Chapter 62

24th December, 2016

Avengers Facility, Upstate New York

Christmas fell on a gloomy weekend. The Avengers Facility gleamed with twinkling lights and vibrant Christmas trees, but the mood within didn't feel as much like a holiday as it did a funeral. There was a big Avengers staff party with all the agents, analysts, and scientists, but Maggie didn't go. They deserved a party after spending the year protecting the world, they didn't need a mass murderer there.

Rhodey had plans to visit his family on Christmas morning so the Avengers gathered in their common room on Christmas Eve for a celebration. Maggie almost didn't go to that either, but Pepper appeared in her room, tossed a red and green Christmas sweater at her and dragged her to the common room.

Maggie found herself sitting on one of the couches by the Christmas tree with a paper crown on her head, drinking eggnog, as Bing Crosby's I'll Be Home For Christmas crooned from the speakers. The song – both the singer and the lyrics – echoed in the deep, aching part of herself that hadn't gone away since that frozen day in Siberia.

The couch shifted, and she glanced to her left to see Tony sitting beside her. He'd escaped the Christmas sweater treatment, dressed as nicely as ever in an expensive suit, but there was an ever-present furrow in his brow.

"Sorry for ruining Christmas," Maggie murmured.

He put an arm around her shoulders. "You haven't ruined Christmas, Magrinch."

She gestured at the common room. Rhodey and Pepper stood by the enormous Christmas tree, murmuring in subdued tones. Happy frowned down at his phone, and Vision stood by the dark windows, looking out at the thin layer of snow on the lawns. The atmosphere in the room was subdued, and the empty spaces echoed with absences.

"Behold," she muttered.

Tony sighed. "It's not just the trial. It's the first Christmas after… y'know."

Her eyes squeezed shut. "Right. Sorry, I didn't even–"

"You've got a lot on your mind, I don't blame you."

She sighed and leaned in to him. "What was Christmas like last year?"

"Well it wasn't all sleigh bells and merrymaking. I knew you were out there somewhere. But we… we celebrated together. The Avengers. We all split off to go to other places afterwards, but on Christmas Eve we were together. It was…" his face twisted, and Maggie's heart ached at the conflict in his eyes. "It was good."

She could tell she wasn't going to get more than that out of him. After a wistful moment, Tony raised an eyebrow at her.

She closed her eyes. "Last Christmas I was in Croatia." She remembered it like it was yesterday instead of a year ago: she and Bucky had bought a tiny Christmas tree for their safehouse, one that they could donate before they moved on, and exchanged gifts. They had gone out to see Christmas in the city, left footprints in the snow, and Maggie had kissed Bucky beside a fountain ablaze with lights. She remembered thinking for this night, I am unafraid.

She sighed, and Tony squeezed her until Pepper called to him and he got up to speak to her. Maggie watched him with her chin propped in her hand. Pepper whispered something in his ear and he grinned, his face lighting up as he looked down at his fiancé. Vision wandered from the window to the Christmas tree.

Suddenly, a thought occurred to Maggie – this could be the last Christmas she spent outside a jail cell. Her heart pounded, but the thought had her standing up and walking toward the others. If this was the last chance she got to celebrate Christmas with her family, she was determined to enjoy it.

The rest of the night passed in a less somber mood – they ate dinner together, trading jokes and teasing one another, and Pepper told the story of Christmas three years ago, when Tony had bought her an enormous stuffed bunny, invited a terrorist to blow up their mansion, and then blew up all his suits. It should have been depressing but wasn't, Pepper's endearing retelling mixed with Tony's snarky additions leaving the others at the table laughing.

On Christmas morning the Avengers – sans Rhodey – gathered once more to exchange gifts. Everyone seemed to have silently agreed not to discuss anything trial or crime-fighting related, so the morning passed in a tense kind of peace.

Maggie had never bought presents for so many people before. She'd also given presents to her lawyers (a scalp massager for the headache-prone Andrea and a fuzzy scarf for Diego), and Shirley (a copy of one of the photobooth photos with she and Bucky beaming at the camera, with strict instructions not to show it to anyone under any circumstances. Shirley had taken the present with shining eyes).

Her presents to the others seemed to be well received. Tony was stubbornly saving his presents for last, so Maggie was surprised when midway through the festivities he plucked a present wrapped in red paper from the lower branches of the tree and offered it to her.

At her raised eyebrow, Tony explained: "It's not from me. It got dropped off by a little spider earlier this week."

