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Director Fury calls Lieutenant Maria Hill his "Good Eye" but the first time he meets her, Steve thinks she should be called "The Fist". At 0800 hours on a Monday morning he pulls his motorbike into the curb of a brownstone building just in time to watch her slug a man in the jaw.
It could be another time and place for Steve, watching another beautiful brunette put a man in his place with a killer right hook.
Then she stands on the guy’s neck until he passes out. With superhuman coolness she takes out a Sharpie from her breast pocket and writes something on his forehead. Definitely not something Peggy would have done. Steve tries to ignore the word PERVERT etched on the man like a brand as he greets her.
“Lieutenant Hill?”
He’s only spoken to her on the phone since his run in with Fury in Times Square and he doesn’t know what he expected, but it’s not this. She stands to attention and pierces him with baby blue eyes, her feet planted on either side of the unconscious man’s head. Her gaze is direct, sharp and unwavering and Steve feels a subconscious need to raise his shield.
“Captain Rogers,” Hill says. She holds out the hand that moments ago had done so much damage.
Her shake is firm.
“Please call me Steve,” he says.
The look she gives him tells him that’s not going to happen.
Ever since he was injected with the serum Steve has gotten used to the appreciative glances of the opposite sex and occasionally the same sex.
At first it was flattering and even exciting but over time the novelty began to wear off. Steve understands human nature and his effect on people but those are the ones who look at him and see only the physicality of Captain America. They don’t see the skinny kid from Brooklyn. Sometimes he’s not sure if he preferred it better when he was invisible next to Bucky.
The way Hill appraises him isn’t flirtatious in the slightest. She surveys him with an analytical shrewdness befitting a S.H.I.E.L.D agent and for some reason he can feel a flush coming on.
Steve’s got eyes too and he’s not impervious to the slight pursing of Hill’s pink lips.
She shoves a briefcase and then a set of keys into his arms.
“Your apartment is on the fifth floor, Captain. Number 15. The briefcase contains your admission papers and introductory information. I’ll see you at 0900 tomorrow at the Triskelion for your physical and standing orders.” Just like that she steps past him.
“Thanks.” His clipped tone surprises him. He’s kinda gotten used to warmer welcomes. She halts. From behind he sees her rigid stance thaw slightly as though she’s forcing herself to be nice. She turns and meets his eyes again and this time she’s wearing a small smile.
“Welcome to the twenty-first century.”
“Any advice?” he jokes to try and break the tension.
Her brow creases. “Be careful, Captain. Here be dragons.”
Steve’s not good at meeting new people.
Or rather, they’re not good at meeting him. The nicer he is, the more they fumble. So he’s learned to be polite but distant. Something Hill appears to be an expert at as she escorts him to each of his induction stops with an air of inconvenience.
He swears Lieutenant Hill is hiding a smirk beneath the guise of a sneeze as Kristen from Statistics asks him the same question for the third time. In the end Steve has to write his answer on a piece of paper that Hill tears from her clip board and slides in front of him.
It’s the same in Accounting where Lillian keeps fiddling suggestively with her lip piercing. Steve’s not sure where to look and makes the mistake of catching Hill’s eye from where she’s standing beside the window going through reports on her tablet. He’s never realized how expressive a slow, shuttered blink of long brown lashes can be. Pay attention they seem to say. This is boring but important.
It’s in medical where things get really awkward and he reconsiders his acceptance of Director Fury’s offer of employment.
He’s stripped down to his boxers as Cathy the nurse is taking his measurements for modifications to his uniform. Her hands are cold but her expression is warm as she spans his chest overly methodically.
“Could you raise your arms, Captain?” And he does. Only she doesn’t move out of the way and he inadvertently pushes her backwards. She stumbles and her hip connects with a metal tray containing samples of his blood. Steve reaches for her, his arm sweeping her up into a reluctant hug.
Any second now he expects to hear the shattering of glass. But then Hill is there, her elegant, long fingers wrapped around the edge of the metal tray which she catches mid-air.
“I thought I was meant to be the one with heightened reflexes,” he says.
“It seems that you are, Captain.” Her words are as pointed as her raised brow and he realizes he’s still holding on to Cathy.
