This is the fourth, and final, of the options as sequels to Her Dirty Little Secret. It's the only true 'happy ending' fic out of all of them. That said, it's not without angst along the way ;)
Fury's Inside Man
A HYDRA facility, New York
"Are you ready to comply?"
A pause. "Yes, sir. I am happy to comply," Crossbones replied. Bakshi leaned in and pressed a photograph into his hands.
"We need to capture this woman. She has too much information locked in her head, we need to get her under control so we can find out what Fury was doing."
Crossbones looked down at the photograph. Blue eyes stared back at him from a pale face. "Who is she, sir?"
"Her name is Maria Hill. She works at Avengers Tower and she likes to run in Central Park in the early mornings…"
Bakshi watched the reprogrammed soldier carefully. They never called him Rumlow, just Crossbones. Didn't want to accidentally trigger memories of his former life. The man had been incredibly hard to break, and was one of very few that occasionally regressed. The new brainwashing techniques Daniel Whitehall had created were far more effective than the old ones used on the Winter Soldier, but there was still a flaw.
Crossbones' eyelids began to flicker. "Maria," he said in a low, husky whisper. "My Maria…" He didn't see the syringe Bakshi had ready. Only felt a brief pinprick at the back of his neck.
"I believe you were correct, sir," Bakshi told Whitehall. "Rumlow did have an emotional connection to Commander Hill, over and above the physical affair he admitted to."
"Hmm." The former Nazi adjusted his glasses, considering the man hanging limply in the frame in front of the brainwashing machine. "Crossbones is too useful an asset to give up on because of these lapses of his. I'm inclined to pursue the course you suggested. Even though Hill is no longer S.H.I.E.L.D. she does have a lot of useful information stored in her head, no doubt." Whitehall frowned. "It's hard to believe that something as foolish as love can break down brainwashing."
"It is the only explanation, sir. The only subjects who've been able to break the conditioning had strong pre-existing emotional attachments."
"Very well. We'll give Crossbones what he wants. See to it, Sunil."
"Yes, sir."
Central Park
"Maria, get down!" it was Steve's yell, and she'd been working with the Avengers long enough to know that when Captain America told you to get down, you better hit the floor. She threw herself face first at the ground in mid-stride, using her hands to shield her face from the pavement, felt rather than saw something whiz past over her head, heard a loud metal clang. Surely Steve wasn't out running with his shield – oh. It was a manhole cover, and it was now stuck in the driver's side door of a large black van that had pulled up at the side of the path.
Maria scrabbled for the gun holstered at the small of her back – she quite liked being alive, thanks very much, and anyone running in Central Park around dawn should definitely be armed – and rolled to her side once she had it out, steadying her arm and looking for a target. Steve went past her in a blur of grey sweatpants and T-shirt, hitting the van and flipping it up on its side. She almost grinned. That man.
A shadow loomed between her and Steve and she levelled the gun. "Put your hands on your head. I'm nervous and I get trigger-happy when I'm nervous. Failing that, Captain America is behind you and he doesn't like it when people interrupt his run."
"Maria?" a husky voice whispered uncertainly.
Her finger tightened on the trigger. She knew that voice.
A rushing roar signalled Iron Man's arrival, and Tony was suddenly clanging to the path between her and the large shadow.
"Big fucking mistake, bub," Tony's mechanically altered voice said. "Maria's one of ours." His gauntlet came up, a panel sliding open. "Say bye bye."
"Tony, wait," Maria said, scrambling to her feet. "Wait."
"They were here for you, Maria!" Steve had finished with the van. Two unconscious figures lay beside it. He strode forward, holding something up. "They had your photo."
That was… pretty shocking. Maria sucked in a gulp of breath and looked at the dark figure standing motionless under the trees. She pointed. "I think you'll want him alive, though. I think that's Rumlow."
Steve's lips peeled back in a snarl as he started forward.
"Who the fuck is Rumlow?" the man in the black and gold skinsuit said. In Brock Rumlow's voice, a distinctly puzzled undertone to it.
Steve hesitated. Who the hell is Bucky? reverberated in his mind, in just that confused tone.
Tony cocked his head as JARVIS threw information onto his heads-up display. A vocal analysis completed. "It is Rumlow," he said.
