Chapter 25

October, 2014

National Museum of Fine Arts, Santiago, Chile

Maggie squinted at the portrait of Liberator Bernardo O'Higgins, glancing from the uniformed man in the portrait to the blurb about the artwork in the brochure she'd taken from the front desk. The low murmur of conversation echoed throughout the wide galleries of the museum.

She stared at O'Higgins, and he stared back. She didn't get it. It was just a picture of a man. She'd read about him, knew he was a Chilean independence leader from two hundred years ago, but that didn't help her to understand the art any better. She wondered if she needed to know more about the man, or more about art, to understand.

This had been Bucky's idea. He'd said that people living in the world went to art museums, and here they were. Maggie looked back at her brochure, frowning.

"I can hear you thinking," Bucky murmured, materialising beside her. He ran his eyes over the portrait of the independence leader.

"Can you hear what I'm thinking?"

Bucky smirked and looked at her with an assessing eye. "Not sure. Whatever it is, though, you're thinking way too hard about it."

She sighed. "Probably." She brandished the brochure at him. "I don't get this. What am I meant to be doing? Do we just… look at the paintings? Why are some people looking at them for so long? Should I have done research before we came here? Bucky, I was standing at that painting-" she pointed to a landscape oil painting on the far wall – "and one woman said that the optical suggestions of the facture spatially undermined the exploration of the montage elements." She lowered her voice, because she was starting to get agitated. "I know what those words mean individually, but I have no idea what she said! Bucky, stop laughing at me!"

He tried to compose his face, but she could see the laughter sparkling in his eyes. He hadn't moved or even opened his mouth to reply – he just watched her get more frustrated.

"Is there something I'm not getting?" Maggie asked, scowling at his amusement.

"No," Bucky said, and his face softened. "Look, just… give me that-" he took the brochure out of her hand, and guided her away from O'Higgins. "You're thinking too much about it. Forget about what that woman said, she's an idiot." Maggie huffed a laugh as he steered her toward another portrait; this one was of a woman in a rich blue gown, turned away from the viewer as she held a letter behind her back.

Bucky planted her in front of the painting. "Look, I'm no art expert, but I know you. Stop thinking so much about what it might mean, stop searching for an explanation, and just… look at it. Approach it kinda like you do with music. You said you don't know why you like one song more than another, you just do. Does that make any sense?"

Maggie bit her lip, and felt her mind start to quiet. It did make sense – she just hadn't thought that a painting could be like a song. She closed her eyes, quelling the buzz of questions and overthinking, and then opened them anew, considering the painting. The first thing she noticed was that she liked the colours – the soft blue of the woman's dress combined with her pale skin and her intricately painted dark hair. There were shadows and light in the painting, and she noticed her eye being drawn from the woman, to her letter, to the door in the background. Maggie let the colours and textures of the painting wash over her for a minute or so, not thinking particularly hard about it, but letting herself feel.

After a few minutes of silence, Bucky asked: "Well?"

"I like it," she decided, and cocked her head at the painting. "It makes me feel… worried, I guess. But it's good, too." She shrugged.

"There you go," Bucky said, and she could hear the smile in his voice. "You're an art critic." He was solid and warm beside her, and she could sense him watching her.

She turned to face him, taking in his thoughtful blue-grey eyes and his small smile as he looked at her. "You're good at this."

He shrugged. "I remember I used to moan about how I didn't get art, until Steve dragged me along to his art classes. I was never much good at it, but it was fun, and I learned that you don't have to listen to the pretentious assholes to enjoy it."

Maggie snorted, and the sound made Bucky's eyes crinkle.

"We were in our art class when we heard about Pearl Harbor," he continued, and his eyes went distant, seeing the memory. Sometimes his memories slipped over him like this, inserting themselves into conversations almost of their own volition. Maggie recognized the nostalgia that came over him, and she knew how he liked to process it.

She smiled at him. "Go on, go write in your notebook." His eyes focused on her. "I'll catch up with you."

With a wry grin, Bucky turned and headed back for the main atrium, where there were seats for artists wanting to sketch the marble sculptures. Maggie watched him walk out, a small smile on her face.

