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Maria found her basically where she'd expected to. Melinda May wasn't overly creative with her choice of hole-in-the-wall SHIELD and cop bar where she'd settled in to drown her sorrows.
Maria had read the report. She knew whatever May was willing to tell about what had gone down in Bahrain and knew that several had already taken a run at trying to talk May into staying on as an active agent instead of retiring to desk duty without a word in her own defense. And if Andrew Garner, the woman's husband, couldn't handle getting her whatever therapy she needed, far be it from Maria to try.
So she sighed and sat down next to May at the bar, who didn't even flick an eyebrow in surprise. "I'd rather be left alone," she said bluntly but not as rudely as Maria expected. She'd thought Phil would have worn away whatever veneer of politeness May had left.
"I'm not here to make you talk about it," Maria replied simply. "Top her off and give me the usual."
Another long moment of silence, an assessing gaze before Melinda returned to her drink and Maria started in on hers. They didn't talk, just kept drinking, beside each other, barely even looking at each other.
Maria had seen fieldwork, and she'd been there beside more than a few fellow fighters in the Marines when talking was the last thing any of them wanted to do and their pride could barely admit needing a shoulder to lean on. So she didn't put herself out there, just sat beside her friend for as long as it took.
There was something to be said for the bonds formed by working together in SHIELD, perhaps a reason no one ever really expected privacy or respect of boundaries in their work. Not like Fury let you keep such an illusion for long either.
That said, Maria didn't really mind when Natasha slipped into her office on the Helicarrier as if she'd been invited and looked around before she'd even offered a word of greeting.
"Natasha."
Natasha merely nodded in acknowledgement, her expression difficult to read. "What is all this?"
Maria taped up another satellite photograph and surveyed her own work. Monitors, maps, tabs really. "The Avengers have scattered and Fury insists they'll come back if we ever need them." But that didn't stop her from wanting to keep an eye on them herself. None of them were really known for being reliable, except maybe Captain America if you threw out certain useful definitions of reliable that Maria preferred.
Natasha looked mystified for a moment, then turned her attention to Maria, as if she were somehow less comprehensible than this little project. Then she came forward and stood beside Maria, critically looking over the various notes and trackers. "Well, I'm not going anywhere."
"Yes, you are," Maria disagreed and disengaged from the wall to go collect a mission brief. "Bahrain."
"I feel better already," Natasha bantered back, accepting the brief. "Do I get to take my favorite toys?"
"Barton will be with you," Maria told her. "I hear R&D has finished with the battle staves you wanted. Morse accepted it as flattery."
It wasn't not. Natasha shrugged and, finished with her reading, tucked the brief away. "That's not what I meant, Agent Hill. I'll be here," she repeated, firmly, forcefully.
Maria stared at her for a long moment, then nodded crisply. "Thank you."
And there was that smile of Natasha's that broke out every so often like stray sunlight. "You're welcome."
Natasha and Clint were SHIELD. They were always going to come back more often than the rest, but something had changed since New York and the Chitauri and Maria ending up saddled with the Avengers Initiative because Fury said, "You're good with details. But lend me Rogers for a bit, and Romanoff," because Fury was never going to change.
They'd become half something else, and Maria tried to let them go a little bit, give them a little freedom to do things in a way that prepared them for big, showy battles rather than just keeping to the shadows and the precision work they were known for.
She was always busy, supporting from the side where they didn't really notice her, keeping people off Banner's tail, occasionally booking his rooms for him in areas where security was harder to come by, handling situations Pepper would thank her for never allowing to reach Stark if she'd known who to thank. Other things she never talked about and most of them, she assumed, didn't know she did.
Then SHIELD fell, and she didn't know why it surprised her at first that they didn't come back.
Damage control was her specialty and Maria did damage control like SHIELD depended on it, all their agents on foreign soil depended on it, and Fury's personal life certainly did.
Then there was Steve and Natasha and someone she didn't even know fighting again alongside her. They did come back, just like Fury had said.
It was cold on the balcony outside of the comfortable area Stark liked to assemble team gatherings in the aftermath of doing their work. Maria Hill had spent more than enough time being involved with the Avengers after the fall of SHIELD and was generally included on nights like these.
She wasn't really expecting Steve Rogers to join her though. "Evening, ma'am." His politeness was without condescension or pretension, as natural a part of his personality as breath was part of his body.
She shivered a little and nodded back. "It's a nice night out," she replied conversationally, even friendly.
"You know," Steve began just as comfortably, but then spoke quietly, even carefully, "there are people who'd like to be there for you, if you'd let them."
Maria turned to him in surprise. He was holding out his jacket and fixing her with that barely resistible earnest expression that made it so hard to refuse him, even when he didn't want to force his will on anyone else.
His jacket. She was cold, she suddenly realized, and he had noticed.
She looked up at him and remembered her own conversation with Fury a lifetime ago, trying to understand the way he described the nature of the Avengers, when it was her own nature to do her duty, to be there through every difficulty, to stay. Not to come back.
But he was here right now, and Natasha had been there, and somewhere along the way Tony Stark and Pepper Potts had inducted her into their little world of the people they held onto, and sometimes they didn't just vanish and let her pick up all the pieces.
"Thank you, Rogers," she accepted and was somehow unsurprised when he didn't just give her the jacket but helped her into it. "I'll remember that."
"Steve," he corrected, polite still but firm.
She stared for a moment, then accepted. "Steve."
He held out his arm, and she took it as they went back inside.