-33-

++++++++++

Bucky and Maggie's second year on the run was much like their first, but they were doing so much better. They were still ravaged by nightmares and guilt, but they could keep their heads above water now – not fixed, but stable.

They travelled up through India, through the war-torn Middle East, and into Europe. They wanted to be close to major world events, but the U.S. was still too risky for them. They split up sometimes, though neither of them liked it.

It was a hard year filled with remorse, recalls of traumatic memories, and missing their dead and distant loved ones.

But they had each other. And they were certainly never bored.

June, 2015

New Delhi, India

A month after Ultron's defeat, Maggie and Bucky strolled down the colourful disarray of a New Delhi main street, letting the rushing traffic and low roar of conversation flow over them.

Bucky's covered-up metal arm was slung over Maggie's shoulder, and he bowed his head to whisper in her ear. She smacked him and he grinned at her, all teeth and crinkling eyes.

"I need a nickname for you," Maggie decided, as they pushed through the press of bodies.

"You do realise that Bucky is already a nickname?"

She scrunched up her nose. It was weird to think of Bucky as James. Just like it was weird whenever he jokingly called her Margaret. "But you call me doll, I feel like I should have something like that."

"You could call me doll, I wouldn't mind."

She elbowed him. "You're not pretty enough," she lied.

"How about… 'O Great and Powerful Bucky'?"

Maggie continued to consider the prospect, ignoring Bucky's very unhelpful suggestions, which were mostly based around his stunning good looks and prowess in the bedroom.

It was a warm day, and they'd decided to go out for a walk to escape their sweltering safehouse. Bucky was sweating through his layers, but Maggie was doing a little better in shorts and a loose shirt.

Of course, because they had apparently offended some God of Luck, they turned onto a side street just in time to see seven armed men in balaclavas storm into a bank.

Their joking abruptly died. Maggie met Bucky's eyes: they'd gone hard and grey, and she could feel his arm clicking and sliding into combat mode even as it rested over her shoulders. Maggie felt her own body tensing and readying itself, almost unconsciously.

"Cameras," Bucky said, his eyes locked on hers.

She nodded. "Civilians."

An instant later they separated, Maggie slipping into an alley beside the bank, and Bucky stalking straight for the front door.

Maggie dug her improvised digital jammer out of her backpack. Normally she didn't use it, as the act of a camera failing was suspicious in and of itself. But she didn't want video proof of what was about to happen reaching the intelligence community. She activated the jammer and swung her bag back over her shoulders, gritting her teeth at the sound of shouting and gunshots from inside the building.

You better not get yourself shot, Bucky.

As Maggie shouldered open a fire escape and slipped into the air conditioned shadow of the building, she almost smiled at the thought. A year and a half ago she wouldn't have spared a thought for the possibility of the Winter Soldier being shot – she knew he was perfectly capable of handling any situation he was sent in to, and that he could survive multiple gun shots. Now, with her shirt sticking to her skin and her ears straining for movement in the dark corridors, she still didn't doubt Bucky's capability. But she worried, and she couldn't help it. She hoped it wouldn't be a detriment in a combat situation.

Maggie paced past unoccupied offices, honing in on the situation in the lobby. It sounded like the gunmen were merely intimidating their victims at the moment, shouting threats and firing pot-shots. She wondered if they'd had a plan for the cameras.

Oh well. Thanks to the blinking jammer in her pocket, they wouldn't have to worry about it. They'd have other things to worry about in a moment.

She finally reached the lobby, an open plan space with glass walls and white tile. She crouched behind a teller's desk and peered out. The floor was strewn with sobbing civilians; bank employees and customers, their hands on the backs of their heads as they lay on the tile floor. The gunmen – because they were all men, she noted – stood over their victims, shouting for silence.

Maggie ran an experienced eye over the situation. The men were in jeans and jackets, wielding semi-automatic weapons that they clearly knew how to use, if the shot-out cameras were any indication, though she didn't sense any elements of military precision. Gun enthusiasts, then. Greedy gun enthusiasts.

And, she noted with a smirk, there were only six of them now. They didn't seem to have realised they were short a man – perhaps they'd sent him ahead to the vault or to secure the building. Maggie didn't think that guy would have lasted long on his own.

As if she had summoned him with a thought, Maggie spotted Bucky on the other side of the lobby, looking out from behind a pillar. His jaw was clenched, and his eyes flickered to the gunmen, who were currently trying to figure out who the manager of the bank was. The screams and sobs in the lobby were dying down, but Maggie's skin twitched at each shuddering, terrified gasp, and the sounds of boots hitting flesh.

