Reviews
DBZFAN45: I agree, Maggie and Spider-Man both share a love for speed! Glad you enjoyed and hope you like this one!
Shorttrooper: Thanks so much, we needed a more domestic chapter after Zemo and his fuckery. Crazily, I'd never heard that Celine Dion song, so thank you for the recommendation! Side note, the dress she wears in the music video is 100% a dress Alice would wear.
May 18th, 2024
GRC Headquarters, New York City
Maggie's phone rang at midday. She held up a finger to the suited journalist she'd been speaking to, mouthed sorry, then hurried out of the press room of the GRC Headquarters to take the call. In the quieter corridor outside, she lifted the phone to her ear.
"Hey, handsome," she said, tugging on her suit jacket to straighten it.
"Hey, doll. Sam just called, are you - you're still at the GRC, right?"
"Yes, I've been here since dawn. They're voting today, I've been speaking to anyone and everyone who'll listen but I don't think I can stop them voting on the Patch Act, Bucky." She leaned heavily against the wall. "I've offered enough resources to sustain the situation for another month to delay the vote and give them time to properly consider the new research I've presented, I've threatened to speak out in the press against them to add to the jack-booted thugs optics, but they'll hardly let me in the room to speak with even their support staff." She ran a hand through her hair, sighing. "I've come into this far too late, Bucky, and I'm not sure I can do anything about this anymore."
She'd been in New York for three days now, lobbying the Global Repatriation Council to stop the Patch Act and see sense. In the days before that she'd spent every waking moment researching solutions for the people Karli was fighting for. Maggie was the kind of person who could acquire PhD-level expertise on a subject within a few weeks, so she'd learned a lot within the space of just a few days. She'd set herself a mission of understanding the humanitarian crisis, inside and out, and collecting solutions. There was six months worth of research and studies into the crisis now, as opposed to the chaos immediately after the Blip. She'd managed to get a picture of the situation, though it was a blurry one. She'd even developed a few draft ideas for policies in conjunction with a host of experts she'd reached out to (a majority of whom were displaced persons themselves).
But she'd come to the GRC at the eleventh hour, and they did not care to hear new ideas when they were too busy tearing at the Patch Act like a pack of wolves with blood in their noses. The US Senator Davis - the one who'd announced Walker as Captain America all those weeks ago - had become the most influential of them all, and his stance of 'we've argued about this too long, let's just enact the Patch Act and be done with the problem' had become far too enticing to many of the other members, jaded by the mounting international pressure and Karli's extremism.
Davis had refused to even meet with Maggie. There's no need for Avengers in this situation, his staffer had told her.
"I'm sorry, Meg," Bucky murmured. "They will listen to you, they'll have to. But listen-"
"They don't have to," she said, tipping her head back against the wall. "As far as they're concerned, I'm a relic who lost her relevance the moment Tony snapped his fingers and brought back half the universe. No one's said it yet, but they all think I should go home." She sighed again. "But I can't. It might not be my fight, but I'll be damned if they vote on this without listening to all these people who have spent months proving that the forced relocation of twenty million people is not the answer."
She looked down at her binder, full of briefs from all the experts she'd spoken with, abstracts from all the papers on humanitarian crises and integration of displaced people, and testimonies from GRC camps. She'd come with twenty copies of this binder, and this was the last one she had left. She'd seen one poking out of a trashcan yesterday.
"Doll, it's about to become your fight." She frowned, finally catching the edge in Bucky's voice. "Sam just called. Joaquin's been deep on the Flagsmasher dark web apparently, and he's got intelligence that the Flagsmashers are in New York, as of two hours ago. Sam's on his way into the city, and so am I. He thinks that Karli's there to target the GRC."
Maggie straightened and looked around. A few journalists wandered down the corridor, and by the elevator a security guard yawned and checked his watch. Her heart thundered.
"Of course she is," Maggie whispered. "The vote. Of course she'd try to stop it. She's desperate enough, determined enough."
"When Sam and I get into town we'll call you, figure out a plan. Carter's on her way in as well apparently."
Maggie ground the heel of her hand into her forehead. "What if this is the straw that breaks the camel's back, Bucky? What if Karli trying something today is what forces their hand into passing the Patch Act? They're already framing it as the solution to the Flagsmasher attacks - break up their support base." She suddenly wished she could speak to Karli, somehow convince her to join Maggie's crusade of binders and lobbying, instead of whatever violence she had planned instead.
"I know," Bucky said grimly. "But we can't control what the GRC do, doll. We have to protect them first, stop whatever Karli's got planned. Whatever happens next…" he let out a sigh. "We'll just have to wait and see."
Maggiew closed her eyes. "Alright. I'll see you soon." Clutching her binder to her chest, she marched back into the press room and began downloading schematics of the building.
Despite knowing that the Flagsmashers intended to act that night, Maggie had no idea what they had planned until, in the middle of the GRC debate deep into the evening, all the lights in the building died.
