Rewritten 2018
Make You Feel My Love ~Book II~
Disclaimer: I do not own The Winter Soldier movie! All rights go to Marvel. All I own is my own characters and their stories.
~Chapter 12~
SHIELD compromised?
With her arms wrapped around his waist and the cool evening air of Washington slapping against her cheeks, she and Steve rode the motorcycle back to the apartment. They had spent their the day with Sam who showed them some new cafés along with a small park not too far away from where Maria and Steve lived. In that very park, the three of them had spent at least three hours simply sitting down in the grass, talking and having a blast.
In the end, Maria concluded that she really liked Sam and that she never had felt more inclined to call someone again after they had said goodbye. Sam Wilson was a man true to his words, never once seeming to tell a single lie about anything, and he knew how to be sarcastic; two qualities that Maria loved in friends.
Not to mention that he seemed to be one of the few people around nowadays that made Steve genuinely laugh, which just made Maria adore Sam even more.
When Steve stopped the engines of the motorcycle and placed his feet back on the ground, steadying the bike for Maria to be able to climb off it without any problems, she couldn't help but feel like everything was too quiet. Of course, it was quite late at night and the next day was a workday meaning people had prepared to go to bed early. However, this was Washington and there were always people out and about. Instead there was almost no one there. The air around them even seemed heavy and too silent for a normal evening. She gave Steve a look when he climbed off the bike too, earning a nod of his head.
"I feel it too," he said quietly before grabbing her hand and dragging her to the entrance.
Maria watched him fumble with the keys for a while before opening the door and leading them inside the building. Once inside, Steve seemed to relax a little bit with the walls now protecting them from most attacks, but neither were yet relaxed. And they wouldn't be either until they were back in their own apartment safely.
"Did you set up the trick?" asked Steve quietly as they started to climb the stairs.
"Yeah, I did," replied Maria, walking behind Steve.
On the way up, they briefly encountered Sharon. Steve and she exchanged a greeting before she walked on down the stairs, offering Maria a smile as well. She couldn't help but feel a little awkward around Sharon though since after she had seen Maria half naked in the corridor. However, that didn't mean that she didn't smile back at Sharon in an as polite way as she could.
"How do we see it?" he asked as they arrived at the floor where Steve's apartment was.
"Not until we're inside," said Maria, taking the keys from Steve and leaving one of her daggers in his hands instead.
He gripped it, even though he looked slightly confused by how she had managed to carry it around without people noticing; without him noticing. He watched as she carefully placed the key in the keyhole, turning it, opened the door… and immediately looked down at the floor, seeing the small string of cotton already lying there. It was an old trick that her grandmother had taught her;
"Place a small string in the doorway," she would say; "so that, when it's opened, it will fall down to the floor without the intruder noticing. That way, if the string is already on the floor when you come back home, you know if someone's entered the house without permission."
With a deep breath, she looked back at Steve, nodding her head at him while her eyes told him what she now knew; someone had entered their home. He seemed to tense up and become aggravated, though he stayed calm and simply nodded his head back at her.
"I'll go around," he said quietly before shoving the dagger back into her hands, a confused look on Maria's face as she was sure that the apartment did not have a backdoor. "Be careful."
And with that, he walked away from her and to the window on the other end of the hallway. She blinked a couple of times as she watched him climb out before she realized what he had meant. Instead of the backdoor, he had meant to climb around from the outside and enter through a window. Rolling her eyes at how slowly her brain was functioning, she turned around and entered the apartment, her dagger in her right hand.
She closed the door behind her a little louder than usual, just so that the intruder could know that someone was there and that he was about to have to face two Avengers. At least, Maria assumed that there was only one as there had only been one that last time.
From inside, music could be heard playing and Maria recognized it as one of Steve's favourite songs. Slowly and silently, she started to make her way further into the apartment and towards the living room where she knew the music was coming from. She met up with Steve right before the doorway into the living room and she felt relieved about the fact that he had managed to get a hold of his shield. He gestured to her that there was one man in there and she nodded her head. Exactly what the different hand gestures meant was something she had learned over the last couple days from Steve, wanting to prepare her to go out on missions with him, something that she had been ecstatic about then but something she couldn't think about at that moment.
When Steve pressed his back against the wall, peeking out into the living room, his tensed stance relaxed slightly and Maria breathed out. If Steve didn't see the person as a threat, then Maria didn't either.
