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 24~
Achilles' Heel

Softly, Maria knocked on the door even though it was already open. After all, she didn't want to simply burst inside uninvited. When she heard a murmur from inside sounding a lot like a yes, Maria placed her palm against the cold, metal door before pushing it open further, entering the small room which Natasha was residing in.

The four heroes had all gotten a room each to stay in while they were at the secret hide-out of Fury; or what remained of those who had gotten away from Hydra. Even though these rooms weren't luxurious or nice in any way, it was still better than having to constantly be on the run from Hydra. Currently, they were safe and that was all Maria wanted; a break.

For a while, Maria had simply been sat in her room, trying to think of something to do. What she wanted to do was go out there and end it all since she knew that, as long as the world was in grave danger, she wouldn't be able to sleep nor eat. When she hadn't been able to find Steve in his room and after having contemplated whether or not she wanted to get lost in the big building trying to find him, she decided to go and visit Natasha instead to see if she was okay.

"Hey," said Maria softly, seeing Natasha standing in front of the mirror, wearing a sleeveless shirt and a pair of jeans. She was inspecting her bandaged shoulder, her fingertips tracing the fabric wrapped around it. "You okay?"

"Much better," replied Natasha, turning away from the mirror to look at Maria. Though there was no smile on her face.

A silence filled the room and Maria looked down at her feet, her mind racing as she tried to think of any ideas for a normal conversation.

"What about you? You were shot too," said Natasha, sitting down on the bed.

Slowly, Maria sat down next to Natasha, nodding her head as she did. "I was. But I healed, as always."

"Steve told me," said Natasha, earning a look from Maria. "About the bullets."

Sighing, she pulled out the bullet she still had in her pocket to show the assassin. Natasha cocked her head to the side, watching the bullet with fascination as it rested in the palm of Maria's hand.

"So, it hindered you from healing…" mumbled Natasha, glancing up at Maria's face.

"Yeah… Hydra knows something." Closing her hand around the bullet, she let her clenched hand rest on her knee where once the wound had been. "It scares the crap out of me."

It was the truth. Not only did the fact that the world was in danger keep her appetite away, but also the fact that Hydra knew more about her than she herself did.

"Maybe Banner can help after all this is over," said Natasha with a sigh as she stood up again, walking over to the desk standing against the opposite wall. She grabbed the jumper that was laying there and pulled it on, grimacing slightly as she had to move her shoulder. Maria noted how Natasha did not mention Stark's name – either because she didn't like the guy or…

"Maybe…" said Maria before an idea popped into her head. "I've gotta go."

"Where?" asked Natasha as she watched Maria stand up and walk towards the door.

"Martin," was Maria's only answer before she left Natasha alone in her room again.

It took longer than Maria had wanted it to take before she found Martin. She made sure to only go where the lights were turned on yet even then, she had managed to get lost at least twice before she found herself somewhere familiar again. Martin was in the same room as Fury and Hill were. The two of them were silently talking and even though Maria was surprised to find Fury out of bed already, she wasn't as surprised as she was when she found him alive.

Though whatever medical treatments SHIELD were using on Fury were a little suspicious… And… though she hated to think like this… if SHIELD had this amazing ability to treat people quickly, had they really not been able to do anything for Coulson?

Martin sat in a corner at a desk, typing away at his laptop furiously and almost looking a little stressed. Maria didn't really want to go over to him, seeing as he looked busy, though she knew that this was important and if she didn't get information about this soon, she knew she'd only end up on a mission without her head clear which might endanger everything.

"Martin?" asked Maria quietly, causing him to snap his head around to look at her, his eyes wide.

"Yes?" he asked, his tense figure relaxing slightly as he saw her.

"Am I interrupting something?" asked Maria, offering him an apologetic smile.

"Oh… Uh, no. Just writing an e-mail," said Martin with a shrug of his shoulders.

"Oh… For who?" asked Maria, sitting down next to Martin at the edge of the desk.

He cleared his throat, looking back at the laptop in front of him before smiling; "My mum. She doesn't know where I am or why I had to leave so quickly… I don't want her to worry."

Maria smiled, nodding her head. "That's sweet of you."

A blush appeared on Martin's cheeks before he once again cleared his throat; "Did you need my help with something?"

"Oh, yes," replied Maria, taking out the bullet she still was clutching in her hand. "I was shot earlier today…"

"Are you okay?" asked Martin, suddenly alarmed to which Maria chuckled slightly.

"I'm fine. I heal, remember?" said Maria, smiling at Martin's look of realization. "But… I didn't heal immediately. I had to get the bullets out before I could heal."

"Sounds reasonable though, right?"

"No, Martin. Other times that I've healed the bullet sort of… this is going to sound gross, but it sort of pops out on its own." At Martin's frown, Maria rolled her eyes. "There's something off about the bullet."