"I'm not…"
Steve punched him in the head. Because even if he was as lost and confused as Bucky had been – and his voice sure sounded like it, Steve had to admit – Steve still owed him one for trying to kill him in a damned elevator. Not to mention that Rumlow had been the one to force the Helicarriers into the sky.
Tony scooped up the unconscious man. "I'll get this one secured. Clint and Tasha are on their way to escort you back to the Tower, Maria. NYPD are on the way, Steve, you right to deal with this?" He gestured at the damaged van and the unconscious goons beside it.
"I got it," Steve nodded. Tearing the photo of Maria into several small pieces and dropping them into a nearby drain. "You were never here," he told Maria, who nodded as she heard the distinctive sounds of two Stark-modified motorbikes approaching.
Hawkeye didn't bother to stop, just circled the scene, looking for more trouble. Natasha skidded to a halt by Maria and handed her a helmet wordlessly. Pulling it on over her hair, Maria straddled the bike behind the other woman.
Tony whooshed into the sky as the two bikes took off again, leaving Steve standing alone in the middle of Central Park. A few moments later, the sound of sirens reached him. He sighed. Well, at least the NYPD were usually good for donuts and coffee.
Maria headed up to her apartment when Natasha dropped her off in the Tower's parking garage and took the time to shower and change before asking JARVIS where Tony had put Rumlow.
"In the medical holding cell on containment level 6, Ms. Hill," JARVIS replied politely.
"Is he conscious?" Medical, Maria thought. Obviously there was something badly wrong with Brock, if he was denying who he actually was. She pushed away the tiny glimmer of hope. He's a traitor.
"No. Dr Banner is attending him."
Maria looked through her wardrobe and chose one of the power suits Pepper had advised her on choosing. She still felt naked without her S.H.I.E.L.D. uniform, but she was slowly coming to accept the expensive clothes as a different kind of uniform, one that marked her as still in possession of power, even if it was less absolute than it used to be.
Down in the medical holding cell, Maria found both Clint and Natasha keeping Bruce company, Natasha inside the room and Clint outside. The holding cell could only be opened from outside so one of them had to stay out there. Clint was standing with his arms folded, watching with a grim look on his face as Banner examined Rumlow.
They'd removed him from the black and gold skinsuit, Maria saw as she looked through the observation window. Rumlow lay on the examination table, wrists and ankles shackled down. She couldn't help but flashback to when they'd had Barnes in here, after Steve and Sam brought him back. Tony had upgraded the shackles twice when Barnes ripped out of them. The ones that held Rumlow now would probably hold even Steve or Thor.
But right now, Rumlow was unconscious. Maria stared, leaning closer to the window. It was definitely Rumlow, but he looked – different.
"He's about two inches taller than he used to be." Clint didn't look at her, but it was obvious he was speaking to her. "And about eighty pounds heavier. Much higher muscle density. Received the same sort of enhancements as Barnes did, from the looks of things." He turned to face her finally. "I daresay he had to have them to survive."
It wasn't the bigger, heavier body that had caught Maria's eyes. It was the horrific scarring all over Rumlow's chest, shoulders, his left arm and part of the left side of his face. Shiny white burn scars, that looked deep, and probably covered thirty percent of what she could see of his body. And Bruce had him covered to the waist.
"I'm guessing Brock didn't so much as survive the Triskelion as was recovered from it," Clint said quietly, and Maria was reminded that Brock and Clint had trained together, worked together for years. Clint's rage and disbelief when Natasha told him Rumlow was HYDRA had been awful to witness.
"He said he wasn't Rumlow," Maria replied. "He sounded – confused."
"I never believed he could have been HYDRA," Clint said stubbornly, almost angrily. "It just wasn't Brock. He hated that Nazi bullshit. He's Jewish, his grandfather survived Auschwitz, for God's sake!"
Maria bit her lip. She and Clint had watched every painful moment of the footage JARVIS had recovered from the Triskelion's servers, from Rumlow damn nearly taking Steve down in that lift, to his disarming Sharon Carter and forcing the Helicarrier launch, to nearly killing Sam Wilson.
"If they did reprogram him, we probably won't be able to get him back," she said quietly at last. "Because it had to have been done before he was enhanced. We only got Barnes back because it happened the other way around. His brain kept repairing itself. All the others who HYDRA put through their compliance brainwashing – none of them came back, no matter what we've done."
Clint met her eyes. "So you're just gonna give up on him?"
