Archive of Our Own

"Hill, what’s going on?"

Maria groans, rolling onto her back and pushing herself into sitting up. There's scrubby grass beneath her hands, dirt smeared on her palms. "No idea. I’ve crashed in some field somewhere."

"Any idea of your co-ordinates?" Tony’s voice filters in, muffled like he’s speaking from across the room.

"I’m not accustomed to crashing in random Russian fields so, no, no idea," she snaps back.

"Any obvious landmarks, landscapes?"

Maria rolls her eyes, bracing a hand against her ribs. Definitely bruised. She feels the area gingerly, trying to assess if there's major damage. "It’s a field, Stark."

"Ignore him, Maria." Steve comes back onto comms, his voice soothing. "Is the jet completely gone? Nothing salvageable?"

She glances across the field towards where what’s left of the jet lies smoking and smouldering. "I think if I go near it I’ll either be burned alive or die of smoke exhalation."

"And your tracker?"

She digs into her pocket and retrieves the little device Tony gave her, screen smashed in and back hanging off. "Ruined."

"Well, damn. I didn’t know it could be," Tony remarks. "Do you think you could save it for me, Hill, so I can take a look at it? Might be a fun little science project."

"Fun or not, without it, we’re lost." It’s Bruce, now, his voice as worried as usual. "Our last known location of the jet was four hours ago, and it was in stealth mode, so it’s hardly exact."

"So, I’m lost?" She pauses. "Lost in the Russian wilderness with no map, food or drink, way of calling for help, or any kind of system for getting home? I'm stuck here?"

Steve sighs. "We’ll find you, Maria. See if you can find or make shelter and, just ... sit tight."

"Yeah, I’ll get comfy." Her earpiece hums unpleasantly. "Look, my comms is about to die, so buzz me when you’re nearby."

"Will do, Maria. Don’t panic, okay? We’ll find you." Then the crackle of the line goes dead, and Maria is completely alone.

She gets to her feet, eyes scanning the field for any danger, but it’s completely empty. There’s a smudge of hills in the distance. She supposes those are her best bet for shelter so, grunting in slight pain, she sets off.

At first, she thinks it’s coincidental, that she keeps recognising things, things Nat has told her about. Purple flowers, and worn paths, and scattered bits of rubble.

She tells herself that it’s coincidental. It’s just common in Russia, right? She’s being stupid and noticing things that aren’t there because she’s afraid. Not that she’s afraid, because why should she be afraid? She’s got a gun and a blade and exceptional hand-to-hand combat skills. She’s the last person who should be afraid.

But then a wire fence comes into view, and Maria could cry for relief, because she knows that this is the place. Nat’s safehouse, buried in the hills of the outskirts of St. Petersburg, an empty house that has holes in the roof and old tranquiliser darts in the walls, but a house nonetheless.

Maria is so relieved that she breaks into a stumbling run. There’s a gate on the fence with a rusted padlock, old enough that she only gets halfway through picking it before it simply falls to the ground and the gate swings open with an aged creak.

The front door is closed. Maria has the sense to pull out her knife, deciding to save the gun seeing as she’s only got a few bullets left. And she can throw a knife pretty much as well as she can shoot, in an emergency.

These locks are harder to pick, clearly purposefully, but she manages in the end. It pushes inwards and she slips a hand out to stop it, mindful of loud hinges.

Then a hand snatches hers and she’s pulled in, spun around and pressed into the wall, a sharp edge held just close enough to her neck that it bites into the skin.

"Drop your weapon," a voice says. "And don't even think about trying to fight me. I will win."

Maria holds her hands up and lets the blade clatter to the floor. At the same time she shifts so that, through her suit, the barrel of her gun presses close to her attacker’s leg.

"I see." They push closer and it puts a horrible pressure on Maria’s ribs. She lets out a grunt of pain. "You are injured."

“What?” She wheezes.

"That move causes pain, but not that much pain. Your ribs, they are injured." The person steps back a little and, for the first time, Maria gets a look at their face.

It’s a woman, older than her, with dark hair twisted into a neat braid. The blade in her hand is old, with grooves all over the handle from years of handling, and other blades folded into it.

Maria knows that face - has seen it on countless old SHIELD films, on files about the North Institute, and in soft, worn Polaroids from the back of Nat’s phone case.

"The Iron Maiden," she breathes, her training kicking in first. At the same time, the woman glances at her suit and sees the falcon picked out in silver on the breast pocket.

"Oh. Oh, no. You do not come here." Instantly, the wall is back behind her shoulders and the blade is back at her neck, pressing harder this time. "SHIELD sent you?"

"No, I’m not!" Maria holds up her hands again. "I’m here on a different mission, I’m - I’m an Avenger!"

The woman scoffs, clearly unconvinced. "Oh, you are? So what is your name?"

"Maria Hill,”"she says honestly. "I was on a mission and my jet crashed in a field. And - and I knew there was a safehouse here, so I came looking for it. I was told it would be empty. SHIELD is gone now."

The pressure of the blade doesn’t let up. "Oh, is it? That is what they say, but SHIELD never goes away." She pauses, suspicious. "Who told you there was a safehouse here, then, Maria Hill?"

There’s no point in lying. "Natasha did."

For a moment, nothing happens. Then her arms are freed and the woman steps away. Maria’s hands go to her ribs first, wincing and feeling the tender skin beneath her jacket. The woman watches, eyes still conflicted.

"You believe me?"

"I do not. I will, though. On some conditions."

"Some?"

"All of your weapons go there," she points to a table in the hall, "and any communication devices."

Quickly, Maria divests herself of both things: her gun, her dropped knife, the emergency little Swiss penknife she keeps in her boot, her smashed tracker, her earpiece, and her burner phone. The woman’s eyes track how slowly she puts it down.

"You may keep that on the table," she relents. "And call me Melina. The name you gave me is dead these days. Now, come. You are injured. I have ice, and some things to help the pain."

Maria follows her down the hallway and into a small kitchen. There’s a scrubbed wooden table with a couple of shot glasses scattered across the top and a half-sliced loaf of bread. She sits down on the chair closest to the door, placing her burner phone on one of the brightly coloured tablemats.

"So, Natalia told you about our safehouse, but not about us?" Melina digs in a cupboard, pulling out a small plastic box.

