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"Y'know, this is the first time I've had to scale a cliff on my birthday."

Maggie rolled her eyes at Bucky as he swung down the last few handholds to crouch beside her on the porous, sandy rock. She chose not to retort to his complaining, instead leading him through the treacherous rocks. It was a warm day, and the sun beat down on their necks. Maggie could smell the sharp bite of salt in the air.

"We're almost there," she promised. "Hey Bucky, I've been wondering something."

His footsteps were light behind her. "Shoot."

"You've lived in the first half of the twentieth century, and now the first half of the twenty-first. Is there anything about today that's really stood out as different?" She hopped over a fossilised tree root.

"Haven't we already talked about this before? Technology, civil rights, uh… aliens, that's pretty new."

She smiled to herself. "How about modern relationships? Are they different from what you're used to?"

"Ah," he said, realizing what she really wanted to talk about. "Well like I said, I didn't really have a lot of serious experience before, I wasn't about to settle down any time soon." Before she could start teasing him again, he continued: "But I've noticed that the way I used to do things – casual dating, I guess you could call it – is a lot more normal. Also people get married later, and do a lot of stuff outside of marriage."

"And how do you feel about that?"

She could feel his smirk, even though she wasn't looking at him. "If the past week is anything to go by then I think you know I'm all for it."

She looked over her shoulder and met his eyes. "You know what I mean."

He didn't get embarrassed at her directness. If anything, his grin grew. "I only want to do what you want to do," he said, pasting on his best attempt at an innocent face. The look was ruined when he tripped over a divot in the rock, and Maggie turned around laughing.

She ducked around the last rocky outcrop and paused, hands on her hips. When Bucky came to a halt by her side, his teasing fell away.

"Meg…"

She'd brought them to a tiny beach carved out of the rock formations by the sea. Gentle foam waves washed up onto the small pocket of white sand, glowing in the sun. It was quiet save for the back-and-forth rush of the ocean, and the distant cawing of seagulls.

"Not a soul for miles around," Maggie murmured, hands still on her hips as she looked around at the enormous rocky structures that made this beach near-inaccessible. A breeze wafted off the ocean, blowing against the dark strands of her hair. She looked up at Bucky's face, and her heart skipped a beat at the soft look in his eyes as he watched the glittering ocean.

She cleared her throat. "I brought you a swim suit, and I promise to maybe not peek when you get changed." She held up her backpack, and grinned when he rolled his eyes at her.

Maggie's first step into the water brought with it a flash-memory: an enormous yellow floatie on each arm, her feet bare on the sand, a woman's voice – her mother's voice – encouraging her to step into the water.

Maggie closed her eyes and tilted her face to the sky, letting the memory wash over her. Mom had taken her to Coney Island beach with a team of nannies, and Jarvis. Mom, elegant in a pale blue one-piece swimsuit and large shades, held her hand as they stepped into the water together. Maggie was scared of the rushing noise of the waves, and the bits of dried seaweed on the sand, but with mom's hand in hers she knew she was safe. After splashing in the shallows a while, mom went to read a magazine on her sunchair, and Jarvis touched up Maggie's sunscreen and bought her an ice cream.

Maggie let out a long breath and looked down at her feet, buried in the sand with the foamy waves washing over them. The sea breeze blew against her bare skin – her swim suit was a high-waisted red bikini, leaving plenty of skin open and vulnerable – and she shivered.

After that first memory came others: the Winter Soldier's footsteps in the sand as he took her to a cold metal dinghy after killing her parents. Being knocked into the cold Canadian ocean by a rocket during a training exercise, and floating in the waves with a charred and smoking chest, certain she was going to drown. The soldier with the curved scar's cold eyes as he sank into the depths. Marino's blood, misting with the ocean spray. Cold waves hundreds of feet below her as she flew to and from missions, blood on her hands.

Bucky didn't make a sound as he joined her at the very edge of the beach, waves washing over his bare feet. He hadn't been so quiet earlier, when he first saw her in her swim suit, but now he seemed to sense her sombre mood.

"What do you remember?" he eventually asked.

