Chapter 59

The discovery process lasted weeks. Normally discovery for a trial of this magnitude might take far longer, but there was a lot of political and public pressure for it to go quickly. This meant that both the prosecution and Maggie's defense team were down to the wire.

In fact it turned out that Maggie's team was behind. In one of her near-daily meetings with Kemp and Martinez at an office in the courthouse (she couldn't visit them in their law firm offices because of her bail conditions), Martinez made a face as they reviewed the documents they were going over.

"They've been building a case against you for months," he said, putting down one of the many folders of documents the prosecution had swamped them with.

Maggie blinked and looked up. "They have?"

He waved another folder at her. "You don't just have this much evidence and witness reports lying around against someone you're not planning to take to trial."

She blinked again, and then looked around at the pile of documents on the table. She knew this was only a fraction of the evidence the prosecution had turned over to the defense – the rest was at the Kemp & Martinez law firm. She felt like she'd swallowed a stone. This was Ross's plan all along, she realized. The second I wasn't useful any more, this was waiting for me.

She scowled and squared her shoulders. "You wanted to talk about finding witnesses?"

20th October, 2016

The Daily Bugle News Alert

PROSECUTOR IN STARK CASE WON'T SEEK DEATH PENALTY

Prosecutors in the Margaret Stark case today announced that they would not be seeking the death penalty, instead pushing for life without parole.

Legal experts have called it a smart move, explaining that juries are less likely to convict when the death sentence is on the table, particularly against a woman.

However, there has been widespread criticism of the decision. Senator Bill Wallace stated "at the end of the day, the prosecution has shown themselves for the cowards they are. Ms Stark represents a grave threat to the American people, more than deserving of the highest punishment for her crimes, and they're apparently comfortable with letting her live on the taxpayer's money in comfort for the rest of her life."

Ms Stark is charged with over thirty counts of murder, along with espionage and treason, each count of which is punishable by death under Title 18 of the United States Code.

Maggie did everything she could to help Kemp and Martinez, but ultimately this was what they were good at – reviewing legal documents, researching and tracking down witnesses. She knew they were having trouble with that last one: there wasn't anyone left alive that they knew of from her time in Canada, and there weren't many HYDRA agents currently still alive and available for questioning. The prosecution had gathered more than enough witnesses to her many crimes, but the defense didn't have a lot to show that she'd been controlled.

At one point, Kemp and Diego approached Maggie and asked if there was any possibility of getting Captain Rogers', Natasha Romanov's and Sam Wilson's impressions of her as a combatant for HYDRA, even as written testimony. Maggie had just spread her hands and said "Sorry, that's not gonna happen."

They worked with what they had though, and Maggie couldn't help but be impressed with them. Martinez was empathetic and personable, strangely warm for someone in his profession. When he got frustrated he muttered Spanish curses under his breath, and after a few instances of this Maggie muttered back in kind. Just like that, they formed a bond – he stayed behind a few minutes after their meetings to talk in Spanish or English, chatting about a book they'd both read, or about Martinez's wife and four daughters, or about the courthouse's arbitrary air conditioning system. Soon enough they were on a first name basis.

It took Maggie a while but she eventually realized that Martinez – Diego – hid a deadly sharp intelligence behind his personable exterior, that he used to devastating effect. She almost couldn't wait to see him in court.

Kemp didn't hide her skills. She was a straight up, no-nonsense, determined legal genius. She had a great head for names, figures, and facts, and she had a way of looking at people with her sharp eyes that made them feel like she knew every one of their secrets. She didn't chat about her family, but she showed Maggie every day that she'd do everything she could to fight for her.

Their hardest conversation was early on in discovery: "Is there anything else you haven't told us?"

Maggie had been drained after hours of going over victims, crimes, and traumas, so she almost said no. But then she realized she hadn't told them about Bucky.

So she did: first she told them how the Winter Soldier had killed her parents and kidnapped her, and then explained her relationship with Bucky after escaping from HYDRA. Kemp and Diego looked at her without judgement, though Kemp looked a little pale, and when she finished they agreed that the information was very unlikely to feature in the trial – the prosecution had no way to know either of those facts and they weren't relevant to what Maggie had been charged with. It made Maggie uncomfortable, but this trial was going to be hard enough without bringing Bucky into it. She'd tell the truth about the Winter Soldier and the crimes she'd committed by his side, but she'd protect Bucky Barnes.

