Caught the 'rona, but I'm not going to let some stupid virus particles get in the way of my update schedule.
HYDRA Base, Siberia
Bucky blinked in the blast of cold wind that swirled up over the Quinjet landing ramp as it opened. Sheer, bright whiteness flooded the cockpit.
His eyes adjusted, and he got a glimpse of the flat expanse of white ice and black rock beyond. They'd been able to see the base entrance as they landed, as well as the orange snowmobile that was already iced over - the doctor must have been here a while.
I think I'm about to die, Bucky thought as the swirling wind and snow-laden rock brought back memories of decades past.
By all rights he should have died here a thousand times before. It seemed a terrible kind of poetic justice that now he finally was going to die here, it was the first time he didn't want to.
He thought of dark, burning eyes and a half-quirked mouth, and his heart thudded.
When this is all over, you and I need to talk.
Maybe he should write her a letter - but no, there wasn't time for that any more. He was always late to the things that mattered most; too scared, too clouded by doubts. His fingers clenched on the rifle he'd taken from Romanoff's storage compartment. This, at least, I can do well.
Steve's voice jolted him out of his thoughts, and Bucky realized he'd been staring out at the ice.
"You remember that time we had to ride back from Rockaway Beach in the back of that freezer truck?"
Bucky glanced over, confused, and saw his friend smiling. Ah. He was distracting him. They used to do this, before they went into battle. Well the Howlies did, but they were dead now.
Bucky obliged. "Was that the time we used our train money to buy hot dogs?"
"You blew three bucks trying to win that stuffed bear for a redhead," Steve shot back, his brows arched even as he smiled.
"What was her name again?"
Steve glanced out at the ice. "Dolores. You called her Dot."
Bucky shook his head. "She's gotta be a hundred years old right now."
"So are we, pal," Steve muttered. His smile faded a little and Bucky thought he would say something else, but instead he reached out and clapped a hand on his shoulder.
"Okay," Bucky breathed. "Let's go."
Together they stepped out toward the rock and ice.
The Quinjet was empty when they arrived.
Maggie's metal boots clanked on the landing ramp as she strode back out into the howling wind on the Siberian tundra, and she shook her head at Tony, who stood guard near the base entrance.
"They must be inside already," she called.
"Then let's get after them, Zemo's clearly been here a while." He nodded at the snowmobile.
They'd only landed a minute ago, two metal figures melting holes in the snow outside the HYDRA base as they landed. Maggie's heart thudded under the metal plating, and the icy wind scorched her bare cheeks. Her broken arm ached, but the Iron Wyvern suit was a better brace than the one the Raft medic had given her.
She paced over to Tony and they both faced the heavy metal doors of the base, which had been open when they arrived. The darkness inside felt like the inside of a monster's mouth. Tony had already had F.R.I.D.A.Y. try to scan the base, but the metal walls were too thick.
"Keep the suit on, please," Tony muttered.
"Planning on it," she replied. Though as nice as the gesture of making her a suit was, she disliked wearing it. She desperately missed her wings. She hadn't been to battle without them in years.
But she remembered what she had learned from Aldrich Killian, years ago: even without my leg, without my wings, I'm still Maggie Stark. Still the Wyvern. She glanced sideways at Tony, who had been attempting to scan the base again without luck.
"Hey."
He glanced at her, and his helmet retracted to reveal his bruised face. "What?"
She reached out to touch his arm, and it reassured her despite the metal separating them. "You and me."
He nodded at her, his jaw clenched. "Yeah. You and me."
As one, they deployed their helmets and stepped forward, metal boots crunching in the snow. The open doors yawned wide before them.
We can do anything.
Bucky and Steve crept through the HYDRA base once they'd descended in the elevator, covering all angles in the grim concrete corridors like they had a hundred times before, decades earlier. Dust and cobwebs clung to all the surfaces they passed, and Bucky found himself faintly surprised that spiders could survive at all in this place.
Bucky guided them, following his hazy memory of where he had once been kept.
Until a heavy clang rang out from behind them.
They whirled, Steve sinking behind his shield and Bucky's rifle snapping up in the direction of the sound.
One of the metal doors back the way they'd come was creaking, something metal complaining under the force of something strong.
"You ready?" Steve breathed.
"Yeah," Bucky murmured. His gaze didn't break from his rifle scope.
He got a magnified view of the door as it slowly creaked open - he caught a glint from some kind of light source, and his finger tightened on the trigger-
The doors widened further and Bucky blinked as the indistinct target behind them resolved into two: a pair of metal suits, one red, one black. They'd pried open the doors together, one on each door. His finger loosened.
The metal suit on the left was a familiar red and gold, eyeslits glowing a white-blue. The one on the right was unfamiliar: the frame and proportions were slightly off, and the majority of its metal plating was painted a gunmetal grey, with dark red where he was accustomed to seeing gold. A logo was painted over the arc reactor in the chest, almost like it had been graffitied on. Then the darker suit straightened, and its black-and-burgundy helmet retracted to reveal a pale face shrouded by dark hair.
