-34-

++++++++++

June 23rd, 2016

Commercial Bus, Outskirts of Bucharest

Maggie leaned her forehead against the glass window, watching streets and buildings roll past as the bus made the last leg of its fourteen-hour journey from the Ukrainian city of Zhytomyr.

She was bone-tired, since she wasn't stupid enough to let herself sleep on public transport, and she missed Bucky. She'd been away longer than expected, almost three weeks, because once she'd started looking into the remnants of her victim's life she couldn't pull herself away. She'd texted a coded message to Bucky's burner phone to let him know she was staying longer, but other than that they'd had no contact.

The man she'd killed was named Maksym Chumak, and it hadn't taken her long to figure out why HYDRA had wanted him dead. Six years ago he'd been a highly successful businessman, when he'd wandered into the wrong room at the wrong time. He'd overheard a conversation between two other business men who happened to be HYDRA, and then started asking questions. When the Wyvern made his death appear to be an unfortunate hiking accident, Chumak's business failed and his wife and two daughters were left with little income and no father or husband.

Maggie had watched their lives from afar for over two weeks now. At first the sight of their faces had made her sick with guilt, but then she'd developed a sort of fascination. They'd rebuilt their lives – the daughters were co-CEOs of the business they'd built from the ground up, and the widow had remarried – seemingly happily – to a public servant. Still, Maggie had seen that there was a hole in their lives that they'd learned to live with – Maksym's photo on the fireplace mantle, a wedding ring on a chain around a neck. They didn't know it, but the Wyvern had ruined their lives six years ago. Their grief and love remained.

Maggie found herself wondering if she'd left a similar hole in Tony's life, and wondered what it looked like now.

Maggie had meddled a little. Maksym's widow had some parking fines, which she managed to make go away, and she promoted the girls' business by posing as a wealthy socialite and loudly praising the girls' work at a party packed with aristocrats and business people. It didn't make her feel much better. She'd considered approaching the family and telling them the truth, but she didn't know if they'd want that. Would it make things worse, if they knew their father and husband had been killed on purpose?

Nineteen days had been enough for her to work out that watching their lives, a macabre ghost of their father's death, was not doing anyone any good. So she'd left a bouquet of flowers on the widow's doorstep (periwinkles, her favorite), and got on a bus back to Bucharest, taking her memories of Maksym's terrified scream with her.

While she'd been away, she'd also heard the news that Peggy Carter had died. Maggie grieved distantly for her namesake, the woman she barely remembered. She knew that Aunt Peggy had been incredible; intelligent and brave, an inspiration for Maggie to look up to. She wished she could have met the woman again before she died, instead of remembering the legend.

As she pressed her forehead into the glass, Maggie was surprised to realize that as she grieved for Peggy she was thinking of Steve, hoping he was okay. She thought it was probably strange that she felt that way for a man who she'd only met once while she was trying to kill him, but she couldn't help feeling like she knew him, since Bucky talked about him all the time.

As the buildings grew taller and closer together, and the signs started to show places that she recognised, Maggie felt a thrill go through her at the prospect of seeing Bucky again, despite her fatigue and grief. She'd missed him in the cold, lonely Ukraine nights, as she wrestled with the remainders of her past crimes. She'd missed the way he could make her smile so easily, the way he was always there, warm and solid by her side. She couldn't wait to see him again.

As soon as she had the thought, Maggie mentally scolded herself and leaned back in her seat. She couldn't allow her emotion to make her reckless – she'd turned off her laptop and burner phone to avoid any possibility of electronic tracking from Ukraine to Romania, and she ought to take caution instead of marching straight back up to the safehouse and throwing herself into Bucky's arms, like she wanted to. She should hang around in the city a few hours, doubling back on herself and making sure she wasn't followed.

Maggie was still turning over logistics, watching the scenery as the bus drove further into Bucharest, when her enhanced hearing caught on a hushed voice three rows in front: "Soldat de Iarna-" ["The Winter Soldier-"]

Maggie didn't outwardly react, but it was a near thing. At the three murmured Romanian words, her whole body went cold. Maggie's guts twisted and seemed to sink through her body, and her face tightened – it felt like she was about to have a panic attack.

Taking a long breath through her nose, Maggie leaned forward slightly, peering through the gap in the seats so she could spot the source of the voice.

Three rows ahead and to the right: it was a woman in a pale shawl, reading something off her phone to her friend in the seat next to her. Maggie closed her eyes and strained her ears, ignoring her pounding heart and the cold sweat on her palms.

