NOTES: Mild violence and moderate angst in this section.
And Baby Makes Eight
- Part V -
Seven days is more than enough time to find someone if you know how.
Call it unconstitutional, unfair, abuse of power, or sheer, unrepentant nepotism. Maria doesn't give a shit. Someone has her daughter and is using her as pawn in a game where Earth could be the stakes.
"It works, but the ride's really rough," Jane Foster says, her gaze troubled. "Thor said it made him sick and he's used to it. Are you sure you want to do this?"
"Have a daughter, have her taken away from you, and then ask that question again." Maria keeps her voice cold, because if she doesn't, she'll lose it. Her daughter – her baby girl – in the hands of—But she can't let herself think about that. Can't let herself think that the Avengers made a target out of her daughter.
She'll think about it – feel about it, deal with it – later. Right now, she has a job to do, and a god to confront.
Oh Jesus, she hopes she's up to this.
"Thank you for this."
"Go get Pippa back." Jane says, and there's compassion and concern in her face as she starts the initiating sequence for the transfer between worlds.
Then there's nothing but lightning and the sensation of being stretched before her whole body vibrates like a massage chair. Maria feels vaguely dizzy for a moment as it feels like everything around her is tearing apart, but she keeps her eyes open because if she's going to be sick, she's going to see what's coming at her.
Nausea only lasts a moment, though. Her breath catches as the universe tears past her, around her, through her. Shimmering, sheeting light writhes along tunnelling brightness, leaving twisting darkness seared against her brain. Stars float like candle lanterns in the river of space, and something tugs her body on and on and on, leading through the emptiness of space that maybe isn't so empty after all until—
Solidity beneath her feet. Radiant solidity beneath her feet, glowing with a light that's never been seen on Earth.
Solid ground. The Rainbow Bridge.
A little dizziness persists, but nausea clutches briefly and fades at once. Calibrated for humans, Maria thinks as she stares out across dark water to a shimmering city.
Movement to her right. Maria turns and looks up into the golden eyes of a helmed and armoured man, as tall and forbidding as Commander Fury at his most intimidating.
"Heimdall."
"Lieutenant Hill. You have come to ask about your daughter." It's not a question. "Asgard cannot intervene in a matter of Midgard."
Maria takes a deep breath. There are stories told of mortals who went up against the gods. Very few of those stories turned out well for the mortals.
She's determined this is going to be one of the few.
"That's not what was said when Loki led an attack on Earth," Maria responds. "Or when Sif and the Warriors Three came to warn Thor of Loki's actions. Even thousands of years ago, when the Frost Giants attacked our world, Odin hardly sat on his hands and did nothing."
"Yet these were matters of worlds, not the taking of a single child."
"And yet the taking of a single child is what started the chain of events leading to our current predicament," Maria says with all the cool and calm she can summon when pointing the finger of accusation at a being so far removed from humanity as to be termed a god. "A moment's compassion on the part of Odin has caused grief untold – to both Asgard and Earth."
"By this argument you would claim that Asgard owes you?"
Maria looks towards the great city. A distant figure strides along the rainbow bridge, distinctive by the way he swings his arms, and the way his hair gleams beneath the brightness of the starry skies.
"I would argue that my daughter using Mjolnir's handle as a teething toy suggests Asgard's non-interventionist policy is a failure. And I'm not asking for a platoon of Valkyries – although I wouldn't say no. All I need is my daughter's location."
She's careful not to make it sound like a plea. Even if it is. Her patience and her calm are running out, and without Asgardian help, she doesn't have much hope of finding Pippa without revealing her hand. As it is, going to Dr. Foster's lab was a risk, but one she had to take.
There were people back in S.H.I.E.L.D. counselling her not to risk Pippa's life – to stay tight and not endanger her daughter. Everyone seemed to have an opinion about what Maria should do. By the time she managed to make an escape, she'd had her fill of well-meaning advice, awkward sympathy, and veiled satisfaction.
And then she'd had to deal with the Avengers.
It's taken everything she had to get through the last twenty-four hours – all the self-control and calm she'd developed and fostered through the years of her father's bitterness and anger, all the patience she'd schooled herself to in her training with the marines and S.H.I.E.L.D..
Don't risk Pippa. Don't risk your daughter's life.
The problem is that it's too late for warnings. She put Pippa in harm's way when she let the Avengers into her life. She made her daughter a target when she let Stark make Pippa his heir and didn't fight it tooth and nail down to the last clause. She let herself become complacent, assured, stupid.
And the price might be Pippa's life – or worse, Pippa's faith in the world.
