Happy Holidays, my loves!

January, 2007

"Maggie? You there?"

"Good morning Tony," Maggie smiled, leaning back in a cafe chair overlooking the Chao Phraya river in Bangkok. A red ferry chugged past, briefly overpowering the noise of the city.

"Well it's good evening in Myanmar, isn't it?" came Tony's carefully even voice.

"It is, but… I'm in Thailand now. It's evening here too though." The sun was setting on the city, casting orange light over the wide river. "It's good to hear your voice."

She meant it wholeheartedly. Two months after her impulsive flight out of LA, she and Tony had developed a system. Their first phone call had been long, and angry. Tony had flown to Doha to retrieve Maggie, but she'd already hopped on another plane to Bangladesh. He had called her, near out of his mind with worry and frustration, and Maggie had refused to meet him. He had yelled at her, and it had ended with them laying ground rules: Maggie had to call Tony at least once every two weeks, or he'd bring in the police and the FBI and Interpol and every other authority he could think of to get her home.

Maggie had travelled far and wide since then. Last time she'd called Tony she'd been in Myanmar. She'd slowly been making her way down into Southeast Asia, sightseeing and trying new things and enjoying anonymity. Because she'd quickly realised that as a drifter, she didn't get recognized as often. She wore different clothes, different makeup styles, cut her hair, and used temporary dyes to change hair color every week or so. Today she wore a flowy yellow sundress, and had neon pink hair. Her boots were kicked up on a nearby chair and she nursed a vibrant orange cocktail in her free hand.

She'd learned a lot in two months. She had taken up gymnastics again, and attended martial arts classes wherever she went. At some point when she'd worked at SI she had stopped doing the things she'd enjoyed, and hadn't even noticed. She learned new skills from the fellow drifters she'd met along the way: she'd learned to pick a lock in Dhaka, how to sneak into an event she had no ticket for in Mandalay, and how to steal in Laos. She knew she didn't necessarily need these skills, but she never turned down a learning opportunity. Living with no consequences or responsibility felt like a breath of fresh air.

"Good to hear your voice too," Tony said, and Maggie blinked and took a sip from her cocktail. "Are you okay? You've got somewhere to stay in Bangkok?"

Maggie smiled. She hadn't said where in Thailand she was. He must have traced the call. Tony tried to trace every phone call they had, and most times she let him. She didn't regret leaving, but she missed Tony every day. And he deserved to know she was safe, after all she'd put him through. He still didn't understand why she'd left, but he knew better than to test Maggie's resolve.

"I'm fine, Tony, really," she reassured him. "Are you okay?" She'd read a headline about another one of his wild parties on the weekend, which had to have been something if it made the news in Thailand. He seemed to have gone off the rails a little recently.

"You know me, I'm always having a good time," Tony replied offhandedly, and Maggie wished she could see his eyes. "How's your leg?"

"Still missing," Maggie smirked, glancing at her flesh-colored prosthetic.

"You're a pest," he sighed. "Hey, it's Pepper!" His voice perked up. "Pepper, it's Maggie! Say hi to Maggie!"

A few moments later: "Hello, Maggie," came Pepper's smiling voice. "Are you okay? Do you need money?"

Maggie laughed under her breath. "I'm okay! More than okay." She sipped her drink. "How is everyone?"

Tony answered. "Rhodey's fine, he's in D.C. for some political thing. Happy is still convinced you've been abducted."

Maggie smiled and rolled her eyes. She'd done her best to convince Happy of her welfare two months ago, but he'd remained suspicious ever since then. Maggie had had to email him a few photos of herself making various gestures with a current newspaper.

"The company's fine too, no thanks to you," Tony continued. "Obie just sold the last batch of Dart missiles and we've got orders for more."

She pulled the phone away from her ear for a moment, feeling her chest getting tight. For a week or two she'd avoided all thoughts of why she'd left, but after that… it had crashed down on her. Maggie had never understood the term soul searching before, but while backpacking through Bangladesh she had looked inwards and found pain. Not just pain leftover from that car crash when she was a child, but shards and shreds of damage from much more recently.

Working at SI had been hurting her, and she'd been too wrapped up in the excitement of invention and working with her brother to realise it. It had taken her instinctive, impulsive escape for her to finally confront herself. She knew now that she wouldn't - couldn't - make weapons any longer. Now she tried not to think about the Stark Legacy at all.

Cautiously, she brought the phone back to her ear.

"... and MIT keeps calling and emailing to try to get you to come back to finish your Masters. What should I tell them?"

Maggie grimaced, and the waiter approaching to take her empty drink retreated. "I formally withdrew, I don't know why they're hassling you. Just tell them I'm not planning to go back any time soon."

Tony was silent for a few moments, and she wondered if MIT really had been hassling him.

She swallowed and searched for a change of topic. "I saw some monkeys today," she said. "They were bullying some tourists."

