EDIT: Apparently I haven't been getting ff net email notifications, so sorry to all the reviews I haven't replied to! I will by next chapter.
May 6, 2015
Over the Atlantic Ocean
"So… how do you shower?"
The Quinjet fell silent. Maggie had been quietly checking her tablet for signs of activity in Sokovia, Thor and Vision had been murmuring to each other up the back of the Quinjet, and Tony had been speaking to Steve. But at the sudden, loudly pitched question, everyone turned to stare at Pietro Maximoff.
"Pietro," Wanda murmured warningly under her breath. They had been successfully keeping themselves to themselves so far.
Maggie blinked when she realized Pietro was looking at her. "What?"
He flicked a strand of silver hair out of his eyes. "How do you shower? With the leg?" he gestured at her prosthetic, which was just visible as she'd rolled up the legs of her uniform to adjust her boots.
Maggie looked down, then back up at him. "Do you usually ask people you've never met about their showering habits?"
Pietro, at least, had the grace to look embarrassed. Tony shot Steve an exasperated look.
Silence fell again, save for the humming of the Quinjet engines. Maggie looked upward, frustrated, then back at Pietro.
"This leg is waterproof." His head jumped up and he eyed her curiously. "Because I never know what I'll come across on a mission. But it's not hygienic to shower with the prosthetic on. I… I've got one of those old lady shower chairs."
"Really?" asked Clint interestedly, leaning over from his pilot's seat.
"What? They're great. After a long day I can just sit down in the shower. I recommend that everyone gets one."
Pietro shot her a sceptical look.
Maggie glanced over at Bucky, who was watching the conversation with an air of disbelief.
This is going to be a long flight.
Novi Grad
The sun was nothing more than a pink haze on the horizon beyond the mountains when the Quinjet soared into the valley of Novi Grad. Thor leaped out of the back with Bruce as they passed by the stone fortress, since they were on Natasha-finding-duty, and the Quinjet flew on toward Novi Grad.
"Team B, get ready," Steve murmured.
Maggie shuffled to the back of the Quinjet, tightening her uniform straps and powering up her still-folded wings. Bucky, Tony, the Vision, and the Maximoffs moved forward with her.
"Wyvern, Stark, Vision, you find where Ultron is and figure out his play," Steve instructed, not for the first time. "Wanda and Pietro, you start the evacuation from the city centre, and Bucky, you'll be monitoring the evacuation from the outskirts along with me and Barton. Remember which quarter of the city you're assigned, but don't be afraid to be flexible and move if someone else needs backup." They all nodded grimly as Steve said their names, and in the cockpit Clint let down the loading ramp. Wind whistled into the Quinjet. Steve looked to the twins. "Wanda, you're sure you can… command that many people?"
The young Maximoff nodded. "I have not taken hold of so many minds before, but I can try."
Maggie let out a sharp breath of air through her nose, and Steve's head jerked to her.
"Wyvern," he said warningly. Wanda watched them cautiously.
"It's fine," she said shortly. She turned to Bucky. "You ready?"
He had barely nodded before she seized the back of his jacket and together they dove out of the Quinjet. The others weren't far behind - Tony carrying Pietro, and Vision carrying Wanda. Clint piloted the jet over to the west side of the city, where he and Steve would take their stations.
It was a short, cold flight down to the ground. Bucky had been assigned the northeast quarter of Novi Grad so Maggie aimed for a convenient-looking rooftop with a good vantage point over the quarter. His jacket was an unwieldy handhold, so she had to cinch one arm around his chest to keep him steady as they flew down. He did his best to angle his body with her to make their flight more streamlined, and he didn't complain about the bitterly cold air.
They touched down on the rooftop together, boots landing silently, and as Bucky looked up Maggie felt him freeze in her arms.
"What's wrong?" she whispered. The city was quiet in the dawn light. Maggie let Bucky go and stepped around to face him, though his head was concealed by his tactical helmet.
Bucky's head swivelled as he looked around. "I've been here before… I think." He shook himself.
"You good?" she murmured.
He nodded, then jerked his head downward. "It's starting. You should head to your mission."
Maggie followed his gaze down to the cobbled street below, where a tendril of red light snaked through the air, branching off into every household. The witch.
Despite herself, Maggie nodded. "Watch your back."
"I'll watch yours too, when I get the chance," he said with a light note to his voice.
With a half smile, Maggie kicked off the ground and spread her wings.
It was strange, watching people walk in mindless droves through the streets toward the edges of the city. Wanda could only control a few blocks worth of people at a time, so the rest of the population were being corralled by the police and the Avengers, wide-eyed and clutching their belongings. People were using whatever means of transport they had: cars, bikes, trucks, some walking out with nothing but the clothes on their backs.
The sun rose on a city still dusted with snow from the night before, the streets thick with people heading for the main evacuation roads west and east. Most of the city was ringed by a river, so the bridges became clogged, slowing down the evacuation.
Thor and Bruce were up in the fortress looking for Nat, and the rest of the Avengers were stationed around the city, overseeing the evacuation. Clint monitored the situation from up high, calling out chokepoints and obstacles for Bucky, Steve and Pietro to manage. Maggie cleared her share of obstacles as well, though she focused more on systematically scanning each neighborhood for any sign of Ultron, or new construction. Her scanners were picking up the presence of large quantities of Vibranium, though she hadn't located the exact source yet.
After fifteen minutes, a new voice came over the comms:
"Well thanks for coming all this way to bust me out of the clink, boys and girls."
"Nat!" Maggie exclaimed, her voice joining the half dozen others on the comms that greeted the Widow's dry words.
"We're on our way in, Ultron's not in the fortress anymore," Natasha said. "I don't know what he's planning."
But it turned out they didn't need Natasha's intel. Because minutes later, F.R.I.D.A.Y. (the new UI Tony had installed in his suit) found Ultron waiting in the church at the heart of the city.