She didn't catch all of it, but she heard enough to make bile rise in her throat. Fingers trembling, Maggie fumbled for her burner phone and turned it on, operational security be damned. Immediately the screen burst to life with information, too much. It took her a few moments to focus enough on what her program – set up to inform her of any mention of the Wyvern or the Winter Soldier – was telling her.

Regulating her breathing and trying to slow her heartrate, Maggie scanned the information. UN Bombing in Vienna. Twelve fatalities. Winter Soldier. James Buchanan Barnes. The entire goddamn world looking for him.

Maggie stared at the CCTV still of the bomber for ten seconds. It looked like him. As soon as she had the thought, she angrily pushed it away. He wouldn't – she knew he wouldn't, no more than she would.

But then she recalled those Russian words, shouted through frozen air, and she had to double over in her seat to stop herself from being sick. Had someone found Bucky and turned him back into everything he feared? Maggie clapped her hand to her mouth and squeezed her eyes shut, almost crushing her burner phone in her other hand.

A cold voice in the back of her mind spoke: Focus. Mission Objective.

With a shuddering breath, Maggie sat up. Mission. The mission was Bucky. There wasn't any time for fear, or tears.

Clenching her jaw, Maggie wiped the information and the program from her burner phone, and composed a single text message: Dragonfire. Their ultimate code word, the doomsday word, that meant they've found us, go dark.

Maggie didn't care if Bucky was triggered, or on the run already, this was all she could do to protect him from here and she was damn well going to do it.

That done, she slid out of her seat into the aisle of the moving bus and pulled her backpack, heavy with the weight of her wings, onto her shoulders. She strode down the aisle, ignoring the curious glances of her fellow passengers, and put her hand on the driver's shoulder. He glanced up at her, startled, and she didn't know what he saw in her face but it seemed to make him scared.

"Parcați imediat," ["Park immediately,"] she said, injecting some of her fear and nerves into her voice. She didn't speak Romanian fluently, but she knew enough to get him to do what she wanted. "Este o urgență." ["It's an emergency."]

He immediately began questioning her, but he turned the wheel and stepped on the brake, pulling onto the shoulder of the freeway. Passengers on the bus were murmuring to each other, looking around for the emergency.

Maggie ignored the driver's questions, and didn't wait for him to stop. As soon as he was near the edge of the road she yanked the door open and hopped onto the tarmac, taking a second to balance herself before she ran for the edge of the freeway and jumped off, legs windmilling until she hit the residential street below.

She hit the ground running. Like a shot she was off, tearing through streets towards the location of the safehouse, her boots slapping against the pavement and her hair flying.

Maggie was terrified. She hadn't been so confused and afraid in a long time, but she had her focus: Get to Bucky. Protect Bucky. The news articles hadn't mentioned the Wyvern, so whoever came after Bucky might not be expecting her. They were supposed to protect each other, how could she have let this happen-

Her thoughts were cut off by the distant rumble of helicopters, and Maggie cursed. She'd been trained to identify helicopter models by sound when she was ten, and she knew that heavy thundering didn't belong to any news or recreational helicopter.

Jaw clenched, Maggie skidded to a halt and ducked into a dark alley. She allotted herself two minutes, and she used them well. First she pulled her wings out of her bag and hastily slotted them into her back, tearing holes in her shirt as she did so. That done, she folded the wings close to her body and disguised them with a secondary backpack, with the back cut away so it fit over her wings like a cover. It hid her wings, but she could leap into flight at a moment's notice.

Next, heart still pounding, she pulled out her burner phone and hacked into the local law enforcement agencies.

What she saw was enough to make her skin crawl with panic. They had the location of the safehouse, and what seemed like every goddamn agency was on their way to apprehend the Winter Soldier. Shoot on sight, read the orders.

Abruptly, Maggie's debilitating panic was numbed by a sense of cold focus that washed over her, emanating from where her wings slotted into her spine and flooding into the churning chasm of her chest.

Maggie crushed the burner phone in her hand and tossed it aside. Her face was blank, and her body was ready. She stepped back out onto the street and started running again, heading for the distant sound of helicopters and sirens. She blew past pedestrians to startled shouts, her body settling into the enhanced pace that she hadn't allowed herself to reach in over two years.

She had one mission. The Wyvern had always accomplished her missions.

Safehouse, Bucharest

Bucky was stealthing his way through the apartment building back to the safehouse, mind reeling from the headline about him in the newspaper, when his burner phone vibrated in his pocket.

Keeping a wary eye on his surroundings, he brought the phone out and looked at the screen.

A single text, from an unknown number: Dragonfire.

