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The first thing Maria notices on waking groggily from a comfortable slumber on the fifth day, after she did the unthinkable and introduced Coulson's Little Hacker Girl to Stark’s AI before turning them loose on SHIELD, is the smell of burnt coffee. She never burns her coffee. Then there's the much better smell of frying potatoes, the clang and clatter of kitchenware, the soft background hum of a familiar movie—Fellowship of the Ring if she's not mistaken—and voices. Multiple voices. Sadly, familiar ones.
She groans and drops her face back into the comfortable pillow she'd intended on clinging to for at least a few more hours before she was so rudely interrupted. They're interrupting her bunker, and she doesn't particularly appreciate it.
"Morning," Natasha's faux cheerful greeting is much closer than it was a moment ago.
Maria waves off the equally chipper face and notes absently that Natasha is standing in Maria's bedroom doorway, dressed in pajamas of her own as if she'd crashed Maria's couch last night, and cleaning Maria's favorite Glock.
"Get your own gun."
"She's awake, Clint," Natasha calls as she heads back out of the room into the living area. "Make Nespresso."
Annoying assassins.
"I have an interview at Stark Industries this afternoon," Maria points out when she emerges, properly dressed. No pajamas around Strike Team Delta, no matter how annoyingly domestic they're being. "I'm supposed to be well-rested."
"Overrated." Clint dismisses her words with a plate full of breakfast. Eggs and potatoes.
"He didn't burn them," Natasha's chipper voice returns from the couch.
It grates on Maria precisely because she knows they're humoring her and her own attempts at normal. Never mind she actually left SHIELD on sabbatical with Fury's grudging acceptance (if not agreement) to hide out from the (unmentioned to Fury) fallout from letting Skye and JARVIS loose on all of SHIELD's systems in search of a mole. A stubborn mole. Maria's going to SI to keep an eye on things where she might actually have a chance of reining them back in if the whole idea turns out to have been a bad, bad idea.
She already knows it's a bad, bad idea though. She has Natasha and Clint hanging out in her apartment quoting along with the hobbits.
She sits at the table and eats her breakfast, in lieu of banging her head on the table.
She should have gone with plan C.
"Your magazine supply is wanting," Natasha says before Maria's really made it back in the door.
It was a fruitful interview at least. She got the job. Pepper gave it to her, of course, with at least one knowing eyebrow raise.
"My magazine supply is fine," Maria retorts. As if Natasha actually cares about whether Maria has the latest Cosmo or Jane's Intelligence Review.
Then she comes around the corner and groans. Natasha has several of her backup guns disassembled and spread out all over the kitchen table where she's clearly been cleaning them. She's frowning at a tiny heap of parts that apparently need replacing in Natasha's perfectionist mind.
"Don't you have anything better to do?"
"I did the knives already," Natasha mutters. She pauses and looks up with a speculative gleam in her eye. "Got any launchers?"
Maria just looks at her for a long moment, long enough for her to realize she's hearing something else that isn't white noise. "What is he pretending he knows how to cook now?"
"Learning how to cook," Natasha correctly, looking pleased and maybe a little smug. "Borscht."
They're trying to drive her back to SHIELD by assaulting her stomach.
"I want my caches back in place before dinner," Maria orders and heads into the bedroom for a shower without waiting to hear Natasha's muttered complaints while clearing the table.
After dinner, one rescued by the culinary teacher of the pair, Maria tries to escape before they can spring anything else on her, but Natasha shoots her a reproachful look and Clint looks offended.
"Come on," Clint says. "We waited for you."
"Waited for what?" Maria asks, tone cool despite her suspicion.
Clint grins and Natasha looks positively gleeful.
"The Two Towers, of course," Clint says.
"You had the first one in the player when we arrived," Natasha finishes.
Maria decides they are exactly like dealing with five-year-olds. Their ability to take care of themselves is offset by the danger level of the toys they play with.
"Fine. One movie. The last one has to wait."
Natasha nods solemnly.
Maria thinks she'd prefer they drop the act, but if they did, they'd also be trying to drag her back to SHIELD rather than annoy her there.
She turns her alarm up as loud as it goes, sets it for four in the morning, and lets it ring for eleven minutes before leisurely emerging from the covers to turn it off. She gets a sour look from both of them when she opens her locked bedroom door, though she decides Natasha looks decidedly less intimidating when she's only half-awake.
"The next door neighbor asked if I could watch her cat for the day," Maria announces cheerily as she makes herself a cup of Nespresso and toasts a bagel. "I told her I had houseguests who would be more than happy to keep an eye on her."
Natasha mutters something unpleasant in Russian and disappears back underneath her blankets on the couch.
Clint leans back and groans. "I knew the payback was coming."
"Grocery list is on the fridge." Maria heads out the door and can't help the smile on her face.
Working with Pepper is a delight, especially when they're in perfect agreement about keeping Stark from micromanaging JARVIS's search activities, the ones Maria hired JARVIS for, not Stark. Mostly, Pepper's trying to make sure Stark and Skye don't meet and take over the world.
So far, so good.
The apartment is clean when she returns, and the two assassins are nowhere in sight. Maria knows better than to think they're actually gone.
She hums to herself as she puts on the kind of dinner she actually likes—not pizza and not borscht—and thinks that plan H hasn't really had as much fallout as she expected.
Of course, that kind of jinxes it.
"You could have told us you were chasing an insane AI that's trying to take over SHIELD," Clint griped when he got in and dropped his gear and weapons on the floor of her living room, rather rudely interrupting The Return of the King. "What were you thinking letting Stark run rampant?"
Maria sighs, pauses her movie, and assesses him. Clearly, he's been doing something for him to be decked out in full tac gear and battle-worn weariness. "JARVIS went crazy?"
"No," Natasha comments as she enters and closes the door quietly behind her. She looks worse than Clint. "Zola did."
Zola. That's a name that rings a bell, not a good one considering the guy died decades ago.
Well, that's what she gets for having assassins camped out in her living room while she lets hackers ravage her beloved home organization.
Maria turns off her movie, gives up normalcy for a lost cause, and orders them to debrief.
She should've stuck to plan C.