Maria shrugs, then winces as her shoulder burns. She must’ve landed funny. "No, she did tell me about you. I just didn’t expect you to be here. She said it was empty."

"Well, she was lying to you, or I suppose she did not know. I have lived here ever since the Red - since I last saw Natalia. It must be a year or so ago now, I think."

"I know about what happened with the Red Room," Maria says softly. "Nat told me all of it."

Melina sits down opposite her and takes out a roll of bandages. “Your shoulder. You are bleeding.”

Maria frowns and cranes her neck to peer around at the back of her suit. Oh, shit. She’s bleeding. Fairly profusely, actually, the dark stain spreading over the cloth at a slightly alarming rate. "I - I didn’t know."

"Well, no. If you had noticed, you would not be bleeding. Turn."

And Maria finds herself doing as she’s told. "Thank you."

"So, you are close with Natalia?" She feels something press against the wound, soft at first, and then with the sting of an antiseptic. "This may hurt."

"It already hurts."

A slight laugh. "Yes, well, it will." Melina pulls gently at the fabric of her suit. "May I cut this? It might need stitches."

"Go ahead. I can get a new one easily enough." Maria looks down at her lap.

"So, you are close with my Natalia?" Repeats Melina, after the rasp of scissors through cloth and Maria's quiet hiss of breath as the cold air hits her wound. "My apologies. I will find some painkillers as soon as I can."

Maria allows herself a quiet smile; realises too late that Melina will see it no matter how hard she tries to hide it. "Yes. Yes, we are friends. At SHIELD, we ... well, we got to know one another, and after the fall in 2014, I moved to work for Stark Industries. But I help the Avengers." She hums. "I'm not really an Avenger."

"I know. I would have heard of you, if you were." Melina is blunt in exactly the same way as Natasha is, her hands move to clean the wound the same way Natasha's do whenever Maria arrives home bloodstained and tired. "You knew my name."

"I joined SHIELD when I was twenty-one, and I spent thirteen years there. I know who you were." Maria swallows. "And Nat has told me all about you, so I know who you are, too."

"You trust me."

"I trust Nat with my life, so I will trust you with my shoulder," replies the younger woman. It gets a laugh out of the Russian as she passes her a packet of ibuprofen. "Thank you."

"You don't have to keep thanking me, Maria. A friend of Natalia's is a friend of ours - even if I have never heard of you before. We ... talk, but she does not talk about her life much."

It stings, a little, but Maria already knows that she is a secret. It stems from Natasha's upbringing, she thinks. She's so scared to share what she has because the more people know about it, the more people can take it.

Hundreds of nights, it feels like, she's spent with Natasha's head in her lap, fingers carding through scarlet hair as Nat murmurs they'll hurt you because of me. Hundreds of nights Maria has said back and I'll give them hell when they do.

"It is interesting that you trust me, though. I greeted you with a knife to the carotid artery," Melina comments. "Your shoulder does not need stitches, but you need to rest it. I will bandage it."

Her hands are swift and skilful, wrapping gauze around the cut and then neatly tucking in the ends so it stays put. When Maria turns, there's a small pile of glass on the table. She recognises it from the window of the jet.

"I would greet anyone who picked my lock with that," she offers. "Nat sometimes forgets I have a key to her apartment and jumps on me when I come through the door."

"You have a key to her apartment?"

Maria focuses on keeping her face neutral and schooled. Fuck. "It's for emergencies. And pizza nights. Wanda has one too, for girls' nights. We're the only three at the facility, so sometimes it's nice to get away from the men."

The back door crashes open as she finishes her sentence and a man in a thick blue sweater and mud-caked boots lumbers through the door. He must be Alexei, the Red Guardian.

"Melina, my love, where are you?" He calls in Russian.

"We have a guest!" She calls back in English. "We are in the kitchen. Make sure you take your shoes off, too! I swear, some of the pigs are cleaner than you are."

He comes into the kitchen humming and nods at her. He speaks in English, thickly accented. "Hello, ma'am. I am Alex. I am pig farmer. I apologise for the mud, it is the grass at this time of year."

"No, you fool. She's a friend of Natalia's," Melina tells him. "You can drop the cover act. As if anyone would believe you are a pig farmer! You could not tell snout from tail - you just sit in the pen and feed them treats."

"They are cute, okay? You have cute pigs." He pours himself a drink and then offers the bottle to them. Melina declines, but Maria nods. She can keep up with Nat drink for drink for a good while, so a shot or two won't make her vulnerable, but it should make them see her as accepting, as friendly.

It's the same familiar burn as it always is and Maria realises it's the brand Nat fills her own cupboard with. She knocks it back easily and sees Alexei give Melina an approving wink. She smiles to herself, and checks her burner phone.

Natasha wasn't on comms for this mission - it was supposed to only be Steve, but she supposes Tony and Bruce were just in the room with him - but surely someone told her Maria went missing. Or maybe they didn't. It would be exactly the kind of thing that would make her fly to Russia and literally search every field by hand.

"So, where is Natasha?" Alexei asks, sitting down heavily in the chair opposite Maria.

She shrugs, then winces. Melina raises her eyebrows, again the same way Natasha does when Maria sprains her hamstring and then tries to teach Wanda roundhouse kicks. "It was a solo mission. She's still in New York."

"Ah, New York. With Captain America? Was he on your mission?" Alexei asks eagerly. "Does Natasha tell him of me? Does she tell him she knows his enemy, his arch-nemesis? Does he say, I wish I could meet him?"

Melina exchanges a glance with her, a fondly exasperated smile on her face. Maria shakes her head. "He wasn't on my mission. Nat doesn't really share personal details with everyone - but I'm sure he would, if he knew."

Alexei leans back in his chair, satisfied, but Melina frowns. "She doesn't tell them of us? Natalia, she keeps us a secret?"

"I think she's scared to tell people," Maria says honestly. She knows this isn't her information to tell, but Melina looks so concerned, and so sadly confused. "She's afraid, I think."

"Afraid of what?"

Maria shakes her head. "I don't know."

She takes Melina to see the wreck of the jet. They have a car, thankfully, a small black one with the glove compartments filled with all kinds of things that are never usually in cars. The Russian pulls out a bullet pouch from beneath the dashboard and passes it to her.