Rumlow twitched under Bruce's hands, and his eyes snapped open. He jerked upwards, wrenching at the restraints, his lips curling back in an animal snarl. Natasha had two guns out in a second, and Maria couldn't help a cry of protest.
"They're trank guns!" Clint grabbed her arm as she went to grab the door release. "ICERs. Not real bullets." He patted the guns in his own holsters. "I've got the real bullets. Just in case."
Maria stared, her hand pressed flat against the one-way glass, as Rumlow jerked and fought. "I'm going in."
"Maria…" Clint started, but she'd hit the button.
"Not now… oh," Natasha blinked as she saw Maria. "What, you really think this is a good idea?"
I couldn't stay away. She didn't say the words, but she knew from the look on Natasha's face that the other woman understood. The redhead rolled her eyes and sighed, but she took a step back from the examination table, clearing Rumlow's eyeline to Maria.
He stilled. Instantly. Staring at her from fathomless dark eyes, and then those eyes she'd gazed into so many times rolled back in his head and he started convulsing.
"Jesus!" Bruce startled, grabbing for a syringe. Natasha calmly shot Rumlow with an ICER instead.
"Get out, get out, you triggered that!" Natasha shouted, putting her gun away and reaching to help Bruce. Maria backed out hastily, knowing that if Rumlow's enhancement was indeed similar to Barnes', the ICER would wear off in under two minutes.
In the observation room, she found herself clinging onto Clint, both hands wrapped around one of his thick biceps. He didn't move other than to use his free hand to pat gently at her fingers, steadying her.
"So it was you," Clint murmured, almost to himself, though Maria heard him.
"What?"
"The guys used to tease Brock that he never bothered picking up girls when we hit the bars after missions. Girls used to throw themselves at him, too; he's pretty good-looking, I'm straight and I can recognise that," Clint gave her a sideways grin. "And he was even less interested in men. I always thought he had a girl somewhere he was head over heels for."
Maria actually found herself blushing. "It wasn't like that."
"Tash told me about your fuck-buddy arrangement with him, yeah. I'm just sayin' I think it might well have been more from his side."
Maria said nothing, but Clint saw the way her eyes slid back to Brock, saw the yearning there.
You fucking idiot, Maria. If you'd said something to him long ago, the two of you might have been properly close; close enough for you to have NOTICED when HYDRA took my friend and turned him into a puppet. He didn't say it aloud. It was quite clear to the sharp-eyed marksman that Maria was already beating herself up for exactly the same thing.
Brock was coming around again, and this time Bruce was ready with the mild sedative; enough to keep him calm but conscious. Bruce had to use one of the 'Steve' needles to get through Rumlow's skin, they saw; further proof, if any had been necessary, that he'd been enhanced.
"Where am I?" Rumlow asked in his low rasp, staring at Bruce. Natasha, guns out again, was standing behind him, where he couldn't see her.
"In a medical facility. How are you feeling?" Bruce said, keeping his voice soft and calming.
"Okay." There was a long pause. "Who are you?"
"My name's Bruce. I'm looking after you."
"Is something wrong with me?"
Bruce hesitated, then shrugged mentally. What the hell, they had nothing to lose. Everyone they'd tried to tell that they'd been brainwashed, the subjects had refused to believe it.
"You hit your head. Can you tell me your name?"
Another, even larger pause. "Crossbones."
Maria felt the shock pass through Clint. That name had come up several times lately attached to HYDRA operations; Crossbones was their new strike weapon, the replacement for the Winter Soldier, just as brutal and lethal as his predecessor had been.
"That sounds like a nickname. What about your real name?"
Rumlow didn't answer, only furrowed his brow.
"What about the last thing you remember?" Bruce pressed gently. "Where did you expect to be when you woke up?"
He didn't resist answering the questions, though he didn't seem to have clear answers either. After a few moments of no resistance, Natasha sheathed her guns and moved around to join Bruce. Rumlow showed no sign of distress, only curiosity, and began to answer Natasha's more probing questions as best he could.
"What are we going to do?" Maria asked in despair as she sat with the Avengers around their meeting table later. Clint and Natasha sat on either side of her in a silent show of support; Bruce was remaining neutral, and Tony, Sam and Steve she suspected were all for throwing Rumlow off the top of the Tower and seeing if he bounced. Well, perhaps not Steve. Sam at least had good cause. Rumlow had kicked his ass and damn nearly killed him in the Triskelion.