He laughed, and she let out a sigh of relief. "They didn't bother you?"

"Nope."

"Must have realised you bore a family resemblance." There was some noise over his end of the line, and Tony said distantly: "No can do, I'm busy Obie. I - seriously?" His voice grew louder. "Mags, I'm really sorry but-"

"Duty calls?" she guessed.

"Yes," he groaned. "I'll talk to you soon. You promise you're okay?"

"Always, Tony. Love you."

He paused again. "Bye, Maggot."

She hung up.

When the monotonous dial tone sounded through the headset, any shreds of joviality left Tony's face. He set down the phone, eyeing Obie as he left the room, then shared a glance with Pepper. She sat in the chair opposite his desk, watching him.

"Maybe you're right," he said. He tried to crush the white and grey Stark Industries stress ball in his free hand. "Maybe she really did just need space. A whole planet's worth of space."

"She sounds fine," Pepper agreed gently. "I know it was sudden, but I…" he heard what she didn't say: I would do the same, if I were her. "I think this is what she needs."

Tony dropped his head into his hands. His computer screen still showed the call trace J.A.R.V.I.S had done: BANGKOK, THAILAND. "I don't know what I could have done to make her stay."

"I'm not sure this is about you," Pepper replied. "Which I know you'll hate to hear." He glanced up, glaring, and she smiled at him. "Maggie needs to figure out what it means to be Maggie, and if she has to do that on another continent, then I think we should let her."

"But I hate it. What if something goes wrong?"

She sighed. "I've known Maggie since she was fifteen. She's not invincible, but if anyone can take care of themselves alone in a foreign country, it's her. She's almost twenty one, Tony, she's well and truly grown up."

Tony nodded to himself. He still hated it, but Pepper was right. Maybe he could stand to ease up on the freaking out. Heaven knew that he'd had plenty of his own quarter life crises.

Pepper's lips quirked. "I'd give you all of two days alone in a foreign country before you ran out of food."

Tony threw his stress ball at her.

March, 2007
Beijing, China

Two months later and two thousand miles away, Maggie swore at a hissing car engine and smacked it with a wrench.

"Is this how you fix all my engines?" someone asked in Mandarin behind her, and Maggie glanced over to see her employer, Li, arching an eyebrow at her.

Maggie had taken this mechanic job in the far north of Beijing four weeks ago. She'd learned a bit of Mandarin at school so she could get by, and had learned plenty since arriving. Her interview at the garage had consisted of being presented with a broken engine and being asked to fix it, so she let her skills do the talking.

The garage also doubled as a chop shop, but she pretended she didn't know that. She was more of a consultant, coming up with solutions to the trickier issues they hadn't managed to solve yet, and fixed up the vehicle carcasses in the back yard when she had the time. It was a grimy place full of old rusting cars and stacks of metal parts, more of a junk yard than a mechanic shop.

Maggie didn't really need to work, but she wanted to live quietly in Beijing. She'd rented a tiny short lease room under a false name, and she needed to prove that she had some kind of income. Because she'd come here with a purpose.

She smiled wryly at her boss. "Sorry. Sometimes I need to show them who's in charge."

Li shrugged. "Well it seems to be working." He watched, hands in the pockets of his overalls, as Maggie turned back to the engine and started properly fixing it. She replaced one of the air intake hoses, tightened the connections on the rest, and then replaced the coolant on the others. She wiped the grease off her hands, then slid into the driver's seat to start the engine. It kicked up with a low rumble, and no signs of hissing. A soothed beast.

Nodding to herself, Maggie turned off the car and slid out again. Li seemed amused.

"That's the end of my shift," she told him as she headed for the door. "I'll see you tomorrow."

"Heading to the Monster Bar again, laowai?"

Maggie smiled at the slightly impolite term for foreigner as she grabbed her bag. Li hadn't believed her when she told him her name was Mary. "So you heard about that?"

"I was there last week," he laughed. "You did very well. I lost money betting against you."

She laughed as she rolled up the garage door, letting the orange afternoon sun and smoggy air flood inside. "That will teach you to bet against me."

She'd walked down the drive and was almost at the front gate when Li called after her: "Why do you do it?"

Maggie looked back, squinting in the setting sun, and considered the question. "Practice."

Two hours later, Maggie pushed open the door of the Guàiwù Bar and shivered as the warmth inside washed out over her. There was no sign over the door or any indication that it was a drinking establishment, save for the red paper lanterns out front, but it was packed inside all the same.

Maggie shut the door behind her and pressed her way through the sweaty, liquor-breathed crowd. Smoke filled her lungs, and her face glowed red from the neon sign over the bar. Loud rock music blared through the crackly speakers.

The Guàiwù Bar had two levels: the upper one, with seats and the well-stocked bar, and the lower, with bare wooden floors and a circular metal cage.

