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January, 2015
"Alright, thanks for the confirmation on that, Stark." Maria Hill nodded to Maggie where she sat behind the desk in her SI office, then turned to leave, her head already bowing to her ever-present StarkPad. Hill didn't usually bring Avengers business to Maggie when she was working in her capacity as an SI engineer, but some details had cropped up regarding a cache of HYDRA weapons they'd been tracking and Hill had wanted her opinion as an analyst.
It was a dark, gloomy day, but Maggie didn't let her gaze drift toward the view of New York from her sixtieth-floor office. Her eyes remained fixed on Hill's back. She had a suspicion to test.
"Oh," she said with an air of casualness, and forced herself to look down to tidy a few loose pens on her desk. "If you see Coulson, say hi to him for me, would you?"
In her peripheral vision, Maggie saw Hill freeze. It was hard to make her react so visibly, and she felt a surge of vindication. She leaned down to put the pens in her top desk drawer.
Hill turned around. "What are you talking about?"
Maggie looked up, her face even. "If you see Coulson, say -" she made a show of noticing the stern, reserved look on Hill's face. "Oh, don't worry, he told me about the not dead things ages ago."
Hill's expression broke and she frowned, her eyes darting. "Did he? That wasn't on record."
Maggie dropped her act and sat up straight, drawing in a deep breath. It's true. She looked down at her hands in her lap, which had started to shake.
Hill saw Maggie's reaction and she grit her teeth. "Damn. I just confirmed it for you, didn't I?"
"Yes," she breathed.
Hill shut the door. "How did you know?"
Maggie looked up. "Things haven't been adding up with the HYDRA response. I realized a month ago that there was another group out there hitting HYDRA bases, making them hurt. Then there was this skirmish in Morocco, and I picked up some HYDRA chatter about the new Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. And I… had a hunch." It had been playing on her mind for a week now, doubts and questions and things piecing back together. She'd thought she was being paranoid, that she might hurt Hill by even suggesting the possibility. But she should have known that S.H.I.E.L.D. could sink to any low.
She remembered how Coulson had looked at her, the moment before she fell out of the bottom of the Helicarrier. Bleeding, in pain, and yet his whole expression filled with concern for her.
She crossed her arms and glared at Hill. "How did he survive?"
"It's classified."
Maggie scoffed.
Hill sat down and leaned forward. "Coulson is doing important work, Maggie. Work not even the Avengers can do, and he's got a good team, off the grid. There's a reason he hasn't reached out."
"I'm going to tell the others."
"Don't-"
"What are you going to do, wipe my memories?" she said sharply.
"No, I'm asking you," Hill said, levelling her gaze on her. "Coulson needs to work in the shadows."
"So we'll leave him be," Maggie retorted. "But letting them think they're responsible for - for Coulson's death isn't fair."
Hill leaned back. "They'll want to find him, and speak to him. But that's not possible."
"Okay. So I'll convince them." Hill looked doubtful. "Out of everyone in this Tower, who do you think has the best shot of convincing Tony Stark and Steve Rogers not to do something crazy?"
"Pepper Potts," Hill said instantly.
Maggie opened and closed her mouth. "Okay, that's true. I'll tell Pepper too, because she deserves to know as well, and then get her help in telling the others."
Hill rubbed her forehead. "You're just going to do what you want regardless of what I say, aren't you?"
"Absolutely." She met Hill's eyes. "You shouldn't have lied to us."
The others took it pretty well. Pepper cried, but graciously accepted Maggie's explanation of why they wouldn't be able to see Coulson. She helped Maggie tell the others: one by one, because the Avengers as a group made crazy decisions sometimes.
They decided to tell Steve first, then Tony.
They were both angry. Mostly at Fury, but also at Coulson, though they instantly wanted to track him down. But Maggie convinced them that he needed to be left alone. She could only guess at what he'd been doing since his resurrection, but she knew it had to be important. Despite Tony and Steve's anger, she saw a weight leave their shoulders. They'd all been carrying Coulson's death with them.
Clint's reaction surprised Maggie the most, when she told him and Nat together. A huge gust of breath left his chest and he put his head in his hands for a full minute, hardly reacting when Maggie hesitantly reached out to touch his shoulder. Natasha rubbed his back, her face closed off.
Maggie should have expected this. "Whether he'd survived or not," she murmured, "he wouldn't have wanted you to blame yourself. It was Loki-"
"I know," Clint said in a low, heavy voice. "But it was still me. And now…"
"You can't see him."
"I figured, or he would've showed his face sooner. Op-sec, I know the drill."
Maggie eyed him with concern for a few moments, then looked to Nat. "You don't look particularly surprised."
"I think I suspected," she said. Clint looked up at her, hurt. "I couldn't prove anything though, so I didn't want to get anyone's hopes up. But no, I'm not surprised. Fury always has a backup plan."
"That one-eyed bastard," Maggie muttered.
Bruce took the news quietly, with a furrow in his brow. He asked a few questions, and accepted the meager answers Maggie was able to give. He hadn't known Phil very well, out of all of them.