After that grueling conversation Kemp steepled her fingers and asked: "Any chance of getting Sergeant Barnes as a witness?" Her all-seeing eyes focused on Maggie, razor sharp.

Maggie blinked. "What? No, he's on the run. I have no idea where he is. Even if he showed up and offered, I'd say no."

Kemp and Diego shared an exasperated look, but they'd learned by now how stubborn Maggie could be.

They ended the meeting, and agreed to meet up the next day to go over the HYDRA data. After all, Maggie wasn't just their defendant – she was by now one of the leading experts on HYDRA: their members, their crimes, the way they operated. When she wasn't helping her lawyers, she was working on HERACLES with Vision, F.R.I.D.A.Y. and Tony. Kemp once grumbled that HERACLES was just a much a resource for the prosecution as for the public, but Maggie just shrugged at her.

Public and media scrutiny dimmed a little throughout the discovery process, but it never went away. Not even close. Any scrap of evidence or information about a witness got scrutinized in intense detail in the public eye. Doctors, politicians, legal experts and members of law enforcement with absolutely no connection to the trial were sought out for their opinion.

Maggie had to be careful in the public areas of the Avengers Facility, because there was a near constant press presence there now. At the courthouse she held the bathroom door open for a lady who later had a tell-all interview with a local television station.

The scrutiny exhausted her, but she had some of the best people to support her: a former-playboy billionaire with his own share of press appearances, an expert in public relations and the media, a stone-faced Air Force colonel who stood by her side whenever he could to glare off reporters, and an omnipresent android who could analyse her media presence in a heartbeat and give her comforting (or sometimes not-so-comforting) statistics.

14th October 2016

Thurgood Marshall United States Courthouse, New York City

Maggie stood by the window of a small courthouse meeting room, looking out at the sun glinting on the windows of Manhattan. Not that she could see much of Manhattan itself – she was in an office on the south side of the building, so she had a prime view of the Brooklyn Bridge stretching across the east river, its faded stone bathed in morning light.

Maggie was alone in the meeting room, though she knew there were three guards standing outside the door. She wore a midnight blue business dress, but she felt uncomfortable in it – she'd only ever worn such things as disguises when she was in HYDRA, or when she was on the run. The expensive cloth felt stiff against her skin, and she kept tugging at her collar.

She was waiting for Diego and Kemp to show up – it had only been a week since she'd been released on bail and she was still helping them trawl through all the data. She'd already been here twenty minutes, and they'd never been later than ten minutes before.

Almost as soon as she had the thought, the door opened. She turned around, lips already lifting in a smile, but when she saw two strangers at the door her smile fell.

Her initial read on them was: early-fifties Caucasian woman, non-threatening; and mid-forties African-American man, physically strong, military training.

But that gut assessment only lasted a second, because in the next second she picked up on inconsistencies in their appearance and then searched their faces – only to realize that she recognized their eyes.

The early-fifties Caucasian woman wore a padded suit in an old-fashioned style to make her look heavier and older, and a grey wig. Whoever had done her makeup was skillful, but Maggie knew what fake crow's feet and skin discoloration looked like. She also knew that if she took off that wig she'd find red hair, and that under those blue contacts were eyes as green as emeralds.

Maggie's mouth dropped open, and she turned to the man. His must be a wig as well, thicker and streaked with silver strands, and she spotted makeup aging his face, too. He stood tall in a blue suit, but Maggie knew that half-quirked mouth and warm eyes. Sam.

Her mouth hung open but she couldn't speak, only stare at them as they stood in the doorway. Her hands fell loose at her sides. She distantly wondered where her guards were.

Natasha's eyes glinted. "Stark," she murmured.

Still half-stunned, Maggie felt a rush of satisfaction – this was someone who'd known her as the Wyvern, who'd been afraid of her, now calling her by her real name. The surprise of it gave her enough of a jolt to be able to speak again.

She nodded. "Romanoff."

Natasha gave her a quick smile, then said "you have ten minutes," stepped outside, and shut the door behind her.

