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Her fist landed hard, a vicious right hook that would have sent her foe sprawling were it a person instead of a punching bag that was fastened securely to the ceiling by a series of commercial bolts. She ignored the growing weariness in her muscles, purposefully straining to push herself to her physical limits in an effort to rid herself of some of the tension in her system.
A lot had happened in a rather short span of time.
Loki.
The Chitouri.
The near loss of New York and it’s 8 million inhabitants.
And, stopping all of them had certainly come at a price, the most notable of which to Maria being the loss of agent Phil Coulson.
To say they hadn’t been friends would have been a lie. More than that, though, it would have been an insult to his memory. Every agent on the helicarrier relied on those around them for security. During combat, each agent protected those around them as they had been trained so explicitly to do. Unit cohesion was paramount. One weakened link would compromise the integrity of the entire system.
And outside of combat, other agents were often times their only company for great spans of time.
Human intimacy did not come easily to Maria. Joining Shield early on, this had been made an integral part of her being, and it was just this lack of interpersonal intimacy and her own extreme focus that had allowed her to rise to the rank of Commander so quickly. But she had worked closely with Phil Coulson for a number of years, and she had come to consider him a friend. One of only a few. So, each time she struck the punching bag, Maria imagined Loki in its place. Every punch hit that narrow nose of his or one of his soulless eyes or was a good shot to the jaw that knocked loose a couple of his pearly whites. Every kick landed in his gut, sometimes just a little lower. She didn’t care that she’d have been less than useless in an actual confrontation against the Asgardian, a very literal god in their mortal world.
Everyone had their own methods of grieving. Hers simply kept her anger in check when outside the gym and served as a nice physical workout.
“Remind me never to get your bad side.”
A voice came from a ways off to the side, and Maria paused in her assault long enough to cast a glance and see it was Captain Rogers who had joined her in the gym. Last Maria had heard a week ago, he’d been making his way to Philadelphia. Perhaps he’d returned to the helicarrier for a break from the real world, a world that was vastly different from the one he had known and grown up in.
When she’d turned to look at him, he inclined his head to her, offering a polite, “Ma’am.”
“Captain,” Maria returned in monotone with her own nod.
He sat on one of the workout benches, rifling through his duffel bag for something.
“We both know I wouldn’t stand a chance in a fight against you,” the Commander replied simply to his previous comment as she returned to her assault on the punching bag.
Whether he detected her subtle tone of spiteful distrust, she couldn’t be sure, but she couldn’t really bring herself to care much either. With the boxing tape recovered from his duffel, the Captain set his bag on the floor before setting in on applying said tape to his hands.
“If you punch that thing any harder, I might have to disagree.” His tone was casual as he spoke, a lightness that indicated it as a friendly jab.
Whether or not he knew she was taking her rampant and tightly bottled frustrations out on the bag was again unknown. If he did, he didn’t ask if anything was bothering her, probably respecting her privacy.
Silence prevailed. Maria didn’t mind. She wasn’t much of a conversationalist, anyway. What she did notice out of her peripherals, however, was that Captain Rogers kept glancing up as he applied the boxing tape to his hands. He almost seemed… nervous? Uncomfortable perhaps? It happened a few more times before Maria decided she’d figure out what was bothering him.
Although, a cursory glance down gave her a pretty quick understanding.
Rather than a shirt, she was wearing an athletics bra, the only clothing covering her torso, for its added mobility. It was fairly standard in the modern day and age as workout apparel for women, but Rogers had come from the 40’s where such things hadn’t been at all frequent or even looked upon very highly. She wondered briefly if he’d even had an understanding of what the basic female form looked like before his time in the 21st century, what with all the baggy and conciliatory clothing women, especially women in the military, had worn during his time.
Uncomfortable was probably the right word for how Rogers felt in that moment with Maria’s midsection openly displayed for world viewing and her sports bra leaving little else to the imagination. So, walking over to her own duffel at the edge of the mat, Maria removed from her own bag the black uniform tee she’d been wearing before she’d begun her workout and slipped it on. She may not like supers much, but that didn’t mean she had to be an overzealous ass when it came to them.