Barnes was the wild card, sitting studying his hands and listening as Bruce spoke, detailing Rumlow's utterly confused mental state, and then they all argued over what to do with him. His blue eyes met Maria's once, and she thought she saw sympathy there. Finally, when they'd all fallen silent, at an impasse, the former Winter Soldier spoke up.
"I think you should talk to Coulson."
"What?" that was one option no one had suggested. "Why?" Steve asked. "I mean, yeah, Rumlow technically betrayed S.H.I.E.L.D., but Coulson has neither the time nor the capacity to hunt down all those who did. Crossbones has been more of a pain in our ass than his, too."
"Not for that reason," Barnes shook his head. "Coulson has a memory restoration machine. He offered me the opportunity to use it, but apparently it's extremely unpleasant – and my brain is slowly repairing itself on its own, thanks to me receiving the serum first. But if what you believe is true and Rumlow was brainwashed before the serum, he won't get better on his own. Coulson's memory machine might get him back to who he was before – if you want him back." He looked at Maria again.
"It's not my decision," Maria said a bit weakly.
"I think it should be," Clint said unexpectedly. "Tash and I looked into the old S.H.I.E.L.D. personnel files. Rumlow didn't have any listed next of kin – but he had your name down on the Contact In Case Of Emergency form."
"That wasn't unusual for agents without family, I was the Deputy Director…" Maria argued.
Clint and Natasha both stared at her. She trailed off and dropped her eyes to the table.
Steve sighed. "All right. What am I missing?"
There was complete silence in the room for a few moments, and then Maria admitted; "Rumlow and I were, uh, quite close before S.H.I.E.L.D. fell."
"You were banging him," Tony immediately concluded.
Maria winced, and Steve's eyes widened. "Good God, really?"
"Don't be crude, Tony," Natasha saved Maria's blushes. "Yes, Steve, Maria and Rumlow had a relationship," she told the shocked Captain.
Steve was the one blushing. "I see. Wouldn't that mean your judgement is rather – compromised in the matter?" he asked after a moment.
"No more than yours was when you dragged me off on a wild goose chase after the man who almost killed you," Sam said, not unkindly, inclining his head at Barnes, who almost-smiled.
Steve sucked in a sharp breath, then smiled awkwardly. "I guess I deserved that. I'm sorry, Maria, that was uncalled for."
They were all looking at her. Waiting for her to make the call. In the end she sucked in a deep breath, nodded and said "I guess I'll call Coulson."
Coulson fell all over himself agreeing. "Rumlow was a disaster. He came to Fury about a year before it all went down, told him the HYDRA were trying to recruit him and he suspected they'd already infiltrated the STRIKE team. They both suspected Rumlow would be killed and Rollins put in his place, so Fury ordered him to become a double agent. Only at some point, and we're really not exactly sure when, they brainwashed him into compliance. Told him to keep playing at being Fury's inside man, only he was passing over false information. I've never seen Fury so angry as when he realised what they'd done."
"If only I'd worked it out," Maria muttered, kicking herself even more as she watched Clint and Bruce manoeuvre a heavily sedated Rumlow into the memory machine, locking his wrists down with the same type of electromagnetic cuffs he'd once almost captured Captain America with.
"Don't do that to yourself, Maria. HYDRA were ready to move. Using Rumlow just means they got that much closer to pulling off Project Insight. And that we were able to root out all the traitors within S.H.I.E.L.D."
She looked around at what S.H.I.E.L.D. was reduced to and wanted to weep. But then she met Coulson's eyes and realised he was right; the old organisation was corrupt from the core. It had to be torn down before it could be built anew.
The young scientist on Coulson's team – Simmons, Maria thought her name was – was standing at the machine's control panel, biting her lip nervously. Clint moved over and said something – something flirtatious to try and put her at ease, no doubt, because the girl laughed and blushed, giving Barton a shy look from under her lashes.
"We're ready," Bruce said then, inserting a needle into Rumlow's arm and depressing the plunger. "He'll be awake any moment, so when you're ready, Dr. Simmons."
Maria backed away as the machine hummed to life and Rumlow's eyes opened. She had to come – had to see if it was really Brock, her Brock, somewhere buried in the blank-eyed man who called himself Crossbones and waited passively for orders. But every time he laid eyes on her, he went into convulsions again, so she had to stay out of his sight and wait. Pray. Fists clenched tightly, she squeezed her eyes shut as the first screams sounded.
