Marvel BB Fic: No Fear of Heights [R; Movies 'verse; Maria Hill, Ensemble] 3

Nov 11, 2013 19:51

Title: No Fear of Heights
Author name: Obsessionality
Beta name: Ifitwasribald, seablue_eyes and AW (from RL, darling you know who you are)

Alternate Link at AO3 for the fic as a whole
LJ 3/8

Fanworker name: Kymericl
Type of fanwork: TBC
Link to accompanying fanwork master post: TBC

Chapter 2

She scowled. Perfect. Something to ruin her mood even more. She should have known better than to listen to scuttlebut, but Barton had been wandering around looking like a kicked puppy, and she’d figured that he’d know better than anyone else whom Phil was getting married to. But she’d started this, and she was going to have to go through with it. “If you have to ask that, you’re actually as big a tit as Stark. Worse, even.” He actually looked offended, but she’d had enough of stupid people. She turned to head for her office, to drown herself in coffee and paperwork.

Phil grabbed her hand and it was only well repressed instinct that stopped her from fighting his hold. This was Phil. Not a random stranger whom she could shamelessly attack with a lamp. “What?” she demanded.

“What?” he asked, either simultaneously or in return to her first query. That didn’t make sense though. His voice was slightly higher pitched than normal, and his eyes were somewhat glazed over. A thought occurred to Maria. But no, surely Phil was not that oblivious to Barton’s giant raging boner for him, right? Surely not. Phil was an international spy and occasional assassin. He once took down a man with a baguette and a half-kilo sack of flour. He was aware of subtle nuances around him, so surely he knew what she was talking about. Definitely.

The look on his face told her that her hopes in his intelligence had been sorely misplaced. Right, she wasn’t going to turn down a distraction when it offered itself to her in a nicely tailored suit and tie.

“Coulson, my office. Stat.”

He followed her obediently. She began to scheme.

When she emerged from her office a few hours later, she was glowing slightly with the pride of a job well done. Phil Coulson followed her, looking somewhat stunned, following her blindly.

She deposited Coulson in his own office, and called Clint. “Barton, it’s Hill.”

“Ma’am?” he asked, managing to make a question of out one word.

“It’s Coulson. Get to his office, asap. It’s urgent.” She did not snigger. She did not.

She could hear the whoosh as Barton jumped for the air ducts. The line disconnected, and she waited, hip propped against Coulson’s desk. He still looked dazed, and unable to form full sentences. Man, Fury was going to love this. She snapped a picture of Coulson’s face, just as Clint crashed down from one of the vents.

“Barton, Agent Coulson has an important debrief. Good luck.” She manfully suppressed a wink as she left the room and locked the door behind herself. The last thing she heard was, “Sir?” before there was a crashing noise, as if a desk had been pushed aside. That was the sweet sound of success, and she’d leave before she started hearing sounds which would scar her forever. She forwarded the picture to Fury, and to Natasha, because she was as invested in Barton as Maria was in Phil. Both of them responded with evil smiley faces.

Sometimes her life was unbelievably bizarre.

And she loved it. It was more than enough to keep her going, even when she had unpleasant events ahead. Natasha’s secret stash of booze beckoned, but she had loads of work to do. Well, there was no rule preventing her from having both paperwork and booze at the same time. She’d regret this in the morning, but for now she needed to be distracted. Maybe, booze would help her think of a decoy boyfriend to take home. Oh, maybe Stark would build her an LMD of the perfect man. Someone she could just turn off when she got home, because she didn’t particularly want, or have time for a relationship. That, she thought, would be incredible. For all she knew, it had been done before. Knowing Stark.

She'd called Natasha in, who could always be relied on to be discreet, and they'd sat in an empty office and proceeded to get increasingly inebriated. Stark had wandered in, picked up a stapler, and wandered out. Natasha had told her so many stories of the time she’d spent working as Stark’s PA. They both recognized this as one of his famous black-out engineering states. They didn’t worry too much about it. Maria had stared at him through the open door, where he was examining the stapler like it was the most fascinating thing he'd ever seen, with his tongue stuck out between his lips. Then she'd turned back to Natasha, speechless. Natasha had giggled, and she was so incredibly pretty when she smiled that Maria hadn’t been able to resist laughing too. They’d just sat there laughing until Stark walked in again. He'd taken one look at them, and executed a perfect 180 turn, confirming her every expectation that he was a tit, even if he was an adorable one.