Maria wants nothing more than to curl up in a ball and mourn at the unfairness of the universe. She can't. Her daughter needs her and Maria doesn't intend to fail that. And if this is what she needs to do to get Pippa back…
Thor strides up. "Lieutenant Hill. What has happened?"
"Pippa's been kidnapped."
The air grows thunderous, pressure building in Thor's anger. "Who dares?"
"We don't know. Yet." Maria doesn't need to turn her head as a faint ozonic crackle heralds the arrival of someone else through Dr. Foster's portal. She knows who followed her even before his hand brushes her shoulder blade and barely turns her head to acknowledge him. "You shouldn't have come."
"It was me or Tony."
"You got him to agree to that?"
"Sort of. Bruce threatened to sit on him as the Hulk."
"And that worked?"
"No. But it gave me and Natasha a headstart. She's not coming," Steve adds.
"At least one of you has sense."
Thor looks at Heimdall. "Is she alive?"
"If I knew, I should not be telling them – or you," the guardian says, grave and steady. "This is not the way things are done."
"It is what is right!"
Heimdall doesn't flinch at Thor's anger. "I stand here and see many things which are not right. I cannot change them all."
"But you can change this one." Maria says, stepping forward, away from the heat of Steve at her back. Comforting as his presence is, she wishes he hadn't come. He distracts her, and Pippa can't afford that. "You can tell me where my daughter is, Heimdall. That's all I want."
"Earth is owed this," Steve adds. "For returning Loki and the Tesseract to Asgard. For the trouble Loki caused us which has made us a target."
"And who, then, was it who made Philippa Hill a target, Steve Rogers?" Heimdall looks pointedly from Steve to Thor and back to Maria again. "All acts echo in the void, and what seems small today may grow into a great thing tomorrow."
Maria presses her lips together. "So you won't help us?"
Heimdall looks at Thor. "Will you sanction this?"
"I have put her in danger," Thor says after a moment, and the angry helplessness in his voice echoes Maria's own frustration and fury. "I cannot stand aside and do nothing. Seek her and find her and if there is a price to be reckoned for this, I will pay it or owe it."
"You may have to stand aside and do nothing," Steve says grimly as Heimdall turns to look out across the void. "Our hands are tied – so are S.H.I.E.L.D.'s. It's a condition of Pippa's safety."
The air around them crackles with Thor's fury. "But that… Maria's hands are not tied?"
"Oh, they're tied." Maria tells him. "But S.H.I.E.L.D. has contingencies in place for this situation. Not all of them are known to Tony Stark and his pet AI."
She's worked with S.H.I.E.L.D. for over a third of her life, she's met and dealt with plenty of people, and more than a few of them owe her personal favours. It's going to be messy and dangerous, but if she has to use up every last bit of credit she has to get her daughter back, then it'll be worth it.
It has to be worth it.
"You have any assistance we may render," Thor promises, and although Maria suspects it will be an empty promise if Odin chooses otherwise. Which is why she'll take what she can get as fast as it's given her. Pippa's location to start with and any assistance thereafter.
She doubts it'll be as much as she wants, but she's not going to turn away any help – even the help of the gods.
Heimdall stares out into the void, seeing whatever it is he sees. Maria knows he keeps an eye on Earth, because of Thor, Jane, and the Tesseract, but also because Earth may be small potatoes in the cosmic scheme of things, but the Avengers are a wild card that nobody – not even the Asgard – can predict.
A hand smooths across her back, sliding up, fingers curling over her shoulder. She glances up at Steve and doesn't know if she wants to break away or turn into the comfort he's offering.
Safer not to react. Safer not to give in.
"I have found her."
"Where?" Steve asks.
Maria braces herself for the answer she dreads more than where. She knows what happens to too many kidnapping victims when a ransom is demanded. "Is she alive?"
Heimdall turns and the gold eyes burn with knowledge. "Yes."
–
Keep the Avengers, S.H.I.E.L.D., and Stark Industries leashed…
Maria has no idea where the line is drawn between using S.H.I.E.L.D. resources and using resources she encountered while with S.H.I.E.L.D.. But she can't do this alone, she needs help.
And she needs to do this.
Dr. Foster's project was on the deep books – the ones that they learned to keep off the helicarrier networks after Stark hacked them. Using her to get to Asgard and locating Pippa was low-risk. Getting the Avengers involved is not.
At least it's only Steve, Thor, and Natasha right now, with Dr. Foster standing to the side looking worried. Even if the guys are being as bullheaded as Stark and Pym can be.
"You're not doing this alone!"
Thor is more reasonable – at least on the surface. "It would not be wise to attempt this by yourself, Maria."
"I won't be doing this alone," Maria retorts. She has contacts outside of S.H.I.E.L.D. and favours owed her by people with useful skillsets. She's going to call in whatever markers she has to call in. "I'm saying that you're not coming with me."