"Maria, you should go." It was Agent May who tried to take her out of there, and from the compassion in her eyes, Maria knew that Natasha had probably told May the truth.
"I can't," she told her friend. "If he can suffer through it, I can bear to hear it. It's my fault. I should have seen it…" She was huddled in the corner of the room by now, her nails cutting bloody crescents into her palms – but she wouldn't go. She would not go, would not leave Brock to his agony. My fault. It's my fault.
"It's like there's a core of something he's hiding, protecting," Coulson said to Bruce despairingly. "That he's been hiding from the beginning, locked away even before they brainwashed him…"
Bruce looked up, met Clint's eyes where Clint was trying to comfort Dr Simmons, the young woman clearly terribly distressed by Rumlow's screams of agony.
"Maria," Clint and Bruce both said in unison, and Rumlow's body jerked, fighting his restraints.
"No!" he howled. "No, you can't have her, you don't TOUCH her!" His whole body tensed, muscles bulging, and the massive electromagnets actually squeaked as he dragged them across the steel surface of the table beneath him. The steel was buckling, Maria realised in horror. "MARIA!" it was a bull-throated roar of her name and she ran to him instinctively, leaping deftly up onto the table to straddle his body, reaching to put her hands on his stubbled cheeks.
"Brock, I'm here! I'm here!"
"No!" he screamed, his eyes wide open, clearly seeing her, but he was also just as obviously lost in his own head. "God, Maria no, get away from here, please, please, not her, don't hurt her, I'll do what you ask…"
Dimly, Maria could hear Bruce shouting something, triumphant, as the machines monitoring Brock's brain waves beeped crazily. Could feel Phil dragging at her arm, trying to pull her off Brock. But all she could see were his eyes, his eyes, deep dark brown, staring at her, knowing her.
"Maria," he said her name softly, and she realised that the lights on the memory machine had gone out. It was over.
"Brock?" she whispered.
"Are you real? I saw you so many times – they said they'd taken you, I saw them torture you…"
Was that how they'd broken him, finally? she couldn't help but wonder. Brock Rumlow would have been a very difficult subject to break.
"I'm real," she said softly. "I'm here. Free, not captured. No one's going to hurt either of us." She heard a dull clunking sound beside her, glanced sideways to see Clint unlocking the electromagnetic cuffs.
"What's this – thing I'm in?" Brock glanced upwards at the arc of metal and lights over his head. "Where am I?"
"S.H.I.E.L.D.," she answered the second question first. "HYDRA brainwashed you. This machine – broke it."
"No," he said, disbelievingly. "No." Then, reading the truth in her eyes, "What did I do? Maria – what did I do?" it was almost a cry of agony.
"Don't do that to yourself, Brock," it was Clint who spoke, quietly, seeing his old friend's eyes flick up to him and widen. "There are some things outside of our control. You said that to me after Loki, remember?"
Clint never talked about Loki. Never. Not to anyone. Maria heard Phil suck in a gasp on the other side of her, saw Clint's eyes move up and across, but then he looked at Brock again.
"You fought better than I ever did. Resisted them. You didn't give Maria up, did you? You never told them about her. If you had, they'd have come for her long ago, taken her to break you completely."
"I thought they had," Brock whispered, his throat hoarse from screaming. His hands slowly came up, clasped Maria's hips. "I thought they had taken you…"
"Out," Clint jerked his head at Phil, at the silently watching Bruce, at May, still watching wide-eyed and shocked from across the room. Took Dr. Simmons' hand and pulled her towards the door. "They need to talk. Come on."
"I need to get out of here," was the first thing Brock said once they were alone. Maria scrambled off him, reached to help him out of the machine, was surprised when he took her hand. It was strange to look even further than usual up at him when he was on his feet. They'd stripped him to the waist to put him in the machine, he wore only a pair of black sweatpants, and he was all rippling muscle and terrible scars as he prowled around the room, looking at the medical equipment.
Brock turned back to her, to his Maria, standing there by the machine with an uncertain look on her face. Everything was slowly coming back together in his mind, clicking together like pieces of a puzzle. And all he could think was that he'd never been honest with her, before or after HYDRA turned him into their fucking mindless puppet.
"I love you."
"What?" her jaw dropped open.
