Chapter Text
‘Hill.’
Maria wasn’t even sure if she was awake or not. Perhaps she was dead, for she couldn’t see, or talk, and her entire body ached with a pain that she could only assume was what dying felt like. Maria wasn’t very afraid of dying, one of the many reasons that she’d chosen to join the army. She’d only assumed it may have been a little more peaceful than this, for the Russian cursing that she could hear, slightly muffled from one ear, was distracting her from this new feeling of out-of-bodiness. If this was what being a ghost felt like, Maris wasn’t sure she wanted it. Her head throbbed, thoughts speaking over themselves so loudly that she couldn’t hear anything that her mind was trying to tell her.
‘Pretty short record for someone who needed to be gagged,’ Someone spoke out, finally in a language she was able to understand.
So, not dead. Interesting.
Maria was fairly good at Russian, however in that moment she didn’t seem to have the ability to think straight.
‘Smart for a military kid, too,’ The voice added, possibly not far from complimenting her. It seemed like downright patronisation to Maria, and while her memories were completely jumbled, she still had her pride.
‘It’s funny,’ The girl, Maria had now worked out, began, ‘When I asked you to find the girl, you told me it would be easy.’ Her tone had leveled out, more serious, yet still calm. ‘Yet you’ve brought her back here two men short. Do I need to remind you why we’re here?’
Maria tried her hardest to breathe quietly, understanding that if they thought she was unconscious, she was more likely to be able to eavesdrop.
‘No, Ma’am.’
‘Good. Now get the fuck out of my sight.’
If Maria didn’t have a gag in her mouth so tight that she knew the sides of her lips would crack and bleed for weeks after, she probably would've smirked. It was incredibly stupid of these people to continue to believe that she couldn’t hold her own, far better than the others in her squadron at that. Maria had been underestimated far more times than she cared to admit, however she knew that it was one of the downsides to joining the army as a woman. It didn’t help when half of the men she’d met at her rank had tried to sleep with her, even when she was completely out of their reach. Of course, she didn’t tell them that beforehand.
There was something so satisfying about seeing a jackass who thought she was desperate for the comfort of a man when she was oh-so-far-away from home find out that she was gay. The initial shock itself gave Maria enough of a high, and the embarrassment when they realised that everyone else in the military bar had silenced to watch the situation unfold made up for the fact that Maria had very few options for girls to hook up with. Which she was fine with, she didn’t want anyone anyways.
Maria’s memories were still hazy when she heard someone, presumably the girl, dial a phone number, before the light tapping of a foot.
‘It’s me. She’s here,’ The woman paused, letting the person on the other end of the line talk before responding.
‘Debrief went well,’ She said, and Maria assumed that she had still been unconscious when that occurred, or perhaps it took place in a different room.
‘Status Alive, sir,’ Maria had to focus through the pain, and the ringing in her ears, however when the throbbing subsided for a second she realised that a pair of footsteps were approaching her.
The girl kicked Maria in the shin, not as hard as the other guys had, but enough to bruise her. Maria barely flinched, for the bruise was a short distraction from her multiple other injuries.
A cold pair of fingers touched Maria’s neck, as she was startled slightly by the feel of another person who in that moment, wasn’t trying to hurt her. She cursed internally, assuming she had been caught out, however the girl didn’t seem to notice.
For someone with such a rough touch, her hands were ever so soft.
‘Good,’ She muttered, taking a few steps into another room.
Maria sighed with relief internally, the pain in her ribs far too great to actually breathe any more than completely necessary. The girl had left earshot, which gave Maria time to go over everything she knew from memory.
The guys had gone for showers, and Maria used the alone time in the gym to work on her core without the guys staring at her in a sports bra. She hated to admit it, but she had been incredibly insecure for years, even more so after joining the army. She just knew that the guys judged her for not being as visibly muscular as them, however countless spars seemed to prove to them that she was far more advanced in combat than most of them would ever be. When they left to shower, Maria untangled her earphones and began streaming her only playlist. She used the pull-up bar almost every day, because although she hated to admit it, it got to her when the guys poked fun at her for not looking the part. Maybe if she was able to build a more visible type of strength they'd respect her more. She hadn’t even broken a sweat when she felt hands wrap around her mouth and torso from behind. At first Maria thought it may have been one of the guys from her squadron, which wouldn’t have been that surprising to her, but when she grasped the man and flipped him over her shoulder to pin him down, Maria realised that he wasn’t wearing an Army uniform.
And that he wasn’t alone.
Four other men surrounded Maria, and her calls for help were ignored, or went unheard. The showers were pretty far down the halls, and even if someone heard her, they probably wouldn’t reach the gym before she was killed. Maria didn’t think twice before punching the guy in front of her hard enough to knock him cold for at least a few hours, then getting up to face the other men circling her. They were all much bigger than her, and probably the guys in her squadron too. She wasn't just going to be able to fight her way past them to ask for help, and Maria barely had time to wonder if this was it for her.