"What do you mean?" asked Martin, furrowing his brow and leaning back in his chair, the serious expression on his face almost making the young man age twenty years.

"This," said Maria, placing the bullet on the desk in between them; "was in my leg."

Martin frowned, adjusting his glasses slightly before leaning in towards the bullet to see it more clearly, his eyes narrowing. For a while, there was just complete silence filling the air and it wasn't until Martin leaned back again, the same frown still on his face, that Maria spoke up once more.

"I was hoping you could get some data on it, to see what caused it to do that… I know you're more of a hacker but-"

"Yeah, I could get some data," interrupted Martin, nodding his head as he grabbed the bullet and placed it on a small tablet.

Maria raised an eyebrow at his antics, wondering what he was doing. He seemed to have sensed her bewilderment as he looked over at her and smirked.

"It's a little something I came up with myself," explained Martin before starting up a program on his laptop, causing the tablet to start glowing with a strange mix of grey and blue.

"What does it do?" she asked, cocking her head to the side.

"This," replied Martin as he pressed enter, a picture of the bullet ending up on the screen of his laptop.

"Wow… it's a picture. How… high-tech," said Maria sarcastically, earning a glare from Martin.

"This," repeated Martin before pressing enter once more, showing off tons of boxes filled with tiny letters. From each box, a line was drawn towards the place on the bullet that the text referred to. And, on closer inspection, Maria saw things on the picture that she hadn't seen on the bullet before such as marks from where the bullet had exited the gun in high velocity or the tiny splash of blood that still existed on one piece of the bullet.

The device had scanned the bullet, showing them things no human eye could have detected.

The one thing that stood out the most from the data, which also was what Martin zoomed in on, was the fact that the color of the bullet, purple, was actually not just a color. It was a strange substance that someone had smeared onto the bullet. On certain places, once again something you couldn't see with the naked eye, the substance was gone, probably having dissolved inside of Maria's leg.

"What is it?" asked Maria quietly, Martin zooming in on the text referring to the substance.

"It's a rare sort of… acid," said Martin, frowning. "Used way back in the days to remove blood stains on any kind of material. It dissolves blood but it's not used anymore due to the…"

"Toxic fumes that dissolved one's DNA…" read Maria, looking at Martin who quickly opened up his web browser. "What does that mean?"

"Maria… The name…" said Martin silently, starting to type again.

"What about it?" asked Maria, not having read it.

She looked back at the screen, seeing Martin go to Google (which under other circumstances would've been hilarious in Maria's eyes) and type in the name of the acid.

Hydrus Acidulus.

As he pressed enter, multiple articles came up. All of which were about the deaths of mutants.

"Maybe they know something about you… Or, they simply took a shot," said Martin, looking back at Maria. "This acid has been used before by 'ordinary' people in attempts to kill mutants otherwise near unkillable. All attempts succeeded."

"Why did they kill them?" asked Maria quietly, her eyes scanning the multiple articles as Martin continued to scroll down, the articles never seeming to end.

"Fear… Fear of change. Fear of new things. Mutants have always been hunted and never really accepted in society. 'Anything that's different is bad' seems to be the slogan of societies."

Maria glanced down at her own hands, thinking about her own abilities… "So… this acid is like my Achilles' Heel or something?"

"I honestly don't know. But, it looks like it."

"How? And why?" asked Maria to which Martin could only shrug.

"That's more of a question for an actual scientist…"

"This man declined the Noble Peace Prize," said Fury louder than he had been talking earlier, causing both Martin and Maria to look over at him.

There, he and Hill were still sitting. However, now Steve, Sam and Natasha were there as well.

"Thank you, Martin," said Maria quietly, earning a nod from him as he pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his nose again.

"You want the bullet?" he asked back in the same hushed voice. "If you want, I can make it into a file with all the info we just got and then put it on a USB. So you can bring it with you to Stark."

"Thanks," smiled Maria, patting his shoulder before standing up and walking over to where Fury and Hill were.

"-It's stuff like this that gives me trust issues," said Fury as Maria stopped next to Sam, the two of them exchanging a look and nodding a silent hello towards each other.

"We have to stop the launch," said Natasha, looking over at Steve who nodded his head.

"I don't think the council's accepting my calls anymore," said Fury before opening a black case that was resting on the desk before him.

In it, three - what looked like - computer chips magnified ten times lay resting on a bed of rubber.

"What's that?" asked Sam, voicing what Maria was going to ask.

"Once the helicarriers reach 3000 feet," explained Hill, turning a small laptop around for the four heroes to see what she was explaining; "they'll triangulate the Insight satellites, becoming fully weaponized."

"We need to breach those carriers and replace their targeting blades with our own," added Fury, making Maria understand that the computer chips were the new targeting blades.

"What will the new ones target?" asked Maria.

