"How may I assist you this morning, Agent Hitchcock?" J.A.R.V.I.S. asked.
Flanked by two uniformed CIA agents, Sam watched Hitchcock glare at the silver elevator doors. "Bring us to the top floor."
"I'm afraid you do not have access to that area." Sam could have been imagining it, but J.A.R.V.I.S. sounded colder than normal.
Hitchcock nodded to the grey-haired Agent Lowell, who produced a sheaf of papers from her jacket. "This warrant says we do," she said in a clipped voice. "If you fail to comply with our legal warrant to search this tower from top to bottom, your creators Tony and Margaret Stark will be charged with obstruction of justice. Probably Pepper Potts too, as she manages this building."
There was a beat of silence. Then, almost soundlessly, the elevator doors slid open.
Maggie sprinted up a flight of stairs, hair frazzled and her arms full of an oddly-shaped bag, her breath sharp in her chest. She crested the stairs and ran full-pelt down the corridor, her hastily-pulled on shoes slapping on the floor.
"J.A.R.V.I.S.!" she cried.
Thankfully that was all the command he needed - the door to Bucky's suite slid open as she approached and she burst through.
"Take off your shirt!"
Steve and Bucky were sitting on Bucky's couch, but at Maggie's abrupt entrance and exclamation they both spun around, their eyebrows flying up. There were shadows under Bucky's eyes after his sleepless night, and even Steve seemed weary.
"Steve," Maggie said breathlessly. The door slid shut behind her. "I'm going to need you to shut up and trust me for about fifteen minutes. I know you're bad at lying, but god dammit you're going to have to do your best." She dropped her duffle bag on the ground and yanked it open, accidentally breaking the zipper in her haste.
Steve stood up. "Maggie? What's wrong?"
"The CIA is here." On the couch, Bucky went still. Maggie straightened with her hands full of something silvery and she met Steve's eyes. "Now take off your shirt."
Thank goodness for Steve's inability to stand up to forceful women. He hesitated only a second longer before he grabbed the bottom of his too-tight running shirt and pulled it off. Maggie darted forward and grabbed his left wrist, pulling his arm out from his body as he held his shirt awkwardly in his other hand. He met Bucky's gaze, wide-eyed.
Maggie stretched out the silvery thing in her hands and placed it against his skin, from shoulder to palm. "I thought this might happen," she said as she worked. "I planned for it, but I thought we'd have more warning-"
The silvery, cool substance shivered and then flowed over Steve's arm, sliding around and clinging tight like a second skin. It took Steve and Bucky only a second to see that it had transformed his arm into a replica of Bucky's: the metal stretched over his arm all the way up to his shoulder: there were false, painted ridges and plates, and a burnished red star on the shoulder.
Steve stared at his arm, then across at Bucky.
Maggie hadn't wasted a second to stare. She darted back to her bag and pulled more things out, fabric now. "Put these on!" she grabbed something hairy and ran back to Steve to jam it on top of his head: it was a dark, shoulder-length wig, stitched to the inside of a baseball cap. She shoved a wad of clothes into his arms. Steve stared at her.
"Now," she urged. Without hesitation this time, he obeyed her. Maggie looked up. "J.A.R.V.I.S., Eclipse Protocol. And give me an update."
"They are currently in the elevator, Ms Stark. They have a warrant to search the tower."
"The CIA?" Steve asked as he pulled on a dirty, threadbare shirt. He started to pull off his trousers and blushed. Maggie turned away for his sake.
In that moment a whole section of the suite floor slid open, making Bucky jump. The floor simply split apart and slid smoothly to reveal a low, narrow space beneath the floor. It was about five feet deep and ten feet long, enough to comfortably sit down in.
"I know you don't like small spaces," Maggie said to the staring Bucky. "But you're going to have to get in there." She looked around, then rushed to grab a pair of used coffee mugs on the countertop. "What's in this suite that might signal you're living here?" she called back to him. "Books are fine, but anything personalised-"
Bucky tore his gaze away from the open hole in his floor and then moved: he silently echoed her hurried circuit around the room, grabbing items. He was pale, but steady.
"J.A.R.V.I.S., are we missing anything?" Maggie called as Steve finished pulling on a pair of boots.
