All of Me - Agent's of S.H.I.E.L.D

Chapter 83

Washington DC - 10:47am (Somewhere along the Potomac river)

Maria's eyes were scanning every inch of the riverbank below as they neared the location of Steve's tracker that had been implanted into him upon first finding him two years ago. Only Nick, her and Dwight Richards knew about it. Nick had ordered Dwight to implant it so they never lost the Super Soldier again. She knew he was still alive because the tracker monitored his pulse and it was currently sending off a weak one.

"We'll find him," Sam's voice from the pilot's seat beside her. The pair along with two medics were on the search and rescue team for the Super Solider. Natasha and Nick had headed back to Nick's underground base to be patched up check in with the Hub and their other teams that were dealing with the fallout of HYDRA.

Maria didn't respond, her eyes just kept searching as her mind kept replaying his last words to her. She knew that Steve was practically indestructible, but he still could die under the right circumstances. All of a sudden she spotted a flash of white, red and blue thirty odd metres ahead along the riverbank - not moving.

"Over there!" Sam announced as he flew in said direction.

Maria couldn't tear her eyes from his still form, her heart clenching in her chest. She still couldn't believe how close she had come to losing him, just like Peggy had.

-o0o-

Less than a minute later as soon as the helicopter landed, Maria jumped out of it and began sprinting the ten metres towards the unconscious Super Soldier.

"Steve!" she screamed out to him, stopping beside him ten seconds later and turning him to assess his injuries - gently placing his head in her lap. His eyes were clamped closed and his face beaten and bruised. "Soldier boy," she whispered down to him, brushing her lips across his forehead. "I love you," she told him as tears slipped down his cheeks.

The Medics and Sam arrived beside her several seconds later. Maria didn't move from her spot or take her eyes off the Super Soldier as the medics went to work checking him over.

Maria just stroke his forehead as a few tears fell freely. She kept repeating 'he'll be alright' over and over in her head.

"He's alive," the medic declared a couple of minutes later. "But in bad shape, we have to get him to a hospital."

Maria nodded, going on auto-pilot. She kept his head in her hand and watched as the two medics and Sam carefully loaded him on the stretcher board and made their way back towards the helicopter. Maria running beside it.

The HUB (C.E.T)

Five hours later ...

Victoria, Melinda and Phil were having a video conference with the new Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. Skye was also in the room monitoring the secure encrypted link.

"We've managed to save eighty percent of S.H.I.E.L.D," Victoria supplied as she stood tall, hands clasped behind her back. "All of the major classified locations and facilities were saved and are under our control. We've moved all agents that were in said facilities into holding cell's or containment units. It's gonna take several weeks to process all the agents here and at the other locations, especially with the limited of pre-approved trust agents we have remaining. Any agent that was out in the field and has gone dark and it will take time to track them down. When they have been located, said agent will be put through several test and 'the chair' before we're certain they can be trusted and bought back into this organisations or given the choice to walk away if they want to."

The Director nodded her head once. "Good," she replied formerly, her stance tall and authoritative like. "The next few months if not years are gonna be tough to prove to the world and government that we're really the good guys. We've been called into congress on the sixth to prove our innocents in this whole mess. They wanted the government to start talking over our classified facilities and shut down our organisation ... ... I told them to go to hell, then I informed them that we had everything under control and knew about the attempted takeover and were handling it in-house. That HYDRA stepped up earlier than planned, but we still managed to handle it. They were hesitant that I was left in charge - claiming inexperienced and my age, but I then pointed out everything I've achieved since being Deputy Director - including my age."