Ave Maria

Seventeen

Chapter 17

The moment Maria stepped from his side Thor was hot on her heels.

He flew out the door after her in seconds, but she was faster then he'd expected, her nimble form already nearly at the end of the corridor. "Maria!" he called after her, his voice still rough. Fast or not, she could not outrun a god: in a few long, sprinting steps Thor had closed the distance. He caught her arm as she turned to shoot down another corridor, jerking her back so her body thudded into the wall harder than he'd intended. He didn't have time to be sorry though. There were more important things to be said.

For a moment he just held onto her arm as she struggled weakly, watching the way gentle tears rolled down her deathly white cheeks. He was breathing hard, for reasons he didn't understand.

"Maria," he said again, softer, moving closer. "Is it true? What the Stark man said?" He gulped nervously, already knowing the answer, but needing to hear it from her own lips. "Is it true?" He couldn't bring himself to say the actual words. To ask if she had really tried to – he swallowed hard – kill herself. He couldn't even imagine it…

She covered her face with her hands and let out and anguished whine. "I didn't want you to know. It was a long time ago. I didn't know you then."

"You could have told me…"

Thor wished he'd known. He wished it so hard it hurt: he wanted to know everything about her, good and bad. Finding these things out from the likes of Stark was not how he wanted his relationship with Maria to progress. He tried not to feel to selfish, brushing aside his hurt to try and think of how bad Maria must be feeling about everything. It wasn't hard: her hands slowly peeled down and she forced a few level breaths, collecting herself. Thor founds he preferred her distraught to the blank, vacant mask that formed over her face, eyes dulling almost lifelessly. He moved his hand from her arm to plant it on the wall beside her head, needing to be closer to her. It wasn't enough and he dropped Mjolnir to the floor with a metallic thud, cupping her cold cheek in his palm.

"Maria…" he breathed over her lips. She didn't respond.

"I didn't know you back then." She repeated, quietly, eyes distant as they hovered somewhere over his chest. "I didn't know what else to do."

Thor's breath hitched in his throat. "Tell me." He implored. "I will not judge."

A sad smile flickered over Maria's lips and Thor's heart leapt that she was showing signs of life again, even if it were ones of distress. He offered no resistance as she numbly nudged free of him, wondering a few steps until her back was firmly to him. She let loose the tears now that he couldn't see.

"Remember how I said that what Jason did was his way of coping." She started, trying to keep her voice level, thankful the corridor was deserted. She sucked in a deep breath. "Well…I didn't cope."

Thor's eyes watched the back of her head, frowning. He knew that she was crying, and every fibre of his being was telling him to stride forward and gather her in his arms, to hold her tight and let her sob into his chest until she would spill everything to him. Something held him back. He wasn't sure if it wasn't his own dread: this was a story he didn't want to hear, but one he needed to know regardless. Asking Maria to confront the shadows of her past, after all the things they'd already faced together, was something that tore him apart. He could only imagine what it was doing to the small woman in front of him, hugging her arms around herself, stroking the fringes of the bandage on her arm underneath her shirt.

"I could cope after dad died," she finally went on. "I didn't know what to do. So I took my mother's antidepressants and downed a bottle's worth, hoping it would kill me too."