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Even before Coulson died, Director Fury liked to have Maria present in his meetings with the World Security Council. Coulson was the angel on Fury’s shoulder, providing him with intel and carefully researched support. Maria plays devil’s advocate, unflinching in her loyalty but unwilling to follow blindly either. Maria’s not an idle talker, but only a fool would mistake her quiet assessment for incompetence.
“Sir,” Maria had said after the debriefing on the Avengers Initiative, “Should we really be putting our security into the hands of a group of untested, uncooperative individuals?”
“We might not have a choice,” Fury had said.
“And if they prove ineffective?”
That’s why Coulson was assigned as liaison and why Maria was placed in charge of containment.
After the Battle of New York and the devastating loss of Coulson, Maria watched with gritted teeth as Fury scrambled to get back on the front foot. In the wake of the Chitauri, Fury had no problem getting the go ahead for Project Insight.
She drew the line at the collar he wanted to place around the world in the guise of protection.
“Do I even want to hear your objections, Hill?” Fury says, when she follows him with pointed silence back to his office after the meeting with the Council.
She only needs three words to get her point across.
“Self-fulfilling prophesy.”
One slow blink of his good eye is all Fury needs to convince her of his desperation. But he’s not done throwing grenades into her lap.
A box of files, each one marked Top Secret.
A cursory glance at the first file is all Maria needs to dig in. “No.”
Fury leans forward, resting his chin on steepled fingers. “You were top of your class in Behavioural Profiling at Quantico.”
“My hands are already full with your first batch of superheroes. Now you’re telling me they’re a test run?”
“S.H.I.E.L.D isn’t in the habit of putting all our eggs in the one basket.”
“All your eggs are broken, Sir.”
“Those are your orders, Hill.”
Maria is used to taking orders. She knows that without a chain of command things go very wrong. But orders aren’t all that she is and S.H.I.E.L.D is beginning to feel like a noose.
Back in her office, Maria stares at the box until the light outside her window disappears. There’s no question in her mind that the idea of another supergroup can only end in disaster and she would rather not be associated with a ticking time bomb.
The question then is one of disobedience.
Maria’s first act of disobedience was surviving her birth at the expense of her mother. A fact that her father, the original Lieutenant Hill, never forgave her for. By the time Maria is fourteen they’ve moved between nine US Army bases and orders are all she knows.
Imagination is her closest friend and silence her greatest ally.
Still, there are times when a show of force is necessary. Evidence of her handiwork sits against the wall on the other side of the principal’s office, clutching at his split lip and shedding crocodile tears.
“Did you hit that boy, Maria?” her father wants to know.
“Yes, Sir.” By now Maria knows that honesty is her best defense.
Despite the concerned glance of her principal and the outraged huff of Captain and Mrs Spencer, Maria refuses to let her chin drop. She knows her father’s steely scrutiny means private consequences but there are things she cannot abide and unwelcome hands are one of them.
“I apologise about your son, Captain,” her father appeases his superior officer. “I’ll make sure she’s punished appropriately.”
His punishment is swift. Maria braces herself as the front door closes behind them. A sharp rap against her knuckles with his leather belt to begin with and then in other places that can’t be easily detected. Shouts in her ear about duty as an officer’s daughter while he takes another gulp of bourbon. This is followed by extended silences that she’s long since gotten used to and a grounding that takes away nothing because she had nothing to begin with. A small price to pay in the scheme of things and by next week Maria knows he’ll have forgotten she exists again.
It’s at Fort Benning that Maria notices the first signs of discord.
A scarf around Mrs Spencer’s neck for weeks at a time, even through the scorch of summer. A barely pronounced limp as Mrs Spencer enters the base’s chapel. A diet of soups and small bites of soft food for an alleged decaying tooth in an otherwise flawless smile.
Matron, the camp’s cook catches Maria scowling against the sun’s glare, her eyes glued to Mrs Spencer as they harvest tomatoes in the communal garden. The Captain’s wife flinches for the third time as one of the other ladies grazes a tender spot on her hip.
“Let it be, child,” Matron warns. “No good can come of meddling.”
Maria swallows the bile that rises in her throat. In her mind she sees a future that terrifies her more than the notches on her father’s belt. An army marches on its stomach and on its pillow and it’s these woman who do their duty without a scrap of recognition that keep the army going.
She meddles.
There’s no need for her father to ask if it was Maria who filed the domestic violence reports because her name is on one of the two victim statements plain as day.