Bucky's gun dropped and he straightened, all pretence at a battle stance gone. "Meg," he breathed.
Her name echoed in the concrete underground corridor, and Maggie couldn't help the smile on her face.
Bucky and Steve had been crouched together on the far stairs, but now Bucky tried to step forward, only to be blocked by the still-wary Steve. "You're okay?" he called, gun hanging by his side.
Maggie's smile widened. Despite the creepy cold war bunker, despite the oncoming promise of death, the sight of his furrowed brow and the sound of his voice eased the chill in her bones and the fear bubbling in her gut. "Broken arm," she replied, gesturing to her left arm. "But nurse F.R.I.D.A.Y. is taking care of me." She frowned at Steve, who remained huddled behind his shield. "Steve, chill out."
"Yeah, you seem a little defensive," Tony added wryly, stepping forward as his helmet retracted.
"It's been a long day," Steve replied. He slowly rose and took hesitant steps forward. Bucky stayed behind him, now motionless at the foot of the stairs. Steve's eyes flicked past Tony and Maggie to the chute they'd just dropped down. "Who else is here?"
Ah. He'd been expecting more of Ross's men.
"Just us," Tony said. Maggie figured Tony and Steve were good to talk it out, so she strode forward and circled around Steve's cautious form. Behind her, Tony spread his hands. "We're… well, this isn't exactly how we planned for this to go, but we're here to help. Ross thinks we're on our way back to the Facility, and I'd like to keep it that way. Otherwise I gotta arrest myself. And Mags. Again."
Maggie saw Steve's shield drop out of the corner of her eye as she walked past him. "Well that sounds like a lot of paperwork," he murmured, tilting his head. "It's good to see you, Tony."
"You too, Cap."
Maggie reached Bucky, who stood at the bottom of the stairs with a faintly lost look on his face. She stepped right up to hug him, paused, and after an incremental nod from him she wrapped her arms around him, metal and all. His metal hand tinked against her back when he returned the hug. His hair tickled the side of her face.
"You okay?" she asked lowly, and pulled away a moment later to get a good look at him. The corridor was dim, but… his face reminded her a little of when she'd first brought him back to the Facility. His face a little blanker, his eyes more lost, as if he'd stepped out of real life and back into a nightmare.
His eyes tracked over her face. "I thought you fell. I thought-"
"I did," she murmured. "It looked super dramatic and didn't go quite to plan, but… I'm alright. I'm here." She held his gaze, not sure quite what she wanted him to see in her expression.
He eyed her a moment longer, and then the furrow between his brows cleared. "I…" his eyes flicked down and then back up. "That's some get up."
She tapped the arc reactor set into her chest. "It's a loaner." She glanced back to see Steve and Tony watching them. "We're sorry we couldn't bring more of us," she added, pitching her voice up a bit so Steve could hear.
Steve shook his head, just once.
Tony had a shrewd look on his face as he watched Maggie and Bucky. "I will say, it might have been nice to know about the whole Manchurian Candidate situation before all this."
Bucky's face shuttered.
"Tony," Maggie warned.
"I'm just saying," he said, spreading his arms. "Would've been nice to know Barnes wasn't tossing me through the full IKEA collection because of some personal vendetta."
"Should've warned more of you about the words," Bucky muttered. "I didn't… I'm sorry."
"Hey, it's alright," Tony held up his hands, apparently alarmed by the sincerity. He sighed. "Come on. Let's end this."
"We haven't got much of an idea of what we're walking into," Steve said grimly, hoisting his shield. "They know we're coming-"
"And I have eight short-range missiles equipped and a satellite on standby. We can take these Soviet popsicles. And if Zemo - that's his name, by the way - if he tries to Clockwork Orange your ass," he said with a glance at Bucky, "we'll zap you with a cool 50,000 volts and tuck you up somewhere safe." Tony shrugged, and even though she knew the irreverence and movie references were a sign of his stress, it did reassure Maggie.
"Okay," Maggie nodded. She turned to Bucky. "Lead the way."
T'Challa stalked the three Avengers and Barnes through the silent underground bunker. They appeared to have allied - not surprising, given Stark's duplicity in coming here in the first place.
It didn't matter. He listened to their low voices as he padded behind them, their footsteps clanking and scraping, but his utterly silent. Anger simmered under his skin as he eyed Barnes, closely flanked by Ms Stark in her new dark armor.
He could be patient a little longer. He'd wait for Barnes to become isolated from the others. And then he would strike.
He was so tired.
Soon, baba.
Maggie and Tony filled in Steve and Bucky on everything they knew in hushed whispers as they cleared the HYDRA base, room by terrifying room. There was clearly some kind of power source still active, if the bare glowing lightbulbs hanging from the ceilings were anything to go by. If these walls could talk, Maggie found herself thinking as they passed through a grim concrete windowless room, with a few long scratches in the walls, and indeterminate stains on the floor. It could have been a storage room. It could have been so much worse.