"I've been in love with you from the moment you first surprised me in the training room and kicked my ass because I underestimated you."
That was years before they'd started sleeping together. And it had been one time; he'd never underestimated her again, and she'd never been able to match his sheer strength, not to mention that he was a pure action specialist and supposed to be able to kick everybody's ass.
"I know for you it was just a chance to get a physical release with someone you trusted, and now I've trashed even that completely and you probably never want to lay eyes on me again," Brock realised he was rambling, but he no longer cared. Maria was staring at him from those huge dark blue eyes, her soft pink lips parted incredulously. "But I'm not going to die wondering and I'm not letting you walk away without telling you the truth. The only truth I have left, it seems. I love you."
She ran at him, and for a moment he wasn't sure if she was going to hit him, but instead she literally leaped at him, wrapping her arms around his neck, her long, slender legs around his waist, dragging his mouth to hers. He was very far from objecting, kissing her back hungrily.
"I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry," she said between kisses, and he realised her face was wet with tears. "It's my fault. It's all my fault. If I'd told you earlier, we'd have been close, I'd have known when they took you…"
"Maria," he groaned, silencing her with his mouth on hers. For long minutes they kissed, hunger and need sparking between them, and then she pulled her head back and said the words that shattered him completely.
"I love you."
He stroked her silken black hair with a shaking hand. "You can't. Not after everything I've done."
"That wasn't you. No more than it's Clint's fault, what he did when under Loki's control. We accepted that – you were one of the first to accept that. This is no different."
Her eyes were so clear, so lucid, he found himself slowly beginning to believe.
"You'll forgive me if I avoid getting into any elevators with you?" He was a little surprised that Steve Rogers' first words to him, once he arrived back at the Tower, were a joke. But then Rogers did have a sense of humour; he was still trying to work out which STRIKE missions he'd been HYDRA for, but he remembered Rogers cracking a few jokes.
Sam Wilson was a bit harder to win over, but then the Falcon had never known him before. Rumlow winced as he remembered doing his best to kill Wilson as the Triskelion burned and crumbled around them. "Sorry," was about all he could offer, and Wilson shrugged, his eyes flickering to Maria.
He'd met Stark before. Bodyguarded him, and Potts. That was definitely pre-HYDRA, and he remembered actually rather liking Stark, which was probably why Stark had a perfect right to be pissed off with him. It wasn't a nice feeling when someone you thought was a friend betrayed you. Rumlow still remembered his disbelief, his rage, when he'd finally gone to Fury with his suspicions – no, his certainty – that Jack Rollins was HYDRA.
"Is Rollins still around?" he asked Maria when they were finally alone – in her apartment, and he didn't miss that she'd brought him here.
"Hasn't been seen since the Triskelion, not by us. You don't know?"
He shook his head, trying to wrack his brain, but no – the last time he'd seen Rollins was in the Triskelion. "With any luck the bastard's dead. If not, I'll kill him sooner rather than later."
"Are you going to consider Rogers' suggestion?" Maria asked, watching him as he prowled around the living room of her small apartment. "Of claiming the Crossbones identity and fighting with the Avengers, making it a publicity blow against HYDRA?"
"Can't see that I'm good for anything else," Rumlow gestured down at the body he was still getting used to, scarred as it was, but bigger and stronger than he'd been before. "If Barnes can do it, so can I. HYDRA were so enraged when the Avengers flipped him back again. I'd love to see the look on that bastard Bakshi's face when he realises I'm yours again too."
They'd decided to give him a day's grace to get his head straight before Natasha began his debriefing, leaching everything he knew about HYDRA and their plans out of his head.
"You should get some rest," Maria murmured. "That's my spare room, that door…"
Rogers, the closest of them in size to Rumlow now, had given him a bag of clothes to wear. Rumlow dumped it on the floor now, turning to look at her. "That's where I'm sleeping, is it Maria?"
She froze under that dark gaze, hands fluttering nervously (nervous? She'd never been nervous in her life – except when he looked at her that way), unable to settle. "I thought – that is – it's been a long day – you must be tired…"
He shook his dark head. "Serum," was all he said, and she realised suddenly how foolish she was being, not to think of that. "Are you tired, Maria?"
She wanted to say yes. But the truth was that there was a fiery pit of excitement curling in her belly, making her knees shake, her heart beat faster. She wondered if he knew. If he could hear her heartbeat, like Steve could hear heartbeats of enemies trying to hide from him.