Maggie waved to the bartender and he poured her a drink. She watched him the whole time he made it. She sat alone at the bar when he handed it to her, and cast an eye out over tonight's clientele. About ninety per cent men, from a variety of backgrounds: the Guàiwù's evening entertainment attracted rich and poor alike. Some people travelled internationally exclusively to spend a night here.

When the music faded out, a buzz of excitement prickled through the crowd. Maggie finished her drink just as the Guàiwù's owner, a ruddy-faced man with slicked hair named Wang Lei, picked up the microphone and began speaking in rapid, excited Mandarin. People pressed toward the balcony or rushed down the stairs to surround the cage, sloshing drinks over the already sticky floor.

Maggie cocked an eyebrow at the bartender, who nodded and opened a door by the bar. Maggie slid her empty glass across the bar and then made her way through the door to the back room. She pulled off her jacket and her work trousers, leaving her in a pair of fabric shorts and a t-shirt, and kicked off her shoes. She wore tights, to hide her prosthetic leg. As the volume increased in the other room, she tied up her hair. Finally, she stretched up on her toes to reach the top shelf of the backroom, and pulled down two old boxing gloves.

A roar of noise erupted in the main room, followed by the blaring of rock music again. Maggie pulled on the gloves as she headed down a set of narrow wooden steps, then pushed out onto the lower floor of the bar.

She found herself in a roped-off area, already occupied by several other people wearing shorts and boxing gloves: mostly men, but a couple of women. They stretched and bounced on the balls of their feet, eyes on the cage.

The rest of the bar's clientele were packed around the cage. They shouted and laughed and pointed, watching as the two young men inside circled each other. Some turned to eye up the fresh meat in the roped off area, muttering to their friends and passing their bets to the bar owner. Wang Lei stood in pride of place at the centre of the balcony, excitedly narrating the cage fight through his cheap mic system and ramping up the audience's eagerness.

The larger man in the cage swung his elbow into the other man's side, and the crowd roared.

Maggie took a seat against the wall, quietly breathing. The booming music and swooping roar of voices had overwhelmed her on the first night, but she was used to it now.

The fight ended when the smaller man kicked the back of the bigger one's knee, downing him, before slamming his knee into his head. Even Maggie winced.

Two by two, the rest of the fighters were called up. Maggie's turn came third, and as she guessed she was paired with one of the other women - a foreigner like her, maybe Indonesian, with bright eyes and a scar through her eyebrow. The crowd parted to let them toward the cage door, and Maggie stepped through with her back to the other woman. The door slammed shut behind them with a rattle.

The music seemed louder in here, without the crush of people to absorb the noise. People pressed their face against the mesh of the cage and hung over the balcony, staring, like a forest of watching eyes. Wang Lei's theatrical speech was almost indistinguishable from the pounding rock music, but Maggie caught most of the words as he introduced the two new fighters with all the showmanship of a ringmaster. He called her Chaofeng and her opponent Taotie, both monsters from Chinese legend. Maggie stood flat-footed and still. The other woman stretched and flexed, and even winked at one of the men in the crowd.

Wang Lei went over the rules: No Biting. No Weapons. That's it. The crowd chuckled with the low anticipation of a predator about to strike.

"Begin."

The fight lasted four minutes. The owner had told Maggie last time that each round had to take at least three minutes or no one got paid, so she felt she was being generous with the amount of time she spent ducking and weaving. Taotie even got some hits in, including one aching blow to her hip. That was the moment Maggie decided to end it.

Taotie's eyes widened the instant Maggie made her decision - she had seen the sudden shift in Maggie's demeanour. The ducking and showboating stopped. She brought her fists in, tightly defending her head like Happy had shown her, and her previously dancing, obvious steps became light. Maggie's eyes focused wholly on Taotie, unblinking and dark.

To her credit, Taotie launched forward in an attack. She threw a heavy punch, her teeth gritted, but Maggie weaved under it and popped back up with a feint punch which had Taotie taking a step back. Maggie used her momentum to step, spin, and throw a high roundhouse kick which cracked against the other woman's jaw. She'd learned that one in Thailand.

Taotie hit the ground.

Maggie stood still for a few moments, acknowledging her victory as the roar of the crowd washed back over her, then stepped forward to help Taotie up and out of the ring. The woman spat blood onto Maggie's feet, which Maggie thought was fair.

Maggie fought three more rounds that night, the rest against men. She lost one with a nasty elbow to her ribs that landed her gasping on the ground. But she rose smiling, a loser, because she knew she would never let that happen again.

This wasn't the first shady fighting competition Maggie had been a part of. She'd started with a Muay Thai club in Bangkok, when exhausting herself at gymnastics didn't cut it anymore. She liked the fights probably too much: honing her skills and bloodying her fists on other people. She didn't always win, but it felt good to peel back all the layers of society and culture and politeness until it was just her: her fists and her skills against another person's. She learned with every fight.