Maggie's eyes flicked to Sam, who stared right back at her with a smile playing at his mouth. She opened her mouth to say hi, but she suddenly had an awful thought about why Natasha and Sam might have taken the risk of sneaking into a courthouse to speak to her.

The blood drained from her face. "Bucky," she breathed, hand fumbling at the windowsill behind her to steady herself.

Sam blinked at her numb, horrified tone, and his hands suddenly flew up. "No, no, Barnes is fine!"

Maggie let out a long breath and sank into the nearest chair, reaching up with a trembling hand to cover her eyes. She willed her heart to stop racing. "Dammit, Sam, what did you think I would think?" she said, the fading edges of panic making the words harsher than she meant them.

"I'm sorry, really." She heard him move further into the room. "Barnes is… well, he's actually…"

She looked up, eyes narrowing at the hesitance in his voice. "What?"

He grimaced, then reached up to scratch at his wig. "He asked to go back into cryostasis until a cure for the trigger words is found."

There was a beat of silence.

Then Maggie spoke, her voice low and icy. "What."

Sam took a step back. "He said he didn't want to be dangerous anymore," he said carefully. "He's in a safe place, and we've got people working on the triggers-"

"You let him do this? Steve let him do this?" She snapped back, jumping to her feet. "I thought he was going to be safe!"

"He is safe, Maggie-"

"He's frozen in a glass box, Sam!" She gripped the table so hard that it creaked under her fingers, and a familiar helpless rage scorched through her chest. "He's not anything. He's, he's…" a rush of emotion hit her, and she fell back into her seat. She covered her mouth with her hand and squeezed her eyes shut, feeling all at once like she was on the edge of a panic attack.

She'd thought he was safe, healing somewhere, but apparently he'd been frozen all this time. She thought of all the times he'd been dragged away at the end of a mission to be put on ice, and remembered the way he'd once stared at her with his stormy blue eyes as the glass closed over his face. A sob bubbled up her throat at the memory, and she hunched over.

She heard Sam's voice: "Okay, I'm going to touch you, is that alright?"

She nodded, eyes still squeezed shut, and Sam took her free hand. His skin was warm, and it jolted her. Her hand, which she hadn't realized had been clenched into a fist, uncurled. She took a deep breath.

"It's okay, Maggie," Sam murmured, and the chair next to her creaked as he sat in it. "I'm sorry for upsetting you. I get why you don't agree with his decision, and you have every right to be angry. But I promise you that we have the best minds working on getting him out and healed as soon as possible, and that he's in a safe place in the meantime. That's actually part of why I'm here."

That got her attention. She sniffed and looked up. Sam squeezed her hand and leveled his gaze at her, silently asking if she was ready to get to the point, and she nodded.

"Okay," he said. "First thing's first – I'm here to offer you an out. Right now, today, we can get you out of that handcuff, out of this courthouse and in Bolivia by the end of the day. Interested?" He cocked an eyebrow at her.

She smiled, wiping her eyes. "I think you already know what I'm going to say to that."

He sighed. "I figured, what with the press conference and everything, but the offer's there if you want to take it. We're getting pretty good at being on the run."

"Wonder what that's like," she replied with a bland smile, and he rolled his eyes at her.

"Yeah alright, snippy. We just don't want you in jail. Steve told me to like, triple check that you were sure you wanted to stay, but with the way Tony looks at you these days I figure it's not just us looking out for you."

Maggie smiled again. "Let's just say you're not the only one to offer an out. I appreciate it, but no thank you. Where is Steve, anyway?"

"I don't really know. He can't exactly sneak into a New York courthouse as easily as Nat and I, all the makeup in the world couldn't hide those shoulders."

"Fair. Oh, and… hi," she said, belatedly realizing she hadn't actually said hello, just freaked out about Bucky.

He grinned. "Hi. It's good to see you. Though I've been seeing a lot more of you than you have of me, lately." He frowned. "That sounded less creepy in my head."

"No, I get it," she said, grinning back at him. "I figure that as an international fugitive your media presence isn't as big as mine right now." She shrugged. "It's good to see you, too. Old man and all." She pulled him in for a hug, and smiled when he returned it. When they pulled apart, she sighed. "I really want to catch up and ask how all of you are, but Natasha said ten minutes, right?"

