Three: You Inherit the Flames
Chicago – May 2000
One Sunday, her father slammed a car door in the parking lot of St. Gabriel.
The door closed with a wet thunk rather than a loud clank, but he didn't look back.
Until his nine-year-old daughter in the backseat shrieked in pain so loud people the next block over could hear her, he hadn't noticed.
Overnight in a bed in the Cook County ER, arm under the plaster numb from lidocaine.
Rotator cuff torn. Bones reset. Sutures from a handsome pediatrics fellow who smiled like a prince and praised her strength.
Her father seated the whole time in a chair by her bedside.
The girl was happy to believe this meant he really did love her and really was concerned.
For a girl who'd been Francis Hill's daughter from birth, the realization otherwise came embarrassingly slow.
When it did, she told herself she wouldn't count on anybody for anything anymore because nobody really cared.
Her first day back at school, Fiona Brennan helped her open a can of tuna fish. Offered to share carrot sticks with her, something fresh, not oily and from a can.
After Fiona had done this for a week, Maria Hill decided maybe she was wrong.
Božić's math class.
Fiona in the back row.
Fiona watching, guilty.
Maria didn't look back, just passed the quizzes over her shoulder.
From three months away, something in her heart howled, running rabid mad.
Her hands shook with approach before she wrote her name and the date on the right lines.
Fiona still in the back row.
Fiona still watching.
She'd only tested one tail of the probability when Božić rang the bell on his desk.
Maria didn't look back, just picked up the quizzes when Lila Moreno tapped the row's papers on her shoulder.
"Okay," said Božić. "Let's go over these. Maybe you all learn something before the test on Friday. Who's got question one? Duerte? Washington? No? Okay, how about you, Maria? Show these people how it's done."
Still in the back row.
Still watching.
"I didn't get that one, sir," she said.
Božić showing surprise over the rims of his bifocals.
The bell eventually rang.
In her haste to avoid questions and get to her next class, she nearly bowled over a woman in a black suit.
"Sorry," Maria said, fast. "I should have watched where I was going, ma'am."
"It happens," said the woman, dry.
Maria was off and down the hall before the woman had a chance to say anything else.
JROTC lunch meeting.
Only her in full dress uniform.
Watkins and Vinson discussed adopt-a-highway duty and weather forecasts for the weekend.
Ruiz ate the grease trap Tilden's cafeteria called a hamburger. Still waited to speak until he was done chewing and swallowing, like any good officer should.
Watkins glanced over at her from time to time, watching her. He often did. Did he want her? She'd always suspected.
Was he worried?
Oh.
He expected her to say something.
"If it's a problem," she said, "then we'll bring umbrellas. The rain won't stop them littering. It can't stop us picking it up."
Staring into the cold can of tuna she'd brought from home.
The other officers exchanged looks she couldn't actually see.
Saturday night's a long time away by the following Tuesday.
Everybody at this table knew the rumors by now.
All of them knew not to bring up personal matters with the commanding officer during "business" hours, too.
She thought she saw Fiona out of the corner of her eye.
Howling again. Paws scrabbling in the dirt. Snout sniffing the air.
She didn't look up. Fiona didn't come over.
Maria kept her head down for the rest of lunch, and didn't eat, and nearly ran into a woman in a black suit with a visitor's badge milling around outside the cafeteria doors when the bell rang.
She mumbled an apology.
"Hey! Maria! Wait up! I wanna talk to you!" Tommy's hand on the shoulder of her dress coat. Five greasy fingers against smooth green fabric.
Half of what she'd been trying to avoid since opening the wrong door Saturday night.
"Take your hand off of me," she said, sharp enough to cut glass.
He pulled it back so fast she thought he might have left the skin of his palm on her shoulder.
"What's with you, Maria?" She kept walking. Rubber soles squeaking fast on linoleum. Tommy keeping pace beside. "You won't even look at us," he said. "Fi wants to apologize."
