March 10, 2015
Bucky Barnes turned ninety eight.
He'd had a good night, gotten to sleep even, so he was woken at a reasonable hour in the morning by J.A.R.V.I.S.'s polite request to let Steve into his suite.
"Happy birthday!" Steve exclaimed once Bucky let him in, and Bucky stared exasperatedly at him, eyes half-lidded from sleep. "You've got presents."
"What did you get me this time," Bucky sighed.
"Well I got you this," Steve said, handing over a package wrapped in brown paper. "But what's the box outside for?"
"Box outside?"
Steve walked back to the door and opened it, revealing a large, slim cardboard box with no markings propped against the far wall. Bucky stepped out into the corridor to examine it, then found a post-it-note tucked under one of the top flaps. It read:
- M
Eyebrows rising, Bucky carefully opened the top of the box and peered in. Steve peered in a second later.
"Is that a telescope?" he asked.
"It… is."
Most of the box was taken up by a packaged Celestron telescope, which had a starchart stuck to the side of it. At the bottom of the box lay something called a Learn-to-knit-kit, and on top of that, a thick book titled The Complete Lord of the Rings Trilogy.
Bucky stared into the box for a long time, as Steve's confusion grew. Conversations from the past few weeks came to mind - an exchange about how crafts were supposed to be good for the brain, and for practicing finer dexterity. A discussion about the works of Tolkein. A night spent looking up at the sky.
Bucky thought he might have stood frozen, staring into that box, for an eternity, if Steve hadn't put his hand on his shoulder. He flinched, then looked into Steve's concerned face.
"Buck? You alright?"
Bucky let out a long breath. "It's my birthday."
He didn't see her all that day. The Avengers were busy with something, only darting through the common room on their way to quickly eat, energy buzzing. Clint and Thor wished him happy birthday, and Tony's way past said something about how Bucky had to be the surliest-looking ninety eight year old he'd ever met, which Bucky thought might have been his way of saying happy birthday.
Steve brought him takeaway from the Vietnamese place they both liked, and let him unwrap his present: two more books, and a photo frame. The photo inside was of him and Steve - Sam had taken it a couple months ago in the common room, and in it Steve was grinning and Bucky stood with his arms crossed and a small smile flickering at his mouth. Bucky remembered it well. He hadn't thought Sam was being serious about taking a photo.
"I can't have a photo of myself in here," he objected to Steve.
"It's a photo of me too," Steve said obstinately. "And you don't have any photos. You need some."
"Why?"
"Because it's what people do."
And Bucky couldn't argue with that.
He'd resigned himself to not being able to see her until tomorrow. He hadn't unpacked the box with the post it note. He had to give it back, he had to-
"Sergeant Barnes," J.A.R.V.I.S. said over his suite speakers a few minutes before midnight. "Your presence is requested in the common room."
Bucky frowned and looked up at the ceiling.
"Please be sure to bring your telescope."
Your telescope. It made him fidget.
All the same, he carefully slid the telescope out of the box and brought it down to the dark common room.
"Oh, good." Meg stood by the entrance to the corridor with the elevator, dressed in dark clothes and with something tucked under her arm. She smiled quickly at the sight of him. "We don't have long. Put this on." She handed the bundle under her arm to him, and he carefully set down the telescope to take it. He examined what she'd handed him: a long, dark jacket, gloves, a grey wig, hat, and a pair of glasses.
"This is a disguise," he said.
"Yes, put it on." Her voice was implacable. He looked up at her cautiously. "Happy birthday, by the way." She frowned. "Wait, it might be past midnight already." She checked her phone, which seemed blinding in the darkness. "Ah. Happy birthday for yesterday. I see you got your present." She nodded at the telescope.
"I can't accept it," he said in a rush.
She frowned. "Why?"
"It's… too much."
"If you don't take the telescope, I'll end up giving it to Thor and I'm convinced he'll either break it or make fun of it, and I don't want to see either of those." Despite her light tone, there was a weight to her dark eyes. "It's yours."
He could not argue with her. He swallowed.
"Why aren't you putting on the disguise?"
He blinked, then picked up the grey wig and began pulling it on to his head.
She'd disguised him as an old man, which seemed a little unflattering, though not inaccurate. Her disguise was more nondescript; dark clothes in a long, unusual cut, her hair loose around her face, and a pair of glasses.