"The hell I'm not!"
Her temper snaps, stretched to breaking point. "The hell you are! I don't need you – any of you – endangering my daughter any more than you already have!"
"What's that supposed to mean?"
There's a dangerous look in Steve's eyes. It gives Maria a moment's pause, but she's been silent too long.
"It means exactly what you think it means, Steve!" The words pour out of her in a fall of fear and frustration, and she can't stop them, doesn't want to, won't. "This is why I didn't want you – any of you – involved in her life! This is why I fought you and Stark and Banner at the start. And you wouldn't let me back away. You pushed because you wanted something you shouldn't have had in the first place. And after a while I gave up trying while because I can't fight all of you all the time and with everything else going on it was easier for me to just give in. And now someone has Pippa – has taken her away and will think nothing of killing her - for no other reason than because she's a useful hostage to the Avengers' good behaviour!"
The truth hangs in the air between them, the ugly root of why Pippa is gone. The Avengers loved her and in loving her, they made her a target.
Steve's expression is frozen – helplessness, grief, anger, hurt. Thor bows his head. And Natasha's expression is carefully blank – her 'hiding' face, the one she defaults to when she doesn't want to show her emotions.
And Maria looks at them and, for that trembling, awful moment, hates them and all superheroes.
"This isn't helping Pippa," Jane Foster says briskly after a moment, her voice cool and authoritative. And Maria is reminded once again that strength is not always physical. "Thor, you'll go with Natasha back to the Tower. From the sound of it, they're going to need your help with Tony and Bruce. Maria, it's not up to me, but I'd take Steve. You'll need at least one card you know in your deck and he'll be…less obvious."
Disbelief locks her tongue before she chokes on something that's not quite hysteria. "He'll be less obvious?"
Dr. Foster's glance flicks to Thor, big and dangerous and larger-than-life in spite of being more or less the same size as Steve. It says everything that needs to be said.
"We can dye Steve's hair," says Natasha, coming in cool and composed now that she's had a moment to think. "We'll activate his Life Model Decoy. And," she says with a hint of humour, "at least you know he can take orders."
The glance she shoots Steve might be a warning or it might be an encouragement. Maria doesn't know, doesn't care. Her outburst drained her, all she wants now is to find her daughter and go home and never speak to any of the Avengers again.
"Fine," she says, and looks to Steve. He's stepped back from the edge, that moment of anger stifled under the soldier's face. "You come with me, you follow my lead, and you take my orders. Understand?"
His lips press together, tight and white. "Understood."
He walks from the room, spine ramrod straight, shoulders back, like a soldier sent to do an unpleasant duty by a commander he'd rather see dead. Thor goes after him, a troubled expression on his face. Dr. Foster looks like she wants to say something, then nods at Maria and follows them out.
Part of Maria wishes she hadn't said what she did. But they needed to know. Especially Steve, who's doted on Pippa these last few years with a tenderness that Maria's watched with no small amount of envy. Her own father never cared much about his eldest daughter, and she grew up believing that she wasn't worth that attention or care.
And, yes, Maria took advantage of the Avengers' interest to give Pippa the family that she couldn't give her daughter alone, so she's as much to blame as they are.
Natasha's watching her, a steady, wary gaze.
"If you have something to say, spit it out."
"You were pretty hard on him."
"Yes. I was." And it hurt her to say that to Steve. Because he's...Steve. And because Maria knows it's her daughter whom he's in love with, but he makes it easy to forget. "But this isn't about his feelings." Or about her own. "It's about Pippa and getting her back."
And they both know it's not just about Steve.
Now Natasha's lashes drop, a moment's grief and acceptance before they rise again and the Black Widow is back and in control, all business. "I'll get Steve's Life Model Decoy into action on the helicarrier. Thor and I will run what interference we can on Stark and Bruce."
"Thank you."
"Good luck."
Maria heads for the door, already calculating what they'll need. This base has one of the older Quinjet models – they'll need that to get to where they're going. And while she's on her way, she'll need to start calling her contacts. The sooner the better. She has at least two people in mind for this job, although hopefully she'll only need one of them. Hopefully, they're free and not busy right now.
"Maria?" She turns at the door to look back at Natasha. "What happens afterwards?"
This time she holds her tongue long enough to formulate a kinder response than the one she gave Steve. "I haven't decided."
But she has. They both know she has.
If they get Pippa back, Maria can't let this happen again.
–
They have a system for contact if S.H.I.E.L.D. communications get compromised. The protocols exist nowhere but in their heads, which means they can't be hacked – at least, not technologically.
"We're going in."
"The dogs are straining their leashes. I don't know how much longer they'll hold though."
