You'll notice we have new cover art by the amazing Celia Golbano! She created a whole bunch of amazing Wyvern and Siren art, which you can see more of if you come hang out with us on the Discord server, with invite code YfRmrFXp8A :)
Also, as we head through Civil War, I want to say that I know we've been through many of these scenes in the Wyvern already, I'm trying not to leave things too similar and fingers crossed it isn't too boring for y'all!
Joint Counter Terrorist Centre, Berlin
They'd been transported to Germany on a military jet, where they were ordered to change out of their uniforms and then sit in handcuffs for the short flight. Rhodey had put them on the jet, and had refused to say a word to Maggie. He stayed behind.
After the short flight, a police motorcade drove them to the JTTF headquarters. Bucky had been separated from them from the start: Maggie knew he was in the large armored truck she could see a few cars ahead, but had no idea of his condition.
She eyed the sunlit streets of Berlin from the inside of their own armored car, and kept one ear on Steve and Sam's conversation with the Wakandan prince - T'Challa, she'd learned his name was.
"Because your friend murdered my father, I also wear the mantle of king. So I ask you as both warrior and king… how long do you think you can keep your friend safe from me?"
Maggie turned to look at him then, her neck straight and her eyes narrowed. She sat directly behind T'Challa, but she could just see his eyes as he faced Steve - he meant every word.
She said nothing. But she marked the set of T'Challa's jaw, and the hidden violence in his frame.
As long as it takes.
The motorcade drove below the JTTF headquarters, and in a heavily armored room they were told to get out of the armored car. As they did, a large glass and metal contraption was wheeled behind them - Maggie did a double take when she realized Bucky was inside it.
He sat inside the containment unit, strapped into his seat by four locking mechanisms over his chest, two more bands around his arms, and two cuffs around his ankles. As the unit passed their car, Bucky's eyes slid to them, and then away. Maggie exchanged a glance with Steve.
Steve led them toward their welcoming party: Everett Ross, the head of the JTTF, Sharon Carter, and three German GSG-9 officers.
Maggie said nothing as Ross and Steve spoke, choosing to stand a few feet behind Steve, even footed and her hands loose by her sides. The Germans had provided them with similar outfits: jeans, shirt, and a jacket. Their weapons and uniforms were already being taken to the JTTF lockup, which made anxiety churn in Magige's stomach. She wanted her wings.
She saw Ross's eyes flick over her briefly, before turning back to Steve with his expression of bemused distrust.
Steve asked for a lawyer.
"Lawyer, that's funny," Ross smiled.
Maggie's eyes narrowed.
She kept her silence, as did T'Challa, as they were led out of the loading area. She did look back as they left, however, and found that Bucky's containment unit had been turned to face them as he was wheeled in the opposite direction, to who knew where.
He looked back at her and Steve with flat disinterest, before looking away. A door closed between them.
Steve stepped closer to her as they followed Ross and Carter. "He's trying to protect us," he murmured.
"Hm," was all she said.
They were led up through the JTTF compound, flanked by a whole group of GSG-9 and CIA officers, drawing stares wherever they went. They were apparently being taken to an office, which Maggie supposed was better than a cell. Just about.
On the way, they were intercepted by Natasha, who eyed them balefully.
"For the record, this is what making things worse looks like," she told Steve, then turned to Maggie as she kept pace with them. "You did something stupid."
Maggie kept her gaze fixed ahead, and thankfully Steve spoke for her:
"He's alive."
They were led into a windowless room which Maggie quickly recognized as some kind of operations hub: screens lined every wall, displaying CCTV and satellite footage, as well as news coverage. Guards manned every entry and exit point and analysts were packed in around the desks. In the centre of the room was another, smaller room, lined by glass walls and slightly raised, giving the impression of some kind of zoo exhibit. A label by the sliding door read CONFERENCE ROOM.
But Maggie gave the operations center only a brief scan, because an instant later she heard her brother's voice.