She brought him down to the outside world.
He'd hesitated in the public elevator, and again in the glossy, dark Avengers Tower lobby. He'd never been on the ground floor, only the top floors or the garage. Each time he paused, she whispered for him to come on, hurry up. And he would touch his Manacles for reassurance and walk on.
She led him out onto the streets of New York, still bright despite the late hour. This felt different from his missions downtown. He walked down the sidewalk, able to stare around at the towering buildings which he was so used to seeing from above. He let the smells of the city wash over him. They only passed a few people, whose gazes slid over the old man walking past them. Cars buzzed by and glowing signs flickered on the buildings. He heard the rush of trains underground and distant shouts and music and electricity buzzing and laughter and honking horns.
She brought him to Central Park.
It was… well, it looked exactly as sketchy as it used to be back in his day, but Meg walked into the darkness without fear. Bucky's steps slowed as he followed her, and a minute later she turned back to see him on the lawn, kneeling down with his flesh hand pressed to the earth. The grass was damp under his fingers, and the soil got under his fingernails. He drew in a long breath.
He should have been worried. He should have been out of his mind terrified that he had been unleashed on the city, that HYDRA might have an opportunity to snatch him up and turn him into a weapon again. But the late hour and the darkness and Meg's strange, quiet energy made the city feel as if it belonged on another planet entirely. A planet where he had never been the Soldier, where no danger lurked waiting for him. A planet where he could feel the plain, simple grass under his fingers as if he'd never experienced such a thing before.
"Come on," Meg whispered. "Just a little further."
Maggie brought Bucky to what she'd scientifically calculated to be the darkest part of the park. They passed a few weirdos on the way, who looked at them like they were the weirdos. If only they knew.
When they got there, Bucky seemed to know what to do without her having to speak. He knelt on the damp grass and began unpacking his new telescope. Maggie had done a fair amount of research, comparing features like scopes and eyepieces and tripods, and had been practically tearing her hair out about all the choices until she asked Jane Foster, who had helped her select a mid-range one with good quality and enough features to make it interesting. Maggie watched Bucky assemble it, his eyes flicking over the instructions in the darkness, until the telescope stood ready on the grass.
Maggie looked up. "The moon's out."
Bucky nodded silently, kneeling before the telescope. But he didn't look into it.
Maggie shifted her feet. Maybe this had been a bad idea, maybe it was too much-
"What?" she prompted, trying to see his expression in the darkness. She didn't have his night vision.
"I… I don't know what to say," he murmured. His metal hand rested on the telescope tripod, feather-light.
She let out a long breath. She wanted to wave it off, to explain how much money she had and how little this gift had left a dent. But she knew what he meant. This gift was… more than about money. She hadn't really considered this side of it, what it would mean. She'd just… she'd known Bucky's birthday was coming up. And she'd known that he had only seen the moon through a telescope once, for a few minutes on a tenement building eighty years ago.
She supposed, if she was being honest with herself, she knew what this meant. It meant that somehow, inexplicably, Bucky Barnes had become her friend.
"You don't have to say anything," she replied. "I know."
And as if that were some kind of permission, Bucky leaned down and put his eye to the eyepiece. He frowned, tilting the tube in incremental movements and adjusting knobs until suddenly, he stilled. A long breath left his chest. His hands went limp by his sides.
It was several minutes before he spoke again. "Do you want to see?"
She looked down, surprised. She'd been keeping watch, her eyes on the darkness and on J.A.R.V.I.S.'s text updates on her phone. Bucky was kneeling by the telescope, looking up at her.
"Do I… no, it's yours."
"Go on," he said. And there was that note of challenge again, that emerged more and more frequently these days. She arched an eyebrow, then silently strode over to crouch at the base of the telescope. "It's in position," he said.
She let out a breath, then tilted her neck and looked into the eyepiece.
He'd been looking at the surface of the moon. It was sharp and clear in the telescope, like the speckled shell of an egg. She drank in the sweeping grey seas and the puckered craters, the luminescent shades of grey that dipped in and out of shadow. She could see it so clearly, this orb which spun silently through space, absorbing the impacts of comets and meteors and then one day, a pair of human feet.
"One small step," Bucky murmured from beside her. As if he could read her mind.
They stayed in the dark abyss of the park for an hour and a half, as Bucky trained his telescope on different points across the night sky, consulting his starchart and showing constellations and distant planets to Maggie.
