Apologies this is slightly late, and that I haven't replied to reviews from last chapter, I'll be getting on that ASAP! Enjoy x
Leipzig-Halle Airport
Maggie perched on the roof of the air traffic control tower, sheathed in her wings so she blended in with the dark metal roof, her HUD picking up electrical and radio signatures all over the place: she could make out at least three teams of soldiers and agents in cover amongst the airport buildings, three drones high in the sky, and several helicopters a few miles off. She kept an ounce of her attention on the rest of her team: Clint and Wanda in the parking deck, Sam and Bucky sneaking their way into the concourse, Steve and Scott on the tarmac. Redwing roved the area, scanning for troops and the Quinjet. Maggie couldn't try to trace the jet electronically since its stealthing capacity was too great.
Her eyes remained fixed on the tarmac, where Iron Man and War Machine had just flown down, EMP-ed their helicopter, and landed in front of Steve.
"Wow, it's so weird how you run into people at the airport, don't you think that's weird?" Tony asked, flicking back his helmet. Maggie's HUD zoomed in on his face and she winced at the blue-black bruise under his eye.
"Definitely weird," Rhodey responded. Maggie wondered if he was as angry today as he'd been in Bucharest.
"Hear me out, Tony," Steve called. "That doctor, the psychiatrist, he's behind all of this. He-"
With barely a sound T'Challa leaped out from behind one of the abandoned airport vehicles, landing with a crouch and rising to reveal the same dark uniform, glinting with Vibranium. Steve greeted him with a dry your highness, and Maggie's HUD zoomed out to take in the movement as two of the ground troop units emerged from their cover: they streamed out of the terminal building, from around the parking deck, and from behind vehicles, all in tactical uniforms and helmets and bristling with assault rifles.
Steve glanced around, as if assessing his new situation.
"Anyway," Tony said casually, taking a step toward Steve. "Ross gave me 36 hours to bring you in. That was 24 hours ago. Can you help a brother out?"
"You're after the wrong guy." Steve glanced aside as the rumble of two incoming Apache helicopters became audible as they churned toward the airport.
"Your judgement is askew," Tony said, and Steve's eyes flicked back. "Your old war buddy killed innocent people yesterday." Maggie's jaw clenched. I know he has to say it, but...
"He's not responsible, that doctor knew how to activate HYDRA's programming," Steve said clearly.
Good, Maggie thought, her fists clenched between her boots as she crouched on the tower roof. Get it all on film. She caught movement amongst the waiting ground troops and saw Natasha stride out from among them, in her black uniform.
"And there are five more super soldiers just like him," Steve continued. "I can't let the doctor find them first, Tony, I just can't."
"Steve," Natasha murmured, drawing his gaze to his right. "You know what's about to happen." Her voice was low and laced with warning. "Do you really wanna punch your way out of this one?"
Maggie had hacked into the ground forces's comms minutes ago, so she heard the gruff sound of Ross's voice when he spoke:
"Enough of this, Stark. You bring him in now-"
"Alright, I've run out of patience," Tony said, raising his hands to his mouth to shout: "Underoos!"
Maggie stared as a figure in a red and blue suit flipped over Steve's head, firing some kind of webbing and snatching the shield right out of his hands. He landed on a airstrip supply vehicle in a crouch and Maggie blinked, zooming in on him. She hadn't noticed him - his suit must have been stealthed. The figure began to talk, bumbling and nervous, and she settled back on her haunches with a frown.
"That's that spider guy," she muttered into their comms. "Shit. Steve, he's enhanced."
"Said he was bringing reinforcements, didn't he?" Bucky murmured in reply, and her eyes flicked to the concourse. He and Sam were supposed to be finding the Quinjet.
Tony managed to bring the spider guy's (Spider-Man, he'd introduced himself) ramble to an end.
"You've been busy," Steve commented, his hands still trapped in the webbing.
"And you've been a complete idiot," Tony snapped, the easy manner sliding from his face. "Dragging in Clint, rescuing Wanda from a place she doesn't even want to leave, a safe place." Tony's eyes flashed and there was sincerity there when he said: "You shouldn't have brought them into this. I'm trying to keep" - he sighed. "I'm trying to keep you from tearing the Avengers apart."
A cold silence dropped, witnessed by at least two dozen soldiers.
This isn't pretend, Maggie reminded herself. Sweat prickled on her skin, beneath the tight surety of her suit.
"You did that when you signed," Steve replied.
"Stark," came Ross's warning voice over the ground troops' comms.
Tony glanced aside. "Alright, we're done. You're gonna turn Barnes over, and then you, Wilson, and Maggie are gonna come with us, now, because it's us," Tony hit his chest angrily. "Or it's them," he gestured at the special forces lined in a half-circle fifty feet behind Steve, their guns trained on the small of his back. "And they've got no compunction about being impolite." His eyes burned and he muttered: "come on."
Maggie swallowed. She had hardly any idea where the line between reality and performance lay, but the hurt in Tony's eyes was real.
"We found it," Sam murmured over their comms. "Their Quinjet's in hangar five, north runway."
Maggie readied her limbs, her legs bunched under her and her hands carefully balanced, like a diver at the edge of a board.
Steve moved quickly: his hands rose, an arrow pierced through the webbing, and a breath later Lang expanded to his true size on the shield, kicking the Spider-Man away and handing the shield to Steve.
"Open fire!" Ross roared, and without hesitation the agents on the ground obeyed. Maggie dove off the air traffic control tower in the same moment that they let loose.
Gunfire exploded across the tarmac like metal rain. Scott went tiny again and Steve rolled, using his shield to get him to cover behind the helicopter, which sparked and jerked as the gunfire tore into its side. Even Natasha had to dive for cover, and Spider-Man fired off a burst of webbing and leaped out of range.