"Maria?" he moved towards her, all lethal grace, moving deliberately slowly so that she could evade him if she wished it. "Is it the scars?"
"What?" that shocked her out of her half-aroused, half-terrified trance.
"The scars." He lifted his right hand, traced his fingers over the roughened white skin on his face, down his neck, brushed over the scarred forearm emerging from the sleeve of the shirt Coulson had found him. "I'm not the pretty boy I used to be…"
"Brock!" she half-laughed at his description. "You were never a pretty boy. A man – very much a man – one I could never stop looking at – I still can't." He was directly in front of her now, and she lifted a hand to his face, touched the burn scar on his cheek very lightly. The light in the room was low, the handsome, unmarked side of his face in shadow, only the burned part visible.
"A mark of my shame," Brock said, his voice low. "My failure. "
"No," she moved closer to him, cupping his jaw, keeping it still so he looked into her eyes. "No, Brock, don't do that to yourself. It wasn't your fault. HYDRA do this, they take and twist, they destroy and burn and use, make people into weapons against their will – your scars are no more a mark of failure than Barnes' are. But they made a mistake, Brock, they gave you the serum, made you stronger, and you're going to use it against them, bring them down for good. I believe in you."
"I don't deserve that," he said, his voice even raspier than its usual whisky-and-cigarettes snarl.
"Yes, you do." Her other hand landed on his chest, over his heart. "You never gave me up, did you? They couldn't break you hard enough to make you give me up."
"Never," it was a groan of remembered agony – but no. He'd given up his own soul instead. The subliminal images he'd been fed from Whitehall's machine had changed, in his tortured brain, to images of Maria being beaten, tortured, raped – but her name had never passed his lips, not even when his mind broke under the strain and he had agreed to comply if they would just stop hurting her.
There'd never been tenderness between them, but it was there now, in the way his hands caressed lightly over her back, in the look he was giving her. Maria swallowed, trying to get some moisture into her dry mouth, licked her lips. His eyes widened, the pupils blowing wide until there was only the faintest ring of colour surrounding all that blackness.
"I don't care about the scars," she whispered finally. "You're still Brock. I still – I still want you."
"Maria," her name was almost a prayer on his lips, and then he was lifting her in strong arms. "Where's your bedroom?"
"That way," she gestured, and he carried her through, glancing around at the room, his mouth curving as he found it to his liking, simply furnished in shades of dark blue and gold. He laid her gently down on the big bed, gazing down at her for a long moment before reaching for the hem of his shirt and peeling it off.
"Have you lain here and thought of me?" he asked softly.
She winced, looked away. Realised she owed him the truth. "Cried too many nights into my pillow because I hated you for betraying me," she confessed starkly. "And then hated myself for still wanting you."
He paused, his hand on her ankle, and then he unlaced her boot and slipped it off. "I don't know what I can say," he said finally, after removing her other boot, "except that I hope you'll never cry another tear over me."
"I'll try not to." She unfastened her belt, unclipped her waistband, helped him to remove her trousers. "Do you realise we've never made love in a bed?"
Brock stilled, his hands on the buttons of her blouse. "We never called it love, either. I don't think I knew what I felt until I realised that the memory of you was the only thing I had left to hold onto."
"I didn't know until I'd lost you, either," Maria admitted, reaching up to him. He was kneeling above her on the bed, barely seen, only the moonlight seeping in around the half-closed curtains illuminating the scarred side of his face. "Losing you broke me, Brock. Broke my heart into little pieces and I didn't even know how to start putting them together again."
He finished unbuttoning her blouse, bent and pressed his lips to the upper slope of her breast, right over her rapidly beating heart. "Let me put you back together again, Maria. I don't know – I just have this feeling that we're going to be all right, as long as we stick together this time."
She speared shaking fingers into his dark hair, pulled him to her for a kiss. Felt the thrumming tension in his body as her breasts pressed into his chest, the thick arousal beneath his sweatpants pushing eagerly at the heated well between her thighs.
"You were always better at making me come undone than putting me back together," she whispered against his mouth.
Brock let out a low, hungry growl, nipped at her lips lightly. Felt her slight body shudder beneath his weight, her knees lifting to bracket his sides, tilting her core against him. Clad only in a few scraps of silk and lace she was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen, and his, at last, all his.
