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The Tilted Tulip is a florist shop in downtown Chicago. Maria avoids going there if she can help it – the day she accepted the position as Fury's second in command, Fury told her If I'm taken out of the picture, the eye they keep on me will become the eye they keep on you. Although that changed with Coulson stepping up to take the role of Director, with Maria stepping down to become the loathed private-sector-turncoat, she can’t shake the vigilance ingrained into her. Can’t shake the need to shake non-existent tails on a visit the rational part of her says she should not be taking.
But San Juan was a clusterfuck, from beginning to end. She hadn’t been there for the beginning, Coulson had only called her in towards the end, but from his briefing, she feels confident in labeling it a clusterfuck in its entirety. The clean-up was the same, with the Puerto Rico government not being friendly to SHIELD even before the HYDRA reveal, with the limited number of SHIELD agents meaning the ones she had to work with were not trained for clean-up, with too many variables still left unaccounted for. But with Coulson needing to tend to his team, and Maria far more used to clean-up, she easily took charge.
Afterwards, she exchanged a few words with Coulson, a few words with Stark, and both had encouraged her to take the week off. It's not likely, nor even possible. She’s hoping for two days, uninterrupted, and even that’s a stretch.
But she'll take what time she can get. Normally she gets itchy during downtime, but there are some times when she needs a break, and this is one of them.
She meanders around University Village for twenty minutes, making absolutely sure she has no tail, before she turns on Taylor Street.
In the eighteen months since Maria has stopped by, the block has changed, just slightly. New cafe here (cleared by security), out of business shop there, a new paint job every few shops.
The only change to The Tilted Tulip is the font listing the store information on the door – still a looping cursive font, but less bulky, more legible. Otherwise, everything is the same; the tall, wide windows, wiped clean every morning, the white and green striped awning, flapping in the gentle breeze.
Through the wide windows of the front of the store, Maria sees Jordan.
Jordan is facing away from the front of the store, standing before a display of floral arrangements. She's wearing skinny blue jeans and a white flowing blouse, and her long red hair is pulled up in a loose ponytail. Even from behind, she looks gorgeous.
Maria watches her for a few heartbeats, before pushing open the door. The bell jingles as she walks into the shop.
Jordan is already turning around, a cheery retail smile on her face that freezes when she recognizes Maria. Surprise has her eyes going wide, before her expression brightens. It results in the brightest, widest smile Maria has seen in months.
The shop is empty, but Maria makes a show of looking around. "You working alone?"
Jordan shakes her head. "Betsy is in the office. Graduation season has just past, but wedding season has just started. We keep alternating between being empty and a few dozen people trying to book their weddings all at once. We're at the lull now, though it’s going to pick up soon. Luckily for me, my shift ends in half an hour, so that’s going to be Ginny’s problem." Her grin falters for a moment. "Are you alright?"
Maria closes the six steps between them, and pulls Jordan into a tight embrace. She doesn't speak for a moment, just enjoys holding Jordan. Jordan's hair smells like the pink grapefruit wash she always uses. "I am just so glad to see you."
Jordan wraps one arm around her waist, fingers digging into her side, her other hand coming up to clasp the back of Maria's neck. "Are you alright?" she repeats. "I heard something with SHIELD happened in San Juan, was that–"
"I wasn't there for the danger, just there for clean-up." She sighs heavily, and lets herself lean into Jordan. "It was a lot of clean-up."
"How long do you have off?" Jordan asks, as she finally pulls back.
Maria shakes her head. "I have a week, but something’s going to come up in the final stages of clean-up, sometime always does. I give it two days. Coulson knows where I am, why I'm here. He's not going to pull me out before twenty-four hours, minimum, unless it's a Level Six threat."
Jordan frowns. "Coulson?"
They only touch on Maria’s profession after major catastrophes. The last time she had mentioned Coulson was immediately after New York, prior to his trip to Tahiti. Maria should not have let that slip. "They were able to resuscitate him," she says. "He's alive. He's doing well."
