-36- to -37

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Joint Counter Terrorist Center, Berlin

Sam stood with his hands on his hips on the pavement outside the JCTC building, surrounded by running civilians and confused law enforcement. It was chaos out here: no one knew who was in charge, and the air was filled with screams and sirens.

He was pissed that the doctor had escaped, and all he had was the guy's jacket.

Frowning, Sam trudged toward the road, trying to think through his next steps. He'd lost Steve in the bowels of the building, but he had no doubt the idiot would've kept going after Barnes. So where-

With a screech of tires, a white van suddenly pulled up in front of him. Sam blinked and looked up, and had to take a step back when the passenger door swung open.

There was a dark-haired woman wearing some kind of uniform in the driver's seat, and hey, she looks familiar…

"Get in," the woman called, and her eyes flicked to the JCTC behind him.

It took him a second, but Sam connected the dots, combining the woman's focused stare with his memory of the CCTV footage from Chile. He swore loudly and stepped back, glancing around at the running, screaming people around him. The woman scowled.

"It's okay, Sam!" That was Steve's voice, and he was… was he in the van? "We're good, you can get in!"

Sam glanced once more at his surroundings. No one was paying any attention to the van, or his predicament.

"Get in or I'm leaving," the woman hissed.

Certain he'd just agreed to be abducted by a former HYDRA assassin, Sam swore again and climbed into the passenger seat. Before he could buckle himself in, before he could even close the door, the woman – Margaret Stark – stepped on the gas, tearing away from the JCTC and throwing him back in his seat.

Once he'd shut the swinging door, Sam looked over his shoulder to see Steve, soaking wet and filthy, crouched over an unconscious, equally wet Barnes.

"What the hell."

Steve glanced up from Barnes. "He's out for now, but we need a way to restrain him when he wakes up."

Margaret Stark, who was wearing a goddamn van company uniform and a cap on her head, furrowed her brow as she drove them away from the JCTC, sticking to the speed limit. "I know a place," she said.

Sam glanced from Margaret Stark, to Steve, to Barnes. "What the hell."

Maggie ignored the surreptitious and not-so-surreptitious looks from her passengers as she drove the van through Berlin. She was heading for an abandoned warehouse she'd flagged as a potential safehouse in her earlier research. Of course, she'd been planning on using the safehouse for just herself and Bucky, but plans changed, and apparently Captain America went on the run. With his veteran friend. Who was now blatantly staring at her.

Maggie gritted her teeth and scanned the road ahead for any sign of surveillance or a road block. She'd thought about getting one of the others to drive, so she could monitor any potential pursuers on her laptop, but they were almost at the warehouse. Besides, the mess they'd left at the JCTC would take a while to make any sense of, especially with the power still down.

Gravel crunched under the van's tires as she pulled up outside the warehouse in the quiet industrial district. Maggie eyed the building – dirty, in disrepair, no sign of life in the windows.

She sensed Steve straighten to get a look at the building. "There's no one here?"

Maggie rolled up to the closed loading bay door and recalled the data she'd found on the location. "It's foreclosed upon. Not a popular area for squatters, and the bank put brand-new locks on the doors." She nodded to the loading bay door. "We need that open."

She glanced over her shoulder at Steve, but he seemed hesitant to leave Bucky alone in the van. Wilson was still staring at her, and he was the only one in the van without super soldier serum.

Repressing a sigh, Maggie opened her door and marched toward the warehouse, feeling Steve and Wilson's gazes prickling on her back. She wasn't too worried about leaving them alone with Bucky. If they decided they wanted to drive away, she had a few tricks up her sleeve – or rather, under the faux-backpack on her back. And she wasn't worried about them hurting him, if Steve's unconsciously protective body language was anything to go by.

She gripped the handle of the industrial-strength roller door with both hands, braced her feet and heaved. With a crack of the lock the door groaned open, rolling upwards and revealing the damp, dirty interior of the warehouse.

Maggie dusted off her hands and jogged back to the van – ignoring Wilson's even wider-eyed stare – and drove it into the building. Once it was out of public view, she turned the engine off and jumped out again, this time to open the back door for Steve.

She'd been concentrating on getting to the warehouse, but the sight of Bucky bleeding and unconscious in the back of the van affected her all over again, making her chest ache and her fists clench helplessly. If Steve noticed her pain he didn't say anything. He slid out of the back of the van and slung one of Bucky's arms over his shoulder. Maggie took the other arm, and they dragged him to a room adjoining the main warehouse, where they could see a vice.

"Sam," Steve grunted, and Wilson jogged ahead of them to start cranking the vice open.

Once Wilson had set out a crate, Maggie and Steve eased Bucky down, propping him on the crate and resting his arm on the plate of the vice. As they worked, Maggie noticed bullet holes in the sleeve over his metal arm. She gritted her teeth.

Finally, the vice was clamped over his arm and they stepped back.

Bucky's head was propped against the soldered metal of the vice, his damp hair obscuring his closed eyes and his head wound. He looked like a beaten man, slumped and filthy in an abandoned warehouse. Maggie ran her eyes over his arm, immobilized in the machinery. It wasn't a glass prison, but something about restraining Bucky made her feel queasy. Probably the fact that she had to do it at all.

What a mess, Bucky, she thought. Just this morning she'd been planning on telling him about her time in Ukraine, maybe cooking together and falling asleep in his arms. Her mind was a mess from everything she'd seen today, and she just didn't have the mental room to process having seen – having touched – her brother. She wished she could talk to Bucky about it.

While she'd been watching Bucky, her face carefully blank, Steve and Wilson had been trading glances. She could almost hear them thinking.

Eventually Steve turned to face her fully, and Maggie reluctantly dragged her eyes away from Bucky to look back at him.

His face was stoic, serious – Bucky had sometimes called that his Captain America face – but he seemed to get distracted as he looked at her properly, running his eyes over her features. Everything since the river had been a rush, all about getting Bucky away and restrained, but now Steve had time to look at her. A thoughtful expression filled his eyes.

Maggie kept her face neutral – it was the only thing she could think of to do, under such appraisal. Wilson was a few steps away, glancing between the two of them.

They were all surprised when Maggie was the one to break the silence. "What they're saying he did in Vienna, that wasn't him." She was surprised how even her voice was.

Steve crossed his arms, and now his gaze was a little harder. "I know."

That took her aback. She'd been expecting to have to convince him, especially after the disaster at the JCTC, but then she remembered all the stories about Steve's blind faith in Bucky.

But Steve continued: "It was the doctor, he set it up to get alone in a room with Bucky." He didn't look away from her face, watching intently for her reaction.

Maggie couldn't help the way her expression darkened. She knew it was going to be something like that. Whoever this doctor was, he'd done all that to get to Bucky, and if Bucky went into the JCTC as Bucky and came out the Soldier, then…

Maggie swallowed. Whoever the doctor was, he had Bucky's trigger words. He'd done this to Bucky, had turned him into a weapon and fired him at innocent people.

Maggie noticed that the anger sparking in her chest was showing in her face, and she quickly shut it down.

Steve levelled his gaze at her. "What do you know about the doctor?"

Maggie looked from Bucky's unconscious face, to Wilson's suspicious stare, to Steve's angry righteousness, and clenched her fist. She mentally ran through a list of people who might know Bucky's words, but her memory wasn't anywhere close to perfect. Besides, Steve and Wilson were strangers to her, and her base instincts went against revealing anything about the trigger words or their HYDRA programming. She knew Bucky had trusted Steve with his life seventy years ago, but Steve had been in this new world for five years.

"I don't know about any doctor," she eventually murmured. "What did he look like?"