"Here. These should fit your gun. It is nearly empty, I saw." She closes the drawer as nonchalantly as if offering Maria a bottle of water and then starts the engine. "So, are we far?"

It's only a short ride. By now the smoke has mostly cleared and Maria observes the heap with her arms folded. It's a miserable site, really. There's nothing recognisable left.

"No wonder you injured yourself," Melina hums.

"Do you think any of it is salvageable?" Maria asks, remembering Tony's words. Melina kicks what could be a wing and shakes her head contemptuously. "The boys wanted to know."

"The boys?"

"Captain America, Iron Man, the Hulk," she recounts, guessing Melina will know their superhero names better. "I think they always think they can fix things. Tony can create literal new elements with AI."

Melina snorts. "Is that really true?"

"The truth is a matter of circumstance." It spills from Maria's lips before she can help it, the first seven words Nat ever said to her, ten years ago in a SHIELD interrogation room, her braids coming loose and her eyes hollow above her smirk.

"Natalia says that." Melina shakes her head, and then: "Tell me about her."

Maria frowns. "What?"

"Tell me about her. I know she's my daughter, and we do talk, but ... she never shares much of herself. I can never figure out why. Is she different, when she's with people she loves?"

"Oh." Maria closes her eyes briefly, pulling up the image of Nat in her mind. A thousand different pictures are available, plucked from almost every memory from the past ten years. Nat has always been there. "She's ... good."

"Good?" Melina raises an eyebrow. "Is that all you can say about her?"

"I don't ... she's kind, and she's funny. She's a bit of a nerd," Maria admits. "She loves a lot of people, but I think she's afraid to let them love her back, because she doesn't understand why they do."

Melina sighs quietly. "Oh, my Natasha."

"You know the story of Captain America, don't you?" Maria checks. "Before he was, you know, powered up, there was a test in his regiment - they threw a grenade into the area to see what would happen. He jumped on it as soon as he saw it."

"That would kill you as soon as it went off," responds Melina, her brows knitted.

"That's what the test was. And I always feel like Nat would jump on that grenade. It doesn't matter who she would be protecting: civilians, friends, family, teammates, soldiers, anyone. I think she would jump."

Beside her, Natasha's mother nods sombrely. "I always never understand how she is who she is. The Red Room, it squashes - squashed - everything out of you. Your kindness, your love, your heart. You are supposed to become a machine."

"I think she's afraid of that," Maria admits, crouching down to admire a bloom of flowers. It gives her time to blink away the tears forming in her eyes, tears she's not ashamed of, but nonetheless tears she doesn't want Melina seeing.

A hand lands gently on her shoulder, the uninjured one, though the touch is so light Maria hardly feels it. "Come. Let us go back to the house. You should eat, and sleep."

"Are you sure? I can go, if it's trouble."

"Nonsense. Like I said, a friend of Natalia's is a friend of mine. You are welcome here." Melina pulls her up, surprisingly strong. "When we get to the house you can have your weapons back, if you like."

When Maria wakes up, it's dark, and her phone is ringing. She fell asleep with it clutched in her hand and now it's slipped from her grasp and landed in the crook of her neck where it lies, buzzing, like a child's cuddly toy.

It's her burner, and she knows that only one person would ever call her on it. "Nat?"

"Hey, Commander. How's it going?" It's such a relief to hear her girlfriend's voice that Maria's eyes close again. For a moment, she could be back home, sorting through paperwork at some ungodly hour, and just when she thinks she's going mad her door slides open and Natasha walks in. "Maria? Are you there?"

"I'm here," Maria assents.

"What's happening? Are you safe? Tony made a sort of map that has all the places you could be on it, but it's going to be a long time before we get to you. Did you find shelter?"

Maria runs her hand over the sheets and wonders if Natasha will be surprised. "I'm in St. Petersburg."

She knows that the Russian has caught her meaning from the sharp inhalation of breath on the other end of the line. Maria waits steadily for Natasha to process the information.

"The safehouse there?"

"Yeah." She lets out a low chuckle. "It wasn't empty, by the way. I didn't exactly plan on your mother meeting me with a knife, but, here we are." She sits up, a long-forgotten ice-pack slipping down her torso.

"Did she hurt you?" The anger in Natasha's voice surprises her; it's blatant, vehement, hateful. "Are you still there, Masha? Is someone listening to us?"

"Natasha, no. Everything's fine. She let up once I explained who I was." Maria pauses. "She's nice, you know. Your mother. I haven't really met your father yet, but he seems alright."

"He's got a talent for saying the wrong things, but he's got a good heart. I think." Natasha's relationship with Alexei has always been the most complicated. Maria understands. She knows a thing or two about shit fathers.

"Yeah. He's been outside most of the time." The brunette shifts around on the bed, wincing as every muscle in her body burns with the movement. "How are you?"

"Well, I was shit. But I'm good now." Natasha gives a wry chuckle. "Apparently the boys drew straws to see who had to tell me you were missing because Clint's away."

"How bad was it?"

She can imagine Natasha's shrug on the other end of the line. "I yelled at them for half an hour for losing our best agent, Steve tried to calm me down, I - listen, I'm fine now."

"Natasha." Maria swings her legs off the bed and starts to pace the room as quickly as her body will allow her to. "Please don't lie to me."

"I'm not lying," Natasha replies indignantly. "I'm just editing the truth."

"Fine. Please don't edit the truth. How bad was it?"

There's a soft, heavy sigh through the speaker. "Quite bad. Once I got over being angry, I was just ... scared. I know it's gone, I know we killed him, really this time, I know he's gone, but I just - I thought maybe he'd got you."

Maria's chest aches. "He hasn't, Nat. I'm right here, I'm safe."

"I'm going to be there as soon as I can. I have the co-ordinates somewhere, Yelena gave them to me. I'll be there, I promise." Natasha hesitates. "You promise you're there?"

"I'm here," Maria promises. "Take your time. I'm going to be fine."

She knows Nat won't; she knows that as soon as her girlfriend finds the co-ordinates she'll be on a jet, probably without any backup because it's the middle of the night, and she'll fly non-stop until she gets here.