With a sigh, she put her hands on her hips and looked around the gallery with fresh eyes. Stop thinking so much.

Maggie found that she liked the 'busy' artworks – the ones where she could see the texture on the canvas, brush strokes and dollops of paint. She liked running her eyes over gradients of texture, gloss and color. She wasn't really sure how to decide when she was 'finished' with the museum, but after nearly an hour she wandered back to the atrium to check on Bucky.

It was a beautiful space, the cream walls of the atrium illuminated by light streaming in from the arched glass roof. The open floor on the bottom level was lined with marble statues, and Maggie spotted Bucky on a bench, hunched over his notebook.

She strode across the glossy black floor, still admiring the open space and the intricate carved arches. When she reached Bucky, she brushed her hand against his shoulder.

She should have been paying more attention.

At the light contact Bucky flinched and lashed out, beating her hand aside with his metal arm, and leaped to his feet. The bench groaned at the sudden movement, and the nearby museum patrons looked up in alarm.

Maggie lowered her centre of gravity and tensed her muscles, all thoughts of art and architecture flying from her head. Her whole being was focused on Bucky, who faced her with a heaving chest and wild eyes. His notebook had fallen to the floor. He didn't look like the Soldier, she noted – his bearing was more frightened than hostile.

"Bucky," she hissed, conscious of the curious – but not yet suspicious – onlookers.

Bucky flinched, and straightened. His eyes darted around at the other guests, and he crouched to snatch up his notebook. Without another word, he turned on his heel and walked across the floor and out of the museum.

Shit.

Maggie smiled tersely at the remaining onlookers and set out after Bucky. Her wrist registered a sharp ache where he'd hit her, and she flexed it – not broken, but bruised. Her footsteps were loud on the shiny floor.

When she emerged from the museum's wooden doors, she shielded her eyes against the sun and glanced around. There – Bucky's back retreating into the neighboring park. Maggie gritted her teeth and jogged after him, reading his body language. When he heard her approaching he tensed, but she couldn't read any precursors to violence.

"Bucky," she called softly, but he kept walking. "I'm sorry," she breathed, giving him his space as she jogged around him to look at his face. "I'm so sorry, are you alright?" She didn't fully understand what had happened, but the haunted look on his face was familiar.

Bucky shook his head, still breathing hard. "No, I'm sorry," he said, and his voice was rough. "I shouldn't have – I hurt you."

Maggie shook her hand at him to demonstrate her wellbeing as they passed under the shadow of a sycamore tree. "I'm fine. Would you – would you stop running?" she puffed, trying to keep up with his speed-walking while simultaneously trying to have a conversation. "Let's talk about this!"

He didn't look happy about it, but he stopped. His shoulders bunched up around his ears, and he wouldn't look her in the eye. He glared at the ground, breathing hard through his nose.

Maggie tried to meet his eyes. "I startled you, and I'm sorry. Are you alright?"

Bucky sighed, and some of the tension eased from his frame. She could tell that he was still angry with himself, but she didn't think he was in any danger of running away any more. "'M alright," he said, and finally met her eyes, searchingly. "I'm sorry, Meg. Did I hurt you?"

She held up her hand and wiggled her fingers. "A bit, but it wasn't anything, really. You scared me though, what happened?"

He ran a hand over his face, and she noticed his fingers trembling. "I was writing down memories, and I just…" he frowned. "I was remembering the war, and then Zola, and…"

"And I touched your shoulder," Maggie finished, closing her eyes. His metal shoulder. She felt her stomach sink.

"It ain't your fault," Bucky murmured. He took a few steps backwards and leaned against a nearby tree. "I'm the one who lost it. I thought I was past… past freaking out, at least in situations where it could get us noticed-"

"We're not just going to get over it, Bucky," she replied, keeping her voice gentle. "It might be you today, it might be me in a week; we're not magically the picture of mental stability." She offered him a wry smile. "But we're trying."

Bucky's breath had slowed. "I'm tired of being dangerous, Meg." His eyes dropped, and the tension returned to his shoulders.

She kept her distance, conscious that his memories of being tortured and experimented on were fresh. "I know. But you didn't hurt me, and really, I should have realised you weren't in a safe headspace. I was distracted." He opened his mouth to protest, but she continued. "If this is the worst it gets, then I'd say it's not that bad. All you did was act to protect yourself, and then you came back."