Steve gave a short, terse description, and she could sense him getting more suspicious. She might be resistant to opening up to relative strangers, but she needed them on her side. Maggie desperately tried to think, getting nothing but a sharp headache blooming behind her eyes.

"I don't know," she said helplessly, and met Steve's eyes. "Whoever he is, he knew the Winter Soldier words-"

"Words?"

"Trigger words," Maggie said bitterly. "All he would have had to do was say them, and he'd have the Winter Soldier at his disposal." Her voice was cold, and her face was hard. She'd promised she wouldn't let it happen to Bucky ever again, and she'd failed him.

Steve tried a different tack. "Why?"

Maggie shrugged. "To cause chaos? For information? I don't know. Bucky should be able to tell us, when he wakes up."

Both of their eyebrows raised at her use of his nickname, but Maggie didn't care anymore. Her head was throbbing, she didn't know what to do.

Steve finally took his eyes off her face, glancing back at Bucky. "Which Bucky is he going to be?"

Maggie followed his gaze to Bucky, bleeding and unconscious in a vice, and her heart ached. She knew she could bring him back, given time, but… "I don't know," she whispered.

A silence fell at that, and Maggie couldn't bring herself to meet Steve's eyes again. She'd wanted to meet him for a while now, after hearing all Bucky's stories, but she'd never actually thought she would. An interrogation in a foreclosed warehouse wasn't exactly what she'd had in mind.

Wilson broke the silence next, drawing her attention. "So what's your deal? It's you, right, you're the Wyvern?"

Maggie bristled. She'd guessed they knew she was the Wyvern, going off Steve's wariness and Wilson's fear, but it had been a long time since anyone had called her that. "Not anymore," she bit out.

Wilson, to his credit, didn't look away. "Then who are you?"

She was getting annoyed at the interrogation, she just wanted a few moments to process everything that had happened. But she supposed they did have a right to ask some questions, after she'd tried to kill them a bunch of times and then showed up with a van and a safehouse. She sighed. "I'm Maggie."

Her eyes flickered between the two men, and she could feel the unsaid things. She saw the glance they shared, she saw that they recognised the name.

Something tightened in her gut. "You know who I am."

Simultaneously, they nodded. A sickened feeling washed over Maggie, and abruptly she could feel the edges of a panic attack clawing at her throat.

She cleared her throat, and made sure her voice was absolutely steady before she spoke. "Does he know that I'm alive?" She put the barest inflection on the word he, but they all knew who she was talking about.

Wilson looked to Steve. Steve looked back at her, and she could see compassion in his eyes. The warmth of it, after his resoluteness and suspicion, made her want to step back. Steve opened his mouth.

"Yes."

A whole rush of emotion hit Maggie, clobbered her from all sides like a hailstorm, like an attack. She wanted to ask a million questions: how long? How much does he know? Did he come for me? But she swallowed the questions, because she suddenly thought she was going to be sick.

She managed to stammer out: "I'm going to watch the perimeter," and was gone before they could object.

Sam and Steve watched Maggie flee the room, her face deathly white and her eyes round with panic.

Sam ran a hand over his face. This was already an enormous mess, and now there was her. She'd been cooperative enough, but he just didn't understand what her motives were.

"Think she's going to be on our side?" he asked, and the words echoed in the dusty warehouse.

Steve sighed. "She's here for him," he nodded at Barnes. "I don't know why, but that's the best we can ask for now."

"And if he's not the Bucky you remember when he wakes up? If he tries to fight you again? What's she going to do then?"

Steve met Sam's eyes, and Sam was glad to see that at least he was putting some thought into this. "She helped us get him here and put him in the vice," he eventually said. "I don't think she wants violence."

Sam wasn't so sure about that – he'd seen the way her anger crackled in the air around her when Steve explained how Barnes had been set up. But he supposed she'd been cooperative, when she probably could have killed them both by now, so he let it go.

They couldn't do anything until Barnes woke up, so Sam took watch and Steve went to scope out the warehouse. Who knew what Maggie was doing.

Maggie was hiding in the shadows outside the warehouse, breathing through the end of her panic attack. She'd spent two years building up her coping mechanisms, but it seemed they could only do so much against the day she'd just had: Bucky's arrest and triggering, her hasty attempts to catch up, seeing her brother.

Shuddering, Maggie pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes and took a long breath through her nose. Images of her brother, unconscious and bleeding, played behind her eyes.

She hoped he was alright. She realised that Tony must have been knocked unconscious fighting the Soldier – without his suit, what was he thinking? – and another wave of nausea hit. He was lucky he hadn't been killed. By Bucky. Maggie had to lean over, sure she was going to be sick.

He'll be okay, she told herself. He'd been waking up when she left, and he had his teammates and colleagues with him. Rhodey was there, and she remembered how close they'd been. The Black Widow was there too, and they'd been teammates for years. He'll be okay.

But she didn't know if she believed it. She wondered what his life had been like, knowing that she was alive. Suddenly, her shoulders sagged in exhaustion, and she leaned against the side of the warehouse with her hands still over her eyes.

What a mess.

It took her a while to get a handle on herself, but she'd faced brainwashing and nightmares and remorse before, and she was still here. She didn't push away her feelings, because she'd promised herself not to do that any more. She allowed herself to feel, acknowledged the feelings, and then got on with business.

Maggie stealthed back into the warehouse – she didn't really want to deal with Steve or Wilson again until she had to – and retrieved her backpack and laptop from the van. As she climbed up into the rafters of the warehouse, she thought her situation through.

She was on the run – that was nothing new, she'd been on the run for two and a half years. Of course there was a lot more heat now, and two hangers-on who were – understandably – suspicious of her. Until Bucky woke up – and hopefully he woke up as Bucky, not the Soldier – there wasn't much she could do except monitor potential pursuers and keep them hidden.

Once she found a good vantage point in a shadowy corner of the ceiling, perched on some relatively sturdy scaffolding, Maggie pulled out her laptop. She made sure her digital footprint was utterly untraceable – she needed the tech more than ever now, but she couldn't allow anyone to find it. Keeping one eye on the warehouse below, particularly her partial view of Wilson watching Bucky, Maggie checked on the JTTF situation, careful to avoid Tony's A.I.

Everyone was searching for Bucky, Steve and Sam, but it didn't seem that any mention of her had made her way into the reports. It seemed the attack on the JCTC was too fresh for anyone to have arranged any kind of coordinated approach. They were dealing with their headquarters being all smashed up and evacuated, and had alerted local law enforcement about the fugitives.

Maggie could hear a few helicopters roaming the sky, and surreptitiously listened in on their communications to make sure they weren't aware of the fugitives in the warehouse. As it stood, they had time before the net closed in.

After a few minutes, she noticed Wilson walk into the main part of the warehouse out of the corner of her eye. "Hey, Cap!" he called.

Maggie's heart leapt into her mouth. There was no mistaking the nervousness in Wilson's bearing, or the significant look he shot at Steve. Steve, who had just been peering out at the nearest helicopter, turned around and jogged toward Wilson.

It took Maggie a few seconds to power down the laptop, put it in the backpack and climb down from her perch. Her fingers were shaking. Which Bucky is he going to be?

As she hit the ground and started half walking, half jogging to the room with the vice, she heard Bucky's low voice: "Your mom's name was Sarah."

The rush of relief that hit Maggie made her feel dizzy, and she had to stop walking to press a hand to her forehead. With her eyes closed, she just caught his next words, tinged with a half-laugh: "You used to wear newspapers in your shoes."

She hadn't heard that one before. It must have been a new recall.

Alone in the open space of the warehouse, Maggie took a few moments to steady herself. This day had been a whirlwind of emotions; fear and hope and heartbreak. She allowed herself a few moments to be relieved, then calmed herself and appeared in the doorway to the next room just as Bucky said: "Everything HYDRA put inside me is still there, all he had to do was say the goddamn words."