Culture shock was tough, powers or no powers.
Captain Rogers seemed openly surprised by this action as Maria returned to the mat, but he also looked undeniably relieved.
“Thank you, ma’am.” Polite as always, he voiced his appreciation, albeit a little nervously.
Maria only nodded in his general direction as she returned to her previous task of taking all her frustrations out on the Loki punching bag. Over the next few minutes, the only sounds in the otherwise vacant gym were those of Maria’s well-placed punches and kicks and those of Captain Rogers stretching. Once finished with his task, however, he looked to her a few times, almost as if unsure of something. This too was repeated with a little more frequency, but Maria for the life of her couldn’t discern what was wrong this time.
She’d already corrected her attire, so she had no idea what could possibly be troubling him now.
“Something on your mind, Captain?” Maria asked with a cool tone that kept her irritation well hidden, unsure as to whether he would voice whatever it was without prodding, and his behavior was becoming distracting.
Rogers hesitated another moment before approaching, keeping outside her workout zone as was courtesy.
“Can I ask you a question, soldier to soldier?” he finally asked.
“Ex-soldiers,” she corrected him flatly between swings, and he nodded.
“Ex-soldiers,” he amended, still awaiting her answer. Maria glanced at him once after a good kick before nodding her approval.
“I don’t see any harm in a question.”
That was a lie. Some questions she would certainly take issue with, but she doubted this particular man would ask any of them.
Rogers nodded again and rounded her punching bag, holding it from behind to keep it from swaying as much when she struck it. The Captain was silent for a few moments as she did just that, getting half a dozen good hits in before he spoke again. He seemed to be thinking of a way to voice whatever it was that seemed to be bothering him, but it wasn’t too long before he’d straightened it all out.
“I’ve been having difficulty understanding how…”
His voice died out before he’d finished, his eyes nearly pinching together in thought. Apparently he’d changed his mind on how to ask his question, but it did answer a few for Maria in terms of content matter. It should be fairly simple answering any questions he had about the modern world and fitting in, which it sounded like he did. It would be hard, Maria admitted to herself, starting over like that.
No, she imagined it would sometimes be unbearable.
She’d never put any stock on the idea of time-travel for this very reason. The soldier was a perfect example of the issues of traveling even a short distance through time. Captain Rogers, 70 years out of his time, was having more than a little trouble integrating into society. Where someone visiting a foreign country could simply return home when having these issues of culture identity crisis, Rogers didn’t have that option. Things could change a lot in nearly a century, and just about everything that could have changed had. Social customs, important figures referenced, religious importance in society as a whole. A lot of things had changed since the 40’s.
“That nuke…”
Maria froze solid as her fist struck the punching bag.
She certainly hadn’t been expecting that, and she was sure her surprise showed, even if more subdued on her than it would have been on others. Slowly, she brought her fists down, and, seeing this, Rogers took a step to the side to peer around the punching bag.
“I don’t understand how someone could pull that trigger, knowing what would happen,” he continued.
Maria had tried to avoid that particular train of thought since the incident, but, now that she was thinking about it… Under any other circumstances, she wouldn’t have hesitated in her answer. Orders were orders. That’s what she would have said. You didn’t have to like an order. You just had to follow it. But… There were limits, she had to admit to herself, shoving down the soldier ingrained into her bones when it cried ‘insubordination’. Doing the very thing she had been carefully forbidding herself from doing since that bird had gone out, Maria envisioned herself in that cockpit, rocketing toward Manhattan with a singular terrible purpose.
Could she have done it? Could she have followed orders and sent that bomb into downtown New York, knowing that such a simple action as pulling a trigger would result in the deaths of millions of people?