When she wasn't looking she sat back on the grass, leaning on her elbows, with her eyes closed.
While Bucky peered up at the dusky reds and greys of Mars, she let out a breath. "We're closing in on HYDRA." He stilled, his hand on the focuser. "Up to now we've been shutting down the stragglers, the minor operations. But we got intel today about a large base in Europe. It's the big one, maybe even the one that has the Scepter. Pretty sure it's run by Wolfgang von Strucker. If we can shut that one down… we can shut it all down. It'll be the end."
"All of HYDRA," Bucky said out loud, his eyes on the stars. "Gone."
"Hardly seems real, does it?"
He was quiet a long time. She thought he'd let the subject drop, but when he next spoke his voice was dark. "Promise me one thing?"
She opened her eyes and glanced at him. He'd never asked her for a promise before. "Sure."
He took his eye away from the eyepiece and looked at her. "Don't let a single one get away." His gaze was determined, unyielding, and it made her sit up straighter.
She held his gaze and showed him her fire. "I promise."
27 April 2015
Bucky paced back and forth along the length of the common room window, his hands in his pockets and a furrow in his brow. He kept glancing down at what he could see of the flight deck; nothing was happening, but he knew there had to be a hubbub of activity in the Avengers loading bay just out of sight.
The team had got back from a mission in Sudan only two days ago, but last night something had happened to amp up the energy in the Tower. He hadn't seen Steve, and the others only darted in and out on their way through, eyes alive with activity. He could only imagine the chaos downstairs.
The far door slid open again, and Bucky turned anxiously.
It was Meg. She wore the same clothes she'd been in yesterday, her hair was frizzing out from a haphazard bun, and she made a beeline for the other end of the common room, her eyes fixed. Probably on the way to her lab. But halfway across the room she faltered and glanced over at him, though he hadn't made a sound.
"Bucky," she said, as if she'd forgotten he lived here.
"What's going on?" he asked. "J.A.R.V.I.S. said it was classified-"
"We found them," she breathed, pushing her hair back. "Hill got intelligence about Dr List escaping to a compound in Sokovia, and we think this is where Strucker's been hiding out. We're planning an offensive as soon as we can, I need to get one of the parts for the Quinjet from my workshop-"
Bucky let out a breath and nodded. "Go. Thanks for telling me."
She nodded and continued on in her headlong rush, but paused just before she left through the other door. She looked back. "We're going to get them this time."
He nodded. "I know."
Five minutes later, the door slid open again to reveal Agent Hill, tapping away at her ever-present tablet. She looked up as she entered and spotted Bucky at the bar. "Have you seen Stark? Maggie, I mean."
"She was on her way up to her workshop, I think she was coming back."
Hill nodded, frowned, and then turned around to leave the way she'd come. But then she paused and looked back.
Bucky's skin prickled. She was looking at him with consideration.
"You know," Hill said. "We're planning a surprise attack on Strucker's compound. The Avengers and the Iron Legion. I've been thinking about creating a team of Avengers agents as tactical support on the ground, but we're weeks away from that at best." She faced him fully and turned off her tablet. "I've seen you spar with Rogers. If you chose to go on this mission, you would be extremely valuable."
He stiffened.
"I know the rules of your arrangement here," she continued. "But there's almost no chance of press coverage on this mission, and we would ensure your wellbeing at all times-"
He jerked his head, once, and she fell silent. "I can't."
Her lips pressed together as she considered him. Then she nodded. "I respect that. If you change your mind, though, you know where to find me." And a moment later, she was gone.
I won't.
The only people left on earth that he wanted to fight were HYDRA. But they were also the only people that he should never, ever be allowed to face.
Minutes later Meg whizzed back through the doors with a dark metal case under her arm and what looked like a power tool clenched between her teeth. As she hurried past, Bucky silently offered her a cup of coffee and one of the pastries from the breadbin in the common area kitchen.
Meg stared at the offerings for a long second before she reached out to take them.
"-ank you," she managed.
He nodded, and she hurried on.
April 28, 2015
Sokovia
A tree exploded in a shower of snow and shattered wood under her wing as Maggie plunged through the forest. Her wing, fortified and razor sharp, barely shuddered at the impact and she twisted downward to fire both wrist blasters at the base of a metal watchtower that had been erected amongst the trees. The structure shook as the crackling red energy bolts hit its pylons, and then crumpled a second later when Iron Man followed up with a repulsor beam. Men in white and grey camouflage uniforms screamed as they fell into the snow. The Hulk roared as he raged through the forest toward them.