He looked terrible. Filthy and bloody, hair dishevelled. But it was more than that – his face was twisting with emotion, his guilt and horror gleaming in his eyes as he looked up at his oldest friend. He sagged against the vice. Maggie's chest constricted, and her heart physically ached for him.

She'd appeared soundlessly, just behind Wilson in the doorway, while Bucky was looking up at Steve. But they'd always had a kind of sixth sense for the others' presence, and almost as soon as she appeared Bucky turned to look at her, his eyes grey and tired behind his dark hair.

The instant he saw her, Bucky's eyes deepened with complicated emotion. But Maggie had been reading those eyes her whole life, and she could see all his confusion and concern and relief. His eyes darted to Steve and Wilson, brow furrowed, but then he was looking back at her.

He was surrounded by concrete and metal, wearing a shirt with bullet holes in it, but this wasn't the Winter Soldier. This was the man she loved. Maggie didn't know what her eyes were showing him – probably much of the same: relief and concern. His brows furrowed as he watched her.

The room had gone quiet. Sam and Wilson followed Bucky's gaze to Maggie, and if they were surprised at her sudden appearance they didn't say anything.

Finally, Bucky spoke. "Thought you were going dark." His words were slightly slurred, and Maggie's brows pinched in concern.

She cleared her expression, and shrugged. "Had a mission to complete."

Something sparked in his eyes – relief, love, a complicated mixture of the two, and it made her heart melt. She swallowed. "He knew your words?"

There was a long pause as Bucky looked at her. She knew he was reading her eyes, and she knew he was seeing that she had met the Soldier again. She didn't know how to hide the truth from him, didn't know if she wanted to. Eventually, Bucky hung his head.

"I don't know if he knows yours as well," he sighed.

Wilson piped up at that. "This could happen to you, too?"

Maggie glanced away from Bucky and shot Wilson a look. Then she glanced at Steve, warily, but he wasn't focused on her. He was watching his friend, and Maggie was startled at the open look of grief on his face – his brows were furrowed, his mouth downturned, and his eyes were bright with pain. Maggie swallowed.

But as she watched, that same look of resolve slipped over Steve's features, and his shoulders straightened. "Who was he?" he asked.

Bucky glanced up and whispered: "I don't know."

"People are dead. The bombing, the set up, the doctor did all that just to get ten minutes with you." Steve levelled his gaze at Bucky, who seemed to droop with every word. "I need you to do better than I don't know."

Maggie and Wilson watched silently. Maggie wanted to be angry at Steve for pushing Bucky so hard right after he'd come back to himself, but she knew he was right – only Bucky knew what this doctor had said, what he wanted. Maggie wanted Bucky to spit it out so she could go find the doctor and… she swallowed. She didn't know if she could be as lenient as she was with Vincent Silva.

Bucky was thinking, his eyes focusing and darting from side to side. "He wanted to know about Siberia," he said. "Where I was kept." Bucky cocked his head. "He wanted to know exactly where."

Maggie tensed, her hands balling into fists at her sides and her face shuttering. She remembered howling snow, the Soldier's bloody face. The Project Leader clutching his reddening stomach. Wilson noticed her reaction and glanced at her out of the corner of his eye.

"Why would he need to know that?" asked Steve.

She could see Bucky remembering. His eyes flickered toward Maggie, then rose to meet Steve's gaze. "Because I'm not the only Winter Soldier."

Maggie inhaled, fresh memories crowding together at the front of her mind and making a piercing ache bloom behind her eyes.

She remembered: the bald man with the severe stare. The Project Leader's taunting in cold concrete passageways. Darkened cryochambers.

Maggie gritted her teeth. She'd remembered parts of this, but not all. Other parts of her time in Siberia had seemed more important. And as long as the memories stayed between she and Bucky, it hadn't mattered. But now, this man – this doctor – knew about the Winter Soldier Program.

Maggie felt cold. She felt as cold as she had when she lay bleeding in the howling Siberian snow, watching Karpov's helicopter disappear into the storm.

As Bucky explained the Winter Soldier Program, Wilson cranked the vice open to free his arm. Maggie wanted to help, but she couldn't – her feet were rooted to the spot, frozen by memories of snow and blood and blue liquid. She did keep an eye on Bucky's head wound and his eyes, but it didn't seem that he'd suffered any permanent damage. So she stood there, and listened.

Bucky glanced at her throughout his explanation, but she didn't have anything to add. When he said that HYDRA had sent him after a synthesis of the super soldier serum, Maggie swallowed her memories of a burning car, the Soldier's footsteps in the gravel. This wasn't the time for that, it wasn't the point.

He talked about how the batal'on smerti [death squad] had been given the serum, and she remembered how the blue liquid had felt cold travelling through her veins, before it flared into an unbearable, scorching heat. She shivered.

He explained how the Winter Soldiers had disobeyed orders, fought their handlers. She didn't know that part, she'd only ever heard the Project Leader's snide allusions. Of course they had been tested against the Soldier, Maggie thought bitterly, as she listened to Bucky's hollow voice. Karpov had been jealous, determined to do better than the Project Leader. Bucky's life was nothing, when it came to those men.

She remembered the bald man – Borya – and how his share of the serum had been reallocated to the Wyvern Project. She remembered his rage, remembered how it had felt when her heel spur sliced right through his flesh and bone, piercing his heart.

Steve was leaning against the concrete wall, arms crossed and face serious. "Who were they?"

"Their most elite death squad," Bucky said, his tired eyes focused on the ground. "More kills than anyone in HYDRA history, and that was before the serum."

Sam was against the doorway, by the fuse box. "They all turn out like you?" he asked.

"Worse."

Maggie swallowed. "One of those soldiers without the serum nearly killed me when I was fifteen," she added, and their gazes all swung to her. She crossed her arms. "I'd have enough trouble on my hands facing one of them now, let alone four."

She and Bucky met each other's eyes for a moment, and his gaze softened.

"The doctor," Steve said, "could he control them?"

"Enough."

Steve grimaced. "Said he wanted to see an empire fall-"

"With these guys he could do it," Bucky urged. "They speak thirty languages, can hide in plain sight, infiltrate, assassinate, destabilise." As he spoke, Maggie closed her eyes. She thought she'd left this world behind. But it turned out she'd just been waiting for it to catch up with her.

"They can take a whole country down in one night," Bucky continued, "and you'd never see them coming." He met Steve's eyes, showing him how serious he was, then turned to Maggie. "Peters might have underestimated the program."

It was Maggie's turn to grimace now. She didn't care about Project Leader Peters. But she noted that neither Steve nor Wilson seemed to need to ask who Peters was, and that worried her. If they knew about him, did they know about the Wyvern Project? Did they know about her long, bloody past?

Sam pushed off the wall and walked towards Steve, and something about that action gave her the ability to move again. She paced forward, her legs sluggish, and came to stand by Bucky's shoulder. His elbows were resting on his knees, and his head hung between his shoulders, but as she approached he looked up and met her eyes.

Maggie didn't know what to say. And judging by the glimmering brightness in Bucky's blue-grey eyes, he didn't know either. So she reached out, hovering her hand just over his shoulder, and cocked an eyebrow, asking. He nodded, and her hand came to rest on his tatty red shirt. Just the feel of him, warm skin and worn cloth, eased some of her bone-deep exhaustion, and judging by the way the muscles across his back loosened and stretched she had a similar effect on him. Maggie increased the pressure of her fingertips, just slightly, so she was holding him. Bucky's eyes welled with emotion and his head dropped again. A long, slow breath shuddered in his chest.

