Marvel BB Fic: No Fear of Heights [R; Movies 'verse; Maria Hill, Ensemble] 1
Title: No Fear of Heights
Author name: Obsessionality
Beta name: Ifitwasribald, seablue_eyes and AW (from RL, darling you know who you are)
Characters/Pairing: Maria Hill, Phil Coulson, Nick Fury, Ensemble - Maria/Natasha
Fandom/Universe: Movies ‘Verse, Post IM3
Rating: R
Word count: 38,088 Words
Warnings: This fic contains ALMOST Non-Con - nothing happens, but it is there, and it gets close. There are further mentions of violence and abuse - I’d say canon compliant but nothing like this would ever be shown on TV. Warnings also for the recovery from physical harm and torture. I don’t think I’m very graphic, but please go in with your eyes open. Additionally, there is family and relationship trauma - I don’t know if this is worth warning for, but just to be safe.
Summary: Maria Hill is the Assistant Director of SHIELD, a high-flying member of a high-flying covert agency, whose friends and colleagues could, and often did take off, into flight. But while most of them come from similar, if exceptional, military backgrounds, not all of them have the same story. This story is about Maria Hill, her history, and the price you have to pay for finding acceptance, when you belong to a high-flying, high-risk super secret organisation like SHIELD.
Tony Stark's not wrong, entirely. You do have to be a certain type of messed up, to find a home in SHIELD, or any similar intelligence agency. Normal people did not thrive in places where sex-change forms were a normal thing and re-writing Wills was a monthly business. Maria Hill always thought she was the exception. She always thought she was pretty normal, compared to the rest of the lot. She wasn't. But while Stark wasn't wrong, he wasn't exactly right, either. SHIELD is like the ocean; what it taketh away, it often giveth back, with upgrades.
Alternate Link at AO3 for the fic as a whole
LJ 1/8
Fanworker name: Kymericl
Type of fanwork: TBC
Link to accompanying fanwork master post: TBC
No Fear of Heights
aka the SHIELD Hypothesis
This is a story about how SHIELD is like the sea; it giveth and it taketh away, and about how sometimes Tony Stark sees far too much for comfort.
Tony Stark says that they should all form a club, because there’s not a one of them who doesn’t have a Sad Tragic Past ™. Maria Hill has always thought he’s a bit of an idiot, genius notwithstanding, but she likes and respects Pepper Potts, and there has to be something there that keeps her with him. By the time Pepper and Stark break up, she’s had enough exposure to the man to change her mind about him, to an extent. She still thinks he’s a tit, but she can see where he’s coming from. If you look past all of the bullshit he spews, there is a layer of painful honesty, and sense. She thinks that’s his way of sugar-coating, because it only makes Rogers look irritated. If Rogers could see what Stark was trying to say, he’d look much more sad, and as Barton put it, like a puppy in the rain.
But in the beginning, she thinks she’s the exception to his Sad Tragic Past Thesis.
Anthony Stark’s “Sad Tragic Past” Thesis: Every man and woman (and person in between) who is sadistic enough to get involved in the messy business of government intelligence and national security, in whatever way, shape or form, has a Sad Tragic Past that they are trying to escape.
It seems to be fair enough. God knows, the Avengers are a Sad, Tragic lot, once you get past the shiny outer layer. Even Rogers. The man was effectively sent 70 years into the future. He lost everything and everyone he ever loved. The world had no place for him, so he’s had to carve himself a niche as Captain America. If he ever leaves the niche, well. She’s seen him leave the room when Sitwell starts humming Eleanor Rigby. He’s pretty much the epitome of a Sad Tragic bastard.
Romanov was an internationally wanted assassin by the time she’d hit 20. That woman could do things with her thighs that Maria could not even fathom. And where she kept knives on her skin-tight suit, god only knew. She preferred guns, herself, because they could be holstered. And didn’t threaten to cut her every time she sat down. She has a feeling that Romanov wouldn’t even notice if she’d been cut by a knife inside her suit a couple of times.
Barton was a carnie and a run-away from an abusive home. Banner was a run-away too, even if he’d fallen into an orphanage instead of a travelling circus - as far as Maria could tell, the former was as bad as the latter. Stark had more issues than all of them combined, because Hill knew what was in his original files, even if Rogers didn’t. It had taken her three days to get through them, and when she’d walked out of that room, she wouldn’t have been able to give him a hard time if she’d tried. She’d seen his arc reactor when he was in hospital. She’d seen his torso. He didn’t have much unscarred skin, for a civilian. Even for a civilian ex-weapons manufacturer and defense contractor. He’d definitely got the short end of the stick. At least Barton and Romanov and Rogers had the military routine to keep them straight, and Banner had his girl. Stark was still adrift, hanging on to the empty shells of his old WMDs.
And Thor was the dick older brother of a kid who’d found out he’d been “adopted” as security against his birth parents attacking the kidnappers, and had then lost his mind, killed his father and tried to blow up another realm before trying to take over the Earth on some sort of kamikaze rampage. His experiences spoke for themselves, and she wouldn't belabor the point.
Not a one of the Avengers were what could be called truly sane. But no, the Sad Tragic Past thesis extended to all members of SHIELD, and NSA, and FBI and god help her, even the CIA, the rat bastards. Even the Army, hell. Rhodes was a good man, a good soldier. Even he was messed up, because of the war, and because of what he’d seen and done while trying to rescue his best friend from a terrorist cell in Afghanistan. She’s still not sure if Stark knows about what his bff had done when he’d been taken. She’d be surprised if he was still in the dark, but nothing seems to have changed between the two. Maybe that’s how they dealt, because they were men. But then, that was how she dealt, so she couldn’t throw stones.
Phil Coulson had a robotic arm that was so high tech that no one could tell it was a robotic arm, unless they’d looked at his very, very classified files. Except Stark, because he was the one who’d designed it, but that didn’t count. He had lost it when he was in the Rangers, not two months before Fury had been planning to recruit him. It had looked like they’d lose him, but Stark had come out of nowhere, and said that he’d had some designs in mind, and would they mind letting him save their agent's life, try it out, thanks. She didn’t know if Coulson knew that Stark was behind his hand, but Coulson was a nosy bastard, and it was impossible to keep him out of files which had no relevance to him, let alone his own files.
Maybe she could safely say that the look in his eye when Stark went off on a rant, was fondness. Maybe it was why he’d gone out of his way to look out for Stark, during and after Afghanistan. It had been lucky, anyway. If Phil had been completely flesh and blood, Loki’s spear would have killed him. As it was, it caused a lot of mangled flesh and a little dented metal. Nothing Stark couldn’t fix.