The Wyvern and the Winter Soldier had not needed words.

It seemed Maggie and Bucky didn't either.

They shared a glance, deep brown eyes meeting steely grey-blue.

Simultaneously, they stepped out from their hiding places and descended on the remaining six gunmen.

Maggie didn't have time to think about what she was going to do. She just did, her feet slipping soundlessly across the tile floor toward the first gunman. She seized his arm and broke it across her knee, catching the gun he dropped and driving her elbow into his chin at the same time, knocking him out cold. She sidestepped his falling body and lobbed his gun at the second man, following it up with a driving kick into the centre of his chest, sending him flying into a teller's desk. She was light on her feet, almost dancing over the shaking bodies on the floor, unleashing her long-dormant skills on the gunmen before they'd even had a chance to notice they were under attack.

As she'd stepped out, Maggie had noticed one of the other gunmen kicking a cowering woman, his sneer obvious even through his ski mask. He had just started to turn, startled by the sound of his partners slamming into office furniture, when Maggie tore the gun from his hand and punched him in the side, snapping two ribs. He doubled over, gasping, and she stomped down on his foot. Her heel spur flickered out for less than a second as she did so, slicing through his boot and into the floor. The man toppled, and lost consciousness on the way down by way of Maggie's fist.

The three men were on the floor in seconds, and Maggie whirled to face the last standing gunman. She'd had her eyes on her opponents, but she'd been aware of Bucky the whole time – he'd taken down his first two gunmen with the same speed and efficiency as she had, and she'd just known where he was, regardless of whether she could see or hear him.

In a millisecond, Maggie processed the data: the last gunman lifted his weapon, aiming for the larger threat – Bucky. A security guard on the floor reached for his sidearm. Bucky saw both actions.

Maggie took two light steps across the floor and leaped just as the gunman fired. Her fist slammed into his shoulder, crushing the nerve and making his whole arm slacken and drop the gun. She followed it up with a kick to the back of his knee, and then a fist across the jaw when he turned to gape at his attacker.

Bucky had rolled under the gunfire, kicked the security guard's gun out of his hand, and risen gracefully to his feet just as the last gunman slammed face-first into the white tile.

As quickly as they had attacked, Maggie and Bucky vanished. Most of the civilians had barely had enough time to look up from the floor at the first signs of violence, and none had time to see their rescuers faces. It took a few seconds for the terrified employees and customers of the bank to realise that all the gunmen had been eliminated. In the silence following the fast, brutal attack, men and women climbed cautiously to their feet, trading bewildered glances.

Maggie and Bucky didn't look back. They sprinted up fire escapes to the roof of the bank and then leaped from roof to roof to get away, as the chorus of sirens filled the air.

They didn't speak until they were crouched on the back of a dusty cargo train, heading north out of the city.

Maggie let out a breath and turned to Bucky. His long hair was in disarray, and his brow was heavy over his grey-blue eyes. She reached up to place a palm on his cheek, but then thought better of it.

"Are you okay?" she asked, over the rattle of the train. The cool air brushed her hair off her flushed face.

Bucky met her eyes, and his lips lifted in a half-smile. "Alright, considering. Thanks for getting that last guy."

"Well you're the sniper, you're my backup. I'm the one who swoops in to do the hard work." She was only partially joking – that had been her instinct, back in that moment when the last man lifted his gun. And judging by their seamless, coordinated movements, it had been Bucky's instinct as well.

His tense face relaxed a little at her teasing. "Are you alright? That was…" He let out a breath.

She knew what he meant. Now that they were still, with the breeze cooling the sweat from their skin, the swift violence of the bank was settling in. They hadn't used their skills in over a year, but they'd slid right back into it as if they'd never left.

Maggie's eyes squeezed shut as she recalled the crunch of limbs, the whites of the gunmen's eyes, the way her heel spur slid through flesh like butter. Her knuckles ached from breaking men's bones.

She took a long breath, and opened her eyes. Bucky was still watching her, and she could sense that he was disturbed as well.

"It's not the same," she whispered, and though the air rushing over the back of the train snatched the words out of her mouth, she knew he heard her. "We didn't kill them," she said, a little louder.

Bucky nodded, long and slow, and his hand rested over hers on the tarnished metal roof of the train. "We did the right thing."