Maggie let out a breath and careened to her right, her eyes on a squad of soldiers flitting through the trees using strange purple glowing jetpacks. She could not feel the cold bite of the air, since her full uniform covered her from head to toe, an exoskeleton of metal plates and kevlar. She could feel the push and pressure of the wind as she cut through it, the surge of her engines and the burn of her muscles as she twisted through the air. The cacophony of laser blasts and gunfire filled her ears.
The initial plan had been to launch a surprise attack on the fortress a few miles north of Novi Grad, Sokovia's capital. But they'd quickly met much fiercer resistance in the forest than they'd expected. The soldiers here were equipped with complex weaponry, appearing to be powered by some kind of glowing energy. The projectiles fired from their guns hit hard and burned through steel, and they'd developed weaponry far beyond anything they'd seen at a HYDRA base before. They were still making progress, but it was slow. They'd had to call in a Code Green.
Maggie pulled her wings in tight as she raced through the forest over ground troops and armored cars, unable to rise above the treetops because of the ground-to-air cannons housed in bunkers at the base of the fortress hill. She'd have to get closer
Thor leaped through the air beside her, yelling at the top of his lungs, and she swooped down low and crossed over the armored car Nat and Clint were driving down a narrow snow-laden lane. Blue and purple laster fire scorched through the air and Maggie had to flip to avoid a volley from a ground squad. A moment later the squad were knocked apart by Steve, who flung his shield from his seat on the beautiful dark motorcycle Maggie and Tony had designed for him. Based on the way he was raging through the forest, Maggie could tell they weren't going to see that bike again.
The snowy forest was loud with laserfire and gunshots and engines and the Hulk's roars and resounding metallic blows from Thor's hammer and Steve's shield. Maggie whisked through the chaos with a sharp eye and even sharper wings, firing wrist blasters and shots from the guns she'd stashed across her uniform.
A tank below Maggie exploded and wafted her upward in a gust of hot air, putting her in the sights of two soldiers in jetpacks. She careened straight for them and they scattered; one went down with an arrow in his jetpack and Maggie snatched the other straight out of the sky and hurled him to the ground - where he narrowly missed being run over by Nat's car. A laser cannon fired up at her in a burning beam and Maggie rolled, then aimed down and fired one of her wrist-mounted missiles at it. The cannon erupted with a roar that shook the forest floor. She planted her feet on a tree and used it to springboard back in the direction of their assault.
Natasha and Clint raced toward a spiked road block stretching across the forest floor, Clint firing an arrow every second as they drove. Maggie soared downward just as Natasha jerked the car into a sideways skid and both she and Clint leaped out of the car over the road block, weapons aloft. Maggie found herself behind Thor, who'd just leaped down, and just across from Steve on his bike, Tony with his burning repulsors, and the raging Hulk as she plunged toward the oncoming soldiers, her red goggles burning. Thor called lightning with his hammer and static crackled over her uniform. The whole team surged over the road block, an unstoppable force of metal, lightning and rage.
Thor plunged down to blast the soldiers away with a wave of lightning so Maggie veered left to handle an oncoming jetpack team, watching out of the corner of her eye as Tony roared off toward the white fortress on the looming black rock ahead of them. He outstripped the ground-to-air cannons in a burst of speed, closing in - only to bounce off a sudden blue barrier that appeared in thin air.
"Shit!"
"Language," Steve chided. "J.A.R.V.I.S., what's the view from upstairs?"
Maggie jammed her heelspur into a jetpack as she flew by it and the entire thing blew up, sending the shouting man falling into snow-laden treebranches.
"The central building is protected by some kind of energy field," J.A.R.V.I.S. said. "Strucker's technology is well beyond any other HYDRA base we've taken."
Maggie brought the last jetpack soldier to the ground and rolled to her feet - only to find herself surrounded by field troops. She used the trees for cover, boosting herself from one to another by quick hops with her wings, launching energy bolts.
"Loki's Scepter must be here!" Thor called over his new lightning-resistant commset. She could hear him in the midst of a battle. "Strucker couldn't mount this defense without it." The smoke from a nearby explosion cleared and Maggie saw his red cape as he battled a whole team by himself on the ground. "At long last."