Maggie turned to look at him. He wore swimming trunks and – well, she'd provided him with a swimming shirt, but he seemed content to go shirtless. If Maggie was honest with herself, she had to admit that the sight of Bucky bare-chested, flesh and metal on display, dark hair brushing his muscled shoulders, probably disproportionately helped to improve her mood. She must have shown some of this on her face, because he smirked at her.

She rolled her eyes and stepped closer, taking his metal hand in hers. It was hot in the sunlight, but she used the jolt of heat to centre herself.

"I remember too much, sometimes."

Bucky sighed. "I know how that feels."

"Come on." She used her hold on his hand to tug him forward, into the glittering blue water. The sand slid under her feet, tickling her skin and squeaking against the metal plates where her heel spurs emerged from, and she smiled to herself. Before she knew it she was up to her knees, then her hips, then her chest, and she was startled at how good it felt, to be completely surrounded by water. A glance across at Bucky's face showed that he was echoing her thoughts. His arm whirred slightly as it was submerged, but Maggie knew it was designed to perform underwater.

They reached the point where Maggie could just touch the bottom with her toes, and they faced each other, grinning. Maggie kicked her legs and scooped her arms, relying on her body's instincts to swim – she'd been taught at some point or another, though she couldn't remember exactly when. "I'm swimming!" she beamed at Bucky.

"You sure are." He reached out and caught her, tucking his arms under her legs and behind her back to carry her in the water. "You want to go out further?"

Maggie looked out at the horizon, where the deep, glittering blue of the ocean met the pale blue of the sky. She shook her head. "I don't want to go too far out. The Adamantium on my bones was designed not to sink, but I still… it makes me nervous."

Bucky gripped her tighter, as if afraid she was going to sink right then and there, and he ducked his head to hers. "You're okay here, though?"

She wrapped her arms around his neck and kicked her feet, splashing the surface. "I'm okay here," she beamed up at him, and the kiss he gave her tasted like salt.

They splashed around in the water for the better part of the day, throwing each other into waves and blinking bleary-eyed at the fish under the surface. Perched on Bucky's shoulders under the hot gaze of the sun, Maggie extended and retracted her heel spurs a few times, watching the darting flash of metal underwater. Now that she was free of HYDRA she could fully appreciate how strange her heel spurs were – they were the most obvious sign that she was not what she seemed, besides the metal moorings in her back.

Bucky had his hands on her thighs. He cocked his head thoughtfully as he contemplated her heel spurs. "Reckon you could catch fish with those?"

That made her laugh so hard that she fell off his shoulders, and they spent the next ten minutes trying to use their enhancements – Maggie's heel spurs, and Bucky's silver arm – to catch one of the darting fish in the shallows. But fishermen they were not, and Maggie conceded defeat when she got seaweed caught on her heel spur and had to hop back to shore to free herself.

Bucky followed her, collapsing on his back in the sand and shaking his head like a dog, spraying seawater everywhere. Maggie threw the impaled seaweed at him and it landed with a splat on his chest.

Instead of retaliating, as she'd expected, Bucky merely flicked the seaweed off and propped himself up on his metal elbow. His grey-blue eyes reflected the glimmering, dancing ocean, and his dark hair dripped onto his shoulders.

Cross-legged on the sand, Maggie's breath hitched in her chest. He looked so at ease, laying on the white sand with one ankle hooked over the other, and his eyes on the ocean. There was stubble on his jaw, and his face was relaxed. This was a man who'd lived through decades of violence and pain, and Maggie felt impossibly lucky to see him like this: comfortable, relaxed, enjoying the view. She realized that she thought he was beautiful, with his long hair and his jaw and his metal arm and his piercing blue eyes.

Almost unconsciously, she reached out. Bucky looked away from the horizon when her fingertips brushed against his metal wrist. She traced the grooves, following the smooth limb up, over the inside of his elbow, brushing her thumb over the blood-red star. The arm whirred, and Maggie sensed Bucky's intense eyes on her face, but she didn't look away. Her fingers found the pearly skin where metal met flesh, and she watched the skin jump under her fingertips. The scarring spread across his chest, ropey tendrils that made her heart ache.