The call ends. Maria tucks the phone into her pocket and opens the door, wondering if anyone is awake. She knows it's late, later than evening, but there are still lights flickering on downstairs. Her stomach growls, reminding her she hasn't consumed anything except a protein bar and two shots of vodka since she left the compound.

When she makes it downstairs, her legs protesting with each careful step, the cooking part of the kitchen is empty, but someone's sitting at the table, facing away from Maria. In the low light she can see braided fair hair, a grubby white tac-suit and the shadow of a bottle of vodka.

Maria goes for quiet, even though she's probably already been noticed. There's bread and cheese set out on the worktop, already cut up into slices, and a stack of crockery beside it. She makes herself a plateful, eyes fixed on the figure instead of the food.

"Don't touch the carrot ends. They are for the pigs." It's an accent similar to Melina's, the accent of a person who never had it forced or trained out of them. Maria clears her throat. "You must be Commander Hill."

It surprises her. "How do you know my title, Yelena?"

"How do you know my name?" Yelena asks dryly. Maria carries her plate over and sits opposite her, placing the burner phone back on the table. Glancing at the screen, she sees four missed calls, spread out across the hours she was asleep.

"Natasha told me," she replies truthfully. Yelena nods. "She talks to you about me?"

The blonde shrugs. "Occasionally. We do not call very often, but when we do, she will talk about you. Sometimes too often, actually. We met up a few times when I was in America and she does not shut up about you."

It makes Maria want to smile, but she doesn't, only tucks the information away to tease Nat with later. "You don't sound pleased to have met me. Do you have something against me?"

"You are American."

"I'm half Canadian, actually." Maria takes a bite of her food. It's good. "Natasha's lived in America for at least ten years now. Doesn't that count? Or is it just being from there by birth that makes me deplorable?"

Yelena chuckles. "Yes, she said you like to use big words when only small words are necessary." She leans back in her chair. "She loves you. Did you know that?"

"I did." She works to keep her features a smooth mask of neutral. Another bite of food. She can't tell whether Yelena likes her or not. It's unnerving - Maria is used to coming up against people with the same training as her, but usually even they have cracks. Yelena doesn't seem to have any. "I do."

"It's very annoying when she talks about you all the time." Yelena sips her drink. "I am happy for her, though. You seem good."

"Even though I'm American?"

Yelena smirks. "Half Canadian, no?"

Maria smiles back.

She learns, the next morning, that Yelena is like this all the time, a little blunt and a lot overprotective, but she constantly means well. Melina makes hot food for breakfast, каша with honey drizzled over the top, a neat M swirled over Maria's bowl as easily as there's a Y on Yelena's.

She wonders, multiple times, as Yelena admonishes Alexei for his bad table manners and Melina swipes through the news on a tablet, if any of them have guessed. They don't have to hide it at the compound anymore - the boys don't care, and half the time they don't really notice her anyway.

Not that Maria minds. Nat notices her, and that's enough.

She offers to help with the washing-up, is declined, offers again, and is accepted. She and Melina stand side-by-side at the sink, carefully washing and drying bowls that feel ages old in her hands.

"They're the ones we brought from Ohio," Melina admits softly, as Maria rinses clean a chipped blue bowl. "We couldn't save much the first time, but when I was released here to do my science work, with the pigs, a lot of what they gave me was recovered from the house there."

Maria handles them cautiously, carefully. She imagines young Natasha eating cereal out of these bowls before a hurried walk to school, imagines her making PB & J sandwiches for Yelena as a Friday night treat and serving them on the matching plates.

"Does she ever talk about Ohio?"

"She does. Even before you took down the Red Room and she met up with you again. When I first met her, she'd only talk about it after nightmares. Then SHIELD put her through therapy, and she opened up a bit more. Now she'll talk about it whenever she feels like it."

"Really?" Melina sounds surprised. Maria sighs, shoulders dropping.

"It can take a bit of prodding. Some of it is too painful. She won't talk about the night you left - I know the gist of it through old SHIELD records and whatever, but not too many details. She won't talk about the night you came, either."

The ex-widow's hands clench around the lip of the counter. "I never forgive myself for not escaping. I could have done, I know I could have. I would have managed. I could have saved them, even if not myself. But I didn't. I was ... scared. I was a coward."

For a moment, Maria stays quiet, in case the older woman has more to say. They both go on washing and drying. Each movement pulls her injured shoulder just enough to make it burn, a quiet reminder of why she's here, and it makes her think of Nat, and the scar that sits just by her collarbone.

"There's no use dwelling on the past. It's over now," she says at last, words she says to Nat all the time, sometimes words that Nat says to her too, when she wakes up with explosions in her head and phantom officers yelling orders at her. "It was hard, Melina. And you did your best."

"Did you call Natalia and tell her you were here?" Melina asks her, starting to put the plates away in a cupboard.

Maria nods. "Last night. She'll be here eventually. Unless you don't want her here?"

"No, I do. I want to see her, even if she doesn't want to see me." Maria shakes her head at that and Melina gives her a glimmer of a smile. "While you are here - I know you are injured, but are you good at fixing things?"

"Depends on the thing," says Maria truthfully. Melina chuckles.

"The fence of the pigsty. Alexei is forever bumping into it in the dark when he spends too long out there, but he is not good with tools. I could do it, but it would not be very good."

(Later, years later, Maria will wonder if Melina was lying then, if she sensed her restlessness that only Nat or Fury could really calm at the time, and gave her the job out of kindness.)

Now, she puts the last plate away and shrugs. "I can have a go. Where's your hardware kit?"

It's handed to her, and she's given a pair of boots and a thick green fleece to borrow, and as soon as she's suited up she's outside and crouching down to examine the pig sty.

The pigs themselves are running loose in a pen nearby, so she can see and hear them, but thankfully they're not right there when she's trying to fix their home. It's a pretty simple job to be honest, just tightening up the screws and bolts on the gate and fixing the latch, but she takes her time.

It reminds her a bit of her earliest days at SHIELD, where they'd take them to some field or abandoned shipyard or forest and have them cycle through their survival skills: build a fire, build a shelter, build a trap, read the markings, lay a trail, make a compass.

They were allowed to bunch into groups when they were in their first few trips, but Maria never did. She'd known or learnt the skills before anyone else, so she'd complete the challenges first and lie in her shelter miserably eating her rations.

