❝Just know that from this point on, whatever happens, I'll be with you. I'm not gonna leave your side until you tell me to.❞
. . .in which she helps him find his way back to himself.
[BOOK ONE]
[Highest ranking: #1 in MCU/fanfiction as of 5/26/18]
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THREE WEEKS LATER: AUGUST 16, 2014
★ ★ ★
It was nearing the middle of August, which meant that Marlena had now been enjoying everything Hydra had to offer for an estimated time of three weeks. Bucky was less than pleased with the fact of it, and his anger and sadness towards the matter only grew as the days dragged on. He absolutely despised the fact that it was taking so excruciatingly long for them to find Marlena. The situation was growing so terribly awful for Bucky that it was becoming almost impossible for him to deal with. It threatened to bring the former assassin to tears, and that was something he would rather his temporary colleagues not witness.
Even with the world's most advanced technology, the team still had yet to find any sort of leads regarding Marlena's whereabouts. Maria Hill was working very diligently on attempting to locate Marlena for Bucky (mostly Steve), but there had been nothing for her to follow for the past three weeks. It was almost as if Hydra had completely fallen off the face of the earth, their widespread bases and facilities along with it. Completely removing Hydra from the face of the Earth had originally been what Steve was aiming for months ago, but now he was aiming on finding Marlena, and he couldn't necessarily do so if that was the case.
Steve let out an exasperated sigh and ran a hand over his face, unsure of what to make of the current news he had just received through the phone. "Please, Maria, give me anything else—anything but that."
"I'm sorry, Steve, but there's nothing else I can do. . .literally," Maria informed him. "It's been almost a month, and you know I want nothing more than to help you find her, but if there was something to find I would have found it already."
Steve nodded, although Maria could not see him. He had been speaking with her about Marlena for the past fifteen minutes, and she had given him some information that he hadn't exactly been planning on hearing: she couldn't find Marlena, and she would not continue to try.
Maria Hill was never one to give up, but under certain circumstances she felt it was only necessary. This just so happened to be one of those circumstances. Maria had put everything she possibly could into the mission, yet she received absolutely nothing in return.
As a former S.H.I.E.L.D. agent and one of Tony Stark's many employees, she was very intelligent in the field of technology, as well as the field of finding her way around it. With the right technology, Maria proved to be successful in almost everything she was asked to do, whether it be hacking into something as simple as a cell phone or hacking into something as dangerously complex as the Pentagon's firewall. She could not, however, hack into a single Hydra database in order to locate one teenage girl. It was very rare for someone like her to fail, and although failing only encouraged her to try harder, she could only try so much harder before there was nothing left to try for.
