Truly, your patience through this SLOWEST OF BURNS is admirable. Love you guys x
September, 2015
New Avengers Facility, Upstate New York
"Welcome to the engineering bay." Maggie pushed her sleeves up and tried not to let the wide-eyed stares of the thirty teenagers in front of her make her nervous.
Maggie saw the interns around from time to time in the regular part of the Facility - they came in on Fridays, after spending their Thursdays at the Tower in the city, and Monday to Wednesday at school. They usually moved in a tight pack, nervous around the bustle and professionalism of the facility, and stared and whispered whenever they spotted an Avenger - including Maggie. Their program involved them rotating through different wings of SI, of which there were several at the Facility, and on one Saturday a month they had an individualized training day on a particular specialism. And on this particular Saturday, Maggie was up to bat.
Pepper had scheduled this training day months ago, but truthfully Maggie had only prepared for it a few days ago, when F.R.I.D.A.Y. reminded her she would be training the interns on aircraft engineering. She'd ordered in the necessary parts, and now there were six workstations piled with various machine parts: turbines, shafts, plates, compressors, nozzles, jet fuel lines and a mound of bolts and screws. The interns were eyeing the worktables, and Maggie was pleased to see a calculating, intelligent light in their expressions. They wore labcoats emblazoned with the Stark Industries Internship logo.
Maggie had never really been a teacher before. She straightened her shoulders and looked out at her students, taking in their acne and their stiff new professional clothes and the way they looked to each other for reassurance. She cleared her throat. "You're about to be split into teams. We'll break down the task after you've completed it and I'll show you guys some tricks, but for now your task is simple: make me an engine."
She saw a few of them share excited glances, and one girl near the front's eyes positively sparkled.
Yeah, Maggie thought. They're not so different from me after all.
The engineering bay buzzed with excitement as the interns swarmed around their tables, each group quickly nominating roles and breaking open the box of tools Maggie had provided. Maggie circulated with a few Avengers engineers, answering questions and offering guidance, but never giving the answers. At first the interns were too nervous to ask her anything, but as they became absorbed in the task they seemed to forget their nerves.
"Ms Stark?" asked one boy, who spoke with a stutter and who'd just expertly explained the net thrust equation of a turbojet engine to his group members. "Could we have another fuel line please? We've had an idea to maximize energy output."
"Of course," Maggie grinned, rushing to her pile of extra supplies.
"You gotta hand it to them," said Ahmet, one of her assistant engineers when she met him at the pile, "they're sharp." He broke off at the sound of a clang and they both glanced over to see the group farthest away looking down in anguish at their partially-constructed engine hull which had broken open on the floor.
"Sharp," Maggie acknowledged. "But still a lot to learn." She fetched a clamp as well as the fuel line and headed back over.
"We're finished!"
Maggie paced across the workshop past startled interns, her brows raised. The group who'd called out huddled around a constructed engine, grinning. I'd have been hard pressed to finish so quickly when I was their age.
However, when she got a closer look at the engine her impressed expression dropped and her steps slowed. The kids had not just designed an engine; they had constructed a complete Quinjet turbojet engine, using every single piece of machinery they had been given. Maggie had purposefully included all the parts of a Quinjet engine so she could show them the more efficient model once they'd made whatever they were capable of. She had never in a million years expected them to actually make the engine. But this… this was it, down to the last bolt. It sat there shining and complete, as if it had just been removed from the Quinjet in the air hangar.
Maggie's gaze lifted to the group. They had been flushed and pleased when they called out, but their smiles were now fading at the look on Maggie's face.
"How did you do that?" she asked softly.
Four of them glanced at each other, and then at the fifth kid standing behind the engine - Maggie sidestepped, and saw someone she vaguely recognized: a mop of shaggy black hair, round, thick glasses, and a closed-off expression. The girl who interrupted the meeting a couple months ago, Maggie realized.
"You did this?" Maggie asked, gesturing at the Quinjet engine.
The kid nodded tightly, glancing nervously at her teammates, who seemed to have left her to it. They shrank away from the engine, glancing at the other staring interns around the room.