Nick Fury was like the bastard god of secrets. He lied about lying about his lies, and even then she wasn’t sure if he was done. He could be relied on to do nothing but fuck with your expectations, because he got off on it. It was what made him such a good director. Even he had a Sad Tragic Past. He had, after all, lost an eye in a revenge attack, or something. The details were redacted everywhere she’d looked, and she didn’t particularly want to spend all her time digging up dirt on her boss. The only thing she knew was that he’d been born with both, and he’d been a General in the army when he’d lost it.
It felt like the army and other similar organisations were highly interlinked with Sad Tragic Pasts. It was why she’d been convinced that she was the exception to Stark’s rule.
Because she’d never been in the army. She’d been a normal girl, with a normal, loving family. She had a little sister and an older brother, and she’d grown up in an upper-middle class suburb in California. Her parents were still married to each other. She had two nieces and a nephew on her brother’s side, and her sister’s girlfriend was due anytime soon. She’d been good at school, and she’d played soccer, and had been into gymnastics for a while. She’d been voted Class President, and then the one Most Likely to Succeed. She’d never had a bad relationship, even though none of them lasted too long. She’d wanted to be an astronaut, and then a doctor, and she’d ended up going to law school, of all places. She’d done pre-law, and then law, and she’d been half way through her masters while working at a big firm in New York when she’d first met Nick Fury.
He’d been ushered in by three of the most senior partners available, and she’d been poached from her project, to sit in on the meeting. Fury had eyeballed her, once, and she’d looked him straight in the good eye and not flinched. He’d given them a “hypothetical” case about some guy who’d been kidnapped by the NSA, and how they needed him back because he was a specialist. The senior partners took notes furiously (ha!) and looked at him like he wasn’t a crazy person. She’d done nothing of the sort.
She’d been sceptical of the whole thing, and when he’d asked her if she had something to say, she had said it. Possibly she'd been running on little more than three hours of sleep in three days, and obscene amounts of caffeine, which would explain her uncontrolled outburst. But she considered it a happy accident, in hindsight. She’d said, ‘I’m too new around here to have heard of you, if you are a client, but say this is all true,” and all the senior partners had been making frantic hand-gestures and the look on Maria’s face had probably given it away to Fury, “and that there is a specialist under your jurisdiction who’s been kidnapped by the NSA for national security purposes, your best case would be to get him out some other way. The NSA’s not going to even engage with us, legally. They’re going to pull National Security and whichever judge sits on the case is going to dismiss it without a second thought. If you have one specialist, you’ll have another. I’m sure you know this about the legal system - I’m not sure why you’re even here. If this is even true.” The three senior partners had been watching her, slack-jawed and silent with shock. Fury had looked at her carefully, and then grinned. She’d smiled back, a little, because the guy was charismatic, what could she say? He’d then given her a card, and told her to call. She’d put the card in her purse, programmed the name into her cell out of sheer habit, and had proceeded to completely forget about it.
She’d been fired in less than 24 hours, and she’d not even regretted it. The firm had been killing her inside anyway. They’d forced her into finance and banking law, just because she’d had a better head for numbers than her colleagues. That was not why she had gone to law school. Seriously. She wanted to work with human rights and national security. She just hadn’t decided which side she’d be on; the security side or the rights side.
Also she was sick to death of being mistaken for the secretary all the time. There was nothing wrong with being a secretary, but she hadn’t gone through hell on earth aka law school, just to be asked to make coffee every time a client came in. She’d been done with that bullshit before she’d even started there. She wasn’t even sure why she’d stayed, apart from the fact that she needed to eat, and pay rent and bills.
And as she’d been on her way to a bar to celebrate by having a drink at some-time before 3 in the morning, like she hadn’t been able to since she was in college, a black town car had pulled up beside her on the street. She’d done aikido at some point. She knew enough to run when she had to run, and she was enough of a gymnast to be able to run pretty damn fast. As it was, she froze. For all she knew, the car had nothing to do with her. But then the door opened, and out stepped Nick Fury, dressed in his now-customary, then absurd leather trench-coat, looking like Morpheus from the Matrix.
A small, possibly hysterical part of her, which she’d been ignoring for the fear that she’d completely fly off the handle if she gave in to it, wanted to laugh. Because, seriously? It was a perfectly warm summer evening in New York, following an almost uncomfortably warm day. And he was wearing all black, topped with a leather trench-coat like he was some kind of super spy. She remembered the story he’d told in the lawyer’s office, and wanted to laugh even more.
The rest of her was gibbering with nerves, because what the fuck did he want with her? He’d already gotten her fired, for telling the truth none-the-less!
He was followed by a smaller, compact looking man in an expensive looking tailored suit. He stood perfectly still, hands subserviently held in front of his crotch, eyes meeting hers, despite the fact that Maria teetered about 3 inches higher than him in her heels. The smaller part of her mind was recalling scenes from Men In Black, even though the sane part of her made her take a step back. She clutched her purse in front of her and got ready to run in the direction of a crowd. Safety in numbers, and all that.
“Don’t run, Ms. Hill.”
Despite herself, she snorted. “Why are you following me?” she asked, because it was a good guess. As a junior at the firm, it was unlikely that anyone had even told him her name, let alone her address or her whereabouts, or that she’d been fired. It was downright fucking creepy that they'd been able to find her in a place she couldn't normally be found. But she stayed wary, and didn’t say anything.
“Because I have a skill.”
She waited. She wasn’t going to ask, just because he wanted her to. The man was clearly delusional and dangerous until she discovered otherwise. She wasn’t going to play his insane games. Her heart was pounding, and she stayed deliberately still, poised to run.
His lips twitched, like he wanted to laugh. The smaller guy said, “I see why you like her, Boss.”
“My skill,” he began again, can stay in your pants, she thought, because that was probably where he was going with this and no. Just, no - “is recognizing talent.” She waited. She was good at waiting. She was a lawyer. She was a professional waiter with a law degree. Hah. He rolled his eyes, obviously annoyed that she was ruining his pre-prepared spiel. “And you have talent,” he continued. “You also have balls. I like that.”
“I’m sorry man, I don’t know what you’re into, but I’m not into that.” She heard herself saying the words, as if from a distance, disconnected from her own body. There was a moment of silence, and then the smaller guy laughed. It was a normal laugh. Not a creepy, TV-Villain laugh. Just a normal, slightly surprised sounding, giggle of a laugh. Even Fury sighed and shook his head.
“I should have known that speech wouldn’t work on everybody. Listen. I’m Nick Fury. This is Agent Coulson. I’m the Director of a covert agency known as SHIELD, short for Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division. I know this sounds like a joke, but we deal with the things that no one else can deal with. Things that other agencies can’t even imagine. We’re a largely military division but we also specialise in intelligence and information gathering. We are outside the government and above the law[1], and we do what has to be done in the name of national security. However, you might be interested to know that we have the most advanced research and development division outside Stark Laboratories, and we use the most accurate and reliable technologies to determine whether a threat truly exists, before annihilating it.”