Sometimes Clint would stick his head in and join her, or sit uninvited by her side around her fire to roast marshmallows once the day's training was done. Most of the time, it was just her.

Back then she was lonely, but now she's just alone, and Maria finds it quite nice to be accompanied by just her own thoughts and the occasional grunts and snuffles of the pigs a few metres away. She laughs to herself at the thought of young Maria, determined to do everything by herself and let nobody in, compared to her now, fixing a fence for her girlfriend's father who she accidentally met because she went to her girlfriend's safehouse.

"Well, well, well, don't you look cosy?" Maria's head jerks up, the nail she'd been holding in place falling limply to the ground. Natasha grins at her, standing a few feet away with her arms folded, red curls tumbling down her back.

Maria thought she'd been holding out well, but it's such a relief to see her that she could almost cry. "Nat."

"Hey, Commander." She saunters over, grinning as Maria subconsciously fixes her hair. "It's good to see you. Since when have you known how to fix pig-sties, huh?"

"It's pretty simple. I'm good with my hands," Maria says with a shrug.

Nat smirks. "I could've told you that." She rests her hands on Maria's shoulders, smoothes down the collar of her fleece and then winds her fingers gently in the hairs escaping her ponytail. "You gave me a bit of a fright, running off to be a pig farmer."

"I didn't run off, my jet crashed." Maria gets to her feet, gives Nat a soft smile at her noise of protest at being the smaller one again. "How are you here already? It's only been, like, seven hours."

"Tony's jets go pretty fast." Maria knows every expression that Nat's face can makes and sees her attempt at humour for what it was: thinly veiled exhaustion, carefully masked fear. She kisses the Russian's forehead softly.

"I'm here, krasivyy, I'm all good."

Nat exhales slowly. "I know. I'm sorry. I just - I just wonder what would have happened if you weren't here, if the safehouse wasn't here; if you'd crashed anywhere else and been left alone in some other forest."

"But I didn't, and I wasn't. I'm here, and so is the safehouse, and so are your family, and from what they've told me I gather they're pretty eager to see you again," Maria says gently.

"I haven't been back here in a while," Natasha admits.

"Ever?"

The redhead shakes her head somewhat indignantly. "I did come back! A couple of months afterwards, once we'd broken the guys out of prison and got them set up in their own safehouses to lie low in. But the house was empty, and I figured they'd found a better place to stay."

"I see."

"You don't believe me." Natasha shakes her head and scoffs, looking down at the ground. "I know I do bad things sometimes, but I do still care about them. I'd have thought you'd at least think that."

"I do think that." Maria turns her face back towards her. "No, look at me. I do think you care about them, because you do. But they want to see you, Nat. They really want to see you. You're their daughter."

"Not Yelena's."

She raises an eyebrow. "Natasha, go inside."

"Can I just wait for you to finish?" It's asked quietly, Natasha's eyes darting to look over Maria's shoulder. She nods and leans down to kiss her, feels Natasha relax properly for the first time as she does so. "You're really here."

"I'm here." Maria pulls away and then kneels down again, picking the long-forgotten nail back up. "Now. Anyone ever taught you to fix a gate?"

Even with the borrowed fleece and footwear, she's thoroughly chilled by the time she finishes her job, and Maria uses that as an excuse to wrap her arm around Natasha's shoulder as they head back to the house.

The ground crunches under their feet, pebbles sinking into the earth with each step towards the building. As they approach, she starts to hear sounds - voices, the crackle of a fire, and what sounds like an ancient recording of Don McLean.

"Aren't you supposed to be the one who's anxious about meeting my parents?" Natasha asks, halfway through the walk, her feet lagging behind Maria's. The brunette raises an eyebrow at her.

"I've already met your parents," she says back, earning a sulky grumble in response from her girlfriend.

When Maria reaches out to open it, the door gives easily and she walks inside, welcoming the warmth that washes over her. "Hello?" She calls, although she knows perfectly well the family is all gathered in the main room.

"Maria. Thank you so much," Melina comes into their view, one hand carrying a mug of something steaming. She stops short. Natasha shuffles her feet, steels herself, sticks her chin up. "Hello, Natalia."

"Hi, мама."

Maria unwinds her arm from the redhead's waist and walks further into the house, accepting the mug of tea and sitting down on the couch beside Yelena, who's doing a crossword and is the one listening to the music.

"Commander Hill." She nods, pencilling in a clue.

"You can just call me Maria," comments Maria, leaning over to peer at it. "4 down, the practise of spying - espionage."

Yelena rolls her eyes and writes the letters in slowly. "I was just about to get that, you know."

"If you say so." She tries to make it as light as her banter is with Clint, with Sam, and something like a smile plays on Yelena's lips, which she supposes is pretty good going for a deadly assassin.

They lapse into a contented silence, the fire spitting in the grate and Yelena occasionally sighing over her puzzle, glancing over at Maria a few times before huffing loudly and pushing the page towards her. Maria fills in the boxes with a smile.

In the corner, she can hear soft murmurs, mostly Nat's voice, with Melina's cutting in every so often. She purposefully doesn't translate it in her head, though she could.

"What do you think they are talking about?" Yelena asks after a while, twirling her pencil between her fingers as she thinks. "Us?"

Maria blinks at her. "Don't you know? They're speaking in Russian."

"I do not eavesdrop, Maria Hill. What my sister wants to say to my mother, she will say to my mother, and what she wants to say to me, she will say to me," Yelena replies, suddenly fierce. She narrows her eyes. "You do not seem like the kind of person to eavesdrop, but I may be wrong. I do not like being wrong."

"You're not wrong. I just - never mind." She drinks the last of her tea and uses the few seconds it takes to reset herself. "I guess Nat is probably telling her about what she's been doing. It's been a busy year."

"Yes, so busy she cannot come and see us." It's angry instead of fierce this time, words spat out between her teeth, and somewhere in it is buried six-year-old Yelena clinging to her sister's hand and begging her to play with her, and nine-year-old Natasha shaking her off. "It has been a year."

"She didn't know where you were," tries Maria, but Yelena is shrugging now, going for nonchalant.