Bullets sparked off Iron Man and War Machine - they exchanged a few words and Tony jetted off the ground toward the parking deck, where he'd spotted Clint and Wanda running for Hangar 5, and Rhodey turned his repulsors toward Steve.
"Got two in the terminal, Wilson and Barnes," called an unknown voice over the ground force's comms, and T'Challa went tearing in that direction.
"Maggie, a little help!" Steve called, diving from the shredded helicopter to a ground control vehicle, then hurling his shield at Rhodey to fend him off a moment. His voice was barely audible over the thundering gunfire.
"I got it, you stop T'Challa!" Maggie replied. The ground forces didn't see her coming - she arced down through the sky toward them and activated six concealed canisters in her wings, three on either side. Black smoke vented from the canisters as she swooped low over the line of soldiers, laying down a thick cloud of dark, clogging gas over that section of the tarmac. The agents all wore gas masks, but she heard their shouts over the comms as their vision went dark. The gunfire continued to go off, the soldiers firing blindly in the direction they'd last seen Steve. Maggie couldn't hear anything other than the rattle of gunfire.
Maggie caught Natasha throwing a kick at Lang out of the corner of her eye, then wheeled and plunged back into the smoke cloud. She landed as quietly as she could on the tarmac and activated a device on her arm, which she'd had Clint steal from the Facility for her. Using her thermal vision to navigate she darted through the darkness, firing at each soldier she passed: tiny silver discs shot out of the device, attaching magnetically to whatever they found. Thanks to Maggie's aim, this happened to be the soldiers' rifles. She kept running, attracting a few shouts as the soldiers noticed movement, and when she'd fired twenty discs she hit the button on the device.
There was a collective electric whine and snap, and the gunfire abruptly cut out.
"That's this squad disabled," Maggie panted, still running. She could hear Steve fighting T'Challa now. "Heading to the-"
The smoke around her abruptly dispersed, and she looked up to see a helicopter thirty feet over her head, rotors churning and guns aimed in her direction. She blinked, then realized the only reason she wasn't being shot at right now was because she was surrounded with confused and disarmed soldiers.
A repulsor blast caught her directly in the chest, knocking her backward and down to the ground with an oof. She glanced to her right and saw Rhodey, the glowing red eyes of his helmet glaring down at her as he charged up another repulsor blast.
"So you're still mad," she coughed, rising to a crouch with her wings flared.
Inside the terminal, Bucky stared as the red-and-blue clad Spider-Man held the force of his metal fist at bay like it was nothing.
"You have a metal arm? That is awesome, dude."
Maggie and Rhodey hovered and darted about a hundred feet off the ground, firing projectiles and weaving in and out from each other. The gunship buzzed around them, occasionally firing at Maggie when the angle was clear. One of its missiles had already put a crater in the ground. Maggie had snapped off one of Rhodey's rifle turrets, making him audibly curse, and now she watched as he dove toward her, arms outstretched as if to tackle her out of the sky. She could hear the thunderous rotors of the gunship behind her and to the right.
Maggie turned and gunned her engines, as if to run away, but when she could feel Rhodey right on her heels she flipped, beat her wings to put her a few feet below Rhodey's trajectory, and slammed her feet up into his chest.
Rhodey jerked off course, his momentum and her kick sending him crashing right through the tail of the helicopter. The tail bent, but did not completely break, and the Apache spun away, the pilots flailing at the controls.
Maggie flipped again, wings carving through the air, and looked down to see Steve and T'Challa battling at the very edge of the terminal, claw marks raked down the side of the Vibranium shield. She cast a cursory glance over the airport and her stomach churned. This is already so much more of a mess than we expected. Wanda and Clint somewhere over by a plume of smoke rising into the sky, no doubt of Tony's doing, Scott's ass was getting kicked by Nat, she and Steve were pinned down here, and… she could hear conflict over Bucky and Sam's end of the comms. How are we going to get to the Quinjet?
Maggie fired an energy bolt down at T'Challa as she buzzed over he and Steve, on her way to the terminal.
Wanda brought an avalanche of cars down on Tony, crushing the Iron Man suit beneath the tonnes of shattered metal and glass.
"Oof," Clint muttered. "Sorry, man."
"He'll live," Wanda replied shortly, and jerked her head. "Let's go."
Joint Counter Terrorism Centre, Berlin
The operations hub had dissolved into chaos. Everyone was talking at once, analysts calling instructions and questions to agents on the ground, the comms loud with gunfire, fighting, and soldiers shouting for orders. The footage on the screens was chaos too: some footage bouncing around as soldiers ran to the tarmac, others blurred as helicopters and Avengers flew, the fugitives only visible in brief glances.
Ross gripped the back of one of the analyst's chairs, leaning in to try to get a picture of the situation. "B-Team, move in!"
"They've split up, sir," called an analyst four seats down. "We're trying-"
Two more screens were clouded with darkness and a soldier called: "My gun's jammed!"
Ross's fingers tightened on the back of the chair. "Take out Ms Stark as a matter of urgency, lethal force authorized."
Behind him, Everett Ross watched on with his arms folded tightly and a perpetual frown on his face.
On her way over to the terminal Maggie encountered many more of the ground forces - she disabled more weapons, exploded the engine of an armored car that had somehow navigated through the chaos, and when she was within sight of the terminal windows, a beam of electric-blue light slammed into her mid-flight.
Her HUD flashed black, and the engines of her wings died. Maggie's heart leaped into her mouth as she plummeted, but then half a second later her wing failsafes kicked in and power surged back through her flight systems, her engines roaring back to life and lifting her back up the few feet of altitude she'd lost.
She glanced down in the direction of the blue beam to see another squad of soldiers in partial cover behind an armored car. They'd propped what looked like a silver cannon against the car hood, and her HUD scanned it and flashed with an analysis: Electromagnetic Pulse Generator.