He stopped, and looked at her. She processed. “Prove it.”
He glared. She glared back. She’d done a minor in glaring at dickheads, in college. “Boss,” the smaller man said. Surprisingly, Fury gave him his instant attention, which was interesting. The small guy looked like a pen-pusher, and big bosses generally didn’t give a shit about the pen-pushers who made their lives easier. But no, Fury gave the guy his complete and instant attention. Two options; either this guy wasn’t so bad, or the little guy wasn’t actually a pen-pusher. Maybe he was a deadly assassin ninja.
Maybe she shouldn’t have done those shots before she left home. She was admittedly feeling a little down about having lost her job and having rent and bills to pay, and her next door neighbour’s cat got laid more than she did. Surely shots were to an unemployed person what coffee was to an employed one. Surely shots were to the unwillingly celibate what breath-mints were to the sexually active? That made sense, right? Except, she was maybe allergic to shots? Which would be horrible because coffee ran through her veins, or something.
“Yes, Coulson?” Fury asked.
“I like her.”
Some part of her wanted to be indignant, but the shots were making a dramatic re-appearance in her system. She was pretty sure she hadn’t felt drunk when she’d left the house. Like, at least, 90 per-cent sure. Okay, maybe 85. Or 69. Heh. Sixty-Nine. Funny number.
“Yeah, Coulson. So do I. Think it’s kicking in?”
“Possibly. She does look a little cross-eyed.”
Alarm bells were ringing in her head, at full volume. She wanted to turn them off and go to bed. But there was something going on. Something important, that she had to pay attention to. A door was being kicked in. She’d always wanted to see that. She’d always thought it would hurt like a bitch. It did hurt like a bitch. She could have done without that discovery.
Maybe the door was in her head, because it really hurt. Her skin hurt. Her knees hurt.
And then it hit her, like a mugger with a 6-by-2.
“Holy f-” she began to swear, pulling the pin on the rape alarm she’d been fingering since she’d been stopped on the street, turning to run when-
Her knees gave way, and she collapsed onto the floor. She would have been swearing if she had been able to feel her tongue. It felt like she was at the dentist’s, and he’d just given her a general anaesthetic. There was a man swearing in the background, but it was just really funny because he was speaking in tongues. She passed out completely, to the nonsensical thought that maybe dentists wore white so they would reflect all the glaring light in their offices, and so they’d look like they had halos.
“She’s going to be pissed when she wakes up, Boss.”
“I know, Coulson.”
“You sure about this?”
“I want her on our side, Phil. She’s a good one.”
“Right. Let’s get her in the car then. She was a bit more trouble than you’d said, Boss.”
“Yeah, well. I wasn’t expecting her to have resisted it so much. She should have passed out about the time I’d made that speech. Think she noticed the Torchwood thing?”
“Don’t know, Boss. She seemed pretty out of it, I think.”
“Damn right, Coulson. I gave her one-and-a-half times the regular dose, because I’m pretty sure she could have caused some damage.”
“Huh. Took her a while, though… Boss?”
“Yes, Coulson?”
“You used an EMP to kill the rape alarm, right?”
“Motherfucker, the fucking car.”
“I’ll call backup, Boss. I don’t blame you. It was making me crazy too.”
“Shut the fuck up, Phil.”
Maria woke up to a dim soothing room, and had at once gone into red-alert mode. She’d been a gymnast but for the most part, gym was a non-violent activity. She was practically surgically attached to her cell-phone, and she’d known it was gone the moment she’d opened her eyes. “Fuck,” she swore, succinctly. She didn’t recognize her whereabouts, and she didn’t remember the last thing that had happened to her.
Had she been roofied? She didn’t remember having actually reached the bar, so who the fuck her roofied her? And how? And she was still fully dressed - had she been raped? She didn’t feel like anyone had so much as touched her. She certainly didn’t feel like she’d had sex. She gingerly sniffed herself. She still smelled relatively clean, and free of smoke. She definitely hadn’t reached the bar. She had probably been, stopped? Maybe? She wasn’t sure, she thought she’d be stopped, by a car? Maybe she'd hit a rat on the road and then put it in her mouth because it definitely tasted like a dead rodent in there.
The door creaked open, and she didn’t stop to think. She grabbed the lamp, the only source of dim light in the room, and swung it at the door with all her might. The bulb shattered and the flimsy fabric tore, but the door closed, if only for a second. She heard swearing outside.
Her heart was pounding, and she moved towards a wall. Motherfuck. She didn’t have any shoes on. She’d have to run through the glass to get past the door, if she wanted to face what was outside. Possibly it was worse than what was inside (Insanity. Strange men coming into her room. Death, possibly), but maybe it was better.
She had vague visions of ninja-jumping herself out of there, but she wasn’t a ninja. She wasn’t even that good a gymnast, and unless she could bore someone to death by reciting statutes at them, she was defenceless.
She should have listened to her brother when he told her to get self-defence classes.
But she’d always been safe. New York was dangerous, but so was everywhere else in the world. And she’d always been a sharp girl. She’d relied on her wits to get herself out of situations. But wits didn’t help her when she was facing a stranger who had drugged and kidnapped her. And still, they were all they had in the face of the door re-opening.
Outside was well lit, and warm yellow light spilled into the dark room. She waited, and breathed as quietly as she could manage. She waited, because what else could she do?
“Miss Hill,” it was the smaller guy, she recognized his voice holy fuck he was a serial killer, “I’m not going to hurt you. I swear. I won’t even come near you. I’m going to turn on the lights, so just watch your eyes, alright?”
She didn’t respond. The lights came on and her eyes burned even as she rushed for the door. Before she actually realised what was going on, she’d been tackled to the ground, and pinned to the floor with a hand on her mouth.
She didn’t even wait for him to explain. She bit his hand. “Jesus fuck,” he swore. “God damn it, Hill! I know this is crazy but calm. Down.”
She rolled her eyes and opened her mouth to tell him where he could shove his opinion, but all that came out from her mouth was a groan. The tackling bit had hurt. A lot. Ow.
He looked concerned. She squirmed a bit. He didn’t move away. He didn’t even respond, which was weird. If he was a rapist, surely she’d have experienced more of his man bits by now. He sighed. He smelled like coffee. “I swear, Hill. Not going to hurt you. I just need you to hear me out on this thing. I promise. If you say no, we’ll let you go. No consequences. But we want you. We want your expertise. We’ll pay for it, too.”