"How?" Maggie asked. She stepped forward and placed a hand on the cylindrical-shaped engine. "Do you know what this is?"
"Engineering isn't really my strongest suit," the kid said - she had the slightest of drawls to her voice, a strange mixture of an inner-city NYC accent and something else. "So I… I figured the parts were based on a SHIELD design. So I found the schematic for the SHIELD Quinjet engines and… yeah." She gestured with her phone.
"Found?"
The kid shifted. "From the SHIELD data leak."
Maggie cocked her head. "That's a hefty amount of metadata to sift through, and it's not at all user friendly. Let alone unencrypted. On a cellphone. The Quinjet designs must have been under some heavy duty security."
The kid shrugged again and pocketed her phone. Maggie could sense her growing discomfort, and the stares of the other interns, so she let up. For now.
She turned. "This team has finished first, with an incredible result! Other teams, you've got another half hour, and then we'll discuss efficiency in power outputs."
When the session had ended and the kids had all grabbed their backpacks and filed out (not after getting an autograph and a selfie with Maggie), Maggie asked the dark-haired kid to stay behind. She stood awkward and small by the doorway, her eyes practically concealed by her glasses and her messy bangs.
Maggie cleared her throat and leaned a hip against a nearby workbench. "You did great work today; you must be an incredible programmer. What was your name again? Re… becca?"
The kid avoided her gaze. "Rikki."
"Rikki, then. Rikki…?"
"Ochoa," Rikki said, with a jut of her chin. Something about it made Maggie frown.
"Did you use to work in the Tower?" She knew some of the interns had been sourced from the previous SI Young Talent scheme, which had been based out of Avengers Tower.
Rikki shook her head.
Maggie nodded, then as Rikki shifted she noticed a tattoo on the kid's wrist: they/them. Maggie glanced up. "Are those your pronouns?"
Rikki's chin jut extended, but they nodded.
"We can put that in our staff records, you know. SI is good about that stuff."
Rikki frowned and finally met Maggie's eyes, peering up from under their bangs. "The program leader at my school said it wasn't a good idea for me to come into the workplace asking for special treatment."
Maggie frowned. "It's not special treatment. It's your pronouns. You're hardly the first at SI to go by pronouns other than those assigned at birth. Our lead medical technology engineer transitioned last year; Doctor Hollens, you will have met him. And he won't mind me telling you about it."
Rikki still peered suspiciously, but seemed to have brightened.
Maggie cocked her head. "Anyway. You cracked the SHIELD encryption walls. Want to try your hand at some real research?"
Over the next few weeks, Maggie sent the kid research projects - she couldn't send Rikki real analytics work for the Avengers, because of the security risk, but instead sent a steadily more complex stream of media, political and tech analysis questions. The kid was better than Maggie had even imagined: they dove down tightly-restricted avenues of information to get to the truth. Rikki was a fair hand with technology - more than a fair hand, based on their hacking skills - but their real skills seemed to be in investigation and politics. They could read systems and people like nothing else.
Each week Maggie would visit the interns to see how they were going on, and would speak to Rikki for a half hour or so after the session ended - Rikki was reticent and awkward, but the prospect of a new project always made them brighten. They would tell Maggie about the files they had uncovered, or the proof of corruption they'd accidentally discovered while researching a political campaign in Canada, and Maggie would answer their questions about how to use digital spidering to map an organisation's digital footprint, and remind Rikki to stay on the right side of the law in their hacking. Rikki had ways of hunting for information that Maggie had never considered - for Maggie it was like tossing a line into the ocean and waiting for a bite. Rikki simply trawled the entire ocean with a net.
Pepper seemed encouraged by Maggie's renewed interest in the internship program. "Mentoring is a good look on you," she said on their fortnightly brunch date. "You've got a lot to offer these kids."
"I'm not mentoring," Maggie said, making a face. "I'm hardly a mentor-"
"You've been an engineer for over ten years, an Avenger for three, and are currently the Chief of Research and Development for the Avengers. It's time to face the facts, Maggie - you're not the student anymore."