"Consequences? You bet there'll be consequences." Her eyes snapped to him: Tony stepped down from the conference room steps, a phone ot his ear, his tie loosened, and his shirtcuffs unbuttoned. His eyes were on the newcomers even as he kept speaking to whoever was on the other end - Ross, if Maggie had to guess. He met their eyes with a heavy, unblinking gaze, pacing toward them.
He hung up. "Jailbird," he said, pointing at Maggie. "This is bringing me back. Oh… 2003? Cambridge Police Department, you were wearing a glittery shit, I bailed you out… oh, but you're in a whole lot more shit now, Mags." His tone was joking, but his eyes were dark.
Maggie held his gaze.
"Consequences?" Steve asked, echoing Tony's earlier words.
"Secretary Ross wants the three of you prosecuted. Had to give him something."
Maggie ignored the rest of the conversation, striding up into their glass box with her hands in her pockets.
Sam and Steve took their seats in the glass office, drinking the complimentary water and speaking in low voices about what might happen next. Maggie still felt too wired up to speak or to sit, so she paced the perimeter of glass, peering out at the screens she could see in the operations center. She scanned satellite maps of the city, the continent, and the world, and CCTV streetviews. Analysts sensed her staring at them from behind and shifted nervously.
One of the screens showed some underground concrete room, and her heart skipped when she recognized the same glass and metal containment unit from before being pushed inside.
"Steve," she murmured.
A team of dark-uniformed agents began securing the unit to the ground, hooking up wires and checking readings. The red-shirted figure of Bucky was barely visible inside, but Maggie could just make him out.
"Agent Ross said they were going to do a psych eval," Sam muttered. "That's something, I suppose."
"He says he didn't do it," Steve replied. "They'll just call him a liar."
"And how would he know if he had done it?"
"Stop. Talking." Maggie grit out, and Steve and Sam shut up.
The operations center had been busy at first - Agent Ross talking urgently with Tony and Natasha, then his analysts, people flooding in and out. But after about twenty minutes a relative calm fell, as various people drifted out of the room. Maggie kept pacing, waiting for her moment.
She spotted Tony walk back into the room and made her move.
She hit the controls for the glass door and stepped out as it swished open.
"Maggie," Sam said warningly, but she strode down the three steps, rounded the corner of the glass box and then grabbed Tony's arm. He glanced at her, eyebrows raised, but let her pull him to a corner of the room where there was relative privacy. A few analysts glanced over, and one guard stepped forward, but Tony put up a hand.
"You can't really be okay with this?" Maggie asked, gesturing to the screen with Bucky on it.
"Well hello to you too, miss I'll call you back," he said, brushing her hand off his arm. He looked into her face and grit his teeth. "He blew up the UN, Mags. I know… I know it might not be his fault, I get that. But it happened, and we can't pretend…" he sighed and looked down, and in the blue light from the nearby screens she noticed the bags under his eyes. "The last few years have been a dream. A dream where we" - his voice dropped so he was practically inaudible - "had the big bad wolf all safe in our attic, and he wasn't anyone else's problem. But he's out now - and I'll remind you that was his choice - and this happened on a world stage. People want justice, and I can't blame them." He gestured at the screen. "I know the guy, and I don't want him to suffer. I'm trying to make it so the justice he gets comes in the form of a psych center where he's looked after - where he should have been from the start - rather than a prison." He caught the look on her face. "Come on, Maggot, what do you want? For him to be free, no consequences?"
"It isn't his fault, Tony. Can't you see there's still someone out there who did this? We should be working together to find them, instead of bringing all the shit down on Bucky-"
"So sign," he said frankly. "If you sign, then we're on the same side, and we can figure out the rest of this."
She ran her tongue over her teeth as she tipped her head back.
"Mags, it's the law. This isn't something you can talk your way around-"
"- I disagree-"
"- it applies whether you sign it or not, the signing just makes what you did this morning legal or illegal."
"It's a law that needs to change," she hissed. "Putting enhanced people on a register? Detaining people without lawyers or trial? You're really okay putting your name - our name - on that, Tony?"