Thor took the most convincing not to go find Coulson; he flew into a passion, determined to track the guy down and congratulate him on survival. It took Maggie, Pepper, and a phone call from Jane and Darcy to get him to leave it alone.
He was particularly sensitive to people pretending to be dead when they weren't, Maggie supposed.
Things settled down again. And every now and then Maggie would think about that sharp, even-keeled SHIELD agent she'd barely known, out there in the world somewhere doing good. She hoped he had good people around him.
January, 2015
The Avengers analysis office was one big office space on the seventy-second floor, with a series of cubicles and tucked-away conference tables all with a spectacular view over the Hudson river. Maggie was on first-name basis with most of their analysts by now, and their office space had become somewhat of a secondary office for her (or tertiary, if you counted her workshop).
Today, she stood in a large cubicle space with Bruce and Hill, going over J.A.R.V.I.S.'s weekly findings. He was their most valuable analyst, since he worked on all projects and all teams, while also running his own digital searches. He didn't quite match their human analysts for creativity and lateral thinking, but he more than tripled their analysis speeds.
Hill checked a file on her StarkPad then looked up at the glowing hologram J.A.R.V.I.S. projected over the table. He had also projected his 'digital' form; the yellow glowing orb that oscillated and flickered as he worked. Bruce had his own pad, though he was really there more as an extra set of eyes.
"Any update on those HYDRA communiques on the east coast, J.A.R.V.I.S.?" Maggie asked.
"I was just coming to that, Ms Stark," J.A.R.V.I.S. said. "I can confirm that elements of a transient HYDRA cell are active on the east coast - more specifically, in the region of Washington D.C. and New York. I believe they travelled into the country from South America."
"That's awfully risky for them," Hill frowned. "Are they targeting anywhere specific?"
"Not that I can make out, Agent Hill," J.A.R.V.I.S. said apologetically. "I can only confirm that I have been picking up remnants of confirmed HYDRA communications, and locations that these communications originated from."
The hologram shifted to a simple list of place names written in blue light, and they all leaned forward to scan them silently.
Bruce frowned. "I'd have said they were trying to stay on the run, jumping to different random locations. But coming from a guy who's been on the run, this makes no sense. Why travel back into the country? And look; the Triskelion, New Jersey, some inner city commercial D.C. area, Brooklyn?" He shook his head. "Maybe we're looking at a chain of safehouses we haven't picked up on yet."
Maggie peered at the list, her hand over her mouth as she thought. The list of places looked strangely familiar to her.
"Do you have anything else on them, J.A.R.V.I.S.?" Hill asked.
"From pattern graphing and communication frequency, I estimate the cell is no greater than 20 agents. They have been using repeat encryption on their communications but I have isolated several recurring keywords."
The screen shifted again, presenting a word cloud. Maggie scanned it: tracker… intelligence… programmed… asset… retrieval.
"All fairly standard HYDRA lingo," Hill said in frustration. "It sounds like they're talking about a weapon though."
Maggie's foot was bouncing as she read through the word cloud. Hill noticed.
"Stark? Care to share?"
She let out a breath and rubbed her forehead. "A HYDRA cell like this… they're mobile, and very smart. Or at least whoever's running them is. At least one high-level HYDRA agent running the business." She leaned back against the cubicle wall, thinking it through. "They've got to have resources - discreet transport, and finances to stay off the grid. And yet they haven't used those resources to get the hell out of the one area on earth they're most likely to be discovered. Which means there's something here they're focused on."
"A target?" Bruce asked.
"Yeah, maybe." Maggie tapped her mouth again. "Or like Hill said, a weapon. Maybe both. But they're…" she waved a hand, and J.A.R.V.I.S. displayed the list of locations again. "Look, they're going all over the place. Whatever they're here for, I don't think they know where it is. Which means it has to have been hidden by HYDRA, and these guys were high enough up the chain to know it existed, but not high enough to know where it was."
"So we need to get to this weapon before them, and then stop the cell," Bruce said.
"Or we could make them think we have it," Hill suggested. "Lure them in."
Bruce tilted his head. "That's not very easy when we don't know what it is."
"Well we need to think," Maggie interjected. "What could be so dangerous or so valuable that a smart, well resourced HYDRA team would bounce all over the east coast looking for it? What links all these places?" She stepped forward and cocked her head. "J.A.R.V.I.S., how specific can you get with these locations?"
Without a word he shifted the hologram to a map of the east coast, presenting the traced communications as glowing dots.
Maggie took a step back.
"What is it?" Hill asked.
She stared at the map. Because this wasn't the first time she'd seen a map that looked like this. She'd made one, almost exactly a year ago.
"Stark, what is it?"
She took another step back. "I… I have to go talk to someone."
Hill stood up. "This is a team, Stark, you can't withhold intelligence-"
Maggie backed away with her hands up. "I know, I know. Trust me, I'm going to share. But there's someone I need to talk to first."