"Not you."
"Everybody makes mistakes," said Tommy, and at that she stopped.
She turned to meet his gaze as coolly as she could manage.
Green eyes, scruffy dark hair. She'd always thought he was beautiful
She'd harbored secret dreams of making him a military husband.
When those spells broke, they broke fast and the pieces lay sharp on the floor, waiting to tear at her feet when she walked across them.
"Everybody wasn't in that laundry room."
"C'mon, it was one house party."
"It was her screwing you." A trembling in her left hand. "Or was it you screwing her?" Thoughts of snapping finger bones like dry stalks. "It's kind of hard to tell who's on top in the dark."
"We were drinking." Tommy's voice rising in a whine through the last word. Like it was a legitimate excuse.
"So after all the years we've known each other, all it took to slip the knife between my ribs was a couple cans of beer at Jenny Slater's."
"It's not like that, Maria."
Blood howled through her ears.
"That is exactly what it is," she said. Eyes closed now. Voice low and still now. It was close. "Do whatever you want to do. You and that dumb whore. We see each other from now on, either of you even tries to talk to me, I won't know you."
She was walking away again when she heard him mutter it. "Stuck-up bitch."
Every muscle from her neck to her heels ached with the effort to restrain. To keep her fists from slamming him in the face. Pounding until his blood spattered her medals, her coat, her dress blouse beneath. Knuckles tearing on his shattered teeth.
Tommy wheezing for air through a bleeding broken nose. Triumph in her heart.
Walking away from it as fast as pride allowed. Shoulders level, stride long, eyes straight ahead.
Couldn't show them how much they'd hurt you, or they'd hold it over you forever.
That was the first lesson of her father's house.
Fiona walking in the bathroom as Maria walked out.
"Maria?"
Pale redhead, blizzard of freckles on her cheeks, standing in the doorway.
"Can't we - can't you - "
Pushing past Fiona like she wasn't there.
"I'm sorry." Low words in a soft, high voice. "I'm so sorry."
Bitten nails gouging bloody holes in her palm.
"Please."
The door closing behind her.
Watkins by the sparse trophy case, talking to a dark-haired woman in a black suit with a visitor's pass.
Third time's an enemy action, Maria remembered reading somewhere once.
"Name, rank, and serial number, lieutenant," she said hard as she walked past.
"Yes, ma'am." Watkins snapping to attention in her peripheral vision, trying to talk his way out of conversation with the woman.
Out of the corner of her eye, the woman looking amused.
A problem to worry about later.
Bright kid, Watkins. With another year to develop, he'd have Major written all over him.
She was openly sorry she wouldn't be around to see it, privately terrified she would.
Drill Team practice after school.
A disaster in slow motion.
A room full of student cadets with a month before summer vacation.
A commanding officer who couldn't focus.
Half an hour of diminishing returns later, she dismissed the whole battalion.
Watkins looking back at her again before leaving.
Sitting motionless on the bleachers.
Too parched to think about crying.
"You still here, Hill," called a voice from the door.
"Sergeant Major Braxton." Snapping to attention. Salute not as sharp as she'd like.
"At ease, there, Cadet Colonel." Braxton always sounded like he had a whole head full of private jokes.
"I'm sorry about our battalion's performance today, sir. We should have been much tighter."
Braxton snorted. "I'd never say this around them, but one bad day don't matter. We call it practice for a reason."
"Still, sir. I'm sure I - "
"Look, you've led these joes better than any cadet I've seen since I started advising at this school."
Ducking her head. "Thank you, sir."
"Some days, the mule's just not gonna drive the cart unless you give it a carrot. You hear what I'm saying to you?"
"I think so, sir."
"You're the mule in this analogy. It's leadership, Hill. You burn yourself out over surplus Drill Team practices, you're not gonna be much use to the soldiers counting on you when real problems come along."
"I hear you, sir."