She could tell he was still skeptical, and she couldn't blame him – with their trigger words and the minefield of trauma in their heads, they weren't ever going to be safe. She sighed. "Just… don't run off, next time."

Bucky sagged, his long hair falling into his eyes. "I'm sorry, Meg."

She smiled tiredly. "And maybe we should get better about asking before we touch each other." They'd been slipping, exchanging shoulder-bumps and casual touches as easy as breathing.

Bucky closed his eyes. "Normally it's fine," he sighed. "Normally it's good. Maybe just…"

"Maybe we'll just ask when we're not one hundred per cent sure it's going to be fine?" she suggested. She trusted him to be one hundred per cent sure, when it came to her.

He nodded. "Deal."

Silence fell over them, Bucky leaning against the looming green tree, Maggie standing on the grass just off the footpath. It was a cool day, with a faint breeze rustling through the tree branches and along the wide lawns. They'd both rugged up warm, to disguise Bucky's arm and to resist the weather. The park was quiet, but now she'd talked down Bucky, Maggie's attention was drawn to shouts and laughter further down the footpath. There were children playing in the park square.

Maggie smiled. "C'mon," she said, looking back at Bucky. He furrowed his brow, but pushed off the tree and joined her on the footpath. She was prepared to give him his space, but after returning his notebook to his backpack, he tentatively bumped his shoulder against hers. She smiled wider, and they walked together down the footpath.

When they reached the main square, they took a moment to watch the children dashing across the lawns, running between the jetting sprinklers. They screamed and laughed when the water sprayed them, while their parents watched.

Maggie held out her hand, palm up. "C'mon."

Bucky looked from her hand, to her face. "What?"

She merely nodded at the spinning sprinklers.

Bucky's frown deepened. "Why?"

She shrugged, keeping her hand aloft. "Looks fun. Don't think so much about it," she teased.

He rolled his eyes, but put his right, flesh hand in hers. She could feel his body heat through the glove, and his fingers tightened around hers.

"On three," she murmured, meeting his grey-blue eyes. She counted down and then they ran, gasping and laughing as the water sprayed their faces and clothes. Bucky swore colorfully, and Maggie remembered the words for later.

The kids laughed at them, and they emerged on the other side of the lawn soaking wet, but Bucky's hand was warm in Maggie's and there was a smile on his face.

December, 2014

San Antonio, Chile

Maggie had her feet kicked up on the coffee table of the safe house, watching the TV while she solved and re-jumbled the Rubik's cube Bucky had given her for her birthday. She could solve it in less than a minute now, but she kept trying to hone her time. She liked the slide of the plastic parts under her nimble fingers, and the color transition from jumbled to whole.

Bucky sat at the kitchen table, jotting down memories in his notebook. From time to time he looked over at Maggie to make a teasing comment about the Rubik's cube, or to ask if she wanted more juice.

They'd more or less settled in San Antonio for the past two months, though occasionally one or both of them would leave the safehouse to run surveillance or check for tails for a few days. They missed each other when they were split up, and she found that sometimes Bucky seemed to be looking at her just to double check that she was there. She didn't complain, as she was doing the same thing.

It was a warm day, and their ceiling fan whirred above their heads. The windows were newspapered over, to prevent outside surveillance of the safehouse, but no one in the poor neighbourhood thought twice about it. She'd gotten used to this house in the comparatively long time they'd spent in it – she knew what kind of creak each floorboard made, and she knew how to get the bathroom door unstuck. It was by no means a palace, just as small and ramshackle as all the other safehouses they'd commandeered, but it was nice being able to settle.

They had two twin mattresses in the bedroom/living area, and usually felt comfortable enough in their instincts to sleep at the same time, rather than in shifts.

Their therapies were going well, though they still had the occasional nightmare or flashback. Lately Bucky had been talking about his family: his mom and dad and three little sisters. Maggie's latest remembrances hadn't been so nice – she remembered being told to kill people over and over, very early on in her time with HYDRA, for no other reason than to make sure she was obedient. She didn't remember how many people had to die for her to become HYDRA's weapon.