Her back was to Steve and Wilson, but she could hear their conversation.

"This would have been a lot easier a week ago," Wilson murmured, as if she and Bucky didn't have enhanced hearing.

"If we call Tony-"

Maggie stiffened, her fingers inadvertently clenching on Bucky's shoulder. His head jumped up, but she couldn't look at him. Her gaze was fixed on the pocked grey concrete of the far wall.

"No, he won't believe us," Wilson whispered. "And his focus might be elsewhere, y'know."

Maggie swallowed, and looked at her feet. There was a sliver of glass wedged into the side of her boot, she noticed. Bucky's shoulder bunched under her hand, and she realized she was probably holding on a little too tightly to be comfortable. She loosened her grip, and felt Bucky's eyes on her, but she couldn't meet them. She'd cry, she just knew she would.

"Even if he did-" Steve started.

"Who knows if the Accords would let him help," Wilson finished.

Steve sighed. "We're on our own."

"Maybe not," Wilson muttered. Steve must have given him a questioning look, because he added: "I know a guy."

After that, Steve and Wilson seemed to have some kind of nonverbal conversation, because there was nothing but silence in the warehouse. Maggie sensed their attention turn to her and Bucky, and then she felt their gazes on her hand like a prickling brand. She pulled the hand away from Bucky's shoulder.

She gave herself enough time to compose her face, then turned around. She stood tall over Bucky's shoulder, silent and neutral.

Steve's face was set in serious lines as he looked between them. "You with us on this?"

Simultaneously, Bucky and Maggie turned to look at each other. It only took them a second to read each other's eyes, before they turned back.

"Yes," Bucky answered for them both. "We're with you."

Maggie just met Steve's eyes and showed him her conviction. That was apparently good enough for him, because he nodded once and then said: "Alright, let's get to work."

Joint Counter Terrorist Center, Berlin

Secretary Ross loomed over Tony in the conference room, but Tony couldn't let him bring in the special forces to take out his friends, regardless of how stupid they were being.

"Seventy two hours," Tony said, once Ross looked like he was going to let him do this.

"Thirty six hours," Ross countered, his eyes hard. "Barnes." He started to leave the room. "Rogers. Wilson!"

He walked away, leaving Tony and Natasha alone in the room. Tony let out a breath - everything since he'd woken up in the cafeteria had been a whirlwind of sirens, debriefs, and Ross shouting.

Natasha, bolt upright in her chair, looked worried, and that unsettled Tony more than Ross's bureaucratic bullshit. He straightened, about to say something, but then something in his chest twinged and he had to lean forward, rubbing one hand against his sternum. Man, Barnes packed a hell of a punch. So much for on duty non-combatant.

"My left arm is numb, is that normal?" He asked, because even though she'd never admit it, Natasha needed someone who could make light of a situation. At least, that was his theory for why she kept Barton around.

It seemed to work – Natasha stood, and came to rest her hand on his shoulder. "You alright?"

"Always," he replied, startled by the warmth in her voice.

At that, Natasha crossed her arms and looked out through the glass wall. "Tony…"

Something about her tone made him glance up, fingers still probing his bruised and aching chest. Her lips were pursed, and she seemed to be searching for words.

"What's up?"

She met his eyes. "I saw your sister."

Whatever he'd been expecting her to say, it wasn't that. He froze, and searched Natasha's face for a lie. He'd never be able to spot one if she didn't want him to, but something about the nervous compassion in her eyes made his heart lurch.

Instantly, his brain got to work: Natasha had barely left his side since Steve and the others arrived at the facility, so when…? He sighed. When he'd been knocked unconscious by the fight with Barnes, of course. So Steve had probably been right when he said he saw her in Bucharest – for whatever reason, Maggie was ghosting Barnes' footsteps, just out of sight.

After a few seconds of silence Tony reached up to pinch his nose, then winced when he brushed his bruised cheek. "She was here?"

Natasha's brow was heavy. "I think it was her. She told Barnes to stand down, in Russian, probably saved my life. Then she called him Bucky. He got away from her, but…" she cocked her head as she looked down at Tony. "She checked your pulse, while you were out."

Tony's hand flew to his neck as if he'd been stung, and he pressed his fingers against his skin, where he could feel his own erratic heartbeat. She'd been close enough to touch him. What had been going through her head? Did she remember him?

"Where did she go?" he eventually asked, his voice rough. His fingers, still pressed against his neck, picked up on the vibrations of his voice travelling up his throat.

"I didn't see. I'm sorry."

Tony waved a hand to indicate that she didn't need to be – he could see the purple marks on her neck even now. He sighed. "God, you know, I try to focus on the job, but things are starting to hit real close to home, and…"

"I know," Natasha murmured. "But if she shows up again, we'll deal with it. Bring her in from the cold. If it can be done for me, it can be done for anyone."

Tony squeezed his eyes shut, still touching his own neck. "She really doesn't want to be found."

He heard the rustle of leather as Natasha shrugged. "Won't stop you finding her."

"That's true," he muttered, vaguely appreciative of Nat for knowing him so well.

Okay, his sister had been in this building. He could handle that, surely. He appreciated that Natasha hadn't mentioned it while Ross was in the room. In amongst everything else going on, he really didn't think this was the time to be admitting to authorities that his sister was alive as an ex-HYDRA assassin. He doubted he could convince Ross he was able to be objective in that case.

For now, he had a job to focus on. "Thirty six hours, thirty six hours…"

Natasha seemed to welcome the shift in conversation. "We're seriously understaffed."

"Oh yeah. Be great if we had a Hulk, right about now. Any shot?"

God, he missed Bruce. It felt like he'd just been steadily losing people throughout his life, one after the other. He was sure Bruce would have something sufficiently boring and diplomatic to say in this situation.

Natasha's smile was crooked. "You really think he'd be on our side?"

Right. Secretary Ross and Bruce had not had a great past. Tony frowned.

"I have an idea," Nat said.

Tony's brain had been chugging away since he woke up to find out Barnes, Steve, and Wilson had escaped. "Me too. Where's yours?"

"Downstairs…?" She cocked her head. "Where's yours?"

Despite himself, despite the tingling in his chest and arm, and the way his neck felt like it had been branded, Tony smiled.

++++++++++

Abandoned Warehouse, Outskirts of Berlin

Steve rallied his thoughts, contemplating the resources he had at his disposal: a single white panel van, nothing in the way of weapons, and no real way to get to Siberia. He had Sam, as always, who was currently standing to his left, arms crossed. He had Bucky, finally, though he looked exhausted and beaten. Every time Steve looked at him a thrill went down his spine, because he'd missed Bucky for so long and he was finally there. Of course, these weren't great circumstances.

And he had Maggie, who so far was a total mystery. It was clear that she and Bucky knew each other well, and that she was determined to help find the doctor, but he couldn't read her carefully blank face or the nonverbal communication that seemed to flow back and forth between she and Bucky. She'd looked profoundly disturbed through Bucky's explanation of Siberia and the Winter Soldier Program, but she'd gotten it under control, smoothing her expression and disguising her feelings. It reminded him of Natasha, and he remembered they had both been trained by the same woman, at different points in time.

"Alright," Steve said, straightening. "If we're going to go after this guy, we need soldiers. Sam, who did you say your guy was?"

Sam shifted his weight nervously. "His name's Scott Lang, he's got this suit… helps him to go really small. Like, so small that you can barely see him. He's good in a fight."

Steve cocked an eyebrow.

Sam sighed. "He's called Ant-Man."

Out of the corner of his eye, Steve saw Maggie and Bucky share a cynical glance. He couldn't help but agree, but Sam seemed sure about this.