November, 2015
Maggie watched Bucky out of the corner of her eye as she flipped through a ream of paperwork on her main desk in her workshop. He sat in his usual seat, with a book open in his lap and a steaming mug of coffee on the arm of his chair. He was looking at the book, and turning pages, but Maggie wasn't convinced he was actually reading it.
The sun had not yet broken over the horizon when Bucky had walked into her workshop and sat there, sullen and still and cold, radiating silence. Maggie had let him be for about half an hour, as she usually did when he was like this, waiting for the right time.
Finally, she signed her name on the last page of the paperwork and looked over properly. Bucky seemed a little looser than when he'd first sat down. "Nightmare?" she guessed.
Bucky nodded tightly, already tensing again. But he pulled his coffee mug into his hands, and the tension ebbed a little.
"Memory, or imagination?"
"Both. Always," he murmured, and Maggie's brows lifted. She hadn't expected him to actually answer. His eyes stayed on his book, but he'd stopped turning pages.
"What was it this time?" she asked, trying to keep her voice even.
His face twisted and he bowed his head, so strands of dark hair concealed his expression. "You don't want to know."
Her stomach twisted at the idea that he might be talking about that night, the one they never really acknowledged, but she said anyway: "I do."
He lifted his mug to his mouth and sipped, considering. "I was falling." The words were almost swallowed by his mug. "I was cold, and there were" - his brow furrowed - "there were rocks. You know - you ever feel like you're falling, when you're asleep, and you wake up when you land?"
She nodded.
"Like that. But it hurt."
Maggie pressed her lips together. "You remember falling from the train."
Steve had told her about the mission where he lost his best friend. He had spoken about it in clipped sentences, informative and devoid of emotion, a soldier's report. This was before he had found out about the Winter Soldier; he had been trying to survive his grief. Maggie had felt for him then. After she'd brought Bucky in and he'd been that strange, wild, haunted man in the glass prison, she hadn't ever considered that he would remember the war.
Bucky finally looked up. "I didn't at the time," he whispered. His eyes were very dark. "But with coming out of HYDRA's programming, after the Triskelion… it was like I remembered the most painful parts first. So, yeah. I remember falling."
Maggie forced herself to listen, and not speak. She didn't break his gaze, however raw and painful it felt.
"I didn't slip," Bucky said, flexing his left hand. "The - the railing I was holding gave out. And I just… I most remember the feeling in my stomach as I fell" - his metal hand pressed to his gut - "and I remember being terrified that Steve would jump after me. I could see his face, as I fell. And I fell for what felt like forever. It was snowing." He didn't even blink as he looked at her. "I grabbed out for the rocks. I think that's how the arm got torn off." Maggie gripped the edge of her worktable. "And then I don't remember a lot. The pain, after, and being dragged through the snow. But the clearest memory is falling."
Maggie didn't even try to search for words.
"That's how it felt when I fell from Novi Grad," he continued, finally breaking eye contact to look down. "Like it was happening all over again, on repeat. Falling, and the cold, and Steve's face before I fell." He closed his eyes. "I can't thank you enough for catching me. And… even on the trampolines, that one day, even though I knew the fall wasn't far, I couldn't take my eyes off the ground. I was so scared it would vanish beneath me."
Her heart twisted and she wanted to apologize, but she knew there was little she could convince Bucky Barnes to do if he didn't want to do it first - stepping foot on that trampoline had been his choice.
"Thank you for telling me," she eventually settled on, then cocked her head. "It doesn't have to be terrifying, you know."
One of his eyes cracked open. "What, falling to my death?"
"Just… falling. Of course it's a trigger for you, but… have you ever considered revisiting that? Trying to attach a good memory to the feeling?"
He frowned. "Raynor's talked about that, in theory, but…"
Maggie's eyes darted as an idea began to formulate in her mind. After a moment she met Bucky's eyes again. "Meet me on the roof in five."
His eyes narrowed.
Bucky had no idea why he'd gone along with this. He hadn't even needed all that much convincing: Meg had said to meet him on the roof and then rushed off. He had sat there for a few minutes, thinking about it, and then he had left the workshop, climbed the stairs, and found himself on the roof.
I knew I had a few screws loose, but this is something else.