In her last round of the night, Maggie scaled the side of the cage until she balanced on the top, her gloves on the bar and her legs bunched under herself. Then she flew.

Her opponent went down under her with a crunch.

(Wang Lei had offered Maggie an extra 10% for every time she did the cage jump. It's how she'd gotten her name that first night, after all: Chaofeng, one of the nine sons of the dragon, most often seen perched on the edge of a precipice.)

With the fighting over, Maggie went back to drinking. Most of the rowdy drunks spilled out of the bar after the evening's entertainment to start trouble on the streets, so at least the bar was quieter. Her ribs ached and she'd split one of her knuckles, but she sat relaxed in her seat at the bar.

Knocking back a beer, she cast a glance out the corner of her eye at a young man sitting in the shadowed corner of the room. He was a regular. He always sat in that corner, perhaps hoping the darkness might conceal the burn mark that stretched from his chin to his ear. He drank straight Baijiu and placed bets on every fight.

Tonight's the night, Maggie decided. She ordered two drinks, rose, and then strode across the bar to sit down beside the man. He stiffened, and did not relax when she slid one of the drinks towards him.

"You still don't bet on me, even though you've seen me fight," Maggie commented.

He shrugged, leaning further into shadow. "The odds are better for me if you lose."

"Maybe one day I'll stop losing."

"Then," he said cautiously, and slowly curled his fingers around the drink she'd brought. "I might bet on you."

She laughed. "So, how do you judge a fighter you've never seen fight before?"

They spoke about the fights for another ten minutes, comparing notes and pointing out weaknesses. Maggie played drunk and slightly dim, sloshing her drink on the table,

Finally, she cleared her throat. "Do you mind if I ask…?" she gestured to his face.

His mouth turned down and he retreated into shadow again, like a turtle into his shell. "I got this when I was young. A theatre fire."

"Right, I heard about that. The Silver Theatre, right?" There was a placard commemorating the theatre in front of the shopping centre that occupied the block now, commemorating the twelve dead.

Her conversation partner nodded, his eye skittering away.

"That must have been awful," she said warmly. "And such a shame they still don't know how it happened."

He eyed her. "What do you mean? It was an electrical fire."

"Oh, sorry. I thought they weren't sure." She shrugged.

"Well it couldn't have been anything else," he continued, a small note of hurt in his voice.

"I suppose so. The rumors I heard must have been wrong." She sipped her drink.

He frowned at her. "Rumors?"

She glanced around, then leaned in. "I heard…" she lowered her voice, and made sure the liquor on her breath washed over his face. "That there was a strange man at the theatre that night. A man with a metal arm."

She feigned wide-eyed intrigue, to hide the way her whole attention was zeroed in on the man's face. To her surprise, he laughed. "Oh, you mean Zhou Yi's story. I didn't know people were still talking about her."

Maggie cocked an eyebrow. "Zhou Yi?" As if she hadn't pored over the woman's witness statement to the police, and every subsequent detail about her life.

"Zhou Yi was there that night, but the fire drove her mad," the man said. "She had all sorts of stories: faceless demons, men with metal limbs, fire monsters. She didn't leave her house at all after the fire until she died. Poor woman."

Maggie tried not to let her disappointment show on her face. She wanted to push further, but it was clear this man could not help her. So she steered the conversation in a different path, to hide her real purpose for talking to him. She was hardly aware of what they talked about after that.

With all the significance and responsibility of the Stark name stripped away, Maggie had realised that there was a deeper part of her that demanded gave up on reading police reports about the 1991 car crash and trying to spot hidden details, and instead began a more targeted investigation. An investigation into an assassin with a metal arm.

At first she was met with a fat lot of nothing. Covering her tracks, she'd delved through old case studies and police reports, hunting for any mention of him. Until finally she'd spotted a mention of a man with a metal arm in connection with a Beijing district tragedy. She'd been sure there was some connection. The fire had only been ten years ago. But everyone she spoke to either looked at her like she was crazy, or laughed at her.

Maggie left the bar that night with a blooming bruise, a pocketful of cash and a sour sense of disappointment. She practically kicked down the door to her tiny room and fell face down onto her squeaky bed.

He was the last living witness. With nothing of use on the CCTV footage she'd recovered, and no other mentions of this metal armed man, she had nothing.

Maybe this really is all in my head, I came all the way to China to chase a delusion.

She rolled over and glared at the ceiling. Perhaps I'm looking at it wrong. She frowned and kneaded her temples. Forget the living. Listen to the dead. She ran a mental tally of the Silver Theatre victims. All had lived locally, but she remembered… four of them, a family, were immigrants. She recalled finding their immigration papers from Russia, and guessing that they'd moved, as had so many others, after the fall of the Soviet Union. She hadn't found any documents on them before that, but that wasn't unusual for the Soviet Union, and she hadn't looked very hard.