She kept stealing glances at Bucky out of the corner of her eye. The past few days had leached some of the life out of him, or perhaps it was just this place. He moved rigidly, with none of the lounging easiness she had become accustomed to the past few years with him in the Facility. Dark circles hung under his eyes, and his face was… expressionless.
Every now and then, he would look back at her, as if to make sure she was there. She flashed him a small smile once. There was a flicker in his eyes, and then he looked away.
I won't let this place turn him back into what he was, she decided as they walked down another long concrete corridor. She curled the metal gauntlets of her armor into fists, and soft light from the gauntlet repulsors spilled out between her fingers.
Tony turned right, and Maggie instantly sensed from the way the tap of his footsteps echoed that the room beyond was far larger than these narrow concrete corridors. She rolled her shoulders back and followed.
Bucky flanked Tony, rifle swinging to cover all angles, and Steve and Maggie took the rear.
"I got heat signatures," Tony murmured. He'd only been able to scan room by room thanks to the thick metal lining in the walls.
"How many?" Steve asked.
"Uh… one."
As Maggie and Steve stepped through the room into the dark, cave-like space beyond, she raised one hand like she had seen Tony do a hundred times before, to light the way.
The light from her and Tony's gauntlets told a strange story. They'd found themselves in an enormous, cylindrical-shaped chamber. The concrete below their feet gave way to metal grating, and Maggie squinted to make out the shape of several hulking structures that stretched up from the floor ahead of them. In the centre of the room sat another smaller structure, but she couldn't make it out.
There was a clunk, and like eyes peering out of the darkness lights glowed suddenly in the room: five large glass pods, each with a murky shape inside. Maggie let out a shaky breath that fogged in the chilled air, but did not hesitate in following the others' careful steps forward.
The pods appeared to be containment units of some kind, with wires hooked up all around them and connected to dormant computers. They glowed a dull yellow and cloudy gas unfurled behind the glass, making it hard to see inside.
That must be where the Winter Soldiers were kept. Her eyes darted around, as if she had any hope of spotting them lurking in the shadows.
Bucky didn't hesitate, but Maggie glanced sharply at him all the same. She found him staring not at the containment units, but at the barely-lit structure in the centre of the room, and followed his eyes.
The chair.
The hairs on the back of her neck rose as she eyed it. She'd seen another of its kind, in the HYDRA base in Canada, had seen its plates sparking with white-hot electricity. She glanced back at Bucky, but he was already looking away, his rifles trained on the containment units.
The voice made her flinch.
"If it's any comfort, they died in their sleep."
A man's voice, softly accented in a familiar way - eastern European. Sokovian. Zemo.
Maggie furrowed her brow, and when Steve continued forward she followed as they approached the first containment unit, the blurred shape inside abruptly became clear.
Maggie's lips tightened as she saw the face of the man frozen inside. He could have passed for sleeping, if it weren't for the bullethole in his forehead. Her stomach turned over.
"Did you really think I wanted more of you?" Zemo crooned, and Maggie tore her eyes away from the dead Winter Soldier to try to spot him. But the chamber was empty except for them and the five dead Winter Soldiers.
"What the hell," Bucky muttered under his breath. She kept to his side as Steve and Tony circled the other way around the Memory Suppression Machine. The lights glowing on her armor gleamed off of Bucky's metal arm. She kept both hands raised, searching for a target. She hadn't put her helmet back on yet, so she could smell the cold scents of metal and a sharper, chemical smell, probably emanating from the containment units. Dead faces passed her by.
Everything she knew about this mission dissolved around her, leaving… a question mark. Her heart thumped against her ribcage.
"I'm grateful to them though," came Zemo's voice from the speakers. "They brought you here."
Something clicked, dead ahead. Maggie's head and arms jerked up, but Steve was fastest - the Vibranium shield hurtled to the far wall, bounced, and flew back to his arms.
"Please, Captain," Zemo said, and this time she could see him as he said it: a section of the metal wall ahead of them had slid upward to reveal a thick glass window. It looked like a window into what must have been some kind of operations room. She couldn't make much of his features from the distance, but she saw a dark uniform, a pale face, fixed eyes. "The Soviets built this chamber to withstand the launch blast of UR-100 rockets."
"I'm betting I could beat that!" Tony called boldly as they all circled around the chair toward the slot in the wall. Bucky moved slowly, eyes not deviating from his rifle sight. Maggie took the rear, occasionally turning to cast her glance around the room, just in case.
"Oh, I'm sure you could, Mr Stark. Given time." Zemo's eyes were dark. "But then you'd never know why you came."
Steve strode past the last of the dead Winter Soldiers. "You killed innocent people in Vienna just to bring us here?"
He approached, and Maggie hung back with Bucky. A slowly unfurling curl of dread made itself known in her stomach. This is a trap, she realized. She eyed the containment units, the computers. He's had time to lay any number of terrible bombs or biochemical weapons in here. It's the perfect killbox.