A laser blast caught Maggie in the back and she fell face-first to the ground, rolling to absorb the blow despite the pain in her back. She checked, but her armor hadn't given way. Hurts like hell, though. She whirled up and tossed a stun grenade in the direction of the blast, sending the soldier who'd fired at her running. Not quick enough; the exploding grenade knocked him off his feet and sent the gun flying out of his hand. Maggie stretched to test her back and winced.
"At long last is lasting a little long, boys," Natasha called in a calm voice. She'd taken to calling the team boys while Maggie had been benched, and it had stuck.
"Yeah, I think we lost the element of surprise," Clint acknowledged.
"Wait a second," Tony said as Maggie kicked off the ground to get eyes on the bigger situation. "No one else is gonna deal with the fact that Cap just said language?"
"I know," Steve sighed, and a second later Maggie heard an explosion from his end of the line. She silently grieved the motorcycle. "It just slipped out."
The Hulk barrelled through the snow beneath her, clearing the way, so Maggie diverted all power to her engines and rocketed out of the forest, outstripping the ground-to-air cannons as she raced to catch up to Tony, who was working low to the ground in the defensive buildings below the fortress. It seemed the energy field only covered the fortress at the top of the hill, and the outer buildings were unprotected, save for the troops and cannons and tanks stationed at them. She descended on the lower buildings with a vengeance.
As Maggie plunged through the tiled roof of an old medieval defensive building into a room full of soldiers, she heard Tony send the Iron Legion into Novi Grad, to protect the civilians there from stray cannonfire. She kept half an eye on their schematics as she worked through the tight space of the building, slamming soldiers with her wings and using everything in her vicinity to incapacitate them: rifle butts, tables, even a copier. When she burst out the window on the other end of the building in a shimmer of shattered glass, she saw Tony looping around the fortress, evading laserfire.
"Anything yet?" she called.
"J.A.R.V.I.S. is still analyzing!" he shouted back, and fired a repulsor beam at one of the tanks rolling down the hill toward the forest.
As Maggie strafed a convoy of armored cars with gunfire, she saw a blue streak out of the corner of her eye and her head snapped down to follow it, but it was gone before she could track it. She frowned, then veered down to the road winding down the fortress hill to take on a convoy of tanks.
A minute later, she heard Nat cry: "Clint!"
"We have an enhanced in the field," came Steve's grim voice.
"Clint's hit!"
Maggie's stomach dropped and her wings faltered as she flew in close to the rocky hillside. Clint didn't say anything but she could hear his breathing, fast and pained, and it sent a bolt of panic through her. But she forced herself to accept the panic, to let it burn through her. She needed to focus. She fired a missile at the first tank in the convoy and it flipped back in a blossom of flame. She tried her next missile on the fortress itself, but the projectile merely exploded off the strange blue shield.
"Somebody want to deal with that bunker?" Nat said grimly. A moment later: "Thank you."
Maggie could hear Clint groaning, but she forced herself to focus. She would help him best by putting an end to this.
"Stark!" Steve called. Maggie and Tony crossed over each other in the sky, winding their way up to the fortress. They were just below it now, at the last line of defenses. "We really need to get inside!"
"We're closing in," Tony said. Maggie landed on the ramparts of the lower building at the same time as he did, slamming her elbow into one soldier's face and then kicking the other over a railing. "J.A.R.V.I.S., are we… closing in? Do you see a power source for that shield yet?"
"There is a particle wave below the north tower."
Maggie jumped down on top of an armored car and looked up at the building J.A.R.V.I.S. had indicated. Nice.
"Great, I wanna poke it with something. Mags?"
"After you, dear." She plunged her gloved fist through the car windshield, grabbed the steering wheel and wrenched it to one side, driving the car with its shouting inhabitants straight into the side of a building. She'd darted into the sky before the wall fell.
She soared up just as Tony unleashed a missile into the hillside below the base of the north tower. The rock erupted, and the shield covering the castle glowed blue and then crumbled away.
"The drawbridge is down, people!" Tony called.
"I'll take the front entrance," Maggie shouted as she angled her wings down to the entrance. She saw Tony wheel around, scanning the building for another tactical entrypoint. The building was a strange, grim, grey-white construction, with peaked rooves dusted with snow.