He grimaced. "Right. So the second reason I'm here…" he sighed. "We didn't want to do this, but it's looking like our best option right now-"

"Just tell me."

He winced. "Okay, so… I don't know if Tony's told you yet, but Steve, Nat, and I were there with him when we busted the HYDRA base in… in Québec."

Maggie's face fell. "Oh."

"Yeah. So we know that there's a whole cache of data about how they… how you were…"

"How I was made," she finished flatly.

"Right," he agreed, his voice soft. "We were there when Tony found that data, and we heard him give JARVIS the command to lock it away from everyone, save for you. And the people who are working on Barnes's trigger words, they think that data could be the key to helping him. And you."

She let out a long, low breath, and distantly noticed that the hairs on the back of her neck were standing up. "Who is it?" she asked. Sam hesitated, so she continued: "Who's helping Bucky? Do they have a lab? What are their qualifications? What are they going to do with the data?" She knew she was bordering on rambling, but she could hear Tony's low, disturbed voice: there were… videos. Experiments. Training.

Sam sighed. "I can't tell you much, but I can tell you that the person I'm going to give the data to has yours and Barnes's best interests at heart. And she's crazy smart."

Maggie bit her lip. "And this person… she thinks she can find a way to fix us?"

He nodded, meeting her eyes to show her that he meant it.

She looked down at her folded hands. The thought of opening that Pandora's box terrified her, but she trusted Sam. She trusted Steve too, though he wasn't here, and she knew he was behind this – he wouldn't let Bucky lie frozen in a box without doing something about it. And the thought of getting rid of the trigger words for good…

She took a deep breath through the nose. "Okay," she breathed, and Sam's face softened. "Do… do they want everything?" She cursed the way her voice went high and vulnerable at the end, but Sam didn't judge. He just reached out and took her hand again.

"Everything relating to the trigger words, and the psychological conditioning," he said. "They'll purge anything that's not relevant from their servers, and get rid of all of it once they've finished using it. Steve told me to give you his word that he'd make sure that data only stays with the people who need to see it to help Bucky."

Steve's earnestness was palpable even second-hand. She sighed. "Alright, I'm in. How are we doing this, then? I'll need time to get the data, and you might have noticed but I tend to be heavily guarded. I won't be able to sneak out and meet up with you."

"We've got that covered," he said, reaching into his pocket. When he opened his palm, Maggie frowned down at what looked like a dark metal bead inscribed with a circular symbol. She glanced back up at Sam, who shrugged.

"I don't know how it works. They just told me to tell you that when you get access to the data, place this bead on the hard drive, it'll scan it and send the data to where it needs to be. When the bead flashes purple, touch the symbol on the side and it'll self-destruct."

"Like Mission Impossible?" She saw that one a few weeks ago with Rhodey.

He laughed. "That's what I asked, but apparently not. Your fingers are safe."

She picked the bead up and squinted at it. It was surprisingly heavy, and didn't feel like any metal she knew. An inkling of where it might have come from struck her.

"Sam, I know you don't know a lot about this thing, but I want you to be aware that I have many questions about how and why it works."

"Noted," he replied with a grin. "But please don't try to run experiments or anything on it, it's a one-time deal and this makeup is a nightmare on my skin, I don't want to wear it again to bring you another bead."

"Alright. I'll hold off out of respect for your skincare routine."

"Much appreciated."

Maggie tucked the bead into her pocket. "You guys are helping, right?"

He frowned, pausing in the middle of adjusting his suit. "Yeah, that's why I'm here."

"No, I mean…" she gestured vaguely. "With the world. Those rumors of people shutting down human trafficking rings, taking down terrorists… that's you guys, right?"

He froze. "You've heard about that?"

"Doesn't matter," she said, waving a hand. "You tell Steve to keep doing what he's doing. There are only three official Avengers right now, and they can use all the help they can get."

He broke out in another grin. "Yes, ma'am."

"And tell him…" she bit her lip. "Tell him that when Tony needs him, he'll call."

"Okay."

"And also tell him I don't blame him for Bucky going into cryo, I know Bucky's a stubborn ass and he'd have done it one way or another."