"Think he'll want to help us?"

"He seemed like a pretty good guy, I think if we explain the situation he'll want to help. We'll have to get him from San Francisco, though."

Steve nodded, deep in thought. "I was planning on calling Clint, I think he'd be interested in helping Wanda get out of the compound. And they'll both want to help stop the doctor. They could pick up Lang."

Bucky and Maggie listened silently, a few feet apart. If they were confused by the names being thrown around, they didn't show it.

"Not to mention we'll need our stuff back," Sam sighed. "Think Sharon would help?"

Steve's gut twisted at the thought of getting Sharon further into this mess, but he had to admit that they could use her help right now. "It's worth a try," he nodded. "So we need to get in contact with Clint and Sharon. We could try to find a payphone somewhere around here, but that'll pin us with a pretty identifiable location." He rubbed his jaw, thinking. Nat had always been better at this stuff than him. He was a soldier, not a spy. "We could pick up a burner phone somewhere, but…"

As he spoke, Maggie leaned down to a black backpack she'd brought into the room with her, and pulled something out of the front pocket. Steve noticed that she already had a backpack on her back, oddly bulgy, and he wondered why she needed two. Straightening, Maggie opened her palm to reveal… a phone.

Steve blinked, looking from the glossy flip phone to Maggie's face. She kept it carefully blank, like Natasha and Clint did with strangers, but there was an openness in her gaze that startled him. Every time he looked at her he was struck by her similarity to Tony and Howard – her dark hair and brows, and the intelligence glittering in those brown eyes.

Apparently fed up with his stunned blinking, Maggie stepped forward and offered him the phone.

He took it, and shot her an assessing look. "… Thanks."

"You're welcome," she replied, with a ghost of a smile, and stepped back to her bag. Steve could sense Bucky glancing between the two of them, an unreadable look on his face.

"What else you got in there?" Sam piped up, squinting at her bag as if it might contain the secrets to the universe.

Unbeknownst to Steve and Sam, Maggie ran a mental checklist: the bag contained tools and tech, including a laptop and an iPod packed with hits from the last eighty years, false IDs for her trip to Ukraine, a pair of red goggles and dark gauntlets with barbed fingers, and a meagre collection of her treasured possessions: postcards from Bucky, a pair of safety goggles, a fading Rubik's cube.

Maggie pushed the bag behind her with the heel of her boot, obscuring it from their view. "Nothing."

Steve saw Sam's eyes narrow, but he didn't push further. Sighing, Steve powered up the phone and began tapping away, forming coded messages to send to Clint and Sharon.

The light outside the warehouse was fading, signalling the end of what had been an impossibly long day. Even though his focus was on the phone, Steve could tell that the atmosphere in the warehouse was still tense. They were all a few feet apart, and Steve could sense Sam's confusion, suspicion and curiosity rolling off him in waves. Bucky looked exhausted, still slumped on the dirty crate.

Predictably, Sam eventually spoke up. "I'm Sam," he said, eyes flickering between Maggie and Bucky.

"I know," Maggie said, and Steve glanced up. Sam's eyes narrowed further, and Maggie swallowed, as if regretting the words. Eventually, after working her jaw a moment or so, she spoke again: "I'm… sorry for trying to kill you." Her eyes flickered toward Steve, including him in the apology. He nodded once and went back to texting Sharon.

"Me too," Bucky chipped in. But he didn't stop shooting suspicious glances at Sam, and Maggie suddenly remembered a conversation a few months ago in which Bucky had referred to the Falcon as that guy who shot you.

There were a few seconds of silence while Sam processed that. "Alright," he eventually said, starting to nod. "Alright, sure. I'm sorry about…" he gestured vaguely, seemingly encompassing both Maggie and Bucky, and the entire world. This was followed up by an uncomfortable grimace. Bucky levelled him with an unimpressed look.

Before things could get any more awkward, Steve finally finished with the burner phone and looked up. "Okay, that's done. I'll need to wait for their replies, so do you mind if I hang on to this, Maggie?" He held up the phone.

Bucky tensed at Steve's use of her name, and Steve cocked an eyebrow, but Maggie didn't react. "Sure."

"Okay," Sam said. "What now?"

Maggie cleared her throat. "If we're planning on moving, we'll need to change vehicles. That van's going to be missed sooner or later."

Steve acknowledged her with a nod. "We need to get out of the city, and wait to arrange a meeting location with Sharon and Clint. As for uniforms, hopefully Sharon will be able to get our gear to us, Sam." He turned his gaze to Bucky, pushing through the part of him that was still a twenty-year-old kid excited to see his best friend. "Buck, you've got the arm, and we're enhanced-"

Bucky's head swivelled to look at Maggie, and his eyes flicked – curiously – to her backpack straps and then back to her face, a questioning look in his eyes. Maggie nodded, her eyes flickering with meaning as she acknowledged him.

Sam cleared his throat. "Uh, what was that about?"

Steve had to agree.

Bucky's arm whirred, and Maggie sighed.

"It's not just the arm," she said, and then shrugged off her backpack. Only it wasn't a backpack – it was just a cover, and once it was removed, Steve could see the glint of metal over her shoulders.

Steve's eyebrows shot up his forehead. Before his eyes, metal unfurled from Maggie's back, extending into two sleek, sharp, black and gunmetal grey wings. The wings spanned the warehouse room, and Steve stared as the black webbing stretched and the metal skeleton extended telescopically, slotting into place.

The tension in Maggie's frame seemed to melt away, as if having the wings loose and stretched was easing her posture. To her left, Bucky's face softened.

Steve raised his eyebrows. He hadn't been able to see the wings properly all those years ago, since the woman attached to them had been trying to kill him at the time, but now that he had a moment to take them in, he could admit that they were a technological work of art. He'd been in the future long enough to see expertly made machines when he saw them, and this was the real deal. The wings seemed almost fluid, the metal sliding and shifting like living flesh and bone, and his eyes picked out the tiny, incredibly powerful engines alongside the sharp metal barbs.

Steve found himself wanting to draw the wings, in the same way he'd wanted to draw his shield the first time he saw it, or the Iron Man armor.

Steve glanced back at the metal limbs curving over Maggie's shoulders, and remembered the scans of her body with metal on her bones that he'd seen in Canada. He hadn't understood a lot of it, but he realised that it was that reinforcement that allowed her to wear these complex mechanical wings.

"You've got aerial support if you need it, Captain," Maggie murmured, and Steve met her eyes. He was startled by how normal she looked, despite the metal wings protruding from her back. Before, when she'd been the Wyvern, he'd had trouble thinking of her as more than a faceless, almost robotic assassin. It might have been because of her face mask and malicious-looking goggles, or it might have been the brainwashing.

When he'd spotted her on the riverbank after saving Bucky, she'd seemed small and scared.

But now, it seemed Maggie was in her element. This was her, this woman with intelligent eyes and powerful metal wings, offering her help. Steve was struck by the sudden well of respect he felt for her.

Sam, meanwhile, was gaping. "Are those always attached to you?"

"No," Maggie said, and shuffled her wings a little closer to her body. Steve couldn't see her making any subtle hand or shoulder movements, like Sam had to do to control his wings, and he suddenly recalled reading something about cybernetic linkups in the data about her at the Québec base. Maggie continued: "But the way things are going, I don't plan on taking them off."

"Fair," Sam acknowledged.

Bucky cleared his throat. "Meg and I don't have combat gear, though, we'll need to pick something up."

Steve frowned, glancing from Bucky to Maggie. "Meg?"

She sighed. "It's a long story."