A cry of alarm went up in the press room where Maggie sat, and half a second later the emergency lights kicked in, bathing the room in a deep red. The screens that had been displaying the GRC logos glitched out, crashing into static. Maggie glanced around, but all she could see were frightened human faces.
That was the thing about the Flagsmashers - they didn't come in in a spaceship, or wear recognizable uniforms. They were just people.
Maggie stayed in her seat as the journalists and support staff in the room got to their feet, checking their phones and exchanging anxious words.
"Stay calm, people, we are in a security lockdown!" called a security guard by the door, one hand to the commset in his ear.
"What happened?" called a WHiH reporter. "Is this an attack?"
"We've got this building well protected," replied the guard, holding out a hand. "The NYPD has the surrounding five blocks secured, this will be resolved in no time."
Maggie sank lower in her seat as she tapped at her phone. "F.R.I.D.A.Y.?" she murmured.
"Surveillance drones active," came F.R.I.D.A.Y.'s warm voice in her ear. On Maggie's phone, a series of video feeds sprang up, one from the basement, one from outside the GRC headquarters, one in the press room, one in the lobby, and one in the GRC meeting room. Dim red emergency lights flashed in all the feeds, but as far as she could see there was nothing of note aside from people standing around uncertainly.
"Scanning for known Flagsmashers," F.R.I.D.A.Y. added.
"Nice." Maggie tapped the commset in her ear. "Sam, Bucky, whatever it is has started. Just a digital attack for now, the building is down. No current violence."
"I'm almost there," came Sam's voice, combined with the whoosh of wind. Maggie felt an envious prickle up her spine despite the tense situation. She'd tried to squeeze in some flight time this past week, but it had been nearly impossible with how busy she'd been.
"What's the plan?" Bucky asked.
"Karli's gotta be close. Keep your eyes open."
Maggie rifled through her drone feeds desperately, but no one was moving much aside from the building's security and the police. Inside the meeting room, the GRC members exchanged worried glances.
She heard Sharon's arrival over the comms as she and Bucky met up outside.
"Welcome back to New York, Sharon," Maggie said charitably. "Guys, I can't see any signs of Flagsmasher activity in here."
"They're gonna move on the building soon," Sam said. "Be ready."
Maggie glanced around. A few journalists were looking her way, as if she would do something heroic and Avenger-worthy. Her brow furrowed. "I'm going to move, head up to the meeting room." She made for the door. The security guard stepped forward, arm out.
"Ma'am, this is a lockdown, you can't-"
"Dude, that's the Wyvern," called the WHiH reporter from before, his face bathed in scarlet light as he frowned at the security guard. "Let her through."
The security guard hesitated, and that was enough for Maggie. She slipped past him and out of the door, glancing back to cast the reporter a quick: "Thanks," before she hurried upstairs.
Maggie took the stairs three at a time, her metal prosthetic landing with a slight clang on each step. "F.R.I.D.A.Y., any luck finding Flagsmashers?"
"Negative, but there are several civilians moving in erratic ways-"
"F.R.I.D.A.Y., I'm moving in an erratic way. You've got to give me something!"
"Two guards in the GRC meeting room have just put on Flagsmasher masks."
Maggie's stomach dropped. "Guys, there's contact in the conference room!" She raced up the last of the stairs, elbowed past a startled security guard and burst into the red-lit conference room.
With the bang of the door she'd flung open, every GRC representative, guard, and staff member in the room jumped and looked over at her. In the same moment, a handful of small metal balls in the middle of the room clicked, let out a hiss, and began emitting a dark gas that billowed out across the floor and rose into the air.
"Evacuate the room!" Maggie shouted, but the guards and GRC didn't need to be told twice. Coughing and crying out, all of them retreated from the rising gas and ran to the doors which the guards had flung open. Maggie strode forward, catching one senator when she tripped and almost fell headlong into the expanding gas cloud, hauled her upright and pushed her toward the doors.
"What's going on?" came Sharon's voice over the comms.
"Potential chemical attack in the meeting room," Maggie replied. She touched the side of her head and the mask of her uniform slid over her head, instantly filtering the air she breathed. Moments later the rest of her uniform deployed, covering her body in impenetrable nanotech. She'd done a little tweaking to the design on the way back from Europe. She was no longer the all-black ghoul she'd been during the years of the Blip. The dark reds and maroons of her old uniform had returned. The only visible change were the faintest details of gold lining in between the dark plating.
She paced through the gas cloud inside the meeting room until she found all three sources: silver canisters the size of tennis balls, spewing forth vapour.
"I got the Flagsmasher with the gas grenades," Sam said, and moments later Maggie heard a window nearby smash, followed by the resonant reverberation of Vibranium.
"No one's moving toward the building," Sharon said.
Maggie's suit finished the chemical analysis of the gas, and the results flashed on her screen. "This isn't a chemical attack," she said, stomach dropping. "This is just regular street-level pepper spray."