"Sergeant Barnes's toiletry products in the bathroom."
Bucky's eyes flicked to Maggie's, and he disappeared into the bathroom to get them.
The suite door slid open and Maggie jumped, whirling, but it was only Tony.
Half his hair was sticking up. "Mags!" he exclaimed. "J.A.R.V.I.S. just told me-"
"Get the hell out there and stall them," she shot back. "But don't tell them anything about the HYDRA mission until I get there."
Still frenzied from being woken, Tony nodded. "Stalling. I can do that." He rushed out again, with a frown at Steve.
Bucky emerged from the bathroom with an armful of products, including the small hairdryer Maggie had bought him a week ago. His eyes flicked around.
"That's everything." Without needing to be told, he stepped down into the hole in the floor, kicking the books, papers, clothes and photographs they'd tossed down there out of the way. He lowered himself into a sitting position, where his head was below the level of the floor. He looked up and met Maggie's eyes.
"I'm sorry," she said.
"You're saving me," he replied. "Don't be sorry."
She nodded.
"But… don't put yourselves at risk. If you have to, just… just give me up."
"Clearly you don't know either of us very well," Maggie said with a glint in her eye, jerking her head back at Steve. "We never give up."
He smiled grimly.
"There's water and a flashlight and other supplies in a panel just beneath your feet," she instructed. "Using the flashlight should be fine, and the space is soundproofed, but keep quiet all the same."
He nodded.
"J.A.R.V.I.S.," Maggie said. The floor began moving again, sliding soundlessly to cover the bunker space. Maggie held Bucky's grim gaze right up until the floor closed over him.
She turned back to Steve, her chest tight. He was just finished pulling on his left glove, careful with the strange metallic substance over his skin. Maggie hadn't had a chance to test the metal skin on herself before, but she knew it felt like the metal used in shock blankets - slippery but strangely sturdy. Steve was dressed in tattered, unwashed clothing, with dark hair falling around his face and a metal arm glinting out from under his sleeve. He'd thrown his clothes into the bunker in the floor.
"There's not much we can do about the no beard thing," Maggie said with a frown as she appraised him, catching her breath. "No time."
He met her eyes, his own expression tight with worry. "Maggie, what's the plan here?"
"The CIA are here with a warrant. Which means they picked up on one of the leaks of Bucky being in town and they think it's us-"
"Ms Stark, they are in the hallway."
She cursed. She'd only gotten the text from Sam about their arrival three minutes ago. "We don't have time. Steve, just… just trust me here, okay?" She held his gaze. "Agree with whatever I say."
"Yes ma'am," he said grimly.
Maggie turned him so his back faced the door, then grabbed for the StarkPad she'd shoved in the duffle bag.
The suite door whisked open.
"... and that's the biotracker implanted," Maggie said busily, with her eyes on the StarkPad, as if just finishing a verbal tirade. She looked over to the door. "Right, J.A.R.V.I.S. said you guys were coming up."
She could see about ten people in the doorway; Agent Hitchcock had taken several paces inside before halting, closely flanked by Agent Lowell and two others Maggie recognized. The rest were field officers. They had all frozen in place and were staring at the shaggy haired, metal-armed man standing in the middle of Bucky Barnes's room. The air crackled with tension. Several agents reached for their guns.
She spotted Tony just behind Agent Lowell, with a forcefully flippant look on his face. Sam stood a pace behind him, the picture of shock.
Maggie took a moment to absorb their stunned silence, then looked to Steve as if she'd forgotten about him. "Oh, him. Don't worry, he's friendly." She jerked her head at Steve, eyebrows raised, and he turned around to face them all.
The pack of CIA agents stared with even more shock, not that Maggie had thought it possible.
A long, tense silence passed.
Maggie looked again from Steve to Agent Hitchcock's deeply furrowed brow. "We're about to go out on a mission, so if you guys have questions you'd better hurry." She checked her tablet, on which she'd brought up a map of Manhattan. She nodded to Steve. "Yeah, I still reckon we should hit East Houston street."
Hitchcock got over his shock first. "What the hell is going on here?" he asked gruffly. As if he had unfrozen him, the other suited agents filtered inside. The field officers remained in the hallway, exchanging glances and peeling their palms off their guns.