"Are you sure about this?" he asked, looking over the dark flightsuit he had just zipped himself into as Meg explained her plan - he'd been grateful to have something to do with his hands, to hide the way they were shaking.
"I am if you are," Meg said as she handed over a pair of lab goggles, which he put on with trepidation.
It was still too early in the morning for there to be any staff at the facility, so the grounds were completely empty, the grass shimmering with frost. The sky was a pale yellow, mostly obscured by low-hanging misty clouds. The building they stood on was adjacent to the main white building with the big A on the side of it, and behind them the river slowly churned by. There was a bit of a breeze up here, catching the back of Bucky's neck and making him shiver. He'd tied his hair back, and he felt strangely exposed.
Meg slid a pair of lab goggles over her own eyes, then took a step back and looked at him. She'd changed into the main suit of her Wyvern uniform, with its hundreds of interlocking metal plates encasing her torso and limbs, shifting from black to burgundy. He couldn't see the wings, but he knew they were folded up tight in the wingpack at her back. "Ready?"
Bucky could admit, logically, that Meg's idea had merit. But… his mind skittered away from thoughts of what they were about to do.
"You'll be okay," Meg said, as if she could read his mind. Some days he was pretty sure she could. She reached out with one hand, which today was not covered by a clawed gauntlet. Her nails were painted Christmas-red.
Bucky stared at her hand for a long moment, his heart already thundering. He reached out - and she stepped back. He glanced up at her face to see her steadily watching him, her hand outstretched as she slowly backed away. Her hair was tied securely back, and there was a hint of humor about her eyes and mouth as she looked at him.
Bucky paced forward to follow her. "I don't do great in the air," he said lowly.
"You've only ever fallen," she said, still walking backwards towards the edge of the roof. "You've never had the chance to fly."
He swallowed past the lump in his throat, and continued to follow her outstretched hand.
"C'mon," she said, with a hint of a smile. She was only a few steps from the edge now. "I'll only let you fall if you want to."
And she was still backing up, and he was following, and then reaching out, and when his hand landed on her wrist and her hand gripped his she fell backward, and god help him, Bucky followed.
He only fell headlong for a split second: the sudden loss of ground beneath his feet and the wind around him and his heart plunging - but then he felt his momentum shift. He realized that instead of falling he was rising, pulled upward by a sure grip around his metal wrist. His legs swung with the momentum shift and he looked down, only for his stomach to drop when he saw the ground falling away beneath him.
He swore loudly and heard a laugh above him, just over the sound of engines. He looked up, finding first Meg's grip on his wrist and his on hers, then following her arm up to see her: the sun illuminated her uniform and shone a dark red through her outstretched wings, and for a second she was like something out of a book. She looked up, her eyes on the clouds, but glanced down at him briefly when she sensed his eyes on her; she was smiling, he realized. Every muscle in her body seemed to know what to do - they soared cleanly upward, her wings stretched wide and her engines propelling them, her legs and arms pinned close to her body, even adjusting for the weight of Bucky by folding her left wing a little. The wind screamed in his ears.
Meg put on a burst of speed and then - she let go. Bucky's heart skipped, but half a second later she caught him around the middle as his momentum sent him shooting up toward her. He let out a breath at the feeling of her arms around him, hands linked across his middle, her legs dangling against his. But then her wings beat and her engines surged and they rocketed upward again - Bucky looked up and saw the clouds rushing toward them, and he shut his eyes.
They brushed through in a shiver of cold and wetness, making Bucky flinch. He felt their momentum slow, and Meg let out a breath by his ear.
He opened his eyes and his heart stopped. They were well over the cloudlayer now, hovering in midair as Meg's wings beat, making them gently rise and fall. The clouds stretched for miles. Their white tufted surfaces were washed gold by the sun, and when he looked down he could see a swirling, misty crater where he and Meg had punched through. The air was biting cold on his face, but he could barely feel it.
Meg just held him there, letting him take in the view. He watched the clouds undulate and shift like an ethereal ocean, and squinted out at the rising sun. He let out a breath, and the wind snatched it away.
"You get to do this whenever you want," he breathed.
