EXCHANGE INTERFACE

I'll be posting a few fic snippets in the next few days. Things I started writing but haven't really been inspired to finish (alas).

--

Baby's First Time Travel Moebius

It's distinctly unnerving to watch yourself walking up the ramp of a spaceship.

Maria allows the weirdness of the Skrull shapeshifter wearing her body to distract her from the fact that Fury's leaving Earth. At least for a little while.

It's not that Maria's dependent on him, just that he's been a constant in her life for nearly fifteen years, and the realisation that he won't be a phone call away is daunting.

Nick finishes his conversation with Carol and starts back across the field towards Maria. Behind him, Carol meets Maria's eyes and gives her a brisk nod. Maria returns a quick salute before she turns her attention to Nick.

It's odd to think of him as 'old' although she supposes he is. His age has always been a fact of his existence, so long as Maria has known him - nothing unusual, just the way things are. And yes, he's had close shaves - being shot up during the business with HYDRA - but...this is different. This isn't something that's happening in the line of duty, a necessary loss in the fight for the world, this is...absence.

"You sure you don't want to come, Hill? They have spare cabins..."

She appreciates the invitation, but...

Something about the Skrulls feels...inhibiting. She's surprised that Fury doesn't feel it - but then, perhaps they don't mind the idea of Fury travelling with them through space.

And, too. the world has taken a hit. The universe has taken a hit and everything is a mess. It would be easy to walk away and leave that mess behind, but that's not the way Maria works. That's not who she is.

"I'll be fine."

"Just so long as you are."

They stares at each other for a long moment, trying to work out how to say goodbye.

They were never personal. Partly because their relationship was anchored in the professional realm, and partly because it's not their way. But in the last few years - since S.H.I.E.L.D came down, since the Avengers stopped needing them - they've become close. 'Friendship' is the wrong word for it, and there's nothing even vaguely romantic between them. It's not really paternal, either: Maria's experience of paternal is long periods of being ignored followed by a stream of verbal and occasionally physical abuse. Which...isn't Nick.

He sighs and puts a hand on her shoulder, gripping it. "Look after yourself, Maria."

"You, too."

In the end, it's as simple as that. He strides up the ramp without looking back. Maria watches him go. At an unseen signal, it starts to pull up behind him, and the ship begins to lift off.

Maria watches until the ship has made atmosphere - they must have some kind of anti-gravity device, because they move a lot faster than anything that size should - before she turns and goes back to the SUV. It's an hour's drive back to the airfield in rural Italy where she'll pick up the Quinjet and take it back to the Avengers' facility.

After that?

Well, she'll probably wing it.

--

Rhodey looks tired when she peers around his office door. He's typing something out on the computer and doesn't stop when she asks, "May I come in?"

He gestures at the seat in front of the table rather than making the joke she expects - about what trouble she brings with her now, or what trouble she's going to fix for him now. Maria sits down and tries to stifle the feeling of being a raw recruit facing a busy superior. She's pretty sure it's not intentional from Rhodey, but she doesn't know anymore.

Thanks to the decision to yank half the universe out of oblivion and just dump them five years in the future, the world is full of trauma.

Some people died in the moments after The Snap. The passengers in the helicopter that Maria watched crash before she herself sifted away; planes that came down, their pilots turned to dust; pedestrians crushed beneath vehicles veering out of control. Some died in the years afterwards - of starvation, of anger, of grief, of loneliness. And many people went on with their lives - mourned their dead, dated, mated, and moved on.

Those years are still real. The life that was lived was still real. Morgan Stark - the reason that Tony wanted to keep the last five years - is very, very real.

But Maria - and all the others who vanished in that moment five years ago - are still who they were back then. Those five years haven't happened for them and never will.

So, yes. The world is full of trauma.

And yes, Maria considers trying to deal with people who she doesn't know anymore as trauma of a kind. So far as she was concerned, she watched herself dissolve on a busy street, then came back a moment later. So far as Rhodey is concerned, she's been dead five years, and he's been running things on a shoestring. Or, more correctly, he and Nat were running things on a shoestring, while the others...did their thing. Steve dabbled in psychotherapy, Thor drank himself into fratdom, Stark played happy families with Pepper, Banner played happy diner chefs with the Hulk, and Clint went rogue.