"I need you." He hated the crack in his own voice, the weakness it showed; but then she'd always been his weakness – until she became his strength. "The serum, though – I don't know exactly what it's changed in me. I don't want to hurt you."
"I trust you." Deliberately she ran her fingernails down his spine, digging in hard. "And you forget. I like it when you're rough."
His spine arched, eyes closing, and then she rocked her hips, cradling his erection closer still, and he lost everything but the need to be inside her, to hear his name echoing from the walls in her throaty voice.
He ripped her bra and panties to shreds, kicked his sweatpants off, his mouth all over her in heated licks and nips, his hands seemingly everywhere his mouth wasn't until Maria was a delirious, begging mess, frantic for him.
"So beautiful," Brock murmured hoarsely, looking down at her pale body in the moonlight, spread out on the bed before him like a feast for a starving man.
"Brock," she reached out to him and he could no more deny her than he could his need to breathe, bringing his weight down on her, groaning deep in his chest as she wrapped long, lean legs around his waist. "I need you. Please."
"Yes." He'd got used to being physically bigger and more powerful in the months he'd spent as a HYDRA weapon, but he hadn't had sex since that last time in Maria's office, when he'd taken her on her own desk. He tried to be gentle, to go slowly, but Maria was having none of it, locking her legs around his hips and dragging him deep inside her with one powerful yank, when he would have filled her more gently.
Thank God for the serum, he would think later, because apparently the greater stamina it had endowed him with enabled him to last longer, not to fire off like some callow kid getting off for the first time. Without that he'd surely have embarrassed himself and not satisfied Maria; but as it was he was able to hold on, to drive her to thrashing, screaming heights of ecstasy beneath him before he allowed his own release with a deep roar of her name.
She clung to him when he would have moved off her afterwards, so he rested his weight on his elbows and smoothed her hair, wincing as the fine silken strands caught on his rough, callused skin. Maria didn't seem to care, though, reaching one of her own hands up to touch his stubbled jaw.
"Brock," she said softly.
"I love you," he told her, his own voice a raspy growl. "Whatever you want this to be, I'm fine with that, if you want to keep it casual, make it seem like it's just friends-with-benefits for your Avenger buddies. Just don't ask me to leave you. I – need to be close."
"I'm not letting you out of my sight," Maria said vehemently. "Not this time."
He smiled, leaning down to kiss her. "I'm good with that."
Six months later
"You must comply!" Sunil Bakshi shouted at Crossbones. "Get me out of here! You must comply!"
"He's the one?" Maria leaned her head against Rumlow's shoulder, looking dispassionately at the dark-haired man being pushed into the prison van.
"One of the two. Coulson shot Whitehall in Puerto Rico."
"Take him, then," Maria told General Talbot. "He's an enemy combatant. Find the deepest, darkest hole Gitmo has and let him rot in it."
"Glad to be of service, ma'am," Talbot saluted her, nodded respectfully to Crossbones and climbed into the armoured car which would accompany the van.
"I think I might just fly cover and make sure nothing unexpected happens," Falcon muttered behind them, and leapt up into the sky as the van moved off. He and Brock had become good friends since Crossbones joined the Avengers, and Sam would take no chances with the possibility of one of Brock's arch-enemies coming back to haunt him.
Maria could tell that Brock was smiling behind his mask. His hand tightened on hers. "Come on, my love. Let's go home."
She ran her fingers down his back, across his flank. "What an excellent idea. I do love peeling you out of this suit."
"You're a wicked woman." His grip on her arm wasn't – quite – hard enough to bruise as he led her quickly towards the jet waiting to take them back to the Tower. "I love it."
Incidentally, not long before I finished this fic off, I was watching the Avengers Assemble cartoon with my kids and there was an episode featuring Crossbones (who is, of course, a bad guy). What cracked me up is how, um, shapely his 'package' was in his suit – particularly compared to all the usual characters who are fairly sexless in that regard. Google Avengers Assemble Crossbones and click Images if you don't believe me.
See? And now feel disgusted with yourself for giggling smuttily over a cartoon character's crotch…
I hope you enjoyed at least one of these alternate endings to Her Dirty Little Secret. Would love to hear which one you liked best, if you managed to make your way through all four of them – and if you aren't thoroughly disgusted with me for coming up with the premise for Only Mine!