A cursory investigation is carried out. Mrs Spencer avoids Maria’s eyes and Captain Spencer is all charm. Maria is a leper whose name is only said in whispers that she can hardly ignore.
A month later the matter disappears into the ether.
Five weeks later Maria is on a plane back to Chicago.
The taxi ride jars the cast on her broken arm. It takes her to a weatherboard home on the outskirts of Oak Park.
Great Aunt Emily greets Maria with a nod, dirt falling from her sun bonnet. Aunt Emily isn’t a talker either. They go whole hours without speaking, letting the silence percolate in the presence of sepia photographs of Emily’s code breaking days.
At dinner Maria has trouble carving her steak with only one functional arm.
Aunt Emily sets her cutlery down. “Who did that to you?”
“My father,” Maria says without batting an eyelid. She didn’t cry then and she won’t cry now.
Aunt Emily rises, opens up the cupboard below the sink and takes out a wooden box. From inside she retrieves a handgun.
“Do you know what this is, Maria?”
“Colt .45, Ma’am.”
Aunt Emily nods in approval. “Work hard at school and I’ll teach you how to use it.”
Maria doesn’t tell her Aunt she already knows how. Over the years Aunt Emily teaches her many other things that sink into her soul and soothes some of her father’s sins.
Maria still has that gun but Aunt Emily passed away the year after she graduated from Quantico. She still holds that lesson close to her heart: Disobedience in the face of tyranny is often thankless but it need not be lonely.
Maria’s eyes still sting behind the blindfold as she’s lead down the subterranean corridor. Rough hands dig into her forearms and the cuffs around her wrists are rubbing her skin raw. Every now and then an echo chases through the earth and reminds her that on the surface, the war for control of Madripoor is still raging.
Maria has no doubt that before the week is through, Madam Hydra will have secured her nest.
Up ahead a door opens. It closes as the men holding her usher her inside.
“Sit,” A crisp female voice says. Maria does so with a certain amount of relief that it’s not Viper giving her the same order this time.
Her blindfold comes off but her cuffs stay on.
Slowly the occupants come into focus. An elderly woman with bright eyes and red lipstick in the seat opposite her. A middle aged man in an impeccable Italian suit and a soft smile on the seat to the woman’s left. And leaning against the back wall is the one-eyed man Maria tried to shoot dead not less than an hour earlier. His two body doubles weren’t so lucky.
Neither was the rest of Maria’s squadron.
“What’s your name, soldier?” The woman asks in a light British accent. Maria takes in the black eagle emblem on the woman’s epaulette.
“I should have thought S.H.I.E.L.D would already have that intel,” Maria answers.
The man in the suit tries to hide a smile behind his enclosed fist.
“Told you she was sharp,” The one-eyed man says.
“Very well, Private Hill,” the woman says. “You must no doubt realise by now that you are all that’s left of Delta squadron.”
Maria doesn’t answer for the lump that forms in her throat. Though her ears are still ringing from the explosion, the orders of her commanding officer are crystal clear: evade and regroup.
She sees the pregnant woman and child barricading themselves behind the door of the dilapidated apartment building they were sent to guard. She hears Sergeant Matthews calling her name. She’d refused to leave her post, had disobeyed her commanding officer in favour of doing her duty and in doing so survived the ambush that killed them.
“Why didn’t you run when you had the chance?” The woman asks.
“I’m not accustomed to leaving defenseless civilians to save my own hide,” she says. She’s sure there won’t be any thanks coming her way any time soon. If the army of her childhood has taught Maria one thing it’s duty before glory.
“And when the Deltite clones of Deputy Director Fury descended on you, how did you know not to shoot the real Fury?”
Maria lifts her head to peer at the one-eyed man. Then she turns back to the woman. “I didn’t know,” Maria says. “If your agents hadn’t intercepted me I would have shot him too.”
The seated agents share a glance. Then the suited man speaks up. “If you had your way, Ms Hill, how would you handle the situation on the surface?”
Maria doesn’t understand what this has to do with anything but since she’s probably under arrest for attempted murder, she doesn’t hold back.
“Lose the battle to win the war,” she says. The woman raises an eyebrow. “We’ve arrived too late and the crossfire is only hurting the innocent. Let the dust settle, let Madam Hydra find her feet and then cut off her head from the inside. There’s a man, the locals call him Logan or Patch. I believe he’s the key to her downfall.”