"It does not matter. I do not care, we do not care." She shakes her head as if clearing water from her ears. "What has she been doing, then? There have been no aliens, no mad robots."

Maria spreads her hands in a gesture of innocence. "Everything. Nothing. She's an Avenger; there's always something to do."

"And you?"

"Me?"

Yelena rolls her eyes and sighs aggressively. "You, Maria Hill. What do you do? You are not an Avenger, but you are clearly not just some silly Stark employee, and SHIELD has fallen. So, what do you do?"

"Oh." She clears her throat. "I mostly just help them with whatever they need - tech, safehouses, finding intel, using old SHIELD knowledge or tricks to get them what they need, providing communications with Nick Fury, evac, relief foundations."

"So you clean up after them?" Yelena frowns. Maria nods. "That sounds lame. You should be doing something cooler. Why aren't you an Avenger as well?"

"I don't have the time." It's true - Maria Hill is always busy - but it's a lie too. There's always part of her that tells her to wait before she accepts missions, that chooses papers and desk work over practical application and weapons, because what if something happens to Nat and she's not there?

What if a mission goes bad and she isn't there to patch her up and hold her in the middle of the night? What if Tony gets a little too worked up over one of his projects, or Clint gets shot again, or Steve accidentally pushes too hard in training, and Maria isn't there?

She knows that they're both a ticking time bomb. There's only so many bullets someone can take, no matter their training or their genetic potential or their friends with tech that can regenerate cells. She knows that she doesn't get to have Nat forever like most people do, that it's so frighteningly possible that really, they could never come back here, and Yelena's next conversation with her will be with a gravestone.

Being an Avenger, Maria knows, will only make their fuses shorter. It's safer for her to be behind a desk, so when Nat takes another bullet it's Maria's hands, the hands she trusts the most, that are stitching her up, so that it's her sending her the location of a safehouse, so that it's her welcoming her back in the landing bay.

It's hard, and the stress of it eats away at her insides, and she wishes every day that it was a different life she lived, but it's safer, and if it will keep Nat safe, Maria will do it for every remaining day of her life and then some.

"You should make the time," Yelena says to her. "You'd be a cool Avenger."

She shrugs. "I don't have your training; Natasha's a much better fit for the job."

As if called by her name, Natasha appears at the edge of Maria's vision, Melina a pace behind her. "Yelena, mladshaya sestra, can I talk to you, please?"

"I'm not your mladshaya sestra," Yelena mumbles, "I'm an adult now."

Nat ruffles her hair with a smirk and they go up the stairs together. Maria doesn't get a chance to look at the redhead's face or try to gauge how she's feeling; doesn't even get a chance to touch her hand or even smile at her.

Melina is watching her, she can tell. She forces herself to act natural, peering over at what remains of Yelena's crossword, checking her mug that she knows full well is empty, and then stretching her hands in front of her to examine her nails.

"You love her, don't you?"

Maria stays staring down at her hands. "She's my best friend." It's not a lie, because Nick has never allowed her to call him her friend, and Clint is more like a brother at this point.

"I am not stupid, Maria Hill. I am a trained spy." Melina crouches beside her. "The way you have been about her makes it very obvious. Besides, I do not think Natalia would talk about just a best friend the way she talked about you to me."

"You don't?"

A shake of the head. "My Natalia, she does not trust easily. None of us do, but I think she finds it especially hard. It takes time, for her. Years. It takes even longer for her to love."

"We've had years."

This time, Melina tilts her head to the side, questioningly. "How many?"

"Ten of knowing each other, but seven of being close." Maria sighs, pulling her sleeve down over her hand and running her hand over her eyes. "I miss her. She's going to be worried about me."

Melina nods sagely. "That is what the Red Room tries - tried - to squash in her, in us. Missing people, loving people. If you are completely alone, the only person you need to protect is yourself. There is nobody to use for leverage, to use for bargaining." She pauses. "I do not want my daughter to be alone."

"No. Neither do I." Maria shakes her head almost in disbelief. "I never want her to be alone."

That night they go to bed late, Maria tipsy and Natasha on her way to it. The bed is slightly too small for two people and it's hilarious when they first realise, but once they're actually in bed, all Maria feels is overwhelmingly glad.

Natasha lies practically on top of her, arm slung over her torso, one leg tucked between both of Maria's, her forehead resting neatly on the brunette's shoulder, hair tickling her jaw, her other hand flung above them carding through her hair.

It's the closest they've got to be since Maria left for her mission, and she's missed it. They kiss once, two, three times in the darkness, each time longer than the last.

"Your mother guessed about us." Maria is the first one to speak, her head falling back onto the pillow. "I think Yelena did, too. She didn't say anything, but she was very nice to me."

"Firstly," Nat says, lifting her head, "people are nice to you because you're a likeable person, Masha. You have to start believing me on that. Second, I already told Yelena about us."

"You did?"

"A couple of months ago. It was a long night on a mission - you remember, that one where I had to go undercover? And I wasn't allowed to call home, and I was so close to breaking and just calling you, so ... I called Lena instead. And she knew something was up. So I told her."

"Hm. I hated that mission."

"Are you angry?" One of the things Maria loves most about Nat is even when she knows, whether it's through her intuition or her training or just how well she knows her, she always asks. She hasn't had many people like that.

"No. No, I think it's good you told her. She clearly doesn't mind. Neither does Melina, actually. You should talk to her about it."

Natasha groans. "I've done enough emotional talking for one day, haven't I?"

"Ah, it's past midnight. New day, new emotional talk." Maria kisses her. "You know, Yelena thinks I should be an Avenger. She says I'm too cool to clear up after you lot."

"Well, you should be. Yelena's right sometimes - a very limited amount of time," she adds, grinning as she rolls over to straddle Maria's hips. "But you should be. You'd look cute on a lunch box."

It becomes a habit, after that. Whenever there's a mission remotely close to St. Petersburg, Natasha will tell the boys they're hanging around to clear up some loose ends and they'll rent a car and drive through the night to reach the safehouse.

Melina always welcomes them with a warm smile and a bowl of hot food. She and Alexei have drinking competitions and long discussions about the best brand of vodka, and it should bring back memories of her father, but when it does, she just finds herself replacing them.