If this man is real, Maggie considered, then I know he's been in both America and China. Chasing the international connection here makes sense. A sudden thought occurred to her.

Russia. The Soviet Union was formally dissolved on the 26th of December, 1991. Ten days after the car crash. Her brow wrinkled. Maybe a coincidence.

She sat up, and let out a sigh. Looks like I'm moving again.

April, 2007
Astana, Kazakhstan

Leaning against the brick wall of a bank in the capital of Kazakhstan, wearing red sunglasses as she eyed the bar across the road, Maggie slid her phone out of her pocket. It had been almost two weeks since her last call to Tony, and she had a few spare moments. She adjusted some settings, then dialled his number.

He picked up on the third ring. "Maggie?"

She leaned back against the brick wall and smiled. "Hey Tony, you okay?"

"I'm fine. You've got good timing, your call just got me out of a very boring board meeting."

"You can always call me back, you know." Across the road, the door to the Corsac Bar opened. Maggie stiffened slightly, but then relaxed when a young couple spilled out onto the street.

"Nah, any excuse to get out is a good one. Why Obie keeps telling me to come to these things, I don't know."

"Might have something to do with you owning the company."

"Ugh," he said. She could hear him glaring, and she supposed he'd realised he wasn't able to trace the call.

A chill wind blew down the street and she pulled her leather jacket tighter around herself. "Nice underwear, by the way," she said. "I saw them on TMZ." Tony had gone skinny dipping in a Vegas fountain with three Miss Universes.

"Thanks, I think I should be sponsored by Calvin Klein for that."

"I'm pretty sure they only sponsor people who look good in their clothes."

Tony laughed under his breath. "You're lucky you're not here, Magnet, or I'd get you back for that. Where are you, anyway?"

Smooth. "China, still," she lied. "I saw the Great Wall the other day, it's incredible. Though pretty warm, at the moment."

"You'll have to send me some photos."

"Sure thing." Right after I edit the timestamp. "How's Rhodey?"

"He's fine. He's in the building actually, he came to the board meeting to try to convince us to take less money in the next military contract."

"Despicable," Maggie said, trying to swallow her distaste for the change in topic. "How are you going to get him back for that?"

"Haven't decided yet. Might see if I can convince him to join me in a repeat of the Fountain Incident."

"Maybe Calvin Klein will sponsor him."

"You wound me, Maggot. Oh, here's Happy." There was a rustle of movement. "Happy, say hi!"

"Who's this?" Came Happy's suspicious voice. "Tony, I've told you not to give your personal number out to strangers-"

"Am I a stranger already?" Maggie asked with a smile.

"Maggie!" Happy said in a brighter tone. "How are you? Had any almond milk recently?"

Maggie pulled the phone away from her ear to laugh. She'd almost forgotten that Happy had given her a 'safe word' when she was a kid, to alert him if she was in any danger. "No, Happy, I'm sticking to dairy. Did you see the Marquez v Barrera match?"

Happy snapped up the conversation starter like a starving man and started gushing about the fight. He had a lot of opinions to share about the referee's calls, and the two fighters' strengths. She wondered vaguely what he would think about her own fighting.

Eventually, Tony batted Happy away from the phone. "As you can see, Happy is fine," he said wryly. "He's looking forward to having you back home."

Maggie's smile faded. She hadn't thought of home in so long. She couldn't even say she missed it, save for the people. The longer her search stretched on, the more she felt as if Maggie Stark slipped into the shadows of this new person she was becoming. These phone calls were her brief moments in the sun.

From Beijing, Maggie had set off on a complex international investigation, which more often than not felt like trying to feel for spiderwebs in the dark. She hadn't gotten far with the Silver Theatre victims' histories, but she had found some potentially promising leads by hunting through the history of Soviet Russia. She travelled completely off the grid now, constructing fake identities and getting more and more practice at forging documents. Today she was Beth Handel, from Ontario.

As she searched, Maggie had begun to make some connections. She had become a shadowy figure on the internet, and ended up in touch with those nameless people who sold and traded in information. The sorts of people who never officially existed, or at least had not officially existed in quite some time.

Maggie stepped into this world with caution. She protected her own identity and safety first and foremost, and was careful with what information she handed out. She didn't go around saying she was looking for a man with a metal arm. Instead she followed clues: cases of unknown assassins, hushed up witnesses, and any reference to red star symbols (she had recalled that detail in another fitful nightmare). She felt as if there was some link to the Soviet Union, but couldn't be sure.

Still, nothing turned up. It felt like pacing through a pitch black house - her fingers were outstretched and she felt as if any moment her fingers would brush against the doorknob, but it was always just out of reach.

One of her connections had let slip a name last week: Captain Dusan Preobrazhensky.