Maggie tapped her Adamantium heel idly against the coffee table and turned her focus back to the TV. She usually enjoyed whatever was playing, as she'd never had the luxury of daytime TV with HYDRA, but she had to admit that the news today was a little dry.

She flicked the Rubik's cube this way and that, slotting each coloured cube into place, when a face on the TV caught her eye.

The breath left her chest.

She knew that face. And not in the fond, nostalgic way that she knew Tony's face, or even her mom and dad's when they showed up on TV. This was a face that she knew from her nightmares, filtered through the sensation of metal clamping around her limbs and lightning coursing through her brain. This was the face that said words like divert more power to the central node and she won't need the mouthguard this time.

Bucky appeared next to her – she must have made a sound, or… no, she'd dropped the Rubik's cube, that must have alerted him. He was speaking, asking what was wrong, but she could only stare at the face on the television. Bucky turned to the screen in time to see the face, just before the news changed stories. Maggie expected him to keep questioning her, to ask what do you remember, Meg, but he didn't. As soon as he saw the face he tensed as well, and his face turned to stone.

Maggie took calming breaths, like she did after a nightmare. After half a minute she had composed herself enough to ask: "You recognise him?" She barely recognised her own voice – it sounded so far away.

Bucky was half-kneeling at her side, eyes locked on the TV even though it was now playing a news story about a local dog walking company. "Yes," he gritted out, and wrenched his eyes from the TV to her face. "You?"

Maggie met his eyes, and saw the same turmoil and pain there that she felt. "You know I do." She took a deep breath. "He's HYDRA. Worked on the chair. On us. And now he's…" her shock suddenly sparked into fury, and she had to clench her jaw to keep from screaming. Fire scorched her insides, licking up from her gut into her throat. Her hands clenched into fists.

"He's what?" Bucky asked. "The news story, I didn't hear…"

She took a long breath through her nose. "He's been given tenure at a university in Santiago," she hissed. "They didn't say his name, but he was shaking hands with the Chancellor." She saw an echo to her fury roll over Bucky's face. "For him to have tenure, he must have been at that university for years." She could see it in her mind: he would fly out to program and refine the Memory Suppression Machine, and watch the assets scream, and then he would fly back to teach students and publish research.

Bucky's metal arm was whirring and clicking, but he hadn't moved. "Find him," he murmured, and his eyes burned into Maggie's.

It didn't take her long. Her hands shook as they danced over the laptop keyboard, and she had to make a conscious effort not to crack the delicate technology. Three minutes later she had the man's name, address, financial details and his activities for the last twenty years. He'd been taking regular absences from the university for over ten years, under the guise of medical leave for a heart condition. Maggie followed up the medical documents and traced them back to HYDRA: all fabrications. There were incidental references to him in the S.H.I.E.L.D. data dump, though no one had connected them to the man himself.

When she'd seen enough, she pulled her hands away from the keyboard and leaned back. Bucky stood over her shoulder, anger radiating off him in waves.

"Vincent Silva," he murmured. She'd left an image of the man on the screen: he was in his early fifties, with thick, dark hair and brown eyes. In the image he wore an academic robe, smiling at the camera as he held up a red folder. The photo came from an article headlined: Local Neuroscientist Vincent Silva Publishes Ground-Breaking Research on "Secrets of the Mind".

Maggie had no doubt that his research was based on HYDRA money and influence. He might have even gotten ideas from the ways in which he'd pulled her and Bucky's minds apart. The thought made her stomach churn.

Maggie and Bucky stared at the photo of the smiling man. A dark, silent energy crackled between them. She didn't know what Bucky remembered, but she was sure his memories were like hers: Silva's face just out of reach, his eyes alight with interest in the machine but his ears deaf to her screams. She remembered him leaning over the linked-up computers, murmuring things like interesting; and what if we tried this…?

"What do we do," Bucky said, his voice low and brimming with feeling.

Maggie took a shuddering breath. She felt sick to her stomach, and her mind was reeling.

"We could kill him," she breathed.