"Each other," smirked Fury, earning an impressed look from both Maria and Sam.

"One or two won't cut it. We need to link all three carriers for this to work, because if even one of those ships remains operational, a whole lot of people are gonna die," said Hill. One wrong move, and a lot of people were going to die. Just another day as an Avenger.

"We have to assume everyone aboard those carriers is Hydra. We have to get past them, insert these server blades and maybe, just maybe, we can salvage what's left-" said Fury before Steve cut him off.

"We're not salvaging anything," said Steve harshly, causing everyone to look over at him. "We're not just taking down the carriers, Nick. We're taking down SHIELD."

"Steve-" Maria wanted to defend SHIELD, an impulse she didn't think about in the moment but which made quite a bit of sense to her later on. SHIELD was the good thing in her life that had caused her to be standing there as a hero and she was not about to let it all go to waste. Though Fury was quicker than her.

"SHIELD had nothing to do with this," said Fury simply.

"You gave me this mission. This is how it ends," said Steve simply, a long silence filling the room after he had said this. "SHIELD's been compromised. You said so yourself. Hydra grew right under your nose and nobody noticed."

"Why do you think we're meeting in this cave? I noticed," said Fury, clearly not wanting to give up SHIELD as easily as Steve was.

"How many paid the price before you did?" asked Steve, the harsh tone still evident. While Maria did not want to let go of SHIELD, Steve was right. This super secret organization had been corrupted for so long… and many people most likely suffered due to it. SHIELD had too much information about everything for it to be safe to continue, especially since it was evident that it could be corrupted quite easily.

Fury looked between Maria and Hill for a while, seeming to slowly understand what specific person Steve was talking about. "Look, I didn't know about Barnes-" he started, though Steve shook his head.

"Even if you had, would you have told me? Or would you have compartmentalized that too?" asked Steve, another silence following his words. "SHIELD. Hydra. It all goes."

"He's right," said Hill silently, earning a look from Fury.

As he looked over at Maria, she too nodded her head, agreeing with what Steve was saying. Perhaps Fury could start something new. Though to continue with SHIELD even after everything that had happened, was wrong. That, Fury had to understand. After all, who knew what more had been growing right underneath of their noses?

"Don't look at me," said Sam as Fury looked at him for support, having gotten nods from each and everyone else. "I do what he does. Only slower."

Maria smirked at that.

"Well… Looks like you're giving the orders now, captain," said Fury, leaning back in his seat.

Steve slowly nodded his head. "I see we need someone inside. Someone to delete all the files."

"You can't delete them," replied Hill.

"So, we publish them for the whole world to see. That way, SHIELD will not exist anymore in secret. And if it can't exist in secret, it can't exist at all," said Maria, earning a nod from Steve. She shivered at her own words… because she knew what specific files on her that were going to be released to the world.

"How do we get someone inside?" asked Natasha.

"I think I can help with that," said Martin, all eyes turning to look at him as he walked over to them, holding something in his hands. "The council's coming to 'SHIELD' tomorrow to, probably, talk about project Insight. I say we use that as an opportunity to get inside."

"It's a good plan," said Steve. "But how?"

"With these," replied Martin, holding up a strange wobbly square made out of, what looked like, plastic. On it, multiple dots existed and Maria could do nothing but frown at the odd thing. "Designed it myself. Makes you, uh, change your features so to speak."

"And it works?" asked Steve.

"I guarantee you that," smiled Martin with a nod of his head.

"Okay. Maria, Sam and I take a helicarrier each," said Steve. "Natasha, you make sure that SHIELD's files are out there before sun-down. Fury, Hill, we might need a quick extraction."

"We'll be there, Captain," promised Fury.

"Good…"

The plan was ready. In the early next morning, they all had their own parts to play in saving the world. A part of Maria couldn't wait until the next evening because it all would be over then. That is, if everything went according to the plan. And another part of her didn't want the next morning to ever come. They were safe now… why could they not just stay like that?

She stood leaning against the wall of the hallway where each and everyone's current rooms were. Her head hung low as she nervously bit on her lip, something she had never done before. She hoped it wouldn't become a habit of hers since the faint taste of blood in her mouth almost made her gag. She had never enjoyed the vague iron taste of it and once when she accidentally had bit her tongue when falling over as a child, she had thrown up twice just because of that very taste.

Luckily this had happened to her once she had been in her grandmother's care. If she had done this in the presence of her mother, she would have either had to fend for herself or she would have had to face the consequences of pissing her mother off. Instead, her grandmother had gently cradled her afterwards as she cried from having thrown up, telling her how it was okay and that she was alright now. She remembered how her grandmother had taken her to the piano afterwards and together they had played Maria's favourite song, singing along to it as well. A bad memory was turned into a good memory, making Maria smile softly.