They had said, in an encrypted message: If you are curious about experimental Soviet projects, this is your man. He was declared dead in 1994.

Maggie didn't quite understand, but she was pretty sure that particular connection of hers had ties to the GRU, the largest Russian military intelligence organisation, so she did her due diligence and looked into the name. Sure enough she found a death certificate, but after some more digging into the man's financials, she found… inaccuracies. She followed these inaccuracies all the way through to this bar in Kazakhstan.

She still felt wary of the original tipoff. She was sure there was some caveat, especially since she hadn't offered any information in exchange. She had sort of implied that she was an assassin herself, so perhaps this person wanted Captain Preobrazhensky dead.

"Maggie?"

She bit the inside of her cheek. Tony. Home.

"I'm here," she said. "Tony, I…" across the street, the Corsac bar door opened again, and the police officer she'd seen enter earlier finally walked out. Maggie tensed. "I have to go. I'll talk to you again soon, though. Stay safe, okay?"

He laughed hollowly. "Sure. Take your own advice, Maggie."

"Trust me, I do. Love you."

She hung up and slid her phone into her pocket, already feeling Maggie Stark slipping back into shadow.

She pushed off the wall and strode across the street. Chewing the inside of her cheek. I might be in way over my head, here. She knew she'd been careful, but she was still new to this world of shadows and secrets. She touched the gun inside her jacket (she'd purchased it back in Beijing) and pressed her ankle against the knife in her boot for reassurance. It comforted her that she looked nothing like herself - her hair was silver today, and she had a fake nose piercing and blue color contacts.

At the door to the bar, she drew in a steadying breath. This is probably another dead end like every other lead.

She pushed open the door, and spotted him instantly. The guy definitely looked like an ex-Soviet Captain. Grizzled and grey, he hunched over a glass of what looked like straight vodka at the bar, wearing a faded bomber jacket with fur lining wrapped tight around him. For a man who'd done quite well at faking his own death, he didn't have much of an eye for disguise.

Maggie strode through the mostly empty room and sat down beside the man at the bar. He went still. He didn't look at her, but she could see him thinking about the handgun in his pocket.

"Don't worry, I'm not here to kill you," she said in friendly (if rusty) Russian. She'd picked up a lot of Russian and precisely no Kazakh - perhaps a symptom of the company she kept.

The man finally turned his dark eyes on her. His mouth was a tight line. "That is just what you would say if you were here to kill me."

Maggie shrugged. "Listen, it's taken me ages to find you, and I've learned that you ex-Soviet types don't like to beat around the bush." The man tensed in his seat. She could see the panic he tried to hide, and supposed that he thought he'd gotten away with his disappearing act.

"I don't care about who you are," she said. "I'm looking for a man."

He eyed her again, and snorted.

"Not that kind of a man," she added. "I'm looking for a man that you might have heard of. He's got dark hair, wears a dark uniform. He lives off the grid, but he's better at it than you." The man was avoiding her eye again, but she knew he was listening closely. "He's also got a metal arm with a red star on the shoulder."

Captain Preobrazhensky locked up in his seat, his eyes going wide and white. His fingers clenched rigidly on his glass.

Maggie felt a thrill run down her spine, and a dizzying rush of exhilaration filled her head. "Good," she murmured. "I take that to mean you know him."

At that, the Captain unfroze. His eyes darted to her face again and he glared. "You don't know what you're talking about," he hissed. "How did you find me?" She opened her mouth, but he stood up abruptly. "Forget about it. Forget me, and leave me the fuck alone."

He stormed out. Maggie blinked, still a bit dizzy from his acknowledgement, before she hopped off her stool to follow him.

She pushed out the door into the sunshine again, only to be met with an empty street. Her stomach dropped. No. She took a few stumbling steps, her eyes darting, until she spotted the Captain's bomber jacket disappearing around a far corner. He's faster than he looks. Maggie took off into a sprint.

Maggie chased the Captain through the grid of Kazakhstani streets, slowly gaining on him - he was quick, but he was an aging soldier with a fondness for vodka, and Maggie had been fighting her way through Central Asia for the past months. Sure she didn't have her running leg on, but she didn't miss a step.

Her lungs burning, Maggie skidded around another corner, before stopping in her tracks.

Captain Preobrazhensky had taken a wrong turn, and found himself faced with a dead end alley. Now he stood at the end of it, chest heaving, pointing a gun directly at Maggie's head.

Slowly, Maggie raised her hands. "I meant it when I said I'm not here to kill you, Dusan. I know you're angry-"

"Fool girl!" he spat, his expression creased into a snarl. "I'm not angry, I am afraid." His fingers clenched on the gun and Maggie ground her jaw. "And you would be too, if you weren't so stupid as to go around asking stupid questions in plain sight."