Maggie rolled onto her knees, and her other hand pressed against Bucky's right arm, solid and warm and dusted with sand. Her eyes flickered to his, and she swallowed at the sight of his pupils blown huge, at just the gentle touch of her fingers. She held his gaze for a second longer, and then watched her right hand as it travelled across his chest, mapping collar bones and pectorals and the hard dip of his sternum. Her other hand made its way down his arm, following the ropey muscles and coming to rest lightly on the bones of his wrist.

When she reached the smooth, muscled surface of his stomach, Bucky leaned up and pressed his lips to hers, soft and insistent. Their wet hair tangled around their faces, and Maggie took a sharp breath through her nose when his tongue pressed at the seam of her lips. In the same moment his flesh hand, gritty with sand, rested on her bare waist.

Blood was rushing in her ears, and Maggie's skin crackled where they touched. Her fingernails trailed over Bucky's ribcage and he shivered, sliding his own hand up her waist and across her back, rising and falling over the contours of her wing moorings.

After what could have been seconds or a thousand years, Maggie pulled back with a sigh. Somehow her fingers had made their way to Bucky's hip, and her other hand was pressed against his chest, over his heart. She took a moment to admire him, eyes unfocused and mouth red, his hands on her skin like magic.

"We should go back," she whispered, brushing his hair off his face.

Bucky blinked. "Yeah?"

She grinned, and watched an answering smile cross his lips. "Yeah."

(Separate scene rated M. Synopsis: Maggie and Bucky go back to the safehouse and learn how to be people, if ya know what I'm saying.)

Maggie faded back into her body who knew how much later, to the sound of Bucky chuckling in her ear, and a fistful of splintered wood.

"Oops," she said, startled at the huskiness to her voice, and dusted her hands off over the side of the bed. She rolled back to the sight of Bucky, gorgeous and there beside her, his grey-blue eyes on hers. Maggie spared a glance for the destroyed bedframe, judged that it probably wouldn't affect the structural integrity of the bed, and then scooted over to Bucky, throwing her sweaty limbs over his and dropping her head on the pillow beside him.

"Sorry about the bed," she hummed, as tingles washed across her body.

Bucky's metal arm, wedged under her torso, whirred. "I'm just glad it wasn't my head," he smiled back, and reached up with his flesh hand to push her sweaty locks off her forehead.

She winced. "I was trying to be careful."

"You were careful with me," he said, and leaned over to kiss her. "Besides, for your first time, I'd say a bedframe is a small price to pay."

Maggie grinned, her cheeks still flushed. "You know, I read Dr Erskine's notes on the original super soldier serum."

Bucky blinked at the non-sequitur. "Interesting read?"

"Mm, very. One of his predictions was that the refractory period of serum recipients would be significantly shorter than standard humans." She grinned as comprehension crossed Bucky's face. "Though I don't know if anyone ever bothered trying to work out if his prediction was correct. Did Steve ever tell you about his refractory period?" she asked, her face the picture of innocence.

Bucky rolled his eyes and in an instant flipped her onto her back, hovering over her. "You're a menace," he said, ducking down to capture her lips in a kiss.

A few days later, Maggie lifted her head from her pillow and squinted at Bucky.

"You're good at this," she said.

He rolled to look at her, still a little breathless and too tired to lift his head up. "You're not too bad yourself," he grinned.

"Thank you," Maggie preened. "But I mean, you know how to do this."

"Well, I had some practice, before everything…"

She sat up. "With who?"

His eyebrows rose. "Meg, are you jealous?"

She thought about it for a moment, and then her face broke open in a smile. "Yes," she said, and her smile grew. "I don't think I've ever been jealous before."

He laughed, and when she dropped her head by his again he brushed her hair behind her ear. "Well, congratulations, I think." His eyes crinkled. "Do you really want to hear about the women I dated before?"

"I already know about some of them, but you've never told me their names, only their hair colors." She knocked her knee into his, and her mouth fell open in mock indignation. "Do you even know my name, Bucky? Do you only think of me as 'the brunette'?"

"Damn, you caught me," he said, rolling his eyes. "But don't think that I haven't noticed that you introduce yourself to strangers as Maggie, and not Meg. What's that about?"

