Work Text:
Maria focuses on the envelope in her hands as though she might be able to shred it with the strength of will. Her address is written on the front in messy, slanted cursive. The handwriting belongs to her father but Maria knows the sentiment doesn’t.
He didn’t call on the day she turned sixteen and she hadn’t minded one bit.
This reeks of her soon to be step-mother, a woman she’s met only once at her cousin’s baptism and whom she wouldn’t mind if not for the poor judgement in life partner.
Inside the envelope is a very belated birthday card and a check for a hundred dollars. Blood money. She’d sooner give the money away so she doesn’t have to think about the card but Great Aunt Emily won’t let her.
“You’re cutting of your nose to spite your face,” Emily had said on the day the letter arrived. “Take the money, put it away and do something useful with it. Karate lessons?”
Somebody taps her shoulder and Maria dials the volume on her walkman down but keeps the track running. She takes her right ear bud out and scowls, then swivels around just as the bus lurches to a stop in front of a busy intersection. The motion causes the loose bud to flop over the back of the seat.
“Whatcya listening to?” Cassie asks. Without waiting for a reply, Cass sticks the dangling bud into her ear before Maria can press the stop button. “Aww Glory of Love again! I swear Maria you ought to update your tape deck.”
“Leave her alone,” Tess says from beside Maria. Tess pushes the bridge of her glasses further up her nose. Her eyes remain fixed on the tattered copy of Anne of Green Gables on her lap. “She’d going through her Karate Kid phase again.”
“It’s not a phase if she’s been at it for two years!” Cass interjects. “Those movies are so old. I mean the dude that plays Karate Kid…”
“Ralph Macchio,” Maria informs.
“Right, right, Ralph Macho is pretty cute, but that’s about all it’s got going for it.”
Maria rolls her eyes and knows Tess has seen the gesture by the slight upturn of her lips. Then her best friend betrays her in a very real way.
“It’s not the Karate Kid that she likes!”
Maria’s going to throttle her. Cassie groans so loudly it covers up the gas compression as the bus crawls forward again.
“Don’t tell me you’re watching those lame movies for the old guy!” Cassie says. She picks the remaining bud out of Maria’s ear and places her head in her hands, exasperated by Maria’s behaviour.
“I’m only going to say this one more time,” Cassie mourns. “You need to see a therapist. First that giant rat from Ninja Turtles, then that weird talking tree from Pocahontas and now Mr Miyagi. These parental issues are getting out of control!”
Maria screws her face up and turns back around, giving Tess a jab in the ribs for good measure. Then she dials the volume back up and ignores them.
She can’t blame Cass for suspecting parental problems. They saw the cast on her arm on her first day of school, recognized the way she withdrew at the mention of him, heard her wake up screaming on their class camping trip. How can she explain her fascination with men and women whose kindness belies the power hiding beneath? Who don’t abuse what they have but fight for the common good? Even if they don't get to be the stars of their shows.
“Men like that don’t exist anymore,” Tess had said once, her voice wistful. “Only in Hollywood movies and books.”
Tess prefers book boyfriends to real ones. She’s the first off the bus at the library on the edge of the shopping strip.
Then Cassie alights at the place that Maria hates most. The Mall. It’s a new edition to this side of town and in Maria’s opinion, it’s an eyesore of fast food chains, discount supermarkets, and flashy boutiques. Everything is just so – sparkly – that it jars with the tree lined streets.
At her stop, Maria surveys the bank from the sidewalk, steadies her shoulders like she about to go into battle and then checks her cell phone. Aunt Emily had bought them a set for Maria’s birthday, and then proceeded to use the texting feature to send her coded messages. Even after decades of retirement from the secret service, Emily still couldn’t let the habit die.
It takes Maria a while to cipher the numbers into letters and then she huffs at Emily’s reminder to be home for dinner. This would all have been a lot easier if Emily had taken her to the bank. But that would be coddling and Maria has arms and legs and a brain so no go on being escorted.
The phone is bulky and weighs a ton as she slips it into the back pocket of her jeans and walks through the sliding doors. It’s busy for a Tuesday afternoon and the line for the tellers snake halfway to the door. Her sneakers tap against the granite floor but she only hears them as vibrations through her headphones.
Alanis Morissette’s Ironic blares in her ears as she joins the queue.
Aunt Emily doesn’t approve of Maria’s tendency to shut off the world with music. Maria refuses to give credence to Cassie’s assertion that her walkman is a security blanket. She’s not afraid of people, just weary of them. Besides, there are only so many parties she can go to where some shit faced douche bag breathes ethanol fumes into her face and tells her she’d be hot if she’d just smile more. So it’s either the music or the repressed memories that make her want to lash out and break something. Maria figures she’s doing the world a favour.
Her eyes roam over the thin glass sculptures that act as partitions between sections of the floor. Late afternoon sunlight streams through the windows and outside, the billboard advertising the latest interest rate looms high above the carpark.
In the line beside her, a little boy drives a Transformer toy over his mother’s swollen belly. Maria's eyes lift to the ceiling and she’s just counted two exists before blowing out a breath because she’s doing it again – getting caught up in Emily’s brand of paranoia.