Maggie tried to force calm into her voice. "Okay. I'm sorry for that. But will you just…" her utter desperation to hear what he knew almost overwhelmed her. She took a few steps forward. "Just tell me what you know about the man with the metal arm. Please. And I'll never bother you again."

"No shit you won't, I'm going to get as far away from here as I can and make sure no one like you can find me."

"So tell me what you know, then there's no harm done."

He shifted his feet, and wiped sweat off his forehead. "I should kill you."

"Well, you know us stupid fool types, I'm likely to end up dead soon anyway." She saw a flicker of doubt in his eyes, and took a few more steps forward. She softened her voice. "Dusan. The man with the metal arm. Tell me."

He swallowed, and the gun barrel seemed to shiver. "You must never tell anyone I told you this."

She nodded, staring at him. They were just a few feet apart now.

He kept his gun up, and drew in a shaky breath. "I never met him," he said lowly. "Everyone who did is either dead or living in such shadow that their names will never come to light. But I… in my former job… I heard whispers of a weapon. I thought it was a myth. But then a friend of mine was… was crushed to death. By a man with a metal arm." His eyes seemed to glaze over, and Maggie felt his fear prickling in the air around him. "I saw his body. And the friend who told me about the killer fell out a window a week later." He licked his lips nervously, eyes darting.

Maggie could barely breathe. "You know his name."

Captain Preobrazhensky shook his head violently, but Maggie could see the truth in his eyes.

"Tell me," she urged, her voice low and almost monotone.

"The only name I ever heard was… was…" his voice dropped to an almost whisper and she had to step forward into the barrel of the gun to hear it. "Zimniy Soldat."

Maggie let out a long, slow breath.

The Captain nudged the gun against her chest. "Please," he whispered. "Forget me, and let me run."

Maggie couldn't focus on his face - her vision seemed blurry, distant. Her fingers trembled. She stepped aside. The Captain fled. His heavy footsteps echoed down the alley and faded into nothingness.

Alone in the alley, Maggie dropped to her knees and let out a breath that sounded like a sob.

You are my mission.

Real words, spoken by a real man. A real soldier.

Maggie's fingers curled into fists and her nails bit into her skin. Her teeth clenched together and her eyes were as wide and white as Captain Preobrazhensky's had been. She felt flames licking up from the pit of her stomach, bright and hungry.

Zimniy Soldat.

Winter Soldier.

Maggie let out a breath, and it felt like breathing fire.

You're my mission now.

Two days later, Maggie called her most trusted contact (not that she really trusted any of them). She'd worked out who this guy was - ex CIA, and more or less legitimate, though he lived squarely in the world of shadows and secrets.

He didn't pick up the first time she rang. She tried again.

This time he picked up in the space of a second. "Who is this?"

"We've been in contact," Maggie said as she stared out her hostel window. She'd installed a voice disguiser on the phone. "You know me as WV3K671."

"Ah, yes," Mr ex-CIA said. He had a surprisingly mellow voice - she was sure he was worried that she'd been able to contact him, but he didn't let it show. "I always think it looks like a license plate."

"I have a question. How much will an answer cost me?"

"Depends if I know the answer or not. I'll let you know."

Maggie cocked her head. "What do you know about the Zimniy Soldat?"

There was a long pause over the line. Maggie didn't breathe.

"I'll give you that one for free. That's a myth," he eventually responded.

"Is it?"

"Yes. A bogey man used to explain away any unexplainable assassinations or disappearances. I don't put any more credit in it than I do in the whole Illuminati thing."

Maggie ground her teeth. She was sure that once she had a name, this whole investigation would come to a head. "You've never even wondered?" she prompted.

"Sure I have. Hell, I even had my own bout of curiosity when I was younger. But there's nothing there. Just a popular myth that's mostly fallen out of fashion."

Maggie dropped her head into her hand. He could be lying. But how would she know? Where could she go from here?

"Look," the man continued. "Whoever you are, if you've managed to get in contact with me then you're clearly not an idiot. I can respect your skills. I'll be more impressed if I can't track you down after this phone call." Maggie almost smiled. "But I've never heard a credible account of the Winter Soldier. That name only comes from the mouths of madmen and conspiracy theorists."

Which one am I?

He continued: "With skills like yours, why are you chasing ghosts? Aren't you working for someone? Because if not, I'll hire you."

Maggie repressed a sigh. "I'll be in touch." She hit end call, then put a knife through the phone just for good measure.

May, 2007
Nizhny Novgorod, Russia

Maggie threw herself further into the shadow world. It felt almost like a parallel universe at times: behind the sunny faces of cities lurked dark underbellies, ruled by men and women with fake names.

Maggie built up more contacts and connections, forging a tiny corner for herself in that world. She didn't make a name for herself, since she had no name, but once or twice she had people coming to her for information.