Sam's grin widened. "I agree with you on that one."

At that moment the door clicked open and Natasha slipped in. She eyed the both of them at the table and murmured: "lawyers are on their way up, we gotta go."

Maggie stood and watched them crank open the window as they swiftly arranged climbing gear. They worked well together, exchanging ropes and carabiners without a word.

"Stay safe," she said, as Natasha slung her legs out the window. The other woman looked over her shoulder, eyes warming for just a moment.

"No promises." She cocked her head. "Don't go to prison."

"No promises," Maggie smiled, but then a thought hit her. "When Bucky wakes up, tell him…" Natasha and Sam both looked back at her as she hesitated, uncertain about whether Bucky would be waking up any time soon, and what she should say. She settled on: "Tell him my mission's not over."

Natasha jumped out the window, but Sam was used to ending conversations like a normal person. "We will, Maggie. Stay safe, good luck in court. If you need anything, Tony's got that direct line to Steve, so give us a call."

"I will. Don't love that it's a flip phone, though."

Sam rolled his eyes. "Don't even get me started." And with that he jumped off the windowsill after Natasha.

Maggie closed the window just as the door opened behind her once more. She turned, smiling, as Diego and Kemp entered.

"Hello, Maggie," Diego said, juggling his briefcase and coat as he shot her a warm smile. "How are you?"

Her fingers brushed the bump in her pocket where the strange bead lay. "I'm well, thanks. I've got good people looking out for me."

When she got back to the Avengers Facility that afternoon, she asked F.R.I.D.A.Y. where Vision was, then made a beeline for the Avengers operations room. She wasn't allowed in there, but she knocked and told the agent who answered who she was looking for. When the agent stepped away from the door to call to Vision, Maggie caught a glimpse of a screen inside the operations room, and the three letters displayed on it: A.I.M.

She frowned and leaned to get a better look, but then Vision's body filled the doorway. "Maggie," he said. "How was your meeting with your lawyers?"

She smoothed her frown away and shrugged. "Alright. Listen, I need you to do me a favor."

He closed the operations room door behind him. "Certainly."

"Three months ago, you said that whenever I was ready to look at the Québec data, all I had to do was ask." She took a deep breath. "I'm asking."

His brow pinched. "Are you sure, Maggie?"

She lifted her chin. "Absolutely."

"Okay." Maggie bounced on the balls of her feet and shook her fingers, hoping that the boost of adrenaline would give her the courage to do this. "Okay, this is fine. You already lived it, it's over. This is just data. Lines of code, zeroes and ones."

She'd locked herself in the workshop. Vision had pricked her finger for a sample of DNA to unlock the digital lock-box, then uploaded the data onto a Stark tablet isolated from the wider mainframe. Then at Maggie's request, he'd left her alone with the tablet.

It currently lay on the main workbench, while Maggie psyched herself up to look at it. She could just drop the metal bead on it and call it a day, but she didn't want to send off all that data without checking what it was first – she remembered lots of horrible things being done to her, or done by her, and it wasn't all relevant to the trigger words.

She supposed she should have spoken to Dr Nguyen about this first, but she didn't want to implicate the woman in the very illegal activity of communicating with infamous fugitives. This was on Maggie, and she'd deal with the fallout.

As her thoughts wandered, she heard a ghost of a voice echo from the far reaches of her mind: Verre. Transmission. Affamé-

A full-body shudder ran through her, and she shook her head.

Just get it over with.

She marched toward the workbench, her face set, and turned on the tablet. It wanted fingerprint verification, and when that was done she looked with bated breath at… a table of contents. The data appeared to be organised by date and subject matter. At the very top of the screen, a greeting blinked into existence:

Welcome, Ms Stark.

Maggie smiled despite herself. She doubted Tony would have thought to include a greeting for the sister he didn't even know at that point, so this must have been JARVIS's idea. She'd never 'met' the A.I., but she found herself glad for the irrational kindness of the greeting.

"Thank you, Mr JARVIS," she whispered, thoughts of a tall, silver haired butler in her mind, and then clicked on the first entry.