As they'd agreed earlier, Tony went in alone. Maggie listened intently over the comms as she cleared a spot of congestion on the west evacuation bridge, dragging a broken down car out of the way. Civilians streamed past her, staring. She listened as Tony and Ultron exchanged tense words, followed by a mechanical kind of crash.
"There's the rest of the Vibranium," Maggie heard F.R.I.D.A.Y. say. "Function: still unclear."
"This is how you end, Tony," came Ultron's low voice, faintly picked up by the comms. "This is peace in my time."
The road by Maggie's feet erupted. She jerked back, hand rising to protect herself, as a metal drone with cold blue eyes plunged out of the ground and swiped at her. Maggie stumbled, then straightened her hand and fired a scorching red bolt from her wrist blaster into the drone's chest. It jerked back with a hole in its chest, and crumpled to the ground when her next bolt took its head off.
But it hadn't been alone; drones plunged out of the earth, out of the river, like metal zombies rising from their graves. They shot into the air and crawled up the side of the bridges and buildings, making people scream and run in fear. They were clearly based on the Legionnaire design, though sleeker and darker.
"Contact!" Maggie shouted into the comms as she whirled, firing energy bolts. "Run!" she shouted to the civilians on the bridge.
The air filled with explosions and screams, and from the racket over the comms Maggie knew this had to be the same all over the city. The people around her started running back into the city, into the shelter of the buildings, and all she wanted was to tell them to keep evacuating but the drones were aiming for the bridges. A laser blast collided with her wing, knocking her off balance, and she spun with the blow to fire back.
For a few minutes it was all she could do to survive the sudden wave of drones on her own, drawing their fire so the civilians could get out of the way. Each time she tried to take off, she had to land again to pull a drone away from the fleeing people. She could hear the others fighting over the comms, and she realized distractedly that Vision was with Ultron.
A blue and white blur zipped past her, tearing drones apart as it went, and Maggie used the sudden reprieve to soar into the air and start taking out the flying drones.
F.R.I.D.A.Y. reported a moment later that Vision had burned away Ultron's escape routes into the internet. Maggie allowed herself a grim smile as she soared down to cover Clint as he stood on one of the bridges, firing arrows, then rocketed over to the northeast quarter, where Bucky was picking off drones from a rooftop with a sniper rifle. A quarter beyond that, Steve was protecting civilians on the ground with his shield.
She heard Ultron's low, ominous voice over the comms: "You take away my world? I take away yours."
As Maggie soared over Novi Grad she heard a deep rumble, and looked down. Near Bucky's position on a rooftop, she could see the buildings shivering. She paused in midair to look closer and saw cracks opening up along a cobblestoned road - along several roads, buildings, even the river. An earthquake? Bucky swayed on his rooftop and reached out to steady himself.
Maggie flew higher, watching as the cracks widened and spewed plumes of dust and rubble into the air. In the next second she realized that the growing crevices were forming a ring around the city, and through the surrounding forest. A gigantic bite out of the land. Maggie could feel the tremors and the rumbling from the air. Bridges snapped and fell away. The river drained into the newly opened crevice.
People in the city screamed and dove out of the way of the cracks widening in the earth, and away from the shaking, swaying buildings. Maggie's ears ached with the sounds of splintering rock and the earth rumbling, and her wings faltered as she tried to comprehend what was happening.
From her vantage point in the sky, it took Maggie a few moments to realise that the ringed crevasse wasn't just getting wider. The earth inside the ring was rising.
She felt as if her stomach had dropped out of her body and plunged to the ground below. Her eyes widened as she began to comprehend what she was seeing: a massive section of earth was rising; five feet, ten, thirty. She swooped down, staring as the ground rose up. The circular crevasse was a chaotic mess of dust, debris, spewing water, and crackling electricity from severed wires, so she couldn't see much, but it was clear a huge chunk of the city was simply rising out of the earth. People on the edges of the city stared down, uncomprehending, as those left behind looked up in terror.
"Sokovia's going for a ride," F.R.I.D.A.Y. said in a low voice.
Buildings on the crumbling edges of the city dissolved and fell in clouds of debris as the huge hunk of earth rose upwards. Maggie shook herself and dove closer, scanning the falling debris for people. When her HUD snagged on a falling figure she rocketed forward to catch the person - a screaming woman with dust in her eyes - and brought her back down to the ground.
When she landed with a stumble and looked back, she saw a huge cliff of earth rising upwards, nearly three hundred feet high now. For a moment she could only stare, her mouth agape. At the base of the rising earth, she saw a hint of burning blue flickering up from the crevice. Rock and earth fell away from the edges.
"Do you see the beauty of it?"
Maggie flinched, releasing the screaming woman, until she spotted the source of Ultron's voice - a drone crawling up the side of a nearby building, its eyes glowing blue.
"The inevitability? You rise, only to fall." Ultron spoke from the mouths of hundreds of drones all over the city. "You, Avengers, you are my meteor. My swift and terrible sword, and the Earth will crack with the weight of your failure."
Maggie soared upward, chasing the city, searching for more falling civilians.
"Purge me from your computers, turn my own flesh against me. It means nothing. When the dust settles, the only living thing in this world… will be metal."
The rising city ascended above the height of the fortress on the hill. Maggie followed it up, circling as she caught everyone she could - less people fell the longer the city was in the air, having had the good sense to flee inward. She had to dodge falling buildings and chunks of stone, and each time she dove in to grab someone her vision was obscured by the waterfalls of dust pouring off the sides of the city. Rocks pattered across her wings like rain.
At first she was bringing the people down to the ground, where an immense dust cloud hung over the parts of the city that remained, but eventually she had no choice but to bring the people back up to the city, or risk being left behind. She and Iron Man crossed paths as they circled the rising mass of stone, and they shared a silent glance.
Bucky had seen regimes rise and fall, had seen war and death and aliens from space. But he didn't have a word for what he saw now.