"It's more than that-"
"That doesn't matter!" she said in a raised voice, and a few analysts glanced over. She lowered her voice again. "Anything that includes those terms can't be allowed to stand. I can't believe" - she swallowed as tears stung at her eyes - "I can't believe the UN allowed this. I can't believe the world allowed this. I can't believe you allowed this. Tony," she said, reaching out to grip his arm again. "Be the man I saw seven years ago who saw Stark Industries doing wrong and said this changes now, when change seemed impossible to me. You've always imagined solutions for problems that I could only run away from. See the change that needs to be made here." She looked desperately into his eyes.
He sighed and pulled his arm out of her grip again. "I can't keep debating this with you, Maggot. We can't be allowed to be all-powerful-"
"And I agree with you!" she exclaimed. "But I can agree with that principle and disagree with what it became."
A cleared throat had them both glancing over, and they found a young man in a suit eyeing them nervously, as he clutched a thin box.
"I - Mr Stark, you told me to let you know when your delivery was ready-"
"Right, thanks," Tony reached out and took the box off the agent, who thankfully hurried away again. Tony stroked his thumbs over the leather casing of the box, looking down at it.
"You can't have it both ways," he said sadly, his voice lower. He glanced up at her. "Look, I know you care about Barnes. But he's out of our hands now - he's in theirs, and all we can do is to get him the best treatment possible. We…" he shook his head. "We were delusional to think we could give him any kind of normal." He pocketed the box, and then to her surprise, grabbed both of her hands in his.
He eyed her with that dark intensity that always surprised her. "You have to sign, Maggot. Please. You haven't got long." He held her gaze for a long moment, then let go of her hands and walked back in the direction of the glass box.
Maggie let out a long, slow breath, then ran her hands through her hair with her eyes closed. God, he didn't know how badly she wanted to.
"Hey."
Maggie opened her eyes, and found that Natasha had somehow materialized in front of her.
"Come take a walk. Tony needs to talk to Steve - alone - and you look like you'll explode if you stay still."
Maggie said nothing, but jerked her chin at Nat to indicate for her to start walking. As they left the operations center, with Nat nodding to the guards, Maggie glanced back at the glass office to see that Sam had disappeared somewhere, leaving just Steve alone at the desk. As she watched, Tony stepped inside.
Natasha didn't take her far. They paced the surrounding corridors, never going beyond what seemed like the highest-security areas of the JTTF headquarters. Guards watched Maggie's every move, though all she really did was pace with her hands in her pockets and her gaze fixed on the floor. Natasha kept a steady pace with her.
"You going to twist my arm as well?" Maggie eventually asked, when the movement had tricked her body out of going into full-blown panic override.
"Seems you're doing a good enough job of putting yourself in a difficult position on your own," Nat said. She glanced sideways at her. "You're choosing prison, then?"
Maggie grinded her teeth. "I know you want me to sign. Hell, I want to sign, but… how can I put my name on that?"
"I did."
"Yeah, and why? You're okay with it?"
"No. But like I said before; we can make change from the inside. You can't from inside a prison cell."
"And how is that going?" Maggie lifted her head. "Changing the Accords? Managed to rewrite that detained without trial section yet? Because I have to say, it's pretty uncomfortable so far, and I think I'm being treated nicely."
Natasha's brows contracted.
"Ms Romanoff," called an agent hurrying toward them, "you're wanted in the lockup. I'm here to escort Ms Stark back to the office."
"Right," Natasha said, as ever without an ounce of surprise on her face. She turned back to Maggie and the corner of her mouth quirked. "Be good."
"No promises," Maggie said flatly.
When she returned to the operations center, she walked in at the same time as Sam - "bathroom break," he explained - and they both looked over to the glass office to see Steve storming out of it, his face drawn tight and his shoulders bunched. Behind him, Tony sat at the desk, with the thin box open in front of him and his expression unreadable behind his tinted glasses.
Steve strode over to them.
"Recruitment meeting didn't go well, then?" Sam asked.