Maggie's wings swooshed the air as she hovered in place a moment, her red slitted goggles glaring down at the soldiers. They were going for their rifles now.
"You're not the first assholes to try that," she muttered, then lifted her wrist and fired an energy blast right down the barrel of the EMP generator - it exploded outward in a crackle of blue light, shorting out the soldiers' rifles before they could fire. With that, Maggie veered around and jetted right through the terminal window in a hail of glass.
She glanced around, her wings beating to keep her aloft and making wind swirl in the contained space. Could've sworn they were in here last I-
"Down here!"
She looked directly downward and spotted the two figures she'd been looking for on the floor two stories below, surrounded by shattered glass. Sam was sitting up, struggling against the translucent webbing that trapped his arms against his chest. Bucky lay beside him, glaring at the webbing which had splattered his metal hand to the floor.
Her head jerked up, searching for Spider-Man.
"Redwing got him," Sam called. "Help me out of this-"
Maggie cut her engines and dropped, her flared wings slowing her descent until she crunched down in the broken glass on the floor. Bucky jerked and his hand came free from the floor, so Maggie turned to Sam and began slashing her claws through the webbing on his chest, careful not to cut his arms. He eventually came free, and the two of them got to their feet.
Maggie cast a glance over the two of them - whole, if annoyed-looking - then looked up. Her HUD, able to scan electrical activity through walls and rooves, picked out the two remaining helicopters buzzing in from the south, armored vehicles forming a perimeter around the airport, and more troops flooding into the area.
"Redwing's spotted snipers taking positions," Sam said, checking his wrist-scanner.
"We better move," Bucky said, and with a touch to her elbow and a glance as he passed her, they all set off running.
Tony dropped down beside Natasha, who lay grimacing on the ground. Lang had somehow thrown a whole gas truck at them, the remnants of which lay smoking on the tarmac.
"Alright, now I'm pissed," Rhodey snarled as he stood up.
"Is this part of the plan?" Natasha asked as Tony helped her up, looking up into his helmet. Her eyes held a warning: this is so much more complicated than we expected.
Ross's voice thundered over the comms: "Stark, you better get your asses into gear and start bringing people down or you're done for-"
"Yep, on it," Tony said tightly. His mind ran mile a minute. Get them to the Quinjet, get them out... while trying my best not to let them do that.
"Got them, they've converged and they're running past Terminal 3, heading west!" called an analyst over the comms.
Tony grabbed Natasha's arm. "Hold on."
Bucky, Sam, and Maggie had dashed out of the terminal and back into the daylight after fighting their way past another squad of soldiers. They'd barely made it past the first gantryway before they spotted Steve sprinting ahead of them, followed by Wanda, Clint, and Scott.
"Come on!" Steve called when he spotted them, not breaking his stride. They fell into step behind him, boots flying over the tarmac, and Maggie's heart leaped when she spotted the Quinjet across the airfield, tucked away in a hangar. The helicopters were two terminals away, hovering over the wreckage they'd left behind.
We can make it, she thought, her wings still spread to either side of her as she ran. She glanced over her shoulder in the direction she'd last seen Tony. They tried their best, they made it look good-
A golden beam scorched down in front of them. Steve skidded to a halt and Maggie flared her wings to slow herself as the beam burned across the ground, carving a charred line along the tarmac like a finish line.
"Vision," Maggie breathed, looking up to see the android floating several feet up in the air, ethereal and weightless.
"Captain Rogers," Vision called, his cape rippling behind him. "I know you believe what you're doing is right. But for the collective good, you must surrender now."
"Vision," she murmured again, stepping forward. She didn't know if Vision knew the full plan. Surely he must. But she hadn't had a chance to talk to him about it - about any of it, really, and she'd been missing his calm, rational insight the past few days.
Steve held out a hand to stop Maggie's unconscious press towards her friend, and she did stop. Her mouth closed. Now is not the time. She held Vision's gaze though. He looked down at them with a grim and unreadable air.
The sudden pause Vision had brought was not filled with silence - whining repulsors announced Tony's arrival as he surged down to land with Nat at his side, and the air grew loud as the remaining helicopters flew over, their gun turrets aimed down at Steve, Maggie, Bucky, Wanda, Sam, Scott, and Clint as they stood conveniently clumped in the middle of empty space. Agents and soldiers flooded out from the airport, taking up positions behind and to the right of them, though keeping a healthy distance. Gun safeties clicked off.
Rhodey landed with a clank, dropping T'Challa who rolled into a crouch, and Spider-Man flipped in from a nearby turret.
They were completely surrounded: Avengers ahead, soldiers to the right and back of them, helicopters hovering overhead. Out in the distance on the airfield, Maggie saw a line of blue and red flashing lights. She could still hear Ross calling orders and ultlimatums over the other team's comms.
"Get on the ground, now!" someone with a megaphone shouted from amongst the horde of soldiers. "You have ten seconds until we start shooting!"
Maggie's HUD flashed with warnings: the three drones in the sky had fixed their missile locks on the group, and there were eight snipers on the rooves of the airport with their aims fixed on them. She glanced at Bucky, and he looked back at her, his eyes a mixture of concern and steadiness. She let out a breath and nodded at him.
Her eyes flicked to Tony. His mask stayed on, and his gauntlets were loose by his sides. She could feel his gaze on her.
For a moment, the air felt very quiet. It wasn't, in reality, what with the helicopters and soldiers shouting and distant sirens, but the Avengers stood still, staring each other down. Smoke drifted in the wind.
"What do we do, Cap?" Sam asked.
Maggie looked to Steve. As she had been a hundred times before, she was ready to follow his orders.
"We fight," Steve bit out.
He stepped forward, and Ross shouted "Fire!" over the comms just as Steve said: "Wanda, now!"