He focused on what he could control: the drones still terrorising the people in the city. It seemed the drones had all chosen to stay on this rising piece of rock, leaving the earth behind, and they were concentrating fire on the Avengers. Bucky knew his way around a gun, and he picked off drones as they hurtled by him, or as they ran down the street below after screaming civilians. He caught glimpses of Iron Man buzzing overhead, and once Meg, her metal wings flashing as she not-so-gently dropped a screaming civilian on a road near him, then soared away again.
He noticed the mountains sliding below the horizon, and tried not to think about the sensation of his stomach dropping to his feet.
Maggie got a good look at the rising hunk of earth once it had properly risen out of the ground. It looked like an iceberg, with how much rock and earth was now flying into the sky. Several large glowing repulsors the size of houses burned blue, propelling the earth upward. Debris bounced off Maggie's wings as she flew around the rock, trying to gauge the scope of it. Her HUD showed her a spire of Vibranium lancing down from the heart of the city to the base of the rock.
"The Vibranium core's got a magnetic field, that's what's keeping the rock together," F.R.I.D.A.Y. explained to both her and Tony at once. They flew in tandem, circling the rising rock.
"If it drops?" Tony said.
"Right now the impact will kill thousands. Once it gets high enough? Global extinction."
Maggie and Tony split apart, he to clear a falling building and she to head off a swarm of drones headed toward a bus full of people stranded in the middle of a road. The drones seemed intent on causing havoc and putting civilians at harm - Maggie knew this was Ultron's attempt at distracting and dividing the Avengers, but there wasn't much she could do about it; she wasn't going to let him kill innocent people.
There are still far too many people on this rock. Hundreds, she had to guess. They hadn't been fast enough.
And that's not even counting everyone left back on the ground, looking up at this rising meteor. Her stomach twisted painfully.
Steve's voice came over the comms: "Starks, you worry about getting the city back down safely. The rest of us have one job: tear these things apart. You get hurt, hurt them back. You get killed? Walk it off."
Maggie demolished the last drone threatening the bus, then dove upward, thinking to head back down to look at those Vibranium repulsors. But she'd barely made it fifty feet before something dove out of the sky above her and brought her crashing back down to the ground.
Maggie felt a pavestone crack beneath her wings and she let out a pained wheeze, which turned into a gritted scream as the metal form pinning her to the ground jutted its knee into her stomach and slammed a large hand around her neck.
"Ultron," Maggie choked out. He had tackled her out of the sky and now loomed over her; not one of the shorter drones but his main body, rippling Vibranium and seven foot tall, harsh red eyes staring down into hers. His mouth was a flat line across his metal face. His whole form flickered red, reflecting the flames from a burning car to their left. Maggie couldn't believe how heavy he was - the sheer weight of him was crushing the breath out of her chest. "You-"
"Aunt Maggie," he said mockingly, cocking his head at her as she struggled under him. Her wings were trapped beneath her and he kept knocking away her wrist blasters. His hand pressed down on her windpipe.
"Thought you wanted to shake off the Stark name?" she wheezed.
He rolled one massive shoulder. He blocked out the sun. "No. You and I? We're just alike. You're just like me; because you're not really a Stark, Maggot," he spat, leaning in so his hard face was just inches from her reddening one. Maggie flinched. "You're a weapon. And you know that nothing you can do can change that."
She looked into his intelligent, hateful red eyes. "I wish I could have given you more than my rage," she whispered.
"I'm not angry," he said as the city rose into the sky. "I'm at peace."
"This isn't peace."
"Everyone keeps saying that," he said, and she knew from the whirring in his arm and the look on his metal face that he was about to crush her neck in his grip.
A flare of red light made Maggie's eyes squeeze shut, and her chest inadvertently heaved as the crushing weight of Ultron suddenly left her. She looked up to see Ultron flat on his back a few feet away, snarling. Her head spun and she saw Wanda half-crouched behind a car, her eyes wide with terror. Ultron looked up and his eyes narrowed, but in the next second a blue-white blur darted forward and barged into Ultron, sending him flying.
Maggie looked back to Wanda, but she was already gone. Maggie took that excellent idea and scrambled to her feet, then leapt into the sky.
Bucky had to vacate his rooftop when the building beneath it got blown up.
This was probably a good thing, he reflected, because the fight was on the move. He took off running through the city, using his guns and the metal arm to fight off the drones that swooped overhead and crashed through buildings, causing terror. He caught glimpses of the others as he ran; the Hulk landed by him as he was guiding a gaggle of civilians out of an unsteady looking building, and tore apart an Ultron drone with a deafening roar. Bucky had not seen the Hulk before save for video footage, and nothing could have prepared him for the immense, furious presence of him. It was more than his size, it was the rage that radiated off him in waves, the chest-rattling volume of his roars, the way the earth shook from his footfalls.
The Hulk ceased his roar and turned to look at Bucky, green-ringed eyes pinning him in place. Bucky stared back, his fingers white on his gun.
The Hulk let out a humph, his gnashing mouth curving with a bit of a smile, then leaped away.
Bucky finally breathed again. He turned back to the civilians. "Prodolzhat' idti!" [Keep going!] he shouted in Russian - he didn't speak Sokovian but he hoped the languages were similar enough. "Doberites' do merii!" [Get to City Hall!]
He ran down another street, toward the sounds of laserfire and explosions a block away. A drone exploded through a wall in front of him, blue eyes flashing, and managed to get out "Sergeant Bar-" before Bucky punched right through its metal head.
He'd made it up to the rooftops, eyes on a large explosion over by the edge of the city even as he ran to the closest hub of fighting. His muscles burned as he pushed himself to his limits - he hadn't fought like this in a long time. He'd just made it to a shingle rooftop above what looked like a demolished market square and spotted Barton crouching down behind a car when the set of sturdy oak doors of a market hall across the square burst open.
Wanda Maximoff strode out onto the steps of the hall with unearthly light in her eyes and scarlet energy at her fingertips. She struck out and the light impacted against a pair of drones - she twisted her hands and the drones simply tore apart like dolls, colliding against the drones around them. Wanda turned, red light crackling an aura around her, and summoned a burning ball between her palms.