“What the actual fuck are you talking about, ‘Coulson’,” she demanded, exaggerating his name. “You sound like a crazy person. Why did you drug me?!”
He didn’t respond to her taunts. “We drugged you because we knew we sounded like crazy people, and we needed to get you off the streets somewhere we could talk to you.”
“I’d be much happier listening to your cracked cover story if we were somewhere public, you know?”
“Yes, we thought so. But a lot of what we’re going to say is classified information, and contrary to popular belief we don’t yet have memory wipe devices.”
“I can’t help but note how you just said ‘yet’, about memory-wiping devices. You’re not helping with the crazy thing.”
“Okay, right. Right. First off. I think we got off to a bad start, Ms. Hill. My name is Phillip Coulson, but you can call me Phil, or Coulson. The guy you met earlier is Nick Fury, I’m sure you remember him. Black coat, eye-patch. Unforgettable.” She was nodding, despite herself. Apparently, crazy was somewhat contagious. “He’s the director of our covert organisation. SHIELD, for short. We’re a national security agency, but much more niche and elite than the regular alphabet agencies. We were specially founded to deal with super-human threats. So yes, the mutants count, but only the bad guys. We also take into account extra-ordinary individuals, with the potential to stir things up. We take them in, get them off the streets, and take care of them.”
“What do you take in return?” Hill demanded, speaking even though she had decided that it was a personal life policy to not talk to crazy people. He was very convincing, though, but nothing in the world was ever free.
“Nothing. It’s our job. Most of them choose to stay with us, and work with us to stop future threats. We work under the direct supervision of the World Security Council. The WSC is a panel made up of top politicians and under-politicians. The people who are really in power, around the world. SHIELD is based on American soil, but we’re not limited to America. That’s a very small-minded scale of operation, in this day and age. In the past, maybe. But today, we have a global reach, and branches all around the world. We deal with threats before they become threats. It’s our job to think ahead and predict risks, and then manage them. We’re just like the CIA, or the FBI. We just don’t have TV shows about us.”
“Think you could get off me?” Maria asked, as nonchalantly as she could manage. She’d been listening raptly, but she wasn’t going to give him anything more until he levelled the scales some more. She was intrigued. But she wasn’t going to tell him that. Because he was sprawled on top of her, on the floor, and he hadn’t even bought her a drink first.
“Yeah, Coulson. Why don’t you get off her?” Fury piped in, speaking from the door. He took in the carnage in the room, the destroyed lamp and the twisted sheets lying on the floor, amidst shards of glass.
He stepped in, crunching some of it under his heavy, black boots.
“I can’t, yet, because I think she’s going to jump me again if I try. So I’m just going to lie here a minute, until she decides she’s actually interested and not going to try to kill me.”
“You do know I can hear you, right?” she had no idea why she was so comfortable bantering with these people. She didn’t know them, and yet, she kinda felt like they were good people. Reliable, and honest. To an extent. Honest as much as people were ever honest, really. She thought. She was still woozy from when they had drugged her, and her back hurt like a bitch. But she was intrigued.
Coulson smiled down at her. He was really quite attractive, even though he was losing his hair at the top of his head. He didn’t actually look that much older than her, which made her wonder how he’d ended up with Fury, who was anywhere between 40 and older-than-god.
“Why do you want me?” She asked, deciding to cut to the chase before she was forced to diagnose herself with Stockholm Syndrome.
“That’s the million dollar question, Hill. You’re a lawyer. A young lawyer. But we’ve had our eye on you for a while,” Fury said, and she was almost 90 per-cent sure he’d just made an eye-patch joke but she didn’t want to laugh because what.
“As a covert agency, we sometimes need public representation. To the people who need to know us, we are known. But we don’t have a public representative. No, I don’t mean like a PR-Rep. I meant, when we’re called to court, we don’t have anyone else to represent us, because all our agents and operatives are classified. It’s a pain-in-the-ass but it’s necessary, if we want to keep our profile as low as possible. But that doesn’t mean we deliberately subvert the law. We want to work around it, but we don’t want to bulldoze through it, because that causes problems too. Problems of accountability. We’ve always had issues with that.”
“What’s your point?” She asked, because she maybe knew but that wasn’t possible.
“We want a legal department, and we want you to head it. We’ve been watching you for a long time, Hill. You and a few others. It won’t be time-intensive, in the sense you’ll maybe have to go to court once a year. You won’t get your face on the papers like a defence attorney, or even like the ADA. That’s part and parcel of being in a covert agency. But when you do have cases, you’ll be fighting with politicians about ‘national security’ breaches and the such. You’ll be fighting for people’s lives when they get tangled up with the law that was laid to make our lives particularly difficult. You won’t spend days just drafting legal documents. You’ll be in-house counsel, and there are advancement prospects, but not many from the head of a department. You’ll have funding, staff, space, whatever you want.”
"Why the hell do you want me? I'm not special; There must be hundreds of fresh lawyers out there like me."
"Because you're quiet, Hill. You shut up when you need to, and talk when you need to, and don't let people walk over you. Because you wrote an article that intrigued me, almost four years ago in the Harvard law review. Because we need to be cautious with our legal policy, but also not too cautious. You have good principles, but aren't too driven by them. We want people who can stick to their guns, but we don't want crazies. You're ambitious, and talented, but loyal. You're not job hopping to increase your salary, but you're trying your best even though you're a small fry in the firm's hierarchy. And you didn't bull shit me about that agent's chances with the NSA. I appreciate that. There might be a bunch of other good lawyers out there, Hill, but you've not been fixed in your ways, and you can learn. That's why I want you."
There was a minute of still silence, and Maria felt a little shaky because whoa. But everything he had said was everything she had ever wanted to hear. “This is both crazy and too good to be true, but what do you want, right now. I’d be stupid to think there isn’t some sort of trial period.”
Fury and Coulson exchanged glances. She vaguely appreciated the fact that he hadn’t groped her a single time since he tackled her. He could possibly be gay, if the non-verbal communications was what it looked like.
Oh, Nick. Take me to bed, please.
Phil, darling, I’m going to make sweet love to you…Oh Jesus, what? She really needed to have some non-drugged sleep. “Are you done with the eye-sex?” she asked, because she was bored.
Coulson snorted, and it was a soft huff of breath. Fury guffawed. “You are going to be tried by fire, Ms. Hill.”
“Sounds good, Fury. Can I get up, now?”
“Depends. Are you going to claw my eyes out?” Coulson asked, vaguely teasing.
“Nope,” she responded. He let her up. She punched him in the gut. Probably not very hard, but even to take him off balance when he wasn’t expecting it. He looked outraged at her, as she stood up. She shrugged. “Didn’t claw your eyes out, Coulson.”
“Jesus, Nick.”