Natasha promised to pass the compliments on, and Maria found that she didn't mind in the least. Stark, of all the men she knew, would take the comment as it was meant.

After she got over the headache the following morning, days passed quickly. That was both a blessing and a curse, because the spectre of her visit to California was looming over her. She’d been paying less attention than normal to the drama around her, and had done her level best to not get involved with Stark and Rogers kissing around every corner, and Coulson casually climbing out of the air vents in a five-thousand dollar suit and brushing dust-bunnies out of his (thinning, hah!) hair, like she didn't know what he'd been doing up there. She tossed the now-daily death threats aside without opening them, and sent them in a black bin bag to the incinerator every Friday. They were becoming increasingly frequent, and she could recognize them by the distinctive smell and the handwriting, but she honestly couldn't be bothered about them, anymore. They were just loud, ranty, incompetent assholes who were jealous that she knew enough to keep things running in good order, and they didn't. She dismissed them off hand, and that was her second mistake.

She should have expected it, really. Stepping out of anonymity brought with it a whole bucket-load of shit with it, and she'd done it in a big way. She'd been expecting a baptism by fire, but had been surprised by how easy it had been to make that one, crucial transition. She should have trusted her original instinct, and letting down her guard had been her third and final, really big, monumental fuck-up.

It was nothing like a kidnapping that would have been executed on the Avengers. Nothing flashy, no careless mistakes, nothing she could work with. No hints of a vulnerable megalomaniac. She went to bed one night, after waving good-bye to Natasha, in the SHIELD barracks, and woke up in a room with rough stone walls, hanging by her wrists from chains attached to the ceiling. The tips of her fingers felt cold, and her arms were numb, and her shoulders were aching, so she'd probably been there for a while. Her first thought was that SHIELD had a mole, because no way someone would have been able to get into the compound without help from the inside. Her second thought was, oh shit.

She felt woozy, so she'd probably been drugged. It also explained why she hadn't woken up from the rough handling it would take to get a full grown, unconscious woman out of a secure facility without attracting notice, and then hang her from the ceiling. She was shivering slightly, but moment after she noticed it, the shivering escalated to violent shaking. She didn't have a shirt on, though her underwear had been mercifully spared from the same fate.

The door opened smoothly, and Maria was glad for the lack of dramatic noises. She'd been trying to wriggle her fingers, to get some feeling back into them. She'd already tried to escape by slipping her hands through the cuffs the way Natasha had taught her, but who-ever had taken her had known what they were doing. They were on the uncomfortable side of snug, and she could feel the welts forming under the metal. She had no way of slipping through them, so she'd decided to conserve energy for what was no doubt coming soon. When the door opened, she clenched her jaw to stop her teeth from chattering, because there was nothing more pathetic than showing signs of weakness. This, she had learned from her father, even though she hadn't wanted to.

The man who came in was undeniably attractive, in a very lawyer-ly way. She knew this, because this was specifically the sort of man she'd been attracted to when she'd been in the legal profession. Smooth, and slick, and just a little over-confident. The right kind of asshole. She'd never been one to turn down a challenge, and had, as a consequence, fallen into bed with many ill-advised individuals, who then tended to cave like wet paper when she showed her steel. He had dark hair with a few strands of errant grey, and dark eyes with accompanying eye-bags. Again, something she found incredibly attractive. The only thing that told her she wouldn't have hit on this guy if she'd bumped into him in a bar, was his eyes. He had cruel eyes. While she could appreciate confidence, this guy looked insane. He looked like he wanted to cut her open, and drink her blood, for kicks. She tamped down on the shiver, and the voice in her head that was telling her to be afraid. She listened to Natasha’s voice instead, telling her about the cost of fear being more than they could ever afford.

She waited for the monologue.

It didn't come, and she didn't like it. She was off-balance enough, having been taken from her bed without warning. She didn't like how disorienting it was to expect one thing from the villain of the day, and to get something completely different. It was more dangerous than she had reckoned.