"Yes," she said, with a smile in her voice. "Do you want to see what else I can do?"
Bucky looked down. He couldn't even picture the earth below, the ground he'd been afraid of falling to. All he could see was this strange new world above the clouds. He nodded.
"Hold on," Meg said, and he gripped her arms where they locked around his chest.
She beat her wings, lifting them both, and then his stomach swooped as she angled her wings down and they began to soar - they dove a few feet, buffeted by stray winds and with the sun behind them, then twisted and soared down to the cloud tops. Bucky sucked in a breath as they dove right down to the surface of the clouds, skimming over the chill wisps and curving around the larger, bulbous structures. Meg rolled and the sun washed over Bucky, but then he was face-down to the clouds again, dipping and rising, the wind in his face and the shadow of Meg's outstretched wings on the shifting white surface below.
It was terrifying at first, Meg's unpredictable turns and bursts of speed. But Bucky soon realized that Meg knew exactly where she was in the sky, and after a while he felt like he did too; he was able to distinguish all the colors streaming together, knew by the slight warmth on one side of him where the sun was, could read the shifting pull and push of the wind around them.
He grew bolder, and let go of Meg's arms. She whooped and arced upward, putting the sun at his front, then rolled and they soared back down to the clouds. He felt the wind twine over his arms and he angled them like Meg did, streamlining the two of them in the air. When the shadow of Meg's wings grew huge and close on the cloud surface, he reached a hand out and felt the cloud sift through his fingers, leaving condensation behind.
Meg laughed and then plunged, soaking them both as they soared through the dark mists of the cloud, and Bucky watched the water roll off his goggles. They broke through the other side and found themselves skimming below the belly of the cloud - the ground felt like miles away, a tableau of thick green forest and winding dark river. Bucky didn't even look for the facility. Meg sent them into a corkscrew spin, and he watched the tips of her metal wings dip into the cloud above them.
There was nothing in the world like this.
Maggie banked left, then right, letting the wind sluice over them. Bucky couldn't even feel the cold anymore.
"How do you feel about skydiving?" she called into his ear, her voice wild with adrenaline.
If she'd asked him on the ground, he would have said absolutely not. But he'd forgotten what it felt like to fall.
Meg must have sensed his slight hesitation, because she asked: "Do you trust me?"
"Of course," he said, and didn't recognize his own voice.
And then they were angling up, up through the clouds, up into the naked eye of the sun. There were no fancy turns now, only Meg's outstretched wings and burning engines. Bucky's arms pressed close to his sides, and he felt his loose hair lashing at his skin. The cold started to bite and the air grew thin, and then they slowed.
Meg's wings fluttered, keeping them aloft.
"Try to turn around," she murmured.
They shuffled, maneuvering in midair, Bucky sliding in her arms until they were face to face, two humans flying too close to the sun. He gripped her shoulders, and her hands were looped around his waist. Meg's face was flushed and grinning, her eyes dark behind her goggles. Bucky realized his heart was thundering.
"I'm going to hold your hands again," she said. "Just… if you need to slow down, put your hands and legs out, that will catch the wind resistance."
"Okay," he said, not really sure what he was agreeing to. Meg's wings seemed huge from here, arcing strong and metal and sure to either side of her. The metal edges sparked and glinted in the sun. It felt strange to picture her without them now, as if this was her true self.
"Here we go," she grinned, and in the next second her wings folded up and shot back into the pack at her back.
It didn't really feel like falling. Meg released his waist and gripped his hands instead and the wind buffeted them, sending them from vertical to horizontal, facing each other. They gripped at each other's hands, arms, the wind blowing up from beneath them and catching in Bucky's cheeks, his hair, his clothes. He kept looking across at Meg, who was grinning. Her boots were just visible behind her, buffeted in the wind. The wind made strange shapes of their faces.
They were alone in the sky: no wings, just the air and the sun and the wind around them. Bucky tore his eyes off Meg's and looked down: the clouds were approaching from what seemed like miles below.
"You can let go, if you want!" Maggie shouted, still beaming. And for a moment his hands tensed on hers, but then the headrush of adrenaline made him stupid and brave. He let go of her.