"I don't remember giving you a key," said Steve as he stepped out into the living room, Maria following him.
She widened her eyes as she saw Fury sitting in the armchair, leaning back into it as if he had been trying to fall asleep before they had arrived. Although it was dark, Maria could see that he looked awfully tired and she knew that, if he was at their home, there was something wrong.
"You really think I'd need one?" asked Fury, groaning slightly as he sat up straight in the chair. "My wife kicked me out," he said, causing Maria to furrow her brow as she glanced over at Steve.
"I didn't know you were married," he replied, stating the same thing that Maria wanted to state.
"There are a lot of things you don't know about me," replied Fury simply and by the way Steve tensed up and sighed quietly, Maria knew that it bothered Steve that Nick had secrets.
Steve had talked about it earlier, about how Fury had given Natasha a different mission without him knowing about it which endangered the entire mission. If she had read Steve's face correctly, Fury's words had hit a nerve. If there was something Steve didn't like, then it was when people lied to him.
"I know Nick, that's the problem," he replied, putting his shield back down against the wall with yet another sigh.
Maria, however, kept her dagger in her hand, seeing how Fury seemed to look a little longer at the now abandoned shield than he should have, almost as if he didn't want him to put it down. This alarmed Maria slightly and she didn't let her guard down.
When Steve turned on the lights, Maria's worries about something being wrong were confirmed as the both of them saw Fury's wounds and bruises. Something had definitely happened to him and Maria doubted that it had been his wife. Yes, women were strong, but this was Nick Fury and if someone attacked him, he would not let that person beat him for long enough to create such deep wounds. Something else had happened and the grip on her dagger tightened.
Right when Steve was about to ask where the wounds came from, Fury turned the lights off again, gesturing to the both of them to keep quiet about it. He quickly turned his gaze down to a phone that was resting in his hands before he started to type something. Steve looked over at Maria, shifting so that he was standing next to her, his hand brushing against hers. The look in his eyes told her enough to understand what he was trying to ask her without saying anything, which Fury had told them not to do, and she nodded her head; silently telling him that she was alright and prepared for a fight.
When Fury turned the phone for the two of them to see, Maria grasped Steve's hand as she read what it said.
"Ears everywhere."
"I'm sorry to have to do this," started Fury, turning back to the phone before starting to type once more; "but I had no place else to crash."
"SHIELD compromised."
Maria's lips parted slightly in shock before she bit down on her bottom lip, worry spreading out into her veins like a poison, eating away at her courage. SHIELD had been one of a few things in her life that had helped her to turn her life around. If they were compromised, she'd lost something that meant a lot to her. Yes, she was part of the Avengers, but would the Avengers be the same without SHIELD? Wasn't it through SHIELD that the Avengers, some of the Avengers at least, got their missions?
Oh but her own selfish worries were not the main part for why she and Steve should be worrying. SHIELD had information. Information about everything. They existed in places Maria didn't even know they existed and could pull strings Maria didn't even know could be pulled.
And they had weapons that, if it fell into the wrong hands, could cause the end of the world. So, it wasn't just her own life that was at stake to be changed if SHIELD fell, it was also everybody else's lives on the world.
Pushing those thoughts away, she focused on the one thing she knew she should be focusing on: Fury and the explanation of how SHIELD was compromised. Surely, he was going to tell them?
"Who else knows about your wife?" asked Steve.
"Just my friends," he replied, showing to the three of them his phone again.
"The three of us."
"Is that what we are?" asked Steve, his tone causing Maria to glance over at him.
With the recent news, Maria had hoped that Steve could put aside what had happened earlier so that he could focus on what was at hand.
"That's up to you," he simply replied, having stood up by now, walking a little closer to Steve and Maria.
The next thing that happened, happened so fast that Maria barely had any chance to actually react to it. Instead, Steve reacted for her by pushing her behind him.
Nick's painful cry along with the sound of a gun going off three times echoed in her mind. The thumps of a body could be heard and Maria glanced around Steve's body to see Nick now lying on the floor. Three bullet holes were visible in the wooden floor in front of him. They had gone straight through him.
They both wasted no time in running up to Fury, Maria grabbing his right hand while Steve grabbed his left hand. As if the both of them had talked about it through a telepathic link, they started to drag Fury's body in a synchronized way, pulling him to "safety" behind another wall. Although it looked like it had been because of a telepathic link, the truth was a little more horrible than that. Both Steve and Maria had during their life, been in far too many shootings for that reaction to not be the first one. It was like an automated reflex, though it had occurred in them for different reasons; Steve had his war, and Maria had her criminal past.