What do you do when you come back and discover that the world - the people you knew in it - have changed beyond recognition? How do you deal with that?

The psychologists are making a killing - those who can think their way through their own trauma. And that's one thing that Maria's never going to do: let someone else come into her brain and look over her trauma. She's not willing to open herself like that, she can't allow herself to break that way.

Rhodey finishes tapping his way through whatever he's doing, then hits 'send'. "Sorry," he murmurs as he pushes the keyboard away. "Just...stuff. I kind of figured my Air Force days were over when I joined the Avengers - hell, I knew I was never going to get higher than a Bird Colonel when Tony became Iron Man, but this is..."

"They're looking for someone with experience, who lived through the Snap and was involved in world security," Maria finishes for him. "That's you."

"I wish it wasn't. But...there's no point to that." He leans back in his chair. "How're you? I saw the details of Venice that you sent. Pepper's getting Friday to track all the tech that SI developed in the last ten years, but it's a job. Even for an AI. Vision could have done it, but..." He trails off again.

"It's all about the 'but' isn't it?" Maria half-laughs and already knows that she sounds bitter. "We're all halfway to nowhere, trying to work out who we are now that we've either come back to a new world, or regained half the old one that we lived without..."

Rhodey sighs. "We didn't think it through. And now it's all thoroughly fucked up. And you didn't come to see me to talk about this, Maria. What's happened?"

For a moment, she thinks about changing her decision right here and right now - forget what she promised Nick, forget what she knows she's better suited to doing - just try to fit herself back in with the Avengers Initiative again. Never mind that there are hardly any Avengers left...

But she promised Nick, and that promise matters to her.

"Fury's gone. Left Earth," she qualifies when Rhodey's eyes widen. "He hitched a ride with...old friends."

"Old friends like Carol and her Skrulls?"

And this is the part where Maria struggles to keep up. Rhodey knows about the Skrulls because he knows Carol, and somewhere in the last five years, Carol shared how she rediscovered herself to a friend, and... "Yes, Those old friends."

Rhodey nods. "Might be useful to have a few more friends out in the galaxy."

Maria just shrugs. She's...she feels adrift, like she doesn't know what happens next, where to go, what to do. For someone who's never doubted what she's done for a moment, this is a new and uncomfortable feeling.

For the first time in their conversation, Rhodey looks like he doesn't quite know what to say or how to say it. "So...what's your next move?"

"I'm going underground."

"Not literally, I take it?"

"No," she smiles, "not literally. But I won't be available to call upon for a while - and I don't know how long the situation will last."

Rhodey stares at her for a long moment. "You're not going to do anything stupid are you?"

"Define 'stupid'?"

"Well, the thing I'm thinking of is suicide, but...that's not you." He watches her for a moment. "At least, it didn't used to be you."

"Isn't that my line?" Maria arches her brow. "It's still not me."

He exhales in relief. "Good. I've lost enough friends around here; I don't want to lose any more. Will you be contactable?"

"Yes." She gives him the details, and he doesn't write it down, just commits it to memory. Some things are safer unrecorded.

When she gets up to leave, he rises, too. For a moment she thinks he's just going to shake her hand like a polite stranger, but he comes around the desk and they were never tactile - never the type for affection - but he's no longer the Air Force Colonel she knew five years ago. For starters, he's now a one-star General, commensurate with his time in service and experience. And...he's gentler. Less edged, more forgiving.

More affectionate, apparently, because he kisses her on the cheek, briefly pressing his jaw against hers. It takes Maria a moment to soften. She's not used to this kind of contact and...its a little strange...but also kind of...nice. And in her mind, his words echo, I've lost enough friends around here.

It warms her that she's still counted a friend - maybe it's only in the 'someone that he used to know' category, but that's still in the friends column, even if they're not close anymore. She looks at him and briefly wishes she had more time to get to know this friend five years older. But duty calls - it always does.

"Look after yourself, okay, Maria?"

And that's the old Rhodey. "I will if you do."

unfin