“That man is an urban legend,” Fury says.
“All legends come from a grain of truth.”
A look passes between the agents again again. Then the man in the suit gets up and approaches her. He takes a key from his pocket and unlocks her cuffs.
“Well done, Ms Hill,” the man says.
“What is this?” Maria wants to know.
“Let’s call it an impromptu job interview,” the woman says.
Two weeks later, Maria has an eagle sown into her own collar and she’s in a jeep with Coulson and his damned tailored suit to find the elusive Logan.
This time disobedience has earned her a promotion and taught her that duty above all else has its own rewards.
“Don’t launch the missile!” Rogers orders her over the earpiece. “I can get there in time!”
Judgement and conviction. These are the two things that run through Maria’s mind a second before her palm hits the red button. A heartbeat goes by and then the missile detonates, reducing the domed facility to shards, killing the three civilians trapped inside.
Cameras on the view screen capture Rogers sinking to his knees, dust blooming around him, his shield held out in front of him.
She walks out of the helicarrier's bridge through shocked silence to make her report to Fury.
Later the team of analysts can’t exit the quinjet fast enough when they see the Captain approaching. They scuttle off as soon as the hatch opens to survey the search and rescue effort.
Captain America is on a warpath but even he knows better than to have a showdown with Lieutenant Hill in front of an audience. Rogers’ anger is palpable, understandable even, but in light of what she’s had to do it’s wholly unwelcome.
He tosses his shield aside like it’s a toy. His helmet goes with it shortly after.
They face off in the claustrophobic hold of the quinjet. Eye to eye, chin to chin, will against will.
Icy blue eyes rake over her, searching futilely for contrition that doesn’t come. She’s sure her stoic acceptance of her actions is what pushes him over the edge of reason. If she could soften, apologise or shed a tear it might make things easier. But she can’t, and she won’t. Because she’s who she is and she won’t feel badly for that.
“I gave you and order, Hill!”
“Yes you did, Captain. I chose to ignore the order.”
She’s seen him angry before but this is something else. Behind the sharp words is emotion she can’t pinpoint until he takes a step closer.
“I know you don’t think much of us, Hill. But it would be nice for some faith once in a while. I could have saved those people if I’d been given a chance. If I’m in charge and I give you an order, either you follow or get off my team.”
Maria digs her nails into her palm to stop from lashing out. She refuses to let this be about ego but she’s sure now that his is bruised. He feels too much, one of the reasons people are drawn to him, but she won’t stand by and listen to him accuse her of not feeling at all.
“I have faith, Captain,” she says. She sidesteps and slams the button to open the hanger. “I’m just not blinded by it.”
“We took three civilian casualties today,” Fury says at the senior officer’s debriefing. “But we could have lost more. If Hill hadn’t detonated the missile in time they would have dumped the allergen into the water supply and the city would have collapsed.”
She’s not surprised when Rogers comes to find her that evening two hours after night shift began. His head is hung low and his hair uncharacteristically messy, as though he’s been dragging his fingers through it.
He hesitates at the door of her office. “Not going home?”
She doesn’t look up from her report. “I killed three people today, Captain. How well do you usually sleep after that happens?”
“About that,” he says. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realise. Why didn’t you say anything?”
There are so many things she could say but the weight of the coroner’s reports she’s just signed are heavy on her conscience. “I have faith those who know me will be able to look past the obvious.”
His lips part just a fraction but the words he’s holding back remain secure. Then he reaches over and takes hold of the files on her desk. Worse still he gets comfortable in the armchair opposite her. “What were their names?”
She holds his gaze for a moment before answering, testing the waters of his sudden interest.
He asks and she answers. Details that don’t appear in the report slip smoothly from her lips. She knows them all, each one of them. She never sends a person to their death without knowing who they were in life. Not if she can help it.
This becomes their ritual each time either of them must let someone else make the ultimate sacrifice. They get to know the person’s life. It’s unspoken of course, but he doesn’t ask to be let in and she doesn’t send him away.
In time, Maria learns that disobedience can be the test that strengthens a tenuous bond or the catalyst that tears it apart.
It starts as a niggling ache in her side that she thinks is a broken rib from when Banner landed on her in the warehouse.
Dr. Fine isn’t so sure.
After copious oncological tests, it ends with an early diagnosis that her body has disobeyed her in the worst way possible.