Bucky lifted his gun, but then lowered it when Wanda hurled the scarlet orb at the remaining drones, disintegrating them on impact.
She's got this.
He leaped onto the next rooftop and headed in the direction of the large explosion he'd seen before.
The fight was isolated over by the edge of the city, which Bucky discovered the reason for a few minutes later: Steve and Thor were fighting the drones by the edge of one of the shattered bridges, and Ultron hated them the most after Tony and Meg. The drones surged over cars and down the sides of buildings, blasting lasers at the pair of them. Novi Grad's police force had barricaded themselves on the street leading toward the bridge, firing on the drones.
Bucky stalled as he ran along the rooftop past the police barricade. I didn't realize how high we'd gotten. He could see only the tips of the snowy mountaintops now, and if he craned his neck to see past the lip of the rock edge he could just spot the valley below, with its matchstick trees and ribbon rivers. Steve fought by the lip of the city, where the ground had been torn away. Bucky's jaw clenched and he ran on.
Ultron had now lured Thor further into the city, so Steve was fighting alone - no, Romanoff was there, slipping between demolished cars and striking drones with her crackling blue Widow's Bites. As Bucky watched, a trio of drones descended on her from the sky, firing their laser cannons. She flipped out of the way, shooting one and slamming an electrified baton into the other's face, but the third one had an angle on her-
Romanoff looked up in surprise when the third drone came crashing down to the ground behind her, sparks flying from the sudden hole in its head. Her head swivelled, tracking the shot, until she spotted Bucky just as he leaped down from the rooftop with his rifle in his hands. His boots hit the ground and he rolled with his fall, before rising smoothly on the cobblestones. He lifted his gaze to hers, though she saw only the black blankness of his helmet.
"Good to have you on our side, Zimniy Soldat," she said with a nod. Despite the friendliness to her words, he knew from the look in her eyes she was remembering her other encounters with the Soldat.
"Vozvrashchaysya k rabote," [Get back to work] he said evenly, then whirled to catch Steve's shield as it rebounded off a light post beside him. He felt Steve's eyes catch on him.
Bucky hurled the shield straight downward and it rebounded off the cobblestones directly into the sky, where it sliced a drone flying overhead in half. Robot debris rained down around Bucky as the shield wobbled back down into his hands.
"Quit losing this," he said, and tossed it back to a half-smiling Steve.
Maggie and Tony dodged rocks and parts of buildings raining from the city as they examined each glowing blue thruster, growing more desperate with every yard the rock ascended into the sky.
Maggie's HUD worked furiously to gather a complete picture of the machinery in the rock, and F.R.I.D.A.Y. analyzed the data.
"The anti gravs are rigged to flip," F.R.I.D.A.Y. said as she and Tony soared under their next thruster. Maggie could feel the heat and energy coming off it from a hundred yards away, like jet exhaust. "Touch them, they'll go full reverse thrust. The city's not coming down slow."
Maggie dodged a falling hunk of rock. "Can't we take out just a few of them? Full thrust versus full reverse thrust, equalize the energy and halt the ascent?"
"They're synchronized," F.R.I.D.A.Y. said. "Hit one, you hit them all." Maggie cursed silently, even as her mind worked in overdrive.
"The spire is Vibranium," Tony said. "If we get Thor to hit it-"
"It'll crack. That's not enough. The impact would still be devastating."
"Maybe if we could cap the other end. Keep the atomic action doubling back," Tony suggested. He soared in closer to the last thruster as Maggie kept her distance from the debris rain.
"That could vaporize the city. And everyone on it."
Her heart pounding, Maggie looked up - all the last times she had looked she had just been able to see the buildings on the edge of the top of the rock, and the flash and flare of the fighting. But now, all she saw was the grey mass of the cloud layer that the city had begun to ascend through. Moments later she entered it too as she kept level with the flying rock.
There's no way out other than annihilation, she realized, feeling suddenly very alone in the hazy greyness of the clouds. Either the earth, or this city. She could hear the rumbling of the thrusters and the percussion of cracking rocks, but she could see nothing.
Ultron's always been smarter than the both of us put together.
They'd cleared the wave of drones, but they knew there were more on the way. Bucky helped get the civilians to safety - though safety was relative at this point, just the relatively sturdy City Hall. He couldn't see more than six feet in any direction through the mist of the clouds. Papers and leaves fluttered through the air.
"What've you got, Starks?" Steve called over the comms.
"Well, nothing great," came Tony's grim voice. "Maybe a way to blow up the city. That'll keep it from impacting the surface, if you guys can get clear."
Bucky hesitated as he made his way back to the edge of the city. Wanda walked past him, squinting in the clouds.
"I asked for a solution, not an escape plan," Steve replied.
"Impact radius is getting bigger every second, we're gonna have to make a choice."
"There's no way to get this city down safely," came Meg's voice, and the tone of her voice made Bucky feel, for the first time, truly afraid.
The mist thinned, and Bucky felt sunlight on his face. We're above the clouds now.
"Cap, these people are going nowhere," Romanoff said. Bucky turned and spotted the pair of them standing on a pile of rubble overlooking the edge of the city. "If they find a way to blow this rock…"
"Not till everyone's safe."
"Everyone up here versus everyone down there?" she said incredulously. "There's no math there."
"I'm not leaving this rock with one civilian on it," Steve said, in the same tone of voice he used to use to say I'm enlisting, or I don't like bullies. There was no arguing with that voice, and Bucky didn't intend to.
"I agree with Steve," he said as he padded over to the pair of them, mist rolling off his shoulders. He met Romanoff's gaze. "This isn't math. We're not leaving."
"I didn't say we should leave," Romanoff said, her head tilted. She glanced at Steve, and then out at the open sky. "There's worse ways to go. Where else am I gonna get a view like this?"