Maggie looked up. "Oh, right." She jerked her head. "Meet the Winter Soldier. Congrats, you found him."
The surprise on Hitchcock's face turned into a glare. "What are you playing at, Stark?"
"We're… hunting HYDRA?" she gave a frustrated sigh and turned off her tablet. "To put it very simply, we realized there's a HYDRA cell on the east coast hunting for the Winter Soldier. We tracked them for a while to see if they had any viable leads, but they're sniffing around locations we cleared months ago. So we decided to put a stop to them. But they're tricky, so we realized we needed bait. They're looking for an unstable supersoldier with a metal arm." She gestured both hands at Steve. "We did our best. He's not in makeup yet, that does a lot more to sell it. What do you think?" she asked contemplatively. "I think the hair should be longer. Posture's not right either." She pushed down on Steve's shoulder and he hunched over a little.
Hitchcock traded a glance with his second, Lowell, and Maggie thought she could see uncertainty there.
"Captain Rogers?" Lowell asked, her eyes stern.
Steve nodded. "Maggie developed this skin," he lifted his sleeve to show the metal arm. "And we've been organising sightings, trying to lure them in. It worked, and we got the majority of the cell last night, but we're trying to see if there's any stragglers out there who might take the bait." He paused, and Maggie was brimming with how impressed she was with him, but then he went for the cherry on top. He frowned at Hitchcock and Lowell. "Is that why you're here? You thought I was Bucky?"
Maggie repressed a smile. Smart, smart Steve Rogers.
Tony laughed. "Well I guess if it worked on these guys, we know it'll definitely work on HYDRA." He nodded to Maggie. "Well done." There was a weight to his gaze.
There was another long pause as the five main CIA agents looked at each other. Maggie could see their confusion turning to anger now, and she suddenly noticed that Sharon was missing.
"Why weren't we informed about this?" said a third agent, who Maggie was pretty sure was called Sterling.
She cocked her head at him. "In the jurisdictional agreement your agency signed, sharing of HYDRA mission details wasn't part of the arrangement."
The field officers in the hallway were murmuring to each other now.
Maggie shot Hitchcock an impatient look. "Look, we're happy to cooperate, but… can we go? This metal skin only lasts so long before it tears, and Steve's got a shift downtown to do." She set her hand on his shoulder.
Hitchcock's face twisted in frustration. "And Agent Hill will confirm all this, will she?"
Maggie nodded. "Of course." She and Hill had come up with this contingency plan together. After managing all of Nick Fury's backup plans, this bit of subterfuge was nothing. She raised her eyebrows.
Finally, Hitchcock relented. "Very well, you can go, Ms Stark. Just… let us know if you get any intel about the Soldier from that HYDRA cell."
"Yes, sir," she replied sarcastically. She nodded to Steve, and he strode forward with his head held high.
Maggie followed him, itching at the feeling of turning her back to the room and leaving Bucky alone under the floor with the CIA standing practically on his head. But if she drew any attention to the room in any way, or asked them to leave, they would get suspicious. Her eyes met Sam's very briefly as she passed him. He was trying to disguise his confusion.
To her relief, the CIA agents followed them out of the room. She and Steve strode ahead, and Maggie was already looking down at her StarkPad again, as if too busy to care. Steve's arm brushed hers.
Behind her, she could hear Tony chattering away. "Now does that warrant give you permission to search every room in the Tower? Because if so, there's some, uh, personal items in my room I'd like to request to clear away first."
"Dude," Sam said.
Down in the garage, Maggie and Steve collapsed into their seats in the cheap dark car with heavy sighs.
Maggie finally let her nerves show. Sweat sprung up on her forehead as she put her head in her trembling hands and let out a long, shaky sigh.
Steve shook his head, staring out the windshield at the wall. "Holy hell, Maggie."
"That was too close," she bit out. She stared at her knees. "I don't want to spy on the CIA, but we're going to have to keep a closer eye on them."
"That was incredible."
She glanced up at him with a bemused look.
He met her eye. "I'm serious. If it weren't for you…"
"Then the CIA wouldn't be here in the first place," she said. "I got careless, putting Bucky on those missions. I should've known they'd come looking. We should have gone with you in a wig in the first place."