Braxton nodded. "Always been one of the brighter pennies in this place. But exactly none of this is what I wanted to talk about, so you mind if I take a seat?"
"Of course not, sir."
"Level with me, Hill. How you doing?"
"I'm fine, sir."
He looked at her directly. "Are you really?"
"I'll be fine, sir."
Braxton sighed. "Look, I know you decided to hold off on West Point until next year." Concern in his voice. Her fight-or-flight response cleared for takeoff. "A hard-working gal like you, you've got to have something lined up after graduation."
Backpack strap rough against her sore palm. "I'd rather not talk about it right now, sir."
"'Cause your CO, here, he can make it rain on command." Looking out the open side door at the grey, rain-battered sidewalk. "Not that that means anything today."
Tugging her backpack towards her with a canvas scratch. "I'll be fine, sir."
"Hey, hey. Just sayin', cadet colonel. Record as shiny as yours has been, even at a school like this, I know some folks who'd sell their mamas on the black market to talk with you."
Gripping the handle of her folding umbrella. "I appreciate that, sir. I do."
"That's the tone they use right before they dump your ass in the desert with a juice box and a sniper rifle."
"Permission to leave, sergeant major? I have a shift at the grocery store in an hour."
Braxton studied her in the stark fluorescent light. "Dismissed, cadet colonel." No private joke in his tone that time.
They exchanged salutes, and she grabbed her bag and her umbrella, and she was gone out the side door.
She thought she might have heard Braxton talking to a woman over the rain.
Or maybe it was just the air conditioner turning over.
"Maria Hill?"
"What do you want?" Chill, rain, gusts of wind blowing both sideways under her cheap umbrella at twenty miles per. Already soaked from the elbows down. The house still a block up Union.
"Would I be correct in assuming I'm talking to Cadet Colonel Maria Hill, middle name Margaret, born 4 April 1982?"
Rain drumming on the nylon umbrella.
Needing to get home before her father did. Bar the bedroom door. Curl up in her tiny bed thinking no thoughts until she felt human enough to crawl out her bedroom window for her shift at the Fairplay.
"My name's Wheeler."
"No deal," said Maria.
Wheeler laughed, full-throated and sincere. "Listen, I would have preferred to have this meeting back at the school, but you pulled a runner and your sergeant major wanted to reschedule. There's an opportunity I'd like to talk with you about."
"I'm still recovering from the last time somebody told me that." Maria's foot slipped off the curb and into another puddle. Water flooding her dress shoe. She swore.
"It's the getting-in-out-of-the-rain kind of opportunity."
"My house is over by there," she said, pointing at a long, low heap of red and beige brick circled by a chain-link fence.
"The getting out of this one-star town kind of opportunity, then."
Maria looked over at that, recognized the driver immediately. Dark-haired woman in a black suit, strong jaw, no longer with visitor badge. "You've been following me."
"No, I haven't." The woman watching her with undisguised amusement. Testing.
"All day long, every time I turn around, there you are. Standing outside my math class. Peeping at me from the door of the lunch room. Talking to one of my lieutenants."
"I haven't been following you." The woman held up a hand. "Let me finish. I've been observing you in your natural habitat."
"I'm not some ape on the nature channel, lady."
"Didn't say you were. Where I work, we like to have a sense of what sort of person we're talking to before we start the conversation."
"By spying on high schoolers?"
"The reason I'm talking to you at all right now is that you noticed me. You'd be surprised how many girls in your position don't."
"What do you know about my position?"
"I've got ears," said Wheeler, "and I served with Braxton back in Desert Storm." The way she said served sounded like one of those private jokes Braxton was never telling.
"Yeah?"
"He was supposed to introduce us. Instead, here we are, strangers meeting in the rain."
Wheeler dug around in a pocket of her coat, held a black leather wallet to the window. "Believe me," she said, "I'm exactly who I say I am."
One half a pewter eagle in black leather. The other half an ID for JoAnne Wheeler, Agent, with picture and a list of meaningless numbers and letters.