She overheard Steve and Thor planning over the comms, but only caught Thor's rumble of I can get Barton to the jet. The sooner we're gone, the better. You and the Starks secure the Scepter, before she had plunged through the front doors and into what looked like a transport bay. The large space looked like it used to be a medieval-era entrance hall of some kind, but now it was all concrete, packed with six tanks and about twenty armored cars, all in some state of being powered up. Soldiers ran to and fro, but as the Wyvern burst through the front entrance they all paused and swung their weapons up to face her.
This would normally be the part where someone like Tony would say a quip or a cool line. But as much as Maggie like to joke, as the Wyvern she never wasted time with words.
Maggie powered up her flamethrowers.
Minutes later Maggie was jogging down stone corridors, her wristblasters glowing and her wings pulled in tight at her back. Tony had secured the operations room on the other side of the building, and incapacitated Dr List. Maggie had demolished all the transports, and incapacitated each soldier she'd come across and secured them with Manacles. These Manacles were designed to keep the wearer immobilised until someone with a keycode came along to arrest them.
The corridors got narrower and darker the further she ventured into the fortress. She veered around a corner and found herself face-to-face with a soldier - he barely got his gun up before she'd run forward and slammed her knee straight into his chest. He fell back with the Wyvern on his chest, and as she rolled off she snapped the Manacle around his wrist. She kept running without looking back. She turned another corner and skidded to a halt. She'd found a long, low ceilinged space with fluorescent bar lighting, metal and glass cabinets, and several long metal workspaces that were conspicuously empty. In one corner she saw a metal bench with several pieces of black tarpaulin folded on top. Her stomach turned when she realized they were body bags.
What had caught her attention first, however, were the cells. There were six brick cells built into the centre of the room, not adjoining any other walls. The front of the cells were made of glass, so Maggie could see inside easily. They were all empty save for metal beds, stripped clean of any bedding. Maggie paced closer, her jaw tight. In some of the cells she could see dark smears on the walls, and in one of them there were fingernail gouges in the yellowed paint over the bricks by the door. She shivered.
She looked back to the workspaces around the room, spotting medical equipment. An abandoned swivel chair had a white lab coat draped over the back of it.
"They've been keeping people here," she said, placing one clawed glove against the glass. There were cameras in the corners of the cells, and the door looked heavily reinforced.
"Entering the fortress now," Steve called. "Eyes out for that Scepter."
Maggie drew in a breath, ready to move on and close in on Tony's position.
She heard the barest brush of a footstep and the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. Her muscles tensed as she prepared to whirl around - but she felt the glass under her hand simply vanish, and then there was a flare of red light as something slammed into her back, knocking her forward into the cell.
Maggie rolled with her fall and surged up to her feet, darting back out of the cell - only to bounce off the glass that had suddenly reappeared again. The glass turned out to be a two-way mirror, so all she saw was her own dark mirrored reflection as she slammed a fist against the glass with a curse. She switched her HUD over to thermal vision, and saw a warm human figure running out of the room beyond.
"Got a hostile in the lower levels, possibly enhanced, didn't get a look at them," she reported as she backed away from the mirror. She powered up both wrist blasters and fired two crackling bolts at the glass. The glass shook, but didn't give. She frowned. This is a seriously reinforced cell.
She turned the door and tried the same thing. It didn't give. Gritting her teeth now, she backed right into the corner, selected her last wrist-mounted missile and fired it at the hinge of the door. When the fire and smoke cleared, Maggie could see that the hinge had sagged a bit.
It took her another two minutes to break out of the cell, snarling and furious by the time she finally spilled out onto the concrete floor again. Her assailant had to be long gone by now.
She raced back into the labyrinth of the fortress, her senses alert for any suspicious sound or movement. She took down several more soldiers, but saw no sign of whoever had managed to sneak up behind her. She was dimly aware of Natasha finishing up the fight in the forest and giving Bruce his lullaby, but her attention was almost entirely focused on the stone fortress now.
"We have a second enhanced," Steve said a minute later, sounding breathless. "Female. Do not engage."
Maggie broke from a jog into a sprint, passing a few windows with sunshine pouring in. She'd made it to the other side of the fortress. She burst through a set of metal doors and almost fired on the figure before her - until she recognised Steve, cowl missing as he held his glinting shield over the fallen body of none other than Baron Von Strucker.