"I've thought about nothing else for over a year," Zemo whispered. His voice sent shivers down her spine. It wasn't the voice of a madman. His voice was low, calculated, and simmering with hatred. Despite her desperation to spot whatever trap was waiting for them, she found herself looking back to take in his face. He was younger than she'd expected, handsome, with dark hair and a hint of stubble at his jaw. "I studied you. I followed you. But now that you're standing here…" a hint of a smile rose on his lips. "I just realized: there's a bit of green in the blue of your eyes." He smiled in earnest then. "How nice to find a flaw."
Maggie stared at him.
"You're Sokovian," Steve replied evenly. "Is that what this is about?"
Maggie's eyes flicked to Tony - he had his helmet on, but he returned her glance, and she could see from the slight tilt to his head that his brain was working just as fast as hers, and had come up with a big fat nothing.
Bucky didn't move a muscle.
"Sokovia was a failed state long before you blew it to hell. No. I'm here because I made a promise."
Maggie went cold. Her eyes tracked back to Zemo's face.
"You lost someone," Steve murmured.
The rage that lit Zemo up from within, that made those dark eyes burn, made Maggie's breath stop in her chest. I know you, she thought, senselessly. Because in all her years of wandering, she had never met Zemo before.
But she knew that rage in his eyes better than she knew how to fly a Quinjet or disassemble a gun. Looking through the window at Zemo's face felt, for a split second, like looking in a mirror.
He took a heavy breath, as if fighting against iron bands cinched around his chest. "I lost everyone," he rasped. A muscle in his jaw jumped. "And so will you."
Maggie didn't realize that her hands had dropped until Zemo's gaze slid away from Steve - and to her. She clenched her jaw and held his gaze.
"You were young, and your memory has failed you," he murmured, and there was still such hatred in his eyes. She frowned. "This will not."
He glanced aside and hit a button, and her defenses shot back up again, repulsors whirring. But instead of missiles and detonators and poisonous gas… a computer behind Steve flickered to life.
The angle the computer was at, no one could see it yet - except for Maggie. Steve was already stepping back to get a look at it, but Maggie had stopped paying attention.
16 Декабрь 1991
For a moment she just stared.
"An empire toppled by its enemies can rise again," she distantly heard Zemo say as the date on the screen blinked out, to be replaced by a video: surveillance footage, grey and grainy. A road. Steve moved so he stood on her other side, his eyes on the screen. "But one which crumbles from within? That's dead. Forever."
White text down the bottom of the screen read:
PM 7:00
DEC. 16 1991
CAM 3
Maggie couldn't move. She couldn't make her brain work.
Confusion and caution radiated from Steve as he glanced from the screen, to Zemo, and then back. He doesn't recognize the date. Bucky remained out of view of the screen, his rifle trained on Zemo's window.
Tony slowly circled around to them, his helmet down, keeping one eye on Zemo until he was able to steal a glance at the screen.
She saw Tony's double take out of the corner of her eye. He looked at the screen, away, frowned, and then… he looked back, an expression of dawning horror on his face. His chest heaved.
"I know that road," he breathed. His eyes darted to Maggie's frozen face, then back over to Zemo. "What is this?" he demanded. His voice echoed in the chamber.
Maggie tore her eyes away from the expanse of empty road on the screen before her to see Zemo's face. He just glared back at them with gleaming dark eyes.
Behind the computer, Bucky slowly turned.
The video on the screen lulled Maggie's gaze back to it, swallowing her vision until she could see nothing else. It was nothing: gravel and a bit of scrub, with the dark forest in the background. A patch of lamplight spilled over the gravel road. Maggie hadn't breathed since she saw the date.
There was a rumbling over the same speakers Zemo had been talking through - it increased in volume, staticky and unclear, until-
A car sped into frame and collided with a tree. Crunch, went the speakers, and Maggie jumped.
Steve stiffened.
The car's hood was all crumpled up, rising smoke soon followed by the flickers of flame. The speakers, ringing loud in the chamber, crackled with it. Tony stepped in close, his eyes burning, and she felt his gaze flick to her face for a moment, but she could not look away.
The motorcycle drove into frame. Its headlight was a white spear across the screen's grainy exposure. The dark figure riding it set down one heavy boot.
Maggie looked up, over the edge of the screen, to see Bucky. He stood frozen, with his rifle fixed on Zemo but his eyes on her. He hadn't seen the footage at all, but she could see in his face that he knew exactly what they were watching.
"Help my wife," came a low voice over the staticky speakers, and Maggie's eyes jerked downward. The driver's side door of the car had opened, and there was a figure on the ground. "My daughter. Please, help."
A tear burned a trail down Maggie's cheek. She didn't remember this part. She didn't know dad had survived the initial crash. Didn't know he'd dragged his way out of the car and onto the road. Didn't know he'd begged for help: not for himself. But for her.
The Winter Soldier, metal arm gleaming unmistakably in the firelight, leaned down and seized the back of Howard Stark's head. His arm rose, and Maggie wanted to close her eyes, but she couldn't. She couldn't make out any details of dad's face in the low resolution, except the shape of his eyes, and his shock of white hair.
"Sergeant Barnes?" Dad muttered. Looking up at his murderer. Maggie's heart clenched.
And then a new voice.
"Howard!"