Currently she was Kate Maury of Cape Town, a travel writer with a penchant for ghost stories. Kate Maury had been brought to the busy city of Nizhny Novgorod by a cold case: a government official, her husband, and her elderly mother shot point blank at their dinner table six years ago. Maggie Stark had been brought to Nizhny Novgorod by a suspicion that the murders had been committed by the Winter Soldier. She'd already visited the sites of several other unsolved assassinations, trying to figure out any connection to the Winter Soldier. She was still trying to figure his MO, and if there was a link between his victims, or if he was simply an assassin for hire. Though she was about ready to give this city up.

She'd spent longer than usual here, snooping around the crime scene (with an EMF sensor, for the part), and asking the locals questions. She never mentioned the man with the metal arm, though she asked plenty of questions about the victims' background. All with the same result: nothing.

One evening as she walked back to her hostel after another fruitless day of canvassing local businesses for their old CCTV footage, Maggie realised she was being followed.

It was a cool evening for the season, and as she walked across the Molitovsky Bridge, shivering in the breeze, she noticed the man shadowing her steps about five hundred feet back. He was good, but Maggie was good too, and she'd been expecting something like this for a while. Her skin prickled and her stomach swooped.

As she made her way off the bridge, her nerves zinging, she ran through all the possibilities, very few of which were good. The man, at least, seemed to be keeping his distance. She didn't dare glance around again, but he'd been far enough back last time that she couldn't make out his face.

The air grew darker.

Maggie turned the corner toward her hotel, thinking she might sneak down an alley to watch the man as he walked past, when she heard a footstep behind her.

The man was better than she'd given him credit for. She tried to turn, her heart suddenly pounding, but in another second he was at her back and slinging his hands around her neck. She felt the press of a thin, choking line across her throat and realised he'd wrapped a cord tight around it.

Maggie tried to scream, but couldn't draw in the breath. Her heart juddered and panic flooded her grian. She tried to grip the garotte to get an inch to breathe but the silent man behind her used it to drag her sideways, into an alley. Her boots skidded against the pavement.

When the darkness of the alley fell over her face, Maggie's brain kicked into gear. She let go of the cord at her throat and reached down instead to her ankle, where she yanked the knife out of her boot and brought it up to slice through the cord, nicking her own skin in the same moment.

Oxygen flooded back into her lungs like sunlight, and Maggie spun around to face her attacker, gasping.

Not the Winter Soldier.

Her memory of the man was faded and distorted, but she could already see that this man's left arm was flesh. Her eyes flicked to his face - pale eyes like shards of glass glinting over a dark scarf - just as he lunged after her. Maggie backpedalled, striking with her knife, and he dodged it deftly. He was good. She got in three more swipes before he brought the hard edge of his hand down on her wrist, knocking the blade out of her grip. She brought up her hands to defend herself but he punched her in the chest, knocking the breath out of her. Maggie staggered back.

This was no angry youth in a fight club, not even a principled martial arts expert. As the man lunged at her again, Maggie realized that this was a man trained to kill. She flung her hands up but he preempted her again, slamming full-body into her and knocking her to the ground. Her head cracked against the concrete and she screamed, but he put his hands over her mouth and neck and choked the sound. His body loomed over hers and he leaned his weight down on her neck, his pale eyes burning.

Maggie's choked-off scream echoed in her ears. The man's gloved hands tightened on her throat, crushing her windpipe, and as she spluttered she remembered the sounds Mom had made before she died.

Her vision went white.

Maggie stopped her panicked scrabbling. She grabbed the man's left forearm, and with her other hand gripped his right shoulder. She flung her left leg free and set it against his hip. With his left hip and his right shoulder Maggie jerked him sideways, allowing her to pivot right and fling both legs up and across his body. Her new angle allowed her to lever him to the ground, breaking his grip away from her throat - starbursts exploded in her vision - and landing him flat on his back. She still had his right arm in her grip, with his shoulder between her legs, so she jerked her hips up and drank in the man's scream as his elbow snapped.

Maggie pushed herself away, sliding across the ground, and when the man's pained, shocked eyes flicked up to meet hers she slammed her prosthetic foot into his face. His head dropped to the concrete.

She lurched to her feet, sobbing and choking. The man lay still on the ground, and darkness had fallen over the sky. Maggie got her feet under her and ran.

The next morning, after a sleepless night of laying false leads, switching through identities and covering her tracks, Maggie got on a flight back to Los Angeles.

A/N: I hope you're all having a lovely and safe holidays!

Reviews

DBZfan45: Maggie is indeed all grown up now! Shes definitely a Stark, but her own brand of Stark. I'm excited to show you what she gets up to next chapter. And thank you for your lovely reviews!

MyCelestialFury: Last chapter was a bit of a behemoth, as was this one! I agree with what you said about Maggie not being perfect, she definitely does make mistakes and have flaws - those are interesting to explore so far! Hope you enjoyed this chapter :)