Chapter Text
Maria Hill was top of her class. It was a fact that kept her chin high even weeks after coming out of the academy. She’d made it. Granted, she had the upper hand of having been in the military which had some overlap in training, but she’d made it. It was her status of valedictorian of her class at the academy that meant, despite it being her first day, she was already on her way to the Director’s office for a briefing. She’d be lying if she said she wasn’t excited as she rapped on the door.
“Enter.”
She nudged the door open, forcing her shoulders to straighten and her chin rise to be level to the ground. She shut the door behind her without taking her eyes off the one-eyed man sitting at a desk. He looked up from his paperwork.
“Agent Hill,” he greeted, “Congratulations on your recent graduation. Top of your class I heard.”
“Thank you sir,” she answered evenly with a small proud smile. Her heart thudded in her chest as she looked over her boss’s boss’s boss’s boss. She’d heard stories about him. Apparently he could be rather intimidating. Though, she was still unclear as to how he lost his eye. She’d heard over a dozen rumors as to that. The craziest one by far was from an alien that looked like a cat. The blond woman who’d told her – Carol, Maria thinks her name was – had even had a smirk whilst telling it that made Maria doubt the credibility of the story.
“Have a seat.” She obliged. “It’s a rite of passage for the valedictorian of the SHIELD Academy of Operations to be the first one offered an assignment. Now, as it is your first assignment, I am obligated to tell you that throughout your career with us, you always have the right to refuse an assignment-“
“Sir, all due respect,” Maria interrupted, “I was in the military’s active service for four years and I never once refused an assignment despite the fact that they made the very same offer.”
Something glinted in the man’s eye, and dare she say it, she swore it was a glimmer of respect.
“Understood.” He pushed a manilla folder over to her. “Your first assignment.”
She eyed the front of the folder. The SHIELD logo was printed in large black font, and a red “confidential” stamp over the right-hand corner made her feel like she was in some bad spy film.
“Sir, this has a security clearance level of four.”
“You had higher clearance in the military than what we afford our rookie agents here at SHIELD. We placed you at level 4 upon entrance. Do you have a problem with that?”
“No sir.” She flipped the folder open.
Green eyes pierced her through a photograph, and she peered at the photo of the woman for a few moments.
“Who is she?” Maria asked. Of course, the information would be in the folder, but she could glean more from being told. Folders didn’t make mistakes. They didn’t slip information. People did.
“Natalia Alianovna Romanova, a.k.a Black Widow. She was brought in earlier this week by Agent Barton.”
Maria’s brow furrowed. Black Widow? Who the hell was that? Somehow the name sounded familiar.
“I don’t understand sir. There’s not a mission here. The mission’s been completed.”
“I disagree.”
Maria peered up at the man, trying to read him through his mask to no avail.
“You’re putting me on babysitting duty?”
The man raised a brow. “What, you think it’s beneath you to guard a Russian terrorist who, for reasons unknown to us, handed herself in? You do understand that you are the only agent below security level 7 who knows about her thus far, correct?” Terrorist?
Maria pursed her lips. “Sir, I mean no disrespect, of course but-“ she faltered as she struggled to put her words into phrase. “Why me? Why not someone with experience?”
“Agent Hill. You have been chosen for this task because you are the best option from your class that we have. We need a younger agent to face Romanova, because she clams up around anyone who she can sense has authority, so we needed a new angle. You were in the military, and I’ve seen your commanders’ notes on your file. They’re impressive. Out of the recently graduated class, you are one of few I can rely on to not be manipulated easily by Romanova.”
There was a lot for Maria to unpack with that. She hadn’t been expecting the praise at all, even if it was given in an unusual way. His logic made sense. If they needed a younger face – someone who Romanova thought she could manipulate but actually couldn’t – them she supposed she was the best option of her cohort. After all, if the top dog had such firm ideas on the topic, then surely those below him would have to share similar viewpoints.
Regardless, babysitting hadn’t exactly been what she’d been imagining to be doing once she became a SHIELD agent. That said, she was never one to argue with her superior officer, especially when she was a rookie, and he was the Director.
“Yes sir. Understood.”
“So do you accept the mission?”
Maria thought for a moment. “Yes sir.” She’d be lying if she said she didn’t hope it’d be over soon. She could do so much more than babysit and she was itching to prove as much. He nodded and she took the dismissal for what it was.
“Hill.” She paused as she heard her name. “She will try to manipulate you. Don’t let her.”
She glanced over her shoulder, wondering for just a split second what she’d gotten herself into.
“Yes sir.”
This wasn’t what Natalia Romanova had been expecting when she had handed herself in. Sure, she’d expected the guards, the initial interrogations, the lie detector tests, the constant feeling of someone watching her through the cameras that tracked her movements like a predator would stalk its prey. What she didn’t expect was to be taken in, interrogated, then taken by several guards to a cell with nothing more than a cot and anti-suffocation sheets. She wasn’t sure whether the sheets were anti-suffocation because they thought that her handing herself over was being suicidal or because they didn’t want her to turn the sheets into a weapon. Probably the latter, based off the paper plates her food came on and the lack of cutlery afforded.