“Eat your heart out Coulson, I knew she was a good choice.”
Chapter 2
Author name: Obsessionality
Beta name: Ifitwasribald, seablue_eyes and AW (from RL, darling you know who you are)
Characters/Pairing: Maria Hill, Phil Coulson, Nick Fury, Ensemble - Maria/Natasha
Fandom/Universe: Movies ‘Verse, Post IM3
Rating: R
Word count: 38,088 Words
Warnings: This fic contains ALMOST Non-Con - nothing happens, but it is there, and it gets close. There are further mentions of violence and abuse - I’d say canon compliant but nothing like this would ever be shown on TV. Warnings also for the recovery from physical harm and torture. I don’t think I’m very graphic, but please go in with your eyes open. Additionally, there is family and relationship trauma - I don’t know if this is worth warning for, but just to be safe.
Summary: Maria Hill is the Assistant Director of SHIELD, a high-flying member of a high-flying covert agency, whose friends and colleagues could, and often did take off, into flight. But while most of them come from similar, if exceptional, military backgrounds, not all of them have the same story. This story is about Maria Hill, her history, and the price you have to pay for finding acceptance, when you belong to a high-flying, high-risk super secret organisation like SHIELD.
Tony Stark's not wrong, entirely. You do have to be a certain type of messed up, to find a home in SHIELD, or any similar intelligence agency. Normal people did not thrive in places where sex-change forms were a normal thing and re-writing Wills was a monthly business. Maria Hill always thought she was the exception. She always thought she was pretty normal, compared to the rest of the lot. She wasn't. But while Stark wasn't wrong, he wasn't exactly right, either. SHIELD is like the ocean; what it taketh away, it often giveth back, with upgrades.
Alternate Link at AO3 for the fic as a whole
LJ 1/8
Fanworker name: Kymericl
Type of fanwork: TBC
Link to accompanying fanwork master post: TBC
No Fear of Heights
aka the SHIELD Hypothesis
This is a story about how SHIELD is like the sea; it giveth and it taketh away, and about how sometimes Tony Stark sees far too much for comfort.
Tony Stark says that they should all form a club, because there’s not a one of them who doesn’t have a Sad Tragic Past ™. Maria Hill has always thought he’s a bit of an idiot, genius notwithstanding, but she likes and respects Pepper Potts, and there has to be something there that keeps her with him. By the time Pepper and Stark break up, she’s had enough exposure to the man to change her mind about him, to an extent. She still thinks he’s a tit, but she can see where he’s coming from. If you look past all of the bullshit he spews, there is a layer of painful honesty, and sense. She thinks that’s his way of sugar-coating, because it only makes Rogers look irritated. If Rogers could see what Stark was trying to say, he’d look much more sad, and as Barton put it, like a puppy in the rain.
But in the beginning, she thinks she’s the exception to his Sad Tragic Past Thesis.
Anthony Stark’s “Sad Tragic Past” Thesis: Every man and woman (and person in between) who is sadistic enough to get involved in the messy business of government intelligence and national security, in whatever way, shape or form, has a Sad Tragic Past that they are trying to escape.
It seems to be fair enough. God knows, the Avengers are a Sad, Tragic lot, once you get past the shiny outer layer. Even Rogers. The man was effectively sent 70 years into the future. He lost everything and everyone he ever loved. The world had no place for him, so he’s had to carve himself a niche as Captain America. If he ever leaves the niche, well. She’s seen him leave the room when Sitwell starts humming Eleanor Rigby. He’s pretty much the epitome of a Sad Tragic bastard.
Romanov was an internationally wanted assassin by the time she’d hit 20. That woman could do things with her thighs that Maria could not even fathom. And where she kept knives on her skin-tight suit, god only knew. She preferred guns, herself, because they could be holstered. And didn’t threaten to cut her every time she sat down. She has a feeling that Romanov wouldn’t even notice if she’d been cut by a knife inside her suit a couple of times.
Barton was a carnie and a run-away from an abusive home. Banner was a run-away too, even if he’d fallen into an orphanage instead of a travelling circus - as far as Maria could tell, the former was as bad as the latter. Stark had more issues than all of them combined, because Hill knew what was in his original files, even if Rogers didn’t. It had taken her three days to get through them, and when she’d walked out of that room, she wouldn’t have been able to give him a hard time if she’d tried. She’d seen his arc reactor when he was in hospital. She’d seen his torso. He didn’t have much unscarred skin, for a civilian. Even for a civilian ex-weapons manufacturer and defense contractor. He’d definitely got the short end of the stick. At least Barton and Romanov and Rogers had the military routine to keep them straight, and Banner had his girl. Stark was still adrift, hanging on to the empty shells of his old WMDs.
And Thor was the dick older brother of a kid who’d found out he’d been “adopted” as security against his birth parents attacking the kidnappers, and had then lost his mind, killed his father and tried to blow up another realm before trying to take over the Earth on some sort of kamikaze rampage. His experiences spoke for themselves, and she wouldn't belabor the point.
Not a one of the Avengers were what could be called truly sane. But no, the Sad Tragic Past thesis extended to all members of SHIELD, and NSA, and FBI and god help her, even the CIA, the rat bastards. Even the Army, hell. Rhodes was a good man, a good soldier. Even he was messed up, because of the war, and because of what he’d seen and done while trying to rescue his best friend from a terrorist cell in Afghanistan. She’s still not sure if Stark knows about what his bff had done when he’d been taken. She’d be surprised if he was still in the dark, but nothing seems to have changed between the two. Maybe that’s how they dealt, because they were men. But then, that was how she dealt, so she couldn’t throw stones.
Phil Coulson had a robotic arm that was so high tech that no one could tell it was a robotic arm, unless they’d looked at his very, very classified files. Except Stark, because he was the one who’d designed it, but that didn’t count. He had lost it when he was in the Rangers, not two months before Fury had been planning to recruit him. It had looked like they’d lose him, but Stark had come out of nowhere, and said that he’d had some designs in mind, and would they mind letting him save their agent's life, try it out, thanks. She didn’t know if Coulson knew that Stark was behind his hand, but Coulson was a nosy bastard, and it was impossible to keep him out of files which had no relevance to him, let alone his own files.
Maybe she could safely say that the look in his eye when Stark went off on a rant, was fondness. Maybe it was why he’d gone out of his way to look out for Stark, during and after Afghanistan. It had been lucky, anyway. If Phil had been completely flesh and blood, Loki’s spear would have killed him. As it was, it caused a lot of mangled flesh and a little dented metal. Nothing Stark couldn’t fix.