She disappears on a radio silent mission for six months, during which time the surgeons and radiographers have their way with her. Maria doesn’t mind the hair loss and the ever present pain but it’s the total lack of agency that wakes her up in a cold sweat every night.
She picked a hospital in Texas, an identity that mirrors her own but is subtly different where it counts and severs all her contacts. Still, Maria can feel them sniffing closer, JARVIS rooting everywhere for her and she wonders if it would have been easier to tell them what was happening. But she didn't because she doesn't need their pity any more than she allows herself to feel it.
The nurses all try to make small talk, as though they can take her mind off the sores in her mouth through the magic of mundane pleasantries. Her banter is unsatisfactory, as is her mind’s inability to be still even though her body craves rest.
A month before she’s scheduled to return, Maria discharges herself.
“I really advise against this, Michelle,” Dr Rutherford cautions her. “The surgery went well but you need to take it easy.”
The doctor frowns at Maria over her bifocal glasses. When she sees her advice rolling off her patient like oil on water, she writes Maria a list of things not to do while recovering. The woman reminds Maria of her Great Aunt who would scold her for disobedience on the one hand and force her to face adversity with the other.
“Thank you doctor,” Maria says. “I will take it easy.”
A week later Fury emails her the mission brief to look over. She reconnects in a purely consultative persuasion. Strictly desk work only by order of the Director.
Six weeks later the pain is almost gone. This time Maria learns that disobedience is the part of her that keeps her pushing on. That she can either give in to it and come out the other side or she can fight it and disappear forever.
Four days after Fury hands her the Top Secret box, it’s still sitting untouched in the wall safe behind her desk.
One afternoon when the pain in her side suddenly flares again she’s striding down the dimly lit corridors of the Triskelion. Her destination is located in the middle floors, an area that certain Strike personnel have designated as the Brainstem. A place of antiquated filing cabinets and moth eaten hard cover books. A place Maria has always found welcoming, mostly because without her military training, this is where she would be.
Agent Munroe came to S.H.I.E.L.D from a long career as a successful criminal profiler and her notes on the Avengers is thorough to the last dot point.
“Why did you choose them?” Maria asks the black haired woman. Munroe turns her head to the left and ponders the question over her cup of Earl Grey tea. The beads in her weave click together like a pendulum desk ornament.
“The question is, why would you not choose them?”
The list of cons is long. Maria groups the Avengers into three categories: Bruce Banner when he isn’t the Hulk, The rest of them and whichever one is the thorn in her side for the week.
“They’re a chemical mixture ready to explode at any given moment,” Maria says.
Munroe doesn’t contradict her. “And how do you think you look on paper, Maria?”
Over the years her reprimands have numbered almost as many as her commendations. Maria’s never read her file but she’s sure that on paper she’s not the most upstanding officer. She does her work well, excellently even, but her ability to follow orders is proportionate to her belief in those orders and the greater good. Plenty of others would have been better choices for S.H.I.E.L.D but Director Carter had chosen Maria. Not simply because of what her files had said about her.
She’s has a feeling she knows what Munroe is getting at. “The profiler doesn’t get to do the liaising as well,” Maria says. “It keeps them objective. Three step process and all.”
“Oh pooh!” Munroe says. “If I’d seen firsthand half the things I know now about the Avengers my choices would have been different.”
Six hours later Maria is walking up the driveway of a little house in Queens with white pillars at the entrance. She presses the doorbell once.
The woman who opens the door is wearing a pink and white striped apron. Her expression is weary and Maria almost wants to turn on her heels and leave.
“Can I help you?”
“May Parker?”
“Yes,” Mrs Parker’s voice turns suspicious. Almost as though she’s used to unfamiliar people turning up at her door knowing her name.
“My name is Maria Hill. I’m with the Strategic Homeland Intervention-”
“I live in New York, Ms Hill,” Parker cuts her off. “I’ve heard of S.H.I.E.L.D.”
“Is Peter home? I’d like to talk to him about an opportunity.”
Reluctantly, Parker disappears back into the house shouting her nephew’s name.
As Maria waits patiently for the boy they call Spiderman, she contemplates her response to Fury’s many objections when he finds out she’s circumvented protocol.
She’s sure this is going to be another black mark against her record but she can’t even pretend to be sorry.
If Maria’s going to send people to their potential death she’s going to make damn sure she knows them in life.
Disobedience has its place in an ordered world, and if she can control that disobedience then so much the better.