Maggie looked from the unconscious HYDRA commander to Steve's face, then around at the ancient stonework corridors. "Which way did she go?"
He nodded to the doors she'd caved in. "Same way you came from, you didn't see her?"
Maggie grit her teeth and shook her head, switching to thermal vision again to be sure. Nothing.
Steve touched his commpiece. "Guys, I got Strucker."
"Yeah," Tony said in a low voice. "I got… something bigger."
Maggie shook off her irritation at losing the enhanced woman. "Where are you, Tony?"
"Found a secret door in the operations room. Real fun time down here, you should come. Did you guys know we were missing a Chitauri Leviathan?"
Steve met Maggie's gaze, his eyes wide. He touched his commpiece again.
"Tony, we've got one last wing to clear, then we'll be down soon. Be careful."
The massive bunker carved into the rock below the fortress had the hushed air of a cathedral. Tony paced through it once he'd gotten over his shock at seeing the Leviathan carcass hoisted aloft from pylons and metal chains, looking just as terrifying as the day it had flown out of the portal above New York.
They were keeping other stuff down here too. Chitauri weapons, missiles, old pieces of Iron Man suits.
He called it in to Thor when he found the Scepter, a feeling of relief and glee bubbling in his chest.
And then things got weird.
Scarlet flickered at the edges of his mind. He saw the Leviathan fly, mouth agape in a roar, into the dark sky over the rock plinth that had just emerged before him. An unearthly light shone down to illuminate… destruction. There were bodies littered on the rock steps under the undulating expanse of space. A moment later he realized that these were not just any bodies.
The Hulk, pierced with spears and moaning as life bled from him, Natasha staring sightlessly with her arms splayed, Clint bowed over, his eyes closed as if he were sleeping. But the bloody tear in his chest destroyed that hope. Thor's hand lay open, limply, over Steve's shattered shield.
Maggie. Her wings had been slashed to ribbons. She lay prone and blank-eyed on the ground, and from the angle she was lying at it was clear she was dead: her back was horribly twisted, and there was blood in the sclera of her wide-open eyes. It looked like she was looking right at him. But she could not see him.
Tony staggered forward, tripped, and dropped to his knees by the dusty and bloodied Steve. He reached out with a shaking hand to check his pulse, then nearly jumped out of his skin when Steve grabbed him by the wrist. His fingers were bloody.
"You… could have… saved us," Steve gasped, his eyes desperate. Tony felt his faltering heart stop. But even though Steve lay dead under him, Tony heard his next whisper in his mind: Why didn't you do more?
He staggered upward, his whole body shaking now, and fought his way over to Maggie. He touched her face and her skin was so, so cold. He blinked and her face changed: she became the little girl he'd seen on that hospital bed after the car crash, pale and so still he'd thought she was dead.
Movement above him dragged his gaze upward. There were more Leviathan now, an army of them. Snarling as they flew through the dark sky toward a glowing blue portal. And on the other side… Earth.
Maggie stared at the Leviathan carcass as she passed underneath it, wary of the pylons keeping it from plunging down to the ground. The Leviathan's fangs, each one as long as her leg (the intact one), made her shudder. Her footsteps were soft as she made her way through the underground bunker. She'd left Steve with Strucker a moment ago.
She saw a distant blue light and hurried toward it, then hesitated when she saw Tony. He was standing out of his armor, frozen still and staring at the Scepter.
"Tony?"
He jumped at the sound of his own name and whirled to face her. She saw the whites of his eyes. "Are you okay?" she paced closer, noticing the sweat pouring down his forehead and his heavy breathing.
His eyes fixed on her. "Maggot. You're okay." He stumbled forward and gripped her arm, too tight. She slid her goggles up her forehead to get a better look at him.
"Yeah, of course I am. What's wrong?"
He opened his mouth, then shut it again and shook his head. He looked up at the Leviathan with a wary glance, then around at the room.
Maggie watched as Tony drew a long, steadying breath, then held out a hand in one of his Iron Man commands. She stepped back, out of the way of the Iron Man gauntlet that zipped through the air a second later to secure around his forearm. She let him step forward and snatch the glowing blue Scepter from its mount. He looked at the gem, his eyes hard and his jaw tight.
"Scepter secured," she said into the comms. She looked around. "We're going to need a bigger air carrier from Damage Control."