"Were they able to resuscitate Fury? All the reports are saying that he–"
"I don't want to talk about it," Maria says.
A flash of hurt crosses Jordan's face, more from the interruption than the evasion, but then she gives a tentative smile. "I'm glad Coulson's alright. And that you are too." She reaches down, and laces her fingers with Maria’s. "And I'm glad you're going to be here, if only for a day."
"Two," Maria corrects. "I'm hoping for at least two."
"In which case, I am going to speak to Betsy, and see if we can call in Ginny early. Then we are going to get a late lunch, and spend the rest of the night making the most we can of the two days we have together."
"I don't want to pull you from your work," Maria protests. Even if the idea of ragging Jordan back to her apartment had what kept Maria civil through the long lines of airport security, through having her SHIELD-issued handgun confiscated by TSA. Jordan has a strong work ethic, and Maria had hoped she wouldn't have to disrupt that.
"I can survive losing half an hour off my next paycheck. Besides, I want to enjoy the time I get you away from your work." The kiss she presses to Maria's lips is soft and sweet, and it kindles something a bit more than that in Maria. "It's been a while," she says, her breath brushing against Maria's cheek.
Maria follows that up with a kiss, ignoring the pang of guilt she feels. "Before we do that, I want to head back to your place and change out of this," she says, gesturing down at her outfit. She is in Chicago as Maria Rossi, Tony Stark's part-time personal assistant, and during layovers from San Juan she had changed into something fitting the role. She doesn't hate the dark wide-legged slacks and white button-down blouse, but if she's going on her first date with her girlfriend in months (and later stripping in front of her girlfriend), she wants to wear something she wants to wear.
Jordan steps away, goes to the office to speak with her boss, leaving Maria to look around the shop. The layout of the shop changes constantly, from what she's been told, only the cash register and refrigerated displays along the walls staying in place.
"We called Ginny, and she can come in a few minutes early. Betsy's on a business call, otherwise she would come out and say hi."
Maria doesn't mention she prefers to be seen by as few people as possible. "So it will be twenty minutes?"
"No, she lives closer than that."
"Reports show traffic is bad today, and with where she lives, it's going to take her about fifteen to twenty minutes."
"You know where Ginny lives," Jordan says, voice carefully neutral.
Maria sighs. It's been a while since they had this conversation, she supposes they're overdue for it. And better to have it here, now, than in her apartment later. She takes a moment, and considers everything she wants to say. "Yes, Jordan, I know where Ginny lives. I know where all your coworkers live. I keep tabs on you, and that includes background checks on your coworkers, on all the shops down the street, on the residents in your apartment building. I have done everything in my power to cover my tracks, but after Romanoff leaked all of SHIELD’s files, I don’t know if there’s any track I didn’t cover, and I want to keep you safe. If there's something I do that makes you uncomfortable, I want you to tell me, but I want you to know that my job has certain elements that you won't always like."
"Is infringing on the privacy of my coworkers an element about your job you like?"
Maria sighs again. "Does anyone like every element of their job?"
"I do," Jordan says.
"You’re special," Maria replies. It draws a small smile from her, and Maria responds in kind. Then sighs again. "There are elements about my job that I don't always like. Part of this job is making hard calls. Sometimes the wrong ones, sometimes the right ones, some I regret, some I don't. I am the second highest person in this organization, and that means I don’t always sleep well at night. But up until recently, my choices have helped to keep the world safe. Things have changed, now that HYDRA is a player on the field again, but I will continue to make the choices I need to."
Jordan nods. "You're right, about me not liking certain elements."
They've discussed this before, but it still hurts. "I’m sorry."
"I know."
Maria gives her a half-smile. "I would offer to buy you flowers to make up for it, but..."
Jordan huffs. She tucks her fingers into the shallow pockets on Maria's pants, and pulls her in closer. "I am sure you will think of something."
Maria leans in, tilts her head down, and presses a kiss to her throat. "Plenty of ideas." It draws out a low, breathy laugh, and Maria starts rescheduling their day. "New plan. You wait here for your coworker. I go back to your place, change, we meet up for lunch halfway."