Maggie's eyebrows shot up, and then her heart swelled. She sometimes saw Peter at the facility on the weekends, when he dropped by for suit updates or to give reports. She'd usually been run off her feet and emotionally drained, but Peter never failed to cheer her up when he stopped to say hi and chat for a while.

"I didn't get him anything," she realized, frowning down at the box.

Tony waved a hand. "He said you gave him that Rubik's cube a couple months ago. Go on, open it – I wanted to scan it to see what the kid got you, but F.R.I.D.A.Y. said that would be unethical."

Smiling, Maggie tore open the paper to reveal a jigsaw puzzle of the New York skyline from above, the skyscrapers and river gleaming in an orange sunset. She beamed. "He's a good kid."

Once everyone else had exchanged presents, Tony finally let them open the ones from him. Happy, Vision, and Pepper all opened their gifts and thanked him. But those were the last ones under the tree.

Once the tree was empty, Tony clapped his hands and announced: "F.R.I.D.A.Y., initiate the North Pole Protocol."

At that a section of the sleek grey floor opened up with a hiss, revealing a metal podium that lifted into view laden with a pile of presents wrapped in red and gold paper.

Pepper glanced up at the ceiling, searching for strength. Vision and Happy exchanged a glance, and Maggie stared open mouthed at Tony.

"What are those?" she managed to sputter.

He waved to the raised podium of gifts like a ringmaster. "Your presents," he said, as if that was obvious. "All twenty six of them."

It took her a moment to catch on. When she did, her hand flew up to her mouth and she stared at Tony with round eyes. Twenty six Christmases.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Pepper smiling as she glanced between the two of them.

"Tony," Maggie managed to say after a long moment. "I only got you one present–"

"So I'm clearly better than you," he said with a grin. "We both knew that, this is just proof."

She scoffed at the words, but she was still taken aback at the gesture. Vision put a hand on her shoulder.

"Well c'mon Marshmallow, get cracking," Tony said, waving at the gifts again. "This is your Dudley Dursley moment."

She rolled her eyes but did as he said, getting started on unwrapping her presents.

He'd bought her all kinds of things from electronics, to decorations for her room, to books, to clothes. She laughed as she unwrapped it all, but a dark corner of her mind whispered that she didn't deserve this. That it wouldn't last.

But that dark corner fell silent when she reached her last present. This one wasn't wrapped in shiny paper but in faded, yellowing newspaper, tied up with a frayed electrical cable. Her heart leapt into her throat, and she glanced up at Tony.

"Is this…"

He was sitting by Pepper now, and she could see from the shadows in his eyes that her suspicions about this present were right. He nodded. "Yeah. That one's been waiting a long time for you to unwrap it, Maggot."

Twenty five years. A hush fell as Maggie carefully pulled away the frayed wire and peeled open the aged paper. When she saw what was inside, her eyes welled with tears.

It was a pilot's cap – navy blue, with a winged star emblazoned on the front. It smelled like dust and years, but the fabric felt strong under her fingers.

Tony cleared his throat. "Saw that lying around when I visited Rhodey's airbase back in '91. I… re-purposed it. I meant to give it to you before…" he swallowed. "Before you left. But I forgot."

Maggie jammed the cap on her head, and in seconds had bounded across the room to wrap her arms around her brother.

"Thank you," she whispered into his ear as the others in the room cheered and toasted each other with their coffee mugs.

That night Pepper climbed into bed beside Tony, who absently played with the Chinese finger trap he'd gotten in his Christmas cracker. He still wore his crumpled Christmas hat, though it was nearly torn down the middle. Pepper smiled fondly at him until she noticed the distant look in his eyes and the furrow in his brow.

She sighed. "You did a good thing today, Tony."

He glanced up with raised eyebrows.

"With Maggie," she elaborated. She deserves to be spoiled." Maggie had gone to her room that night with cheeks flushed from laughter and a gleam in her eyes. Pepper hadn't seen that look on her face in a while.

"I know," Tony murmured, gazing at his fingers trapped in the bamboo toy.

Pepper rolled onto her side to face him. "You're worried about the trial."

He snorted. "Aren't you?"

"Of course I am. But Kemp and Martinez haven't given up, far from it, and I trust them. We both know Maggie's not responsible for the things she did, and I'm sure they'll prove it."