Another awkward silence fell after Maggie revealed her wings and Bucky called her Meg. Maggie was still feeling a little uncomfortable about exposing her wings, but something about the way Steve had looked at her eased the discomfort – he'd been surprised, at first, but that settled into awe, and then some kind of understanding. He hadn't been afraid of her, or disgusted. It was as if things suddenly made sense for him.

Maggie shared a glance with Bucky – they were both feeling the awkwardness of the silence that had fallen.

Steve rallied himself. "Alright, we'll track down a new vehicle, then pick up combat gear, and lie low until we meet with Sharon and Clint. Let's go."

"Wait."

Steve, Sam and Maggie all blinked and glanced at Bucky, who stood up from the crate by the vice. His face was grim, and he met Steve's eyes. Maggie cocked her head.

"Something else?" Steve asked.

"I need…" he glanced at Maggie. "A minute."

Some of the tension left Steve's shoulders at the realisation that there weren't any more terrible HYDRA secrets to reveal. Still, he seemed hesitant. "Buck, we're on the clock, here-"

"Steve." Bucky's eyes were serious. "Just one minute."

Steve sighed, and relented. He and Sam walked off into the larger room, to strip any evidence of their being in the van.

The moment they were out of eyesight, Maggie and Bucky moved towards each other. Bucky seemed a little cautious but Maggie wasn't having any of that – she stepped right into his space, slinging her arms around his neck and pulling him into her. Bucky's arms wrapped around her back, hesitant, just below where her wings were moored in her spine. Maggie closed her eyes when he sighed and sank into her, burying his face in her hair and tightening his grip on her.

He smelled like sweat, fuel and river water but she had him now, safe and warm, and her heart pounded against her rib cage with relief. She let her hand drift up to the nape of Bucky's neck, fingers tangling in his hair.

After a long moment Bucky leaned back a little, his stubble scratching her ear as he pulled away. His blue-grey eyes were sombre.

"Did I hurt you?"

Maggie sighed, loosening her grip around his shoulders and meeting his eyes. She didn't want to lie to him. "Yes. But I'm okay-" she hurried on to say, as horror and self-loathing burst into Bucky's expression. "Really. You were the Soldier, and I tried to stop you-"

His horror shifted to exasperation. "Meg-"

"Are you saying you wouldn't try to stop me?" She shot him a challenging look, and when he didn't argue she continued. "You threw me through a wall, but I'm fine now. You just…" she ran her eyes over his face, to reassure herself that he was okay. "You had me really worried, Bucky."

He sighed and leaned in again, pressing his forehead against hers. "I'm sorry, doll." Their words were low, so as not to carry into the next room, and Bucky's breath brushed against her lips.

"It's really not your fault," Maggie said with a small smile. Then her face darkened. "I'm going to make sure that doctor gets justice for what he's done."

Bucky's metal fingers brushed against her cheek, and she realised she was glaring into the middle distance. She shook herself.

"I'm so sorry, Bucky," she sighed. "I promised you I wouldn't let anyone use your words against you again, and then I wasn't even there, I couldn't help-"

"It ain't your fault," Bucky urged. "This is… a lot bigger than us." He looked so lost, so defeated, that her heart ached.

"Sure is." Maggie took a long breath through her nose. "I saw my brother."

"What?" Bucky pulled his forehead away from hers and looked into her eyes. "Where?"

She explained, and Bucky's face fell again at another reminder of his violence. "Doll, I'm-"

"Don't apologise!" she interrupted, and reached up to squeeze his metal hand, to soften the words. "You and I understand what it's like, to hear those words. So we both know that you weren't responsible."

Bucky closed his eyes. "I know, I'm just… I'm sorry he got hurt."

"Me too."

"You going to be alright?"

She sighed. "Better now you're awake. How are you feeling?"

Bucky's eyes darkened, and she watched him swallow. "Not… not great. I'm angry, Meg."

Maggie leaned in again, running a hand through his hair the way she knew he liked, and pressed her face into his neck. She breathed in the smell of his skin, so glad he was alive.

"Me too," she breathed, and squeezed his metal hand again. They didn't need to say more – they knew how the other felt, and there wasn't anything they could say to make it better.

Once they leaned apart, Bucky gave her a small, sad smile and her heart skipped a beat. "So how was Ukraine?"

Despite herself, she huffed a laugh. "It was shit, thanks for asking." He chuckled, and Maggie shook her head at him. "We've been bit more than a minute, handsome, we'd better get back out there."

Bucky nodded, but he wasn't done yet. His hand slipped up to cradle the back of her head, and Maggie leaned in to press her lips to his. The kiss was short, but Maggie poured her love and relief into it, and let herself melt into the sure slide of Bucky's lips. Too soon, Bucky pulled away.

"I missed you," Maggie murmured, wishing they could disappear into some bolthole where they could kiss and sleep and hide from the world.

Bucky squeezed her hand, as if he could hear her thoughts. "Me too." As they pulled apart, he took a deep breath. "So, you met Steve."

"I did." Maggie covered her wings with the faux-backpack again, picked up her bag and started walking. Bucky fell into step beside her, and she sensed him struggling to find the words to ask do you like my best friend? She couldn't help but smile to herself at his silent struggle, before she finally took pity on him.

"He's nice," she said, and smiled again at the way Bucky's shoulders loosened slightly. They walked into the main part of the warehouse and spotted Steve and Sam at the other end, by the van. "He's kinda serious, but that's understandable right now. He didn't seem to need to know anything about me other than that I was going to help him get you to safety. I like him."

Bucky glanced up at his friend, and his face softened and opened, a glimpse of the man he'd been seventy years ago. Maggie knocked her shoulder into his, repressing another smile when he rolled his eyes at her.

"You're jealous of Wilson, though, aren't you?" she stage-whispered.

Bucky sniffed in reply, as if her comment wasn't worthy of a response. They reached the two men by the van, who looked up at their approach.

Steve lifted the burner phone. "Clint's on his way to get Wanda and Scott, and Sharon says she's with us. We'll meet them all at the Leipzig/Halle Airport in thirteen hours."

"Sounds good," Maggie nodded. She was feeling much better after she and Bucky's private moment, and this caught Sam's notice. He straightened and glanced from Maggie to Bucky. They kept their faces neutral.

"So what's your deal?" he eventually asked. "You've been on the lam together this whole time, Bonnie and Clyde style?"

"Sam," Steve muttered, sounding resigned, but even he looked a little curious.

Maggie cocked her head and glanced at Bucky, who was eyeing Sam warily. "Yes," she eventually said. "But without the murdering."

Sam scratched his chin. "Huh. And that was you in Argentina, right, with the kid on the chairlift?"

Maggie blinked. They knew about that? Did Tony know? "… Yes."

Sam and Steve both contemplated her, and she shifted nervously. They seemed surprised, and she could practically see their estimation of her changing, before her very eyes.

Finally, Sam spoke: "That was a good thing you did. Wait, Barnes was with you then?"

Bucky nodded. "I was stealing a car at the time." Maggie caught the wry edge of a joke in his tone, and the corner of her mouth quirked. He continued: "so we could get away."

"Goddamn," Sam said, putting his hands on his hips. He glanced at Steve, who shrugged. He turned back to Maggie and asked "You know we caught you on CCTV?"

Her amusement fell from her face. "No."

"Wasn't much, just a few seconds of you with a backpack. We didn't even know if it was you, really, no one knows what your face looks like. We talked to the kid, too-"

Maggie brightened. "Miguel. Was he okay?"

Her enthusiasm seemed to take Sam aback, and he shared another glance with Steve. "Yeah, he was… he was fine. He was with his mom, said you were a nice lady."

Maggie smiled, then wiped away the expression and changed the subject. "We should get moving."

"Good idea," Steve said, meeting her eyes. "Any ideas on getting a vehicle?"