Cold rain, wet feet, an overwhelming desire to dig a warm hole and stay hidden in it until the roused beasts returned to their caves, and she still snapped to attention. "Sorry for my rudeness, ma'am."
"No need to apologize to me. All things considered, you kept your head longer than I'd have done in your position."
"Still no excuse, ma'am."
"As I said, I have an opportunity I'd like to talk with you about. Is there someplace private we can go to discuss it? Your house, maybe?"
"Not there, ma'am," she said. Too quickly. Wheeler noticed.
"Well, you may as well get in, then. I'm sure we can find someplace else around here to talk."
If nothing else, it was warm in the black Acura, and she was out of the rain.
Buckled in. Wheeler turned to her with a serious expression. "I skipped lunch," she said, "and unless I miss my guess, you barely ate anything, yourself. You wouldn't happen to know any good places to eat, would you?"
The girl in the officer's uniform and the Woman in Black, alone in a pizza parlor.
Maria only ordered a sandwich after Wheeler had promised three times in a row to cover the bill.
"You knew the sergeant major, ma'am?"
"Bill and I turned a few parlor tricks during Desert Storm." Wheeler just loud enough to be heard over the jukebox. "And several more after. But if I tell you anything else about that, I'll have to lock you in a box and make you disappear."
"And he talked about me, ma'am?"
"Let's say you've come up enough times that driving here to meet you seemed worth the fight with Accounts over the expense report."
"Sorry to have wasted your time, ma'am." Maria's eyes looked at everything but her benefactor.
"What makes you say that?"
"I'm not much to look at, ma'am. Shoes are wet. Cuffs are muddy. Coat's wet."
"It's raining outside, and an umbrella's only going to do you so much good when the wind's blowing like that."
"The woman makes the uniform, ma'am. Mine's a mess."
Wheeler's gaze was just understanding enough Maria couldn't bear to meet it. "Fortunately for you," the woman said, "I'm not Bill. Proper uniform maintenance isn't high on my list of priorities."
"And what are your priorities, ma'am?"
"Can you keep a secret, cadet colonel?"
Maria thought about empty bottles. "Of course, ma'am," she said.
"I work for the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division."
"Division of what, ma'am?"
The bell at the counter sounded.
"We'll get to that in a little while. Sounds like our food's up. Why don't you pick it up while I get us some napkins?"
"Yes, ma'am."
They ate in the closest thing to silence possible in a local neighborhood pizza joint. The jukebox still floating blue-collar rock songs downstream at high volume.
Well, Wheeler ate. Maria inhaled, an entire Italian beef gone in less time than it took Wheeler to manage three bites.
Just like a poor girl whose last meal was cold and came out of a can and whose next meal would do likewise.
Maria scrubbing furiously at her face with a napkin, cheeks red in the dim light as she blotted up the grease. "I'm sorry, ma'am."
"What are you apologizing for? You were obviously hungry."
"I forgot my manners, ma'am."
Wheeler smiled around a greasy french fry. "You really believe in all of this." She popped it into her mouth and chewed.
"Believe in what, ma'am?"
"Chain of command," Wheeler said. "Honor. Duty. Responsibility." She took a measured sip of her iced tea. "I'm guessing I could talk to every other kid in this neighborhood and not find anyone who'd apologize to a woman twice their age for bad table manners."
"Only myself and local members of my battalion, ma'am. Rudeness at the table is conduct unbecoming."
"You're eighteen years old. You're not supposed to have any conduct to unbecome."
"Is that a problem, ma'am?"
"Absolutely not. It's very rare we find that kind of dedication in a prospect of your age, Maria." Wheeler chewed and swallowed a bite of hamburger. "It is all right if I call you Maria, isn't it?"
She nodded her assent. "Yes, ma'am."
"All this 'ma'am' stuff makes me feel like I've retired to Boca to spend all day in a condo waiting for my grandchildren not to call. I'm not anywhere near that old yet. Call me JoAnne."