Somehow the phone is in her hands again. It’s like she doesn’t have a will of her own when it comes to this thing. There’s a message from Cassie exclaiming that there are cute guys at the mall. Also one from Tess that doesn’t make any sense because she’s probably mashed the buttons and then sent it while reading a book.
Maria’s just opened up a new message to Emily when what sounds like fireworks pop over the music in her ears. Her head inches towards it seconds before a body collides with her back and sends her sprawling forward. A split second decision sees her sacrifice the walkman to protect the phone and her head. Without the ear buds to muffle the noise, her heart slams against her rib cage in recognition of the staccato burst of gunfire.
“Everybody down on the floor now!”
Glass shatters all around her, raining down and slicing through the chaos of terrified patrons. The arm slung across her hips doesn’t move when Maria rolls out from underneath. Where her palm grazes the person’ shoulder it comes away slick with blood. The metallic scent turns Maria’s stomach but it’s nothing compared to what the butt of the assault rifle jammed into her solar plexus does.
Bile rises in the back of her throat as her knees buckle and crash onto unmoving flesh.
Metal - hot from another round of firing - pushes her head back. She takes in the black combat fatigues and body armour. The face masks and practiced stance of trained professionals. Even if by some miracle she manages to take out this one, a dozen others pick over the hostages for communication devices.
Terror, hot and brittle, strangles her. And yet she can’t cry. Because if she does then he wins. Not the he in front of her, dangling her life in his hands, but the he who tormented then discarded her like she was worth nothing.
Without thinking, her fingers skim over the phone’s keypad. She gets in three clicks and presses send before the phone is yanked from her. The assailant stares at the screen and upon seeing only the numbers 1 and 5, whips it across the floor. The phone smashes as it makes contact with a potted plant.
Maria’s vision tunnels and focuses on his trigger finger. Then a gloved hand splays over his chest and his comrade shakes his head.
“Forget it, she’s just a girl,” the voice garbled by a transmitter says.
Her feet trip from underneath her as the man relieves her of her backpack and shoves her backwards into the wall. Someone’s hand curls around her ankle and when she turns the young mother attempts to draw her into their little huddle. The boy is mashed against her belly, crying silently as she strokes his hair with her other arm.
The part of her that isn’t already broken shatters into a thousand pieces at the foreignness of the motherly gesture. That’s why she resists and instead brings her knees up under her chin and waits.
Just a Girl mentally counts down the thirty seconds it’ll take Aunt Emily to cipher the code she’s sent for mayday.
The assailants knock out the surveillance and set up a loose perimeter, holding guns to the hostages.
Just a Girl carefully chooses a shard of glass from the many pieces lying by her feet. At the five minute mark, she uses the angle of the setting sun streaming through the upper windows to broadcast a message of light onto the billboard.
The assailants find their target in the manager’s office. They make no move for the vault but instead drag a blond man by his collar into the foyer.
Just a Girl catalogues everything that’s happening and waits for a sign.
“Fuck!” one of the men guarding the front door says. “They’re here.”
“That’s impossible. Someone’s tipped them off.”
Just a Girl’s focus locks with the one who was going to shoot her. Then out of the corner of her eye, she registers a pattern in the play of light and shadow on the billboard. A warning.
She reacts without thinking, darting to her left and dragging the woman and her child away from the wall, just as the splintered door crash lands in the exact spot where they were squatting.
The building explodes with a second volley of intruders and Maria can’t tear her attention away from the body of her assailant, now riddled with bullets.
Afterwards, Maria watches the government agents who headed the rescue mission. They’re not SWAT or FBI but figures of authority acting under an eagle insignia. Aunt Emily assumes the role of bodyguard, trading brusque words with them so Maria doesn’t have to say anything. A lot of what comes out of Emily’s mouth are half truths spoken with utmost confidence. Never draw undue attention to your skills, Aunt Emily always said. Maria catches a glimpse of the woman Emily once was – still is – underneath the sun bonnet and wire rimmed glasses. Self assured and stoic.
“You got really lucky, kid,” The E.M.T says to her when she’s had a once over, before moving on to other more deserving patients.
Maria wonders when she wakes up in a cold sweat that night and for six months afterwards, what luck has to do with anything. Her only consolation is that the damn check got shot up in the ruckus.
Director Carter watches the footage on the television screen with shrewd curiosity. What they could retrieve from surveillance before the feed was cut turned out to be - interesting - to say the least. After the fifth playback she turns towards a silent Agent Morgan.
“Tell me about the girl.”
The whites of Morgan’s eyes are like moonbeams against his tan skin. The act of swallowing hard makes the abrasion around his neck where the collar bit into skin more obvious. Maybe he was expecting a dressing down for having been made whilst undercover. Peggy’s not his direct supervisor and she’ll read the failed mission reports later. For now, Peggy’s thoughts are on the bigger picture. One involving a teenager with a killer poker face.
“Nothing special about her. Intel says her Father’s in the army but she’s estranged from him. Mother died in childbirth. Lives with her mother’s Aunt. Good grades. Just your average sixteen-year-old.”
As Peggy presses the play button one more time and the child on the screen lifts her head up into the barrel of the gun – mouth grim – eyes penetrating – Peggy doubts Maria Hill is anything but your average sixteen-year-old. She also doubts this is the first time someone's pulled a gun on Maria.
“Put a red flag on her. I want us to meet again when she's ready.”