She jogged out, ignoring Hill's glare and Bruce's faintly exasperated expression.
In the corridor outside the analyst's offices, Maggie hurried down to the private Avengers elevator. When the doors shut behind her, she said:
"J.A.R.V.I.S., where's Bucky?"
"In his suite, Ms Stark."
She stalled. "I… it's kind of urgent."
There was a brief pause. Maggie listened to the elevator hum. Then:
"Sergeant Barnes has communicated that you may enter his suite at your earliest convenience."
"I… enter?"
"Yes."
"O… kay."
Maggie hesitated outside Bucky's suite door for a full thirty seconds before she finally knocked. The door slid open instantly and she jumped, but then remembered that J.A.R.V.I.S. could remotely activate doors. Sure enough, the room beyond was empty.
Bucky's suite looked much like all the others. Maggie had been in all the other Avengers' suites at one point or another, and they had the same base design; she and Tony hadn't wanted to personalise the suites too much, leaving that up to the occupants. There was a main living area with soft grey furniture and floor-to-ceiling windows looking over the city, with a separate bathroom and bedroom. The main difference in Bucky's suite was that he didn't have a kitchen, and when she glanced at the window she saw the glass glinted ever so slightly differently, hinting at the increased security measures they had installed.
The space was sparsely decorated, with mere hints that someone lived here: a growing collection of books on the shelf against the wall, a jacket over the back of the couch (which Maggie was pretty sure belonged to Steve), a couple of mugs on the coffee table, and various bits and pieces on the coffee table and other surfaces (some of which she recognized as gifts she'd given him). It wasn't the most well-decorated space, but here Maggie could see evidence of a man making himself into a person.
Bucky strode into the living area from his bedroom a second later. He wore his usual socks, trousers, and long sleeve shirt, and he nodded when he spotted her. If he felt awkward about having her in his living space, he didn't show it.
"J.A.R.V.I.S. said you needed to talk urgently?" He gestured to the couch and armchairs facing his window.
She hesitated. "I… you might not want to hear this in here, it… might be upsetting."
He nodded, acknowledging her concern, then thought about it. "Alright." He glanced around. "Well, you may as well tell me here. But…" he looked up warily. "How upsetting? I don't want to… make you uncomfortable."
She almost laughed, but repressed the urge. "I guess that depends on you. But I don't think it'll come completely as a surprise."
He shrugged and strode over to take a seat in one of the armchairs. She took the other, so they were facing each other across the coffee table.
Maggie drew a deep breath. "I won't dance around it." He nodded. "I have reason to believe that a HYDRA cell is in the vicinity of New York, for the purpose of hunting you."
Bucky didn't move, but his gaze did drop from hers and the air in the room seemed to cool. He stared hard at the table for a few seconds.
"Well you're right," he eventually said. "It doesn't come completely as a surprise. Surprised it took 'em this long, to be honest."
"It's likely that other cells and agents have tried before," she said. "But this particular group is well resourced, with impressive intelligence skills. They've probably been assembled specifically to find you. They've come from South America, where I have no doubt they found that your trail went cold," she said pointedly. "I believe they're searching areas on the east coast that you are confirmed to have visited, or that may hold some significance for you."
He frowned. "Significance?"
"New Jersey; the base where Steve trained and Zola's consciousness was housed. The bank in D.C. you burned down. The Triskelion. Steve's old house in D.C., and I wouldn't be surprised if they'd sent agents to scope out the Tower itself. And…" she hesitated. "Brooklyn."
He looked up sharply. "Where in Brooklyn?"
"J.A.R.V.I.S. could only narrow it down to neighborhoods, but… the area where you used to live. Where you went to school."
His gaze went hard. "How do you know that?"
"Because this is exactly what I did when I was looking for you," she replied calmly. "I isolated areas of personal connection to you and scoped them out."
He ground his jaw and looked down. "So…" he flexed his metal hand. "You're worried about them finding me here. Putting the tower at risk."
"No." Maggie tilted her head. "Well, not entirely. I doubt they'd be able to locate you here, let alone pose any risk. This cell is smart, and well resourced, but we're on to them. The trick is actually finding them." She folded her hands in her lap. "I just… thought I should let you know."
He eyed her. "That's not it."
Her eyebrows rose. "Isn't it?"
He leaned forward. "You want to ask me something else."
She almost protested, but then she realized he was right. Her planning, as usual, was always a few steps ahead of her conscious thoughts. She'd figured out what the cell was after and had come straight here, but if she considered what the next step should be…
She sat back and peered at Bucky. His metal arm, the calm life he'd made for himself in this room. "You're right," she agreed. "I do."
He nodded. "Good. I'll do it."
Three Weeks Later
"I still say this is a bad idea," came Steve's terse voice over the comms.
"You have plenty of bad ideas," Maggie said as she tucked a strand of her blue wig behind her ear and sipped her drink. She glanced up at the mirror of the bar and saw a shadowy figure tucked away in one of the back booths. The figure shifted, and a flash of silver peeked between his glove and his sleeve. "It was my turn."