Tony still wouldn't look up from his trapped fingers. His face was dark. "The system doesn't always work, Pepper. It's meant to protect people like Maggie, but… HYDRA made her do some goddamn terrible things, and as far as the public and the jury are concerned she's the only one left to blame. Fear and anger are pretty powerful."

Pepper opened her mouth to contradict him, but he turned to meet her gaze and she knew she couldn't deny the truth of his words. She'd spent years running his company, even before she was CEO, and she knew better than most that what was right didn't always come to pass. She settled for smoothing a hand over Tony's chest, where the arc reactor used to be.

Proof that Tony Stark has a heart, she mused.

"I know you're not going to like this," she said, "because you're you and you need facts and figures to feel confident in anything, but…" she bit her lip. "Things look bad now, really bad, but I have faith that Kemp and Martinez are going to do right by Maggie. They're going to fight for her, and they're not the only ones. You and I both know that anyone who's met Maggie and gotten to know her will fight to help her. Because she deserves it." Pepper heaved herself up on one elbow to press her lips to Tony's forehead. He wrinkled his brow, just to be annoying, but she felt some of his anxiety seep away. "She's got a good team on her side. And a wonderful brother."

Tony freed himself from the finger trap and looked down at his hands. "That might not be enough."

Pepper dropped her forehead against his shoulder. "It will be. It has to be."

Medical Bay, Wakanda

Shuri was walking through the medical bay when she heard the voice.

"… could've given me some warning that I was gonna be keeping an eye on someone as stubborn as you–"

The voice emanated from one of the long-term stay rooms, which Shuri definitely wasn't used to hearing voices coming from, so she backtracked until she stood in the open doorway.

It was Sergeant Barnes' room. The one-armed super soldier remained in his glass tube, obscured by the ice frosting the inside of the glass. But Shuri knew that if you looked just right, you could see and his closed eyes and shadowed jaw through the ice. Monitors beside the cryo-tube glowed with steady bio-readouts.

Sergeant Barnes wasn't alone. Someone had set up a couple of chairs in the corner of the room (Shuri suspected her brother, the big softie), where one could sit and look at the frosted glass for a while. One of these chairs was currently occupied by the large figure of Captain Rogers – he and the Black Widow had arrived in the early hours of the morning with intel about a terrorist group that Wakanda might be interested in stopping (which Shuri wasn't supposed to know about, but she couldn't help it if her finger slipped and she tapped into council meeting audio).

Captain Rogers was still wearing his dark-blue uniform (which Shuri thought was a little dramatic what with the torn-off star and the slightly rolled up sleeves, but she supposed nonagenarians were entitled to their flights of fancy), his hands on his knees and his head tipped back as if looking up at his frozen friend's face. His voice seemed loud in the normally quiet room.

"No matter what happens I'll look out for her, Buck," he said. He sounded exhausted, and his voice was hard with forced confidence. "I'm sorry I couldn't keep her from being dragged through the mud like this, but she's strong and we're not gonna let anything happen to her. And we're gonna get you fixed up, get your head right, and we'll help her with that too." He sighed, and his head dropped. When he next spoke, the forced confidence was gone. "Feels like I can't keep anyone safe, these days."

There was a long, awful silence. Not even the medical machines beeped – Wakanda was beyond such rudimentary technology. Shuri didn't dare breathe.

"You always liked Christmas," Captain Rogers eventually said in a lower voice. "Family, food, gifts… drinking," he added, and she could hear the smile in his voice. "I know you got me drunk on that eggnog that one time on purpose, you jerk, you wanted me to make a fool of myself in front of your sisters–"

Shuri suddenly realized that she was being a huge eavesdropping dick, and abruptly backed away. Her heart sank with every step.

She'd been watching the Maggie Stark trial along with the rest of the world, but having read the things she had in the Québec data she was angry that no one else saw what she did – that Maggie Stark was just another victim, not a victimizer. But there wasn't much she could do for the woman other than work on the insidious, lurking trigger words that were rooted so deep that even Shuri was struggling with finding a cure.

Shuri sighed and glanced over her shoulder at the med bay before she left. She couldn't imagine how she'd feel if the only way she could talk to T'Challa was through a plate of frozen glass while he slept on, oblivious.

She doubled her pace. Well, guess who's working through Christmas? She had a playlist of terrible dubstep remixes of Christmas music to keep her entertained as she worked, and since opening their borders Wakanda had received a lot of gifts in the form of food – she would have more than her fair share of weird and wonderful snacks.

