Here's the next chapter.
Since I'm not totally sure when this is taking place, let's say that it's the second-to-last week of September right now.
I know nothing of Chicago. So all you Chicagoians, I apologize for butchering your city. :) I made up the street that Maria lives on. I made up her high school, too. And the drugstore. So don't go looking for those. And sorry for Garrett Hill's way of speech.
However, the JFK airport IS real. I was in it once coming back from Africa. It's nice. Maybe I was in a gate called 4A, but I doubt it.
Garrett Hill wasn't sure who the lady standing on his doorstep was.
"Father." she said.
"Who are you, lady? Come to arrest me? Did my useless prat of a daughter finally report me?" Garrett snarled. "Is this some kind of joke, officer?" The way she was standing told him she was someone of authority. "You callin' me father? Is that a poke at my age? Cause I'm about twice your age, and twice your size, too. You ain't takin' me in, missy. I'm stayin' right here. The government got no power over me."
The woman was silent.
"Are you mute, lady? I got no time to deal with useless lumps like you." Garrett snapped. "Either arrest me or leave right now, cause I'm a busy man." He wanted to get back to watching the news. She was interfering with his routine. And he wanted more beer.
"I've come for my things, father." she said finally. "And then I'll leave."
"What're you talkin' about? You got no stuff here. There's no one livin' here but me." And my girlfriend. He thought silently. But he didn't say that. "You fetchin' Maria's stuff now? She stayin' with pompous people like you now?"
"I'm getting my things." the lady repeated.
"I got that the first time, lady. There's no stuff for you to get. Burnt it. Ages ago." Garrett said, watching for a reaction from the seemingly emotionless woman that was standing in front of him. Something about her unsettled him. Maybe it was her hair, or her face. Madeline's face.
The eyes. It hit him like a train. Those were his daughter's eyes.
"You related to my girl?" he asked abruptly. "You know someone related to Madeline Jackson?"
"I'm your daughter." the woman said coldly.
"No. She went to the military. Didn't want her to, she was apposed to stay with me and help me with work." Garrett protested. "She ain't comin' back. She's innit forever, and good riddance. That girl was the death of my Madeline."
"I understood that the first hundred times you told me that."
"You're not Maria."
"Like it or not, father, I am."
Maria stepped into her old bedroom. There was no evidence that it had once been her bedroom. There were cans of green paint on the floor. Piles of junk were heaped in the corners. Old books, clothes. Empty beer bottles. Spilled wine. Dirty shoes. A woman's hat. A child's baseball hat.
"Here." Garrett said roughly, and shoved an old wooden box into Maria's chest. "Your things. Burned your clothes and your papers. All that's left in here's your stuffed elephant and a picture of your mother. Some junk, too."
Maria took it silently.
"Shouldn't have come back." Garrett told her. "Still wish you hadn't been born. Then I coulda lived with your mother happily without some brat of a child stinking up the house- you shoulda stayed in the army."
"That wasn't my choice to make." Maria said.
"Don't want you back here. Stay away from this house. You're not welcome here." Garrett snarled. "You've no right to come waltzing inta my life, you here? I have no daughter. Leave, and don't ever come back."
"Your mother would been so ashamed of you." Garrett shouted at Maria's retreating back. "Abandoning your poor man just when he needed you, and comin' back when he was finally healin' from you leavin' for the army! I'm surprised that you got a job, with a record like yours! Find a nice man to settle down with, huh? Or is congratulations in order? I bet it's a girl, just as useless as you were! I hope you die just like your mother! I hope it's deformed! I hope the daddy is horrible to it when you're gone!"
Maria slammed the screen door on her way out. Her blue eyes were moist.
Bucky stood awkwardly in the John F. Kennedy Airport. It was four o'clock: Maria's plane was landing now. Everyone else stared at the tall, slightly disturbing man that was staring a little too intently at the passengers as they came out of the tunnel.
Finally, someone with a brown ponytail emerged from the chute. Bucky started forward, but the woman went over to a man wearing a dark suit and they hugged. Bucky stepped back again, disappointed.
Then he saw someone with brunette hair cascading around her shoulders, and a sky blue backpack separate herself from the crowd and start toward Bucky. He closed the distance between them. After hesitating a brief second, Bucky hugged her.
"You alright?" he asked into her hair. Maria pulled away.
"Distract me." she said. Bucky pretended not to notice the moisture in her eyes. "Tell me something about your childhood. Anything." Bucky took her backpack from her and slung it on his shoulders. They walked out of the airport and Bucky located the car he had borrowed from Tony.
"What do you want to hear?" he asked her once they were settled in the front seats. Maria propped her head up on her hand and looked at him.
"Tell me about Christmas at your house." she said. Bucky thought for a couple seconds.
"I had three siblings. We lived in Brooklyn, but it wasn't as busy as it is now. We had a nice, normal house. My parents would hang stockings for me and my siblings. They were all decorated differently with our names in them. My mother cross-stitched them herself. Mine had reindeer on it. We'd get a tree two weeks before Christmas eve. We'd pick the biggest, fattest tree on the farm. We'd put it on top of our car and we'd drive home.
"Then we'd stuff it inside the house, trim the bottom if it was too tall. Then we'd get out all the decorations and we'd put them on. My favorite was a picture of Steve and me. Steve would come over, too, and mom made Steve a stocking.
"We'd go shopping for presents a week before. We'd split up in pairs, with Steve and his dad, too. Then we'd switch so we could get presents for our previous partner. We'd get home and we'd all have our own roll of paper to wrap it, and our own ribbon. We'd pick it out ourselves. We'd wrap them all at the same time, in our rooms so that no one would see. Then at the same time, we'd all put them under the tree. Then we'd try and guess what was in the packages."
Bucky looked over at Maria.
"That sounds amazing, Bucky." she said softly.
"What was Christmas like for you?"
"My father would go and get drunk all day and then he'd come home and lock me in my room." Maria said flatly. "Then he would shout through the door at how terrible I was for taking his wife away from him so they couldn't spend Christmas together. My uncle would send a present in the mail but my father always burned it in the fireplace."
Bucky was shocked. He couldn't imagine a Christmas without stockings, presents, a tree, and carols. Or family.
"I used to walk down the street and look in the windows and see everybody else's trees and presents and imagine that I lived there, too. I would go into town and look at all the displays in the window and pretend that my father had just been in there, getting a present for me." Maria said. "My classmates would always talk about how excited they were for Christmas. I just liked the holidays because other people were so happy and grateful. They really believed in the holiday. I would listen to the Christmas mass and wish that I could believe in something like that, too."
"Maria, I-"
"I've never gotten a Christmas present." Maria said wistfully. "Sometimes I wonder what it would be like, to have just one gift with my name on it, and be like everyone else. With a father who would come home and spin me around and a mother who would make Christmas cookies. Sometimes I wish that I wasn't a SHIELD agent, or a Marine, so I could just have the chance to be the one with the tree and the lights and the carols and all that happiness. But it's never happened. It's become my fantasy."
Bucky felt an overwhelming sense of pity for Maria Hill. And in that moment, he decided that when Christmas came, she would have her perfect Christmas.
I'm sorry for all you non-Christmas people. Hopefully you all tolerated that.
Some of Bucky's Christmas traditions are actually my family's. My mom cross-stitched all of our stockings. Mine's got an angel on it. We've been trying to convince her to do one for our dog, but she says she doesn't have the patience to make something like that for a dog who wouldn't appreciate it. :)