Nick Fury was like the bastard god of secrets. He lied about lying about his lies, and even then she wasn’t sure if he was done. He could be relied on to do nothing but fuck with your expectations, because he got off on it. It was what made him such a good director. Even he had a Sad Tragic Past. He had, after all, lost an eye in a revenge attack, or something. The details were redacted everywhere she’d looked, and she didn’t particularly want to spend all her time digging up dirt on her boss. The only thing she knew was that he’d been born with both, and he’d been a General in the army when he’d lost it.
It felt like the army and other similar organisations were highly interlinked with Sad Tragic Pasts. It was why she’d been convinced that she was the exception to Stark’s rule.
Because she’d never been in the army. She’d been a normal girl, with a normal, loving family. She had a little sister and an older brother, and she’d grown up in an upper-middle class suburb in California. Her parents were still married to each other. She had two nieces and a nephew on her brother’s side, and her sister’s girlfriend was due anytime soon. She’d been good at school, and she’d played soccer, and had been into gymnastics for a while. She’d been voted Class President, and then the one Most Likely to Succeed. She’d never had a bad relationship, even though none of them lasted too long. She’d wanted to be an astronaut, and then a doctor, and she’d ended up going to law school, of all places. She’d done pre-law, and then law, and she’d been half way through her masters while working at a big firm in New York when she’d first met Nick Fury.
He’d been ushered in by three of the most senior partners available, and she’d been poached from her project, to sit in on the meeting. Fury had eyeballed her, once, and she’d looked him straight in the good eye and not flinched. He’d given them a “hypothetical” case about some guy who’d been kidnapped by the NSA, and how they needed him back because he was a specialist. The senior partners took notes furiously (ha!) and looked at him like he wasn’t a crazy person. She’d done nothing of the sort.
She’d been sceptical of the whole thing, and when he’d asked her if she had something to say, she had said it. Possibly she'd been running on little more than three hours of sleep in three days, and obscene amounts of caffeine, which would explain her uncontrolled outburst. But she considered it a happy accident, in hindsight. She’d said, ‘I’m too new around here to have heard of you, if you are a client, but say this is all true,” and all the senior partners had been making frantic hand-gestures and the look on Maria’s face had probably given it away to Fury, “and that there is a specialist under your jurisdiction who’s been kidnapped by the NSA for national security purposes, your best case would be to get him out some other way. The NSA’s not going to even engage with us, legally. They’re going to pull National Security and whichever judge sits on the case is going to dismiss it without a second thought. If you have one specialist, you’ll have another. I’m sure you know this about the legal system - I’m not sure why you’re even here. If this is even true.” The three senior partners had been watching her, slack-jawed and silent with shock. Fury had looked at her carefully, and then grinned. She’d smiled back, a little, because the guy was charismatic, what could she say? He’d then given her a card, and told her to call. She’d put the card in her purse, programmed the name into her cell out of sheer habit, and had proceeded to completely forget about it.
She’d been fired in less than 24 hours, and she’d not even regretted it. The firm had been killing her inside anyway. They’d forced her into finance and banking law, just because she’d had a better head for numbers than her colleagues. That was not why she had gone to law school. Seriously. She wanted to work with human rights and national security. She just hadn’t decided which side she’d be on; the security side or the rights side.
Also she was sick to death of being mistaken for the secretary all the time. There was nothing wrong with being a secretary, but she hadn’t gone through hell on earth aka law school, just to be asked to make coffee every time a client came in. She’d been done with that bullshit before she’d even started there. She wasn’t even sure why she’d stayed, apart from the fact that she needed to eat, and pay rent and bills.
And as she’d been on her way to a bar to celebrate by having a drink at some-time before 3 in the morning, like she hadn’t been able to since she was in college, a black town car had pulled up beside her on the street. She’d done aikido at some point. She knew enough to run when she had to run, and she was enough of a gymnast to be able to run pretty damn fast. As it was, she froze. For all she knew, the car had nothing to do with her. But then the door opened, and out stepped Nick Fury, dressed in his now-customary, then absurd leather trench-coat, looking like Morpheus from the Matrix.
A small, possibly hysterical part of her, which she’d been ignoring for the fear that she’d completely fly off the handle if she gave in to it, wanted to laugh. Because, seriously? It was a perfectly warm summer evening in New York, following an almost uncomfortably warm day. And he was wearing all black, topped with a leather trench-coat like he was some kind of super spy. She remembered the story he’d told in the lawyer’s office, and wanted to laugh even more.
The rest of her was gibbering with nerves, because what the fuck did he want with her? He’d already gotten her fired, for telling the truth none-the-less!
He was followed by a smaller, compact looking man in an expensive looking tailored suit. He stood perfectly still, hands subserviently held in front of his crotch, eyes meeting hers, despite the fact that Maria teetered about 3 inches higher than him in her heels. The smaller part of her mind was recalling scenes from Men In Black, even though the sane part of her made her take a step back. She clutched her purse in front of her and got ready to run in the direction of a crowd. Safety in numbers, and all that.
“Don’t run, Ms. Hill.”
Despite herself, she snorted. “Why are you following me?” she asked, because it was a good guess. As a junior at the firm, it was unlikely that anyone had even told him her name, let alone her address or her whereabouts, or that she’d been fired. It was downright fucking creepy that they'd been able to find her in a place she couldn't normally be found. But she stayed wary, and didn’t say anything.
“Because I have a skill.”
She waited. She wasn’t going to ask, just because he wanted her to. The man was clearly delusional and dangerous until she discovered otherwise. She wasn’t going to play his insane games. Her heart was pounding, and she stayed deliberately still, poised to run.
His lips twitched, like he wanted to laugh. The smaller guy said, “I see why you like her, Boss.”
“My skill,” he began again, can stay in your pants, she thought, because that was probably where he was going with this and no. Just, no - “is recognizing talent.” She waited. She was good at waiting. She was a lawyer. She was a professional waiter with a law degree. Hah. He rolled his eyes, obviously annoyed that she was ruining his pre-prepared spiel. “And you have talent,” he continued. “You also have balls. I like that.”
“I’m sorry man, I don’t know what you’re into, but I’m not into that.” She heard herself saying the words, as if from a distance, disconnected from her own body. There was a moment of silence, and then the smaller guy laughed. It was a normal laugh. Not a creepy, TV-Villain laugh. Just a normal, slightly surprised sounding, giggle of a laugh. Even Fury sighed and shook his head.
“I should have known that speech wouldn’t work on everybody. Listen. I’m Nick Fury. This is Agent Coulson. I’m the Director of a covert agency known as SHIELD, short for Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division. I know this sounds like a joke, but we deal with the things that no one else can deal with. Things that other agencies can’t even imagine. We’re a largely military division but we also specialise in intelligence and information gathering. We are outside the government and above the law[1], and we do what has to be done in the name of national security. However, you might be interested to know that we have the most advanced research and development division outside Stark Laboratories, and we use the most accurate and reliable technologies to determine whether a threat truly exists, before annihilating it.”