Maggie rested her forehead on his shoulder. "You got that seventh guy, right?"

He huffed a laugh, as if surprised she even had to ask. "Out cold in the break room. They'll find him."

"Those guys… were not very smart."

That made him laugh again. "In their defence, I don't think they counted on us walking by."

Maggie rolled her shoulders, trying to ease some of the nervous energy out of her muscles. She'd robbed banks before, terrorized civilians before. She'd never tried to stop something like it from happening. It felt… good. Rewarding, even, once she got over the unnerving feeling of bringing out her old skills. She wondered if this was how her brother felt when he put on his armor and saved people.

Maggie slid her free hand up Bucky's back, resting it over his shoulder blade. The steady beat of his heart echoed against her fingertips. "You did good."

Bucky's metal hand, still disguised in a glove, cradled the back of her head. "You were alright, too, I suppose."

She laughed into his shoulder, and felt more tension slip away. No one was dead, no one had even got a good look at them, and they were going to be miles away before anyone started asking questions. People were safe because of what she and Bucky had done.

Maggie had no problem marking that down as a good day.

The news ended up labeling the incident as a "Bizarre Robbery-Gone-Wrong". It seemed there were mixed witness reports – some reported two people attacking the thieves, probably a man and a woman, but others were sure it had been more than two. No one saw the rescuers' faces, but everyone agreed that they hadn't spoken to each other or anyone else. They'd appeared out of nowhere, dealt out terrifyingly efficient destruction, and then vanished.

The police questioned the would-be bank robbers, but they'd hardly seen anything and they weren't exactly keen on cooperating with the police. Hospital staff puzzled over the blade-shaped wound in one of the gunmen's feet, but couldn't work out what had caused it.

The news decided that the rescuers were vigilantes, maybe even super-powered.

Bucky had looked up from that particular article and asked: "How does it feel to be a vigilante, doll?"

"Oh, so different, handsome. It brings a whole new level of class to being a boring old 'fugitive'."

He laughed, and Maggie rolled her eyes.

"Handsome?" he asked, when he stopped laughing.

She shrugged. "It's better than Sergeant Good-Looking, or any of those other awful ones you suggested."

"… I'll take it."

They didn't encounter anything else quite like the New Delhi incident. They scared a pick-pocket or two, and Maggie discovered she had a talent for getting creepy guys at bars to back off from obviously uncomfortable women. Bucky re-discovered his talent for finishing fights that other people (Maggie) started.

For Maggie's twenty ninth birthday they went to an amusement park in Pakistan. They whooped and laughed on the rides, bought hot dogs and popcorn, and hustled the game vendors. Bucky reminisced about going to Coney Island with Steve back in the day, and they agreed that they would have to go there one day. They knew it wasn't possible, but for just one day it was easier to pretend.

They ducked into a photobooth together and came out with three photographs – the first photos of the two of them together. In the first photo Bucky was grinning broadly while Maggie frowned at him. Between the first and the second photo Bucky had explained what people usually did with their faces while their photo was being taken, so in the second they were smiling. In the third Bucky was pressing a kiss against Maggie's cheek and her eyes were closed, her smile wider and a little more real.

Maggie slipped the printed photos into a secret compartment of her wings, originally designed to house chemical and biological weapons for dispersion mid-flight. The compartment was vacuum-sealed and protected from the heat of her engines.

Bucky won Maggie a plush toy flower from the can shooting game, which only made Maggie determined to get him something. Choosing the strongman game was probably cheating, or taking advantage of her super soldier serum, but it sure felt good when she swung the hammer and made the bell at the top of the game chime. She chose the biggest prize they had for Bucky, an enormous orange teddy bear which obscured the top half of his body when he carried it around. They quickly realized they couldn't take the bear with them, so they fed a few more rupees to the photobooth and took another set of photos with the orange monstrosity. The bear was only visible in the first two photos, as Bucky had started kissing Maggie before the third photo and she'd dropped it.

She tucked away those photos as well, blushing at the sight of herself wrapped up in Bucky's touch, and they gifted the bear to a delighted seven-year-old.

Back at the safehouse that night, Maggie got the rest of her present: a couple of postcards from places they had been, including one with a print of the Carta de Amor painting in the Santiago National Museum of Fine Arts. He'd also gotten her a necklace: a beautiful pearl pendant on a sterling silver chain. It stilled her breath in her chest.