Maggie closed her eyes and more tears spilled. She dreamed about mom's voice that night, sometimes, and the pain and fear in it always haunted her. To hear the actual thing, recorded, felt like ice shards pressing in against her heart.
She sensed Tony move, and blinked quickly to clear her vision. He was looking across at Bucky, a dark shadow over his face. Bucky lowered his rifle.
And then Tony looked back at Maggie. Dark eyes fixed on dark eyes.
The glance could have only lasted a second or two. But it seemed to stretch for an eternity.
Maggie knew that Tony was just as transfixed by horror as she was, trapped in a nightmare from twenty five years ago made alive again on a screen. He should never have seen this, he should never -
But this is what Zemo wanted. He'd killed and plotted for over a year for this moment, he'd said. Your memory has failed you, he'd said.
The two geniuses in the ancient HYDRA base came to the same conclusion at the same time.
He wants us, seeing this.
An empire that crumbles from within.
Maggie reached out and took her brother's hand, metal clinking against metal. You and me. They both looked back at the screen.
The Winter Soldier's metal fist came down. One, two. Maggie flinched at each strike. Dad's head jerked and though she hadn't been able to make out the details of his face before, now all she saw was darkness - if the footage had been capable of color, she knew it would be red. Her free hand rose to her mouth and tears slid over the metal fingers of the gauntlet. On her other side, Steve glanced at her and Tony.
"Howard! Maggie, say something!"
Tony's eyes squeezed shut at mom's voice. His breathing came hard and pained, as if he'd been hurt.
The Winter Soldier picked up their father and dragged him to the car. Dad was limp as a rag doll, and when he was placed in the driver's seat he slumped against the steering wheel. Mom gasped for breath, and Maggie's eyes glued to the dark shape of her inside the car.
The Winter Soldier paced around the car. He moved almost mechanically.
"Dad? Mom?"
Maggie's breath shuddered out of her at the small, croaky voice, and she looked to Bucky. She could barely see him through her tears but she tried to show him, tried to let him know what was inside her heart, but he glanced away, rigid and ashamed. Zemo watched them all.
The dark-haired, blank faced Soldier on the screen reached into the passenger side window. Reached for mom.
The sounds - Maggie wished she could stop up her ears. Wished Tony was not listening, was not having these sounds seared into his memory.
"Stop it!" cried the little girl, awake now. Maggie remembered this.
They all heard Maria go quiet. They all watched the Winter Soldier step back a moment later. He moved, going for the back seat - only for the door on the other side of the car to fling open and a girl spilled out onto the gravel.
She landed hard, whimpering. The little girl staggered to her feet, bleeding and lopsided and breaths coming harsh. She had dark hair in a braid, and was bent over with pain.
Tony's fingers clamped tight around Maggie's hand. Steve drew in a harsh breath beside them.
The little girl ran. Gravel kicked up behind her as she dashed out of frame. But not for long: the Soldier strode after her, footsteps crunching on the speakers, and a moment later they heard:
"No! Let me go!"
The Soldier dragged her back into view, toward the burning car. He gripped the girl's arm in his metal hand. Her struggling and kicking barely seemed to register with him, as if she were a piece of luggage. The girl punched at his stomach. She gasped and cried, a terrible sound over the speakers in the frozen bunker.
Maggie felt it: the fire flickering on her face, the vice-like grip on her arm, the shrieking pain in her leg (already done for at that point, not that she knew it yet), the skin she'd scraped off her knuckles from hitting him. She knew the sounds of his footsteps in the gravel.
The Soldier reached for his gun. The little girl sagged, and Maggie glanced at the timestamp a second before the Soldier shot out the camera:
PM 7:02
Two minutes.
The screen fizzled to blackness.
Maggie stared at her own dim reflection in the empty screen. The black gauntlet was clamped over her mouth as tears streamed down her face. The footage had stopped but she could hear it, feel it, as if it kept going. The fire radiating hotter and hotter, the silhouettes of mom and dad.
Why are you doing this?
You are my mission.
Tony's hand was vice-like on hers as several seconds of ringing silence passed. Heavy, horrified breaths echoed strangely. Maggie squeezed Tony's fingers in return.
His grip left hers with a jerk as he took a violent step toward Bucky.
"Tony," Steve urged as he darted forward to catch Tony's arm, reaching across Maggie. Maggie stood numb and frozen, but her eyes found her brother's face - his mouth turned down, his eyes searing, as if they could reflect the flames that flickered on the road that night.
"Tony," Steve repeated lowly, breathing hard. His brows were furrowed as his eyes flicked over them, his face creased with concern, and grief, and… something else.
Tony looked down. He was shaking, Maggie could tell, inside the armor. Her heart ached. The wrongness of him seeing that made her feel unmoored from her body.
Tony looked up into Steve's face, both of them lit by the yellow glow from the containment units. His eyes burned, and it took everything Maggie had to slide her gaze aside, to the window where Zemo stood. He just stood there, watching them. Unblinking.
She looked down and stared unseeing at the floor.
"You knew," Tony whispered.