She went back to her lab and her endless research into the inner workings of Sergeant Barnes' mind.

We're so close.

December 26, 2016

Thurgood Marshall Courthouse, New York City

The next day saw Maggie and her family back in court again save for Vision, who stayed at the facility. The brief spark of optimism that Christmas had brought was washed away in the cold light of morning on the courthouse steps.

Inside, Judge Moore said that he hoped everyone had had a happy holiday period, though his face showed that he doubted it. Then he called up the next witness.

"Dr Wells," said Mallory, looking over his glasses. "Exhibits 45 and 46 show us that Ms Stark has an incredibly high IQ. Now, you've conducted research into the link between high IQ and criminal activity, could you please explain that for us?"

The doctor, a burly man in his late sixties with a receding ginger hairline, cleared his throat. "My team and I realized that a lot of studies had been done on the link between low IQ and crime, but not the upper end of the spectrum. We studied a group of adults with an unusually high IQ – over 140."

"What did you find?"

"We found that this group reported much higher crime rates than our control group of people with more normal IQ scores."

"What kinds of crimes?"

"Small things like copyright violations and trespassing, but also more serious crimes like arson, kidnapping, and armed robbery. Even murder. This group was also more likely to get away with their crimes."

"Are you saying that all smart people are criminals?"

The doctor smiled. "Certainly not. But we found that there is a threshold after which a high IQ becomes a risk factor for criminal behavior." At the defense desk, Maggie looked over her shoulder at Tony. He waggled his eyebrows and she turned around – if he wasn't going to take this seriously, she wouldn't look at him.

"Why is that?" Mallory asked.

"The highly gifted experience more isolation, bullying, and difficulty in forming attachments, which are all risk factors for criminal behavior. Also, they feel that society's rules don't apply to them."

Mallory nodded. "Now, you've examined various descriptions and reports about Ms Stark as a child – I'm referring to exhibits 110 through 119, which the jury now have before them." Maggie eyed the exhibits. One of them was a transcript of Mr Jarvis's eulogy at her funeral.

Mallory continued: "Do you see signs of what you've described – isolation, bullying, difficulty in forming attachments – there?"

"I do," Wells agreed. Behind her, Maggie heard Tony inhale sharply. "Here we have letters from teachers explaining that Ms Stark did not integrate well with students, that she didn't form friendships, that she didn't engage with classes."

"What does this suggest to you?"

"Well, it suggests to me a highly intelligent, isolated child with no meaningful social integration. And the material does not suggest any form of punishment or repercussions for her behavior, so I can only infer that this child, a child of privilege, likely felt entitled and exempt from rules. That is very rocky ground for such a gifted individual to begin life from."

Maggie dug her fingers into her seat, pointedly staring at the desk and not at the doctor. She could feel every sideways glance and unkind remark that had been made to her during her brief time at school rising to the surface. Smart, snobby, stuck-up Stark.

"Do you have any other remarks to make about the defendant's early psychology?" Mallory asked.

"I do. If I saw these early criminal behavior indicators in a child, I would be concerned. I would be more concerned if I heard – as this document indicates–"

"That's Exhibit 117, a transcript of a former Stark Industries' employee's testimony," Mallory supplied.

"Yes. It indicates that as a child, Ms Stark was drawn to creating and watching explosions. This stands out to me, as arson is one pillar of the Macdonald triad, also known as the homicidal triad–"

"You have got to be fucking kidding me."

The court gasped. Maggie turned around and stared at Tony, who at some point had gotten to his feet and was glaring at doctor Wells, his dark eyes burning.

"Mr Stark, please return to your seat and remain silent," Judge Moore said, eyeing the billionaire with an unimpressed look on his face.

Tony tore his eyes away from Wells and looked at Andrea and Diego. "You're going to let him spout that bullshit?"

"Tony, sit down," Maggie murmured. Everyone was staring. She could sense Judge Moore's patience waning, and if Tony got kicked out she didn't know what she'd do without his vivid, sturdy presence behind her. Rhodey looked similarly furious, but he tugged at Tony's sleeve to get him to sit down. Tony met Maggie's eyes, scowled, and then finally sat.

"Thank you," she mouthed, and turned around.

"If that's quite all," Moore said, one eyebrow raised, "then you may continue Doctor Wells."

And so the doctor did. After describing all the ways in which Maggie's childhood indicated she would become a mass murderer, Mallory directed the doctor to change tacks.