"I don't know about that, I'd be rubbish," Steve said with a rueful smile. "You never saw me try to go undercover, when I was on the run with Nat."
"Well I'm about to," she said as she reached forward to start the engine. Steve's eyes went wide. "We told them we're going on a mission. They can't catch us in a lie, Rogers."
His face fell. "Oh, no."
"Don't worry, I've got some makeup in the glove box. I'll give you a beard."
"Oh, no."
When Maggie and Steve returned to the tower an hour and a half later, the others (including Bucky) were all gathered in the common room. Thor was absent - he'd left to visit Jane last night.
They all looked up when Maggie and Steve strode through the door, tired but satisfied. Steve had a beard painted onto his face, which looked comical in the clear light.
"You really went downtown?" Tony said with bemusement.
"Steve got a taste of dumpster diving," Maggie said grimly. Steve pulled off the wig-hat and scratched at his scalp. Maggie looked around at them all, reclined casually on the common room couches with cups of coffee. "We're good?"
"We're good," Tony nodded. "CIA poked around a bit, Hill told them off for inter-agency espionage when they went into the analysis room, and they left pretty quickly after that. Their agents tried to plant a handful of listening devices but J.A.R.V.I.S. fried them before they'd even hit the lobby. El Chapo here was fine," he added with a nod at Bucky, who had folded himself into one of the single sofa chairs.
Maggie winced. "Tony."
"Okay, not a great reference." Beside Tony, Pepper rolled her eyes.
"Do we know what alerted them?" Steve asked.
"J.A.R.V.I.S. did a little digging, apparently they got a tipoff from one of their CIs in the city that the Winter Soldier had been spotted, and our mission last night gave them enough grounds to get a warrant. But I suppose now even if the HYDRA agents talk, they'll just assume that their big scary Winter Soldier is our Cap."
Maggie ran her hands over her face and collapsed onto one of the long couches beside Clint and Nat. Clint patted her back. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you guys about this contingency plan before. I always thought we'd have time if the CIA rumbled us."
"I think it went great," Sam said, gesturing with his coffee cup beside Bruce. "When we walked into that room I was convinced I was looking at Barnes." He nodded at Steve, who had paced over to stand beside Maggie. He'd taken off the gloves and was peering at the metal skin on his fingers. "If it convinced me, it'll convince them."
Steve looked from the metal skin to Maggie. "How do I…?"
"Tear it off, it's not reusable," she said.
The doors on the other side of the room slid open to reveal Hill, in her usual suit and with her StarkPad tucked under her arm. She looked in at them all, then shot a thumbs up at Maggie.
Maggie gave her a double thumbs up in return.
"Good. I'm busy," Hill said, and walked back out again.
"You look weird, pal," Bucky said, watching Steve peel the film-like metal skin off his arm. He glanced around. "Is that what I look like?"
"Your hair is better," offered Natasha.
Bucky grinned. But then he looked to Maggie. "Thank you." She nodded once, suddenly tired again. "All this time and I never knew there was a hole in my floor."
"Yeah," Clint said, turning to face Maggie. "Do we all have one of those?"
"Yes," Tony said. "There are also parachute packs in them, if you ever need to jump out the window."
"And emergency rations," Pepper added.
Natasha rubbed her forehead.
Bruce cleared his throat. "So are we… going to have to worry about them again?" He shifted in his seat, and Sam shot him a sympathetic glance.
"Not for a while, I don't think," Maggie said. "But I'll prepare more contingency plans, just in case. And keep you apprised of them next time," she added wryly.
A long silence passed. Everyone was clearly thinking about the events of the morning, and tiredness from their work the night before hung over them, stifling. Pepper put her head on Tony's shoulder.
"Did you guys know Steve wears boxer briefs?" Maggie blurted out.
Bucky tipped his head back and laughed, and the others dissolved into exclamations and questions and exasperated eye rolls. Steve went pink at the ears, then went even pinker when Maggie leaned over to hug his arm in fondness and apology.
Late January, 2015
Like the first time, David Marlow did not answer the first time Maggie called him. When she tried again, he picked up on the first ring.