The wind instantly snatched at his outstretched legs and arms and flung him up above her, making his stomach swoop. He looked down, spotting Meg, and she rolled onto her back in midair as easy as if she were rolling over in bed. She laced her fingers behind her head and tucked one ankle over the other, grinning up at him. Showoff. The ground below her seemed another world away.
She spread her arms and legs and rose up toward him, then past him, and he looked over his shoulder to see her flip over again. Wind streamed through his fingers and if he opened his mouth too wide it felt like being suffocated.
He kept one eye on Meg as she tilted downward, going fully upside down in the air with her head pointed down at the earth and her toes to the sky. She started spinning slowly, catching the wind with one carefully angled arm. She tucked her knees and did a backflip.
Meg was a natural up here; she read the air currents like her own breath. For her there was no up or down, only the sky. Bucky tore his eyes off her and looked around. From up here he could see the curvature of the earth below, and the great big yawning blue of the sky, tinged dark at the edges. He had never truly understood just how much the world had to offer.
Meg floated down toward him vertically upright, as if she was just standing in the air, with one leg cocked slightly to give her balance, Her hair was a dark banner over her head, flickering in the wind, and her cheeks were flushed from the wind shear. She came level with Bucky and then held out her hand, grinning. Her eyes were so bright behind her lab goggles.
Bucky reached out, cautiously and wobbling in the air, and took her hand. With her guidance, he slowly figured out how to become vertical like her. It felt strange, and the wind buffeted against all his limbs, trying to pull him and twist him, but he eventually balanced. The soles of his feet flashed cold with the wind resistance.
And he and Meg slowly spun in midair, facing each other. And they were falling, but Bucky had never realized falling could feel like this.
That afternoon, Steve walked into the facility common room and stalled at the sight he found inside.
The common room was completely empty save for Bucky, who was flat on his back on one of the orange couches, metal arm dangling on the ground, his mouth open and fast asleep.
"Buck?" he said, too surprised to leave his friend to sleep.
Bucky jerked upright, eyes snapping open and head spinning to find the source of the noise. When he spotted Steve he relaxed a little, then stared around, as if confused to find himself in the room.
"Buck… what're you doing?"
Bucky stared around the room once more, then over at Steve. He looked bewildered. "I… guess I fell asleep."
"It's one o'clock. And I've never seen you sleep anywhere other than your room." Steve stepped inside. "Are you feeling okay?"
Bucky blinked, then looked to the coffee table, where a stone cold cup of coffee sat. "Yeah. Guess I needed the sleep." He ran a hand through his hair, then winced when he apparently found a tangle.
"I guess you did," Steve said hesitantly. "Have… what else have you been up to today?" He hadn't seen Bucky all morning.
The corner of Bucky's mouth twitched. "Not much."
"Magnet!"
Maggie rolled her eyes as Tony enveloped her in a hug outside the entrance to the Avengers Facility, letting him lift her off her feet a little.
"It feels like it's been years since I last saw you. You don't call, you don't visit-"
"You don't return my calls-" Maggie echoed.
"I don't like it when we live on opposite ends of the country. You should move in with me."
"Have you hit your head?"
"A man can't miss his sister? Come on, let's have some fun."
Fun apparently meant dragging Maggie across the facility toward her own workshop. Tony was manic and talkative, and Maggie grinned, letting herself be swept up in the sheer presence of him. It was clear he did miss her - he kept turning to check she was there, and ruffling her hair, or leaning down to check her prosthetic. Behind the endless chatter and the shiny glasses concealing his eyes, however, Maggie could see something like tiredness in his expression. It made her frown. She knew he and Pepper had been having trouble; they hadn't involved her in it, but she wondered if things were improving.
"I've brought us something fun to play with," Tony said as they strode down a long corridor, waving a briefcase at her. "Some new experimental tech hot out of the SI oven. Based on my hologram design. It can simulate anything. It needs some finessing, but… I've been thinking of therapeutic applications."
