Maria struggled to pry her heavy eyelids open; the bright halo of lights were assaulting her vision once she got them halfway parted. She groaned, lifting her sore arm so that she could attack the harsh glow, rubbing at her eyes with the palm of her hand as she tried to make it stop. It took her a moment to associate her mind with her physical self as she drew stock of her body and the aching that pulsated through the majority of it. In an incoherent panic – not comprehending what was happened to her – she pushed her elbows beside her and tried to force herself up into a sitting position, wincing out in pain from her throbbing shoulder and the tenderness of her forearms.
"Hey, hey, easy," Natasha's voice came as her friend took a hold of her upper arms, helping her to sit up, as Maria hung her legs over the surface that she'd just been laying on.
"Wha—" Maria blinked, trying to focus on her surroundings. She looked past the agent and instantly recognised one of the smaller rooms inside of the infirmary, that was on the second floor of the Avenger's Tower. Natasha was the only one in there with her; making her wonder if the medical staff were in another section of the floor. She then looked down to her body to see that she was in a hospital gown. She noted the scrapes that ran all the way up her arms, with a bandage at her shoulder, which triggered a memory of a nurse digging at her wound to remove a bullet. "What happened?" she croaked out with a vague recollection of being brought in by Tony in his Iron Man suit. She then gazing back at her friend who was still stabilising her in her grasp.
"The tower was breached, you over-road their controls which led to the termination of the shutdown in the Ready Room. We all got out, kicked some ass, but not before you jumped out of an exploding helicopter and landed in the drink," She explained to her; slowly removing her hands away from her. "You've been in and out of it for about an hour."
Maria shook her head as she tried to recall back to when she was piloting the aircraft; confused as to how she survived the fall. She knew from her military jump training that a straight drop into water from anything higher than 250 feet was fatal, and she was sure that her altitude was greater than that. "You told me to jump," Maria muttered as a memory came back. "You told me to jump... and then I survived an impossible fall?"
Natasha sighed heavily, closing her eyes as she spoke, "Hope used the air vents and got out of the Ready Room before the rest of us could," the woman then opened her eyes and fixed her gaze onto Maria's.
The dreadful look on Natasha's face brought back a chilling memory of Maria waking up in the water where she had dragged Hope's body out to the shoreline. "Where is she?" Maria hopped off of her bed, only to stumble into Natasha's arms.
"Maria, careful!" Natasha pushed her back to leane against the frame. "She's in the O.R."
She cried out in panicked confusion, "What?"
Natasha explained, "So, we're pretty sure she slowed your descent and then broke your fall." Maria had no words, she just shook her head in disbelief as Natasha continued. "She hit her head pretty hard. Jane's performing a decompressive craniectomy on her now." She referenced Jane Foster, the tower's on-call doctor.
"Speak English!" Maria spat in angered frustration, not understanding her medical jargon.
"Her brain is swelling, so she's removing a piece of her skull to elevate the pressure."
Maria's head started racing, not fully understanding the fatality of the situation. "Well, is that going to fix her? Will she be okay?"
"Jane doesn't know. She just said she wouldn't make it if she didn't get the procedure." Maria swallowed hard. "But that's not everything." Natasha bit at her lip while having that same grave expression as before.
"What do you mean?"
"Her spine. It's ah—" Natasha cocked her head to the side, like she didn't want to finish the sentence. "It's been completely severed."
"No." Maria shook her head, her eyes instantly welling up. It was too much, it was all too much. She pushed herself off of the bed frame, past Natasha, as she started clumsily pacing the floor, trying not to topple over due to her sudden vertigo. "No, no, no, we can fix this. Wakandan medicine. They fixed that C.I.A. Agent's spine. What's his name."
"Agent Ross."
"Yeah! So they can fix her's too."
"Princess Shuri is already on her way, but she did caution us that she's only ever fixed incomplete spinal injuries."
Maria stopped pacing as she looked to her friend, a tear escaping down her face. She had never felt so scared in her life.
Natasha crossed the floor to her and wrapped her into a hug. "Hey, just breathe." She stroked her head. "Shuri sounded determined. And that kid's literally the smartest person in the world, and she's going to be here and completely devoted to her injury, okay?"
"It won't do any good if the swelling doesn't go down."
"It will go down." Natasha pulled Maria away from her so that she could see her eye-to-eye. "Look, I've only met Hope this past week, but – just by that – I can tell you – with absolute certainty – she's a fighter." The woman smirked encouragingly. "She took down Cap in less than five seconds, she can beat this too."
Maria sniffled as she started to pull herself together, allowing Natasha's words to sink in. "Yeah." She nodded while wiping her teary eyes dry, yet in no ways was she remotely okay. She took a deep breath, reminding herself that she was in command and had to start acting as such.