"Doctor, you've reviewed the evidence for each crime on the charge list for this defendant. Tell me about the kind of person who would commit these crimes."

"Objection, your honor!" called Diego. "This witness has been called to discuss his studies into the link between IQ and crime-"

Mallory cut in: "Doctor Wells is a forensic psychologist, your honor, I assure you this is within his scope of expertise."

Moore glanced between the two lawyers. "Objection overruled," he decided. "Carry on, doctor."

"Right. Well, the person who could commit this number of crimes, with such a high level of violence and organisation but no visible sign of emotion at the scene… they wouldn't have a conscience. They'd be psychopathic, or at least sociopathic: incapable of feeling empathy, highly intelligent and organised, with considerable superficial charm. They would also be a skilled manipulator. If I saw this kind of crime scene, I'd be telling law enforcement that they were looking for a cold-blooded serial killer, or a contract killer."

"Thank you, Dr Wells," Mallory said with a nod. "No further questions."

Andrea got to her feet before the judge even said another word. As soon as he gave the go ahead, she turned on the witness. "Dr Wells, let's talk about your study of the high-IQ adults. Did you and your team analyse police reports? Crime rates? Court documents?"

"No," the doctor replied.

"Then what evidence did you base your study on? How did you find the crime rates for that group?"

He frowned. "The crimes were self-reported."

"Did you verify these self-reported facts?"

"… No."

"I see. And – I have your study here, did you write it?"

"Of course I did," the doctor replied, disgruntled.

"So these are your own words then. Could you please read the highlighted section, here?"

Wells took the sheaf of paper from Andrea and ran his eyes over the page. He barely managed to conceal a scowl.

"Any time, Dr Wells," Andrea said, folding her hands in front of her.

He cleared his throat. "While these findings are surprising, it must be stressed that the crime rate in this IQ bracket is far lower than amongst individuals with low IQs."

"Thank you, Dr Wells. I also have here eight other subsequent studies on the subject of crime rates amongst high-IQ individuals. Are you aware of these studies? Have you read them?"

Dr Wells eyed the list of studies. "Yes, I've read them."

"Would you be so kind as to summarize their general findings?"

He gritted his teeth. "They found few signs of a significantly higher crime rate amongst that IQ bracket."

"I see. So even though other studies have found different results, and your own study indicates that its results are to be taken with a grain of salt, you've made some pretty strong remarks about my client. I'm curious, Dr Wells – when it comes to other notable geniuses such as Einstein, Hawking, or Savant, would you be so cavalier about labeling them psychopaths and mass murderers?"

Mallory stood up. "Your honor, she's arguing with the witness."

"Watch yourself, Mrs Kemp," Moore warned.

Andrea smiled. Maggie's eyes widened at the sight – Andrea hardly ever smiled, and when she did it wasn't this sharp-edged flash of teeth. "Certainly, your honor," she said, then turned back to the witness. "Now, Dr Wells. Have you ever had a conversation with Margaret Stark?"

"No," the doctor said. His skin was tinged red.

"I see. Now I'm sure that you're used to working in the dark, Dr Wells, drawing inferences from crime scenes. But say there are two doctors: one has seen only the crime scene photos, and the other has spoken with the individual in question and had numerous consultations with them in the context of evaluating their mental health. Which doctor would you say is more qualified to make an assessment of the individual's state of mind?"

Wells' forehead was shiny now. "The second one," he grumbled.

"I see. No further questions, your honor." Andrea turned her back on Dr Wells and paced back behind the defense desk. Maggie eyed her warily.

"I'm glad you're on my side," she murmured as Dr Wells was led out.

Andrea smiled. "You should be."

That afternoon Maggie left the courthouse, already bracing for the crowd she was about to walk through. She didn't think she'd ever get used to it: the flashing, snapping cameras, the shouted questions and abuse, the flashes of faces. For someone used to working in the shadows, it was jarring.

Sure enough the volume on the courthouse steps tripled as soon as she emerged from the courthouse door. She focused on breathing and kept her gaze fixed ahead. Her lawyers, Tony, Rhodey, and Pepper pressed closer around her and they began the slow push through the crowd toward the car Happy had idling on the curb, as Andrea and Diego periodically responded to the shouted questions from reporters. People waved signs. Maggie could feel Tony's shoulder pressed against hers, warm and reassuring.

She wasn't sure what made her look up at the flash of movement to her right, but one moment she looked up, and the next she moved.