"Let's not waste time, shall we?" he spoke with a crisp accent, words perfectly enunciated. Control freak, her mind-voice piped. Look at his cuff-links. Look at his collar. His tie. Straight lines and crisp perfection. Definitely a control freak. Play on that.

"No, let's not," she matched him, because she'd never known when to mind her mouth. Or, well, she had, but she'd never cared. "What do you want from me?"

He quirked one eyebrow, and she could have sworn that if she'd measured it, she'd have found it at precisely 45 degrees. Too neat. Too perfect. He seemed unreal. "Are you suggesting that you might comply with my demands, Deputy Director Hill?"

"No," she replied, "not at all. I'm just bored, so I thought we'd get this show on the road."

"You're as daring as they say, Maria. May I call you Maria?" he asked, suddenly uncomfortably close to her bare skin, his breath warm against her clammy skin. She did not shiver.

"You may not," she replied, carefully keeping her voice light, and very carefully not spitting at him. She was under no illusions about who was in control here, and contrary to what Barton said, she did not have a pet death wish. It was probably why Fury hadn't made her an Avenger, thank fuck for that. Natasha filled out a cat-suit better than she did, anyway. "You may refer to me as Deputy Director Hill, or Ma'am." Didn't mean she didn't have a smart mouth, though.

He smirked, and god, she'd seen that smirk so many times on the faces of the men she'd fucked - it was disconcerting. He leaned in very close to her, and he smelled like expensive aftershave. He'd dressed up for her, and that was another bad sign. A very bad sign. He lowered his lips to her collar bone, which he could do even though she was suspended a solid three inches off the ground, and pressed his lips against her skin, keeping her in place with firm hands on her hip. She couldn't even scrabble for purchase, to jerk away from his touch. She very carefully did not react to him, even though her skin was crawling and she wanted nothing more than to spit, scream, scratch or bite. The way this was going, and god, she didn't like where this was going, getting violent and giving him the reactions he so obviously craved was the worst possible thing she could do.

He kissed her softly, behind her ear, taking liberties like a lover would. She wanted to scream for him to get away, because he did not have the right to take this from her. He did not have the right. She didn't react.

"You, Maria, are a gorgeous woman." What. "Has anyone ever told you that?" he continued. Maybe this was his insane, very creepy version of an evil monologue. "Has anyone ever told you that you have beautiful eyes, or that you smell nice, or that you make them hungry for your flesh?" And wow, she hadn't thought it was possible for this to get more creepy, but she'd obviously been wrong. Underneath the inane babbling that was going on in the top layers of her mind, there was a growing feeling of terror. Like someone had stabbed a meat hook into her gut, and was playing with her insides. She couldn't afford to succumb to panic, though. Not this time.

This was her baptism by fire, and she was going to come out on top if it was the last thing she did.

She did not react. He dipped his fingers below the waistband of her sleeping pants. She did not react. "Has anyone ever touched you, like this, Maria? Have you ever had spectacular sex, darling? Has anyone ever reduced you to a hot mess? Have anyone ever made it so good for you, that you screamed." She did not. React. He leaned in close again, speaking into her ear. "Maybe that's why you don't want to be a woman." What. "Because you don't know how good you can feel. Maybe, you haven't been treated right, so you've lashed out by trying to take a man's place. Is that it, Maria? If I make you feel like a woman, will you stop stepping out of line? Will you go back to where you belong, and behave?"

This was so far from what she'd expected, that she literally did not have the words to respond to him. This wasn't political ideology, at least not in the sense she was used to. This had nothing to do with the war on terror, or the so-frequent alien attacks. This had everything to do with her, and that, possibly out of everything she had been through, was the scariest thing. She didn't let it show. She could have dealt with a rant, and demands for information. She had dealt with that before. This, she didn't know. She'd never been targeted for who she was, before. She sympathised with Stark.

"Did you get my love notes, Maria?" and her mental alarm bells were ringing, loud and clear. "Did you understand what I was saying to you? That you didn't have to pretend anymore, and that you could just be yourself, and relax, and let someone more capable take over the job. After all, SHIELD is no place for a woman of your exquisite appearance, my darling."