She stepped away from her friend before asking, in a professional tone, "The intruders, were they A.I.M.?" She cycled through the most pertinent questions. "Did they access any information? Any casualties?"
Natasha must have noticed her shift in demeanour as she indulged her need to move on, answering accordingly, "Yes, we suspect A.I.M. Fury's got Coulson and May on the investigation. No casualties. We're still not sure if they got into our information or not. Tony thinks they only breached into the building's security and were hoping to access our servers directly after they'd taken the place."
Maria nodded, glad that the building breach may not end up being a full systems breach. Though, she started to wonder how this all could have come about in the first place.
"They got in because of that hiccup in the power grid the other day, didn't they?" Maria concluded.
"Possibly."
"This is my fault."
"Yours? Tony was the one who was tampering, not you."
"Yeah, but I should've been more thorough in checking the system afterwards. I'm in command, everything falls on me in the end." She looked in the direction of the operating room that lay on the other side of the wall, guilt-ridden by the fact that Hope was in there because of her failures as a leader.
Natasha didn't bother responding to her comment, Maria assumed that she probably recognising that she wasn't wrong.
Maria then looked around in search of something to wear. She noticed a fresh pile of her clothing, with a pair of boots, on the tray next to the bed. She knew that they would have been out there by Natasha; she was the only one who would've gone into her room for them.
She instantly grabbed her stuff and began getting dressed as Natasha wordlessly stepped in to help her with both her bra and t-shirt, as she was having trouble with them due to the sore bullet wound at her shoulder.
"Are you sure you're okay?" Natasha finally asked as Maria began putting her boots on.
Every muscle in Maria's body felt tight, the skin on her arms burned from all the cuts on them (courtesy of the rocky shore), and her head was pounding, but she didn't care to acknowledge them. They were nothing in comparison to what Hope was dealing with, and deep down she believed that she deserved her pain. "I'm fine," she huffed as she finished tying her shoelaces. "Just need to get up to Controls and see if we're screwed or not."
Maria got up and headed for the room's exit which led into the hallway that held the elevator, with Natasha on her heels. When they opened the door they were met with a frail looking Scott, sitting on a chair just outside of the operating room.
"You're awake," he said like he was overtaxed with anxiety while he stood in response to them.
Maria froze, not knowing what to say. He looked so worried and haggard. His hair was askew like he'd been nervously running his hands through it.
"I…" Maria trailed off as she turned her head, looking to the side, through the surgery room's window.
It appeared as if they had just finished the procedure as they were gently flipping Hope over onto her back while guiding her head onto a ring-shaped pillow, which kept her from laying on the suture at the back of her head. One of the nurses then gently lifted Hope's head while Jane removed the surgery cap from the unconscious woman, revealing her hair that was half up in a bun with the lower section in a small ponytail at the base of her neck, that had been tucked into her gown. Between her parted hair there was a section that had been shaven for the incision. Jane then placed a thick piece of gauze on the wound, where she proceeded to wrap a bandage around her head, not unlike a headband, to keep the dressing secure, before her head was softly placed back down.
Maria was shaking as she watched them. Then, suddenly, she was surprised by the gross sensation of vomit coming up past her throat, she had to quickly swallow it down.
"I have to go," she muttered through her hand over her mouth, heading straight for the stairwell. She was not capable of calling the elevator and having to wait for it. She had to get out of there, and right then.
She had climbed only two storeys before her sore body had had enough. She then called the elevator from the cafeteria floor to take her the rest of the way up. Forcing the image of Hope out of her mind.
Once she reached Controls, she saw a man from their cleanup crew, wheeling a mop and bucket full of bloodied red water while casually make his way past her to take her ride to another floor. She was left to the room, along with Clint, and Tony. Both men were hunched over various computer screens at the time.
"Update," she ordered, falling back into her soldier mode, which was the only thing keeping her together in that moment.
They both looked up to her as Clint was the one to smile. "Hey, glad to have you back."
She bowed her head in awkward acknowledgment, still too guilt ridden and shaken to take his words to heart. "The security breach?" She pressed on.
"Right." He rubbed at his neck. "Tony's stripping down logs looking for anomalies access of secure data."
Tony already had his head back into the computer as he spoke up. "You're gonna have'ta be the one to check these. You know better than any of us of who is accessing what and at which times. I don't even know what most of these encrypted files are." He then cleared his throat, as he refused to look her in the eye. "So yeah, if something looks suspicious, let me know." He had guilt written all over his face like he too was internalising the responsibility for what happened.
He stepped away from the computer that he was at, gesturing for her to sit down and do her thing.
She walked over and took a seat as he fumbled out a quick explanation of exactly what she had to do before muttering something about checking the servers, as he then left.