Maggie sprang into the crowd. Someone shouted in alarm. A gunshot rang out across the stone steps.

In an instant the shouting crowd burst out in screams and dove for cover, dozens of people hunching on the steps and pushing into each other in their fear. One of the TV cameras, which had followed Maggie's sudden movement, filmed her as she crushed a semi-automatic pistol in her hand like it was made of paper and tossed it aside. Her other hand pressed a man's face against the courthouse steps, and her knee dug into his back. The man, bearded with a dark cap on his head, cried out in pain.

Seconds later the on-duty police officers waded through the crowd and glanced from the man on the ground to Maggie, her face hard and her limbs unyielding as she restrained him. In the moments before the police took the man away and Maggie was rushed by her lawyers, the single standing cameraman zoomed in on her shoulder, where her white blouse bloomed with a scarlet stain.

BREAKING: MARGARET STARK SHOT ON COURTHOUSE STEPS.

"Ow," Maggie complained, as a doctor probed the hole in her shoulder. The doctor murmured an apology then kept poking.

She sat on the edge of a hospital bed in a private room, trying not to let her instinctive fear of white walls and sterile equipment make the pain radiating from her shoulder any worse. The sheer number of people packed into the room with her wasn't helping: Tony stood right over the doctor's shoulder, his face white and his breath coming fast enough to make her concerned he was about to have a panic attack. His hands were still stained with her blood – he'd been the one to put pressure on her wound until the ambulance arrived, begging her to stay awake, Maggie, oh god, while she'd reassured him in increasing annoyance that she wasn't going anywhere.

Pepper and Rhodey weren't doing too much better, alternating between crossing their arms and tapping their feet, their faces pinched with worry. Vision had flown all the way from the Avengers Facility. They were all at the edges of the room, though, making space for the doctors and nurses, Maggie's anxious lawyers, and the police officers there to interview her.

Maggie concealed another wince as the doctor swabbed her exit wound – the bullet had bounced off the Adamantium coating her bones and ricocheted out of the top of her shoulder. She'd lost some blood, but she'd definitely had worse wounds before.

Maggie gestured for the lead detective to continue with his questions.

"Did the shooter say anything?" he asked.

"No." Maggie shifted to give the doctor better access, holding the ruined remains of her blouse across her chest. "Well he was yelling a bit when I broke his hand and held him down, but he didn't say anything."

"Why do you think he attempted to assassinate you?"

Tension crackled through the room at that question, but Maggie frowned.

"He wasn't attempting to assassinate me." She looked up and took in everyone's disbelieving faces. "Wait, you all think he was trying to shoot me?"

Rhodey cleared his throat. "Well you kinda got shot, Maggie…" he said, gesturing to the bloody hole in her shoulder.

"Yeah, because I got in the way." She looked around again, but was met with nothing but surprise. Her brow furrowed. "He was aiming for Tony."

There was a stunned silence, and then everyone turned to look at Tony. His eyes were wide.

Maggie shrugged, then winced as the movement brought a fresh bolt of pain lancing from her shoulder. "I know what I saw. I looked up, saw the gun pointed at Tony, saw the guy looking at Tony. And I stopped him." She'd barely noticed what she was doing until it was done – her instincts had taken over and all she'd thought was disarm and disable, until it was done.

Tony blinked, reached up to pinch his nose, then saw the blood on his fingers and thought better of it. "Maggie, shit," he breathed. "You… you can't take bullets for me!"

"You're right, next time I'm not going to let them get off a shot at all."

Tony gaped at her, his pupils still narrow with panic. One of the police officers cleared his throat.

"Well, uh… Mr Stark, can you think of a reason why someone would want to shoot you?"

At that, the Avengers in the room shared a look. Maggie, wincing as her shoulder got poked at, watched them with keen eyes – they made knowing eye contact with one another, then nodded imperceptibly. Vision turned to the officers.

"It sounds like this is an Avengers matter," he said. "We'll look into it, officers."

The police officers shared their own glance.

Maggie opened her mouth, eyes darting. "I–"

"No," Tony interrupted, "Whatever you're about to say, no."

She scowled.

After a few more questions, the police cast one last disbelieving look at the gathering inside the hospital room and then left. The doctors finished dressing Maggie's wound and explained that with her enhanced healing factor she didn't need to stay. They told her how to take care of the wound, double checked that she didn't want pain medication – "it's not gonna work, sorry" – then cleared out as well. As far as gunshot wounds went it wasn't bad – two exit wounds and a cracked clavicle, some blood loss but nothing she hadn't been through before.