"I probably won't, ma'am."
"Now, you are dedicated." Wheeler wiped her mouth. "I'd be lying if I said I wasn't curious about why."
Maria tried to force herself to hold the other woman's gaze.
"What exactly is Strategic - " Maria trailed off, struggled to remember the full name. "What's your organization named again, ma'am?"
"Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division. You can just call it S.H.I.E.L.D."
"What are you a division of?"
"You asked that before. We can get to that later, if you like. We've got time."
"I have to be at home to change for work."
"Your Mr. Bechir was very understanding when I talked to him about your situation earlier."
"You talked to him?"
"He offered to cover your shift himself. He's concerned about you. Do you know how many friends you've got around here, Maria?"
"I don't have any friends, ma'am."
"You'd be surprised. Okay, sure, you're not gossiping and smoking cigarettes behind the gym with most of them. But I talked to a lot of people about you today, Maria. Every one of them wants what's best for you."
"And what do you want, ma'am?"
"JoAnne. I'm not on your chain of command."
"But you're still a superior, ma'am."
"That stick's all the way up there, isn't it, Maria?"
"I'm afraid so, ma'am."
Wheeler half-smiling. "You can't really get to know somebody based on what other people have to say, no matter how glowing the recommendation. What I'd like is for you to tell me something about yourself nobody else I talked to knows."
"Is that necessary, ma'am?"
"You don't have to if you don't want to. That would tell me something, too."
"Would it make a difference?"
"If it helps you decide, I got divorced from Bill five years ago, we've got an eight-year-old daughter, and after years of Barney the Dinosaur re-runs, I was glad a comet took out every last one of those bastards."
Wheeler seemed honest.
Wheeler darted around all day, trying to dig up dirt by questioning everybody she knew.
"I'd rather not, ma'am."
Wheeler nodded like she'd passed some test. "Fair enough. And in answer to your question, we're a division of nothing. We used to be part of another agency. When we were spun off, we kept the old name."
Silent. Processing it.
"Of course, Bill tells me West Point's your first choice, and they're drooling over you, so what I have to say may not matter."
"The sergeant major is wrong, ma'am," she said, flat.
"Is that right?"
"Yes, ma'am," she said, flat.
Flat was safer.
"I'm sorry to hear that." Wheeler studied her in the dim light, closely enough Maria began to think about the frogs in science, pinned to boards and peeled open while jagoffs joked about the size of their organs in relation. "It's definitely their loss. I'm not sure it's yours."
"How do you mean, ma'am?"
"You've been in JROTC from the moment you were eligible and you got promoted all the way up to cadet colonel. Believe me, that's not easy. And Bill also tells me you're an active hand in extracurricular activities around Tilden."
"I'm on three student committees, ma'am," she said. "It's not a very good school, but it's the only one we have, and I think we should try to improve it as much as we can."
Wheeler smiling. "Mmm. You also have two track-and-field gold medals and a field hockey championship trophy."
"Playing sports kept me out of trouble, ma'am."
"I don't believe that. You volunteer for community service like you've been sentenced to do it. When would you have the time to find any trouble?"
"Service is its own reward, ma'am."
"And with the sole and almost suspicious exception of this semester, you've blazed a trail of straight As since you started high school."
"Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration, ma'am."
"Don't be so modest. I've seen hardened field agents who don't work half as hard as you. And others who do but don't get half as far."
"Thank you, ma'am," Maria ducked her head, voice nearly swallowed by the ambient noise.
Wheeler looking at her, pale pink lipstick, white teeth, like the puzzle pieces just clicked into place. "So tell me, Maria. Do you really want to save the world? Or do you just want to pretend to by joining the Army?"
"What?!" Feeling her face flush, go hot.
"I thought that might get you to stop calling me 'ma'am.'"
"Is that supposed to be funny?"