Maggie was surprised he was turning to her for advice – if she'd heard his history right, Captain America had liberated a getaway car on more than one occasion. Then it occurred to her that he could be testing her. All he knew about her, after all, was that she'd tried to kill him a bunch of times and now had Bucky's seal of approval.

Maggie shrugged. "There're plenty of auto repair shops around here, and I hear you're a fair hand at stealing cars."

Steve's eyes widened, and his head snapped toward Bucky. "Buck…?" Hope and surprise mingled in his eyes, and Maggie smirked. But then Sam glanced at her, so she hurriedly composed her face in an innocent expression. He narrowed his eyes.

Bucky's eyes glinted. "I don't know where she coulda' heard that."

Steve smiled, the first time Maggie had seen him do that, and her glee softened at the way the smile transformed his face, made him seem years younger. Bucky smiled too, and Maggie's heart nearly burst at how happy she was for them both.

Sam cleared his throat. "I don't care who steals the car, but we gotta go."

"Right." Steve shook himself, and they followed him out of the warehouse.

As they were squeezing into a dusty, midnight blue 1965 Volkswagen Beetle, Sam slammed the passenger door shut then turned to look at Bucky and Maggie.

"Wait, that HYDRA scientist in Chile-"

"Yep," Maggie deadpanned, trying to find a way to fit in the backseat without squashing Bucky. Her wings were making it extra difficult.

"Goddamn," Sam muttered, as Steve gunned the engine. "How'd you manage to get him to turn himself in?"

Bucky shifted to give Maggie more room. "We persuaded him," he replied, then cocked his head. "So I'm guessing you don't know about the HYDRA base in Belarus."

Sam thought about it, as Steve steered the puttering car through the dark Berlin streets. "Wait, Belarus? But that was ages ago, and there wasn't…" he trailed off, glancing at the two stoic ex-assassins in the back seat. "No, you guys did that?"

Maggie nudged Bucky and shot him a stop bragging look, but she couldn't resist adding: "We don't know anything about it. Communication devices are so complicated."

"I bet," Steve added, and when she met his eyes in the rear view mirror she could see he was smiling.

Twenty minutes outside of Berlin, Bucky glanced away from the window. "Oh, and there were the bank robbers in New Delhi."

"Bucky," Maggie murmured, though she was smiling.

Sam blinked. "What."

Steve shook his head.

When Maggie pulled her beat-up laptop out of her backpack and opened it on her lap, Steve and Sam shared a nervous glance. It was full night out, and they were driving country back roads to avoid detection. Maggie was already sick of sitting in the tiny car, squished in with three men who were far too big for this make and model.

"Isn't that traceable?" Sam eventually asked.

Maggie's fingers danced over the keyboard. "Don't worry about it."

Unbeknownst to her, Steve glanced into the rear-view mirror at Bucky, with a questioning look on his face. Bucky nodded, just once, and Steve returned his focus to the road. If Bucky said it was okay, then Steve was fine with it. And if Steve was fine with it, then Sam would deal with it. With some complaining.

"We need to keep a low profile," Steve murmured, shifting in his seat as he drove. His legs had to be killing him, squashed into the driver's seat as he was. "The CIA and the JTTF and everyone else will be looking for us."

Without looking up from her laptop screen, Maggie said: "I don't know what the Avengers are doing, but the CIA and the JTTF are thinking we've gone west. They're looking for transport lines to the UK and US, and following a few dummy leads I set up."

Sam physically turned around in his seat. "You hacked the CIA?"

Steve stared incredulously at her in the rear view mirror.

Maggie looked up from her screen for a moment, meeting Sam's gaze. "No, I can read minds from very far away."

Bucky snorted as she returned to her typing. "You're a showoff," he murmured.

Out of the corner of her eye, Maggie saw Steve smile a dopey smile at Bucky through the rear view mirror.

Maggie merely shrugged, and smirked to herself when Sam turned back around in his seat with a huff.

"We're making jokes now, I guess," he grumbled.

After spending a few hours on the back roads, they headed for a 24-7 sports store in a town close to Leipzig that would have what Maggie and Bucky needed for combat gear. It was decided that Maggie and Sam would be the ones to go into the store, as they had the least recognizable faces, and Maggie could speak German.

On the way there, Maggie was working on the laptop when a song she had on her iPod came on the radio.

"Love this song," she muttered absentmindedly, forgetting, for a moment, the tense situation.

Sam's head swivelled, and when she looked up she noticed he was giving her a weird look.

"What, I'm not allowed to like music now?"

He shrugged. "Guess I just don't know how to read you. You're really different to the last time I met you."

Maggie's face shuttered. Bucky stiffened in his seat and glared at Sam.

For the first time, Maggie properly considered what Sam's opinion of her might be. The last time he'd seen her she'd been the Wyvern, no question about it – black cowl and slitted red goggles covering her face, sharp metal wings flared as she pinned him against the hull of the Helicarrier, seconds from ending his life. She'd been confused, then, but he'd had no way of reading that – to him, she was a barely-human assassin sent to shoot him out of the sky.

Now, Maggie could hardly imagine being that… monster. She was a person now. Her life wasn't normal, but it was filled with music and hobbies and laughter and love. Sam hadn't seen that, she reminded herself. He was seeing an old version of her, surely. Surely she couldn't still remind him of the Wyvern.

She'd taken too long to answer. Sam said "Uh…?" and glanced at Bucky. Steve looked into the rear view mirror, frowning.

Bucky was still glaring. "Give her a minute," he muttered, and his metal hand dropped to his knee, only an inch away from Maggie's thigh – offering support, but giving her space.

Maggie swallowed, and shook her thoughts away. "That's the goal," she murmured to Sam, gave Bucky a quick smile, then got back to work.

Four thousand miles away, Tony went from exasperated to surprised as the fifteen year old he was talking to looked into his eyes with a solemnity that didn't belong on such a young face.

"When you can do the things that I can, but you don't, and then the bad things happen… they happen because of you."

Tony looked down, and away. The damn kid sounded much too much like another too-young hero he knew. He rallied himself. "So you wanna look out for the little guy, you wanna do your part, make the world a better place. All that, right?"

Peter seemed relieved. "Yeah, yeah, just looking out for the little guy. That's what it is."

Tony sighed, and got to his feet. Okay, so we're doing this.

At a back road near the sports store, Maggie climbed out of the car after Sam with an audible sigh of relief.

"I feel that," Sam muttered, as she closed the car door, nodded goodbye to Steve and Bucky and turned to follow him. "I couldn't think of a worse car to try to squeeze three super-soldiers into."

Maggie didn't know what to say to that, so they walked the rest of the way to the store in silence. Maggie was still wearing the black slacks and pale blue collared shirt from the van company uniform, though she'd discarded the jacket and hat, and her wings were hidden under the faux-backpack. Sam seemed less suspicious of her after the car ride, seemingly lost in his own thoughts.

The store was brightly lit, staffed by a tired-looking teenager. Maggie double-checked her camera signal jammer to make sure it was working. She and Sam moved around the store, searching for clothes tough enough to pass as body armor.

At a rack of reinforced leather vests, Sam scratched his head. "Ah, shit, I didn't ask what size Barnes is, which do you think-"

She reached out silently and slid the right-sized vest off the rack. She'd been buying clothes for Bucky for over two years, and he'd been returning the favor, of course she knew what size he was. Sam shot her a look that she ignored. They moved toward the women's line of outdoor gear, drawing the teenage cashier's eye for a moment.

"So what else have you two been up to in the past two years?" Sam asked in a low voice, cocking his head. "Apart from stopping bank heists and rescuing kids on chairlifts."