"Who is this?" he said in a low, serious voice.
"An old ally," Maggie replied, leaning back in her desk chair.
A few seconds passed. "You might have to be more specific than that."
"You used to know me as WV3K671," she explained. "You turned me in to SHIELD," she said faux-chidingly.
There was another long pause. Then: "Ms Stark," Marlow said in a slightly lighter voice. "It's been a while."
Marlow had been one of her main contacts back in her early Wyvern days, going on seven years now. Maggie hadn't trusted him, necessarily, but he'd given her good intel. They'd barely spoken since she'd been outed as Maggie Stark. Marlow was technically retired from his role in the CIA, he didn't need all that noise.
"Did you really call me up all these years later to tell me off for the SHIELD thing?" Marlow went on. His voice was gravelly with age. Maggie knew he was a grandfather now. "Seems to have worked out alright for you. In the end."
"I did get shot."
He sighed static. "I really thought Phil would have more subtlety than that, god rest his soul."
Maggie frowned a little at the mention of Phil, then cleared her throat. "But you're right. I'm calling about your old employers, actually."
"Run up against the agency, have you?"
Maggie waited a moment. She needed to do this right. "They seem to have gotten the impression that we're working against them." She ran her tongue over her teeth. "Which is not the case."
It was not, technically, a lie. Sure, they were keeping the Winter Soldier thing a secret, but the CIA's interest was theoretically in public safety. The public was safe.
"And you called me because you think I might have some sway?"
"I called you because I think you know me, or at least how I work. You gave me intel that I don't think you would have handed out to many other people, back in the day." She pressed on. "The agent we're dealing with is called Hitchcock."
There was a long, long pause, and for a moment Maggie was convinced she'd made everything worse.
"I know him."
Maggie wanted to push, to convince, but she forced herself to keep her silence.
Finally, Marlow sighed. "I'll have a word. Can't promise anything, but you're right. I know how you work. Close to the chest, definitely. But it always seems to make the world a bit better, all the same."
Maggie silently lifted a fist in triumph. "Thank you, Mr Marlow." She lowered her hand. "Though I am working on being a bit less close to the chest these days."
He huffed. "I wouldn't recommend that. But I was a spy." He cleared his throat. "But anyway. Least I can do, after getting you shot."
"If you ever need a favor, you know where I live."
"You stay smart, Wyvern."
Maggie never did figure out what Marlow said to his old colleagues at the CIA, or if he'd even said anything at all. But the CIA backed off. They occasionally checked in to compare notes on the Winter Soldier hunt, or on the Avengers HYDRA response, but no more so than any other agency. Maggie found out through the grapevine that Sharon had been transferred to Europe to liaise with the Joint Counter Terrorism Task Force, and wondered if it was punishment or promotion.
She turned her energy toward looking into Bucky's mysterious 'words'.
In truth, she hardly knew what she was looking into. It became her personal research project, in between working on the Iron Legion and the Quinjet and the dozens of other Avengers engineering projects she had. It wasn't like any research project she'd ever had, nor like her hunt for the soldier, or even her adjustments to her leg and wings.
The mind was new territory for Maggie. She talked to Raynor, to Mai, and then expanded out to seeking knowledge from experts in neurology and psychology. She gathered theory and research like a sponge. But at the end of the day, she had no idea how to fix this. The technology, the science, simply hadn't been invented. So she set forth into the realm of undiscovered science, theorising and researching on her own. She didn't know how long it might take her. But it wasn't something she could give up on.
February, 2015
Maggie thought that the Tower common room looked bigger at night. Maybe it was the darkness, the way the shadows seemed to expand in the corner of your eye. Or maybe it was the emptiness. Without the fuss and bustle of Avengers streaming in and out, the common room could feel very quiet indeed.
Not that it was empty tonight. She'd been out on a mission for two days with Steve, Nat and Clint in Estonia, and had slept on the Quinjet on the way back, so had no desire to sleep. On the couch across from her, Bucky scribbled in one of his many journals in the low light. He didn't seem to need that much light to see what he was writing.