Clint walked up to her as he placed a tablet next to her. "The Royal Talon's flight plan. It should be here in about nine hours." A map with an indicator marker over central Africa was presented to her.
"Okay," Maria said dryly, wishing that the Wakandans could somehow get there even quicker. She wasn't familiar with spinal injuries, but she'd assumed that the sooner the princess could get to it, the better.
"Hell of a speed that ship can go," he said as if he were attempting to get a little more out of her.
"Yeah," she responded with the same hollow tone as she started navigating the computer's logs.
"Maria," he softly said.
She sighed in annoyance. "Yes, Barton?"
"Thank you. We'd all be a pile of ash right now if it wasn't for you."
She had no words of reply, so she decided to act like he hadn't just said what he had. "I'm assuming our situation made the news"
"Yes."
"Are you dealing with it?"
"I will now." He'd picked up on her subtle order. "Tell the truth, keep it vague?"
"Extremely vague. We were attacked. We dealt with it. That's it."
"Understood." He then walked out of Controls to do as he was instructed.
Once Maria had the room she sighed, taking a moment before she delved into her assignment, almost happy when she realised what exactly she was in for. She had easily a full day's work ahead of her, looking through old logs, while still needing to monitor current ongoing activity, which she hoped would keep her mind busy and off of their fallen Avenger.
About an hour into her work, with nothing suspicious yet found, Maria heard the elevator ping. She turned to see Dr. Foster walking onto the floor.
"You thought you could escape my infirmary without me hunting you down?" She smirked while approaching Maria with her medical bag in hand. "Here, catch." Jane threw a roll of surgical tape at her where Maria was quick to snatch it out of the air. "Good, your reflexes seem fine. Usually a decent indicator that your head's doing alright." She reached the desk that the agent was working at and leaned up against it with her hip, putting her bag down on the table.
Maria managed a genuine smile towards the woman as she handed the tape back to her. "Hey, Jane." She found it comforting in seeing a friendly face that belonged to somebody in whom she wasn't in direct command over. She didn't feel that same urgency to keep up her tough act as much in front of the doctor.
The woman smiled back at her as she turned to her bag and opened it, placing her tape inside of it while grabbing her penlight out. Soon she was flashing it into Maria's eyes, checking her pupil dilation. She then flicked off her tool and held it upright. "Follow it with your eyes." The doctor moved the pen side to side while Maria tracked it. "Good." She then put the mini torch into her lab coat pocket and asked, "How's your head?"
"Painful."
"And your shoulder?"
"Also painful."
She smirked. "Anything else?"
"Yes, everything else is painful."
"As long as nothing's excruciating, like broken bones, pain is a good thing. It usually means things are working correctly." She pulled a bubble pack of pills out of her bag. "I'd be concerned if you weren't feeling pain after falling out of a helicopter." She handed the medication to her. "Take one of these every four to six hours. Do not double up on them."
Maria took them slowly out of her hand as her thoughts fell back to Hope. "How's your other patient doing?" she asked in hesitation, scared of the answer.
"Hard to say." She sighed. "The surgery definitely helped with the pressure, but her swelling seems to be unchanging." Jane shook her head. "She's not out of the woods yet." Maria slowly nodded. "But I'm doing my damnedest to make sure you don't lose your newest recruit. She seems like a keeper." She smirked at her. "She's like the rest of you dumbasses who are always ready to sacrifice yourselves for others." Her face then turned a little more sincere, yet she still bore a smile. "Like a true hero."
"She is a hero."
"Yeah, and so are you." Jane locked eyes with her before she turned to her bag and grabbed out a few small satchels. "Now, I'm assuming you have yet to shower after your swim in the harbour."
"Is this you telling me that I smell like fish?"
"No, this is me telling you to take a break from whatever important thing you're doing here, and wash our garbage New York City waters off of you, so you don't get some weird parasite." She lifted up the packets. "These bandages are waterproof, so take off the one that's on your shoulder and replace it with one of these before you shower." She put the items down next to her. "Then afterwards" – she fumbled inside her satchel again, pulling out similar looking packets, but of a different colour – "put one of these on. These ones breathe" – she shook the packets in hand – "the others don't."
"Okay"
"Okay," Jane repeated her, putting the bandages next to the others. "I'm going back down to the infirmary." She started off towards the exit. "Make sure to take care of yourself," she warned her.
"I will," Maria responded half-heartedly.
"I don't believe that for a second," she called over her shoulder while pressing the button for the elevator, as it opened almost instantly for her. She then piled in as she turned to joke. "You don't want me tranqing you so I can give you a sponge bath, do you?" She smiled as the doors shut, leaving Maria alone and to herself.
