D A R K

M A R I A

MAJOR TW: This book is not called dark for nothing. There is implied SA in this chapter.

Please bare with me, this is not a one shot! There will be flashes into the past, present and maybe future. Enjoy!

FLASH BACK

Maria Hill would lie awake at night, watching the shadows dance around her room, imagining all sorts of demons and monsters lurking in the darkest corners. The Boogeyman under her bed and the Dream Snatcher in her closet. The shadows seemed to take on a life of their own, but that wasn't the worst part. They would contort and twist into something much worse, much darker, much bigger. They would reach out for little Maria at night, their ghastly tendrils daring to touch her. She'd pull her blanket closer to her face, to serve some kind of protection. It never worked. The shadows continued to reach out for her, every night.

Her room was always bathed in darkness, her father would laugh at her and reprimand her "Maria, you're too old for a night light". The only source of light came from the glistening moon, refracting against her window. She took deep heavy breaths, calming herself. Whenever she wanted to call out for help the shadows hands, his hands, would slam her mouth shut. Her fathers eyes staring back at her in the dark, his sinister smile and lustful glowing orbs tormenting her. She kept quiet. She blamed herself for so long, maybe he wouldn't have done this to her if she didn't kill her mother in childbirth.

The shadows became a manifestation of her real fear, her real anxiety, her father. She learnt that imagining that the shadows were the ones violating her, then the daylight could banish them. She was always safe in the daylight. No one could touch her. That meant little Maria had hope, even in the darkest of nightmares the light would always shine through.

So she allowed the darkness to play tricks on her mind, allowing the familiar to become the unfamiliar. The shadows could dance and twist around her. Push her into that sense of liminality, the fine line between real and not real. Supernatural and natural. Her imagination was a place that contrasts, the known and the unknowable would meet. She wasn't forced to confront her darkest fear, her darkest secret. She could numb the pain, hide away from every violation, every abuse. She was left with nothing but what her mind made up for her. For years her father wasn't the man than beat and violated her, no, it was the shadows. And that mere absence of light every night was her worst fear.

Present Day

"Agent Hill?" Maria was snapped out of her memories, her body tense and rigid. That same old taste of sickness sinking back into the darkest pits of her stomach, hiding away with her other fears, guilts and secrets. No one would ever find out the truth. Not now, not ever. Hell, they didn't even know the truth about what happened in Iraq. Twenty four is a very young age to watch everyone you ever loved die right in front of you, and it being all your fault. Almost worse that being Nine years young with your fathers sweating body on top of yours believing it was the shadows causing your pain. Maria was ready to throw up right then and there, but that would be unprofessional wouldn't it?

Maria realised that the other S.H.I.E.LD recruits had been staring at her for far too long, she probably looked insane. She'd been doing this a lot lately, reflecting on her life.

S.H.I.E.L.D was her new start. She'd been there a year, but she still couldn't stop staring off into the distance when she thought no one was looking. Hill's eyes were unfocused, face blank, she was well and truly lost in her own thoughts. Hoping that no one could see, praying she was flying under the radar. But she wasn't in the Army anymore, a place where she was given orders and she followed blindly. A place where it didn't matter if she was zoned out with her eyes glazed over or on autopilot, as long as she got the job done, dissociated or not it didn't matter. But, S.H.I.E.L.D ran differently, God forbid they actually cared about their recruits wellbeings. Maria didn't know any other ex military there, supposed she was an anomaly. It was unknown for S.H.I.E.L.D to recruit ex soldiers, they had too much PTSD. She was an exception, sent to S.H.I.E.L.D directly. They couldn't waste her cold calculated abilities, couldn't waste her young potential all because of what happened. All because of the explosion in Iraq. But she wasn't ready to share that story.