Jordan clears her throat. "As open and accepting as this place is, I suppose I should keep myself operating under a professional conduct. And I am struggling with that, with you here."
This should Maria's cue to say she can do the same, but she knows, deep down, that if she had to keep being Deputy Director Maria Hill in front of Jordan, she could manage it. She’s good at compartmentalization. "And I would hate to make you struggle," Maria says.
"A little struggle might not be so bad," she says airily, lips curving into mischievous grin. "But we can negotiate that later."
"How long does it take you to eat lunch?" Maria asks. She feels like she knows the answer, but certain higher function thoughts are short-circuiting. "I am a skilled agent in a once-secret spy agency. I can eat lunch in ten minutes. Five minutes. Ninety seconds. Do we even need to get lunch?"
Jordan laughs. "I want to get lunch."
"Then we get lunch." Maria presses a kiss to her cheek. "I'll text you when I'm ready, you text me when you're ready, we'll coordinate."
"You've spent the past week coordinating, surely. I'll coordinate, you do what I say."
"I will not argue with that," Maria says.
It's a six minute walk to Jordan's apartment, though Maria opts for the course that takes her fifteen minutes.
Maria has three apartments to her name: the one she files as her residence for SHIELD, the one she files as her residence for Stark Industries, the emergency-only one that only she and Fury know about. That Fury’s probably squatting at, if she knows him. She visits each every so often, to keep up the pretense of living there. Arriving at any of them never feels like arriving home as much as it does walking down the hallway to Jordan's apartment. She knows about the new tenants, but this is the first time she gets to see the small changes, the new welcome mats, the new painted trims.
The biggest change is the small red droplet of blood in front of Jordan's apartment.
Stepping into Jordan’s apartment takes Maria into a cramped foyer, with four coat hooks, an umbrella stand, and a small end table. The end table has a single locked drawer, and from it, Maria pulls out a Smith & Wesson M&P.
She takes a moment to ready herself. The intruder was able to get in undetected, which sets them at a certain skill level. The blood is still fresh, but they still could have had enough time to get to know the layout of the apartment. Not enough time to know where Maria has hidden all the security precautions, though, and she has the upper hand in that regard. She hates bringing SHIELD into Jordan’s apartment, but she told herself that if it ever was a necessity, she would, and so she will.
She kicks open the door and raises her handgun, finger on the trigger.
Grant Ward is sitting on Jordan's white leather arm chair.
He raises his hands slowly, expression flickering with pain as he does so. Skye had shot him, fairly close range, and even if he had been wearing Kevlar, he should be suffering from bruised ribs at the very least. "I'm unarmed," he says.
"I know," Maria replies. "Give me one reason not to shoot you right now."
Ward gives her a modest smile. "Blood’s a bitch to get out of leather?"
Maria glares at him. He’s unarmed, but not undefended. There is a security camera in the lobby that would have caught Ward coming in. There are neighbors who would hear the gunshot. There would be no way to dispose of his body. Blood is a bitch to get out of leather, especially white leather. She can’t kill him here, even as much as she wants to. She takes her finger off the trigger.
Ward slowly lowers his arms, wincing as he does so. He's wearing a dark gray t-shirt, and there's a dark leather jacket between him and the chair, preventing the blood soaking through his side from staining the leather. It’s almost considerate.
"Next question. How did you know I was here?" Maria asks, fighting to keep her voice as neutral as possible. When the Clairvoyant was still a threat, when ESP was still a very real possibility, Maria had been scared. But the Clairvoyant had turned out to be Garrett, and after the disappointment of losing a good agent, she had been relieved. Maria had kept Jordan close to her vest, a secret from the start. Fury knows, Hendricks knew, Coulson knows.
Garrett didn’t know, and the fact that Ward is here chills her.