Steve flexed his hand, which had been clenched in a fist. "They've got Wanda on house arrest."
"They what?"
Steve just shook his head.
No one told them when the psych evaluation was about to begin. They'd been corralled back into the glass office, and they figured it out when Agent Ross, Carter, Tony, Nat, and a dozen other agents gathered in front of the main surveillance screen of Bucky's containment unit. There were two angles now: one close up on Bucky's face, from a camera mounted inside his containment unit, and a wider angle that covered the room he was held in. They all watched as a new figure stepped inside the room, and approached a desk six feet away from the containment unit.
Steve stood at the glass, hands in his pockets and his face tense. Maggie and Sam sat, and Maggie laced her fingers together to avoid fidgeting.
They couldn't hear anything from inside the glass office. Maggie was left scrutinising the visual details: the new figure - the psychiatrist - took a seat at the desk. Bucky sat with his head tipped back and his face unreadable, barely reacting to the movements or words of the psychiatrist.
Maggie barely noticed Sharon Carter enter the room, with the receipt for their gear, but she did notice when Sharon hit the button to give them audio access inside the room. The screen in the top corner of the glass office flashed to the close-up of Bucky's face, and they instantly heard the psychiatrist's accented voice:
"I'm not here to judge you. I just want to ask you a few questions."
Steve glanced over at Sharon in surprise, which quickly turned to a thankful smile. Maggie kept her face blank. I don't know him. I don't know him.
"Do you know where you are, James?" A silence. Bucky had looked down. Maggie wished Raynor could be here, but officially she'd never met Bucky. "I can't help you if you don't talk to me, James."
"My name is Bucky."
Maggie closed her eyes. His voice was rough, raspy, and she couldn't bear to look at him as he said it.
The psychiatrist kept speaking, asking routine questions about Bucky's full name, and date of birth, and Maggie listened intently, but Steve appeared to grow distracted. He was rifling through the file Sharon had brought in with her, which included the CCTV still of Bucky.
"Why would the Task Force release this photo to begin with?" he asked, making Maggie frown and drag her eyes off the screen.
Sharon shrugged. "Get the word out, involve as many eyes as we can?"
"Right," Steve murmured. "It's a good way to flush a guy out of hiding. Set off a bomb, get your picture taken. Get seven billion people looking for the Winter Soldier."
Maggie's frown deepened and she straightened.
"You're saying someone framed him to find him?" Sharon asked.
"Attention was never hotter on the Winter Soldier hunt than right after the Triskelion mess," Maggie noted, her mind beginning to churn into action.
"Steve," Sam said pointedly, with a glance at Sharon. "We looked for the guy for two years and found nothing."
Maggie furrowed her brow. The only one who could find him was me. And I had decades of practice.
"We didn't bomb the UN," Steve replied. "That turns a lot of heads."
"Yeah, but that doesn't guarantee that whoever framed him would get him, it guarantees that we would." Her face dropped as she said it.
As one, they all looked back to the surveillance screen.
Bucky looked flatly back at the doctor as he made a note on his clipboard. He could hardly do anything else - the only part of his body he could move right now were his hands, barely, and his face. It had taken several minutes of deep breathing to stave off the panic he'd felt when the metal bands first closed around him. It's not the same, he'd kept telling himself. But god, a glass prison underground, it felt all too similar.
"Tell me Bucky," said the doctor, adjusting his glasses. "You've seen a great deal, haven't you?"
"I don't wanna talk about it." Bad enough they had his memory journal, which thank god didn't have anything about Steve or Meg or the Avengers in it.
He closed his eyes again as he remembered their faces, in Bucharest: Steve's wide-eyed panic that Bucky had become a killer again. The way Meg's face had dropped when he turned away from her.
He didn't even care if they understood - he wanted them out of this, safe from the consequences that had finally caught up to him. But they couldn't keep their hands out of it.
"You fear that if you open your mouth, the horrors might never stop," the doctor murmured. "Don't worry. We only have to talk about one."
And then the lights died.
