Summary: "There's a certain agony to waiting. Maria has learned this lesson again and again, and it never gets any easier to bear." In an alternate reality, Maria Hill lives to see Fury's return with Ritson. And he's found Talos, too. But something's wrong- she's never seen his natural form before. One-shot.
Mal de Coucou- (n.) a phenomenon in which you have an active social life but very few close friends—people who you can trust, who you can be yourself with, who can help flush out the weird psychological toxins that tend to accumulate over time—which is a form of acute social malnutrition in which even if you devour an entire buffet of chitchat, you'll still feel pangs of hunger.
Mal de Coucou
Fury left as soon as he got her settled in the new safehouse. It's been several days since then, alone, without news. Fury hasn't made any contact, nor Talos. Last she knew, the two had parted on poor terms on the way to her staged funeral.
Maria Hill has been worried.
Something has been building in the air since the moment they left her here. A dam, about to burst. Agent Hill is far from naive- she knows she may have seen them for the last time. Talos, vanishing into the crowd in Moscow. Fury, eyes tired and soft, closing the door behind him with reluctance.
"No matter what happens, Hill, I need you to stay here and rest," he had said. But what happens if he doesn't come back? If he loses this war with Gravik? Talos has never had it in him to do harm, not to those he considers his own.
There's a certain agony to waiting. Maria has learned this lesson again and again, and it never gets any easier to bear.
.
And then, well into the week, a sound startles her from her slumber. She reaches for the gun she's kept close, on the table beside the couch, and raises it level with the apartment door- only for the lock to give a gentle click before the door bursts open.
Maria jerks the muzzle of her weapon away from President Ritson- what the hell is he doing here- and toward the green figure dragging him in. Fury closes the door behind them, and the other figure- the Skrull- coughs a smattering of purple blood upon the carpet.
"Get over here an' grab him before I drop him!" The Skrull snaps, and-
Oh.
It's Talos.
Maria blinks at the realization; she never has seen the general in his natural form before. Of course, it's because of the deal he made the moment he decided to stay on Earth- to blend in, to be the perfect spy, because the humans don't know of their kind yet, and it's safer that way. She's known he's a Skrull since the moment they'd been introduced, all those years ago, but Talos has never wavered from the oath he made back then.
Until now. And he's bleeding out right in front of her, body bowing as unconsciousness threatens to swarm him, the President of the United States draped over a powerful shou-
His opposite shoulder is drenched in blood.
Fury slips up to Ritson's other side and takes the full weight of the man, lifting him away from the Skrull just in time for him to collapse. Talos had been leaning on Ritson just as much as Ritson had been on him.
He lands on his back and doesn't move. The brown carpet takes on a darker shade.
"Nick-"
"I know, I know," Fury huffs, dragging the president over to the only armchair in the whole unit, looking nearly as tired as Talos had been before he'd keeled over. "One thing at a time."
"What happened?" Maria asks, and her voice is as sharp as it's ever been.
"Gravik ambushed the president's entourage. Talos and I were close enough to jump in and get him out. But he saw us. They were disguised as our own. We were lucky to get out of there alive."
"Alive? Alive?" She scoffs, and it's like his return to Earth all over again. "Talos is dying, Nick!"
"I KNOW, Maria!"
She's never heard him shout like that before. Not at a friendly, and certainly not at her. And she sees it in his face, as silence falls upon them: the utter despair. Maria doesn't know what happened between them while they were away, but she does know that Nick Fury doesn't have a closer friend than the Skrull bleeding out before them. Talos and Fury are like brothers, have been since before she met the former.
"I know," he repeats, softer, kneeling beside the unconscious man, feeling for a pulse. He stares at the pale green skin of his face, and the look on his own is an apology itself. His gaze flickers to Ritson across the room, briefly, before falling back to his friend. "Shit…"
Ritson and Fury are long gone by the time Talos awakes. Not that he knows it, nor the fact that he's in his natural form, before he leaves the room he's been shoved into. Waking up is slow, getting up is almost impossible- everything hurts, and his shoulder…he's had many such grievous wounds throughout his long life, but this one has got to be amongst the worst. He just about topples over onto the floor before he gets himself straightened out.
He doesn't rush, an odd sense of melancholy heavy in his chest. It's quiet, and he's not one-hundred perfect certain where he is, but the air feels still enough. One step in front of the other, leaning on the wall for support- how much blood did I lose- Talos makes his way out into the hall and follows it to the front of the living unit.
Maria appears asleep upon first glance, her eyes closed where she lays on the only couch in sight, but a hitch in her breath at his uneven footsteps startles him from his wounded wandering.
"It's just me," he offers, and his voice is so gravelly that it can't hide his shame. He crosses the room to the armchair- stepping carefully around the stained patch of carpet in the middle of the room- and hisses through his teeth as he sits down and lets his shoulders rest against the back of it. Talos laughs. "It's good to see you, Maria. Been a long week."
When he looks back to her, her eyes have opened, and she's watching him with a sort of curiosity that makes him tilt his head.
"What?"
"Nothing. It's just good to see you up." she says, too quickly. But he hears the I thought you were dead that she doesn't tack onto the end of it.
Talos merely nods. "Fury?"
"He took off with Ritson a few hours ago. Had to make sure you were stable first."
"Good man." He almost smiles. "Good man." A bout of wistfulness overcomes him, then, and even though he and Maria are both out for the count, he knows that Fury will come out on top; he always has. "Everything will be alright soon enough."