Maggie sighed, squeezing her eyes shut and rolling her head from side to side. Between slipping back into combat mode and getting shot, her muscles were rigid with tension. She felt a hand rest, feather light, on her uninjured shoulder and opened her eyes to see Pepper looking down at her with tears tracking down her cheeks.

"I'm okay," she said unnecessarily, stricken that everyone was freaking out over her. She put her hand over Pepper's. "Really, I've been shot before and this is, like, nothing."

"It doesn't look like nothing," Pepper protested. Maggie glanced at her shoulder, bound in white gauze, with her left arm immobilized against her side in a sling. As she looked, she suddenly noticed that Andrea and Diego were murmuring to each other in the corner.

She picked up on a few words: "– ask for an adjournment right away–"

"What?" she blurted out, drawing everyone's attention. "No, we're not" – she shifted so she could see Andrea and Diego better – "we're not adjourning the trial, don't do that."

Diego's eyebrows shot up. "Maggie–"

"I'll be fine! I've done much harder things while shot than sitting in a room doing nothing."

From the shock and disbelief on everyone's faces, Maggie knew they were all about to start arguing with her. But she wasn't going to back down on this.

Once she'd convinced her lawyers not to change the court schedule, Maggie went home to the mansion in a car with Happy, Tony, Rhodey, and Pepper. Each small bump in the road made her shoulder flare with pain, but she didn't let it show on her face. Happy kept muttering about lax courthouse security and eyeing every car on the road as if it contained assassins, so he wasn't concentrating very hard on smooth driving.

Tony hadn't spoken since the hospital room. He looked wrecked, but he kept anxiously hovering over her as if she'd drop dead any minute. And he kept glancing at her, opening his mouth, then closing it again and looking away.

Maggie would normally be endeared by his obvious worry, but the Avengers had shared a look. "You know why that guy tried to shoot you," she said. Rhodey's head jumped up.

Tony whipped around. "Maggie, that is so not the point-"

"Who was he? Why did he want to kill you?"

"Maggie, we're going to handle it. You've got enough on your plate right now and–"

"– if someone's trying to kill you then I want to–"

"– there's not a lot you can do about it anyway!" he finished, gesticulating wildly.

Maggie's eyes sparked and she straightened in her seat, but Rhodey put a hand on her uninjured shoulder with a sigh. "I know you worry about him Maggie, but we can deal with this. Trust us." Pepper watched the three of them with a perpetual frown creasing her brows, and one hand on Tony's knee.

Maggie sank back in her seat, winced at a fresh bolt of pain from her soldier, and scowled. Tony was still shifting restlessly so after a long moment of sulking she poked him in the side. "Say what you want to say."

He let out an explosive sigh. "You're so stupid!" He said. "First you go and get shot–" at Pepper's disapproving glare he added: "thank you, by the way. But after that most people would stay in the hospital and take a few days to recover, Maggie!" His voice was getting higher and higher. "So… so stupid," he finished, shaking his head.

"Nah," she replied, and winked at him. "I've just got a chip on my shoulder."

The affronted look Tony shot her made her laugh, and even though it hurt she didn't stop, because out of all the awful things she'd been through over the past few weeks, getting shot to save her brother's life didn't even bear a mention.

No one could quite believe that Maggie was going back into court the day after she got shot on national TV. When she showed up the next morning in a sling, she climbed out of the car to find that the courthouse steps were absolutely packed.

"D'you reckon they're hoping someone else will try to shoot me?" Tony asked curiously, and Maggie rolled her eyes.

"Let them try," she said, then smirked at him. "I've got another shoulder."

That wiped the amused look from his face. They walked side-by-side up the stairs, past the step that had been stained with Maggie's blood only yesterday, and into the courthouse. People still shouted, and news crews jostled to get a shot of her face and her sling.

Maggie kept her head high.

"Mrs Kemp," said Judge Moore, his eyebrows raised behind his glasses, "Are you sure your client is fit to sit through a full day of court today?"

Andrea spread her hands. "Your honor, my client is determined not to slow down proceedings."

At that, Moore looked from Andrea to Maggie. "Ms Stark? No one would blame you for taking a few days off. You got shot," he added, as if she hadn't noticed.

Maggie nodded. "I'll be okay, your honor. Thank you."