Maggie's view of Bucky's blank face vanished as the TV screen cut out - at the same time as all the lights in the room. She glanced out and saw that all the screens had died, and a moment later a red emergency blinked into existence.
She went cold. Battle stations.
She reached down, yanked up the leg of her jeans and hit a concealed pressure point on her prosthetic leg - a compartment slotted out with a hiss and she pulled out a gun, and a StarkPhone. She instantly powered it up and set it to scan for any nearby electrical devices.
"It's a massive power outage, not just this building," she murmured the moment raw data flashed across her screen, and she looked up to find Sharon turning to Steve.
"Sub-level five, East Wing," she breathed.
Steve looked to Maggie. "You stay up here, try to get eyes on the situation." Then he nodded to Sam, and they both took off toward the door. Maggie stood up, muscles aching to go with them, but then ducked her head again and kept typing. With this phone she should have been able to hack the entire building's security system, but there was nothing to hack right now. She kept trying, finding the backdoor to the building's emergency power supply.
"Zhelaniye." [Longing]
Bucky's eyes pressed shut as if he could block out the barbed, whispered word. The afterimage of the red book with the black star burned against his pupils. "No."
"Rzhavvy." [Rusted]
Bucky tipped his head back, his face twitching as the words clawed gouges into his mind. Dread and panic pooled into his stomach. "Stop."
"Semadstat." [Seventeen]. The doctor circled, relentless.
And in the darkness it became brilliantly clear: all of this, the bombing, the arrest, this prison, it had all been to achieve this moment. The Winter Soldier, in a cage, hearing the words. And Bucky had been trying so hard to protect his people: Steve, Meg, the others. And now he was sitting underneath them all, far more deadly than any planted bomb.
And he was about to be set off.
His metal fist clenched in its bindings.
"Soldat?"
"Gotov vypolnit'." [Ready to comply.]
"Mission Report. December 16, 1991."
Maggie stepped out of the glass office, eyes still glued on her phone, when someone grabbed her arm. She looked up, prepared to hit them, until she recognized Tony in the gloom. His glasses glowed softly.
"Is this you?" he asked in a hot voice, eyes flicking to the phone in her hands.
"I - what? Screw you, Tony," she snapped, and kept attempting to reroute the emergency power supply into the surveillance system, with no luck. Tony scanned her screen, then her face, and nodded. "Something is-"
"Yep, I'm with you, there's more at play here," he agreed. "C'mon." He kept his hand on her arm, guiding her out of the room.
"This was a trap for Bucky," she blurted. "Someone needed to get to him, I don't know why-" her voice broke as she realized that this could be revenge, and he could be dead already.
"Keep it together." He nodded at her phone as he guided her. "You got anything?"
"City wide blackout, sourced back to the northeast power grid - had to be an electromagnetic spike of some kind. JTTF headquarters is on emergency power only which gives us emergency lights, and fire and security doors, that's it."
"That's all F.R.I.D.A.Y. got too," he said with a curse. They passed a window and Maggie winced at the sudden brightness of daylight as she pocketed her phone. "Agent Ross is running evac of the building and setting up a perimeter, but if shit's about to go down we better get ready for it."
A voice appeared beside them: "Please tell me you brought a suit." Maggie glanced across at Natasha.
"Sure did, it's a lovely Tom Ford, three piece, two button," Tony replied, and all three of them kept speed-walking through the building. "I'm an active-duty non-combatant."
"And you guys locked up my stuff," Maggie added resentfully, even as she tucked her gun into the back of her jeans. She glanced over at the sound of running footsteps.
Sharon Carter jogged up to them, a radio in her hand. "Follow me!"
They glanced at each other, then picked up the pace to run after her. Sharon led them down a series of corridors and explained as they ran:
"We've got no signs of an external attack but there's reports of an assailant in the lower levels - no one's got close enough to confirm it's Barnes, but…"
Her radio crackled and they heard a garbled "contact in section C-8, send reinforceme-" before it cut off in another sharp burst of static.
"That's the cafeteria," Sharon muttered.