Bucky followed her gaze out to the endless blue above the rolling carpet of clouds. The wind was crisp and clear as it blew over him, and when he looked up, he could see the pale shimmer of the moon.
I'm standing on a meteor.
"Glad you like the view, Romanoff," came a new voice over the comms, and it took a second for Bucky to place it as Nick Fury's. "It's about to get better."
And then an enormous metal ship rose out of the clouds.
It took Bucky a good minute to get used to the sight of the Helicarrier rising up level with the flying city. Steve exchanged startled, bemused greetings with Fury, and a moment later the Helicarrier launched several squat-looking hovering ships, which looked to be civilian transports.
Pietro Maximoff had come over to stare at the Helicarrier by Bucky's side. "This is S.H.I.E.L.D.?" he asked.
"This is what S.H.I.E.L.D.'s supposed to be," Steve responded, his voice lighter.
Pietro shared a glance with Bucky. "This is not so bad."
Steve glanced from the incoming civilian transport and back to the City Hall. "Let's load them up."
Bucky got to work. He ran back to the building, calling for the people to come out, but then he heard a whine of oncoming engines and he paused, swinging his gun off his back. A new wave of drones were soaring in from the south edge of the city. He'd trained his sights on the sky when a new metal suit jetted in from the Helicarrier - at first he thought it was Iron Man, but then a new voice on the comms confirmed it to be James Rhodes, Tony's friend.
Bucky cautiously lowered his gun and kept running to the building entrance.
When he came running back, followed by a crowd of terrified civilians, a battle was lighting up the sky: the wave of drones arced around the Helicarrier, harried by Rhodes - War Machine, Bucky remembered - Iron Man, and… yes, that flash of dark wings belonged to the Wyvern. They kept the fight up and away from the city as the civilians raced across open ground and onto the transport. Bucky shouted instructions and waved them in the right direction, one eye on the drones in the sky. A child tripped over a stray brick on his way past, and Bucky set him back on his feet with barely a glance down. The boy's mother said a blessing in Sokovian that he couldn't make out, and hurried her child toward the civilian transport.
He heard a screech and then the shudder of laserblasts hitting the ground. He whirled, and spotted a drone racing down toward the edge of the city, its eyes on the docked civilian carrier full of people. War Machine was over by the Helicarrier, he couldn't see Meg, and Iron Man was supporting one of the carriers out in open air, which had lost an engine.
The drone soared closer, metal hands rising as it swooped low.
Bucky turned away from the crowd he'd been ushering toward the bridge and broke into a run. He ran up onto a crashed car and used that as a springboard to leap up -
His metal hand snagged on the drone's shoulder like he was catching a flying football and they both came crashing down to the ground, Bucky on his back and the drone letting out a screechy roar of frustration. Bucky lost his grip as they tumbled across the shattered road toward the edge of the city. He couldn't stop himself, and he realized he was sliding now, concrete cracking and crumbling beneath him.
He felt his feet slide into open air, and the rest of his body slithered after them - he lurched and slammed his metal hand into the rock, but it gave way in a handful of rubble.
"Bucky!" Steve shouted, but he was too far away, and Bucky had a memory of Steve's outstretched, empty hand in the snow just as he fell into open air.
He didn't scream this time.
Bucky stared up at the city as he fell, catching a glimpse of burning blue engines on the underside. Wind whistled around him and his limbs were weightless. The fear froze him until all he could do was stare, and fall. He saw a dark streak burst over the lip of rock he'd just fallen from, and then he punched through the cloud layer.
Back in the mist all he could see was grey, and his uniform soaked through in a shock of icy cold. The wind shrieked and buffeted his weightless falling body. He didn't remember what it had been like to hit the ground, the last time, but he remembered the pain afterward. At least this time, there would be no pain. He closed his eyes.
And then there was an iron grip on his wrist.
It pulled him up short and he grunted in pain at the sudden stop. He jerked upright, dangling from the grip on his wrist, and his eyes snapped open. Then he felt his momentum reversing as he began to soar upward, mist rushing past him to either side.
When they broke out of the darkness of the clouds, condensation rolled off the five black talons clamped around his wrist, and sunlight burst through the dark red webbing of the outstretched wings holding them both aloft. Meg's engines burned and for a moment they hung together in empty space, gripping each other's wrists and their eyes fixed on each other through their masks. Bucky's feet dangled below him and he could do nothing else but stare up at Meg where she hovered above him. Her uniform gleamed from the condensation and she was so bright in the sunlight for a moment that she hurt his eyes.
"Thanks," he breathed.
"You're my mission," she said. And then she looked up and her wings beat in a surging whoosh and they flew back up toward the city, past the strange blue thrusters and up over the edge of the rock, where they looked down to find civilians still streaming onto the carriers. Steve was still corralling them, but he looked over and his face broke open with relief when Bucky's boots touched down lightly on the ground. Meg did not land; the second Bucky released her wrist she soared upward, claws outstretched and wings flaring.
Bucky whipped a gun off his back and took out the three drones converging on her winged figure. Her head tilted, taking in the sniper on the ground backing her up. She arced her wings, and for the next few moments it almost felt like mind reading; the Wyvern in the sky and the Soldier on the ground, an impenetrable force protecting the people.
Steve saw, and left the defences to them.
Tony had cooked up a plan about supercharging the Vibranium spire to create a heat shield, which he communicated to Maggie as she protected the civilians making their way onto the carriers. But there were less and less drones in the air now - for some reason they had begun to head inland.
"Thor, I've got an idea!" Tony called over the comms.
"We're out of time, they're coming for the core!" Thor shouted back.
Maggie's head snapped around as she flew, trying to spot the central church.
"Rhodey, get the rest of the people on board that carrier," Tony instructed in a terse voice. "Avengers, time to work for a living."
Maggie arced her wings and rocketed inward, sights set on the stone church with the hole blown in the roof. The others on the ground took off running.