Back then she had been okay. Back then there had been no pressure of saving the world on her shoulders. Back then, it was just her and her grandparents, smiling and enjoying life.

"You okay?" asked Sam, suddenly appearing next to her and making her jump slightly.

She sighed, nodding her head. "Yeah… As okay as you can be when you're about to have the fate of a million people on your shoulders."

Sam hummed a yes, clearly understanding this as this was his first rodeo ever as the Falcon. "I'll be there by your side tomorrow. Ain't nothing gonna happen to you."

Maria scoffed at his words, smiling as well. "I'm not scared for myself. I'm scared for those people… What about you? You seem as calm as ever. You're making it seem like I'm the one who's going to save the world for the first time, not you."

"Well,"sighed Sam, joining Maria in leaning against the wall, facing her with a serious look in his eyes, "I'm freaking out. But quite frankly, if we're not calm, the cap can't be either. And he's our leader."

A frown appeared on her face as he said this. "You've spoken to him? Is he okay?"

"Yeah. As okay as a dude with the world on his shoulders can be. As okay as a dude who has lost his best friend again can be. About this Winter Soldier," at the switch of subjects, Maria tilted her head to the side. "He's bound to be there tomorrow."

"Yeah… He is," hummed Maria, shoulders sagging.

For a while, there was a simple silence hanging in the air. Not an uncomfortable one, but a silence that the two agreed on since both simply wanted to think for a while. Mostly over what was going to happen the upcoming day.

"Where is he?" asked Maria quietly, breaking the silence and making Sam look over at her.

"In his room," he replied, Maria immediately pushing away from the wall.

"I'll see you tomorrow," said Maria, earning a nod from Sam who followed her with his gaze as she walked away from him towards Steve's door.

She knocked three times, hearing footsteps walking over towards the door almost immediately. Steve opened the door, seeming surprised to find Maria standing there.

"Hey," said Maria simply, nearly forgetting what she was doing there as her gaze met his piercing blue eyes.

"You don't have to knock," said Steve simply, explaining his surprised look as he stepped to the side, allowing Maria to enter.

"Well, it's your room after all," she replied, turning around as she stopped in the middle of the room, looking at Steve as he closed the door behind her.

His smile faltered, his eyes avoiding Maria and although she wasn't surprised about the fact that he wasn't feeling all too well, it still hurt.

"Come," she said, grabbing his hand and sitting the two of them down on his bed.

Their hips touched along with their upper arms and a silence filled the room. She contemplated on what to say… Or rather, whether she should say something at all. Steve had already talked about it with Sam and even though she wasn't sure of exactly what they had said, she wondered whether or not he wanted to continue talking about it. Perhaps all he needed was some silent comforting and a silent agreement that she was going to be there for him no matter what.

By the way Steve suddenly placed his arms around her, pressing her against him, she realized it was indeed the silent part he needed. With his arms still around her, Maria looked up at him, placing a hand against his cheek. They stared into each other's eyes for a while before gently pressing their lips against each other's in a soft kiss.

The kiss felt a lot like an experiment from Steve's side to see whether or not that physical contact was something he needed in his current state of mind. As they broke apart, their lips close to each other, Maria waited silently, watching him think while his eyes darted from her lips to her eyes consistently.

"It's going to be okay…" she said quietly, not quite sure about what she was referring to; the whole ordeal with Bucky or the current mission they were going to face the next day. Though it seemed to calm Steve down a little, his eyes stopping at her lips.

Softly, he placed his lips against hers again, the kiss being more needy than before and filled with much more emotion than before as well. Maria breathed in deeply during the kiss, afraid her breath might actually be taken away from her by the way he kissed her. It was different from other kisses they had shared and it was far more exciting. When Steve broke the kiss, leaning back slightly, Maria nearly followed him with her lips, craving more.

Though, she composed herself. She closed her eyes as Steve softly traced her bottom lip with his thumb, Maria only looking up into his eyes again when she felt him hesitating slightly when his thumb brushed over the parts where she had bit her lip earlier. It stung slightly when he did this, though she ignored the feeling, her heart's desire being far more superior than the pinch of pain in her lip.

"I don't know… I don't know if it is going to be okay," said Steve quietly before he slowly placed his face in the crook of her neck, resting it there for comfort and support. She felt him breathe in, knowing full and well that that particular spot on her neck was where she sprayed her perfume, and she felt his shoulders relax afterwards.

Maria's heart started to race slightly, wanting Steve to feel better. All she could do was wrap her arms around him as best as she could to hold him against her in, what she hoped was, a comforting hug. His arms, in return, snuck around her waist. A shiver ran up her spine at his touch, and she felt his lips curl up into a smile as he felt her reaction.

Relieved he was at least smiling, she pressed a kiss to his forehead before leaning her cheek against his head. Silently and with one hand resting on the back of his head, she told him she was there for him. Silently, she wished he understood.