‘One of you wasn’t enough for a little girl like me?’ She teased, acting far more cocky than she felt, as one of the larger men lunged at her. He knocked Maria back with a strong punch to the stomach, which sent her stumbling over to one of the other guys. A figure not dissimilar to Maria’s, he was much easier to take on. She hopped up almost effortlessly onto his shoulders, wrestling with him until she heard the not-so-faint snap of his neck. He tumbled down seconds later, and Maria rolled gracefully from him as he hit the ground. The three other men surrounding her began to close on her, and while Maria could throw incredibly fierce punches, it wasn’t enough to hold back the largest of the men from grabbing her from behind and lifting her. One arm was wrapped around her neck, and the other around her torso as she wriggled and tried to escape his grasp.
‘What do you want from me?’ Maria squirmed, as the man, who was at least a foot taller than her, tightened his grip on her neck until her vision went blurry. The men didn’t respond, and didn’t seem to have any indication of who they worked for on their clothing.
The two other men took turns throwing punches at her, a few to the face, leaving her ears ringing and bleeding. They kicked her in the ribs until she was pretty certain that her bones were crushed into dust. Pretty typical of the security cameras in that room to be down, and she assumed most of the guards in the vicinity had been taken down considering nobody came when she screamed. Another reminder to Maria that no matter how many people she thought were protecting her, she only ever really had herself.
She had tried to bite her lip back to stop from crying out any more, but Maria was afraid of what they were going to do to her, and how long it was going to take before they tortured her so much that she slipped slowly into death.. They swung at her aimlessly until Maria’s eyes rolled back into her head and blood began to drip from her mouth.
‘Pack it up, we need her alive,’ Was the last thing Maria heard before she was thrown to the ground, and her head hit off of the side of a metal bench. She fought with consciousness for an amount of time unknown to Maria, for even when she thought she may have been waking up, her eyelids were in such a great deal of pain from her newly forming black eyes that she could barely lift them. Her entire body ached, and Maria began almost wishing death on herself, for surely anything was better than this. She recalled waking a little again when they hauled her into a chair, blindfolding her and tying it far too tight as she felt blood trickle down the back of her neck as her injury was aggravated. Her mind recalls an attempt at a struggle, but she wonders if that actually happened, for she doesn’t seem to have attained any new injuries since the fight at the gym.
The room in which she’d been placed felt like a sauna, which would likely put her at a higher risk of infection from her various open wounds. In an attempt to seem unconscious, Maria had been letting the blood flow from her mouth freely, although she longed for someone to take the soaked gag off of her so that she could spit it all out. With no idea of how long she’d been out, Maria also knew that she really needed to drink something. Her head was still pounding, which was likely the reason why she didn’t notice the sound of footsteps coming up behind her. The rough grab of her head from behind was enough to alert her, as she could feel the breath of someone at her left ear.
‘I know you’re not unconscious,’ The woman whispered, almost too quietly for Maria to hear. ‘You’ll do as I say, when I say. I don’t care what they want.’
Maria drew a sharp breath as she felt the cool metal edge of a knife glide across her throat. The girl had a gentle, yet dangerous way of tracing the blade, almost like at any second she was going to slit Maria's throat right open.
‘I'm not sure what you know, but I don’t give a fuck. Try anything with me, Hill, and you’re dead.’
She guessed that the woman couldn’t have been more than a couple of millimetres from her ear, as she could feel the warmth of another person by her face as the woman lingered for a few moments. Maria squirmed a little in her chair, the ropes burning at her wrists.
‘You won’t get out of those,’ The girl, who Maria had appropriately named jackass-kidnapper-who-wants-me-dead in her mind, added while walking off in another direction. Maria attempted to spit on the ground, perhaps to get rid of some of the blood, or likely just because she wanted to piss off her captor. The attempt fell flat when Maria almost choked on her gag. She was slightly embarrassed, even more so when she heard a snort of laughter from behind her, shortly followed by the scraping of a chair.
‘So,’ Maria perked up a little at the voice, who had now seemed to be right in front of her, flicking through something that the soldier could only assume was her personal information files.
‘Says here you’re from Chicago,’ She noted, ‘Never been.’
Just what Maria needed. A reminder of her past.
‘Two tours, medal of valor,’ The woman mumbled, ‘Still doesn’t explain why they wanted you. Nothing special.’
She’d heard that enough times by that point to know it was true.
‘There’s something weird going on here,’ Was the last thing Maria heard before blacking out once again.
****
‘Fury’s gonna kill me if we lose her...’