At first, Maggie's plan had been rejected by nearly everyone in the tower. It was a risky enough idea to begin with, but especially with the CIA's recent poking around it was sheer stupidity. But Maggie was convinced it would work, and Bucky agreed. I can handle it, he'd kept reassuring Steve.
Still, the others had told them to wait.
But the HYDRA cell hunting through New York and D.C. got bolder. They launched a cyberattack on the D.C. police to access their latest leads on the Winter Soldier. The last straw had been the assassination of an ex-S.H.I.E.L.D. agent. He had volunteered at the Triskelion cleanup, which was why the Avengers supposed he had been tortured before he was killed; suspicion that he might have seen the Winter Soldier and have information about his whereabouts. The death itself had been hasty, violent.
A smart leader and bloodthirsty followers, Hill surmised of the group. Hill never got angry, but Maggie could tell that the death weighed heavy on her shoulders.
And so the Avengers had turned the Winter Soldier into bait.
They only brought him out of the tower at night, for very short intervals. The Manacles remained on, and Bucky also agreed to have a biotracker implanted (the same kind the Avengers had on missions), and a commset. Every Avenger was on alert, and they always made sure to create a diversion for the CIA and whoever else might be keeping tabs on Winter Soldiers in the vicinity as well.
The first time was nerve-racking for all of them, not to mention Bucky. With the Manacles firmly on and the tracker active, they had brought Bucky in an elevator all the way to the bottom floor of the Tower, in the dead of night. Maggie and Steve flanked him as they made their way to the garage, where Bucky was ushered into the back seat of a dark, cheap car. Steve drove them to an abandoned alleyway downtown.
The whole drive, Maggie kept stealing glances at Bucky in the rearview mirror. They'd dressed him up in dingy, tattered clothes; a beat up canvas jacket, a baseball cap, jeans, and boots with a hole in one of the toes. His hair hung shaggy around his jaw, where the rough hints of a beard had grown. He reminded her of how she'd found him in Peru: a little wild.
Bucky didn't take his eyes off the window for the whole drive, staring out at the city. This was the first time in a year he'd been outside the Tower. Maggie wondered if the world looked different after so many months spent seeing it from above. The light from the streetlights slid over his face.
She half expected him to comment on how different the city looked, or exhibit surprise at the people, signs, and buildings they drove past. But he just stared.
When they let him out in the alleyway, he climbed out and took a long, deep breath, despite the wafting smells of trash and damp in the air. He was nearly invisible in the darkness between the buildings.
Steve rolled down his window a few inches. "You okay?"
Bucky nodded slowly. "I know the plan. Circle the block, hunt around in dumpsters for food, find shelter under the bridge. Flash the arm now and then. Then back here in an hour."
"I know, I meant…" Steve broke off and shook his head. "We'll have eyes on you at all times." There were only two Avengers in the car, but the rest waited back at the Tower. The HYDRA cell was smart, they'd notice too many watching eyes. "And you know the comms codes if you spot any trouble."
He moved to close the window again, but Maggie called: "Hey."
Bucky looked into the car and met her eyes.
She wanted to say something. Some kind of encouragement, or even a suggestion that he enjoy his time in the open air, but that felt like an insult when they'd asked him to dumpster dive. They weren't exactly in a nice area of town. So she just bit her tongue and said: "Be safe."
He nodded once, a hint of surprise in his eyes, then Steve slid the window shut and drove off.
And so it had been for the past few weeks: dropping Bucky off in a certain neighborhood of the city, then picking him up an hour later. Bucky didn't say much about his time on the streets of New York. They were able to observe his every step through an invisible Stark pocket-drone in the skies, and surrounding CCTV, so it wasn't like he needed to give a detailed debrief. He sometimes murmured a short warning when he sensed people on the streets glance at him twice, so they could track these people down and dig into their backgrounds.
He held himself differently on these short missions: bent over, hiding his stature, tucking the metal arm into himself. He kept his head and eyes down and slipped in and out of shadows like a ghost.
It wasn't always Maggie in the car, since they traded shifts, but whenever it was her she noticed that he always returned to the car radiating cold and the smell of smoke and rain. He would be quiet until they got back to the Tower, where he would give Hill a short debrief, then go up to his suite to shower.
"You don't have to do it," Maggie had said to him in the car a week ago, on their way out of the tower. He still had his eyes fixed to the window, as if he couldn't get enough. "We'll find the cell another way, you don't have to do this if-"
But he had shaken his head. "It's my way of helping. And it ain't all bad." For the first time, he'd torn his eyes off the view outside the car window and met her eyes with a glint of amusement. It surprised her. "I don't see much of the city, but I see some of it. I hear people talking, see them living. I get rained on. Makes me feel less…" he trailed off.
"Unusual?" she suggested.
He huffed a laugh and nodded. "Exactly."