"I earned every dollar that went into that," Bucky said, his eyes soft. "I didn't want HYDRA to have any part of it."

Maggie kissed him with the taste of tequila in her mouth and the feel of the cool pearl in her palm, and she didn't say I love you but she meant it.

Of course, because she was terrible at holding words back when she couldn't get them out of her head, especially with Bucky, she said it a few days later anyway. They were visiting another university, with plans to sneak into a few engineering lectures, and Bucky's hand was in hers and the sun was on her face and even her genius brain couldn't think of a reason not to say the words, so she did.

He said them back, his blue-grey eyes bright and his fingers trembling on her cheeks, and Maggie realised that the words hadn't actually changed anything. They'd both meant it for a while, in their eyes and their touches and the way they knew each other, inside and out.

It later occurred to Maggie that she should have required more data on love, before professing it so confidently, but when she did her research it became clear that this, at least, wasn't something you could research. It couldn't even really be expressed, though that hadn't stopped humanity from trying for thousands of years.

Maggie, for once content with the lack of a concrete answer, was just glad that she was lucky enough to have stumbled into love, to be in it, to have Bucky and have him love her back. She didn't know if she deserved it, but it seemed that love wasn't something that one deserved. It was something one got, without rhyme or reason or empirical data.

They continued to sneak into lectures and seminars at every university they passed. Bucky was interested, but he didn't have the base knowledge to keep up with the advanced theory, so he usually ended up sleeping at his desk while Maggie listened to the professor with wide, unblinking eyes.

They took on odd jobs as they travelled. Bucky usually picked up labour jobs, where he could keep his head down and settle his mind with movement. Maggie usually swung for data entry or mechanic jobs, though she had to be careful that she wasn't getting too much attention for being a female mechanic, let alone a genius mechanic. She felt an unholy joy whenever she encountered an asshole who assumed she didn't know how to fix cars because she was a woman. They always left with their car in great condition, and with the vague sense that their life was in danger.

Bucky often stopped by Maggie's employer's car repair workshop after his shifts ended, to say hi, to flirt a little while they were both coated in grease and sweat, and to watch her verbally dismantle any customer or co-worker who said anything along the lines of what are you doing here, pretty lady? Or can you get someone else to take a look at it? Bucky liked the look she got in her eyes while she proved them wrong. He liked her nimble hands and her fast mouth, and he enjoyed it when the idiots would look to him for help, because he was a man, and when they shrank back from what Maggie called his murder eyes.

"I probably shouldn't enjoy that so much," she said, when one man left with his face as white as a ghost. He'd called her sweetheart and tried to explain what a torque wrench did.

Bucky tipped his head. "There are worse hobbies."

Maggie pulled him down for a hungry kiss, her oil-stained fingers twisting in his collar.

As a new year rolled around and they hopped from one European country to another, Maggie and Bucky fell into some kind of normal. They watched TV shows, went on dates to places like the zoo, or the planetarium, or the cinema. Maggie tried to get better at dancing ("Last time I was too quick to seduce you, we have to concentrate this time!"), and Bucky asked questions about her various projects and mechanical designs. He started watching baseball on TV, but Maggie couldn't stand it.

Some parts of Europe brought back new memories for Bucky, of fighting and dying in the war. They visited a few war museums and memorials, and Bucky spent his free time researching his past, trying to put together the pieces. He had a lot more pieces than Maggie had, and his were more jumbled.

Sometimes, in the few blissful days when they didn't have tortured nightmares, when they weren't drowning in their guilt, when they didn't have to flee a city for fear they'd been tracked, Maggie could almost pretend that they were normal.

January, 2016

New Avengers Facility, Upstate New York

"What are you working on?"

Sam jerked, accidentally knocking a pile of papers off his desk and smacking his knee on the table leg. He whirled around on his swivel chair, and his eyes widened at the sight of Wanda Maximoff in his office doorway.

"… Hey, Wanda."

He and the Sokovian had gotten friendly since they'd started training to be Avengers together last year – they worked well together, as well as a non-powered dude with a wingpack could work with a woman with straight-up magic powers, and he'd talked to her a little about her grief over her brother and her trouble adjusting to the new environment. Still, they hadn't hung out much outside of training. She spent most of her non-Avengers time with Vision, and Sam split his time between hanging out with Steve, visiting the VA in D.C., and… this.

Wanda stepped into his office and looked around, taking in the view of the facility from his seventh-story window, and the tasteful pot plants on his desk. "This is nice."