Wanda's eyes glowed red as she threw up her hands and a burst of scarlet magic furled outward, blooming around them like a cocoon. The sudden hail of bullets crashed into the shimmering red forcefield with a force that made Wanda's knees shake, but she held firm, her teeth gritted and her hands and eyes burning with magic. Maggie let out a breath and realized she'd been unconsciously tensing for the onslaught of bullets.
Through the blazing forcefield Maggie could see the flashes of dozens of gun muzzles from the soldiers, and hear the rattling gun turrets of the helicopters. Sam stared down at his Redwing wrist scanner, hitting controls, and a second later Maggie heard cries over the other teams' comms:
"Aerial contact, something just took out my gun-"
Clint and Bucky fired - Clint with his arrows, and Bucky with a rifle he'd pulled from his back that had been equipped with the same EMP discs Maggie had used. They took out five more snipers between them with uncanny accuracy, the bolts passing through Wanda's magic like air. Scott hurled something toward the mass of soldiers behind them, which seconds later expanded outward to the recognizable shape of a water truck - it obscured most of the soldiers from view and began to judder with the gunfire hitting it.
Maggie, meanwhile, touched the side of her HUD, her eyes darting as she finalized her hack into the operations system of the drones in the sky above. She blinked, and hundreds of feet above three explosions blossomed in the sky.
They had moved as one; the shots, water truck, Redwing, and the drones exploding all occurring in synchronicity as Steve continued to pace forward, picking up speed. The rest of them followed, including Wanda who walked with her arms spread and her teeth bared.
Ahead of them, Tony and the others took in the sudden incapacitation of half of Ross's resources with something like surprise, and then broke into a run toward them.
In response Steve started sprinting and Maggie picked up the pace to follow him. Her boots thudded on the ground and her breath already rasped in her chest. She saw Tony and Rhodey take off, repulsors burning, and she and Sam snapped their wings out and took off to mirror them. Gunfire still filled the air around them from the helicopters and the soldiers, who were fanning out and around the water truck, but as they broke into a full run Wanda let out a cry and jerked her arms; their protective shroud shimmered, forming a wall behind them to protect their backs as they leaped forward and into the fight.
The gunfire cut out a moment before they collided; Maggie had rightly guessed that the soldiers and gunships wouldn't fire on their own side. She had only a moment to feel vindicated, however, before the Avengers slammed together.
Maggie dove for T'Challa, reading murder in the determined set to his head and the flash of his claws. He rolled under her, slashing up and raking three claw-lines along the front of her armor as he passed - she shot over his head and she glanced back to see him collide with Bucky. She turned, but found herself faced with Vision; she gunned her engines and charged him, only for him to phase and her to fly right through him. She spun, firing a volley of energy blasts at him as he reformed - they broke over him like waves onto rocks and he merely shrugged it off.
Missiles and bullets streaked around the epicenter of the fight. Maggie's vision blurred as she twisted in the air, firing projectiles at those who used to be on her team; she saw metal, fire, scarlet magic, Vision's golden energy beam, the spiralling flash of Steve's shield, repulsor blasts and smoke. She flew through it all, wings flaring wide to catch herself one moment and pulling tight the next to dodge through fighters. Webbing snared one wing until she sheared it off with a snap of the razor edges of her wings, an arrow flew over her shoulder, gunfire rattled along her other wing until she flipped and fired a concussive grenade at the gunship that had targeted her. The grenade went off, shattering the helicopter's windshield and sending it wobbling, but the craft stayed up.
Maggie veered away from the fight and over to the soldiers fanning out from the terminal building, faster than they could swing their guns up to aim at her. She activated the last gas canisters on her wings as she soared over them, laying down another thick blanket of smoke to obscure their visibility. She heard a shriek of metal and glanced over to see one of the helicopters going down - she had no idea who had done it.
She saw the soldiers with the rocket launcher just in time; they fired and she veered aside, the missile sailing over her right shoulder with a high whistle. She pulled a stun grenade from her belt and dropped it as she flew over them, and the detonation buffeted her wings upward when it went off. Soldiers went flying back, shouting.
Circling back to the main fight, a blur of red and blue zipped past her and she pounced. Spider-Man had been swinging all around the place, firing webs at peoples' legs and weapons and generally being a nuisance. He couldn't have seen her coming, but when she was inches away from seizing him with her clawed gloves he yelped and flipped out of the way. Maggie skidded to the ground, wings digging into the concrete in a shower of sparks, and sprang after Spider-Man again.
"Whoah!" he cried out, firing two globs of webbing at her in quick succession; she saw him touch a finger to a pressure pad on the base of his palm, and the webbing shot out from a device at his wrist. She ducked the first projectile, but was so distracted by the device that the second one splattered onto her left foot, sticking her to the ground.
Maggie cursed and stumbled, and a thundering over her head told her that one of the gunships had buzzed over the battle and now hovered above her. Her wings shivered in the downdraft and she could practically feel the guns training themselves on her back. Spider-Man leaped toward her, leg outstretching for a kick.
Maggie used the anchor-point of her left foot stuck to the ground to lean, sending Spider-Man sailing by. But instead of letting him fly past she grabbed his outstretched foot and used his momentum to pull him into the ground. He landed with an oof, then yelped as Maggie dropped, grabbed his arm, and twisted.
With her elbow in Spider-Man's back and his right arm in her grip, Maggie turned, pointed Spider-Man's hand at the gunship hovering overhead, and jammed her finger into the base of his palm. A glob of webbing shot out from his wrist device and collided with the central turbine of the helicopter's rotors. There was an awful grinding sound and a bang, and then the helicopter listed to one side, the rotor blades wobbling.
"Hey!" Spider-Man complained, then elbowed Maggie in the side to force her to let him go. Her side ached - he was strong. The guy flipped back to his feet, turned - and then the whites of the eyeslits in his mask widened when a blade flicked out from her right heel and sliced through the webbing holding her to the ground.