"Garrett had me look into you, a few months before you vetted me for Coulson's team. Knew you had a love nest in Chicago, had a comms agent look for a paper trail. Gotta say, when I saw Jordan on the lease... this wasn’t quite what I was expecting."
"And?" Maria says, voice tight. "Got something to say about it, Ward?"
Ward shakes his head. "She seems nice. I actually feel a bit bad about breaking in, now. Don't worry," he adds, as she puts her finger back on the trigger, "I didn't break anything, I didn't draw any attention to myself. I'm going to say my piece, and I'm going to leave, she'll never have to know I was here."
"What do you want, Ward?"
He huffs a laugh. "That's a bit of a loaded question," he tells her. When she doesn't share in his humor, he sighs. "I want to work for you."
It's Maria's turn to laugh. "You've got to be joking."
"Would I really be here, bleeding, in your girlfriend’s apartment, if I was joking? I've been told I don't really have a sense of humor."
The absurdity of the situation has finally hit her, and the rush of adrenaline is making it almost funny. "Let’s pretend for one minute that I’m going to take you seriously. Give me one reason why I would take you up on that offer."
Ward stares at her for a few moments. "You know what Garrett used to say about you?"
"Talking about Garrett is giving me less of a reason not to shoot you."
His jaw tightens. "He said you were a ruthless, cold-hearted bitch. Frankly, I don't disagree."
"Are you going to get to the point where I don't want to shoot you?"
"Garrett also said you were the single most pragmatic agent in SHIELD. Said Fury was an idealist standing next to you."
"And Garrett's dead."
To Ward's credit, he barely reacts, only the barest of a flinch, but he smoothly continues, "And so is Fury. And that's left Coulson as Director, and we both know he is not cut out for the job. He can't make the hard calls."
"What makes you say that?"
"I think I'm proof enough of that. He kept me locked in a basement for months. I had intel on HYDRA. I gave him my terms, but he wasn’t able to take me up on them for weeks, and he wasn’t able to find a way to convince me to talk on his terms. Coulson had a connection to me. He saw me as part of his team, as much as he denied it later, and he let that get in the way, he let that cloud his judgement. You, on the other hand, don't have that connection to me. You don't like me. You've never liked me."
"Yes, and?"
"I don't have a connection to you either, and I don't really like you. That implicit conflict, when a handler is sending one of their agents into a dangerous mission? The danger of the handler making the wrong call to keep the agent safe? That wouldn't apply here. You can order me to do any job, and I'll do it, because I'll do what I need to survive."
"And you need my help to survive," she concludes. After a moment, she asks, "How much blood have you lost?"
"After getting shot at four times? About a liter. I'll live. I'm not in my peak health, or anywhere near it, which is why I need help. And this will work out for the both of us. Think about it – you know the red tape SHIELD has, you know all the red tape that SHIELD will have under Coulson's rule. You need someone on the outside. Coulson is going to be focusing on HYDRA. With Whitehall dead, there’s a power vacuum and I can tell you what players will step forward to try and fill it, and you can get a step ahead of them. But there are going to be missions, as there always are, where it’s going to be a hard call to go after a target, and Coulson may not be able to make that call. But I’m not SHIELD, I’m outside the system, and you know what I can do."
Maria considers him for a long minute. "What's your other angle?"
He frowns. "There is no other angle."
She shakes her head. "No, you joined SHIELD while you were loyal to HYDRA–"
"I was never loyal to HYDRA, I was loyal to–"
"Garrett or HYDRA, I don't care," Maria says, speaking over him. He quiets. "You had an angle from day one, you have an angle now."
"My angle is that I want to live."
"That can't be all. Are you hoping working with me will make you seem more trustworthy to Coulson?"
"I don't really care about Coulson all that much."
"More trustworthy to Skye?"
Ward tenses. "Last time I saw Skye, she shot me four times in the chest and left me to die. Can't say I have an overwhelming desire to be reunited with her."
"Then what?" Maria asks. "You want to prove you can be loyal?"