He hadn't explained his sleeplessness tonight, not that he needed to. Tony had complained about him while they were away; he won't stop asking about you all, he'd said over a crackly phone line to Maggie. Keeps pacing and staring, like you might've all been killed and I've just forgotten to tell him.
Bucky seemed at ease now, flipping back a few pages in his journal to check something. He usually tied his hair up when he was writing, and it was scrunched at the base of his neck in an attempt at a bun. Maggie wondered if the metal arm made hair care difficult, but that was far too silly a question for tonight.
"Do you remember the second time we met?" she asked over the top of her copy of Journal of Neurology, Feb 2015.
He looked up, frowning.
She tipped her head. "It would have been… 2010, I think."
He shrugged. Years, to him, were like water sliding off his skin.
"Hm," Maggie said. She put down her journal and sat up. "Singapore. There was this banker, involved in underworld moneylending. I almost didn't go, but I figured I'd get some intel on him, turn him in. That's sort of what I was up to those days. Vigilantism. His name was Kong Xiuying-"
Recognition sparked in Bucky's face, and his metal hand flexed. He looked down with a furrowed brow for a moment, then winced and reached up to rub his forehead.
"I killed him," he murmured. "You… you were there," he continued in an almost dreamlike voice. "In the sky, chasing me."
"You took me by surprise. I wasn't expecting you."
He looked at her. "I shot at you."
"Missed," she shrugged. "Obviously."
"But then I…"
"You threw a grenade at me to get me off your tail. I broke two ribs."
"Sorry," he winced. She waved a hand. "I… I remember I told my handlers that I met resistance, a flying assailant. They seemed confused by it."
"That was early days for me. Only a few people in SHIELD knew about the Wyvern. And clearly HYDRA never linked me to that mission, or they probably would have come after me."
His wince turned into a frown. "I could've killed you, twice over."
"I could have killed you," she said matter-of-factly. "I would have, probably, if I'd caught you that night." She picked up her journal and flicked it open. "Thank goodness for grenades."
She'd thought that would be it - they often shared snippets of remembered violence and tragedy in short exchanges like this, when they crossed their mind.
But when Bucky next spoke, his voice was so heavy it made her look up from her journal in alarm.
"I don't know how to carry it all, sometimes." He had sat up properly and set his notebook aside without her noticing, and now he looked down at his feet with deep shadows on his face. "Which I know is unfair for me to say to you-"
"Don't," she said. "No more apologizing. And I… I don't know if it helps, for me to keep saying it wasn't your fault? Because I keep thinking. You did all that, under horrific mind control and torture. And I… Tony and I made weapons together. For years. They called him the Merchant of Death. And we did that with both eyes open."
He looked up, eyes dark. "You stopped, though. Steve told me the company-"
"That was Tony's choice, not mine. I just ran away, my whole life." She waved a hand. "But the point is - you stopped too. You broke through decades of programming and mind wipes and the second you had a choice, you chose to protect life. You saved Steve, and then you left and you stopped hurting people. I know you spared those HYDRA agents at the bank, after the Triskelion."
His eyes went wide. "How do you know that?"
"I was chasing you the second those Helicarriers fell into the water," she said archly. "Assume I know everything."
He laughed at that, a low sound. Then he frowned. "Steve… Steve gave me the impression that you started chasing me before the Triskelion. That you'd been doing it for… a while."
Their conversation snagged on unsaid things, like a ship on hidden rocks. There was so much of Maggie's life that Bucky did not know, which felt strange since she knew so much of his. He got only snatches that she'd revealed. Maggie had not meant to keep so much of her life a secret from him, but she was certainly aware of it. And Bucky had never asked before.
She looked down at her hands a moment, watching the shadows play over her skin. Bucky held his silence, retreating into himself as if he'd sensed he'd stepped onto treacherous ground.
The common room looked bigger at night, and Maggie's secrets felt smaller.
She let out a breath. "I'm going to tell you all of it."
He frowned.
She straightened and leaned forward a little. "My whole life. I'm going to tell you about it. Get ready."
His eyebrows flew up and he straightened again. "Okay."
And so she did.
