This was just great, just wonderful. Coulson was supposed to have checked the car. Dammit, she'd checked the car too, but here they were, in the middle of the frakken Scotland, where the nearest large town was hours away, in a broken down SUV. It was also cold and windy. It might have been raining, except that the sky hadn't fully committed to the act and was half-assing the icy drizzle that was mostly fog anyway.
Maria was in a pisser of a mood.
"Look, I said I was sorry." Coulson wasn't sorry, though. His smirk, even muted by the weather and hidden in shadows,shone through in the so-familiar voice. He was mostly amused, but he wouldn't be for long; there was a jamming field in the area. She scowled and waited for him to notice.
The soft curse brought a tight smirk to her lips, and she stepped outside of the broken car cautiously, avoiding bits of shredded tire almost daintily, and stopped next to him. "Yeah. So, do we investigate or walk out and call for back-up?"
"Well, you're here. I'm not sure how much more back-up I need." He drew his gun and checked it easily, noting with a feeling of pride that she was doing the same. He was training her well, he thought. She'd outrank him someday, and he was perfectly fine with that.
"Well, I sure as hell don't need any with you here, sir. Coulson." It was habit, and it was dying hard. Only one year out from Madripoor and she was still trying to lose the habits of being ten years a Marine. "There's a path over there," she motioned with her head and took up a flanking position on his left. "It's a bit too pat to be coincidence."
"Agreed. Let's stay off the coincidental path, then." He led her to the side, and they moved off into the nasty Scottish weather. There were woods here, thick and gnarled with age. Maria ran her mental map back trough her brain and decided this must be the last remnants of Birnam Forest. The wound their way through the woods until they saw a faint glow, or rather a collection of them, and realized there was a house out here in the middle of the woods.
"Is that a castle?" The sheer bulk of the dwelling would seem ot indicate one, but Coulson shook his head. "Tudor manor house, probably. Still pretty big, but no drafty stone corridors."
"No vampires either." She tried to sound disappointed, and was not reassured when he shook his head.
"Vampires could be anywhere, Hill. Remember that." She tried not to gape at his back, and kept her eyes on the trees that stretched threatening twigs and gnarled branches into their path to snag and tear at the unaware.
"Good thing we had Italian, then." His soft snort of suppressed laughter carried back to her and soother her nerves somewhat. She was used to deserts, and ruined buildings, not trees and rain that refused to live up to the name. Not mysterious castles that weren't and jamming fields i the middle of pristine medieval forests.
But this was Phil's world, and it was one he'd brought her in to be a part of and in which she could share. He'd believed in her when she didn't believe in herself, and she'd be damned before she'd let him down. So she followed as they circled the house, peeking into windows and noting the apparently harmless party going on inside.
"Thoughts, Hill?"
"Well… I don't know. The field has to be coming from around here, but they don't seem to have noticed. Unless they set it and so have no need to discover it. Um." She checked abruptly and pointed; just visible in the fog was a security camera. Coulson nodded understanding and they pulled back to the treeline.
"Good points, all. What would you recommend we do?" He was always doing this, giving her a problem to solve. She'd been an officer, she was used to tactics, but the set of tactics under Coulson were always changing.
"I'd go in. We can't go back; it's getting colder and we will freeze. We could break in or we could walk up and ask for sanctuary." She holstered her gun and snugged her jacket around it. "I vote for the more ballsy one."
Coulson glanced back at the shadow and lights drifting in the mist and nodded. "Ballsy it is then. Lead on, Macduff." He holstered his own weapon as he misquoted solemnly, and motioned her to walk ahead of him. They looked every bit the lost, bedraggled, and weary travelers they were pretending to be.
Normally, Coulson would at this point have taken his jacket off and draped it around the shoulders of the woman who was stubbornly refusing to acknowledge the chattering of her teeth as she walked beside him. But he had a gun in a shoulder holster, and they were about to crash a party in what his gut told him was hostile territory. The jacket would remain on.
It wasn't as if she'd have accepted it had he offered.