"Well alright then." With a sigh, Moore motioned for court to begin.

"Mr Miller, in your professional opinion as a senior financial analyst at the NSA, what do these transactions tell us?"

"Well it's complicated," said the grim-faced analyst. "My team and I followed each small transaction to a series of shell accounts. They were expertly hidden, but we uncovered them with time and effort."

"We appreciate your diligent work, Mr Miller," Mallory said. "What did you find?"

"We found that the missing HYDRA funds had been funneled to a series of accounts controlled by the defendant, Margaret Stark."

The packed courtroom burst out in whispers. Maggie froze. She felt Tony staring at the back of her head. Her lawyers weren't so unprofessional as to turn and glare at her, but she felt their bodies go stiff on either side of her, and she sensed the oncoming storm.

The jurors glanced from the witness to the sheaves of financial documents in front of them, their eyebrows raised and pens poised.

Oh, shit.

After receiving a vehement dressing-down from her lawyers for withholding information (apparently "I didn't think about it" didn't cut it when it came to thousands of dollars stolen from HYDRA accounts) they returned to the courtroom for cross-examination. Maggie had given Kemp and Diego enough to ask focused questions that revealed that the funds hadn't been accessed until after she escaped from HYDRA, and that there was no evidence of her being paid before then. The air was more or less cleared, but the seeds had been laid.

All the media could talk about that evening was the possibility that Margaret Stark was a paid HYDRA agent to the last.

The following days were filled with various expert witnesses from various government agencies making various assertions about Maggie's collusion with HYDRA. Maggie sat and listened, pointedly ignoring the dull pain in her shoulder and Tony's poorly-concealed anger at each witness. At least the pain in her shoulder was less after she went a round in Helen Cho's Cradle – it had worked wonders, but Dr Cho ordered her to stay in the sling to make sure her joint healed right.

It seemed that the prosecution's case was drawing to a close, but Maggie couldn't bring herself to be relieved. She had no illusions that the defense case would be any easier on her mental health, and after everything she'd seen… well, the jury so far had no reason to find her anything but guilty.

She was considering the best way to go about preparing for life in prison one afternoon as she awkwardly washed her free hand in the courthouse ladies' bathroom. She'd more or less figured out how to do everything with one hand, and the doctors said the sling could come off in a few more days.

Suddenly, a prickle of awareness crackled across the back of her neck. She didn't visibly react, but her eyes flicked around the small bathroom as she chased the feeling. There. An unopened stall door. Maggie had been in the bathroom for nearly ten minutes, what with the sling getting in the way, and that door had been closed the whole time. And now the lock was turning–

Maggie whirled around, hand already flying to the sling's clasp to rid herself of any restraints if it came to a fight, but she hesitated at the sight of the woman who stepped out from the stall. Her tear-filled eyes glittered with anger, maybe even hatred, but this wasn't a woman preparing herself for combat. She was in her mid-thirties, pretty, with pale blonde hair and big brown eyes. Her hands were shaking. Maggie tensed as the woman took a breath.

She let out the breath with two words, spoken like a curse: "Ben Mitchell."

Maggie's eyes closed and she sagged back against the countertop. When she opened her eyes again the woman's gaze burned into her, determined and wrathful.

"I killed him," Maggie murmured. Thirty one year old male, limited access. Poisoning. "Who was he to you?"

The woman's face flickered. Grief seeped through the cracks, but then the anger returned. "My brother."

Maggie wanted to curl into a ball and shrivel into nothing. But she met the other woman's gaze evenly. "I know it doesn't help, but… I'm sorry. Is there anything I can do?"

The woman took a step forward, fists balling. Maggie didn't react. "Bring my brother back," she spat. "That's what you can do."

"I can't do that," Maggie replied softly. "I think you may have some idea of how much I wish I could."

Something about the words, or the defeated way she'd spoken them, seemed to make the woman's grief-fueled rage ebb and fade away. Her hands fell loose by her sides and the tension seeped from her shoulders until she and Maggie were just staring at each other across the white tile, silent and haunted by ghosts.

The woman's eyes flickered down, taking Maggie in from her feet, to her sling, to her face, before meeting her eyes again. After a few more seconds she wiped the tears from under her eyes and walked out.

Like an echo, Maggie recalled something she'd said to Bucky back when they'd first gone on the run and she had realized just how much pain she'd inflicted on the world: What do we do, to repay all the blood we spilled?

Almost three years later she was no closer to an answer.