They bring Wanda a couple of times, and Melina hardly blinks before she's adding another bowl to the table and a spare mattress to the floor in Yelena's room. It brings the Sokovian out of her shell a little, crosswords by the fire and feeding the pigs and snowball fights when Yelena can persuade them.

Any time they have a snatched few days off, a forced weekend of recovery mandated by Steve or a long-booked, desperate forty-eight hours to fly across the globe, it's to the safehouse that they go.

Somewhere along the line, Maria picks up nicknames: drugaya sestra for Yelena, other sister, and it shouldn't mean anything to Maria, but it does. Melina includes her in the moi devochki she calls before meals and uses when saying goodnight. Alexei calls her our American friend and it's with a knowing smirk that Yelena mouths the correction.

It's at the safehouse and nowhere else that Natasha drops to one knee for her, snow soaking into the fabric of her joggers and dusting in her hair, the open box in her hand sparkling in cold sunlight.

"Wanna piss off a thousand old men and marry me?" Is the line she goes with, pulling a laugh from Maria's throat.

"You're losing your touch, Romanoff," is what she replies with, falling onto her knees herself and pulling Natasha's cold lips against hers.

"And here I was hoping you'd say Romanoff-Hill," smirks Natasha when they part, and Maria's heart skips in her chest the way it's done for years, fluttering the way it always will when she sees that particulars smirk.

"I can. I will." It's not often that Maria Hill is lost for words, but she finds herself floundering now, a thousand syllables ready on her tongue but none of them are enough to say what she really wants to. So she settles for: "I love you. And I do want to marry you."

It's the safehouse in St. Petersburg where she goes years later - years for everyone else, anyway, but it's only weeks for her. Weeks are enough to find out that she didn't just lose five years, but she lost everything else too.

It has only been weeks for Melina, too, and when she opens the door her face is lined with fresh grief, newly-made bags under her eyes from sleepless nights and bouts of tears. She sighs softly when she sees Maria. "Masha, moya devochka."

"I'm sorry," Maria whispers, as she all but collapses over the threshold. "I didn't know where else to go. I didn't know who else would understand. I feel like I'm the only person left."

"You are not." Melina wraps a strong arm around her shoulders and leads her to the couch. "We are here, and we know. We understand. You are never alone when we are here, Maria. You are family."

There are tears spilling down her cheeks before she can stop them. "I don't know how to live without her, Melina. When Nick and I came back, the first place we went was the Compound, and it was ruined, and the first person I saw was Clint, and he just looked - I just knew."

"Do you blame him? Barton?"

Maria stops. In truth, she hadn't even considered blaming Clint. She'd seen him try to tell Nick the story, his voice catching and breaking every time he said Nat's name. She heard him explain how Nat caught him, the grappling hook, and how she bit him to get him to let go.

She's seen him walk around the Compound and pace aimlessly around the fields on a quick visit back to the farmhouse, where Laura held her in the old room that used to be reserved for Nat and Maria thought her heart might break in two at the sight of the redhead's old comfy clothes she kept there.

"No," she says at last. "I don't. He doesn't - he can't live with himself. Every day we were together, he would tell me, I wish it had been me. The only thing keeping him alive is having his family back. He stays alive for the kids, so he can tell them about their Aunty Nat."

Melina tuts sadly. "That poor man."

Maria does her best to pull herself together, drying her eyes and taking a deep breath. "And you? Are you coping? Yelena, Alexei, are they both doing well?"

"Alexei feels guilty, I think. There are lots of things he wanted to tell her and he never did, because he was so sure they'd always have another visit. He didn't dream she'd die before him."

She shakes her head wordlessly. Melina's words are heavy with grief, wrenched from the pit of her soul. She reaches out and takes the older woman's hand. In doing so, the ring on her finger bumps against the one on the Russian's. They both look down.

The sob that escapes Maria's throat rips its way out, tears its way through her sternum and into the open air. Her chest feels like it might split open with how much it hurts inside, the pain of losing Nat so tangible and so sharp that Maria thinks she could throw up.

"The stupidest thing is," she gets out, through her heaving breath, "is that all I can think about is how much we spent on Nat's ring. They'd stopped selling them, and we had to pay extra to get hers to match. And all I can think about is how wasted the money is, lying at the bottom of a fucking cliff in space!"

"I know, moya doch', I know."

"And then - and then I can't believe myself - because Natasha is dead, she's gone - and - and all I care about is the bloody money!" Maria practically explodes. "I can't believe it's what's on my mind."

"It's because it hurts so much." And Maria doesn't understand how Melina has remained so steady this whole time, but she has, and now she pulls Maria into her the way her real mother never did. "You are compartmentalising, Maria. You are an officer; it's what you're used to."

At those words, Maria thinks of an early morning years ago, coming into her office to Nat sitting on her desk with a box of doughnuts and her signature smirk, uttering a hey, Commander as she dragged Maria down into a kiss. She can't stop the tears that come after that.

Melina holds her for a long time, strokes her hair and murmurs soothingly to her as she cries into the fabric of her shirt. Her tears go on for much longer than she has actual tears left in her, and after a while they just turn into dry sobs, quiet eruptions of grief as Melina rocks her from side to side.

"I don't know what to do with myself," Maria mumbles, when she finally goes still. "Every second I think of her and it hurts more."

With a nod of understanding, Melina carefully extracts herself and stands up. "I have found that keeping busy helps. I have been developing the formula for the antidotes to the Widows' chemical subjugation to hopefully make it easier to produce more. I am going to make some tea, and perhaps you would like to join me?"

Chemistry was never Maria's favourite subject at school, but she got an A in it in 11th Grade, so she's not awful at it. She follows Melina into a half-study, half-lab and joins her at the desk, sipping at a mug of sweet tea cradled in her cold hands.

"It is very simple really," Melina says, walking her through a complicated chemical formula. "I have all the materials and the process. It is just slow to make, and we need lots of it."

The chemical subjugation the Red Room developed, Melina explains, wears off after five or six years. When the Red Room was operating, it was fine, because Widows could be called back for regular top-ups, but after they brought it down it posed a problem. There are Widows who survived the Blip and had it wear off during the five years, and it causes a lot of confusion.