She looked up, claws bared, and half a second later an arrow soared over her head and detonated in Spider-Man's face - he tumbled away, and Maggie dove back into the fight.
The tarmac had turned into a battle zone. The concrete was pockmarked and charred, and still the Avengers battled in place, leaping and diving and exchanging blows with one, before swinging for another. Maggie's side were throwing everything at Ross's men that they could; shields and EMPs and stun grenades and concussive blasts to knock them down and away. The soldiers had scattered, no longer presenting the united wall of bristling rifles that they had a moment ago. As Maggie watched, Sam took down the remaining gunship with a flick of his wings.
Maggie fired a few energy bolts down at Natasha, to make her roll away from Lang, before something hit her in the small of her back and she was knocked to the ground. She rolled, her wings clattering as they protected her. She lifted her head and found Iron Man standing over her, the eyeslits in his helmet glowing. Steve's shield bounced off his back, sending him stumbling forward a step.
Maggie didn't think. She sprang for Iron Man, only for him to punch her in the shoulder to send her falling past him, then turn and power up both repulsors. Maggie rolled and the whining blast burst past her, to smash into the ground by a squad of soldiers who went diving back behind cover.
Maggie and Tony went for each other again; he threw a punch at her and she grabbed his wrist, spun past the gauntlet, and slammed her dark helmet into his face. There was a clang, and he pulled back a little to look at her.
"You had to know that wouldn't do anything," he said.
She jerked at his wrist and swept her wing into his legs - he toppled to the ground with a metallic clank, then fired all four repulsors and jetted up into the air. Maggie leaped after him, her wings unfurling like black metal sails.
For a few seconds they arced around each other, firing repulsor blasts and energy bolts at each other, weaving through the chaos around them. Maggie dove in close to claw at one of his boot repulsors, and for her trouble got grabbed by her right wing and slammed back down to the ground - it wasn't gentle, but nothing broke. She buffeted Tony with her wings, jostling him where he tried to pin her down, and they both froze for a moment when a bullet sparked off her shoulder.
Tony glanced up, then twisted so he was between her and the soldiers even as he aimed another repulsor down at her face -
Maggie angled her wrists toward him and unleashed her flamethrowers. Tony went reeling back in a blast of white-hot flames, and Maggie used the moment of distraction to shoot back into the air.
"We've got to get clear of those soldiers, they could kill someone!" she shouted over the comms. She veered up to help get Rhodey off Sam's back, and out of the corner of her eye noticed Nat sparring with Clint. A flare of red snared Nat's ankle and she soared away.
"You were pulling your punches," she heard Wanda tell Clint.
Maggie banked, firing energy blasts at Vision to cloud his eyesight of Lang and Steve, but then glanced back again when the whole right side of her vision flared red.
She turned with herarms raised to protect herself. She'd assumed it was a blast of some kind, but... instead of fire she saw a tidal wave of scarlet washing over all the soldiers between them and the terminal. Wanda stood with her arms spread and her hair drifting in an unearthly breeze.
Instead of flying backwards under the wave of magic, as Maggie had expected them to, as one each soldiers' eyes glowed red and they dropped their weapons, turned tail, and ran. They didn't make a sound, but sprinted as fast as their legs could take them. The battle raged on between the Avengers, but abruptly a whole chunk of Ross's men had disappeared from the tarmac.
Wanda dropped to her knees, her fingers rigid as she concentrated, and Maggie swooped low to deflect a repulsor blast aimed at her.
"Way to go!" she called as she swooped past. Wanda only groaned.
Joint Counter Terrorism Centre, Berlin
Ross slammed a fist into the desk between two gobsmacked analysts.
"Someone needs to take out Maximoff, now!"
In the red glow of Wanda's magic, Maggie saw two dark shapes that had broken away from the main fight.
T'Challa hadn't gone after anyone other than Bucky, and somehow he'd managed to isolate him from the others. Maggie's stomach bottomed out as she saw T'Challa grappling him.
"I didn't kill your father," Bucky grit out, his face creased with pain.
"Then why did you run?" T'Challa pulled Bucky's metal arm away from his throat like it was nothing, and Maggie angled her wings down to dive toward them.
It was a near thing; T'Challa dismantled Bucky's defense, lightning-quick and with the strength of a super soldier. He slammed a foot into Bucky's chest and sent him slamming into a pile of packaged boxes, then dove for him with razor-sharp claws outstretched.
T'Challa glanced up a moment before Maggie slammed right into his head - perhaps sensing the downdraft of her wings, or hearing the sound of her engines. But he wasn't quick enough to avoid tumbling back under the force of her downward dive - her outstretched heelspur screeched on his uniform - nor to dodge the energy blast she fired at him; she'd been charging this one for half a minute, and the red crackling burst launched him into the air and then through a gantryway.
Bucky stared up at Maggie, sitting with his back to the boxes and his chest heaving. "Thanks, doll," he breathed, and the ghost of a smile crossed his face.
"You're welcome, handsome," she replied, then kicked off the ground and back into the sky.
Joint Counter Terrorism Centre, Berlin
Ross watched the footage from their last remaining drone, which one clever analyst had had the foresight to hold back from the beginning of the fight.
"That's it, focus in on her," he ordered, watching the feed zoom in on the battle - it was hard to distinguish anything in the smoke and flares of light outside the airport terminal, but he saw several flying figures zoom across the frame. The drone hovered past them, aiming at the red-cloaked figure that fired bolts of light along the ground.
The crosshairs centered on her head.
"That's it, fire now!" Ross shouted.
The drone pilot went to hit the button - and the screen went dark.
"What happened?" Ross demanded, his eyes skimming to the other, chaotic screens: soldiers running, or hiding, Stark's screen showing a blur of sky and ground.
"We lost signal, sir," the drone pilot replied grimly. "Must have been destroyed."