Finally, two days ago Clint had had a stroke of genius. He and Nat had been keeping tabs on a HYDRA money cache in Staten Island, waiting to see if anyone showed up to claim it. But after a few weeks of Winter Soldier baiting, Clint had organized for Bucky to be the one to break into the HYDRA cache.
It had been their longest outing yet. Bucky hit the cache, tripped HYDRA's digital alarm system, and then brought the duffel bag full of cash back into New York on a public bus.
Finally they'd achieved a result. The Avengers analysts observed a flurry of communications that signalled the HYDRA cell had descended on New York once more. Now they planned Bucky's outings more tactically. They localized appearances in a particular neighborhood, planting subtle clues that the clever HYDRA search party should have been able to pick up.
And now, Maggie was pretty sure the night had come. Bucky had been in and out of this dive bar sandwiched in the middle of a block of tenements a few times, cap pulled low over his head and jacket covering his metal arm. The HYDRA net had been pulling tighter and tighter: they'd rumbled a few of his 'sleeping spots', and even been asking questions on the street about him. Maggie was 85% sure that one of the other homeless guys on the street had pointed them to this bar.
It was a tight-packed space with an eclectic mix of patrons and a single bald bartender, all illuminated by three low-hanging yellow lights and a strip of red neon over the liquor shelves. Maggie sat on a squeaky stool at the bar with her elbows resting on the sticky laminate bartop. The inside of her dark blue wig scratched the back of her neck, and her features were concealed by heavy graphic makeup and a false eyebrow piercing. She wore a black choker and her clothes clung tight. Most people would probably assume she was an off-the-clock sex worker. She dangled her booted feet at her barstool, sipping from a dark drink that was really just Coke. She tapped away at a cheap pink phone with her painted fingernails, apparently busy texting.
Steve was in uniform, hiding on the roof of the three-story building and no doubt stressing more than was good for him. Tony was in the Iron Man suit, hiding behind the cloud cover, and Clint and Nat were a block away on motorbikes. Thor was back at the tower with Bruce and Hill.
Bucky hadn't said a word since he'd walked into the bar an hour ago, except to gruffly order a straight whisky. He sipped the drink at his booth in shadow, occasionally scratching at the scruff he'd grown out over the past weeks.
"I have completed background checks on the bar patrons," J.A.R.V.I.S. said over comms. "There are several with criminal records, but none with connections to HYDRA."
Maggie hid her look of frustration.
"The analysts haven't picked up any chatter outside the normal," Bruce reported.
Ten minutes later, after a few patrons had come and gone, the bar door swung open with a gust of January cold. A single man walked in, wearing dark trousers, a jacket, and a low baseball cap. He didn't take off the hat when he entered, and he scanned the bar with coffee-brown eyes. He noticed Bucky and stiffened, though he quickly loosened and let his eyes drift past. He walked rigidly to the bar and leaned against it, several seats down from Maggie.
Maggie sniffed once, and in the mirror she saw Bucky place his palm flat on the table.
"Suspected contact confirmed," Steve murmured at her signal.
The guy looked over his shoulder to Bucky's booth - amateur, Maggie thought - and then pulled out his phone and made a call.
Maggie was already working. She'd sent a cyberspike to his phone so she could view it remotely, and she isolated the number he'd called just as the call connected. She sent it to J.A.R.V.I.S., who immediately began tracing.
"Hey pal," the man said in a low voice. "Just calling back about that project. I can quote you 1400," he said significantly.
Maggie rolled her eyes at her phone.
J.A.R.V.I.S. would be recording the other end of the conversation, but Maggie couldn't hear it. Whoever was on the other end couldn't have been talking much though, because a few seconds later the guy in the bar nodded, said "Yes," and then hung up.
He peered back at Bucky again, who pretended not to see him.
"J.A.R.V.I.S. is tracing the contact," came Tony's voice. "Should be finalised in thirty seconds. That's got to be their current base of operations. But Wyvern, you've got incoming - electronic alerts have just gone out to… seven mobile devices in the vicinity. They must have been scoping the neighborhood."
Maggie typed on her phone: confirmed. J.A.R.V.I.S. relayed the message instantly.
She sipped her drink once more, acknowledging her nerves and letting them roll through her, rather than squashing them down. This HYDRA cell was smart, and quick. They'd need to hit them all at once to avoid half of them just disappearing into the aether. They'd have to get not just the agents in this neighborhood, but also the base the cell was operating out of, and they'd have to do it all tonight. Maggie bobbed her head to the music.
Thirty seconds later, two more men filed into the bar. These two were better: they didn't even look in Bucky's direction, seemingly engaged in conversation as they strode over to take a seat two booths away from him. They were good, but their muscle and their forcefully casual clothes gave them away. Bucky sipped his drink.
Over the next minute, two more came in and sat at the bar. One of them jostled Maggie with his elbow.
"Got one in front and two out back," Steve murmured.
Seven. Maggie stood up.
"Not now," Bucky said under his breath. He was bowed over his drink, hair in his face. "I don't want anyone in here to get hurt. I'm going out the back exit."