Tony found her later, after her hours of reading through the patchy, corrupted data about the Wyvern Program, about the things that had been done to her and the things she had done. After she had read the Progress Reports and clinical notes signed Project Leader, or Chief Scientist Sanders. After she had read the notes and data about how they'd twisted her mind, wiped her over and over and bent her to their will.

After she had watched the videos of a younger version of herself beating men to the ground, the videos of Marino and the others digging away at her exposed bones, complete with the audio of her senseless screams. After she had seen the scans of her heartbreakingly small body, made strong with metal. After she'd seen the still of herself in the chair, twelve years old and screaming.

After she'd placed the metal bead on the Stark tablet with shaking hands, and watched it glow purple. After she'd touched the illuminated circular symbol and watched the bead vaporize into thin air.

Tony found her in the workshop after all this and stopped in the doorway, staring at her.

Maggie lay on the workbench, her legs dangling off the end, as she drank a clear liquid out of a beaker with a green straw. His eyes flicked from the beaker, to her eyes fixed on the ceiling, to the IV stand next to the workshop. He followed the line of the IV to the needle pressed into the crook of her elbow.

Tony's eyes widened, and his focus widened to the chaos around her – there were beakers, vials, tubes, and filtration systems strewn across the workspaces around her, some still bubbling with unidentified liquids. Dum-E and U rolled cautiously around the mess, occasionally gently prodding Maggie with their rubber grips, as if checking on her. A slow jazz song crooned from the workshop speakers.

Maggie somehow sensed him standing in the doorway.

"Do you know what I've been doing for the last three hours?" she asked, still looking at the ceiling.

Tony ran an eye over the mess once more. "Vision told me–"

"I have been inventing," she cut in, lifting the beaker with the green straw in it. She got one arm under herself and used it to push up to a sitting position on the workbench. She wobbled slightly, sloshing the liquid in the glass, and Tony's eyebrows shot up. He began hesitantly pacing toward her.

Maggie eyed the beaker, then pulled it to her chin to take another sip from the straw. "I finished going through the electronic vault," she said, enunciating her words carefully. "And then I thought: 'if my metabolism runs four times faster than the average human's, why couldn't I just distill a solution that has five times the normal amount of alcohol in it?'" She took another sip, as Tony's eyes got rounder and rounder. "It was difficult, and I had to formulate a drug that would slow down my kidney function at the same time" – she lifted her arm with the IV in it – "but I made it work."

Tony blinked, and looked from the empty beakers strewn around the workshop to his sister sitting on the bench. She was usually so well-balanced, like an athlete, but now she tilted from side to side like a sailor on deck. Her hair was strewn across her sweaty forehead, and when she reached behind her back for another beaker full of clear liquid, he noticed that her eyes were glassy.

"You're drunk," he said, rather unnecessarily.

Maggie nodded decisively and tossed her empty beaker at the workshop wall. It exploded on impact and rained down on a pre-existing pile of glass on the floor. "Yes," she said. "Today is the first time I have ever been drunk. I can see the appeal." She spotted Tony still staring at the pile of broken glass, and squinted. "I'll clean that up."

"It's like having a freaking Asgardian living in the place again," Tony grumbled to himself as he picked his way across the workshop. He stepped over a titration setup, his nose wrinkling at the sharp tang of alcohol in the air, then boosted himself onto the bench beside Maggie. She was busy poking a straw into her new beaker, and he watched her miss the opening three times before she finally got it in. She took a sip and then tilted her head to look at him with bleary eyes.

He rested his elbows on his knees. "You're not about to die of alcohol poisoning, are you?"

She snorted. "Of course not, I did all the calculations" – she waved a hand dramatically, and a holographic screen of formulas and equations appeared in midair – "and my math is excellent. I did it all while sober, too," she added, as if he ought to be impressed.

"Huh." He peered at her beaker. "Can I try that?"

She looked from him, to the beaker, and back again. "I dunno if that's a good idea," she said, but handed it over. "Don't do what I did with the whiskey."

He sniffed the beaker and could swear that he singed off some nose hairs. But he'd never been known for his good decision making, so he took a tentative sip. Immediately he gagged and spat out the solution, tears springing to his eyes as he shoved the beaker back at Maggie.

"Jesus Christ, Maggot," he said, gasping for air, "that's not alcohol, that's poison."