She plunged through the roof and landed heelspur-first in an Ultron drone with its arm outstretched toward the strange metal device in the centre of the chapel. Vision, Tony, and Thor were already there, and a minute later as Maggie leaped off her drone to drive her claws into the neck of another one, Steve and Bucky arrived, closely followed by Wanda and Clint.
It was relatively quiet for a moment as Tony checked in on Nat and Banner, and the Avengers in the church formed a loose ring around the core, trading glances. Pietro touched Wanda's arm to check on her, and Steve inspected the metal pillar that was the core. Bucky had lost his helmet somewhere, and his dark hair hung around his face. A few laser blasts crashed against the stonework of the church, but it was a sturdy building - its pillars held, their surfaces etched with runic designs. Pale sunlight streamed through the broken-open dome. Vision floated a foot off the ground, his cape swirling.
Nat arrived in a massive yellow truck, then jogged into the church with a nod to Clint. "What's the drill?"
"This is the drill," Tony said with a gesture at the slowly rotating Vibranium pillar. It was about four foot tall. "If Ultron gets a hand on the core, we lose."
"Just like capture the flag back home," Maggie said nervously, her wings furled at her back. "I can hear Hill saying dead or severely injured already."
To her surprise, Bucky huffed a laugh. She glanced across the pillar at him, eyebrows raised.
"Remember to look up," he said wryly, jerking his head up at the hole in the roof.
The Hulk arrived with a thud and a growl, beating a pair of drones aside on his way into the church. But Maggie's attention didn't stay on him for long; in the distance, Ultron's tall Vibranium body hovered down, his red eyes fixed on the Avengers in the church. Maggie had one foot on the steps leading up to the core, her wings furled and her heart pounding.
"Is that the best you can do?" Thor roared in challenge.
Ultron spread his arms and dozens, hundreds of Ultron drones raced out from behind him. They filled the sky, clogged the ground, and the air pounded with their metal footsteps.
Maggie's armor clinked as it shifted into its sturdiest defensive configuration, and she flared her wings.
"You had to ask," Steve said drily.
"This is the best I can do," Ultron intoned. "This is exactly what I wanted. All of you, against all of me. How can you possibly hope to stop me?"
"Well," Tony said as the thick crowd of drones raced toward them. He glanced to Steve. "Like the old man said. Together."
The Hulk roared, reverberating in Maggie's chest, and all of Ultron surged forward. They scrambled over the cars and rocks surrounding the church, climbed up the walls and onto the roof, and Maggie put her back to the Vibranium core. They had each taken their best defensive stances, a ring of Avengers with lasers and guns and repulsors and wings and brute force and shields and magic and hammers. Maggie felt a collective intake of breath, like the moment before a prayer.
Maggie forgot to think. Metal bodies surged into the church and she became a whirl of claws and violence, slashing with all her sharp metal parts and slicing with laser blasts and beating and kicking and tearing. Her vision was steel and the eerie blue slashes of the Ultron eyes, and the red bursts of Wanda's magic. Metal tore and clashed in her ears against the melody of grunts, lasers, crackling lightning and gunshots. She was not a single fighter but a chink in a shield, repelling an endless onslaught of metal.
Vision defended the torn-open roof, but Maggie didn't forget to look up. Her senses expanded outward and at the closest flash of metal she turned and ripped it apart. She felt so aware of the Avengers around her, as if she could sense their movements before they made them, as if she could use their senses for herself. She stepped into the air, sharp wings beating to give her more reach as she fought, flying in the confined space of the chapel. She felt Tony scorch over her wing to crash into a trio of drones, heard the whir of arrows skating by her to detonate a drone above her, Bucky and Nat's bullets unerringly finding their targets, then the emanating rage of the Hulk as he beat his fists. Pietro was a blur around them, taking out the drones too fast for her to see.
She covered the core behind her with her wings, and whenever she had to move away someone else was there to cover her; Thor with his swinging hammer, Vision's devastatingly calm violence, Wanda's crackling magic. Bucky beat a drone into her path with a swing of his fist and she tore through it with a screech of metal. Steve's shield bounced off her outstretched wing and skated through four drones at once, then lit up with lightning as Thor scorched the whole east side of the church.
Maggie saw the bulk of Ultron's main body surge into the church and her heart leaped, but in the next second Vision had hurled him back out, following him beyond the church and striking him down with a beam of burning golden light from the stone. Thor followed up with his lightning, and Tony with a repulsor beam. Maggie kept covering the core with the others, but she could see out the corner of her eye as Ultron came apart under the combined force of their power, metal stripping away from his face and his body melting.
They stopped, and Ultron was left staggering and burned. He straightened.
"You know, with the benefit of hindsight-"
Hulk leaped out of the church and punched Ultron into the atmosphere.
Maggie turned, claws bared, to find that there were no more living drones in the church. Those left outside waiting to dive in paused, looked at the Hulk, and then turned to run. Despite her relief Maggie's panic spiked.
"They're trying to leave the city!" Thor called.
"We can't let them, not even one," Tony said urgently. "Rhodey?"
"I'm on it."
Maggie allowed herself a heaving breath of relief when Rhodey intercepted the fleeing drones, then was backed up a second later by Vision.
"Okay, what?" Rhodey exclaimed.
Maggie sagged on the steps of the church, her hands braced on her knees and her chest heaving as she tried to catch her breath. Sweat poured down her face and she had to push back her goggles and mask to suck down a gasp of cold air. Pietro was steadying Wanda, and Bucky checked his ammo then tossed his gun aside. The ground was littered with Ultron bodies four-high.
"We gotta move out," Steve said, looking around at them. "Even I can tell the air's getting thin. You guys get to the boats. I'll sweep for stragglers, be right behind you."
"Not alone, you won't," Bucky said with a grim look at his friend.
"I've got to get to the spire," Maggie said, straightening and her mind churning back into gear as she thought of Tony's heat shield idea. She looked around at them all. "Get clear of the city ASAP."
"What about the core?" Clint asked with a gesture at the still-turning metal pillar.
"I'll protect it," Wanda said. She looked to Clint. "It's my job."