Sam leaned forward to pick up his strewn papers, keeping Wanda in the corner of his eye. She was wearing a dress and a hoodie, and she looked… bored.

"Vision not home?" he asked, and didn't miss the slight colour that brought to her cheeks.

"He went to the science conference with Tony," she said, her accented words careful, and turned her attention back to Sam's desk. F.R.I.D.A.Y. had projected a series of holograms over his workspace. "What are you working on?"

Sam stacked the papers back into place. "It's a… missing persons case."

He didn't know how much he ought to tell Wanda. Since the New Avengers had started, Sam had been working on finding Barnes and Margaret Stark on and off, with pretty much zero luck. As far as he knew, all the original Avengers were aware of the search, and most of the latest recruits knew too: he and Rhodey, obviously, and Vision had all of J.A.R.V.I.S.'s data. Wanda was the only one in the dark.

Today was the first time he and Steve had collaborated on the search in about a month, going over the very little progress made and brainstorming new leads. They usually had a meeting once a month with Tony about the search, but he was in Austria or somewhere this week, so they'd catch him up when he got back.

Today they'd been honing in on some shadow data about a potential abandoned HYDRA base, but Steve had stepped out for a meeting with Hill about an hour ago so he was back to reviewing their search materials.

Wanda ran her eyes over the papers and holograms, brow quirked. F.R.I.D.A.Y. had been working through CCTV footage from various suspected hideouts around the world, and as Wanda watched, the hologram shifted to a still of the Wyvern in flight at the Triskelion, red goggles glowing and black wings spread.

Wanda froze. "You are looking for her?"

Sam sat up at the cold shock on his fellow Avenger's face. "You know her?"

She shook her head, still staring at the hologram. Her young face was creased with shock and fear. "No, but… I saw her. She was at the HYDRA base in Sokovia, the day Pietro and I arrived from the riots. She was leaving when we were arriving, and I remember thinking…"

There was the minutest noise from the doorway, and Sam and Wanda turned to see Steve leaning against the doorframe. His face was closed off, serious.

As if realising the gravity of what she'd just walked into, Wanda's dark eyes widened and her mouth fell open. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to…"

Steve shook his head. "It's alright. You were saying?"

Wanda cleared her throat and continued hesitantly. "I remember thinking… that HYDRA had told us that they would give us the power to stand up to our oppressors. I looked at her-" Wanda nodded at the image of the Wyvern "- and thought that was what they were going to do to us."

Sam rubbed his jaw. A sighting of the Wyvern from more than two years ago wasn't exactly a lead, but nowhere in the files had it said that the assassin had been to Sokovia.

Wanda was glancing from Steve to Sam, and then back at the files on the desk. "Who is she?"

Sam raised his eyebrows at Steve. "Wanda could help us, you know."

Steve glanced at his feet, arms crossed. Sam could practically see his mind working. Finally, he looked up. "Wanda, I… we're trying to keep this a private matter – if the Avengers get involved, then the world gets involved, and… we should ask Tony."

At that, Wanda's eyes flashed red and she gasped, her hand flying to her mouth. She more or less had a handle on her powers, but she'd been having the most trouble with the telepathic side of things – she didn't go actively hunting for other peoples' thoughts, but she said that sometimes the minds and emotions of others overwhelmed her. And apparently whatever Steve was thinking was loud enough to be picked up.

Steve sighed. "I guess there's not much point in trying to keep secrets from you, huh."

Wanda glanced from Steve to the Winter Soldier file on Sam's desk, and then back to Steve. "I am sorry, I didn't mean to-"

"I know," he said, and stepped into the room, closing the door behind him. "What did you pick up?" His eyes were serious.

Wanda opened and closed her mouth, discomfort and uncertainty flickering across her face. Eventually, she spoke: "… pain. You… you were thinking about your friend, about his file." She nodded at the Kiev file. "It was only a glimpse, but… you thought he was dead, then he was alive, but not himself, and now he's… missing. I don't know what the connection to her, is, though."

Steve ran a hand through his hair. "That's about the gist of it. Sam, you want to fill her in on the basics?"

Sam cocked an eyebrow. "What about keeping this a private matter?"

"We shouldn't be keeping secrets within the team," Steve sighed, and leaned against the window. He looked tired, but he hid it well under the Captain America façade.