He stopped, and looked at her. She processed. “Prove it.”
He glared. She glared back. She’d done a minor in glaring at dickheads, in college. “Boss,” the smaller man said. Surprisingly, Fury gave him his instant attention, which was interesting. The small guy looked like a pen-pusher, and big bosses generally didn’t give a shit about the pen-pushers who made their lives easier. But no, Fury gave the guy his complete and instant attention. Two options; either this guy wasn’t so bad, or the little guy wasn’t actually a pen-pusher. Maybe he was a deadly assassin ninja.
Maybe she shouldn’t have done those shots before she left home. She was admittedly feeling a little down about having lost her job and having rent and bills to pay, and her next door neighbour’s cat got laid more than she did. Surely shots were to an unemployed person what coffee was to an employed one. Surely shots were to the unwillingly celibate what breath-mints were to the sexually active? That made sense, right? Except, she was maybe allergic to shots? Which would be horrible because coffee ran through her veins, or something.
“Yes, Coulson?” Fury asked.
“I like her.”
Some part of her wanted to be indignant, but the shots were making a dramatic re-appearance in her system. She was pretty sure she hadn’t felt drunk when she’d left the house. Like, at least, 90 per-cent sure. Okay, maybe 85. Or 69. Heh. Sixty-Nine. Funny number.
“Yeah, Coulson. So do I. Think it’s kicking in?”
“Possibly. She does look a little cross-eyed.”
Alarm bells were ringing in her head, at full volume. She wanted to turn them off and go to bed. But there was something going on. Something important, that she had to pay attention to. A door was being kicked in. She’d always wanted to see that. She’d always thought it would hurt like a bitch. It did hurt like a bitch. She could have done without that discovery.
Maybe the door was in her head, because it really hurt. Her skin hurt. Her knees hurt.
And then it hit her, like a mugger with a 6-by-2.
“Holy f-” she began to swear, pulling the pin on the rape alarm she’d been fingering since she’d been stopped on the street, turning to run when-
Her knees gave way, and she collapsed onto the floor. She would have been swearing if she had been able to feel her tongue. It felt like she was at the dentist’s, and he’d just given her a general anaesthetic. There was a man swearing in the background, but it was just really funny because he was speaking in tongues. She passed out completely, to the nonsensical thought that maybe dentists wore white so they would reflect all the glaring light in their offices, and so they’d look like they had halos.
“She’s going to be pissed when she wakes up, Boss.”
“I know, Coulson.”
“You sure about this?”
“I want her on our side, Phil. She’s a good one.”
“Right. Let’s get her in the car then. She was a bit more trouble than you’d said, Boss.”
“Yeah, well. I wasn’t expecting her to have resisted it so much. She should have passed out about the time I’d made that speech. Think she noticed the Torchwood thing?”
“Don’t know, Boss. She seemed pretty out of it, I think.”
“Damn right, Coulson. I gave her one-and-a-half times the regular dose, because I’m pretty sure she could have caused some damage.”
“Huh. Took her a while, though… Boss?”
“Yes, Coulson?”
“You used an EMP to kill the rape alarm, right?”
“Motherfucker, the fucking car.”
“I’ll call backup, Boss. I don’t blame you. It was making me crazy too.”
“Shut the fuck up, Phil.”
Maria woke up to a dim soothing room, and had at once gone into red-alert mode. She’d been a gymnast but for the most part, gym was a non-violent activity. She was practically surgically attached to her cell-phone, and she’d known it was gone the moment she’d opened her eyes. “Fuck,” she swore, succinctly. She didn’t recognize her whereabouts, and she didn’t remember the last thing that had happened to her.
Had she been roofied? She didn’t remember having actually reached the bar, so who the fuck her roofied her? And how? And she was still fully dressed - had she been raped? She didn’t feel like anyone had so much as touched her. She certainly didn’t feel like she’d had sex. She gingerly sniffed herself. She still smelled relatively clean, and free of smoke. She definitely hadn’t reached the bar. She had probably been, stopped? Maybe? She wasn’t sure, she thought she’d be stopped, by a car? Maybe she'd hit a rat on the road and then put it in her mouth because it definitely tasted like a dead rodent in there.
The door creaked open, and she didn’t stop to think. She grabbed the lamp, the only source of dim light in the room, and swung it at the door with all her might. The bulb shattered and the flimsy fabric tore, but the door closed, if only for a second. She heard swearing outside.
Her heart was pounding, and she moved towards a wall. Motherfuck. She didn’t have any shoes on. She’d have to run through the glass to get past the door, if she wanted to face what was outside. Possibly it was worse than what was inside (Insanity. Strange men coming into her room. Death, possibly), but maybe it was better.
She had vague visions of ninja-jumping herself out of there, but she wasn’t a ninja. She wasn’t even that good a gymnast, and unless she could bore someone to death by reciting statutes at them, she was defenceless.
She should have listened to her brother when he told her to get self-defence classes.
But she’d always been safe. New York was dangerous, but so was everywhere else in the world. And she’d always been a sharp girl. She’d relied on her wits to get herself out of situations. But wits didn’t help her when she was facing a stranger who had drugged and kidnapped her. And still, they were all they had in the face of the door re-opening.
Outside was well lit, and warm yellow light spilled into the dark room. She waited, and breathed as quietly as she could manage. She waited, because what else could she do?
“Miss Hill,” it was the smaller guy, she recognized his voice holy fuck he was a serial killer, “I’m not going to hurt you. I swear. I won’t even come near you. I’m going to turn on the lights, so just watch your eyes, alright?”
She didn’t respond. The lights came on and her eyes burned even as she rushed for the door. Before she actually realised what was going on, she’d been tackled to the ground, and pinned to the floor with a hand on her mouth.
She didn’t even wait for him to explain. She bit his hand. “Jesus fuck,” he swore. “God damn it, Hill! I know this is crazy but calm. Down.”
She rolled her eyes and opened her mouth to tell him where he could shove his opinion, but all that came out from her mouth was a groan. The tackling bit had hurt. A lot. Ow.
He looked concerned. She squirmed a bit. He didn’t move away. He didn’t even respond, which was weird. If he was a rapist, surely she’d have experienced more of his man bits by now. He sighed. He smelled like coffee. “I swear, Hill. Not going to hurt you. I just need you to hear me out on this thing. I promise. If you say no, we’ll let you go. No consequences. But we want you. We want your expertise. We’ll pay for it, too.”
“What the actual fuck are you talking about, ‘Coulson’,” she demanded, exaggerating his name. “You sound like a crazy person. Why did you drug me?!”