"We were not there to help them, or explain to them that Dreykov was gone, and it led to issues. Now, we give the job of freeing Widows to the ones we helped right when we killed Dreykov, and instead Yelena goes to help ones freed by accident during the Snap."

"I see."

And it helps, it does help, to forget it all for a while. Maria loses herself in copying out pages of old, faded instructions worn away by the years they didn't get to see pass, whilst Melina mutters to herself in Russian and makes notes and fills their mugs continuously.

They have dinner in the kitchen. Alexei eats with them in total silence, wearing a thick black coat over his ordinary clothes with the red Widow symbol pinned to the label. Once he's finished, he disappears, saying goodbye with only a single nod.

"We named a pig after her," Melina says, "and he goes to talk to it all the time. I suppose he thinks it is her soul, in a pig." She raises her eyebrows. "Five years ago I would have told him he was a fool, but now I am as desperate as he is."

"You should come to America," Maria says impulsively.

Melina frowns. "America? Why? We have no use for that country - everything we need is here. We do not want to be a part of SHIELD," she adds suspiciously. Maria shakes her head.

"No, no. I meant ... Nat has a grave there," she says quietly. "The funeral was a small one. Private. Clint and I couldn't bear her being turned into some sort of national hero when ten years ago everyone was calling her a traitor for the things she did before she defected. But she has a grave."

"A grave? What does it - what does it say on it?"

Maria clears her throat carefully. "Natasha Romanoff. Daughter, sister, Avenger. And it has her symbol, the Black Widow symbol. I go sometimes. People leave flowers there, random people, and notes of gratitude. They see her as a hero."

"Oh, my Natasha," Melina whispers. "All she ever wanted was to be good. All she ever wanted was to protect people. When she was nine she held armed guards at gunpoint to protect Yelena."

"I can't believe she's gone. I can't believe someone so good is gone. And the worst part is," Maria continues, her voice catching, "is that she never even believed it."

"Always the red in her ledger, the mistakes she made. Never what she was doing for people."

They cry together for a few minutes, Maria sobbing softly into her hands and Melina staring through the window as her tears fall. Quietly, Alexei comes in and stoops to kiss the top of her head before, hesitating, he squeezes Maria's shoulder.

"It will pass," he mutters in Russian.

Will it? Maria wants to scream. Will it pass?

She sleeps over, curled up in the bed she and Nat used to share on visits. It's spacious and comfortable with just her between the sheets; she ends up sleeping with a pillow clutched to her chest to fill the empty space.

At something past midnight, a noise wakes her up, and for a moment she's transported years back: 2016, Nat climbing through her apartment window in a brunette wig and dungarees of all things, I'm on the run from the government tossed over her shoulder as she packed a suitcase.

Maria blinks in the darkness, watching the sash window slide up, and her hand flashes to her gun before she sees blonde hair and an army surplus vest and collapses back against the headboard. "Lena. What are you doing here?"

"Sleeping," Yelena says simply, pulling off her vest and kicking off her shoes before she collapses at the end of the bed and tugs a blanket over herself. "It was a long walk."

"Where have you been?"

She shrugs. "Lots of places. Spain. Portugal. France. A very charming little villa just off the coast of Italy, there was a wonderful pasta place next to it, fresh pasta - none of that boxed shit."

"I thought you liked boxed mac n cheese?" Maria asks, gathering the covers around her to give Yelena more space. "You eat bucketfuls of the stuff whenever I bring it for you."

Yelena turns to face the wall. "It was my favourite in Ohio. Tasha would make it for me when мама and Alexei were out working late. We weren't allowed to use the cooker, only the kettle."

Maria doesn't know what to say to that.

"I miss her," says Yelena softly, unexpectedly. "I miss her so much. I never said goodbye to her, you know? We never said goodbye when she visited - we would be joking, I would call her an idiot or something stupid, and we'd never say goodbye."

"Where were you?" She doesn't know why she wants to know, but she does, achingly so. "When you were dusted?"

"On a mission. You?"

"The same. I was with Nick - we were just on the pavement, and suddenly I felt myself going, and I looked at him, and that's all I remember. And when I came back -"

"Everything was different," Yelena says grimly. Maria remembers the first day as clear as water. The memorials were the worst part - that and the way Nick held her, clutching her to him the way Maria has seen Tony hold Peter.

"Everything was worse." Maria closes her eyes. "Everyone told me I should be glad to be alive, that it was a miracle, and all I could think was that I didn't want to be in this world. I didn't want to be alive if it was a life without her."

Yelena reaches out and takes her hand and squeezes it, and after a moment, Maria squeezes back.

Maria stays for a week that bleeds into a fortnight that bleeds into a month, continuous hours running into each other. She helps Melina in the lab, feeds the pigs with Alexei, teaches Yelena to make real mac n cheese and then keeps eating the boxed packets with her.

She fixes the gate, and then fixes it again. Yelena makes a habit of climbing through her window after missions, falling asleep on the floor or at the end of the bed or sprawled on the mattress they eventually bring in.

Nick calls her, Clint calls her, Sam calls her, Laura calls her, and each time she hangs up as soon as she can.

She stays the whole winter: hot food and roaring fires, long rambles through the snow with her tears freezing on her cheeks, tentatively laughing at Yelena's tales from her travels, spending hours training the American Akita puppy she brings home.

"Why you had to call it such a stupid name, I do not know," Melina says despairingly, watching as Yelena teaches the dog to roll over. Maria thinks of the false IDs recovered from the safehouse in Norway and keeps the secret quiet. They have enough things to cry about as it is.

She stays the whole winter, but eventually Nick's calls are getting too frequent and her hands are starting to twitch whenever she reads the news and Nate is turning nine soon and she knows that she has to go back.

So, when Yelena leaves for a Widow recovery mission in Pennsylvania, Maria packs up the few things she brought and the many things she was given, hugs Melina and Alexei goodbye and boards the plane with her.

Yelena sees her off on her flight to New York. Just before the gate, she pulls Maria back and hugs her. "Goodbye," she says firmly, and then, "good luck. If they are making a new Avengers, you should be in it."

Maria chuckles. "So should you. Talk soon, Lena, okay? I'll call you tomorrow."

Still, the blonde doesn't let go. "Are you going to be okay, Maria?"

Smiling softly, Maria allows herself a nod. "Yeah. I will be."