With Fury in "safety", Maria crouched down next to him and placed a hand on his chest, looking at the three wounds. They were nasty, and Maria grimaced at the sight of white, shattered bone she could see when lifting up certain parts of the wound. She had killed enough people to know what a deadly wound looked like… and this was one of those.
With the adrenaline pumping through her veins, her heartbeat was almost the only thing she could hear and she barely even registered as Sharon kicked down the front door and entered with a gun in her hands. Steve did, though, and he walked up to her with a confused look on his face. Maria was about to join him, though Fury's hand shot up and grabbed the collar of her shirt, pulling her face down so that it was close to his. A single drop of blood slowly fell down his cheek and his teeth were covered with the red substance as he spoke to her in a pained and hushed voice;
"Don't trust anyone," he sputtered before releasing the grip on her collar, showing to her his closed hand before opening it to her.
There, in the palm of his hand, lay a USB stick and from the look in Fury's eye, he wanted her and Steve to keep it safe, she assumed. When she heard footsteps come closer to them, she quickly grabbed the item and placed it inside of her bra before anyone else could see it, nodding at him that she would do what he asked of her, before grabbing his hand and holding it, trying to make it look like she had been holding his hand the entire time and that nothing else had happened.
Fury's focus was turned to trying to fight the blood loss though he couldn't keep up and fainted the moment Sharon crouched down next to Maria, nearly pushing her to the side as she started to check for a pulse. Maria softly placed Fury's hand on the floor before standing up, rolling her eyes at the agent of SHIELD as she started to call for back up. Of course Sharon wasn't what she had made herself out to be, it had been painstakingly obvious. It did, however, make Sharon sink quite low in Maria's eyes. Lies was something that Maria didn't appreciate just like Steve.
Steve brushed past her and into the living room, Maria following him quickly. Her mind had yet to grasp what had just happened and she was almost shocked to see the bullet holes in the floor. Though, she was indeed shocked when she saw that the bullets had gone through the wall. What kind of professional shooter was this? And who had the money to finance such a sniper rifle – SHIELD, of course. The compromised SHIELD.
He stared at the bullet holes as well, his shield now in his hands.
"There!" said Maria when she suddenly saw a man standing on the rooftop of the building on the other side of the road.
"Stay here. I'll try to catch him," ordered Steve, shifting the shield in his hands so that it was in front of him.
"How?" asked Maria, furrowing her brow at Steve as she backed away from him, accidentally stepping on her dagger which she had dropped when Fury had been shot.
He didn't reply, but only glanced at her once before suddenly charging towards the window, breaking it and using all his strength, which he had a lot of, to jump over to the opposite building. Maria couldn't help but gasp at his sudden action and she quickly ran to the now broken window, watching him break through another window on the other building before landing inside of it.
When he ran away further inside of the building, Maria looked up towards the roof, surprised to still see the shooter there. He was not aiming his gun at her but was simply staring at her instead, not fazed by the fact that Steve was after him. Maria placed her hands on the window frame, not flinching from the pain of the broken glass cutting through her palm, before leaning forwards. For some reason, she didn't feel threatened by the shooter. There was something about him that simply made him… neutral. When he turned around and started to run, Maria shook her head and stood back from the window.
Although she felt useless having to stay behind, she also felt slightly relieved. Turning around to look at the corner where they had dragged Fury, she noticed a trail of blood leading to his shoes that were sticking out from the corner. Her heart sank at the sight and thoughts started to swirl inside of her mind.
Why had he been shot?
Who was the shooter?
And how was SHIELD compromised?
… And by whom?
From her bra, she took the USB he had given to her before fainting and she inspected it, wondering why he had given her that. She wanted to use it and see for herself what secrets were hidden on there, but when she realized that Sharon was staring at her with tears appearing in her eyes, Maria decided that it was best not to do anything about it yet.
"What's that?" she asked, her wavering voice clearly showing to Maria that she was upset about what had happened to her boss.
"Don't trust anybody."
Fury's last words to her echoed in her mind as she shook her head and placed the USB in her back pocket.
"Vacation pictures. Is the ambulance coming?" she asked Sharon with a cold tone to her voice. Maria moved over to Fury, crouching down next to the unconscious man.
"Yeah…"
"Hang in there, Nick. Hang in there…"