Hill sets the tray down and goes back to her reports as though nothing out of the ordinary has occurred. Cathy doesn’t fare so well and Steve can’t help breathing a sigh of relief when he’s fully clothed again.
Everybody anticipates his superhuman reflexes and strength but nobody considers that his hearing has been enhanced as well. That’s why they don’t do more than lower their voices as they whisper about him while Hill leads him down the corridor towards the training center.
“He’s old enough to be your grandfather!” Steve hears the brunette tell her blonde colleague. Both barely hide their glances as he walks past. Everything is so obvious in this century. There’s no room for courtship anymore.
Maybe it’s just Steve’s imagination but Hill’s steps seem to falter for a second before she composes herself and keeps moving.
He’s not often curious about other people’s thoughts. He’s got too many of his own to occupy the long, lonely nights. But something in the way Hill almost backtracks reminds him of those split second decisions he would make before he’d speak up and get his ass handed to him by the bullies at home. He thinks of Hill hitting the man yesterday and can’t imagine anyone getting the better of her like that.
Ten minutes pass in silence with nothing but the thud of their footsteps. He’s holding the door to the training center and she’s stepping through when she turns towards him.
“Sleeping beauty,” she says. He’s confused and a little on edge.
“Beg your pardon, Ma’am?”
“In the original story, Sleeping Beauty slept for a hundred years before Prince Phillip woke her with a kiss. Nobody ever mentions she’s too old for him.”
Steve’s not sure what to make of her comment but suddenly he’s not so tired anymore. He even manages not to grin at the idea of stoic Hill watching princess cartoons. That she’s wearing lacy pajamas in his thoughts catches him totally unaware.
Two weeks later Steve understands the "Good Eye" moniker that Hill has earned.
She is everywhere at once and notices everything.
Her voice in his earpiece is a tether and a balm on his first missions as a S.H.I.E.L.D operative.
She feeds information and advice to him through his earpiece, telling him not to duck his head when a pretty woman looks at him, that he’s a drug lord and couldn’t care less how much bad language is flying around.
Every word out of her mouth is measured and Steve wonders if anything ever fazes her. Until the day he’s leaping over the rooftops of DC and she suddenly screams.
“Steve! Three o’clock!”
His shield is up and deflecting the bullet in a nanosecond. His pulse is drumming in his ear, not from the three assailants emptying their rifle clips at him but from the way her voice is edged with concern.
“Did you just call me Steve, Lieutenant?”
Vibranium connects with metal and bone, slicing through the air as Steve dispatches one enemy after another.
“Eyes on the mission, Captain!”
But he can’t unhear it and she can’t unsay it and when it’s over neither of them brings it up again.
Then Loki happens and Fury comes to Steve with a mission he can’t refuse and stirs up memories he can’t forget. Thanks to his metabolism Steve doesn’t feel the cold so badly anymore but the sting of ice on his skin is never far from his thoughts. The sea spray that whips from the helicarrier’s turbine engine calls to mind that day he steered the plane into the ocean.
The day he died.
Peggy’s voice haunts him as Natasha Romanoff guides Steve and Dr. Banner onto the helicarrier’s bridge.
Just be there, Peggy had said.
But he wasn’t.
He is a man out of time in a control room full of S.H.I.E.L.D agents. They speak in a language he’s sure is English but that he can’t understand.
And then he sees her.
Hill is as comfortable on the bridge as she is on land. She issues orders in a smooth, neutral tone that courts no opposition. Her regulation jumpsuit fits like a second skin and every so often her hands take stock of the gun clipped to her side, ready for anything at a moment’s notice.
Her presence calms him in a way that is beginning to scare him.
Their eyes meet as he takes in the wondrous scene unfolding out the window but she’s all business. Eyes on the mission, Captain.
“We’ve got a hit!” Jasper Sitwell calls from his station. “Stuttgart, Germany.”
“Captain,” Fury tells him. “You’re up.”
All eyes are on him as he prepares to suit up but only one pair holds his attention. Steve is used to concerned well wishes before a mission but when Maria glances at him it’s not with worry.
It’s with expectation.
Blue eyes say more to him than words could and the message is clear: Show me you were meant for more than this.
She might be the "Good Eye" but Steve is the one who is seeing her. Once he does it’s impossible to look away.
For the first time since he awoke from the ice, Steve actually feels alive.