And okay, whoa, that was genuinely below the belt. But then she started processing what was actually being said. This guy was angry because she was a woman, in SHIELD. Because she was a woman in the upper echelons of SHIELD. This guy - she really hated this guy. She made sure it showed, but she didn't say anything. Nothing to give him more ammunition. She was secure in herself, and her abilities, but this was... insane. She had no idea what she was supposed to do, now. She wasn’t listening to the hysterical voice in her head, worrying about Natasha and her other female friends. Natasha would be fine. No one could even think about touching Natasha. She’d be absolutely fine. They all would.

He sighed, and sounded like she'd somehow offended him. He drew back and studied her, shaking his head. "You've been conditioned into this, darling. Don't worry. We'll recalibrate you soon enough." He kissed her and she couldn't even flinch away. That characterised the following -hours? -days? -weeks? -lifetimes. She couldn't flinch away. She had to take it, quietly, or he'd gag her. She had to take it, and bear it, and learn to cope with the feeling of wanting to peel her skin off, to be clean again.

He was gentle, at first. She hated that more than she could express. He'd touch her and kiss her and mark her skin with his teeth. When he slid off her underwear and tried to shave her privates, because 'women shouldn't have unkempt lady-bits', she kneed him in the jaw. He'd looked up at her with such rage in his eyes, that she'd known things were about to get much, much worse. But the torture was better, somehow. The whips were vaguely sexual, but there was something clean about the pain. More neutral, and less invasive than what he'd been doing before.

She could handle pain. She tried to stay aware, alert through it, in case he monologued and gave anything away. But he was singularly focused, and when she realised that he was disciplined, and not going to say anything to her, she gave it up as a lost cause. She let herself drift, and distance herself from her body. Every few hours or so, he'd stop whatever he was doing and ask her if she was willing to submit.

The first few times, she'd spat in his face, because it wasn't like she could make that any more clear, right? Then she'd stopped bothering, to conserve energy. He wasn't looking to hurt her, though. He was looking to break her, completely. She didn't have water unless she begged, or food, at all. The lights would come on and go off randomly, as far as she could tell. Sometimes, he'd wake her if she was drowsing, and sometimes he'd let her sleep for hours. There was no routine, no system. Her body wasn't adapting, because there was no way of knowing what was to come. Sometimes he'd have a whip, sometimes a knife, and sometimes he'd set up a funnel to drip water on her forehead for hours.

She hadn't seen anyone else, though. No one. Just him, coming in and out of the room which she had studied as thoroughly as she could. There were no windows, no alarms, and her watch was gone. He was constantly cold, and clammy, and her upper body was numb. She had bruises all around her shoulders, and an insistent pain that was in no way a good sign. The only thing keeping her going was the thought of her vengeance, when it came, and her scheming. She was smart, and capable. Fury, Phil and Natasha were no doubt looking for her frantically, but she wasn't going to wait for them to rescue her. No siree. She was going to get herself out, if it was the last thing she did.

And then her chance came, when she was pretending to sleep but actually scheming, and the door opened but He didn't come in. A delicate wisp of a girl came in, slipping through the smallest crack in the door as if she was afraid to open it further. She started picking up some of the instruments lying scattered around the room, and putting them into a cardboard box in the far corner of the room. She was wearing simple clothes, and cheap flip flops. She was shivering, and pale. She continued doing her work until she noticed Maria studying her, then she froze, like a deer in the headlights.

Maria shushed her, quiet herself, exhausted but seeing a light at the end of this nightmarish tunnel, finally. The girl stared at her, wide-eyed, tearing slightly when her gaze fell on Maria's ruined body. An sympathetic third party. Thank fuck. Thank fucking fuck. "Come here," she whispered, and the girl shook her head frantically and pretty much ran out of the room. Part of Maria wanted to cry and scream because she'd wanted this to end, please. But another part of her, that was holding on to rationality, was rejoicing. This was a step forward! A sympathetic third party was a blessing that not many hostages could have asked for. She could have laughed with the relief. But the next time the door opened, it was Him again.

She'd thought he was holding her face off limits, in deference to his "women must be pretty" thing. She was wrong. When she woke up, her whole face felt swollen and her nose was definitely off centre. He was escalating, and losing control of his anger. Good, because it meant he'd make mistakes. Not good, because it meant she was going to be experiencing more pain in the near future. She couldn't feel anything, so hey, small mercies. It was really difficult to open her eyes, but she managed, and thank god she did. The girl was standing there, hands clasped together nervously. When she noticed Maria's eyes squint open, she stiffened and awkwardly tucked a wisp of hair behind her ear. She couldn't quite meet Maria's eyes. She didn't think it was guilt. It felt like fear, and shame. Fear was understandable, but shame? Odd, but Maria was sure of it.