"Well it just sounds so much better than 'the brunette'," she sighed, and then squawked when he pinched her hip. "Alright! Uh, well I told you that pretty soon after remembering the name Margaret I remembered that my family called me Maggie, and I don't know… I just prefer it, I guess. It's how I think of myself."

Bucky's face fell. "Why didn't you tell me? I can call you Maggie."

She smiled at the sound of her name on his lips. "I know. But I liked that Meg was the name you gave me. I didn't really want you to stop, even once I remembered what my nickname was."

That made his face soften. "So you want me to keep calling you Meg?"

"Please."

"Alright then, brunette."

Maggie leaped onto his chest and dug her fingers into the spot on his ribs where she knew he was ticklish.

A few mornings later, Maggie tried to explain what it was like spending her whole adult life under HYDRA, with her every biological instinct suppressed. They were curled together in bed, noses touching. Bucky's hand was warm in her hair, and his metal arm was a comforting weight, but the memories still made her feel cold.

"I definitely… I noticed people," she whispered. "I knew that people – targets – experienced attraction, and formed romantic pairings, but it wasn't ever something that was on the table for me. After a long time out of a wipe I sometimes started to notice the people around me – usually technicians, or targets, or innocent bystanders. I even noticed you a couple of times, towards the end." She swallowed. "But I didn't understand it, and I knew there was nothing I could ever do about it. A weapon wasn't supposed to feel."

Bucky pressed his lips to her forehead, and when he pulled away his eyes were blazing. "You're not a weapon," he said, and his voice shook with emotion. "You're a person, one of the best and strongest I know."

Bucky eventually did get around to telling her about his ex-girlfriends, as they sat at a fish and chip shop by the beach.

"You know," Maggie said, tracing a finger through the condensation on her soda glass, "Since we're, uh, talking about this… I should probably mention that I kissed one of those girls we were dancing with, in that club in Townsville."

Bucky reached for another chip. "The one in the pink shirt that said Brains, Beauty, Booty? Yeah, I think I saw."

Maggie blushed. "You saw, um, one of the kisses."

His eyes widened, and his hand froze halfway to his mouth. "Oh?"

"Yeah. I was curious, so I asked her if I could kiss her, and then I… did." She could see Bucky processing the information, and she pointed a chip accusingly at him. "At the time I was trying to stop being so keen on you."

He thought about that for a little while, bringing the chip to his mouth and chewing on it slowly. "Did it work?" he eventually asked.

"I enjoyed it," she said thoughtfully, "but no."

Bucky cocked his head. "So, women, huh?"

She grinned. "Yes. And men. But mostly you."

He leaned across the cheap plastic table and kissed her, his five-day-old beard brushing against her chin.

Their life as a couple was much like it had been before – they tried things that people did, they went for walks and coffees and kept up their therapies. But now, as Maggie had predicted, there was exponentially more kissing. And other things.

They were always conscious that they were on the run, that this was by no means an ordinary existence. But it was nice to have each other, to be people. They were still very much in what Maggie's research described as the 'honeymoon phase', wrapped up in each other's touch and eyes and smile.

They had a few fights, mostly small disagreements sparked by tiredness, or resistance to a particular kind of therapy, but after taking some space they were able to work it out easily.

They stayed in Karratha for a month and a half, in their tin-rooved safehouse. Bucky took up an unskilled labour job at a processing plant and Maggie worked in data entry at the town's only pathology lab, using her off hours to learn more about science in practice and surreptitiously using the lab equipment for her own experiments. Their jobs were boring but helped them to blend in, and they even earned some real-life, legitimate money (mostly legitimate – they had fudged their CVs and all their details, after all). This time around they were Megan Sawyer and John Burnett, hard-working US expats struggling in the difficult economy.

They didn't get too close to the locals, but they exchanged 'hi's and 'how was your weekend?'s with their co-workers, and the local barista knew their coffee orders.

They went on 'dates', to local restaurants or the library, sometimes a couple of hikes through the beautiful national parks. Once they went to bingo in honor of Beatrice, who had given Maggie relationship advice not so long ago, and Bucky put up with Maggie's endless teasing about finally hanging out with people his own age.

One morning, as they shoveled bowls of cereal into their mouths to sustain their super-soldier metabolisms, Bucky looked up at Maggie with a frown.