Bucky swallowed. Either someone had recognized Meg, or she'd found out about the worldwide manhunt for him. The article hadn't mentioned her, so he hoped she'd be safe, wherever she was.

Alert and on edge, Bucky crushed his burner phone in his metal hand and reached his floor. His footsteps were silent on the concrete stairs, and his eyes darted around the space, ready for any sign of surveillance or contact. The part of him that had planned a day of eating fruit, writing, and missing Meg was gone. He was relying on his Winter Soldier instincts now.

He reached his door, and froze. Someone was in the apartment.

For a moment he considered running. But he needed his backpack, and if he strained he could only hear one set of foot treads on the creaky floorboards. Steeling himself, Bucky crept into the safehouse.

Steve.

That was his first thought on seeing the blue-uniformed silhouette standing in front of his fridge, and for a second he thought he'd gone crazy. Wishful thinking.

But the silhouette moved, reaching up for the notebook on top of the fridge, and Bucky's eyes tracked over the unmistakable frame, down to the gleaming metal shield.

Bucky's shoulders slumped out of his combat-ready stance, and he stared dumbly at his friend's back. It had been two and a half years since he'd left Steve bleeding and half-drowned on a riverbank, and it was almost seventy years since they'd last really been together; Bucky Barnes and Steve Rogers.

It felt impossible, seeing his friend in the tiny, ramshackle safehouse he'd called home for almost a month and a half now. That was Steve, standing in his kitchen, behind the counter that he and Meg had sat on the day she left, reading his notebook.

All of this went through Bucky's mind in an instant, but he didn't make a sound.

"Understood," said Steve, and Bucky's brain clicked back into gear.

Comms. A mission. Of course, Steve was here to take him in.

Because Bucky had killed people.

He must have made some kind of noise, or moved, or something, because Steve whipped around and saw him.

Bucky tried to keep his face carefully blank, he really did, but he couldn't disguise the fact that he was staring at his friend's face, drinking him in. He didn't move. Couldn't move.

Steve looked him up and down, face serious, and asked: "Do you know me?"

Bucky took two breaths. If Steve was here it meant they'd found him, he was done. Bucky had spent two years on the run to protect Steve and he couldn't stop now. He was dangerous, now more than ever, and Steve would stop at nothing to protect the Bucky Barnes he knew. So now, Bucky needed to be the Winter Soldier.

"You're Steve," he said, and cursed the croakiness to his voice. "I read about you in a museum." He braced himself.

Steve shifted his weight, placed the notebook on the kitchen counter, and then started walking towards him. "I know you're nervous. And you have plenty of reason to be." Steve stilled, and his eyes were serious under his cowl. "But you're lying."

Bucky was surprised, but didn't let it show. Could Steve read him so easily, even after all these years? Or had he picked up a few tricks in the future?

Steve straightened, and when he next spoke his voice was softer. "Do you know where the Wyvern is?"

Bucky almost blinked in surprise at the question, but he kept his face blank. "No." That wasn't a lie – Meg could be anywhere by now. He allowed himself to feel a second of relief that Steve – and whoever he was working with – didn't know where she was, and that there weren't any indicators in the apartment that she'd been there.

Steve stepped closer, and Bucky's instincts were screaming danger, but not because of Steve. Bucky clenched his jaw.

"I wasn't in Vienna, I don't do that anymore." He wanted to beat his hands against his face. Why should anyone trust him, let alone Steve? The UN bombing was nothing compared to what he'd done over the last seventy years. But he wanted to convince whoever was listening that he hadn't been that way in over two years. He'd been working on being a person, a partner. He had a soup ladle, for crying out loud. He'd been living.

Steve glanced out the window, and Bucky stiffened.

"Well the people who think you did are coming here now," Steve said, still moving closer. "And they're not planning on taking you alive."

Bucky felt the Soldier straightening inside him, ready to fight. He only took a second to consider the implications of Steve being here against orders before he said: "That's smart. Good strategy."

Footsteps on the ceiling, in the stairwell. Bucky's mind flooded with entrances and exits, fight strategies, likely strength of opponents. And the niggling thought: Keep Steve safe.

Steve looked scared now, his eyes fixed on Bucky from across the room. "This doesn't have to end in a fight, Buck."

Bucky sighed, and loosened his limbs in preparation for combat. He almost wanted to make a joke – if only the little Steve Rogers from Brooklyn could hear you now – but no, he wasn't Bucky right now. He took a moment to think of Meg, hopefully far away and safe, and knew he was probably never going to see her again. He couldn't think about that – if he did, his mind would dissolve into a mess, and right now he needed to be the Soldier.