"Hey there," she ventured, after a couple of seconds of staring and one or two aborted attempts on her part to speak. Her voice was rusty, and probably terrifying. She probably looked like the devil himself, but she had a feeling this girl had seen hell, and that the fire in her gut had kept her alive. She could respect that. She could also respect the fear, because that's what kept people alive. The girl finally looked at her, then looked away quickly. Her eyes were big, and brown. She didn't look more than fifteen.

"Please look at me?" she asked, trying her best to keep the desperation out of her voice, and not sure she was succeeding. "Please?" the girl did, making solid eye contact, and it was such a relief to see someone other than that fucker, that she felt like crying. She was, actually, tearing, and she would have been mortified if the girl hadn't stepped forward to press her face into Maria's filthy belly. She was tiny. She trusted her gut on this. The kid wasn't involved. She was a dogsbody, but there was no fucking way she was malicious, or anything. Some part of her mind was wondering whether Stockholm Syndrome was finally kicking in, but no. This kid was just a bystander to this trainwreck. "Does he hurt you?" she finally dared to ask. The girl gently nodded her head, still pressed into Maria's body. Her heart broke for the girl. She was being careful to not hurt her, and that consideration caused more tears to spill from her eyes. It felt like it had been years since someone had touched her, other than Him.

She wanted so badly to touch the girl herself, but.

"What's your name?" she asked, because maybe that would get the girl to look less like a beaten puppy.

"Melissa," she whispered, barely audible, and fuck if that wasn't the sweetest sound Maria had ever heard.

"Melissa," she repeated, unable to stop the smile, even though her face hurt like. Well. Like someone had beaten her senseless. "Melissa, my name is Maria."

The girl turned her face up to Maria, and offered a shaky smile. It was sweet. It looked like victory, and freedom in the distance.

Then the door slid open again, and the look on Melissa's face was heartbreaking. For a minute, it didn't matter that Maria was going to get beaten senseless. She just wanted the girl out of there. She'd take another year in the hellhole if it meant the girl didn't get hurt. It must have shown on her face. "Hide," she hissed. "Hide," but it was too late. She'd been too slow. He'd seen her, and his face had twisted into a moue of disgust. He was looking at the girl like she was something he'd scraped off the bottom of his shoe. She hated him even more, for that.

The moment broke and he strode over, and slapped her so hard she fell to the floor, pins flying from her hair. He turned from her, and curiously enough, it was like he'd forgotten she was there, or he'd dismissed her as irrelevant. It was clear that Melissa knew it, too. She pushed herself off the floor, and her nose was bleeding and Maria wanted to wipe it clean for her. She was not what anyone would call maternal, but god, she'd have done anything to get the girl to safety. Melissa swayed for a second, standing still, then she left, without a glance back. Maria recognized the tension in her shoulders. She definitely had an ally on her side, even if it was an definitely-abused maybe-fifteen year old. She had steel in her backbone, and that was good enough for Maria.

She endured the following hours in silence, as she always had. But she did it with a new energy, and hope. She didn't know where Nick, Phil and Natasha were, but she sensed freedom. It was so close, she could taste it.

She was right. Melissa came into the room later, and shook her awake. It didn't take much, because Maria's cuts had only just stopped bleeding, and she'd only just managed to close her eyes to rest. She beamed. She was holding a small, silver key in front of her, and Maria couldn't tell which was more beautiful; her smile, or the key. They were equally beautiful. Melissa had to climb on the box to reach her hands, but she did, and Maria fell to the ground, boneless, and the pain ripped a sound of agony from her throat. It felt like her whole world was on fire, and tears were prickling at the corners of her eyes, and she couldn't move her arms. She was still effectively immobile, and it made her so angry she could have screamed. But Melissa was rubbing her shoulders, and even though it felt like she was being stabbed a thousand times, and acid being poured on her cuts, she knew that was the only way she'd be able to even function. It took fifteen agonized, terrified minutes, but she could move her arms. And then, she stopped.