"I just need twenty-four hours one way or the other." Then, because she can't quite resist, she inquires, "How's the Buffy-bot?"
Fury snorts. "The term 'freaking me out' might adequately describe my unease with it, but then again, it might not." He pauses, and in the silence Maria hears the things her boss won't say. "Hunt hard, Hill."
"Believe me, sir, I plan to."
–
Dark hair makes him look...different.
Steve isn't sure it's a good different. The man in the mirror looks dangerous. Or maybe that's the disillusionment in his eyes and the bitter lines around his mouth.
This is why I didn't want you – any of you – involved in her life!
Out in the room, Maria's stretched out on the bed, 'resting' with her face to the wall, unmoving, unspeaking, unforgiving. Outside the hotel, in the street, the constant stream of cars and motorcycles and horns buzzes along in the endless heat.
Steve's in here, in the cool and grubby tile of the tiny bathroom, barefoot, shirt off, dyeing his hair and staring at his reflection and wanting nothing so much as to hurt someone. Preferably himself.
If Maria's not entirely right, she's not entirely wrong, either.
Yes, the Avengers made Pippa a target by loving her. Unwitting, perhaps, and with the best of intentions, but a target all the same. And do the intentions matter when a little girl's life is at stake?
He doesn't blame Maria for giving him the cold shoulder on the flight over. If their positions had been reversed, he would never have let her on the mission in the first place.
He knows she doesn't want him here. And he knows what comes after they rescue Pippa.
Stark wanted to push the boundaries, wanted to hunt down whoever was behind this. Pepper and JARVIS stopped him – barely. Pepper locked him out of Stark Industries, and while he argued with her, JARVIS shut down.
Steve's never seen Tony Stark stripped of his technology and power, and gutted to the heart.
He hopes to God he never does again.
And after they've got Pippa back – alive and whole and safe, God-willing – Steve knows what comes next. It was in Natasha's eyes when she looked at Maria as they climbed into the Quinjet. It was in Thor's eyes as they gripped forearms and told each other to be safe. It's been in Maria's eyes every time she looked at him for the last twelve hours, flying across an endless ocean.
"There are unspoken rules in this business," Fury said when Steve called in to say he was going to follow Maria. "Stay distant. Don't get involved. Don't make targets out of the people you love." The old man sounded tired, even more worn down than after Coulson's death. "Sometimes it's easy to remember. And other times you forget. Until you're reminded why."
You pushed because you wanted something you shouldn't have had in the first place.
With his hands braced against the sink, Steve looks at his reflection – at the man who stares back at him. Not a man he recognises at first, not instantly a hero. Not even the 'little guy' whom Erskine recruited into the SSR, and turned into Captain America. No, he sees someone else, someone who put a little girl in danger because he wanted something he should have known better than to hope he could have.
Because – irony of ironies – he wanted to be seen as the man rather than the hero.
He'd been spoiled in Peggy and Bucky – two people who knew him as 'Steve' first, and only saw him as Captain America later. Since then – in his days with the USO as the trained monkey, with the SSR chasing Schmidt, in the days after his defrosting and the Chitauri and the Avengers, Steve's never been anything less than Steve Rogers, Captain America.
Wasn't that the problem in his relationship with Sharon? The eternal, undeniable pressure of expectation. Yes, she saw the man, her friend and lover, but he was the hero to her before he was ever Steve.
To Pippa, he was just 'Steve'.
Innocence, Bruce said after Natasha's revelation and disappointment. She doesn't know who we are; she doesn't care what we can do. She doesnt' see that part of us yet, although someday—someday she will—
They'll remember what it was like to have that innocent trust – to be seen and loved as ordinary men and women when nobody else around them looked at them as anything less than heroes.
Dear Lord, it's going to hurt when Maria shuts them out of Pippa's life – and her own.
But he can't think of that now. Steve pinches at a strand of his hair, testing the colour. He has to rinse out the dye, clean up, and be ready to go in two hours when it's fully dark. They'll be picked up by Maria's contacts, head out to where Pippa's being held – somewhere in this city, apparently – and rescue her.
And then they go home and the heartbreak starts.
Don't think of the aftermath now. Focus on the mission. Get the job done. Get Pippa back, and then let go of what you can't have and learn to deal with it.
As he turns on the tap, he hears something that doesn't sound like a horn or a car, the noises from the next room, or someone clattering down the narrow stairs of this six-storey house. He flips the tap off and listens.
It sounds again - a moan from the next room – like a creature in pain.
He's out through the door and into the narrow room before he thinks about it. On the bed, what was the long line of Maria stretched out has become a curled-up woman, tangled in rough sheets, thrashing wildly against whatever haunts her dreams. Even as Steve crosses the room she twists in the throes of her nightmare. He's not thinking when he grabs her shoulder and tries to shake her awake.