“I’ve always followed my orders, ever since I was allowed to join the military,” Rogers continued, a distant look entering his eyes as he was brought back to that time of battling the Nazis with his newfound physical prowess. After a moment, however, his eyes focused on her again, and he spoke in a tone that was highly conflicted. “…But I couldn’t obey an order like that, not even against a foreign enemy.”
Rogers started getting fidgety, probably because he was talking to an agent—a rather stern agent, she would be the first to admit—about potentially disobeying a direct order. His increasing lack of eye-contact brought it to Maria’s attention, however, that she hadn’t once responded to any of what he was saying, at least not verbally. He continued, however, and she still wasn’t sure what to say.
“I don’t know,” he said somewhat dismissively as he lifted up one of his hands to rub absently at his neck. “When I was in the army, that number of casualties outside the line of duty would’ve been unacceptable… Or, at least that’s what I thought.”
The significance of that comment wasn’t lost on Maria. Rogers had gone under in 43.
A nuke had been dropped on Hiroshima in 45.
A weariness filled his eyes, and the man suddenly looked so much older than he was--approaching how old he actually was, even.
“Maybe I am old-fashioned,” he mused to himself in a disheartened murmur, but Maria heard it anyway.
“No,” she finally spoke, and the Captain almost seemed surprised.
Perhaps he hadn’t expected her to answer after she’d remained silent for so long.
“A nuclear strike should always be the absolute last resort and should only be considered if the situation is dire enough. I don’t know if anything could constitute launching one into a highly populated city like New York.”
She gave her reasons, and Rogers seemed to relax.
“The Director and I tried to stop the missile, but they used a decoy. If I was in that cockpit, though, I don’t think I could have pulled that trigger, knowing what was on the other end.”
Another short beat of silence passed before Rogers responded.
“That’s good to know, ma’am.”
He held her eyes for a time after that, an unreadable expression in them as he studied her. Maria quickly became uneasy under the intensity of that gaze, an odd feeling rising up in her.
Was that trust?
Whatever it was, she quickly smothered it and returned to her previously discarded task of beating on the Loki punching bag, something she was much more comfortable with than human attachment or ‘bonding’.
The Captain returned to his position of holding the bag still for her. He wasn’t giving it his all, or else Maria knew the bag wouldn’t budge an inch when she struck it.
“I hope you realize I won’t really be able to return the favor,” Maria commented offhandedly as she landed a solid kick, and Rogers gave a good-hearted laugh that actually made her pause momentarily in surprise and honest confusion.
What had been amusing?
“Not a problem, ma’am. I’m sure you have more important things to do than babysit a kid from Brooklyn,” he dismissed with a casual shrug and an easy smile.
Something about that comment conjured something in Maria. Whether it was the innocent honesty with which it was spoken, the fact that a renowned leader would refer to himself in such a modest fashion, or even the goofy grin he wore while saying it, the simple statement made Maria do something she hadn’t done in some time, using muscles she forgot she even possessed until that moment.
She smiled.
Sure, it was small, barely noticeable from an outsider’s point of view, but the muscles pulling in her face were ones that had gone unused for far too long, and they were instantly noticed by her. That subtle reaction of smiling, an idea so foreign to her by that point, conjured a thought.
Maria could respect Captain America, as a leader and as a moral compass. She could trust him to do his job in the field and could respect his input on what action should be taken next, even if she didn’t like him. She had a habit of not completely trusting anyone or anything that could do the amount of damage the supers she’d become recently acquainted with could dish out. The video feeds of the attack on New York simply strengthened that caution within her. If even one of them turned, she didn’t want to think of the damage they would be able to cause.
A couple of them may actually be impossible to stop once they got going. Bruce Banner and Thor came to mind rather readily, and she suppressed a shudder that threatened to make its way up her spine. No, Maria would remain cautious of the supers out of necessity.
But, Steve Rogers, the stalwart, honest kid from Brooklyn? That was different, she couldn’t help but think.
Maria supposed she could learn to be friends with Steve Rogers.