Leipzig-Halle Airport, Berlin
Wanda turned at the sound of an explosion above her, then followed the falling drone parts down to see Bucky. He rose to his feet from where he'd been on one knee, and lowered the EMP-rifle he'd carried into battle. His eyes were keen and calm, and he looked from the fallen drone to Wanda with a sniper's focus.
"Thank you," she breathed.
Vision grabbed Maggie's wrist to stop her punch, the two of them high above the battle that raged below them. Steve was sparring with Spider-Man, and Scott had somehow infiltrated Tony's suit. The air seemed cleaner this high up, and a moment of quiet passed as they spun in midair, her wrist in Vision's grip.
"There's more at stake here than Bucky, Vision," Maggie breathed, pulling uselessly against him. His green human eyes regarded her and she tried to gauge his face. How much do you know? "That doctor is out there somewhere, and he could hurt more people." A few more wing-beats passed. He did not move to hurt her. "We're friends, Vision, please trust me-"
He eyed her. "I intend to act in the interests of humanity."
And then he winked. It was almost imperceptible, but she saw it, and then he let go of her wrist and the gem in his forehead glowed, giving her a second of warning before he fired the golden unibeam. She beat her wings and dodged out of the way, then they whirled into combat.
Bucky and Steve dove behind two runway vehicles for cover. Steve peered over his, eyeing the flyers rocketing over the airstrip. Most of Ross's men had cleared out, but some still remained on the fringes. There had to be more reinforcements coming, too.
"We gotta go, we're running out of time," Bucky urged, ducking low. "That guy's probably in Siberia by now."
"We gotta draw out the flyers," Steve said, glancing up. Bucky followed his gaze, watching Maggie rocket overhead, followed by Vision. "I'll take Vision, you get to the jet."
"No," came Sam's voice, audible over the sounds of rushing wind and repulsor blasts. "Both of you get to the jet. The rest of us aren't getting out of here."
Steve looked down, his jaw clenched.
"As much as I hate to admit it," Clint added. "If we're gonna win this one, some of us might have to lose it."
"We're too evenly matched," came Maggie's voice. "I should have realized it sooner. There's no realistic way we all escape."
"This isn't the real fight, Steve," Sam said.
"No," Bucky said, craning his neck to spot where Maggie had flown off to. "We don't know what'll happen to you-"
"We'll be okay," she replied, her voice forcefully chipper. "I'll make it okay."
Steve looked down, and a brief pause passed. "All right," he finally muttered. "What's the play, Sam?"
"We need a diversion. Something big."
It took Maggie's mind several seconds to comprehend the sheer size that Lang had just expanded to - he'd become a giant, standing tall over the massive passenger plane and taller even than the airport terminal itself, his helmet glinting in the sun and his hand wrapped around Rhodey's leg like War Machine was a small bird.
Both sides of the comms rang out with exclamations and expletives.
After a few moments of sheer shock, they returned to battle. Lang forged carnage, tossing Rhodey and kicking vehicles. Vision swooped down to prevent T'Challa from being flattened by a bus, and in that moment Maggie saw T'Challa notice Steve and Bucky running for hangar 5. She dove.
Scott did his best to get in T'Challa's way as Sam and Tony veered around each other, but was distracted by Rhodey and Spider-Man lighting him up with explosions. T'Challa kept running, cat-like in his grace as he evaded obstacles and fighters, until he skidded to a halt when the Wyvern slammed down in his path.
She rose, her wings flared and her claws bared as she glared at him. He bared his own claws, the Vibranium sliding out of his gloves with a snick.
"You choose to protect murderers and criminals, Ms Stark?" he hissed. His suit glowed gold for a moment when Scott stepped on a truck and it exploded behind them.
"Someone else killed your father," she replied. "And you're one to talk about hypocrisy, Black Panther: an enhanced man supporting the Accords, which would legally have you wearing a tracking bracelet your whole life. Or are you above the law, too?"
He dove for her, claws flashing, and she met his leap with a swinging punch. Her knuckles clanged off the Vibranium and he tried to dodge past her, but she scooped his body with her wing and slung him back the way he'd come, making him hiss. He turned back, and she saw his focus had gone from Steve and Bucky, to her. He's ruled by his anger, she realized as he dove for her again.
She knew how anger could blind you.
T'Challa fought fast, whirling and snapping out with blows she barely saw - a kick caught her in the knee, making her prosthetic creak dangerously, and he almost dove past her. He whirled suddenly, catching a pair of arrows that had been aimed at his head. They exploded in his face and T'Challa merely rolled his shoulders as if they were an annoyance.
Clint leaped down from the top of a van, putting himself between T'Challa and the hangar.
"We haven't met yet," he said, flicking his bow so it reformed into a staff. "I'm Clint."
T'Challa's gaze flicked between Clint and Maggie. "I don't care."
Maggie and Clint dove together.
Half a minute later, Maggie heard Ross roaring over the comms: "Forget the big one, Vision, you bring in Barnes and Rogers right now!"
She glanced up to see Vision floating toward Scott, with a glance back at Maggie as if to say come on. He turned back and phased right through Scott's chest, making Scott yelp.
Maggie flared her wings and leaped up - only to feel claws snag into her prosthetic foot and slam her right back down to the ground. She rolled, snarling, and kicked up at T'Challa. When Clint stepped in and she managed to struggle free, she turned back to see the air traffic control tower falling, right in front of the hanger. Vision watched with a clenched jaw.
"No!" she cried, and in the same moment a flare of red magic caught the falling debris, leaving the hangar entrance clear for the moment.
Maggie let out a breath and soared upward, leaving Clint to handle T'Challa. Wind sheared over her as she rocketed past Scott, and her eyes moved to Vision - he was preparing another unibeam, his fists clenched.