"Maria!"
A gasp and a strangled scream are all the warning he has before his wrist is shoved away and she pushes him into the wall beside the bed. She kicks free of the sheets as he tries to keep his balance and fails, his palms slapping against painted cement to keep himself from falling over completely. Then he doesn't dare move as the click of her gun cocking sounds loud and clear in the sudden quiet within the room.
It's pointed at his heart and, even just woken from sleep and in the clouding dark, her aim is unwavering.
Hysteria bubbles up. Steve wants to laugh – at himself, at the irony of the universe. The last time a woman aimed a gun at him like this and shot, he was already half in love with her.
He passed halfway with Maria a long time ago.
Sometimes Steve wonders about the man who fathered Pippa – an odd sympathy with the faceless, nameless stranger, an obscure jealousy of a man he never knew and never will. Did Maria bemuse and bewilder him, too? Did he wonder that she let him close enough to make love to her? Did he know about the complex, complicated woman she was, or was their relationship casual, off-hand?
Did he know how it felt to have his life in her hands, waiting for her judgement?
Her gaze still seems blurry – the room light's off and it's hard to tell. "Maria?" He's not sure if she sees him, or if she's still stuck in the dream.
Her eyes focus on him. Then she takes a deep breath and lowers the gun. "Steve. God, sorry."
"You were having a nightmare." He watches as she sits heavily down on the edge of the bed. The gun goes back on the bedside table, the safety flicked back on as she relinquishes it. Only then does he feel he can ease himself off the wall and sit down beside her.
"You shouldn't have woken me like that."
"I wasn't thinking."
"I could have shot you." There's no anguish in the statement, just an empty reflection. Almost as if she has nothing left after the tension and strain of the last forty-eight hours.
"You still can if you want," Steve says before he can rein himself in.
Maria gives him a long hard look. "I might hold that in reserve," she says as she looks away. "If we don't get her back."
It's the line of her neck and the break in her voice, the tiredness that shines in her eyes, and the way she's sitting – sagged, as though she's already lost hope.
Steve isn't thinking when he puts his arm around her shoulders, when he presses his cheek against her temple. It's an instinctive move – the need to give human contact, to take human comfort from someone else. Maria doesn't want or need his care – she could survive on her own, without him – but he offers it anyway, because she might accept – and because he wants this, needs this.
She tenses at his touch, stiff and still. Don't push me away, he thinks. Not yet. Please. And then she relaxes against him as though she heard his thought, the breath shuddering in and out of her lungs.
"We'll get her back," he says against her hair. "We will."
After a while the jerky breaths even out, like spent tears, leaving her leaning into him as she's never done in all the years Steve's known her.
It terrifies him – her vulnerability. Because out of all the women in the world, all the people that Steve knows, Maria Hill doesn't let herself be vulnerable with anyone.
Then she turns and looks up at him, her face all sharp planes and angles in the harsh light and hazy dark – proud and complicated and beautiful. He can't see her eyes but he can see her expression. His breath catches as she leans in, then shudders out as she brushes her lips along the line of his jaw.
He shivers, but his face tilts down to her as she reaches his chin.
"Steve?"
"Yes," he says, and he doesn't know if he's answering her question or responding to his name, but his mouth finds hers and coherence is lost.
At first the kiss is tentative, learning the shape and flavour of her. But Maria's mouth is bold and unafraid, and Steve takes up the invitation to step up to her, to match her. Then his hand is somehow full of her hair and the curve of her head, and her palm slides down over his chest where his heart pounds wildly.
He slides a hand up under the back of her cotton tee so his fingers caress her spine. She arches a little, and the thin cotton tee does nothing to disguise the curve of her breast against his shoulder, the nub of her nipple under his palm as his hand drops to her breast, cupping, weighing, stroking.
The bright shrill of her cellphone shatters the moment.
Maria's head rears, and her eyes are wide and horrified as she stares into his face. "I'm—Sorry—I didn't—Excuse me."
She pulls from his grasp and reaches for the cellphone vibrating the nightstand. Takes a moment to compose herself. Answers. "This is Hill."
Steve rests his elbows on his knees, glad he's sitting down because he's not sure his legs could hold him right now.
She sounds all business. All agent.
"We can do an hour. Send me the house layout and I'll review it - you know I don't like going in blind. No, we shouldn't need her yet. More likely after. Yes, we're even after this. All right."
She turns the phone over in her hand for a moment after she's hung up, then looks at Steve. Her gaze is steady, as though she hadn't just been kissing him senseless, their hands all over each other. "You'd better wash out the dye. We're meeting in an hour."