"What?" she asked, and reached up to her face. "Have I got cereal on my nose again?"

"No, it's…" he cocked his head. "I guess it's just hitting me how much you've had to figure out on your own. You've never really… asked me, about…" he gestured between them, a blush rising on his face.

It took her a moment, but once she realised what he was talking about, a wicked grin lifted her lips. She leaned across the table, glanced around as if there might be someone else in their safehouse who could overhear, and then whispered "Sexual encounters?" with the tone of a scandalised high-schooler.

Her teasing usually made him more embarrassed or made him roll his eyes, and today seemed to be the latter. "Yeah," he said, through another mouthful of cereal. "You, uh, kinda have a handle on things."

She shrugged. "Well like I said before, I knew more or less about the mechanics of it all from an early age. They taught us at the Red Room." His eyes darkened at the mention of that place – she'd told him about her memories. "And," Maggie continued, "ever since I figured out why you were getting me all hot and bothered, I've been doing research."

Bucky choked on his cereal. "Tell me you haven't been reading dirty magazines."

"Well the most common go-to today is actually video pornography," she explained, taking a sip of her coffee, "but my research showed me that that's rarely an accurate depiction of sexual relationships."

Bucky looked completely floored as she continued to talk about her research over breakfast, explaining everything from the sexual revolution, to the wide range of birth control methods, to consent. After his initial surprise he seemed to warm up to the conversation, asking questions and expressing amazement at how much had changed since his time.

As they washed their dishes in the kitchen, Bucky smiled at her during her detailed explanation of the science behind reproductive hormones, complete with the names of prominent scientists in the field.

Eventually, she realised that his smile had softened into a familiar dopey look. "What?"

His eyes crinkled. "I like it when you robot talk about stuff."

"Robot talk?"

"Yeah, like… 'there's currently a 70-1 pi ratio chance that Bucky's about to kiss me'-" he towelled off his soapy hands and leaned in toward her.

She laughed, ducking sideways. "That doesn't even make mathematical sense!"

"Mmm, robot talk," he hummed, catching her by the fridge and leaning in to kiss her neck.

Maggie's hands found their way into his hair. "You should know better."

"Well I graduated high school eighty years ago, give a guy a break," he said against her throat.

Maggie tilted her head to give him easier access. "I didn't even graduate fourth grade."

He leaned back at that, hands on her hips. "I thought you were five when… when HYDRA happened."

She cocked an eyebrow, unimpressed with the lack of kissing happening to her neck. "I was."

He thought about it. "Is that normal nowadays? Do kids start school super early or something?"

"No, it's not normal," Maggie sighed, and she leaned back against the fridge. "I was a lot smarter than kids my age, so they kept bumping me up. Didn't make a lot of friends my age." She huffed a laugh. "Tony had this robot, Dum-E, I saw it as my friend, more than the kids at school."

"Huh."

Maggie cocked her head, and levelled her gaze on him. "I'm not smart because of what HYDRA did," she explained. "They wanted me because I was smart." At that she had to break eye contact, because suddenly there were tears brimming in her eyes. She folded her arms across her stomach and frowned, remembering the Wyvern Project, and the test scores and school reports of hers that they'd collected before they sent the Winter Soldier after her. She hadn't had a chance.

Bucky wrapped his arms around her, and she pressed her damp eyes into his shirt.

"Well," he eventually said, "We'll have to get you back to school."

She laughed tearfully. "And enrol as who, Margaret Stark? The Wyvern?"

He pressed a kiss on the top of her head, and she sighed at the feeling. "We'll work something out."

April 28th, 2015

Perth, Australia

It turned out, Bucky's answer to 'getting her back to school,' was to take her to a university. They left Karratha after a month and a half and travelled south to Perth, where they could lose themselves in the crowd.

On their second day, Bucky coaxed Maggie out of their safehouse and onto a bus, merely smiling at her repeated whispers of "I don't like surprises, Bucky, I'm a highly volatile, mentally unstable ex-assassin!"

But when they got off the bus by the signs for the university, with the old, austere buildings and the more modern complexes, Maggie's mouth fell open.

"Bucky."