Maggie raised her wrist and fired a short-range missile. She hadn't used any in the fight, because she wasn't fighting to kill, but Vision could take this and she needed to give him a good excuse to stop. He whirled and the missile caught him full in the chest, exploding harmlessly but ensnaring in him a bright blossom of fire.
Maggie's heart dropped when she saw, behind him, Rhodey soaring toward the hangar and Wanda. She saw him hesitate, caught between Steve and Bucky's undefended backs, and Wanda distracted with her magic. She raised her arm, preparing another missile, but it was too late. Rhodey could not hesitate.
He raised his own arm and a sonic cannon burst downward, hitting Wanda with a stream of concentrated sound waves that Maggie knew felt like a headache exploding in her mind. She'd designed the weapon, after all.
Wanda screamed, her hands flying to her head and her knees dropping to the ground, and the tower fell just as Steve and Bucky disappeared behind it.
Maggie fired the missile at Rhodey, and he turned.
"Come at me!" she shouted, to him and Vision and anyone else left in the sky. Her wings flared, the sharp talons glinting in the sunlight. I can be dangerous.
The tower crashed down behind Steve and Bucky, partially blocking the entrance to the hangar. The Quinjet was there ahead of them, but they came to a halt as soon as they were clear of the debris.
Because Natasha stood there, waiting for them.
"You're not gonna stop," she murmured, her green eyes on Steve. Behind them, whines and explosions filled the air as Maggie tried to draw the fight back toward Lang.
Steve let out a sigh as he eyed his friend. Bucky glanced between them. "You know I can't."
Natasha lowered her center of gravity. "Come on, then."
Steve started forward, his stomach already twisting at the thought of fighting her, but then Natasha's gaze flicked over his shoulder, her eyes widened, and she flung up her hand to fire a Widow's Bite.
Steve flinched. But the projectile crackled past him and he whirled to see T'Challa on the ground, seized up with the electrical energy and groaning.
A moment of silence passed as the three of them stared at him. Steve glanced back at Natasha, his own eyes wide.
Natasha's jaw worked. "Go," she muttered.
Steve and Bucky ran.
For a moment, Maggie had become the Wyvern.
She went after Rhodey and the others with ruthless accuracy, firing energy bolts and missiles and bullets to make herself the most dangerous player on the field, and hopefully distract them from whatever was happening in the hangar. She trusted in her friends' strength to protect them from her weapons.
And it worked, for a time. Then Rhodey, Tony, and Spider-Man were distracted by bringing down Lang, who came down with a thunderous crash, and Vision was distracted by Wanda, who lay clutching her head on the ground. And Maggie found herself without an opponent.
She glanced around. There were helicopters on the horizon, as well as incoming lights on the ground that must be a fleet of armored cars, but the airport, for the moment, was the battleground of the Avengers alone. She glanced back at the hangar and her stomach swooped as she saw the nose of a Quinjet emerging from over the top of the debris.
She raised a hand, senseless for a moment in the midst of her adrenaline, and the Quinjet's engines burned and it rocketed forward, shooting over her head and buffeting her in its downdraft.
They made it, she thought numbly.
Until she registered the dark, dangling shape on the Quinjet's underbelly, legs buffeted in the slipstream but its claws lodged firmly in the metal hull.
"We didn't shake T'Challa!" Steve called over the comms, and Maggie became an arrow shot from a bow.
The Quinjet was faster than her once at speed, but not in the midst of takeoff. Her already-burning engines hit their max capacity and she arced after the jet, feeling the g-forces pressing on her skin and bones. Wind screamed past her and her wings cut through it all, pulled tight to offer the least resistance as she surged upward.
Ross on the other comms shouted "Vision, Rhodes, Stark, you bring down that Quinjet or-"
Her HUD locked in on T'Challa - he clung to the bottom of the jet with his impossible strength, using his claws to inch forward to the cockpit. She recognized the strength in him, the determination to complete his mission no matter the cost. He won't stop until he kills himself or someone else.
"Got him," Maggie said. Just as the Quinjet began to outstrip her speed she overloaded her engines, pushing them beyond any safe limit and she surged forward, crashing into T'Challa and shoulder-charging him off the bottom of the jet. He cried out and she snared her arms around him like a long-lost friend.
For a half-second she shot out ahead of the Quinjet with her arms tightly linked around the Black Panther and she heard Steve and Bucky's intake of breath over the comms. Then she flared her wings and eased the pressure on her engines and the Quinjet shot overhead, free of the stowaway.
"Thanks, Maggie," Steve called.
"Go!" she shouted, clenching her arms around T'Challa as he kicked at her, his cries desperate and angry right in her ear. They were going too fast for sense, sky and earth a confusing stream around them.
Maggie banked her wings, preparing to slow and bring T'Challa safely to the ground, but the incoming roar of engines made her heart drop.
Rhodey, Tony, and Sam buzzed past her as she struggled with T'Challa in midair, Rhodey and Tony's sights fixed on the Quinjet. They were faster than her - they'd be able to catch up, unless something slowed them in the next few seconds. T'Challa clawed at her armor, carving more gouges into it, and she knew she couldn't fire any weapons like this.
Her brain whirled, doing the math.
"Sam," she called into the comms. "You bring down Tony if he doesn't follow us!"
"What?"
But she didn't reply, too busy isolating Rhodey's comms system. It took two seconds, and then she was speaking directly into his helmet - she saw his flight falter as he registered her voice.
"You and I are going to have to take a fall, my friend." She explained her plan, simultaneously sending an encrypted message to Vision, which he'd be able to understand faster than words.
Maggie sent power surging back to her engines, making T'Challa cry out and twist his head to try to spot the Quinjet, claws dragging along the back of her armor - he thinks I'm following them again. The glowing lights of Rhodey and Tony's repulsors swam in her vision, as did the exploding missiles that Sam fired after them.
Rhodey shouted over the other team's comms: "Vision, I got a bandit on my six! Target his thruster, turn him into a glider!"