She supposed she could take some comfort in it – they weren’t underestimating her at least.
There was always a guard in her room. At first, she’d been irked by it – despite never having had true privacy in her life, having an agent sitting across the room from her as she tried to sleep made it nearly impossible to do so. It had only been a few days though. She’d survived sleep deprivation longer than that, and it had yet to take its toll on her.
None of the guards made much of an attempt to interact with her. She ended up giving them names so that she could stop thinking of them as just a collective. ‘Red’ had carrot-coloured hair – more of an orange than her own hair – and though the name was a bit on the nose for Natasha’s liking, it was memorable. ‘Trigger’ was her least favourite. He sat in the guard’s chair that was bolted to the ground opposite her bed with his gun resting on his thigh pointed at her. She wasn’t afraid. She knew it was more than likely that the chamber was empty because if SHIELD wanted her dead, she would be six feet under by now, and Trigger didn’t look like the sort to be able to find another job if he accidentally killed her. Grumpy was just that – grumpy. In all fairness, he usually got the night shift and Natasha had psychoanalysed him enough to think that he was probably just a grunt stuck on babysitting duty. She’d be grumpy too.
Those were the regulars. The others switched in an out. They were probably being given this job as a punishment judging by the way they’d fidget and look at their respective timepieces every other minute. Natasha had been bored enough to mock one of them about it. At least you get to leave. He’d only glared and told her to shut up. In return for their politeness, she’d refused to say a word when they asked her about the Red Room, or assignments. She was not some bitch that could be commanded to sit and lay down and roll over and speak, and she refused to become one.
It had been about half an hour after what she’d assumed to be breakfast. There was no way for her to tell time in here and she hadn’t seen the sun in days. They could have easily been doing this on purpose to disorient her, but it was more of an inconvenience to the assassin. It would take more than that to break her. Regardless, half an hour after breakfast was shift-swapping time, so she watching as the door opened and sat back in her cot as she waited to be shown who she’d be spending the next few hours with.
She fought a smirk as a young agent stepped in. The woman looked far younger than forty, which seemed to be the average age of those assigned to her. Natasha herself was twenty, but this woman didn’t look any more than two or three years older than her. That said, she carried herself in a way that told the assassin that this wasn’t a new scene to her. Natasha’s eyes glide over the woman’s body, her stance, the way she nodded at the other guard in acknowledgement as he passed her. Natasha could immediately peg this woman as military. Likely marines.
Natasha completed her quick assessment of the woman before placing an easy grin on her features and leaning back on the wall in the most nonchalant pose possible.
Maria almost looked back as the door shut behind her. She refused to allow her body to give Romanova that though. She would not appear weak within seconds of seeing the woman. She watched the redhead as she shifted back, a blasé expression taking over her features. It gave the impression of cockiness, but Maria doubted that she was incapable extensive damage. Sure, she’d been doing boxing since she hit double digits, but she wasn’t willing to risk a fight with the woman. Not when Fury was acting as though she could kill people without even raising a hand. Maybe she could. SHIELD was no stranger to inhumans, but she wasn’t in an inhuman cell.
“You’re new,” the widow mused. Maria’s eyes snapped to her, and piercing blue met intense green.
“Yes, and?” Maria replied sharply. The weight of the gun on her hip was a comfort. Her fingers brushed over it, just to reassure herself that it was still there, that Romanoff hadn’t somehow stolen it already. She’d only been in here a few moments and already she had to wonder if speaking to Romanova in the first place was a mistake.
The smirk grew. “At ease, Soldier. I’m just trying to start small talk.”
Maria bristled. She was here for a job, not to make friends with an assassin. She wasn’t sure whether the ‘at ease’ jab was a coincidence or an intentional prod to see if she was actually military.
She refused to respond to the redhead, and instead, her eyes travelled around the room. The cot was simple, bolted to the wall and covered in non-descript grey blankets that, despite no one doing room inspections, were pulled taught over the thin mattress, and tucked away complete with hospital corners. Part of Maria wondered why the woman bothered. It wasn’t as if she was going to have guests around. Her eyes trailed back to the woman whose smirk remained.
“Please, Agent. Have a seat,” she offered mockingly, gesturing to the chair behind Maria. It too was bolted to the ground.
Despite the tone, Maria sat. She kept her feet flat on the floor so that if the widow attacked without notice, she’d be ready. Her hand remained on her weapon, the black object cool under her fingertips.
An amused snort had her mind flashing back to the present.
“I don’t bite, Agent. Honestly, you look like your commanding officers just threw you into the spider’s den.” She chuckled at her own joke.
In Natasha’s defence, she was deadly bored, and toying with the baby agent seemed like a fun way to pass the time. Part of her wondered how easy it would be to get under the woman’s skin. She’d always considered that a sort of mental sport of its own – finding people’s buttons and seeing how quickly she could push them.
She locked eyes with the brunette again and was almost impressed by the amount of time the agent held the stare before looking away. They always looked away.