Maria didn't hurry for that break. Instead, she poured over the logs for hours, only stopping when she had to direct one of her personnel, or when Agent Melinda May had called to update her on their progress.
Finally, by the evening, she had minimised her windows on the computer and left Controls, intending to make her way down to her room to take a quick shower, needing some time to rest her brain.
When she got into the elevator, she pressed the button for the apartment level. However, when the doors had opened for her to get out, she froze – gazing down the hallway. After a moment the doors shut before her blank, disassociated stare. She sighed while closing her eyes, giving up while pressing the button for the infirmary.
When she arrived on the floor, she cautiously walked out into the hall while scouting to see who was around. There was no one in sight as she started meandering through the passageway. She then looked through the narrow window on the door of the larger patient room which she'd suspected Hope would be in.
She was right, she could see her, with Jane checking her vitals, and Scott asleep at the end of her bed in a chair by her feet. Jane looked up, noticing her after she finished writing something in her chart. She put her clipboard down before she slipped out of the room.
"Hey," Jane greeted her.
"Hey," she repeated, looking back through the window. "Any changes?" She gestured with her head to Hope.
Jane turned around to face the window too. "Not really." Maria sighed. "You can go in to see her if you like."
Maria shook her head. "No, it's okay." She scrambled for an excuse. "I don't want to disturb Scott."
"Well, I wouldn't worry too much about that. Poor guy was so stressed, I offered him a Lorazepam and it kinda just knocked him out." She then shrugged. "Which probably isn't a bad thing. Now he'll get a little rest before Hope's parents get here." Jane then focused on Maria. "In all my years of working in a hospital, I've noticed that parents always seem to be the most stressful element, especially on the patients' partners."
Maria started biting at the inside of her lip in agitation. The fact that Hope's condition was so grave that her parents had been called, hit her like a ton of bricks.
"Anyway, I should get back to prepping the lab. I've gotten some requests from Princess Shuri already for what she'll be needing when she gets here." Jane lightly patted Maria's back as she walked away down the hall to the door at the end, disappearing inside.
After a moment of hesitation, Maria took a deep breath, deciding to go in. She turned the knob and quietly entered the room as she ever so slowly made her way towards the unconscious woman.
Hope still had a bandage wrapped around her head, but this time her hair was down, nicely sprawled out on the bed like a halo you'd see in a renaissance painting. She also had a nasal cannula, for oxygen, at her nose, and an intravenous in her arm. Though, while Hope's beauty remained unmatched, even in her current state, the tragedy lay in the sight of her pale, colourless face. Without her blushing cheeks and her naturally pink lips, she had looked lifeless which brought an unimaginable pain to Maria's heart.
Maria stilled her body at the side of her bed. Her instincts were to reach out and touch her, but she was too scared to do so. She feared that she didn't have Hope's permission to take her hand or kiss her cheek, both things that she longed to do. Instead, she rested her hands on the mattress beside her as her gaze remained fixed on Hope's face.
"You stupid, salty bitch," Maria muttered under her breath. "Why did you do this?" She closed her eyes, taking in a deep breath, trying to keep herself together. She then opened them, looking back to her in anger, an anger that Hope was laying there instead of her. "I swear if you don't wake up, I'll roll your ass all the way back to San Francisco and into your lab, and then I'll blow it up for real this time..." her words trailed off as she sniffled and rubbed at her eyes that were trying to shed a tear. She then reached out towards her face, only to pull away as she was about to brush against her skin, again, not wanting to cross a boundary. It was pure agony that she couldn't run her thumb across her cheek, or comb her fingers through her hair. She so wished to just touch her skin. Instead, she clasped her hands together and brought them to her mouth. She pushed the knuckle of her thumb into her pursed lips as she imagined kissing Hope's cheek. Then, she slowly started to back away from her; finally, taking one last look, she turned and left.
She went straight up to her room where she wasted no time in stripping off her clothes in her bathroom, finally seeing a full view of her injured body. She had a gash across her forehead by her temple, her arms were black and purple with her scrapes already starting to scab over. Then from her mid-thighs to her knees she was also covered with bruises. She imagined that they were from Hope's suit when they'd crashed into the water together.
She changed her bandage before she slowly stepped into her upright shower, turning on the hot water as it trickled down her sore body, wishing that it could just wash the entire day away.
She hadn't lasted long in the steaming water before she finally broke, sliding down the cool glass pane. She landed on the tile floor, tears running down her face as she wept into her hands as the water pounding at the back of her head.
The image of Hope on that hospital bed was etched into her brain. She'd witnessed both friends and colleagues fall in combat before, it had always been painful, but this was a new level of agony that she'd never known. She would've sold her soul to the devil himself if it meant that Hope would be alright. Unfortunately, that wasn't an option, so she simply remained crying on the shower floor for a little bit longer.