Sorry about the delay, started work experience and had no time to write.
This gets kinda fluffy, and a little weird and Cinderella is awesome, but not at all related.
Disclaimer: Natasha just rang. She wants her knives back. If I owned her, I'd own them, ergo, I own neither. Also, if I owned her, she wouldn't be calling me, as it's slightly illegal to own people.
One hour before the ball, Maria was drying her hair. Pepper and Betty had come down, and asked her to join them up in Pepper's suite to get ready. Well, Pepper did. Betty was hiding in order to surprise Bruce. Obviously, Maria had declined, favouring a few more hours of quiet solitude, over a few hours of girl-time and being teased about Steve. Her dress, the one she had bought previously, not the one from the store, was hanging on the wardrobe door. It was beautiful. A deep, dark blue, the same shade as the Captain's night gear. The back of the skirt had the S.H.I.E.L.D. eagle in dark red fanning out behind her. It had a white underskirt, and the hem was trimmed with hundreds of tiny white stars. Built into the bodice was a layer of bullet proof material, just in case. There was also a small knife sheath hidden on the underskirt, and another in the seam where the skirt and bodice joined. Maria finished drying her hair, before she strapped a gun holster onto her leg, and pulled on the dress.
Once she had finished various guns and knives throughout the dress, as well as a taser in the sole of one of her dark blue stiletto heels, she sat down at the dressing table, and carefully applied her make-up: dark red lipstick; blue, shimmery eye shadow; and, white nail polish with minuscule, red gems on her thumbnails, before twisting her dark hair into an elegant chignon at the base of her neck.
By the time she was finished, it was 19:50: time to go. She stood up, and walked towards the door, pausing momentarily to don her blue mask, with red trim and white stars. She caught sight of herself in the mirror just as she walked through the door, and smirked. Unrecognisable. Good.
CHCHCHCHCHCHCHCHCHCHCHCHCHCHCHCHCHCHCHCHChCHCHCHCHCHCHCHCHCHCHCHCHCHCHCHCHCHCHCHCHCHCHCHCHCHCHCHCHCHCHCH
Maria swept into the tower just as the clock struck eight. She had slipped out unnoticed. She overrode JARVIS so that he couldn't tell Tony who she was, and walked into the ballroom. The entire place was done up in Avengers themed decor, the array of colours creating a veritable rainbow, with the exception if one corner, which was done up in ice blue, styled like one of those pet-palaces you can get for cats.
She spotted all of the Avengers quickly: Bruce was dancing with Betty, his gaze never leaving her mask; Tony was twirling Pepper round on the dance floor, her dress matching his tie and the mark VII Iron Man helmet he wore specially; Natasha and Clint were dancing together, cutting efficiently and gracefully through the other dancers; Thor was absent, still up on Asgard; and, finally, Steve, who was standing on his own with a glass of champagne, looking out at the dancers. Then, as though sensing her eyes upon him, he looked up. Their eyes met, steel and water. His gaze was mesmerising. Maria found she could not look away even if she had wanted to, and indeed she did not. She was vaguely aware of his feet moving, but not until he had reached her, did she realise that he had moved over any distance.
"Ma'am, would you like this dance?" He asked, holding out his hand, eyes never leaving her own. She, painfully, broke her gaze away from his, and stared at his proffered hand, before gently laying her own upon it, and letting him lead her onto the floor to dance. He looked ever so dashing and debonair in a navy suit with a white shirt and red, white and blue american flag tie. The song was relatively slow, she noticed, as they swayed in time to the music. She knew he never learnt to dance, but he wasn't half bad.
When the song started to end, he began to twirl her around, before dipping so so low that, had her hair been down, it would have swept the floor. When he brought her back up, just before the music died out completely, he pulled her very close. She could see his eyes flitting between her eyes and her lips, and couldn't help but let her eyes do the same, then, he slid he arm around her back, and pulled her into him, lips meeting. They stayed like that for a moment, lips meeting, both applying pressure, but neither sure what to do beyond that. Maria had been waiting for this for days, but for Steve, she knew, he was kissing someone he had met minutes earlier, a veritable stranger, not Maria, and definitely not Agent Hill.
They broke apart as suddenly as they had come together. Maria was suddenly aware of the deathly quiet which had befallen the room, and, as she looked around, she noticed lots of people's stares, as well as people muttering. People seemed to be wondering who she was, completely oblivious to the fact that she was the Ice Princess herself. Her focus was brought back to Steve by a hand gently placed on her hand. He was looking at her intensely, as though he too was trying to work out who she was.
"Who are you?" His voice was inquisitive, but the words cut deep, deeper than she had thought. She had never wanted him to recognise her, only for her to be able to dance with him, be close to him, give herself over to her desires even for a moment, but it still hurt that he did not know who she was, though she was wearing an almost-full face mask, only revealing her lips and jaw, far more covering than his, which covered only his eyes. She pulled away from him then, gently pulling herself out of his arms. He tried to pull her back, but she only shook him off, walking from the room.
As soon as she was out of sight, she began to run, all the way back to her room, where she stripped off and quickly removed her make-up, yanking her hair down, before collapsing onto her bed, and giving herself over to blissful peace, forgetting completely about her plan to appear again, dressed in a different dress, to reveal herself and remove her name from the list of suspects.