Maggie made a show of checking her hair in the mirror and nodded slowly. Her pulse raced beneath her skin.
When Bucky got to his feet, purposefully staggering slightly, the HYDRA men in the bar either stiffened or narrowed their eyes. He felt the weight of their focus on him like a brand. All these outings to the streets of New York, he had been looked at in many different ways: as a drunk, as a helpless case, as a waste of space, as a vagrant. He'd almost forgotten what it felt like to be looked at like a thing.
His skin prickled like static. He finished his drink, then set it down and headed for the back entrance, around the side of the bar with a green FIRE EXIT sign over it. His eyes met Meg's in the mirror behind the bar as he walked past. Her expression was utterly neutral, and slid away from his. But he could feel her concern, crackling like the seconds before a fight.
He pushed open the back exit and stepped out, blinking in the sudden darkness and cold. The door shut behind him seconds later as he strode down a short set of concrete stairs.
The alley behind the bar was narrow, with two overflowing dumpsters against the back wall, and rusty-looking fire escapes lining the buildings further down. Every surface was scrawled in graffiti. The busy street at the other end seemed a mile away.
Bucky stepped out and the single yellow light behind the bar spilled over his head and shoulders, marking him like a spotlight. Condensation on the concrete glistened. He could hear the vague, muffled pulse of music from the bar behind him.
Two men stood a few yards away down the alley, one with his hand to a comm in his ear.
Bucky let out a breath.
"I've got the guy in front in my sights," Steve murmured over the comms.
Bucky heard the door behind him open again, spilling out a burst of music and voices. He paused in the pool of yellow light and looked over his shoulder. There were four of them, the fifth most likely on his way. They all had the build and hard stare of soldiers. Bucky straightened.
"You have been running a long time, Soldat," said one of the grim-faced men from the bar. He had hints of silver in his hair. They stepped out as one, two of them coming around the sides to flank him. They kept their backs to the walls of the alley to encircle him. "Are you ready to come home?"
Bucky flexed his metal hand in its glove and glared. He knew what they saw: a loose, faulty weapon, in need of reprogramming. Weakened from months living on the run, in the streets, desperate for survival.
Home, they called it. The lightning and the ice.
He kept his senses spread, ready for any hint of any of them moving to strike. He kept his centre of gravity low and his hands freed, his eyes not fixed on any one of them. He didn't know where Meg was. He could hear other murmured conversations over the comms - J.A.R.V.I.S. had pinged the call and hacked into their comms, and the others were moving.
So Bucky wasn't expecting it when the tall, grim-faced one with the silver hair said: "Zhelaniye." [Longing].
Bucky locked up and his eyes squeezed shut at the burst of lightning behind his skull. It was only one word but it sliced into his mind like a bullet, bringing him back to lightning and steel around his wrists and his heaving chest and bloody rubber between his teeth and a cold so biting that it stole breath and life-
He heard footsteps and he swung out wildly. The encircling HYDRA agents scattered back. He heard one of them laugh.
"Rzh... rzhavyy." [Rusted].The pronunciation was clunky, hesitant, as if the speaker were repeating a misremembered word. All the same, it burned like ice.
Bucky clutched his head even as he tried to keep them all in view, gritting his teeth to fend off the pain. He staggered as he spun. He was already slipping; through years, through spaces. There was concrete, and steel, and yellow light, and Russian voices, snow - no, just cold- he didn't know - who was he, what was he meant to be-
A shadow dropped from the sky. Bucky would later realize that Meg had jumped out of the second story window, but in that moment all he saw was a blur of dark and midnight blue, and then the HYDRA agent lunging for his back dropped with a crunch and a sharp cry.
She whirled and a beer flagon smashed into another agent's head in a glass starburst, knocking him down. The HYDRA agents shouted and dove into the fight. Bucky stepped forward, but Meg ducked under a blow from the man who'd first walked into the bar and snapped at him:
"Get back! Out of the fight!" That's what they had agreed on beforehand.
Bucky was about to disobey, because there were seven men and half were turning toward him anyway, but then Steve barrelled through the fire exit, shattering it in two in a shower of wooden splinters. Screams emanated from inside the bar behind him. Steve took in the scene in the alleyway in a heartbeat and snapped out with his shield, sending it rebounding off two of the agents closest to Bucky. Bones crunched.
So Bucky obeyed. He backed into the shadows of the bar beside the dumpsters, his eyes on Steve and Meg as they tore through the strike team. Meg wasn't in uniform but she'd pulled one of her wrist blasters and a stun gun from her handbag.
Seeing Steve and Meg fight here was different from observing their training sessions. Both of their eyes were hard, focused. They didn't speak. They fought quick and silent and brutal, incapacitating the HYDRA agents and deftly evading their surprised defences. Steve smashed his shield into one man's face as Meg slammed her prosthetic foot, heel spur and all, into another guy's thigh and then dropped him with a knee to the face. Her wig flew off, blazing blue in the light for a moment.
He hadn't seen her eyes burn like this since Peru.