"I've tried loyalty," Ward says. "It hasn't really worked out for me. This is self-preservation. I want to live, all I have to bargain are my skills, and you are the only person within SHIELD who would think twice about utilizing them."
Everyone in SHIELD hates Ward. He had come up when Coulson had brought Maria up to speed in San Juan. He allied with HYDRA, was working for Whitehall; Skye reluctantly said that he was, allegedly, only working with HYDRA to get Skye to see her father, but it was still the second time his ulterior motives had him riding HYDRA's coattails.
He has few options open to him. He has enemies in SHIELD, enemies he made during missions run for SHIELD, and probably so many more.
She could turn him down, set him back into world, let him be someone else's problem until his enemies caught up with him. He came to Jordan's home, and for that alone she would be happy to see him dead.
But at the same time, Maria has always prided herself on being pragmatic. She can't trust Ward, but his duplicitous nature and self-destructive loyalty to Garrett hasn't changed her assessment of him. He was able to infiltrate Coulson's team, as well as later escape their custody. Twice, with how he was able to get from San Juan to Chicago without drawing any red flags. She can't trust Ward, but she can trust in his skills.
With San Juan, Coulson has started speaking to her as a colleague again. He said he was glad she was back. Maria does like Coulson, but the hard calls that are new to him are familiar to Maria. Ward’s going to be a player on the field. It might be easier if Maria could keep track of where he was.
Besides, they've pulled in agents with worse rap sheets.
There's a song about this, Maria thinks. Don't tame your duplicitous free-agent specialist porcupines, always keep them on a leash.
"If we do this," Maria starts.
Ward looks like he can hardly believe what she's saying.
To be fair, Maria can hardly believe what she's saying. "If we do this," she repeats. "I need your word. I need your complete honesty, and your total compliance."
"Gotta say, after spending some time with HYDRA, I'm not too keen on compliance."
"Your obedience, then."
He huffs a laugh. "I'd rather be your attack dog than pet porcupine."
"I order you to take a shot, you take a shot. I order you to stand down, you stand down. You don't, I put a bullet in the back of your head. No second chances, not this time."
"This is already a second chance," Ward says. "Thank you."
"Don't thank me. This is a business proposition, and to be honest, I'm not entirely sure I want to follow through on it."
"Give me a chance," Ward says, voice going quiet. "Please."
Her phone buzzes with a text from Jordan. Sorry, rush! Will be another twenty min.
Maria doesn't want to text Jordan in front of Ward. "Get out," she says. "Find a motel, wash off, restitch yourself up. I'll find you sometime in the next thirty-six hours. Don't come back here, don’t try and contact me until then."
Ward nods. He stares at her for a few seconds, before his gaze flicks down, and then he's placing his right hand on the arm of the chair, and pushing himself gracelessly to standing. Once he's standing, he sways once. He gives Maria a wan grin.
She wants to call bullshit, that this is an act, trying to appear helpless to lull her into a sense of false security. But at the same time, she knows the tension in his body – the tension of so badly wanting to mask the pain, the weaknesses, the vulnerabilities.
And Ward is truly vulnerable.
He picks up his jacket, and he starts walking towards the door. His first few steps are rough, uneven, and then he's straightening himself up, and striding towards the door. "I won't thank you, because you told me not to," he says, at the door to the foyer, "but I promise you–"
"I don't need any promises other than your word, and you've already given me that. And new rule – don't beat around the bush. I want you to tell me what you mean in the most blunt form."
"You won't regret this," Ward says.
"I’m glad you believe that," Maria replies.
Ward frowns, but nods. He leaves without another word.
Maria watches the door close behind him, listens to the sound of footsteps recede. She sighs. She has never wanted to be Deputy Director Maria Hill here, and she hates Ward for making her need to be. She should have killed him. There's still time.
But for now, Maria walks into the foyer, and locks the handgun back in its drawer. She steps back into the hallway, locks Deputy Director away. Locks Ward away, locks the past few minutes away. Took the long route home, Maria replies to Jordan. Need another minute to finish changing, I’ll text you after.