"You're not enrolled or anything," he said, taking her hand and leading her into the flood of students with bursting backpacks. "But I figured we could sneak into a few lectures for free."

At that, Maggie tore her eyes away from a sandstone building with mossy arches and a clocktower. "So we're stealing education, now?" Her tone was vaguely reprimanding, but her eyes were alight.

He shrugged. "Sure. But if anyone's going to appreciate it, it's you, Meg." He squeezed her hand. "Let's have a look around, but there's a lecture in…" he craned his neck to look at the clocktower, "twenty minutes that I think you'll like."

Maggie and Bucky strolled through the university hand-in-hand, pointing out the beautiful buildings, the enormous library, the glimpses they could see of labs and classrooms. Bucky hadn't had the money to go to college when he was younger, though he'd excelled in school. As they walked down a wide path, blending with the other casually dressed students enjoying the sun, Bucky explained that he'd been saving up to go to college, but then the war arrived and other things took precedence.

"What would you have studied?"

"I don't know," he shrugged, smiling sadly. "I was good at math and science in school. But the guy who wanted all of that… I don't know if I'm him anymore."

Maggie hugged his arm to her side. "It doesn't matter which version of yourself you are," she said. "You're a person, and you can do what you want."

He smiled down at her. "I guess. But what about you? What would you study, if you had the chance?" He was leading them toward the main sandstone building now, for the lecture he'd mentioned.

Maggie's eyes went wide. "I don't know," she said. "I don't know a lot about these places."

Bucky studied her for a moment, then laughed. "I don't know either, they might have to invent a new degree for you. 'Bachelor of Everything.'" She smiled, and he held the door of the lecture hall open for her.

It was a huge space, with hundreds of seats rising in rows – already half filled with students – and a wide dais with a desk and a projector screen. Maggie blinked at it all, startled, until Bucky nudged the small of her back. They took seats up the back of the lecture theatre, both to prevent them being noticed, and because it was closer to the emergency exit. Maggie set her backpack between her feet, feeling the reassuring weight of her wings, and then glanced around at the other students. The room hummed with low murmurs and the tap of keyboards.

"Bucky," she whispered, and he looked up from where he was inspecting the fold-out desk for his chair. "Everyone else has a computer or a notebook, I don't have anything!"

He grinned at her, shaking his head. "Do you need it?"

She thought about it. "Probably not. But-"

"You'll be fine," he said, and reached out to take her hand.

Seconds later, the lecturer – a tall, gangly woman with enormous spectacles – blew into the room, setting up her notes and her prepared PowerPoint presentation in a whirl.

"Sorry I'm late everyone!" she breathed. "Welcome back to Week Ten of Mechanical Engineering. Let's get started with our discussion of mechatronics."

Maggie didn't even have time to turn to Bucky to show her excitement – she was hanging on to the lecturer's every word.

They walked out of the lecture theater an hour later, mingling with the flood of students. Maggie's mind was whirling – she'd already known pretty much all the theory, even though it was a fifth-year class, but they'd talked about practical applications and latest trends in the field, and everything they'd said had called to the part of Maggie that was hungry for knowledge.

"So you liked it?" Bucky asked, when she stopped for breath.

Maggie gaped at him and tried to express with aborted hand gestures just how much she'd enjoyed it. She settled for reaching up and kissing him on the cheek. "Thank you," she said.

He smiled at her. "You belong here. Or a place like it. It really suits you."

Maggie smiled back and looked around at the rows of classrooms in the corridor they were walking down. "I do like it. The idea that there are whole buildings – whole blocks of buildings! – dedicated to teaching people, that's… really amazing. But I can't stay somewhere like this," she finished, and had to look away from Bucky's soft, sympathetic eyes.

They walked in silence for a few moments, and Maggie distracted herself by trying to absorb everything she could about the university before they left. That was why she spotted the TV screen mounted in the middle of a walkway, displaying the weather and news headlines.

Against all her training that told her to blend in, to restrain her emotions, Maggie froze.

"Bucky," she breathed.

The major news story showed an image of a smoking, ruined white stone fortress. The headline read: The End of HYDRA: Avengers Secure Sokovian HYDRA Research Base, Arrest Wolfgang von Strucker.

Bucky froze by her side. "Holy shit."

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