Maggie met Tony's eyes. "He must have been triggered." His brow furrowed, but she saw understanding in his eyes - Nat must have passed on what Maggie had said about the words.
Sharon glanced back. "What does that mean?"
"Means he's not going to be anywhere near as friendly as he was in Romania," Natasha said grimly, rolling up her sleeves.
Sharon grit her teeth. "We're all we've got. There's two main entrances to the cafeteria, if we split up and isolate him there we've got a two-pronged attack."
They nodded, and Maggie tried to do away with the awful memory of when she'd first fought Bucky, on that rooftop in Peru: she could still remember the way the light had left his eyes, leaving them ice-cold and blank.
Who are we about to face?
"It occurs to me you're about to break the law again," Tony whispered as he and Maggie ran along the ground floor of the JTTF building, counting sections as they passed them: section C6, C7…
Maggie opened her mouth to reply, but abruptly shut it when she heard shouting up ahead. She touched Tony's elbow to slow his pace, and they crept along the concrete wall leading toward the more open space of the cafeteria.
The sounds of fighting increased in volume, and at the end of the corridor they both peeked around the corner:
Maggie got a flash of figures, one with a red shirt and dark hair swinging what looked like a baton at another man. Her heart leapt into her mouth, and then Tony pushed her behind a concrete pillar, wide enough for them both to use it as cover. A shout and a smash rang out from the cafeteria behind them.
"We're in position," Natasha murmured over their comms - Tony had had a spare set after all.
"So are we," Tony replied, and touched the watch on his right wrist - it unfolded into a complicated array of machinery which he pulled over his fist to become a pared-back version of an Iron Man gauntlet. He glanced at Maggie, who crouched beside him. "Sure you want to try your thing?"
There was a pained cry behind them. Maggie nodded, then rose and stepped out from behind their cover. There were at least three agents she could see collapsed on the ground, and another had just been thrown over a tabletop. Bucky advanced, pulling a gun free in his right hand-
"Soldat, stoy!" [Soldier, stop!] she shouted.
Bucky paused, and glanced over. The agent collapsed to the ground with a groan.
Maggie swallowed and put both hands up. "Bucky. Listen to me. You recognize me?"
His hair was strewn over his face and his head tilted low, but she could see his eyes - her heart stilled as she saw ice, and blankness, and an utter lack of recognition. He turned to face her and took a menacing step forward.
"You know me-"
He lifted the gun.
Maggie ducked, hands over her ears, and behind her Tony stepped out from behind cover and fired a blast of sonic energy right into Bucky's face. Bucky winced and stalled, and she sensed Tony run up behind her to fire a blast of light when Bucky recovered; that sent him doubling over, and Maggie and Tony surged forward together.
Maggie sprinted forward and dove for Bucky's legs - he stumbled at the impact, and then Tony had darted in for the gun. Maggie kicked at Bucky's foot and drove her elbow up into his gut as Tony redirected three of Bucky's lightning-fast strikes, seized the gun and-
Maggie flinched at the deafening bang of a gunshot, and looked up to see the muzzle in Tony's hand - protected by the gauntlet, she realized with a breath of relief.
She twisted, balanced on her knee and kicked up, cracking her prosthetic foot into the underside of Bucky's elbow. He cried out and Tony yanked, ripping the slide off the top of the handgun. With a smirk he whipped it across Bucky's face and Maggie went for his legs again.
Bucky's knee crashed into her side, knocking her flat, and he used his momentum to whirl, elbow Tony in the face, then slam a fist into his gut - Tony went crashing back through two sets of tables and toppled to the ground.
"Tony!" Maggie called past the aching pain in her side, and didn't have time to panic about not getting a reply because Bucky stepped over her, looming and blank-eyed. She rolled as he slammed the metal fist down and the floor cracked where her head at been. She twisted up at him, snaring her legs around his and trying to roll to bring him to the ground, but his centre of gravity was rock solid. He reached down and grabbed her arm, and a real bolt of fear went through her as she felt the strength of it close around her flesh and bone. He has never used his full strength against me before, she realized.