She heard something to her left - a sigh or a scuff of a shoe, she wasn't sure - but when she whirled to look, there was nothing there. A chain hanging from one of the pylons supporting the Leviathan swayed slightly, before coming to a rest.
Tony stormed past her with the Scepter in his grip, his eyes dark. "Let's get out of here."
Maggie stayed in uniform for the flight back. Tony piloted the Quinjet and the others fussed over Clint, who was in a bad way; conscious, but unable to move without pain and with his wound heavily packed to keep him from bleeding out. Steve had put him on an IV of sedatives and fluids.
Maggie sat near the back of the jet, checking the live reports from Damage Control as they catalogued everything at the Novi Grad fortress. Nat and Bruce talked softly across the cockpit from her, and after a while Steve and Thor both moved closer to Maggie to get a look at the Scepter, glowing blue in its metal casing.
"I forgot how it makes you feel, being around it," Steve murmured, his arms folded over his chest.
"Like it's looking at you," Maggie nodded, not looking up from her StarkPad.
"I know not where Loki acquired it from," Thor rumbled. "But it is clear that a weapon of its power does not belong on Midgard."
"We already agreed to let you bring it back home to dad," Maggie smiled. "You don't have to give us the speech again. Couldn't take the Leviathan with you as well, could you?"
Thor chuckled.
Nat looked up from her low conversation with Bruce and called: "Thor, report on the Hulk?"
They all glanced over. Bruce looked terrible, with tired lines around his eyes.
"The gates of Hel are filled with the screams of his victims," Thor replied proudly.
Maggie rolled her eyes and kept monitoring the Damage Control reports as Thor tried to backtrack. Tony checked in about Dr Helen Cho using Bruce's lab, which was agreed to all around, though Maggie reminded him that she would have to sign all the nondisclosure forms about Bucky again.
After some time, Tony came back to get a look at the Scepter as well. Maggie looked up from her StarkPad. He seemed better now, but he'd been too quiet back in the fortress. Something had happened down there that he wasn't telling her about.
"Feels good, yeah?" Tony said to Thor with a nod at the Scepter. "I mean, you've been after this thing since SHIELD collapsed. Not that I haven't enjoyed our little raiding parties, but…"
"No, but this… this brings it to a close," Thor nodded.
Steve frowned. "As soon as we find what else this has been used for. And I don't just mean weapons. Since when has Strucker been capable of human enhancement?"
"Hill's following up on the enhanced," Maggie chimed in. "She should have a report for us by the time we get in."
"I've been thinking," Tony said. "Banner, Mags and I will give the Scepter the once over before it goes back to Asgard. Is that cool with you?" Thor nodded. "Just a few days til' the farewell party. You're staying, right?"
Maggie had almost forgotten about the party. Tony had been talking about it ever since they started hunting HYDRA, and Pepper was in on it too. A celebration of the end of their missions, and a farewell to Thor. She let out a breath. I can't believe it's over.
"Yes, yes, of course," Thor nodded. "A victory should be honored with revels."
"Yeah, who doesn't love revels?" Tony grinned. "Captain?"
"Hopefully this puts an end to the Chitauri and HYDRA," Steve said. "So, yes. Revels."
Tony nodded, then met Maggie's eye with a glint.
"At least the Tower's insured," she said.
Reviews
Nina: Thank you, I'm glad you liked it! The CIA have been vanquished… for now.
DBZFAN45: I'm so glad you liked the contingency plan, and Maggie and Bucky sharing more about themselves! I think they're both big old nerds so bonding over space is definitely their style. Besties for now ;) And you mentioned What If! Each episode makes me so SAD and I need Marvel to just not.
Zariah: I'm so glad you liked the last chapter! It would be interesting to see the Avengers use their own hidey holes. Aw I'm sorry you're not able to stargaze :/ I've just had a look and apparently there's a book called the Tactile Guide to the Solar System which is basically like a starchart for the visually impaired! Also comes with an audiobook from the look of things.
Shorttrooper: How cool that I unintentionally tapped into something so close to your heart! My little brother discovered a love of astronomy and astrophysics when he was about 15 and I was so excited to help him facilitate that. I love that you've had those memories with your mom :) I'm also glad you liked the bit with Steve playing the Winter Soldier! And… calm before the storm? Not like Ultron's just busted onto the scene ;)
Guest: Aw do you have a go-to chapter in the Wyvern for when you miss Maggie and Bucky?