"It's just a question. Everything about you says to me that you want to make a real difference. And sure, West Point will take you where you think you want to go, assuming you can make it to next year to find out." Maria's teeth grinding at the implication. "But all you'll really learn is how to beat your chest, follow orders, and leave a place worse off after you leave than it was before you arrived."
"Why should I believe S.H.I.E.L.D. is any different?"
"You know how the United Nations has peacekeepers? Well, we're their shadows. We usually operate on the ground, in the dark, in places nobody else can or will go. If we do our job right, nobody knows we've done it at all."
Thinking about it.
"And I'm not going to say anything gauche about S.H.I.E.L.D. being the best of the best, because you'd see through it like glass when you meet the bottom half of your class. But I will say we know exactly what to do to with bright, driven workers like you."
"And what's that, ma'am?"
"Four years of training and education at the Academy to start. We're a little past the admissions deadline, but with your record here, that's not going to be a problem."
Wheeler sipping from her tea again, like she'd just remembered ordering it. "The Academy also offers summer courses for some of our more dedicated cadets." Catching Maria's eye. Maria thinking about the frog again. "If that seems like something you'd be interested in."
Something fell.
In the back, the counterman swearing loud enough to be heard over the big finish of David Bowie's "Young Americans".
"And if it is, ma'am?"
"Then when we're finished here, I drive us both up to the field office in the Loop and we fill out some paperwork."
Maria nodding.
"Finish your drink. Take some time to think about it. It's a big decision and you shouldn't make it lightly. But while you're thinking, I do have a couple of questions you'll need to answer before we proceed. I'm not a scout, you're not a pitcher, and this isn't spring training. You are eighteen, aren't you?"
Bowie out. Springsteen in. Snare drum snapping like an explosion.
"Since April, ma'am."
"That's good."
"Now, let's assume you decide to take my offer. After you graduate from the Academy, you'll be a full field agent, which means you may find yourself in some tense situations."
Born down in a dead man's town
"Your record says you're very big on service, and I know you were in line for West Point, but I still need to know now if you think you might have problems pulling the trigger in tense situations."
The first kick I took was when I hit the ground
Maria looking into a spot in the air behind Wheeler's shoulder. "If it's a matter of survival, ma'am?"
You end up like a dog that's been beat too much
"Sure. But it may not even be your survival."
Till you spend half your life just covering up
Empty bottles in her memory again.
"Yes," Maria said, quiet enough under the Springsteen that Wheeler had to lean forward to hear her. "I think I could do that, ma'am."
"You're sure?"
February, somebody at West Point admissions made the mistake of calling home.
He was waiting for her after school to tell her all about it.
Asleep on the front room couch later that night.
Empty bottle of Jameson's on the ground.
Everything easier to understand if he'd just been an alcoholic.
He only ever drank to celebrate a victory.
She was the only person he ever seemed to beat.
Him face down on a threadbare cushion.
Testing the weight of the bottle.
Back of his head visible through thinning hair.
Snoring.
So easy it was gift wrapped.
Wondering at the last if the bottle was heavy enough.
Stepping back the hardest thing she'd done.
Throwing the bolt on her bedroom door.
Huddled up under thinning sheets, cold against her knee through the hole in the Goodwill sweatpants.
Shaking.
Sweating despite the cold.
Knowing for the first time what the bolt was for.
"Positive, ma'am," said Hill.
Maria Hill and S.H.I.E.L.D. ©2014 (and points before and beyond) by Marvel, Disney, whoever.
Lyrics from "Born in the U.S.A." ©1984 Bruce Springsteen.
As ever, feel free to point out any factual errors in the comments and I'll correct them in the next update.
One larger note: the Marvel multiverse designation for the MCU is Earth-199999. This story takes place in Earth-199999-B. Or C. Or possibly even D. The specific variations will make themselves known in later chapters. For now, just know that anything Marvel's made or announced after the first season of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. - plots, projects, or casting announcements - will not automatically apply here.