It only took them about fifteen minutes to bring Wanda up to speed on the Wyvern and the Winter Soldier. She took it all in her stride, though she seemed to be affected by the strong emotions Steve was putting out – when Sam mentioned the Winter Soldier's brainwashing, she winced and glanced at Steve out of the corner of her eye.

When Sam finished with a short recap of their fruitless search, Wanda looked back at the hologram of the Wyvern with a thoughtful glance. "I wish I had had my powers when I met her, so I could have looked into her mind and seen what she felt."

Sam raised his eyebrows. "You could do that?"

"Yes. I could tell you if her mind was her own. I could do the same for…" she looked over her shoulder at Steve, who had glanced up from where he'd been staring at his folded arms. "I could do it for him."

Steve had that earnest, hopeful look on his face again, and Sam repressed a sigh.

"I'll keep that in mind."

When Tony returned from his trip they told him about the new development, and he didn't seem that concerned about Wanda knowing about his sister. Things were still a little awkward between him and the young Sokovian, but he trusted her as a member of the team, and she no longer sought revenge against him. It made things easier that he lived in Manhattan most of the time, only ducking in to the New Avengers Facility every now and then to make sure everything was running smoothly or to join Dr Selvig or Dr Cho in the labs.

"So, Wanda, welcome to the season of The Bold and the Beautiful that is my life," he quipped, flipping an arc reactor component in his hand.

Wanda just looked confused.

Tony sighed. "Amnesiac not-really-dead brainwashed sister? No? You haven't seen that show?"

"Vision told me it was not worth watching," she hedged, toying with her sleeve.

Tony shrugged. "He's probably right. So, you mentioned you recognised the photo of the Wyvern?"

Wanda repeated her single encounter with the Wyvern for Tony's benefit.

"So she was the one who got the sceptre to HYDRA," he said, and leaned back in his lab chair. He looked exhausted.

Steve piped up: "They would have gotten it anyway, Tony-"

"Yeah, but she was there so they decided to use their 'ultimate weapon'." He leaned forward and pinched his nose. Wanda was shifting uncomfortably, the room packed tight with emotion. Tony sighed. "The more I look, the more I find out about all the shit they made her do for the last twenty years, and it's… well, it ain't good."

Wanda was wincing now. Sam glanced from Tony to Steve, watching the mirrored pain in their faces. He didn't need to be a telepath to see that both of them were still pretty messed up over this.

Tony wasn't done. "You know sometimes she was within a hundred miles of me? Sometimes a hell of a lot closer. She was at a new year's party I was at, doing some horrible shit. She was at the Stark Expo, did some horrible shit there. And I was just… oblivious. At least you had the excuse of being on ice, Cap. Only took you three years before you cracked the case."

Steve shifted his weight. "You know it's not your fault, Tony. It's HYDRA's."

"Yeah, and we went and blew them all the hell up, so now I don't have anyone to aim my repulsors at, except…" he gestured to a pile of shattered glass in the corner of his lab, which looked as if someone had hastily swept it out of the way and then left it.

Sam's eyes widened and he glanced around, finally spotting the section of wall where a glass partition should have stood. Sam frowned. Stark had been doing okay since Ultron, shacking up with Ms Potts and retiring from the Avenger side of things. Clearly things weren't all on the up and up.

Wanda and Steve didn't seem to know what to say, so Sam piped up: "Well, this might not be quite the right time, but, uh, I might've found an abandoned HYDRA base?"

Tony jumped up from his chair. "It's exactly the right time, Captain Sidekick. Come on, let's go."

"Hey now," Sam said, but then didn't finish that sentence, because… okay, yeah. Fair enough.

He, Steve and Wanda filed out of the lab after Tony, and none of them questioned the fact that Tony seemed fine with putting on the Iron Man suit again after seemingly retiring. If the man needed to blow shit up, then they'd help him do it.

Wanda, for her part, finally had an answer to the strange sensations of pain and grief she'd been picking up at the Facility over the past few months, and a name to match the monstrous face she'd met at the HYDRA Research Base in Sokovia all those years ago. She knew the pain of losing a sibling, and she'd do what she could to help her teammates get theirs back.

June 4th, 2016

Bucharest, Romania

"Sometimes I think you like the arm better than me," Bucky murmured, as they sat on the kitchen countertop in their latest safehouse.

Maggie was playing with his metal fingers, running her fingernails along the grooves and divots of the joints. The metal gleamed in the light filtered through the papered-over safehouse windows. "Mm," she mumbled. "Do you think you could convince the arm to run away with me? It'd be so much easier, it's a lot more portable than you."