They both knew it would be easy. The man was an hour and a half away by car, and they wouldn't even need a weapon. He was a non-combatant, breakable. He'd be nothing against the skill and strength of the Wyvern and the Winter Soldier.

Bucky shifted his weight behind her. "I'm going to touch you."

She inclined her head, silently accepting, and felt his flesh hand settle on her shoulder. His warmth seeped through her shirt and into her skin, and she closed her eyes.

"Meg," he murmured, moving a callused thumb over her shoulder blade. His voice was soft. "Tell me what you want."

Maggie opened her eyes.

Santiago, Chile

Vincent Silva's house was worth more than a professor on his income could afford - HYDRA must have been adding to his salary. But despite the money he'd obviously spent on security, it was easy for Bucky and Maggie to slip through a downstairs window and stealth through the darkened corridors. It was all glass sliding doors and rich timber, each floorboard sturdy and each door hinge well-oiled.

The opulence of the house was obvious even in the dark. Maggie stood in the corner of Silva's study, the red light of her goggles switched off, wearing her wings and an approximation of the combat suit she'd disposed of in D.C.: thick black cargo pants, a black hoodie with holes cut in the back for her wings, her clawed gauntlets, and her old combat boots, which had gaps in the soles for her heel spurs to seamlessly extend and retract through.

She held herself still, though the current of anger and resentment flowing through her prickled at her skin and clogged her throat. She'd only seen the news story that morning, but she was sure that the fury had been festering for far longer. Now she had a face, a target.

She could just see the glint of Bucky's arm on the other side of the room, cloaked in shadows. She knew he was wearing thick black clothes as well, and a scarf tied around his lower face.

Vincent Silva wasn't a particularly noisy man, but each sound he made as he shuffled down the corridor toward his study felt deafening to Maggie. Her darkened goggles picked up on his heat signature.

Silva's browser history had showed that he was a late-night researcher, who worked into the small hours of the morning on his upcoming projects. His bank records showed that he bought a lot of premium dark roast coffee, and from the faint clink as he juggled with the door knob, Maggie guessed he'd made himself a cup to tide him through his research.

The door didn't creak when he opened it. He shuffled into the study in the dark, finding his desk by spatial memory, and turned on a lamp once he'd set down his coffee and papers. Maggie's goggles filtered out the sudden burst of light, so she wasn't momentarily blinded.

She drank in the sight of Silva: he looked so ordinary, in flannel pajamas and with bags under his eyes, but a thrill of fear still went down her Adamantium-reinforced spine at the sight of his face. This was the face that had brought her so much pain – she couldn't prevent her body's instinctive fear, and that just made her angrier. She reached up and turned on her goggles' red glow.

Silva saw Maggie when he looked up to reach for a pen. This was as they'd planned it – she faced the desk, while Bucky was behind Silva, hidden in a shadowy corner by the door.

Silva's reaction was almost comical. As soon as he saw Maggie's red, slitted eyes glowing in the gloom at the edge of the room he flailed, knocking his coffee over with his elbow and careening backwards, a full-body flinch at the sight of the Wyvern.

Maggie didn't move. She drank in Silva's fear, scanning his wide eyes and flapping limbs. His eyes were on her, taking in her slitted goggles, metal wings and stony face.

Bucky slid across the study floor and clamped his metal hand over Silva's shoulder, stilling the man. Silva yelped and tried to get away, but Bucky's hand was inexorable. When Silva tried to twist around to get a look at him, Bucky gripped him harder and made him scream. All the tenured professor could see was the still, silent Wyvern, and the silver metal hand on his shoulder. Maggie's eyes flicked over Bucky, taking in his cold eyes and his flesh hand, clenched by his side.

"Oh my god," Silva wailed in English, his body shaking. "Please, no, please don't kill me!" His voice was high and tremulous.

At this Maggie slid into action, stalking across the study toward the desk. She made sure her clawed gauntlets were visible, hanging loosely at her sides. When she reached the desk, towering over it and Silva, she spoke.

"Admit what you did, Vincent," she said, keeping her voice flat.

The man went, if possible, even paler. There was sweat beading on his forehead, and his breath was coming in gasps.

"Admit, I… I don't know what – you don't-"

With a metallic snick Maggie flared her wings, spanning the office space and exposing her sharp metal barbs. They gleamed in the lamplight.