"Tony, I…" Steve's voice cracked, and he was confused, Maggie could hear it in his voice.
"You knew," Tony snarled again. He turned his back on Bucky and leaned in to Steve. "And you protected him. You never would've - you never would've told me."
Steve's eyes darted over Tony's face. He was met with hurt, and horror, and the kind of grief that tore lives apart.
Tony shoved back a step away from Steve and his gaze slid downward. Steve watched, his hands out and his brow furrowed. Maggie saw Tony nod to himself, almost in resolution.
The helmet slid over Tony's face in the same moment as he swung his fist. The Iron Man gauntlet smashed into the side of Steve's head and sent him toppling back on the floor with a clang. Maggie didn't flinch.
Tony whirled, eyeslits glowing, and fired a repulsor blast at Bucky. The bolt slammed into Bucky's rifle and sent it flying, and Bucky staggered back with gritted teeth. Tony dove, swinging for him, and Bucky caught his armored forearm with wide eyes and teeth bared.
Zemo stared.
Bucky opened his mouth. "Tony-"
Tony smacked Bucky's metal arm aside and seized the front of his jacket, firing up his repulsors in the same moment. They jetted into the air and arced over the Memory Suppression Chair, until Tony slammed Bucky down on the concrete on the other side of the room. He stomped down on the metal arm and raised his hand. A repulsor whined to life.
"Tony!" Steve flipped to his feet and bolted over.
Maggie unstuck herself, her breath shuddering in her chest, and raced after them.
Steve's shield clanked off the side of Tony's helmet, sending the repulsor blast he'd aimed down at Bucky's face wide, and half a second later Steve and Tony collided together. Steve knocked Tony back, only to be shoulder-charged and flattened. Metal clanged. Bucky rose and cocked his metal arm to protect Steve -
Bucky changed trajectory on instinct. He whirled, catching the heavy punch aimed at his head just before it connected.
He saw the gauntlet, black and gleaming red, before he followed her arm up to the glaring metal helmet. His eyes widened and his hands faltered.
It was as if all the color flooded out of him from some unseen wound. His eyes, gleaming with adrenaline, went grey, and the tension and alertness in his expression dropped, leaving him open, and raw, and broken. His jaw unclenched and his mouth opened in a look of crushing dread. The look on his face almost made her stop, but she couldn't. He looked as if he'd frozen still.
The tears burning at her eyes burst, and while crying she powered up the repulsors at her palms -
Steve dove in and yanked Bucky out of reach.
Maggie swung her arms and fired - the repulsor blasts scorched off Steve's shield, and in that moment of distraction Tony dove in, seized Bucky again, and propelled him across the room. They slammed into the midsection of one of the giant metal pylons that stretched up to the roof, a good fifty feet off the ground. Bucky cried out at the impact. They struggled, Bucky gripping one of Tony's gauntlets in his metal hand.
On the ground, Maggie fired a repulsor blast at Steve's legs as he went to run after Tony and Bucky - he toppled, then turned with his shield raised just in time to catch the punch she slammed down on him.
"Maggie, what're you-"
Maggie snarled, and glanced over her shoulder - Zemo was no longer visible in the window to the control room. Her heart skipped and she looked back to where Tony was struggling with Bucky. He had noticed too.
Tony raised his arm and aimed one of his short-range missiles right at Bucky's face - Bucky, his metal hand free, grabbed it and twisted it aside. The missile careened across the room and slammed into the side of one of the other massive pylons. The resulting boom thudded in Maggie's chest and she raised her hand as debris rained down on her.
Steve rolled out from under her and dashed across the room, outpacing the falling pylons.
The first pylon groaned as it split and fell, crashing into the next pylon, and then into the one Tony had Bucky pinned against. Explosions blossomed and sparks flew as a whole part of the wall and roof came down in a cascade of concrete and metal. Maggie covered her head and ducked, heart in her mouth, and the others dove for cover.
Bucky staggered to his feet, teeth gritted against the pain and his ears ringing from the crashing sound of the room coming down around him. Sunlight spilled down from somewhere. He'd shaken Tony somehow, but even his gut instinct to survive could barely register past…
Meg. She'd come after him. He'd looked into the relentless glowing eyes of that helmet and for the first time in a long time, been unable to read the woman beneath.
And the world had fallen apart.
Smoke irritated his eyes and nose, and he whirled, eyes wild, to find Steve rising to his feet a few yards away. There was a huge pile of fallen rock and twisted metal between them.
"Get out of here!" Steve cried, waving a hand at him.
Bucky ran.
The missile had brought down the whole chamber, leaving a mountain of debris between Maggie and the others. The air was clogged with dirt and smoke. She could fight her way through easily enough, with her new armor. She heard the sound of repulsors and the reverberation of Vibranium dully through the rock. Zemo, if he was clever, would have hacked the base access to the various scanners and cameras, so he could keep an eye on what was going on. He'd see Tony continuing to go after Bucky with a vengeance, and Steve doing everything he could to protect his friend.
Maggie turned and stalked back the way she'd come.