She shrugged and took another sip. Tony shook his head, feeling a little overwhelmed at the alcohol-thick air. It was like sitting in a distillery.

When he'd gotten over the shock of putting what tasted like aviation fuel in his mouth, he leaned back and watched Maggie drink. She was hunched over, staring into the beaker, still swaying slightly. Her eyes were distant.

He sighed. "It was bad, huh?"

"You've seen it," she whispered. "How did you deal with that?"

"Blew up an island," he replied. "Then… yeah, I did some drinking."

"Great minds," she said with a low chuckle, and toasted him. When she realized he didn't have a glass to clink against hers, she frowned and then gently knocked the beaker against his forehead. He raised his eyebrows at her but didn't complain.

After a long moment of silence, he murmured: "You shouldn't have had to do that alone."

She shrugged.

Tony sighed, and kicked his heels against the workbench legs. "Look," he began. "I'm… obviously not a great role model, for lots of reasons-"

"Not true!" she protested, head snapping up. Then she winced at how loudly she'd spoken and pressed her lips together.

"Anyway," he said, "I'm not used to being… you know, role-model-esque, but… I kinda feel like I've got some wisdom to impart here."

"I absolutely cannot guarantee you that I'll remember it, but go ahead." She shuffled around so she was mostly facing him, nearly falling off the bench in the process.

"Right, uh… well, I've been partial to a drink or two, you might have read about it in the news. Hell, you probably remember from when you were a kid." That hit him hard, realizing that this had been a thirty-year problem. He reflected on that for a second, then shook his head and continued. "And honestly, I can't remember a single time I felt good about myself when I used alcohol to forget, or to smother up whatever shit was happening in my life at the time. I think most people agree that alcoholism is bad, but… take it from a guy who's been there." He shrugged, avoiding her eyes.

Her head settled on his shoulder, surprising him, then he wrinkled his nose at the alcohol fumes.

"Thank you," she murmured. "I'm not doing this as like, a revolutionary new life plan. It's too much effort to do all this every time, and I really hated putting the needle in. But what I saw in that vault… it scared me, Tony. And I wanted to try something normal for once."

He sighed and propped his head against hers. He noticed she'd put away the beaker. "Well if Thor ever comes back, get him to give you some of his Asgardian mead, that worked on Ste–" he cut himself off, then grit his teeth and continued. "It got Steve drunk."

Maggie laughed tiredly into his shoulder. "I'd like to see that," she said, then lifted her head. She climbed carefully off the bench. "Maybe I will one day."

Tony helped her down, ignoring the way his heart clenched at her words. He helped her pull out the IV line, and held her hair back for her when she threw up in the trash bin. He nursed her through her hour-long hangover, plying her with water and food. She was sober by night time, so he walked her back to her room and gave her a long, squeezing hug before she went to bed.

Research Facility, Wakanda

Thousands of miles away, four people gathered around a glowing holographic display of a recent transmission.

"You didn't mention Wakanda while you were there, did you?" asked Princess Shuri, frowning at a secondary message that had been sent with the data.

"No, why?" asked Sam, glancing at Natasha.

The young genius pointed to the message: Ndiyabulela. She raised her eyebrows at her guests.

"N-diya.. bulela?" Steve read aloud. "What does that mean?"

Shuri frowned. "It means thank you. In Wakandan."

Comprehension crossed their faces, and Sam reached up to pinch his nose. "That woman is going to give me an aneurysm," he groaned.

"This won't be a problem, your highness," Natasha said, her face and voice calm. "Maggie knows to keep this to herself."

Shuri eyed Natasha, then the single Wakandan word. "Alright," she said, with a shrug. "My brother won't be happy, but he has a guilt complex about that woman so that should help. I'll get started right away, though I should warn you that this may not be a quick process."

"Thank you," Steve said earnestly. "We'll get out of your hair. Oh and your highness–" she'd already started scrolling through the transmission again, but she looked up. "Be careful, going through that data. It's not easy reading. Or watching." A shadow crossed his face, and behind him Natasha's eyes darkened.

Shuri inclined her head. "I am prepared, Captain." The sobriety to her gaze was quickly chased away by a glint of mischief. "Ndiyabulela."