Silva screamed, still struggling against Bucky's metal hand. "Alright!" he gasped. "I worked on the Memory Suppression Machine, I worked for HYDRA, what do you-"

Bucky's muscles bunched and he threw the professor sideways, sending both him and the office chair sprawling to the floor.

Silva screamed again and tried to scrabble away on all fours, but Maggie stepped around the table and planted her boot in his side, knocking him onto his back. Another second later and he was frozen on the floor, with Maggie's exposed heel spur hovering just over his chest. She could see the whites of his eyes as he glanced from the metal blade, to her merciless red goggles, to the intimidating sight of the Winter Soldier over her shoulder.

Maggie had done this before, held her heel spur over a target's chest to get them to talk, or just to put some fear into them before she killed them. Whatever her handlers had wanted.

Bucky moved so he stood by Maggie's side, towering over the prone scientist. "Your university thinks you have a heart condition," he murmured, his voice low and deadly through the scarf. "Don't they?"

Silva whimpered, then wailed when Maggie pierced his chest with her heel spur, just enough so that blood welled from the wound and darkened his pajamas. Her heart was singing, thrilled at the sight of his blood, pain and fear. She could still see him in her mind's eye, cool and fascinated as she screamed at the lightning in her mind.

Bucky's arm whirred. "How is your heart now, Professor Silva?"

Silva was sobbing, not even trying to fight back. Maggie could smell his fear, and knew that this was her moment. She twisted her heel slightly and watched him wince.

"You're going to go to the police," she said. "You're going to tell them that you worked for HYDRA, and you're going to tell the same thing to the CIA and anyone else who comes to question you. You're going to tell them everything, or we'll know. You're a smart man, you know what we can do."

Silva's face creased with confusion. "You're… you're not going to kill me?"

"Not yet," muttered Bucky.

Maggie cocked her head. "But we will if you don't do as we say. And we know you've got trouble with honesty, so it's a good thing that some entrepreneurial mind on the Internet has pieced together the information about you in the S.H.I.E.L.D. data dump. You've been worried about that, haven't you Vincent?"

His browser history showed that he had been obsessively combing the websites of people sorting through the data dump, and news about the HYDRA base takedowns. Maggie pulled her heel spur out of Silva's chest, wiped it on his pajamas, and retracted it. She and Bucky loomed over him, the Wyvern and the Winter Soldier.

Silva was still crying. "Why?" he gasped. "Who… who told you to do this?"

Bucky stiffened, and Maggie felt her rage return with fiery gusto, but she contained it.

"If only I could remember," she hissed.

Seconds later she and Bucky had vanished from the study, leaving Vincent Silva sobbing in his own sweat and blood with the murderous voices of the two former assets echoing in his ears. After taking a few minutes to cry and wallow in self-pity, he got dressed, set his study to rights, and then walked to his local police station.

Bucky and Maggie watched Silva walk into the station from the rooftop on the other side of the street. They'd made sure the officers on duty that night had no connections to HYDRA and weren't on the take. They'd monitored their anonymous information leak to make sure it went to the right people. They hadn't needed to say a word as they followed Silva from his house to the station. Everything was in place.

When Silva disappeared from sight, Maggie let out a shuddering breath. Moments later she was bundled up in Bucky's arms, clinging to him as if she might float away or burst into flames if she didn't. His long hair tickled her ear, and she felt his breath brush her shoulder. They were both shaky and emotional, for so many reasons, but having his arms around her made Maggie feel marginally safer, more stable, less likely to burst into the police station and put her heel spur through Silva's pathetic face.

Bucky's metal arm made a faint clink against her left wing, and they both chuckled. The laughter eased some of the tension, and they spoke to each other for the first time since they'd broken into Silva's house.

"You didn't tell him not to tell the police about us," Bucky murmured, and the side of his head brushed against hers. One of the good things about the super soldier serum was that it kept their metabolisms running hot, so when they hugged Maggie felt impossibly, blissfully warm.

"It was very heavily implied," she murmured, with a half-smile. "Besides, I don't care. He's… he's nothing, now."

