortable with that. He was used to her voice remaining calm, steady, unaffected no matter the emergency, but he was used to it keeping that tone of command, that tone that said she was on top of things, knew what was happening, expected to be obeyed and expected her orders to be effective. He didn't like this numb voice, as if she'd lost capacity to think beyond the unconscious man in front of her. He shrugged his leather jacket off and settled it around her shoulders. He felt her stiffen at the touch, felt her muscles tense as his hands lingered against her upper arms.
"You're freezing." He stepped a little closer, sliding his arms around her from behind and holding her against his chest. She was rigid, eyes still focused on Fury's prone form, as if she didn't even notice Steve's presence. He let the silence continue for a while.
It hadn't been something announced to the entire personnel of SHIELD – the mass chaos that would've resulted from that kind of announcement would have been disastrous. Telling every agent with an insignia on his jacket that the indefatigable Director Fury was temporarily incapacitated was not an intelligent option. But a few key people had needed to know. People like Steve Rogers, tacit leader of the elite Avengers team, who answered only to Fury himself. He'd been one of the few to be informed that Fury had escaped death by a fraction of an inch, by bare moments – by clever driving on the part of his second-in-command. A second-in-command who had escaped with only cuts and bruises and at the moment looked in no emotional state to run the organization while the director was unconscious.
"He's going to be alright, you know," Steve said at last.
"I was driving." Her voice was low, almost a whisper. His arms tightened around her and he let his head drop forward so he could rest his cheek against the top of her head. Her silky hair was falling down. That in and of itself was out of character for her. Agent Maria Hill was one of those people who always seemed in order. Uniform pressed and tidy, hair in place, desk orderly… Now she looked like she'd walked out of a strong wind and hadn't bothered to sort herself back out. And she looked like she didn't even notice, which was possibly more worrying than the fact that she was out of order to begin with.
"It wasn't your fault." He didn't know what she was getting at, but guilt seemed to be the obvious. He knew it well enough himself; they all did. Things went wrong, people got hurt, and you had to fight off the guilt, somehow persuade yourself to get past it so it couldn't eat you up, consume you, leave you helpless and useless. It wasn't something that went away, guilt, but you had to get past it.
"He told me to go back. Said we couldn't make it through. Had to go back and reroute." She swallowed. "But I was driving. There were… hundreds of them behind us… charges counting down…" It was supposed to have been a diplomatic job. Something to let them get a look inside Hartford Enterprises' laboratories, something to get them an inside look at the security and the actual experiments going on behind those steel doors. Fury had wanted to simply shut them down, but the council had said no. Don't be hasty. Not enough proof. Cause for investigation, yes, but not enough cause for any outright moves against the company. Too munch risk to the agents. Too much risk to the civilians. Steve thought Fury probably would've silently told the council to go to hell and sent the Avengers in anyway if it weren't for the fact that they knew so little about Hartford's security. Fury might be something of a loose cannon but he wasn't stupid and he didn't risk his agents unnecessarily. Without sufficient cause, he wouldn't send in even a team as effective as Rogers' unless they had a better idea what kind of security they were in against.
Which had turned out to be a good thing. Hartford Enterprises was militarized beyond what they could have anticipated. The diplomatic mission had gone entirely wrong. It wasn't supposed to turn into a battle. Wasn't supposed to end up with an emergency deployment and a full infirmary. Wasn't supposed to end up with the director of SHIELD unconscious in a hospital bed. He rubbed her arms gently.
"You didn't know it was coming; you had to make a decision." She didn't move. He shifted a little, turned her to face him. She let him, but kept her eyes directly forward, facing into his chest. He took one arm from around her so he could tip her chin up, trying to get her eyes to meet his. She kept them away, though, looking past him. "You got out, Maria. You got both of you out; it's gonna be okay."
"I let this happen."
"No." Her eyes finally slid back to meet his. He hated the desperation in them. "No, you didn't. You kept him alive, Maria." He'd never seen her looking this uncertain before. She was good at her job. She didn't second-guess herself. She was the one who didn't take holidays, didn't take days off. She was the agent who could be found at any time either behind her desk finishing reports or on the bridge running things, making sure if anything went wrong there were contingency plans put into operation immediately, making sure every move was smooth, well planned, strategically well executed. He'd pulled her away from her work after midnight more times than he could count, forced her to take a break to sleep, reminded her she couldn't do her job if she was dying of sleep deprivation. "I'd rather lose a little sleep than lose a man," she'd told him once. He'd never seen her uncertain. Grim, yes; horrified, yes; desperate, yes; but never uncertain, never doubting herself. She's traumatized, Steve, he reminded himself, running his fingers gently through her hair and trying to figure out just what to say to a ranking officer who looked on the edge of a breakdown. He would've been traumatized too if he'd been on a diplomatic mission that had turned into an all-out battle ending in a rout by an army of scientifically engineered mutants.
"When agents disregard orders people die, Steve," she whispered. It was an interesting comparison, really, her and Fury. Fury tended to do exactly what he wanted. He had excellent judgment but he worked on his own motivation, did what he thought was best no matter the council's opinion or his officers' recommendations, and he didn't share his reasoning or goals. Maria knew how things worked, understood Fury for the most part, and got things done. She followed orders, factored procedure and protocol into the moves she made. She was the responsible one. He pulled her closer and her dark eyes slid shut. She dropped her head against his chest, hiding the painfully weary expression that lined the corners of her mouth and eyes.
"Orders can be wrong," he reminded her. "Fury didn't put you in that position because you take orders – he put you there because you've got brilliant instincts and you don't back down. He doesn't need more agents that follow orders. He needs you – someone who can see what needs to happen and do it without hesitating." He felt some of the tension beginning to seep out of her shoulders as his fingers slid through her dark hair, wreaking havoc on the remaining pins.
"About damn time." Fury's voice was weak, raspy, but still distinct and recognizable. There was still the unmistakable tone of almost arrogant command. Steve found it vaguely reassuring. Maria seemed to have other feelings at the sound; her entire body went rigid again in a fraction of a second and she'd leapt away from him and snapped to attention before Steve had time to stop her. Fury looks exhausted and frail still, but his one eye was open and looked alert, and something that might've been the beginning of a smile contrasted with the usual severe set of his face. "Relax, Hill. You thought I didn't see you two?" He had to pause to breathe hard for a moment, as if even speaking took immense effort. "Been waiting for that for months." Steve couldn't help the grin that spread across his face.
"Good to see you awake, sir." He reached out again, caught Maria around the waist and pulled her back up against his side. Fury's head moved in the beginning of a nod, and his eye closed again, breathing deepening and slowing. The monitors' steady beeping continued as Maria's arms slowly slid around Steve.
"Hill –" Fury's voice was just loud enough to hear, eye still closed. "Thanks. For ignoring orders." Steve felt her head move n a curt nod against his chest. He turned, still holding onto her, and led her toward the door.