And with that she steps over to her duffle and crouches down to take out her tablet. As though her body isn't still buzzing – as Steve's is – as though nothing happened between them, nor ever will.
Steve's fingers curl in on his empty hands. Everything's hot of a sudden – his skin, his cheeks, the ache beneath his breastbone.
He wants to say something – actually, he wants to say a lot of things, and he wants to demand why me and did it mean anything other than a way to forget.
He's more afraid of the answers she might give.
So he doesn't say anything as he stalks – flees - to the bathroom where the man in the mirror stares back at him with bruised and bitter eyes.
–
Maria can barely breathe in the damp heat of Saigon's night. Her trousers and top are cotton, but the vest buckled over it is heavy armour and she's feeling a little light-headed at the heat..
Across the street, the house looks more or less like the other houses in the street, six storeys tall, painted and gated, with barbed wire around the top of the fence. They've seen dozens of such houses in the streets of Saigon's District 10, and Maria might easily have passed this one without ever guessing Pippa was imprisoned inside.
Soon, baby, she says to her daughter. We're coming for you.
"Military," says a voice in her earpiece, female, French-accented. "Or ex-military. It was sold to foreigners several years ago, but has only been used in the last six months."
"Planning for this," Maria murmurs, standing on the rooftop of the house across the street, staring at the quiet, dark building where her little girl lies curled up in a cold tiled room, scared and alone. So damn close, and yet so far away. "They've been planning for this for a while."
"Probably." The woman on the other end of the line sounds indifferent to the perfidy of a child held hostage against someone else's behaviour. Maria knows better. "I take it you have a plan to keep this from happening again?"
"Yes."
"You make me glad I'm not S.H.I.E.L.D., Lieutenant."
Maria doesn't comment on that. "Are your people in place?"
"Nearly. We encountered some unexpected technology, but…" the voice pauses, then continues calmly, "it's being dealt with. We'll move in on the signal."
The comm falls silent, and Maria wraps her arms around herself and promises her daughter that there will be blood to pay for this.
"You're sure she's there?"
"Xi'an says she is."
"And you trust her intel?"
She doesn't look down at Steve, crouched in the shadows. She's been careful not to look at him since they left the hotel. "She owes me for helping her locate her siblings a dozen years ago," Maria murmurs. "I don't like her, but I trust her."
The silence between them is underpinned by the steady noise below, full of honking motorcycles, cars, and the occasional van, moving in a steady and endless flow of traffic through the streets of the city.
"Are we going to talk about it?"
Maria doesn't want to. Not now, not ever. Not before they have Pippa back, and not after when he needs to start keeping his distance. But she supposes she owes him this much. "We kissed. It's not the end of the world."
"Or the start of anything?"
She wants to laugh hysterically and she wants to weep. He's become a friend in the years since he first found her outside the communications van, dizzy with the knowledge that she was pregnant. In the last year or two, she started thinking of him as more than just a friend – a co-partner in parenting her daughter.
Maria always considered that the polite way of saying it is that her daughter's in love with him and so is she.
But Steve never said anything to her or made a move towards her that could be construed as anything less than friendship and a shared love for Pippa.
It's telling that it's only when the prospect of her daughter being taken away looms that he wants more from her.
And yes, she comes as a package deal with Pippa, but it's not wrong to be wanted for herself, is it?
"No."
"So that was just a diversion? Something to do while waiting?"
"I don't want you like that." It's truthful enough as it goes. She doesn't want Steve like that – hurried and frantic, in the dark, out of place. A hotel room – she notes the cliché – in desperation for her daughter.
Yes, she would have settled for it, but it's not what she wants.
"Good." Steve says. "Because I don't want you like that, either."
Her breath doesn't quite catch. But the cool cruelty is unexpected – especially from Steve. "Well, then—"
"I don't want you as a pity fuck, Maria. But I want you."
And the way he says it, so calm – too calm – is suddenly more terrifying than any show of temper or visible anger. Because he's angry and he means this – or he thinks he does.
"You..." ...want me. She can't get the words out. Saying it might make it real. And this isn't. Can't be.
She's stressed. She's tired. She's overwrought. And she's so close to getting her daughter back and never ever letting her out of her sight again that she can't think what he was trying to say, because he didn't just say...that.
Apparently, though, he did.
"I'm in love with you," he says gently. "I have been for a while."
"Because of Pippa."
He huffs with exasperation and disbelief. "I don't know whether to be angry that you'd think that of me," he says, "or that you'd think that of yourself—"
"You think I'm going to take her away—"
Steve interrupts. "I'm not trying to control you, Maria! You'll do what you'll have to for Pippa's sake, and the Avengers will live with it. I just... After this evening – after tonight – whatever happens, I wanted you to know. I love you." She can't see his expression clearly but there might be a twist to his mouth. "Reciprocation isn't required."