Bucky hummed and pulled back, putting his hands on her arms as his eyes flicked over her face. His eyes softened.

"What?" Maggie asked, cocking her head.

He gave her a sad smile. "I'm glad you chose this."

She sighed. "Me too. I think. I keep thinking about who I was before, about what that Maggie might have been like, what she would have done in this situation. But I don't know," she shrugged, and looked down at her feet. "The girl I was… everyone kept telling me about my potential, but then HYDRA came and just… just wrecked it. Maybe it doesn't matter what I used to be like."

Bucky's hands tightened on her arms and he ducked his head in an attempt to look into her eyes, but she resolutely avoided it. "Meg. HYDRA are definitely a bunch of assholes-" that startled a laugh out of her "- but you're not wrecked. You're incredible."

Maggie smiled, and met his eyes. He was wearing that look like it was the first time he'd ever seen her. There was a faint, crooked smile playing at his lips, and his hair fell around his glinting grey-blue eyes. His fingers were warm and gentle on her arms, and Maggie was torn between wanting to collapse into an exhausted puddle on the ground, and wanting to throw herself back into his arms.

She settled for rolling her shoulders and sighing. "You're not too bad yourself," she said. She'd seen the Soldier in his eyes tonight, and knew that wasn't an easy thing for him to do. Maggie wondered if he really would have preferred to kill Silva, but they'd already discussed it, and she sensed the same tired relief in him that she felt now.

"You're right, though," she said. "We don't know what he'll say. We'd better go."

Bucky nodded, and let go of her. "Are you ready?" he asked, softly.

Maggie flexed her fingers, still in the clawed gauntlets, and nodded. "Always."

December, 2014

Avengers Tower, New York City

Once again, their weekly meeting about the search for Barnes and Margaret Stark was filled with dead leads and guesswork. They didn't have anything new, not since the maybe-sighting of the Wyvern in Argentina, and the CCTV still from D.C.

Sam mostly just detailed what leads he'd been following up, and explained why they were all useless.

"I gotta say," Sam eventually said, in his therapist-voice. "When it's this hard to find someone, that's usually a sign that they don't want to be found."

Tony huffed. "Yeah, but that isn't going to stop me from finding her. Them. Whatever."

Sam nodded, sighing, and shuffled his papers. "Just making sure you're aware." He knew that neither of the men at the table were going to stop until they had their loved ones in front of them, so there wasn't much point in discouraging them. "How did that thing in Chile go?"

Steve and Natasha had recently flown down to Santiago to question a HYDRA scientist who'd been exposed by a freelance Internet group analysing the S.H.I.E.L.D. dump, and had turned himself in. Natasha had been suspicious about the convenience of it all, and the scientist's cooperation.

Steve straightened in his chair. "It turns out Silva worked on the Memory Suppression Machine, among other things," he said, eyes flicking toward Tony. Tony, who apparently already knew this, kept his feet on the table and started scrolling through his phone. Sam wasn't fooled, he could see the muscle jumping in the billionaire's jaw. "He helped to refine the process, and helped HYDRA with other forms of cognitive control. We asked if he worked with the Wyvern or the Winter Soldier, and he said he didn't know who they were, but Nat thinks he was lying." Steve sighed. "I don't suppose he could tell us much that the files haven't, though. It's not really a lead, but you're welcome to talk to him if you want."

Sam cocked an eyebrow and looked to the image of Silva that J.A.R.V.I.S. had projected on the glossy table. "What an asshole."

He knew that if the Black Widow hadn't been able to convince the scientist to talk about which HYDRA assets he did or did not work with, he sure as hell wasn't going to have a hope. "What did Natasha say about the Internet group?"

Tony pulled his feet off the table. "She looked into it, with J.A.R.V.I.S.'s help, but wherever the information came from, whoever it was, they wanted to stay anonymous and they knew how to do it. Seems we might have an ally."

"Or HYDRA's got an enemy," Steve countered.

Tony shrugged. "Potato, tomato."

Sam rolled his eyes. "Anyway, are we getting any closer with that rumoured Japanese base?"

Six thousand miles away, Bucky and Maggie settled into their new roles as stowaways on a cruise liner bound across the Pacific Ocean.