The window was empty - Maggie peered in, squinting, but could make out no movement in the control room beyond. She followed the wall around until she found a door with a metal wheel to unlock it. She turned the wheel, the metal creaking in protest, and pushed through. An empty concrete corridor. To her right, she spotted the door to the control room. It was made of three-foot-thick metal with one of the most complex locking mechanisms she'd ever seen. She'd never be able to break in through there in time.
She set her HUD to scan. The suit systems obligingly scanned the door, telling her all sorts of helpful information about exactly how impossible to break it would be, and she glanced aside in frustration - only for her heart to leap.
The HUD scanners had highlighted a set of boot prints in the thin layer of dust on the concrete floor: very, very faint, but the scanner could see it. A set leading up to the door… and another set leading away.
Maggie charged forward.
She tracked the bootprints away through the base, tracing a rough semi-circle through the warren of corridors. She could hear explosions and thuds back in the direction of the main chamber, so loud they shook the ground beneath her. She kept her mind on the hunt.
I found the Winter Soldier. I can find anyone, she kept telling herself.
To her surprise, the boot prints led her back in the direction of the base entrance. She charged on, tears still wet on her face and her heart pounding against her chest. She could still hear her mom's voice.
Tony could see the raw fear on Bucky's face as he turned away from the suddenly-shut top of the missile silo, to see Iron Man jetting up toward him. Bucky swung a metal pole at him - it connected, but in seconds Tony muscled the pole away and cinched his armored arm around Bucky's neck.
Bucky grabbed at the armor, choking. There was a grim kind of resignation to his face, despite the fear.
"Tony-" he began, but Tony cut him off.
"Don't." With his arm around Bucky's neck, Tony leaped back into the depths of the silo. His repulsors faltered, one of them cracked by Steve's shield.
Steve dove for them, coming out of nowhere, and they all went tumbling down to the hard concrete over a hundred feet below.
The harsh white light of the outside world made Maggie squint, even inside her helmet, as she crept through the cracked-open metal doors at the front of the base. It was shockingly quiet outside. The iced-over snowmobile and the Quinjet sat dormant on the rock, a strange pair. The wind had eased up a bit, faded to a low moan across the tundra.
But she barely spared a glance for the expanse of rock and ice.
Instead of one figure, she'd found two.
Zemo sat on an outcropping of rock a few yards away, with a cellphone to his ear. He wasn't talking, just listening, with his head turned away.
Behind him, the Black Panther set his helmet down in the snow. The silver in his armor gleamed in the Siberian sunlight.
Maggie froze in the doorway, her heart in her mouth.
T'Challa straightened, his head bare to the cold. "I almost killed the wrong man," he called. Zemo's head tilted slightly at the voice, but he did not look back.
"Hardly an innocent one," he replied.
"This is all you wanted?" T'Challa approached, feet silent in the snow. "To see them rip each other apart."
Snowflakes drifted past Maggie's face as she retracted her helmet. She did not move.
"My father lived outside the city," Zemo replied in a low, disconnected voice. T'Challa stood just over his shoulder now. "I thought we would be safe there. My son was excited. He could see the Iron Man from the car window. I told my wife 'Don't worry, they're fighting in the city. We're miles from harm'. When the dust cleared, and the screaming stopped… it took me two days until I found their bodies. My father… still holding my wife and son in his arms."
Maggie took one step forward.
"And the Avengers?" Zemo shook his head. "They went home. I knew I couldn't kill them. More powerful men than me have tried. But… if I could get them to kill each other…"
Maggie's bootprints left clean imprints in the snow behind her, beside T'Challa's smaller footprints.
"I'm sorry about your father," Zemo said to T'Challa, and Maggie spotted the gleam of the gun propped on his knee. "He seemed a good man. With a dutiful son."
T'Challa had been listening with a straight-backed, unblinking silence, his eyes intense as he watched the Sokovian. Now his jaw clenched and tears gleamed in his eyes.
"Vengeance has consumed you," he rasped. "It's consuming them." He closed his eyes and shook his head, his breathing uneven. "I am done letting it consume me."
Vibranium claws slid back into their sheaths.
T'Challa's eyes fell on Zemo. "Justice will come soon enough."
Maggie heard Zemo's soft, sardonic laugh. "Tell that to the dead."
He turned the gun on himself with a soldier's reflexes and pulled the trigger - the bullet collided with Maggie's outflung gauntlet and her metal fingers closed down on the barrel, crushing it out of shape as she kicked forward with her knee, laying Zemo out on his front in the snow with an oof.
T'Challa, who had moved to stop Zemo as well, froze with his arms outstretched and his eyes wide.
Zemo twisted his head to stare back at Maggie. He spat out snow. "You-"
"I remember everything," she told him, salt and snowflakes sharp on her tongue. His brow creased.
T'Challa recovered, stepping forward and seizing a hold of Zemo's wrists in an impossibly strong grip. He looked down at the man.
"The living are not done with you yet."
Steve slammed his shield into Tony's armor, gouging dents and cracking one of his gauntlets, throwing his free hand into Tony as well. The blows hit hard, ringing Tony's head like a bell and blooming new bruises even through the metal.