Clint nodded, then turned to Nat. "Nat? This way."
Maggie cast one last glance over them: Nat and Clint jogging one way, Steve and Bucky in the other direction, and Wanda and Pietro sharing a teasing joke by the core, then stepped out of the church and into the sky.
As Tony rocketed down to the base of the rising city, F.R.I.D.A.Y. updated him: "Boss, power levels are way below-"
"Reroute everything," Tony cut her off. "We get one shot at this."
"Aren't you lucky you aren't an only child?"
Tony looked over just as Maggie soared down from the other side of the city, her wings outstretched and her red goggles glowing through the still-falling dust at the base of the giant rock.
"Get out of here, Maggot, get up on that Helicarrier."
"Oh, we're long past you being able to tell me what to do," she said as they met each other at the metal plate at the base of the rock, which protected the spire. The whole thing looked like a giant metal safe door.
"Since when was I ever able to do that?" he asked exasperatedly, but stopped arguing. He raised a hand and fired his lasercutter, slicing a rough circle in the metal plate above them.
The chunk of metal fell away, narrowly missing Maggie's outstretched wing, and they both peered up through the hole, flying awkwardly close to each other.
"You've gotta admit, it's a decent piece of work," Maggie said when they saw the base of the spire - it was housed in an enormous Vibranium tube, with complicated external parts rotating around the main spire like cogs in a clock. It had to stretch for at least a mile.
"Thor, I'm gonna need you back in the church," Tony said.
Steve chimed in, saying that the last of the civilians had been evacuated onto the boats.
"You know," Tony said, with a glance across at Maggie. "If this works… we maybe don't walk away."
"Maybe not," came Thor's low voice.
"Always cheerful," Maggie said with forced lightness. She grabbed the edges of the hole Tony had made with her claws to steady herself, though she did not climb inside. "Let's get ready."
In the sky over the flying city, Ultron clamped his hands on the Quinjet controls.
Bucky didn't realize what had happened until after it happened.
He'd seen the Quinjet alright, scorching down toward the Avengers outside the city hall with both gun turrets firing. He remembered taking a split second to look for cover even knowing that he was too far away from anything to get to safety in time. He remembered thinking, as the bullets plunged into the road ahead of him like a series of oncoming eruptions, that one metal arm was hardly enough cover for all his vital organs.
But he'd done his best, curling over with his metal arm up over his head as the ground erupted around him. He remembered feeling the shadow over him, and the distinctive clang of bullets off Vibranium, and Steve's knee pressed awkwardly into his back. Punk, he remembered thinking through the panic.
But a shield and a metal arm still weren't quite enough, and the lightning barbed-wire pain of being shot was all too familiar.
Bucky had to push Steve's worried hands off him, because he could tell something was wrong.
Yes, he'd been shot, and yes, with bullets at that caliber it hurt like the devil himself, and yes, he was lucky his right arm was still attached. He could see the bloody holes torn in the meat of his upper arm.
But something else was wrong - now that the Quinjet had passed, it had become too quiet.
He and Steve got to their feet and turned around.
Bucky had seen so much death in his life that he really ought to be used to it by now. But the sight of Pietro Maximoff's staring, unseeing eyes as he lay bloodied on the ground almost sent Bucky crashing back to his knees.
Wanda Maximoff tore out Ultron's heart.
"It felt like that."
Steve was the one to carry Pietro's body onto the last civilian transport, and Barton carried the young boy he'd rescued on after him. Bucky limped after them, waving off the reaching hands of a man wearing a yellow vest that MEDIC.
He turned, taking in the empty city in the sky. There were no more civilians left, and even a few stray dogs had leaped onto this transport. It was just a hunk of rock now. Steve had taken a step onto the rubble edge of the city, scanning the smoke and shattered glass.
"Steve-" Bucky began.
A mile away, a broken Ultron drone limped toward the metal core inside the church and placed a hand on it.
They all heard the grinding whine as something about the engine powering the city changed. Bucky's eyes snapped wide and on the rock edge of the city Steve turned and leaped -
The city dropped away beneath his feet like it had never been there. Bucky dove onto the lip of the loading ramp, his metal arm outstretched, and felt Steve's hand snag in his.
Steve's weight tugged on his arm with a wrench and Bucky cried out, his other arm screeching in pain, but he didn't let go. He anchored his boots between the rungs of the loading ramp and heaved, dragging Steve up until he could reach the edge and pull himself up. Steve clambered onto the ramp, breathing hard, and then they both looked over the edge.
The city wasn't just falling. It was plummeting downward, rapidly becoming smaller in the sky as it rocketed toward the earth below. And, Bucky remembered, the city was not empty.
"No," he breathed.
Maggie and Tony had been hovering below the hole they'd cut in the base of the city, elbows bumping into each other as they worked on arranging their power relay.
The city dropped with no warning. It plunged straight into them and Maggie felt herself slam against the base of the Vibranium core. Her legs clashed with Tony's and she felt the pressure of an entire city crashing down on top of her, her body pinned by the momentum.
Then Ultron's antigrav thrusters kicked in and the speed of the city increased a hundredfold. In the space of seconds they had become a comet, a shooting star. A meteor.
As they plunged through the atmosphere the base of the rock began to ignite, and Maggie's vision glowed orange.
"Tony, the spire!" she grit out, as her HUD alerted her that her uniform was engaging temperature controls.
Tony jetted out a few yards below the city to centre himself, then let himself crash back against the Vibranium base, his arms and legs braced against the sides of the hole he had created, his chest facing in. Maggie burned her engines to give her some push against the pressure on her body and managed to maneuver herself over to her brother, putting herself at his back. She braced her feet against the hole he'd cut and wrapped her arms around him from behind, pressing her hands against his chest on either side of the arc reactor. Her uniform shifted, metal clanking as the power structure in her suit arms slithered out to connect with Tony's, linking their power relays.