He lifted her, his face expressionless and his grip vice-tight, and then dropped her when a boot swung in at him from his left; he blocked Sharon's kick and swung for her, only for Natasha to drive forward with a devastating knee to his chest.
The two of them drove him back with knees and elbows and feet, and Maggie scrambled to her feet, heart pounding. She felt the gun tucked into the back of her jeans, but did not reach for it. She reached for her prosthetic leg instead.
Bucky let out a pained grunt as Natasha elbowed him between the legs, followed up by a high kick from Sharon, but then their combined assault faltered; Bucky seized Sharon's next kick and hurled her flat on her back on to another table, which she crashed through with a cry.
Maggie flung a small metal ball at him and it exploded in another sonic explosion, which made him wince and jerk his head away. Natasha used the moment of distraction to seize his shoulders and leap onto his back, hooking her legs around his neck in a vice-like hold. But rather than falling Bucky held her, impervious to the powerful elbow strikes she rained on his head. Maggie's breath hitched when he slammed her down on one of the tables, her legs still around his neck, and the metal hand came down on her throat.
Natasha choked, pulling helplessly at the gleaming metal arm, and Maggie sprinted across the cafeteria.
"Bucky, stop!"
She barrelled into him; her momentum wasn't enough to knock him away from Natasha but Natasha was able to suck in half of a breath, and Maggie leapt up his shoulders like Natasha had. She swung onto his back, cinching his right arm in her grip and her lefted foreleg around his neck. She clenched her teeth and twisted, and the sudden jerk of his body broke his hold on Natasha. Bucky stumbled back a step with her on his shoulders, grappling his limbs and one leg clenched around his neck like an awful piggy-back. She remembered doing this same hold on him before, when they'd been goofing around in quarantine, and her heart ached a moment before he jerked, and she was barely able to keep her hold on him.
He wasn't afraid to use his strength now, and the metal arm grabbed for her, trying to get a good hold that she knew would crush her bones. She strained to keep his right arm pinned in her grasp. She realized her prosthetic heel was pressed against his side. Heelspur to the liver, I'd say that's a victory?
She cried out in frustration and kicked him as he grabbed for her, but she couldn't make herself deploy the blade into his body.
In a real fight, you can't slow down. She could almost hear him saying it.
"Bucky, come back!"
She reached for her last trick - a taser spike, like one of the Widow's Bites, and jammed it into the side of his neck.
Rather than dropping, with a pained roar Bucky seized her ankle in his metal fist and tore her free - in a whirl of motion Maggie felt the air on her face, a grip on her jacket, and then she crashed on her back to the ground, the breath leaving her chest. She blinked and Bucky's figure swam over her, huge and blank and metal fist raised. She squeezed her eyes shut.
But the blow never fell. There was a blur and a muted cry, and she opened her eyes to see T'Challa's dark-clad form stalking after Bucky, his fists raised and his feet light on the ground. Maggie tried to follow their fight - lightning-fast strikes and heavy-thudding punches - but her vision swam and she couldn't get enough air in her chest. She'd been winded by the impact, and she had to place her hands on her stomach and take deep, forceful breaths to force oxygen into her lungs. Her head throbbed.
Thirty seconds later she was able to roll over and get her hands under herself, wheezing. She looked up to where she had last heard fighting, only to see T'Challa leaping down from the upper walkway. He landed impossibly softly and glanced around, a lost look on his face.
"Where'd he go?" Maggie called, swallowing past her croaky voice.
T'Challa looked back at her with confusion.
Shit. Maggie punched the concrete beneath her and forced herself to her feet, only staggering slightly. She stumbled over to Nat - gasping for breath, but alive - then to Tony, where she dropped to her hands and knees beside him. His back was to her and he lay terrifyingly still. She rolled him over, hands shaking, and a strange sort of noise left her throat when she saw his eyes were closed.
She pressed her fingers to his pulse point and with a groan, his eyes opened.