Maria stares at him with her cheeks burning up. There's a sudden ache in her chest. Unexpected. "I don't—"
Around the corner, the pop-pop-fizz of fireworks begins – the signal to move in on the house. But as Steve scrambles to his feet and reaches for the grapple shooter, Maria's earpiece buzzes.
"Red alert! We've been compromised. They're on the move."
"Red alert," she tells Steve, and his eyes widen, but he doesn't delay.
The grapple is shoots high and fast into the stonework of the other building, and Steve moves briskly towards her. Her arms go around his neck, and his arm slips around her back as they step off the roof edge and plunge towards the ground and the other building – but also across the thirty-yard gap of the street as the grapple reels in.
They're going to miss, they're going to miss, they're going to-
Steve's boots clang on the metal railing of the second-story balcony and his soles scrabble for purchase. There's a moment when the ten yard fall behind pulls at them, dragging them backwards. Somehow, he lunges forward, and they land on the balcony tiles, uneven. Then he twists them both around, angling their momentum so his shoulder takes the brunt of the impact.
It would hurt – they weren't moving slowly – but the instant they're steady on their feet, he pushes her away. "Go get her." And Maria goes because their priority is her daughter and he knows it.
He would do this for anyone, she tells herself.
She shoots the lock in and yanks the dooropen. Beyond, the small living space is crowded with four men in various stages of suiting up.
Two are dead before they realise they're being attacked from behind. Maria wings a third as the fourth calls a warning out the door. She takes a step to the right and snatches up a mug, tossing it at the fourth man as a distraction so she can get her shot lined up.
There's a scream out in the corridor – a shrill, childish shriek of outrage and pain and protest – and Maria's heart clenches. Pippa!
Maternal instinct starts her across the room and the bullet clips her side, a glancing blow that spins her sideways, throwing her aim off. The next one will get her in the chest and her daughter— His head explodes in bright blood and brain matter – a headshot. Steve stomps on the knuckles of the downed third man scrabbling for a weapon, and reaches over to haul her up. "Your side—"
"Grazed," she says as she uses his hand and his solidity to propel her up and through the door. "Pippa—"
Her daughter's shrieks haven't stopped, but their cadence is verbal now – screams and protests, a couple of sobbing curses. They're coming from the room at the other end of the hallway and stairwell running through the middle of the narrow buiding.
There's fighting everywhere – upstairs, downstairs, and on the stairwell, both ways. Maria's earpiece buzzes with orders and calls, the voice in it steady and informative. An armoured man lunges at her as she reaches the stairwell and she dodges sideways, eluding his grasp and flattening herself against the wall as she side-steps by, leaving him for Steve.
Behind her, the crack of of fist against flesh is both sickening and satisfying.
Maria plunges through the bead-hanging across the doorway of the last room – a kitchen, barely lit – and slips on something wet and oily, careening to the side. A yelp escapes her lips as she lands on her butt and bashes her head against a cupboard. Maybe it saves her life – several shots echo in the small space before there's a click-click of empty chambers and a curse.
"Mommy!"
Her breath catches, one blur-swift gaze taking in her little girl being hauled up as a human shield - pigtails and big blue eyes in a round, frightened face. "Pippa!"
The man draws a knife from his belt, shining steel. He flips it upright – a slicing grip, not a throwing one.
Endgame.
Maria can't take a shot with Pippa in the way. Steve's still dealing with the one in the stairwell. And the knife is already coming in for the cut.
"Xi'an, now!"
Too late.
The man yelps with pain. Pippa screams. He drops her like a rag doll. There's blood – God! So much blood! And something crackles through the air like a mental storm, psychic lightning earthing in unprepared and unfamiliar minds.
The man makes an 'urk' noise as Xi'an Coy Manh uses her particular gift to control him for a brief moment in time. Scrambling across the grubby tile to her daughter, Maria gets hold of Pippa's ankle as the man collapses, and pulls her out of the way as the man comes down heavy and hard.
And Pippa fights, screaming, because she's scared and hurt and in pain, and she doesn't know it's her mom who has her.
Maria drags her up, dodges little fists, inexpertly wielded, and her relief at the life in those punches is so strong her voice breaks, "Pippa! Pippa, it's mommy!"
"Mommy?"
And then Maria's back is against the kitchen cabinetry and her arms are full of her daughter. Bloody from the cut that only sliced across her forehead, sobbing with pain and relief, but alive. Thank you, Maria tells the universe, tears stinging her eyes. Thank you.