For over an hour, Maggie spoke. She talked about her life as if they were old aquaintances who hadn't caught up in a while, as if he were her biographer and she needed to give him a clear outline. She told him about waking up in hospital, delirious and confused. She told him about the surgeries. About the grief-soaked months in the mansion, then the move to California and Tony's brilliance. She told him how she went from school to college, about her pilot's license. She told him about her mission, and her long hunt for the Winter Soldier. She told him about Iron Man.
She knew so much about him, it seemed only fair.
She told him about her life of secrets, and how it had abruptly crumbled around her in a donut shop in downtown Los Angeles. Bucky laughed sometimes as she spoke, and this was one story she could recount with humour. She explained how she had fallen head-first into the Avengers and how clever, clever Steve had figured out her identity in the space of a minute. She explained how the Mandarin had risen and fallen, and how events had led to her marching into the Triskelion last January in search of answers, only to find a regime falling. She told him, haltingly, how she had confronted Steve in his hospital room, and then set off on her final hunt for him.
"And then… I found you."
Bucky listened.
Late February, 2015
It was a warm night, for February. Maggie had paced out onto the flight deck an hour ago, as she did some nights when the feeling of walls around her grew too claustrophobic. She wore thick sweatpants and a hoodie, and sat out on the very edge of the Quinjet landing deck, where the deck itself was nothing but metal mesh, rising to a low barrier. Maggie sat cross-legged on the mesh. If she looked down she could see the city far, far below her: headlights streaming down the street, traffic lights flicking from green to amber to scarlet.
Sitting out on the mesh edge of the flight deck felt a little like flying because the wind met no obstruction, able to flow through the bars and over Maggie's body. But there was little wind tonight. This meant she could cearly hear the flight deck door slide open.
She knew who it would be. Sure enough, she heard the barest hint of Bucky's gait, softened by the socks he always wore, as he strode up the deck and then took a careful step onto the mesh. It vibrated under her with the weight of his footsteps.
She looked over her shoulder at him. She'd seen him writing in the common room on her way down here, but he'd left his journal and pen behind, and now stood with his hands in the pockets of his sweatpants, softly illuminated by the ambient light of the city. This was one of her usual haunts, but she had never seen him out here at night before.
"Thought I'd see what all the fuss was about," he murmured, nodding to her. He took a few more steps out onto the mesh and carefully lowered to a seated position a few feet away from her. His metal palm tinked against the mesh when he steadied himself.
Maggie nodded, her hands buried in the pocket of her hoodie. But then she looked back at him. His dark hair spilled around his face. "This is the only way you can go outside," she realized. "At least, when we're not making you dig through dumpsters."
"I don't mind it," he said, his eyes roving across the landscape of darkly glittering skyscrapers around them. A breeze blew up from below the mesh, pinching cold at their skin. "There are worse views."
Maggie frowned, but said nothing. She looked down, picking out neon signs and the shapes of pedestrians on the streets below.
After a while, she heard a soft huh. She glanced at Bucky and found him staring up, his neck craned back.
Maggie followed his gaze to the unobstructed night sky. "What are you looking at?" she squinted.
"I… that's Ursa Major," he murmured. She blinked, then followed his gaze up. She hadn't even noticed the stars were out tonight. He lifted his metal hand and traced it across the sky, picking out seven stars which glowed a little brighter than the others. "Looks a bit like a saucepan, there's the handle going to the right, and then… like a square." His hand dropped. "It's not often you can see the stars in the city."
Maggie was still staring up at the stars. The sky was tinged slightly purple at the edges from the light pollution from the city, but the stars were surprisingly visible. "You know the constellations?" she asked, curious. She'd done astrophysics at college, and worked with Jane Foster, but that had been more about atoms and black holes and Einstein-Rosen Bridges. Not the stars.
Bucky looked a little taken aback as he gazed upwards. "Until now I'd forgotten. The… the oldest memories take the longest to come back, I think. But I can see…" his eyes roved across the sky. "I know the planets. Where they should be." He frowned. "I had a book about them, when I was in school. Used to… my tenement building, we'd go up to the roof on clear nights to see what we could see." Maggie didn't ask who we was. "Stars, planets, comets. On the really clear nights we could see Venus."
She looked from his face, then up to the sky. She hadn't stargazed since she was very small. In New York you usually couldn't see anything. "Can you see it now?"