"Therapeutic?" Maggie asked as they passed alongside the main R&D department. She spotted the interns, standing in a gaggle around Erik's workspace, and she waved to them. Several waved back, including Rikki, who even smiled - rare for them. They must have been enjoying Selvig's presentation. The rest of the interns stared at Tony.
Tony appeared not to notice. "Yeah. You've heard of revisiting therapies?"
She frowned. "Like… revisiting traumatic memories?" She'd done something similar with Mai in their sessions.
"Yeah. I was thinking that with this tech we could step it up a notch, simulate real memories." His eyes glinted.
"Tony, are you sure that's a good idea?"
"I'd like to try it."
Maggie thought about it as they strode across the paved area between the main Avengers building and the private wing. She considered the applications of recreating memories. "I suppose… that could even be used to help Bucky. With his programming. If he were able to revisit his memories of being programmed in a more positive setting…"
"Exactly," Tony said impatiently. "So will you help?"
"Sure. Also, when did you start wearing glasses?"
"Oh, these," Tony tapped the side of the glasses, which were tinged blue. A second later, F.R.I.D.A.Y.'s voice emanated from the glasses:
"How can I help you, boss?"
"Gah," Maggie said, taking a step away. She peered closer at the glasses, eyeing them for any signs of tampering or added technology, but could see nothing. "How did you do that?"
"Want to try?" As they strode into the private wing of the facility, he slid the glasses off his face and handed them to Maggie. She slipped them on, blinking in disorientation when a full HUD popped up before her.
"My god, Tony." She turned, and the HUD picked up the electrical conductors through the building and a far-off heat signature; probably Wanda, if Maggie had to guess.
"Welcome, Ms Stark," said F.R.I.D.A.Y., right by her ear, and the words projected themselves over her vision.
"This was a compromise," Tony explained. "Rather than walking around with a suit on, I wear these: I get F.R.I.D.A.Y., some minor security measures, and a HUD with no fuss."
"Minor security measures, huh," Maggie said as she returned the glasses. She didn't have to ask who the compromise was with. They turned left, down the corridor where Maggie's workshop was, and Tony began explaining the tech behind the glasses in more detail. The doors slid open for them, and they both strode inside.
Tony dropped the briefcase on the nearest worktable and reached for a nearby chair, which was tucked into the corner.
"No, you can't-" Maggie reached out to stop Tony, and gestured to an identical chair underneath the nearby worktable. "Take this one."
Tony frowned. "Why?"
"That's…" Maggie stalled as she realized why she'd stopped him. That's Bucky's chair. She frowned, then gestured again to the other chair. "This one is better."
The days grew shorter and colder, and when the air was crisp and frost clung to the trees, the Avengers began to take walks in the forest surrounding their new home. Wanda said the forest reminded her of the mountains back home in Novi Grad, and Vision liked to identify different kinds of trees, bugs, and birds. Even Bucky joined them on these walks from time to time, crunching a few yards behind everyone else and his eyes darting everywhere: the trees, the sky, the forest floor around them.
On the first day of snow, Maggie packed a slushy handful of snow together in her hands and lobbed it at Bucky's chest. It splattered against his jacket and he glared up at her. She'd thought he was too bewildered to retaliate until an hour later, where he shook a tree she was standing under and sent a whole cascade of snow and twigs down on top of her head.
Sam had laughed and taken a picture.
December 1, 2015
New York City
"Gah!"
Peter Benjamin Parker shook his hand, glancing around to spot the tiny, strangely-coloured spider, but it seemed to have vanished into thin air. Wincing, he looked down at his hand. Already the bite was swelling up, red and puffy-looking. His hand tingled.
His first thought was: Well, that's it. I'm going to die at fourteen years old.
His second thought was: Aunt May is going to kill me.
Next chapter may be a little late/a weird time my loves, as I'll be flying home for Christmas next weekend!
Reviews
Eennio: Love a bit of jealous Bucky myself too!
Guest: I love a training scene, and Bucky training Maggie is just *chefs kiss*
shorttrooper: Jealousy? What jealousy? Bucky? Noooo. Thank you so much for another lovely review, I love a training/action scene and that was so fun to write. And absolutely I would love to be a script doctor for movies. Have a lovely holiday period!