“You’re too pretty to be a glorified babysitter,” Natasha smirked, enjoying the way the woman bristled irritably at the words. Short-tempered then. Good thing to keep in mind.
“And you’re too pretty to be a heartless assassin, but here we are,” the woman responded with a clipped tone. Snarky. That was good. No dull conversations.
Natasha allowed a genuine smile to flash for just a second. None of the other guards had bothered to give her the time of day like that. It was a pleasant change, and one undoubtedly born of naivety on the agent’s part. She was a prisoner. She knew that much. She was no idiot. She knew that whoever had put this woman here had done so to see if she’d open up to a different type of person. A good cop bad cop type thing except the good cop didn’t know she was being used.
“What?”
Natasha came out of her daze as the woman snapped at her. She’d drifted off into her own head. Something like that would’ve gotten her at least a solid blow to the gut in the Red Room. She was losing her touch being stuck in here. Her gaze sharpened back into focus, and she tilted her head at the brunette.
“Hm?” she gave the woman an innocent look, which seemed to only serve to piss her off.
“What’s that look?” she demanded, tone hardening further. Well, someone wasn’t happy about being put on babysitting duty.
Natasha huffed out a chuckle. “Nothing to worry your pretty little head about.”
Maria didn’t trust this woman one iota. She will try to manipulate you. Fury’s voice rang in her head. She didn’t like the way the woman had been looking at her, like Maria was some pawn and she was wondering how best she could use her to her advantage. She couldn’t help but be mildly curious about the mighty Black Widow. Why the hell did she need a 24 hour guard?
She didn’t look overly muscular in the SHIELD-issued jumpsuit that they gave to anyone they temporarily brought in. Not like some guys she’d seen; whose muscles look like they were fighting a war to rip the fabric. She would even go as far to say that the woman was underweight. Not majorly so, likely because her handlers would want her able to do her normal duties, but enough that she didn’t look like she could take on a full-grown man and come out on top.
Maybe that was yet another purposeful thing about her. There seemed to be many. Even the way she sat seemed fake – written like a novel. She’d slipped into this character of confident ambivalence, one who doesn’t care what will happen to her. She was good, Maria would have to admit. Maria was only able to pick up on it herself because she was expecting it.
The room fell into silence, and it didn’t take Maria long to become bored. This wasn’t a job; this was a chore. A menial task in which she had nothing to do. She’d gotten into this line of work to avoid days like this. Where everything was so slow that the second hand on her watch started to feel like the minute hand. She didn’t know how long Romanova had been here for, but even after two hours she was feeling the need to get up and do something.
She wouldn’t. She’d seen Romanova smirking when she’d started bouncing her leg restlessly, and she refused to give her the satisfaction of being the first to become too twitchy to sit still. Romanova barely moved. Maria would have said it was impressive if she didn’t raise a brow and smirk every time Maria had to readjust herself.
“You agents are all the same, you know.”
Maria’s eyes narrowed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You’re here for a few hours, but even that’s too long for you to sit still. Yet you lock me up in here and expect me to handle it.” Maria didn’t respond and Romanova sat back with a huff. “So what’d you do to get dumped here with little old me?”
Maria met her gaze with a blank stare. “Nothing.”
“What, steal the wrong person’s lunch from the break room fridge? Come on, spill.”
She wasn’t this woman’s friend. She wasn’t her buddy. She was her guard. Nothing more. “Shut it, Romanova.”
She was surprised when a minute flinch rolled through the woman, cutting through her previously calm demeanour. She pretended not to notice. The Black Widow collected herself more quickly than Maria thought was possible, and she eventually said,
“I feel like it’s unfair that you know my name and I don’t know yours.”
“Such a tragedy,” Maria said dryly before pausing. She supposed a name couldn’t hurt. “Hill. Agent Hill.” Romanova inclined her head.
Natasha watched as the woman began to shut her out again. Fine. But that wouldn’t get her to stop. She stopped on her own terms. Not anyone else’s. “You know, you’re young compared to the others that come in here. You’re like half their age.” No response. Natasha clenched her jaw. “So do you have a higher clearance level than the others or what’s up with that?"
“I fit into a criterion,” the agent answered shortly.
Natasha took a moment to think over the words for a moment. The agent was definitely being used, and by the way she seemed this pissed, she had a feeling that the woman knew about it. Still, Natasha pushed. “What criterion?”
“None of your business.”
“Well I think that given it dictates who’s in my room, I think it does,” she challenged, wondering just how far she could push before Hill snapped.
She’d given up on the relaxed demeanour by now. It hadn’t done any good to get Hill to let her guard down.
Hill looked over at her and she met her eyes unflinchingly.
“It’s none of your business,” Hill repeated.
Natasha watched her for a moment before surmising, “So, your CO threw you under the bus.”
“I follow orders.”
“So, you’re military?” Natasha voiced her suspicion.
Hill’s gaze toughened and it was clear in that moment that Natasha had found one of her ‘buttons’. She filed the information away, but for now, sat back and allowed the room to descend into silence again.