Come on, Vision.
A beam of scorching golden light surged into the sky. Maggie could hear the power of it as it burned past her, blasting upward -
Only to just miss Sam's thruster pack. The light scorched straight along the front of the War Machine armor, blowing the arc reactor and making the lights of his repulsors die. Rhodey's momentum propelled him along for half a moment, and then he began to fall.
Maggie's breath stopped. She'd rocketed at a perpendicular angle to Rhodey and Tony, in line with them but a hundred feet below, still struggling with T'Challa's kicking, slashing form.
Rhodey dropped like a hunk of metal. Maggie flared her wings, got herself under him and -
Her claws gouged into the armor plate behind his helmet, catching fast - the weight of him dragged her down and she flared her wings as she heaved in a breath.
"Rhodey!" Tony called, panic lacing his voice. She heard the changing burn of his repulsors as he turned to dive downward, followed by Sam.
Smoke billowed from Rhodey's scorched suit as they plunged downward, the wind loud in Maggie's outstretched wings. Her arm ached where she gripped Rhodey's suit. Maggie had calculated she would be able to carry both Rhodey and T'Challa, but knew she had to make it look dire; she had to struggle, or Tony would go on without them. But she found she didn't need to act at all. It was an effort to slow their fall at all; her body contorted at an awkward angle as she did her best to fire her engines to slow the descent while gripping both men. They spun, buffeted by the wind, and she saw Iron Man arcing down toward them.
But T'Challa was still consumed by his anger. He pulled against her, his voice hoarse from his furious roaring, and Maggie knew he must be feeling that molten-hot surge of fire that she'd felt all those times she lost trace of the Winter Soldier. The kind that burned you up from the inside and scourged all thought and sense.
And then she felt his claws, which had been digging into her plate armor, slip and drag across the base of her left wing.
It didn't hurt - she'd not built the sensation in her wings to hurt. But she felt the numbing electrical pop as vital circuitry in the base of the wing shredded, and then the silence and stillness as her left engines died.
Wind howled in Maggie's ears, a symphony to the horror and panic curdling in her gut. Her left wing snapped back like a useless piece of metal in the wind and they went into a barely-controlled fall; she and Rhodey and T'Challa held fast together but spinning, tumbling toward the ground. White-blue sky and the dull green ground blurred together, clogged by the smoke from Rhodey's suit.
"Rhodey! Maggie!" Tony roared, and the world kept spinning and Maggie felt her muscles pulling as she did her best to hold tight to Rhodey and T'Challa, burning all the engines on her remaining wing and trying to keep as much surface area spread to catch the wind as possible. They slowed a little-
The ground came as an unexpected shock.
Maggie landed partially on Rhodey and the weight of both her and T'Challa came down on her arm - she heard a snap and thought in panic of her other wing, even as they bounced and rolled, and she lost her grip on both of them. She felt only movement and pain, unsure of where it was or what was happening, her vision greying into a thousand staticy sparks and her ears ringing with a scream - her own, she realized with a delay.
It took a few moments for sense to return, as if the fall had dashed all the thoughts out of her brain. She came to with a shout, feeling grass underneath her and seeing sky above. Her stomach churned like she'd just stepped off a rollercoaster. She rolled and glanced around.
Rhodey lay on the ground twenty yards away, not moving, and T'Challa was closer - he was already on all fours, his head rising toward her. Maggie's ears rang. They must have been miles from the airport.
She felt the impact of Tony on the ground more than she heard it - he landed far harder than normal, repulsors singeing the ground.
"You have taken everything from me!"
At the hoarse shout Maggie glanced back at T'Challa to see him springing toward her, his claws outstretched. She fell back and raised her hand, crying out in pain, but then a repulsor blast scorched over her head and into T'Challa's chest, sending him flying.
Sam touched down by Rhodey, dropping to his knees and ripping Rhodey's mask off his face. "Come on, come on."
Maggie couldn't see Rhodey's face from her angle, but she heard the wince in his voice as he said: "Ow. I think I broke my legs."
Sam let out a breath, his head bowing. "You're alive, man. Thank god."
Tony glanced back at his friend, then turned back and stormed past Maggie toward T'Challa. "You-"
Maggie tried to get her arms underneath herself to push upward, but as she put pressure on the left one spears of pain lanced up her arm and into her brain. She cried out as she collapsed again, tears immediately springing to her eyes.
Gasping, she put pressure on her other hand and tried to see through blurry vision as Tony advanced toward T'Challa. "Tony, Tony go easy," she called through the pain. "He's lost his father."
Tony slowed, but it seemed the mood for fighting had left T'Challa. He was on his knees now, looking up at the sky where the Quinjet had already vanished into the clouds. Maggie followed his gaze, then squeezed her eyes shut.
Five Winter Soldiers. I hope Steve and Bucky are enough. Even as she thought it, a tear spilled down her cheek. Nothing I have hoped for recently has come true.
And then she heard sirens, and helicopters churning the air, and her eyes opened again.
What now?
Reviews
Strawberrycheese (from chapter 70): Thanks so much!
Shorttrooper (from chapter 70): Maggie did her best to stop Bucky, but him in full Winter Soldier mode vs her with no wings or weapons? Not going to end in her favour. I'm glad you're enjoying the slight changes to Civil War canon!
MaceGolfer: So glad you enjoyed the chapter! And yes, I'm enjoying writing Wanda :)
Strawberrycheese: Thanks so much!
Shorttrooper: You're welcome for the feels ;) There shall be more to come in the coming chapters. Sorry for all the anticipation but I promise it'll be worth it in the end ;) And absolutely, I've been thinking a lot about the character of Ross and trying to suss him out and that's the best description I could come up with - and figured it would come best from Wanda, who's seen the most political upheaval as an Eastern European. Thank you as always for your lovely review x