Maggie let out a breath and pressed her forehead to his. "Tony - Tony, oh my god-"
"Maggot." He grabbed her and used the hold to pull himself up to a sitting position. He winced and touched his face. "Shit. That was not Barnes."
she checked his pulse again, just to be sure, and glanced over her shoulder. T'Challa had gone up the stairs again. "I'm going after him, you stay here-"
"No-" he grabbed her jacket, and she paused. "I - you were right, something happened to him down there. Even when we took him in at the start, he would never have…" he shook his head, still seemingly unable to fully open his eyes. "You can't take him like this."
"But Steve can. I'll find him, and we'll get Bucky out of here. It's not safe for him or anyone else. There's something bigger going on here-"
"I'm with you on that. Urgh, I'm going to be sick." He grimaced, covered his mouth, then shook his head. "You gotta stay out of this, you can't rack up more crimes."
She punched his arm. It wasn't hard, but his eyes snapped open and he stared at her.
"Ow, what the hell?"
She glanced around. They were alone in the demolished cafeteria, save for Natasha slowly sitting up. "Tony, I know we argue over who's the smartest sibling, but let's for a moment assume it's me. You and I both know there's more going on here than either of us expected. So let's put our smarts together for a minute."
He stared at her for three long seconds, an ugly red mark blooming under his eye. And then he nodded.
They bent their heads together and began a frantic, hurried conversation.
Two minutes later, they pulled apart.
Maggie patted Tony on the shoulder and made to stand up, but he caught her arm again. "Hey," he said. "You and me, right?" His eyes shone.
She nodded and smiled grimly at him. "You and me. We can make anything happen."
"Just need a bit of imagination." His brow furrowed. "Don't get killed."
She leaned down, kissed him on the cheek, and then they split apart.
Maggie found them at the river.
Steve was coughing up water even as he dragged Bucky's limp frame onto the riverbank, water pouring off both of them. Maggie's boots crunched in the gravel as she sprinted to them, and her hands gripped at Bucky's sodden shirt, helping Steve drag him out. She took in Bucky's lifeless face, the water streaming from his nose and mouth.
"I got him, I got him," Steve coughed. He dragged him fully out of the water, and Maggie dropped down to her knees to press her fingers to his throat.
For a heartstopping moment, she thought she felt nothing. He was cold from the water, and he didn't move-
There. A heartbeat.
Maggie nodded, pressing her lips together so she wouldn't cry, and bent over his face to put her ear to his mouth. "He's breathing," she confirmed in a shaky voice.
Steve crouched down, grabbed Bucky's metal arm and one leg, and then heaved him over his shoulders. "We can't stay here."
Maggie shook her head and looked around. The area had been evacuated, but it wouldn't be for long. She could already hear helicopters in the distance. She recalled her scan of the area as they'd been driving in.
"Follow me. There's a parking lot nearby."
"Maggie, you should stay-"
"Shut up and do what I tell you, Steve Rogers."
Berlin Airport
Helmut Zemo eyed the TV screen rolling news coverage, a frown on his face.
"James Barnes, the suspect in the UN Vienna bombing, has escaped custody today. Also missing are Avengers Captain Steve Rogers, Sam Wilson, and Margaret Stark."
He shouldered his bag, and made his way to his gate.
Joint Counter Terrorism Centre
"-I'll be there in an hour."
Tony winced as the call disconnected, though the wince was really more in response to the medic spongeing at his wound with antiseptic.
"That Secretary Ross?" Natasha murmured from the next seat over, a heart rate monitor attached to her chest.
"Yep," Tony muttered.
Natasha eyed him. "You better figure out what you're going to tell him."
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Reviews
Browneyes: Neither would I!
Shorttrooper: I do love inflicting heart palpitations! Glad you enjoyed the last chapter ;) I like how you said Tony was wrong, yet right - that's the juicy thing about Civil War is that everyone is a little bit right and a little bit wrong, it's lots of fun. Hope you enjoyed this chapter too!
Strawberrycheese: Welcome, I'm so glad you're enjoying Maggie's story! Not long until the airport fight ;)