Maggie bristled at the light suspicion in his tone, but she kept her face carefully neutral as she selected a pair of tough black trousers designed for rock climbing. "I learned to juggle."

Sam blinked. "Juggling."

"Mhm." She pulled at the pants, testing the durability. They wouldn't stop a bullet, but they were flexible enough for maneuvering while flying, and they might hold up against a blade. "Went to Machu Picchu. I made friends with an old lady named Beatrice. We've both had a few jobs."

Sam pinched his nose. "You're messing with me."

Maggie shrugged. "I'm not, but I understand why you wouldn't believe me."

He shook his head. "I've been looking for you for two and a half years, and I never would've guessed any of that crap." He sounded resigned.

She stilled. "You… you've been looking for me?"

Sam watched her carefully. "Yeah. You and Barnes. That surprising?"

Maggie was flustered now, and she didn't know what to say. Tony had looked for her? He'd known all this time? "I didn't think… never mind." She hustled to the wall of snacks, trying to escape the conversation. They'd already picked up everything they needed in the way of gear.

But Sam was on the case now. "You left blood on my shirt at the Triskelion-"

"You shot me," she remembered, her face pale.

Sam gave her a look, as if to say can you blame me? She shrugged. "Yeah, and we thought you might be with Barnes so we had the blood tested. By Tony."

She swallowed thickly and stared at the displayed snacks, not really taking them in.

Sam watched Maggie's face. He could see that she remembered Tony, or at least cared about him. He didn't know if he'd ever hoped for that much.

Sam grabbed a handful of protein packets and tossed them in their basket. "I have had a meeting at least once a month since then, updating Steve and Tony on where I was at with finding you guys. Neither of them have stopped looking."

Maggie swallowed again. "That's over thirty one meetings."

He blinked. "Yes, at least. And it really annoys me that you know that." Maggie reached out and grabbed a packet of peanuts. Sam continued: "He's going to be after us, you know," he said gently. "He might try to stop us."

She was trying to get a hold of herself, and Sam really wasn't helping. "I know."

"What will you do?"

Maggie could feel her skin prickling. She wanted to be out from under these bright lights. She wanted Bucky. "I'll finish the mission," she hissed, and turned away from Sam to march toward the counter. She greeted the tired-looking cashier in German.

Toward the end of their purchase, the cashier lifted the pair of trousers for Bucky and glanced from them to Sam.

"Ich glaube nicht, dass das die richtige größe für sie ist, sir." ["I don't think these are the right size for you, sir."]

Sam blinked at the rapid fire German, and glanced to Maggie for help.

Maggie smiled disarmingly at the cashier. "Mein mann hat probleme mit seinem gewicht, der arme liebling." ["My husband has problems with his weight, the poor darling."]

The cashier glanced back at Sam with a vaguely discomforted look on his face. "Ah." He rushed through the rest of the sale, and after wishing them auf wiedersehen slumped back onto his counter, eyes glassy with tiredness.

On the way back to the car, Sam frowned. "What was that about?"

Maggie straightened her shoulders, feeling a little better. "Nothing."

While Sam and Maggie shopped, Steve and Bucky hunkered down in the tiny car. At first it was awkward – this was the first time they'd been alone together when Bucky wasn't the Soldier.

Bucky's eyes flickered around the car, not sure what to look at. He eventually settled on peering out the window, under the guise of monitoring their surroundings. They were parked on a quiet, poorly lit street in a commercial district. There was no one else around. The night chill seeped in through the windows.

Bucky was surprised when Steve broke the silence. "I'm sorry I didn't look for you, after the train in Switzerland." Bucky was alarmed to hear that Steve's voice was thick and choked. "I should've known-"

"Steve," Bucky interjected, and now his voice was choked. "It's not your fault."

The idea that Steve'd been carrying around all that guilt for so long… He reached up and rubbed his forehead. Steve was still in the front seat, looking out the windshield.

After a minute, Steve spoke again. "Why did you lie?"

Bucky sighed, trying to meet Steve's eyes in the rear-view mirror, but he was staring resolutely ahead. "Because I knew that whoever was coming was probably going to kill me. I didn't want you coming after me trying to protect me, in case you got caught in the firing line." He laughed humorlessly and glanced down at his lap. "Look how that worked out."

Steve bowed his head. "That's why you've been away all this time?"

"I'm dangerous, Steve. I knew someone would try to use me against you, and that's exactly what ended up happening."

Steve let out a long breath, and it fogged the windshield. "I could have helped you."

"I know." He knew it wasn't worth trying to convince Steve that he'd been better off without Bucky. Steve had always been more stubborn than him.

Bucky thought they were going to leave it at that, but apparently he'd forgotten just how persistent his friend could be. Steve turned in his seat, the far-off streetlight casting shadows across his face. "I missed you, Buck."

That surprised Bucky, and he felt his throat tighten with emotion. He wanted to keep Steve safe, knew that he had to distance himself for that to happen, but he couldn't help it: "I missed you too, punk."

Steve's smile was sudden and brilliant, and his blue eyes glinted in the darkness. "Jerk."

They settled into a comfortable silence after that. Bucky watched the weak light glimmer on his metal arm, contemplating all the gleaming memories of Steve he'd recalled over the years, and how they didn't hold up against the real thing. Steve watched his friend, a small smile on his face.

After a minute or so, Steve crossed his arms and leaned against the door. "And what about her?"

Bucky stiffened slightly. "What about her?"

Steve raised an eyebrow. "You know who she is, don't you? She knows who she is."

Bucky examined his metal fingers. Softly, he replied: "Yeah."

"Her brother's been looking for her-"

He glanced up. "He has?"

Steve frowned. "Yeah, he has. He's known she's alive for a while now."

Bucky found himself nodding. He was glad for Meg, he really was, but he knew how complicated this must make things for her. He remembered asking her if she wanted to see her brother. You know why I can't do that, she'd said.

Doesn't stop you wanting things.

After a long moment, she'd sighed. Yeah. I do want that.

Bucky could almost hear Steve's thoughts churning, so he offered: "She's just as dangerous as I am, Steve. And she wanted to protect him."

Steve sighed, and dropped his head back against the window. "Tony's not gonna stop."

Bucky went cold at the implications of that. For the first time, he wasn't thinking of Tony as one of his victims, a man who missed his sister from afar. He knew the man's history – Tony Stark was a determined, resourceful genius, and if he was anything like his sister, then sooner or later Stark would get what he was looking for.

Bucky didn't know what would happen if he caught up to Meg, especially while they were looking for the Winter Soldiers.

Eventually, Steve cleared his throat. Bucky glanced up and saw that he seemed to be struggling to find the words to say something. He waited.

Eventually: "Is she… alright?"

Bucky blinked. "What?"

"We… we went to a base in Canada," Steve murmured. "Saw some… pretty terrible things."

Bucky swallowed, thinking of all the times he'd heard Meg screaming in her sleep. His jaw tightened.

"Once you remember that stuff… you don't forget it again."

Steve's eyes darkened, but then he spotted something just down the street and straightened. Bucky looked over his shoulder – it was Meg and Sam, walking back to the car with bags in their arms. Meg's face was carefully neutral, but Bucky could see from the line of her shoulders and the look in her eyes that something was troubling her.

Steve eyed Bucky in the rear view mirror as Maggie climbed into the back seat and offered him a bag of peanuts. Bucky smiled, and Steve was taken aback at how much it made him look like the man he'd been seventy years ago, fun-loving and sociable, trading jokes and smiles with his friends.

Steve thought that over as he and Sam swapped seats, and Sam drove the car away. If Maggie Stark could make Bucky smile with just a bag of peanuts, then she was alright in his book.

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