"Tony," Steve gasped between punches, his teeth gritted and his eyes pained. They'd been fighting for what felt like an age, but he'd barely been able to get a word in. "You already-"
"I don't care," Tony snapped, flinging a backhand at him. They'd fallen to the bottom of the silo, and wind whistled through the gaps in the concrete at the base. Blood bloomed from Steve's lip.
Bucky leaped in from behind - one handed, he gripped Tony's shoulder and tore him away from Steve. All that remained of his metal arm was a frayed and smoking stump - Bucky had tried to go for the arc reactor, metal fingers gouging in as he screamed, and Tony had hit back with the unibeam.
Bucky and Steve launched into another assault, and the super-serumed blows and ringing Vibranium shield made alarms flash on Tony's HUD. Tony grabbed Steve and hurled him into one of the concrete pillars, making him wheeze, then turned to block a determined punch from Bucky, whose own face was twisted with a crazed kind of pain and determination - Tony guessed that if it weren't for Steve, he wouldn't even be fighting.
Tony switched to his private commlink as he turned to meet Steve blow-for-blow again. "Tell me you got him, Maggot," he grunted, stumbling back under the shield. "These two are kicking my ass and if you're not done soon I'm going to have to start kicking their asses." He fired a repulsor blast into Steve's gut.
"I got him."
Tony faltered, and that was all the opening Steve needed to seize him from the back, lift him over his head - and throw him down on the concrete with a crack. The breath left Tony's chest and his vision swam, and fear washed over him.
He'd been buying time, conscious that Zemo could be watching their every move. He hadn't held back, but now… it occurred to him that Steve might not hold back either.
"I got him," Maggie repeated, her voice ringing loud in the concrete space at the bottom of the missile silo.
The action inside halted - Steve paused where he'd been looming over the fallen Tony, shield raised, and the staggering Bucky froze, save for his head snapping toward the sound of her voice. They looked like hell: blood on Steve and Bucky's faces, Tony's armor dented and cracked, and Bucky's arm-
They'd been giving each other hell. But at the sound of her voice they all stopped, and turned to watch her stride in. She dragged Zemo by the back of his coat, his feet dragging in the snow and his arms and legs cinched together by Vibranium restraints. T'Challa strode in behind her, his helmet in his hands and his eyes watchful.
Steve panted for breath, his chest heaving. He straightened, and his knees shook. "What…?"
Bucky sagged where he stood, hair tangled around his face and his grey-blue eyes desperate and confused.
"I got him," Maggie said again, her voice softer now she'd retracted her helmet. She let go of Zemo and he slumped to the ground. He'd gone weirdly lifeless since she had stopped his suicide, wordless and staring.
Maggie took a step back, looking down at the man who had done this, who had killed so many to bring them here. Who had distilled her nightmare and made her relive it, in an effort to make her try to kill Bucky. He did not look up at her.
"I'm sorry about your family," she breathed. "I know how it tears you apart inside. We lost our family too." She looked back at Tony. Lying on his side, he retracted his helmet to reveal his own bloody face. His dark eyes burned into hers. He could still see the flickering flames.
Maggie's face hardened and she looked back down at Zemo, who watched them with those intense eyes. "But you don't see us tearing the world apart to seek revenge. That's not the mission."
Zemo closed his eyes.
An eerie silence passed. Wind whistled through the gaps in the concrete at the base of the silo, over which Maggie could just hear the heaving breaths of those inside. Tony's armor creaked as he shifted a little.
T'Challa stepped forward soundlessly. "I will sedate him now," he murmured, and Maggie nodded. She didn't watch T'Challa kneel down beside Zemo, or see him administer whatever Wakandan sedative he had on him. Zemo didn't make noise either way.
Her eyes were on the three men before her. Steve and Bucky were exchanging a glance, and she could see them beginning to understand. Tony turned his head to spit blood onto the ground.
Steve dropped his shield. The clang on the concrete seemed very loud, in the silence. He staggered forward a few steps, then leaned down and set his hands on Tony. With a groan he helped him up, armor and all, and before Tony could blink, tugged him into what looked like a vice-like hug. He let out a huge breath as he clutched Tony.
Tony patted him on the back tiredly. "No hard feelings, Steve."
Bucky shifted, and Maggie rushed to his side. She slung his arm over her shoulders, supporting his weight with that of the armor. He grimaced as she did.
"Meg," he croaked.
Holding him up, Maggie looked into Bucky's face, and he looked back at her. She couldn't do anything but look at him, in that moment, showing him everything she hadn't been able to before.
He let out a breath, and the color returned to his eyes.
Reviews
Strawberrycheeze: Hopefully this chapter lived up to your hopes!
shorttrooper: Thank you so much! It's been interesting to see how Maggie changes things this time around. Sorry for your rising stress levels, did this chapter help at all? Not quite a 'meh' reaction, as I don't imagine anyone could reasonably watch that video without being affected. Hope this chapter lived up to your expectations, I can't wait to see what you think!