She had no idea what they were going to do. She had no idea where they were, or even what time of day it was. She couldn't even say she owned the clothes on her back. But she had one thing. She had one thing left, that would remain with her even though she was stripped to her underwear, as it was supposed to. She had her panic button. It had gone into her the old fashioned way, with surgical scalpels, deep into her calf. It would have to come out the same way. But first, they'd get out.

"What time is it?" she asked, thinking fast.

"Bit past midnight," Melissa whispered back, and it was clear that she was also thinking. Good. All those years ago, Maria had known what she still knew today. When her guns and machines and body failed her, she would still have her wit. The same applied to Melissa. "We're somewhere outside Oakland."

"Right, fuck. Okay. Melissa, we're going to get out of this. Are we in a suburb?"

"I don't know. I haven't been allowed to go out in a long time." Her voice was rusty, like she hadn't spoken to anyone in a long time. "We only moved her a few months ago. He drugs me when we travel."

"Who's 'we'?" Maria asked, focusing on the simplest part of that sentence, because Jesus. "How did this fucker get his hands on you?"

Melissa looked away, unable to look her in the eye for a solid beat. "He's my father."

"Fuck." It was hardly appropriate, but she was reacting the best way she could. And she could only hope that Melissa understood. The corner of her mouth was twitching slightly, so Maria presumed she was right. The adrenaline was pumping through her body in full force, she knew, which was why she was even standing now. But it wouldn't last long, so she had to get out.

"Right. Let's beat this popsicle stand," she said, and then vowed to hit Tony because fuck him for influencing her. Melissa giggled. Maybe she wouldn't hit him so hard.

The doors were unlocked, and it really seemed too good to be true. The soundlessness of the doors which had so bothered her were a blessing, because it meant there were less chances of getting caught. They took a knife from the kitchen on the way out, and when Melissa made to get another one, Maria stopped her. "No, this isn't for fighting, kid. If it comes to a fight, you run." Melissa looked defiant, but this wasn't something Maria was willing to negotiate. "No, Melissa. You run for your life. You understand me? You run and get help, so you can fight another day."

Melissa finally nodded, and then they were out. It felt incredible. Melissa looked dazed to even see the moon. On one hand, it was great that they had the natural lighting. On the other hand, it would make them easier to find, which was not good at all. She surveyed their surroundings. It looked like a nice, suburban neighbourhood, and she was so tempted to bang on someone's doors until they let her in. But she had lived a long and interesting life and a commune of evil was a thing that existed, so she wasn't going to take any chances.

They jogged as far as they could, even though the term jogging was much more generous than they deserved. They kinda limped as far as they could, was more accurate. And when she couldn't stand anymore, she pried open someone's backyard fence and they sat in the bushes, under the cover of some verdant trees. She wanted to believe that such a peaceful garden could only have been cultivated by a good person, but then again, she had known that evil people were capable of having green thumbs. She was not, however, looking forward to the next part.

They settled down, and then she had to ask Melissa for one more favour. "Kid, I need you to hold my leg down. Sit on it if you have to, but keep me flat, okay?" Melissa nodded, wide-eyed, either because of the darkness or because she was scared. Or both. Both was good. She found the spot, took a deep breath, and pushed the knife into her thigh. She didn't know if the knife was clean, and it would be just her luck if the rest of her wounds were clean and this one got infected, but fuck that. This was their only way out. She detached herself from her body, the way Natasha had taught her, like she was good at now, and pushed deep. When it hit the button, she knew. There was lots of fumbling in the blood and the darkness and it hurt like a motherfucking bitch, which meant the adrenaline was wearing off, but she got it.

And then she broke it, just like she was supposed to. That had been a Stark beacon. It didn't transmit until broken, because he did everything backwards, and because it gave her some resemblance of privacy. After this, she was getting chipped like a puppy, if she had to, fuck the privacy thing. "Now," she said, calmer than she was feeling, hiding the pain, "we wait."

"For what?" Melissa asked.

"For back-up." Melissa studied her for a half-minute, then sat back and pressed her side into Maria's, to keep warm while they waited.

Chapter 4

marvel big bang 2013, success, fanfiction

Previous post Next post
Up