Beads clatter noisily, and Steve skids through, managing to keep his feet where Maria didn't. His gaze falls on Pippa and the blood. His face darkens. Two strides and he hauls up the man groaning in the corner, shoving him back against the door with near-effortless strength and a terrifying brutality. Maria hears the door behind the man crack with the force of the slam.
"Who hired you? Who do you work for?"
"Hill?"
"We have her," Maria says, quickly. "Situation under control—" Sort of. Steve thumps the man against the back of the door again and the man's limbs thud limply against the wood. "I need you up here ASAP, Xi'an. Steve! Steve!"
He turns, and his expression isn't one she ever thought to see on Captain America's face.
We all cast shadows, Phil said in one of her first clear memories of him from her training days. We're human, after all.
Did Phil include Steve Rogers in that estimation? Maria doesn't know and never will. But what she sees in Steve's face now is not something that she's ever seen in him before.
Not an international icon right now, not a hero, just a man pushed past his limits and struggling against the tide of his own darker nature.
And maybe it says something about her that her daughter is bloody in her arms and his hand is wrapped around another man's throat and the words that bubble up in her mouth have everything and nothing to do with this moment, but Maria isn't going to think about that.
She needs to tip the balance with something that matters, so she shifts her arms and nudges Pippa's head up.
"She's okay," she says to Steve, letting him see Pippa move for herself, not dead, not seriously hurt. "You can stop."
Pippa is whimpering in her arms, the cut is still bleeding, and she seems to be cradling her arm, but she looks through her tears and sees. "Steve?"
He drops the man in a heap, takes two steps towards her with his arms outstretched, and stops as though seeing his hands for the first time. The beads at the door rattle as Xi'an pushes them back and takes in the tableau in one long glance.
Steve begins to turn and look at the man lying limp and unmoving in the corner.
"Steve!" Maria uses every ounce of authority she has in her at this moment to draw his attention. "I need you to see to Pippa. Please."
He doesn't quite fall to his knees beside her, but it's close. And Pippa makes nononono mamamama noises as Maria draws away.
"I'm here, baby, I'm not going anywhere. Steve will look after you."
"Hey," he says, and his voice is hoarse. "We've been looking for you so hard..."
It takes some doing to detach Pippa, and Maria doesn't want to let her daughter go anymore than her daughter wants to let go. But this is necessary, and she's the only one who can do it. And Steve needs this – her trust, her daughter's trust, the anchor of belief that will hold him fast at this turning point.
As she gets up, Maria lets her fingers brush his cheek, feels him turn his head a little, prolonging the contact for just a moment. Then she walks over to look down at the man who tried to kill her daughter.
Steve broke his neck, but he's still alive.
His eyes stare up at her, terror and panic etched into his face.
Xi'an is crouched down by the unmoving body. "Paralysis, from the neck down," she says succinctly. "You wish his employer?"
"Everything he knows."
"Not much time to get it. The cops will be on their way – our fireworks didn't quite hide the gunfire." The Vietnamese-born woman closes her eyes, and a moment later the man groans. "He is yours."
Interrogation is never a nice business; Maria has never claimed to be a nice person. Still, this is less fraught than the usual demand for answers – the uncertainty of confession under duress, the need to strip the informant down to their bare bones and then question them again – a process that can take hours, if not days.
With Xi'an Coy Manh in control of his mind, this interrogation has no lies and no deceptions, and takes all of two minutes. Names, contacts, everything the guy knows pours out of his mouth until Maria has what she needs to track the perpetrator down.
"Kill him or leave him?"
Maria looks down at him, then over where Steve is climbing to his feet with Pippa tearful in his arms, a bandage over the cut on her forehead and her arm bound up as though it's been broken.
"With a knife," she tells Xi'an. "No more shooting." And she doesn't want Pippa to see this.
Xi'an tilts her head. "No knife needed."
And, just like that, the man ceases breathing.
Maria winces, but meets the challenge in Xi'an's gaze before turning away.
Pippa nearly leaps at her from Steve's arms. And Maria hisses lightly at the kick she gets in bruised ribs, hugs her daughter tight, and promises that she's never letting go. There'll be nightmares for both of them after this, she has no doubt. Still, for the moment, it's enough to have Pippa alive and clinging to her.
"Mommy!" Pippa sobs into her shoulder. "I hurt! I wanna go home!"
"We're going, baby. We're going." Maria meets Steve's gaze over her daughter's shoulder, the shadows playing across his face. "You ready?"
He meets her eyes – just a moment. Then his gaze falls away. "Yeah."
She'd touch him, reassure him, but her arms are full of her daughter and they need to get out of here fast.
"Then let's go home."
tbc