Near the end, Bucky's stomach dropped as he realized that two of the agents had managed to get their guns aimed on Steve: one closer to the bar door, spitting blood as he swung up his pistol, and the other propped on the ground just outside the pool of light, murder in his eyes.
Heart racing, Bucky darted out of the shadows. He struck the one by the bar door in the ribs, making him scream, then yanked the gun out of his hand and pistol whipped him with it. The man fell to the ground in a pirouette. Bucky spun, gun raised and his finger on the trigger, only to see Meg looming over the other armed agent like a spectre. She kicked the gun out of his hand as he lifted it to point at Steve, sending it spiralling away in a metallic flash, then stomped the man's head down onto the concrete, knocking his lights out and breaking his nose.
Bucky crumpled the gun in his metal hand and kicked it away.
It was over seconds later. In truth it had probably only lasted two minutes in total. Bucky stood hunched over in the shadows, his face turned away from the bleeding and unconscious HYDRA agents. Steve scanned the fallen men, then took a few steps toward his friend.
"You did good, Buck."
Maggie wanted to agree, but she couldn't make herself say it. She caught her breath and shook her hands to shed her racing adrenaline. "Police are on their way. The others are already taking the HYDRA base. You two head back to the tower, I'll make sure these guys get mopped up."
Steve had managed to get Bucky to straighten up. "We can't leave you here alone," he protested, turning back to her. The yellow light made his hair glow. Bucky was a shadow beside him.
At that moment one of the HYDRA agents Steve had dropped with his shield groaned and lifted his head. Maggie fired a concussive blast from her wrist blaster and he crumpled back down in silence.
She looked up at Steve.
"Let's go, Steve," Bucky said. There was a hint of a smile at his mouth, despite the shadows under his eyes. Maggie couldn't return the smile, still stuck on that image of him clutching his head and wrenched with pain, surrounded by laughing HYDRA agents.
Steve hesitated a moment longer, but then the distant sound of a siren made him move. "Okay. See you back at the tower." He set his hand on Bucky's shoulder and the two of them hurried down the alleyway, headed for one of the many getaway cars they'd parked in the neighborhood.
Alone in the back of an alleyway surrounded by bleeding HYDRA agents, Maggie stood with her arms crossed and waited for the police.
None of them got any sleep until the sun had risen. There was the long debriefing from Hill, the liaison with local police and the various agencies who had warrants out for the HYDRA agents' arrest, then the property damage Steve had done to the bar, and trying to ascertain with the analysts whether any HYDRA agents had gone uncaught.
But a general sense of satisfaction hung over all the Avengers as they worked. After weeks of carefully laying the trap, inching in the bait, they had successfully pulled off a major sting of a notoriously transient HYDRA cell. They'd caught the leader, who had indeed been a senior HYDRA general, who'd been stationed in the Capitol before the fall of the Triskelion. They'd also secured several HYDRA lines of credit and had promising leads for tracking down other HYDRA cells this one had communicated with.
"All in all, a good night's work," Tony said cheerfully before he headed up to bed.
But Maggie held Bucky back. "Before you go up, can I…?"
Still in his unwashed clothes from the mission and smelling faintly of whisky, he nodded silently. They walked down a darkened corridor together. Steve watched them go with a frown.
Once they'd rounded the corner, Maggie paused. Bucky put his back to the wall and looked down at his hands. The metal one gleamed in the grey pre-dawn light filtering through the far window.
"What were they saying to you?" Maggie asked. "In the alleyway."
He smiled bitterly, just for a second, as if he'd expected the question. It took him several moments longer to answer her.
"There are… words," he murmured. "I don't… I barely even remembered them until he started saying them. I don't think he even knew all of them, but he knew that the words would... I think they make me…" he jerked his head, as if shaking off a fly. "It's like they get in my head and they fill it up, pushing me to the sides until I'm hardly there. Until it's… until it's just them." His voice had gone cold.
"Words? How…?"
"They called it programming," he said, with a faint air of remembering.
Maggie leaned against the wall opposite him and thought about it. Words, a string of commands. Like programming software. But it was a brain. She supposed in a sick way it made sense. The HYDRA files about Bucky had all referred to programming. Maggie had assumed that meant the Memory Suppression Machine. But that was just what they used to turn the Soldier into a blank slate. They needed some way of writing on that slate.
No wonder Bucky is so afraid of himself, she thought grimly. Not everything inside his mind belongs to him.
"I can look into it," she said. "It's like… brainwashing, right? I can read up on the theory, see if we can't get them removed-"
"I don't know if you can," he said without looking up. "HYDRA didn't exactly do this to me with any idea of reversal. It's easy to break something. Putting it back together? Sometimes that's… there's no going back."
"But how do you know?" she said as gently as she could, after the long night of surveillance and battle. "Granted I'm no psychologist, but there's got to be a way. Do you remember how they-"
"I don't think I'm something you can fix," he cut her off in a hard voice. He fidgeted.