‘He won’t tell me why she…’
‘Disposable when we’ve got the information from her…’
Maria's body toyed with her consciousness for hours, and she was eventually seen by a doctor for her injuries. They kept her restrained, flat on her back, and the blindfold stayed on. She didn’t notice that her gag was removed until she tried to swallow and realised that there was a tube going down her throat. Someone must’ve noticed Maria beginning to choke, as she felt the tube being removed in a way so uncomfortable that she came close to throwing up from the feeling of it.
‘You’re alive.’
This one again, maybe she’d been better off dying.
‘Who are you?’ Maria asked, trying to sound confident. It came out weaker than expected, for she was still in a great deal of pain.
‘I’m the one asking questions,’ She responded, in a cool, almost seductive tone.
Maria was moved back to her chair pretty shortly after waking, after being given a paralytic, and while she was still blindfolded, she knew that the woman kept her eyes on her the entire time. Her presence made Maria uncomfortable, and Maria almost wished she’d just be killed already to save herself from further trauma.
‘Back to what I was saying,’ She began again once Maria was settled, ‘Who do you work for?’
Maria didn’t expect to have her gag kept off, but she expected to have it replaced when she was finished being interrogated. She didn’t respond, knowing full well she’d much rather die with her secrets then live with them exposed. They’d start with the easy stuff, things they already knew, and peel into her slowly. Maria wasn’t stupid.
‘Fine,’ The woman sighed, ‘We’ll do this the hard way.’
Maria braced herself to be punched, receiving a swift set of knuckles to the gut. The blood spewed from her mouth on impact, which was followed by a, ‘gross!’ Maria half smiled, half winced at the sound of a tap running seconds later.
‘It’s bad manners for a guest to get their blood all over the host, you know,’ The woman responded from across the room.
‘Don’t get your guys to beat me senseless and maybe I won’t be so messed up internally next time,’ Maria sighed. She wasn’t enjoying these games. She needed answers, anything that could lead her to a way out.
‘I'm going to do much worse than that after we've finished with you,’ She replied, and Maria knew that if this girl was going to try to get under her skin, she could play at that game too.
‘Not if Fury has anything to say about it.’
The silence that followed convinced Maria that she’d said the right thing.
‘I don’t know what your deal is with Fury,’ The girl responded after a few moments of hesitation, ‘But he’s not here. I am.’
Maria didn’t have any ‘deal’ with Fury, for she had no idea who this Fury guy was. She’d overheard the name in snippets of conversations, and decided to throw it around to test the effect it had on her keeper. She could now confidently assume that he was the leader of whatever the hell was going on.
‘He’ll know though, if you kill me,’ Maria pointed out, which ended up with a hand around her neck. She knew the woman could easily kill her, and that she definitely wanted to, but she didn’t.
‘I could make it look like an accident, don’t worry,’ She whispered, sending a slight chill down Maria’s spine. The girl let go though, and Hill knew she was safe for the time being.
‘Where are we?’ Maria asked, not really expecting an answer.
‘Who’s the one asking questions here?’ The captor responded, and Maria started to wonder if her tone was always this calm. It was worse than being shouted at, for there was something so eerie about the way she was being talked to. It was easier to get the intentions out of someone when they yelled, for they were more likely to end up blurting out something that they weren't meant to.
‘Apparently not you,’ Maria replied, testing the patience of the girl before she heard the buzz of a phone.
‘Stay there, oh wait,’ She got up, most likely smirking at herself for the remark, before walking almost out of Maria’s earshot. The only upside to being unable to see anything, was the newfound ability to hear much better than usual.
‘A bleed? They’re being dramatic, she’s fine…’
‘...well she’s alive, isn’t she?’
‘alright, give me a minute.’
‘Sit still,’ She ordered, which only made Maria wriggle as much as she possibly could. A punch to the face so hard that it knocked her chair down was enough to set her straight when the chair was positioned upright again. After the click of a camera, no one talked for a couple of minutes. Maria was a little startled by the sigh that broke the silence, and then the touch of hands on her face. Maria rarely felt the hands of another person when she wasn’t being hit at or punched. It was almost nice, if it was anyone else she may have even enjoyed it.
‘They need to see your whole face, to make sure I didn’t kill you and replace you with some other girl,’ She explained, ‘if you try anything-’
‘You’ll what? Kill me and replace me with some other girl?’ Maria laughed at her own joke before wincing at the returning pain in her shattered ribs.
The woman became a little more rough with Maria’s knotted blindfold, not caring if she tugged at Maria’s hair a little more than she normally would, for something about this girl really pissed her off. She peeled the blindfold off and walked around to the front of her hostage, who was still adjusting her vision.
When Maria blinked a few times before her eyes adjusted to the artificial lighting, she almost thought she had truly died. There didn’t seem to be any explanation for this where Maria was alive, or at the very least one where she wasn’t hallucinating. Maria froze, completely lost for words because there was simply nothing in the world that could’ve convinced her that this was actually happening. Out of everyone in the entire universe that she could’ve been taken by, of course it was her.
‘Natasha?’