Footsteps at the door, heavy, probably holding a battering ram or a weapon.

"It always ends in a fight," he muttered, pulling off his glove.

"You pulled me from the river," Steve urged, his voice heavy with adrenaline and fear. "Why?"

Goddammit, Steve, leave it alone. "I don't know," Bucky lied, meeting Steve's eyes.

"Yes you do."

The window shattered, and the safehouse turned into a warzone.

Bucky followed the contingency plan he'd set out for this location: beat back attackers, use the furniture to block entrances. Of course, he had to try to keep Steve out of the way as well, because the idiot was trying to protect him.

"Buck, stop! You're going to kill someone!"

As he slammed Steve to the ground and retrieved his backpack, Bucky couldn't help it: "I'm not going to kill anyone," he murmured, and the part of him that wasn't certain that Bucky Barnes would be the death of Steve Rogers hoped that Steve understood: he didn't want to kill anyone any more.

Bucky fought his way out of the safehouse and down the stairwell, using his HYDRA-learned skills in a way he'd hoped to never use them again. Steve was still there, the persistent moron, so Bucky leaped out the window, away from Steve and the special forces.

Then there was a guy in a black cat suit, and a helicopter, and the flying guy from the Triskelion, so Bucky retreated to the underpass, running past cars as the number of people chasing him seemed to multiply.

Despite the apparent organisation and skill of his pursuers, Bucky still had a fleeting hope of vanishing into the city, as he'd done so many times in the past, and making his way back to Meg and anonymity. But then that asshole in the cat suit snagged the rear wheel of his stolen motorbike and it was all over, him and the asshole and Steve, goddammit, surrounded by cars and helicopters and guns.

Steve reached out unconsciously toward Bucky, as if to say stand down, or I'll protect you, and despite his desperation and fear Bucky wanted to smile and roll his eyes simultaneously. His heart was pounding against his rib cage, and every instinct in him was on edge, aware of every gun muzzle pointed in his direction. He hadn't felt so exposed, so trapped, since HYDRA.

He couldn't fight any more. Couldn't do anything.

War Machine arrived – Meg knew that guy, Bucky thought – and then Bucky was being forced to his knees, the world around him all thundering helicopter blades and shouting soldiers, and then the bite of tarmac on his face.

He looked up when War Machine said your highness, but he only looked at Prince – King, now – T'Challa for an instant. Because just in his eyeline he caught sight of a familiar form on the stairs leading down to the underpass.

Bucky's heart skipped a beat, and his eyes widened. It was Meg. She was in civilian clothes; jeans and a jacket, but she was wearing the backpack she'd designed to conceal her wings while she wore them. She was halfway down the stairs, unseen by the dozens of soldiers in the underpass who had their sights set on Bucky, Steve, and King T'Challa.

What the hell was she doing here?

Meg met his gaze, and her dark eyes flooded with pain at the sight of him being held down and restrained. Her face flickered with emotion – panic, anger, determination – and Bucky suddenly knew that she was planning to leap into the situation, heedless of the consequences, to rescue him.

Bucky wanted her miles away from here, from these men with guns and agendas.

As metal was clamped around his limbs, Bucky held her gaze and shook his head, just once.

Steve was being handcuffed, but Bucky was alive. All of it – Rhodey's disappointment, T'Challa's appearance, whatever consequences he was about to face – none of it mattered, because Bucky was alive.

Steve took a deep breath and glanced at his friend. He couldn't see his face, but something about the way Bucky was craning his neck made Steve look up.

There was a woman on the stairs. A civilian, by the look of her, tall, with dark hair and eyes, but something about her made Steve's brow furrow. Maybe it was the way she was looking at Bucky: making direct eye contact, with blatant emotion on her face – this was not how he'd expect a random civilian to look at the man being arrested on the tarmac right now. And now that he was looking, Steve thought he recognized the woman from the CCTV still from Los Andes, over a year ago.

Out of the corner of his eye, as he was handcuffed, Steve saw Bucky shake his head. Anyone else might have written it off as an act of futile resistance, or the result of the soldiers jostling him, but Steve knew his friend even after all these years. The woman's eyes brightened with tears, but then Bucky's face was shoved into the road and, as if she had never been there, the woman vanished.

As Steve was arrested and shoved into a black car beside Sam, his mind reeled: from the chase, seeing Bucky again, T'Challa's appearance, and the woman on the stairs.

He almost didn't credit his own eyes, it seemed so impossible.

Has she been with Bucky this whole time?

++++++++++