Her engines whined, producing every iota of power they could and her uniform funnelled it all down her arms and into the Iron Man suit to boost what little power he had left. The rock above them shuddered and the noise was deafening, and the whole base of the city was aflame. Maggie clung to Tony and did not let go.
Tony fired the unibeam from the arc reactor on his chest, beaming a stream of pure atomic energy into the base of the Vibranium spire. Energy crackled and beamed off the spire like a Tesla cage, arcing upward as the whole spire glowed red hot. A heat shield.
Maggie kept her eyes fixed on the glowing spire inside the Vibranium tube because the world outside was an apocalypse. She could feel the back of her uniform beginning to melt, the exterior doing everything it could to protect her from the burning comet. Her wings were shaking. The air around her was on fire. Her suit oxygen kicked in. All she could see, save for the spire, was flame. She did not want to look over her shoulder to see how close they were to the ground.
"Hold on, Maggot," Tony grunted as the spire glowed, heating up.
"Thor, on our mark!" she called, her clawed gloves clamped to Tony's chest plate.
A few endless seconds passed. Maggie wrapped her legs around Tony's legs, anchoring them together as she gave him all the power she had. Just as the power was about to fail and the spire was about to explode from the heat, they shouted together:
"Now!"
Lightning surged down the spire. Maggie heard the thunderous clap of what sounded like the universe breaking apart. For a second Maggie and Tony remained anchored together at the base of the spire. And then an immense blaze of light washed over them, and the world simply disintegrated.
Maggie caught a glimpse of sky, which she knew meant that the city had broken clean in half, and then despite herself she felt her limbs tearing free from Tony's suit.
The falling city exploded in a supernova of blue light.
Bucky had to close his eyes when the shattering city erupted, but too late - the light seared his eyes, leaving him blinking through a blinding afterimage of bright white-blue. When he could see again he looked down, and there was a dirty grey smear across the sky: the remaining fragmented debris of the vaporized city raining down on the earth below. The city had ended up over the shoreline, so from what Bucky could see most of the larger rocks were ending up in the ocean. Orange light flickered amongst the grey smear: burning parts of the enormous meteor.
Bucky had never seen anything like it.
He could see no figures flying up out of the debris.
He propped himself up on his metal elbow and glanced across at Steve. They shared a grim look.
Their boat hovered across the empty sky, finally docking with the Helicarrier. Dust rose up around the Helicarrier like a ghost of the city that had flown.
The Hulk flew away on a Quinjet, alone, staring into the horizon.
The Vision landed in a quiet forest, across from the last Ultron drone.
Maggie Stark sank into the sea, her powerless wings drifting like sails by her sides, her eyes on the gleaming surface punctured by debris.
"You're afraid," Vision said to Ultron.
Maggie's HUD alerted her that she'd used up the last of her suit's oxygen, and then completely powered down. The blackness of the ocean encroached.
Miles above, in the sky, Steve Rogers hailed his team frantically over the comms. Bucky listened, grimly keeping pressure on his right arm. People swarmed around them on the Helicarrier.
"Of you?" Ultron spat at the Vision.
"Of death," Vision said calmly. Bubbles rose around Maggie, scurrying toward the surface. "You're the last one."
Tony buzzed low over the tossed ocean through the still-falling debris, shouting his sister's name. A mile away Thor plunged out of the sea, Mjolnir held aloft.
"You were supposed to be the last," Ultron said with a flash of red eyes. "Stark asked for a saviour, and settled for a slave."
Vision smiled, the morning light soft on his face. "I suppose we're both disappointments."
Tony dove into the ocean.
Ultron chuckled mechanically. "I suppose we are."
Iron Man's glowing eyes descending through the darkness looked like a miracle. Maggie felt Tony's metal arms grip her tight and then they were rising; jetting up out of the water and into the sky, through the hail of shattered rock. She felt water streaming off of her even as they hit the clouds.
"Humans are odd," Vision told Ultron as Tony and Maggie Stark flew up to the SHIELD Helicarrier, gripping each other. "They think order and chaos are somehow opposites, and try to control what won't be."
Tony set Maggie down gently on the airstrip on top of the Helicarrier, where he tugged off her headpiece and goggles to reveal her face. Maggie coughed, then gripped her brother's shoulder and smiled tiredly at him.
Vision tilted his head at Ultron. "But there is grace in their failings. I think you missed that."
Ultron looked aside. "They're doomed."
The door to the airstrip burst open and Steve and Bucky ran out onto the Helicarrier runway. Bucky was once more anonymous in a helmet and jacket, but he took the helmet off as he ran toward them, sagging slightly to one side. Steve followed, streaked in ash and blood. They ran toward the siblings kneeling on the concrete in the morning air.
"Yes," Vision agreed.
Bucky dropped down beside Tony and Maggie, and Maggie met his eyes.
"But a thing isn't beautiful because it lasts."
Vision took a moment, his eyes on Ultron. "It's a privilege to be among them."
Ultron scoffed. "You're unbearably naive."
"Well. I was born yesterday."
True to his nature, Ultron leaped at Vision. A golden starburst illuminated the forest. And Vision was alone.
Thank you so much for bearing with me while I was on holiday! I had an absolutely lovely time in Paris, got to live my best Alice Moser life drinking Paris Sidecars and seeing the Louvre and the cemetery where Edith Piaf was buried and drinking wine by the Seine. But I missed you guys! Hope you've all had a good two weeks, and that you enjoyed this hefty chapter (can you tell that I love Vision and his philosophisms). Don't forget to join us on Discord, invite code pDsGenUEUX.
PS: Sorry for killing Pietro (again)
Reviews
Guest: I do like to drop in the trigger words wherever you least expect them ;) I am having so much fun with Bucky being more and more his own person so I'm glad you liked that!
DBZFAN45: Vision is born, and I am so excited to explore his character some more! Hope you enjoyed this chapter :)
Guest: I'm enjoying exploring Maggie and Wanda's relationship!
Eennio: I'm actually not really planning to get to Infinity War in this fic!