He shook his head. "It's set. But if you look way, way over there" - he pointed, and Maggie tried to follow his line of sight - "that's Mars. The one that's a little brighter than the others."
She saw it: a pinprick of light struggling through the haze of the New York sky. The more she stared, the more she saw the faint light of other stars shining through. She would never have noticed them if she hadn't taken the time to look.
"I used to show the Howlies in the war, too, on the long nights when you had to stay up on guard." Bucky's voice was low, as if he was worried he would frighten away the memories. "The sky was a lot clearer in Europe, as long as there hadn't been any air raids. I once saw Jupiter and Saturn."
Maggie tried to imagine it. Those endless, timeless planets, glimpsed twice by the same man over the course of eighty years. Like a comet returning to orbit.
His memories, and his voice, and the distant glimmering stars made her feel as if she were floating over the city. Her skin prickled.
"You know, they've put machines on Mars," she murmured.
He smiled. "I know, I read about it. Pathfinder."
"And there's two active Rovers up there now. Curiosity and Opportunity. Up there exploring, taking samples." She huffed a laugh. "Took billions of dollars and decades for us to do it, and it turns out all Thor needs is a bit of magic."
"His magic is just a kind of science though," Bucky said. He had turned slightly, and Maggie realized he was looking up at the quarter moon, shining a speckled grey. "Still can't believe I missed the moon landing."
She smiled. "One small step."
"I'd like to step on another planet," he said.
For anyone else it would be an offhand statement, but it struck Maggie then that she had never heard Bucky express a wish for his own future. He had never once shared a dream, or a goal. And for a man from a tenement building in Depression-era New York, wanting to step foot on another planet… she hoped he managed it, one day.
She shivered, laced her hands together in her pocket and looked up. "What else can you see?"
He pointed out more constellations and where planets should have been, the memories coming easier now. He pointed out Orion, and Ursa Minor, and Cassiopea, and told her about the ancient Greek who had named them. He remembered a surprising amount, and Maggie wondered exactly how many times he'd read that astronomy book when he was a kid. He told her how the book had explained that many of the stars in the sky had already died out, and that we saw only their light travelling across the universe. Like looking into the past, he said. She'd hardly ever heard him talk so much, for so long, and she began to understand why he looked at Thor with such curiosity and awe. Why he lingered in Bruce's laboratory some days. Why he devoured science fiction.
"Have you ever seen them with a telescope?" she asked.
He tipped his head. "Once, someone in my building had a relative staying who had one. He let all the kids on the block have a go. I only got about thirty seconds with it. But it was pointed at the moon. And it was…" his mouth opened and closed a few times. Then he simply shook his head.
Maggie watched him fail to describe what he had seen on that rooftop in Brooklyn, and felt herself go quiet. She'd had so much wealth and opportunity and technology at her fingertips for so long. Sometimes she forgot what it felt like to want, and not have. She forgot the wonder of seeing the universe anew.
Shout out to Sadie Kane for the headcanon that Steve wears boxer briefs.
Reviews
DBZFAN45: Maggie and Bucky can definitely read each other a lot better by now, but they've still got a long way to go ;) Hope you enjoyed the CIA arc this chapter! And that you're having a lovely weekend :)
Guest: Thank you so much! I don't know how to write short stories it seems haha. I'm glad you're enjoying Bucky and Maggie gradually getting closer :)
MsMoe9: Thank you so much, I'm glad you liked the last chapter! As you can see, Bucky had a close call but all went fine ;)
Nina: Haha I haven't mentioned much about his trigger words in a while but they are indeed there ;) Hope you enjoyed this chapter!
Shorttrooper: Shit is indeed going down! And it's about to really go down next chapter. You're right about using Bucky as bait being very stupid and reckless, as we saw this chapter haha. I'm glad you've enjoyed Maggie and Bucky's slow progression into friends, it's been a tricky balance but I'm glad it's worked :)
Zariah: I'm so glad you liked the last chapter! You're right it was a dangerous idea, as we've seen this chapter! Starks do tend to have either genius or dumbass ideas. Also your mom is a baller for watching NCIS, that was one of my favourite shows as a teenager. Hope you enjoyed this chapter!
EchoMoment: Thanks so much!