He didn’t respond to her taunts. “We drugged you because we knew we sounded like crazy people, and we needed to get you off the streets somewhere we could talk to you.”
“I’d be much happier listening to your cracked cover story if we were somewhere public, you know?”
“Yes, we thought so. But a lot of what we’re going to say is classified information, and contrary to popular belief we don’t yet have memory wipe devices.”
“I can’t help but note how you just said ‘yet’, about memory-wiping devices. You’re not helping with the crazy thing.”
“Okay, right. Right. First off. I think we got off to a bad start, Ms. Hill. My name is Phillip Coulson, but you can call me Phil, or Coulson. The guy you met earlier is Nick Fury, I’m sure you remember him. Black coat, eye-patch. Unforgettable.” She was nodding, despite herself. Apparently, crazy was somewhat contagious. “He’s the director of our covert organisation. SHIELD, for short. We’re a national security agency, but much more niche and elite than the regular alphabet agencies. We were specially founded to deal with super-human threats. So yes, the mutants count, but only the bad guys. We also take into account extra-ordinary individuals, with the potential to stir things up. We take them in, get them off the streets, and take care of them.”
“What do you take in return?” Hill demanded, speaking even though she had decided that it was a personal life policy to not talk to crazy people. He was very convincing, though, but nothing in the world was ever free.
“Nothing. It’s our job. Most of them choose to stay with us, and work with us to stop future threats. We work under the direct supervision of the World Security Council. The WSC is a panel made up of top politicians and under-politicians. The people who are really in power, around the world. SHIELD is based on American soil, but we’re not limited to America. That’s a very small-minded scale of operation, in this day and age. In the past, maybe. But today, we have a global reach, and branches all around the world. We deal with threats before they become threats. It’s our job to think ahead and predict risks, and then manage them. We’re just like the CIA, or the FBI. We just don’t have TV shows about us.”
“Think you could get off me?” Maria asked, as nonchalantly as she could manage. She’d been listening raptly, but she wasn’t going to give him anything more until he levelled the scales some more. She was intrigued. But she wasn’t going to tell him that. Because he was sprawled on top of her, on the floor, and he hadn’t even bought her a drink first.
“Yeah, Coulson. Why don’t you get off her?” Fury piped in, speaking from the door. He took in the carnage in the room, the destroyed lamp and the twisted sheets lying on the floor, amidst shards of glass.
He stepped in, crunching some of it under his heavy, black boots.
“I can’t, yet, because I think she’s going to jump me again if I try. So I’m just going to lie here a minute, until she decides she’s actually interested and not going to try to kill me.”
“You do know I can hear you, right?” she had no idea why she was so comfortable bantering with these people. She didn’t know them, and yet, she kinda felt like they were good people. Reliable, and honest. To an extent. Honest as much as people were ever honest, really. She thought. She was still woozy from when they had drugged her, and her back hurt like a bitch. But she was intrigued.
Coulson smiled down at her. He was really quite attractive, even though he was losing his hair at the top of his head. He didn’t actually look that much older than her, which made her wonder how he’d ended up with Fury, who was anywhere between 40 and older-than-god.
“Why do you want me?” She asked, deciding to cut to the chase before she was forced to diagnose herself with Stockholm Syndrome.
“That’s the million dollar question, Hill. You’re a lawyer. A young lawyer. But we’ve had our eye on you for a while,” Fury said, and she was almost 90 per-cent sure he’d just made an eye-patch joke but she didn’t want to laugh because what.
“As a covert agency, we sometimes need public representation. To the people who need to know us, we are known. But we don’t have a public representative. No, I don’t mean like a PR-Rep. I meant, when we’re called to court, we don’t have anyone else to represent us, because all our agents and operatives are classified. It’s a pain-in-the-ass but it’s necessary, if we want to keep our profile as low as possible. But that doesn’t mean we deliberately subvert the law. We want to work around it, but we don’t want to bulldoze through it, because that causes problems too. Problems of accountability. We’ve always had issues with that.”
“What’s your point?” She asked, because she maybe knew but that wasn’t possible.
“We want a legal department, and we want you to head it. We’ve been watching you for a long time, Hill. You and a few others. It won’t be time-intensive, in the sense you’ll maybe have to go to court once a year. You won’t get your face on the papers like a defence attorney, or even like the ADA. That’s part and parcel of being in a covert agency. But when you do have cases, you’ll be fighting with politicians about ‘national security’ breaches and the such. You’ll be fighting for people’s lives when they get tangled up with the law that was laid to make our lives particularly difficult. You won’t spend days just drafting legal documents. You’ll be in-house counsel, and there are advancement prospects, but not many from the head of a department. You’ll have funding, staff, space, whatever you want.”
"Why the hell do you want me? I'm not special; There must be hundreds of fresh lawyers out there like me."
"Because you're quiet, Hill. You shut up when you need to, and talk when you need to, and don't let people walk over you. Because you wrote an article that intrigued me, almost four years ago in the Harvard law review. Because we need to be cautious with our legal policy, but also not too cautious. You have good principles, but aren't too driven by them. We want people who can stick to their guns, but we don't want crazies. You're ambitious, and talented, but loyal. You're not job hopping to increase your salary, but you're trying your best even though you're a small fry in the firm's hierarchy. And you didn't bull shit me about that agent's chances with the NSA. I appreciate that. There might be a bunch of other good lawyers out there, Hill, but you've not been fixed in your ways, and you can learn. That's why I want you."
There was a minute of still silence, and Maria felt a little shaky because whoa. But everything he had said was everything she had ever wanted to hear. “This is both crazy and too good to be true, but what do you want, right now. I’d be stupid to think there isn’t some sort of trial period.”
Fury and Coulson exchanged glances. She vaguely appreciated the fact that he hadn’t groped her a single time since he tackled her. He could possibly be gay, if the non-verbal communications was what it looked like.
Oh, Nick. Take me to bed, please.
Phil, darling, I’m going to make sweet love to you…Oh Jesus, what? She really needed to have some non-drugged sleep. “Are you done with the eye-sex?” she asked, because she was bored.
Coulson snorted, and it was a soft huff of breath. Fury guffawed. “You are going to be tried by fire, Ms. Hill.”
“Sounds good, Fury. Can I get up, now?”
“Depends. Are you going to claw my eyes out?” Coulson asked, vaguely teasing.
“Nope,” she responded. He let her up. She punched him in the gut. Probably not very hard, but even to take him off balance when he wasn’t expecting it. He looked outraged at her, as she stood up. She shrugged. “Didn’t claw your eyes out, Coulson.”
“Jesus, Nick.”
“Eat your heart out Coulson, I knew she was a good choice.”
Chapter 2