Bucky dropped his head onto her shoulder. "I'm going to miss you."

They both looked at her packed backpack by the front door, and then Bucky's belongings around the apartment. It was sparse, but they'd bought things like utensils and pots from the thrift store, and Bucky's old notebooks were stacked on a shipping pallet that served as a shelf.

"I'll miss you too," Maggie murmured. "But I'll miss your arm more."

He laughed into her shoulder, and the arm whirred on cue.

A week ago Maggie recalled another mission in a nightmare, and the details had slowly filtered back – she'd assassinated a Ukrainian man maybe ten years ago: landed behind him while he hiked in the mountains and kicked him off a cliff. Now that she had the details, she couldn't get them out of her head, and she'd decided to travel to the Ukraine for a week or two to check on his family, maybe work out why she'd been sent to kill him in the first place. She wasn't really sure what she wanted to do, but the pull toward the man's grave and his living family was undeniable.

Bucky had offered to come, but she wanted to see the impact of her crimes alone this time. Besides, it was nice in Bucharest – Bucky spoke the language, he had a good job in a nearby factory, and he liked the markets. It seemed cruel to uproot him just to spy on people whose lives Maggie had ruined. They'd split up before, and it wouldn't be for too long.

They'd just celebrated Maggie's thirtieth birthday two days ago, sightseeing local castles and indulging in Romanian Țuică. Bucky had recalled some of his art classes from the forties and gifted her a hand-drawn pencil portrait, of Maggie with her safety goggles on and an expression of deep concentration on her face. The drawing was a little rough, but Maggie easily recognized her own face and was startled by Bucky's perspective of her: in the drawing she looked focused, wise, and more than a little beautiful. Her hair and eyes were dark, and he'd clearly studied her face in detail. Maggie had tucked the drawing into the hidden compartment of her wings, along with their photobooth photos, for safekeeping.

The day had been wonderful, but now it was time for her to go.

Maggie kissed the top of Bucky's head. "You're going to be okay?"

Steve had been in the news pretty regularly lately, since the incident in Lagos a month ago and the rising political and public pressure for oversight of the Avengers. Tony and a couple of others had already signed the Sokovia Accords, but public debate was getting more heated and widespread as the weeks rolled on with no response from the rest of the Avengers.

Bucky and Maggie were naturally suspicious of any kind of authoritarian control, though they could understand why the world feared the Avengers. Either way, the Accords were unlikely to affect Maggie and Bucky, and all they could do was watch from afar and hope that Steve and Tony came out unscathed. Bucky was convinced that no amount of public pressure would get Steve to do something he didn't want to do, and Maggie wondered how her brother would feel about that.

Bucky lifted his head from her shoulder and hopped off the counter. "I'll be fine. I'm going to work on my notebook some more, try to get my head right. I'll worry about you, though."

Maggie hopped off the counter as well. "I'll be okay. It's just information gathering, and I know what to do if I have a panic attack or a traumatic memory. We've done this before."

They continued exchanging concerns about the other's wellbeing until they both laughed at each other, and Bucky walked her to the door. She was taking the laptop, leaving him with only his burner phone in the way of tech. The safehouse didn't even have a TV. But he kept reassuring her he'd be fine, and before she knew it her bag was on her back and the door was open.

Maggie wrapped her arms around Bucky and pressed her face into his neck. "I won't be long. Two weeks." The words were muffled, but he heard them. He wrapped his metal arm around her waist and ran his flesh hand through her hair, fingers gentle.

"Be safe."

"I will." She lifted her head and pressed her lips against his, trying to memorise every second. His fingers combed through her hair.

After a long moment Maggie disentangled herself from Bucky, already missing his warmth and his smell and his grey-blue eyes, and took a deep breath. "I'll be back soon. You're my mission, after all."

He smiled, and his eyes glinted. "You're my mission, too. I love you."

"I love you, too."

Before she could start checking that he'd be alright again, or go back in for another kiss, Maggie clenched her jaw and turned on her heel, climbing down the flights of stairs away from the apartment. She felt Bucky's eyes on her back until she was out of sight, and mentally scolded herself for feeling so morose. She pressed her fingers to her chest, where the pearl necklace he'd given her last year was tucked under her clothes. She'd see him soon.

For now, she had fragments of her bloody past to piece together.

++++++++++