Archive of Our Own ^beta

The day Phil Coulson died on the Helicarrier, she held it together. They had always joked about it, before. Maria Hill, soldier until the end. Phil Coulson, the Agent that Agents modeled themselves after.  A little thing like death wasn’t going to stop the determination and will and duty that drove them both, propelled them to the top of their respective fields. Maria kept her back straight and her head high and soldiered on.

She kept it together. Through Fury’s announcement over the comms—it didn’t really sink in then, anyways. Agent Coulson is down. The medics called it. Stark and Rogers, sitting gutted at the table, as the blood on Phil’s prized collector’s edition cards left a lurid smear across the tabletop.

The battle that followed kept her mind off it for a while longer. Aliens flying through New York on strange hovercraft, the Avengers fighting for the collective world’s lives and barely pulling it out in the end, the shockwave as the portal closed just behind Iron Man’s suited form falling back through to their world.

Agent Coulson is down.

It finally hit half a day later, after the Council’s aborted attempt to oust Fury from the Director’s chair, after the Helicarrier moved back to its position off the East Coast, SHIELD teams ferried back and forth to help with rebuilding. For the first time since the announcement over the comms, Maria felt his absence keenly. Fury gruffly forced her off duty to “get some goddamned sleep, Hill”, and she held it together to the safety of her own quarters.

It was his damned Captain America t-shirt. Worn blue fabric, washed soft by so many uses, the tiny hole in the side seam she loved to poke her fingers through to get at the ticklish skin of his side. Maria clutched it to her chest, lungs heaving for air as the sobs choked out. The scent of Phil’s aftershave still hung in the musty air, starting the tears anew and providing a balm for her wounded soul, all at once.

It hurt. It always would. But Maria Hill was nothing if not resilient. She picked herself up, dusted off the pieces, and soldiered on.

There was no one to stand by the casket. Phil had always liked to joke that he had the most normal family life out of he, Nick, and herself, but his parents were long passed and he’d been an only child.

Fury spoke as his longest and oldest friend. He left a dented metal flask, the familiar etching of a star-adorned shield just visible in the scarred and pitted metal.

Barton hid in the cover of the trees, Romanov a looming force at his side. Their respects would be paid later, under cover of night with no observers.

Stark, for once, was quiet, solemn and stone-faced by Virginia ‘Pepper’ Potts’ side. He stood for a long time above the open grave before dropping a small black and yellow device on the pile of freshly shoveled dirt with a crooked smile.

Steve Rogers stayed until the end of the service. He left a single, pristine Captain America collector’s card on the grave, his signature a messy scrawl across the front.

Maria came back long after even Barton and Romanov had left, her fingers white knuckled around a gunmetal grey Zippo lighter. The cigarette tasted foul on her tongue, ash and the “Last Smoke Ever” pact they were both never really able to keep curling low in her gut.

Leaving the lighter felt like letting go, memories floating away like smoke on the wind.

They never told anyone, really. Working for SHIELD necessitated the sort of double life that was never truly conducive to dating someone from the “real” world. Lies and obfuscation, webs of intrigue, cover identities for cover identities.

Phil had invented the cellist in Portland. No one at SHIELD bothered to ask—the idea of Coulson dating anyone had become laughable years before. Even Barton hadn’t bothered with a pool on how long the orchestra player lasted.

Maria lied smoothly about an accountant in Chicago that only came to the city every few months. It wasn’t like her reputation as the Ice Queen of SHIELD hadn’t preceded her. Half of SHIELD was convinced she was a mindless automaton, and the other half was more than convinced she and the Widow were lovers—because being a strong, independent woman in a male dominated field obviously meant you could only fuck other strong, independent women. She privately scoffed at the idea; and if she and Natasha spent an unusual amount of time together a few times a month just to fuel the rumor, it was their own business.

A year after Phil Coulson's death, Maria got roaring drunk on his favorite brand of scotch and fucked Steve Rogers against the cold shower walls of the locker rooms.

He didn’t mention the aborted sob of the name that isn't his against the skin of his shoulder, and she didn’t mention his quiet, whispered exhale of another woman's name on a long breath.

Steve searched her out on the anniversary of James Barnes' death, a golden, shining jar of Asgardian mead in one hand and his eyes hollow. His clutching fingers left dark bruises on her hip and thigh, and he was silent as he came.

He came to her again a month later with another jar of mead and a battered compass dented under the weight of his grip. Maria kept her eyes straight ahead, pointedly not looking at the obituary pages from the London Times laid out in the open file on her desk as he held her against the wall.

It wasn’t a relationship. It wasn’t healthy enough to be a relationship. They were two broken people trying to mold their shattered pieces into a cobbled, battered whole.

Steve was a man out of his time, struggling to cope with what felt like the fresh loss of his entire circle of friends and the debilitating realization that life as he knew it was a thing of the long-gone past. Maria hadn’t existed under any definition of a normal, carefree existence since the day she was born.

They worked together, butted heads, fought, made up—a cycle of word, kisses, touches, triumphs and defeats that helped them march on, one day at a time.

“If you could ever see yourself with anyone else, who would it be?” Phil’s hand was gentle on the skin of her abdomen, callused fingers swirling absently over her body.

“I don’t know. Probably some middle manager in a banking firm.”

“You’d settle for that?”

She chuckled quietly. “I don’t know, seems you’re settling pretty far for me, sometimes.” She turned the question around. “Who do you see me with?”

His face twisted in a slight frown, brow wrinkled in thought. At length, he spoke. “You’d need someone worthy of you. Someone who would lift you up.”

“Hm, sounds like a great guy,” She said sardonically. “Think you’re just describing Prince Charming there, Phil. Realistic expectations and all, I don’t think he actually exists.” Maria shifted up on one elbow, lifting her free arm to trace down his chest. “Besides, I think what I’ve got here is pretty damn good.”

“Pretty damn good, huh?” In a flurry of deceptive strength and grace, he inverted their positions, looming over her braced on his forearms. “I’ll have to work on that. Need a more, mm, glowing report.”

Maria happily welcomed the press of his body against her own, humming low in her throat as his lips danced down her clavicle. “No complaints here…”

Maria Hill had only ever been a pragmatist, a woman who spent her formative years despised, belittled and underestimated, one who fought her way up through the ranks to show those who doubted that she was strong and resilient.

Steve Rogers saw himself a flawed man, a public face bright and shiny and a private one cracking at the seams, one who tried to stand up for the little guy in a world where the lines had grown more blurred.

Phil Coulson was an idealistic man, a man who believed in fighting for the little guy, one who fought for his childhood hero’s values and morals. He sacrificed his own well-being for an ideal, a group of misfits that cobbled themselves together under his rallying flag to save the world.

Phil Coulson died believing in the Avengers.

It was the least they could do to defend that belief.