Maggie pressed her lips together. He looked up at her, and she continued: "You're not a thing to be fixed. I just think that maybe I can help… help get rid of something that scares you."
"I…" he fidgeted again, shaking his head. "You… I won't tell you what to do. But I… I don't know if I can…" he winced, then reached up to rub at his left eye. "I don't remember. Looking straight at those memories is…"
"Okay, okay," she said soothingly, hands up. The bracelets she'd put on for disguise jingled softly. She nodded slowly. "You don't have to tell me, I understand. But if you're not opposed, I'll look into it anyway."
She couldn't begin to imagine how someone would program words into a brain. She had figured out how to make machinery and nerves talk to each other, but thought? If she had to guess, it had to involve repeated, horrific psychological torture. Mental conditioning to an insanely cruel and precise degree. Perhaps even mechanical conditioning of some kind, using a device or surgery.
She frowned. "Would I… could I talk to Raynor about it?"
"I haven't told her much," he admitted. "Just what makes me dangerous. Raynor doesn't know how to get rid of them either."
"We can try."
He looked up at her with a pained expression. He was touching the Manacles, as if to reassure himself they were still there. She realized what they were to him now: the only protection against losing his will entirely. A safeguard.
"I don't want to be dangerous," he said, quieter. "I want to help you, but I - I don't understand it. I couldn't explain what they did to me if I tried. All I can tell you is that you should never, ever trust me."
Maggie felt a crushing sense of sadness press down on her as she stood in the darkened corridor, tired from the mission and alarmed by his fractured sea-grey eyes. Her leg ached. She wanted to make this better. "I…" she tried to find the right words. She frowned, then continued. "Bucky, today you helped us catch thirty five HYDRA agents. We couldn't have done it without you. You are dangerous, and I can't begin to imagine the pain you've been dealt. But don't lose sight of who you are, despite HYDRA. I trust your intentions."
He blinked.
She nodded, a little embarrassed. "Thank you for telling me. About the words."
He looked down. "Should've told you sooner. Steve knows. Should've figured he wouldn't tell anyone, the idiot."
"You don't owe us anything."He shot her a funny look. She was concerned about what he would say next, so she said: "Go get some sleep, if you can. And if you can't, don't stay up beating yourself up. Tonight was a success."
He shook himself and straightened. "You sleep well."
She assumed that meant he wouldn't be sleeping, then. She sighed. "Try the Pink Floyd album I told you about. Dark Side of the Moon. It's a good one."
Hours later, Sam waited by the concierge desk in the Avengers Tower lobby, tapping his fingers restlessly on the glass desk top. Normally he could walk straight for the main elevator and change to the Avengers private elevator on the upper levels without having to speak to anyone but J.A.R.V.I.S., but apparently they needed to update his security pass. He was sure this had something to do with that Happy Hogan guy, always inventing new hoops to jump through.
"Just another moment, Sergeant Wilson," smiled today's concierge apologetically.
"S'alright, not your fault." He pulled his phone out of his pocket, not quite sure what he was going to do with it. Probably text Steve that he'd arrived. The Avengers had all been out on a mission the night before, busting a local HYDRA cell. When Sam heard he'd offered to postpone his visit, saying they probably needed their sleep, but Steve had asked him to come anyway. Sam had to admit he was curious about the mission. They'd been all secretive about it.
The lobby doors slid open again, and a sudden prickling of attention in the room made Sam look over. Four black SUVs had pulled up on the curb right outside the Tower, and now no less than fifteen men and women poured out, five in nondescript suits and the rest in field tactical uniforms: heavy duty dark outfits, and armed.
Sam tipped his head back with a sigh. "You guys again?"
Agent Hitchcock of the CIA, an older guy with salt-and-pepper hair and a perpetually grim expression, strode across the shiny Avengers Tower lobby floor flanked by his agents and field officers. "Sergeant Wilson," he said tightly. "Come with us upstairs, please."
The stunned concierge placed Sam's new security badge on the desk next to his elbow, staring at the CIA agents.
Discreetly, Sam finished his short text to Maggie and sent it. He put his phone in his pocket and straightened. "Lead the way," he said resignedly.
It always bothered me the Avengers never found out Phil was still alive. I haven't watched all of Agents of Shield, so I probably won't be straying too close to those storylines, but I needed to right a wrong!
Reviews
Guest: Thank you very much, I'm excited to show you!
DBZFAN45: A Christmas special indeed! Maggie and Bucky are sort of friends, but without labelling it, and they've had lots of bonding moments which have been so fun to write. I'm so glad you liked the chapter!
The1975Love: I think you're right, Bucky would enjoy trampolining! And yeah, celebrating family Christmas is a little soon for him. Buggie for life!
Zariah: I'm so glad you liked all the little bonding moments in the last chapter! Puns are a key part of Maggie and Bucky's relationship.
Nina (from chapters 46-48): No worries, congrats on getting a break from your studies! I'm glad you enjoyed these chapters what with bucky and Maggie bonding, and Maggie returning to the field, and team training :) Thanks for your lovely reviews x