Sam voiced the realization that had hit them all at once: "Karli's not coming in, she's trying to force everyone out. It's a misdirect! We've gotta keep everybody inside."
Maggie spun just in time to see the last of the GRC representatives disappear down the fire stairwell. She started forward, only to hear a crash behind her. She whipped around again to see Sam tumbling into the room, head over heels. He wore a uniform that echoed Steve's old Captain America look, but with more whites to the colour scheme and a mask distinctly designed for flight. He righted himself, rising to one knee, and looked up at his attacker as he strode into the conference room.
Georges Batroc. The french weapons smuggler Sam had gone up against weeks ago. He was bald, and wore disarmingly casual clothes as he swaggered into the room.
"You cost me a lot of money," Batroc snarled as he strode after Sam.
"Sam!" Maggie started forward.
Sam glanced over his shoulder. "Go, stop the evacuation!" he ordered with a wave of his hand, before turning back to Batroc.
Gritting her teeth, Maggie turned and ran. "Nice outfit, by the way!" she called in the comms as she burst out of the conference room and made for the stairs. Behind her, Batroc and Sam slammed together.
The evacuation had gotten a head start on Maggie. She raced to the east stairwell and nearly collided with the top railing as she looked down. Fifteen flights of stairs in a circle descent. Dozens of people in suits hurried down the stairs, ushered along by security guards. She could see straight to the basement at the bottom.
"It's a decoy!" she shouted down the stairwell, "stay where you are!" But her voice was drowned out by the blaring PA warning:
"This is an emergency evacuation. Please proceed to your transports."
Cursing under her breath, Maggie rolled back her shoulders and vaulted over the railing.
Stairs and lights and people's shocked faces streamed past her in a blur. She plummeted down the fifteen floors like a dropped stone, and when she could feel the stomach-dropping space beneath her vanishing, she let out her breath and flared her wings. They erupted from her back in a burst of metal, jolting her whole body when the air caught and her descent was yanked to a halt.
She still hit the ground hard, nearly denting the cement floor of the parking garage when her boots landed. She straightened, a little shaky as her wings retracted, and she strode toward the nearest security guard. GRC representatives hurried past her at the base of the stairs, toward the waiting transports. They cast her shocked glances, but didn't stop.
"You have to get them back inside," Maggie told the security guard breathlessly, "they're not safe if they leave in those transports!"
"But - this is the evacuation protocol-"
Maggie opened her mouth to argue, but then F.R.I.D.A.Y. cut in over the comms.
"Ms Stark, a woman wearing a Flagsmasher mask just exited the fifth floor server room. The drone on that floor has captured footage of what appears to be an explosive device."
Maggie's stomach dropped. "Timer?" the security guard she'd been ordering around frowned in confusion.
"Unknown."
"Shit." She grabbed the security guard by his collar. "You stop these transports, now." With that she turned and began racing back up the stairs, barging past GRC council members. "Bucky, you've got to stop those evac transports!"
"I'm almost there," he replied.
"Same," Sharon murmured. "But where are you going?"
"Got to check on something."
Maggie did not see, behind her, the security guard turned and began directing GRC members onto the transports as if he'd never spoken to her.
"One world," he murmured to the driver when the transport was full.
"One people," replied the driver with a grim nod.
A floor above the basement, Bucky was distracted when a woman handed him a phone, with Karli on the other end.
"It doesn't matter if I don't survive this," she told him. "I'm fighting for something bigger than myself. With all the bodies you've collected, have you ever been able to say the same?"
Maggie had to kick down the locked door to the server room F.R.I.D.A.Y. directed her toward. A blast of cool air washed over her, and she squinted behind her goggles at the red flashing light inside the room. Rows of black servers with glowing terminals filled the room, forests of neatly arranged wires collected along the edges.
"Third row," F.R.I.D.A.Y. said grimly.
Maggie's boots squeaked on the shiny floor as she jogged along the rows of servers, until-
"Shit."
"What's wrong?" called Sharon.
The bomb - if that's what it was - looked almost like a spider. Eight black, mechanical arms were clamped onto the wall of servers like a parasite; the metal had buckled slightly, as if the arms were somehow drilled deeply into the server. At the centre of the device was an innocuous black dome, no bigger than a smartphone, with no buttons, displays, or anything else to signify what it might be, aside from a small reproduction of the Flagsmasher hand, painted in red. Maggie held her breath, and then was able to catch the sound of a faint beeping and whirring, as if under its black surface the device was working away at something.
"The transports just left," Sharon snapped. "Seriously, Bucky, you had one job."
"You worry about your guy," Bucky replied, followed by the sound of a motorcycle engine revving.
Maggie ignored them. She cocked her head, trying to scan the device with her HUD, but it was strangely resistant. "F.R.I.D.A.Y., what made you think this was a bomb? It could be this causing the digital lockdown."
"There's no signal emitting from the device, nor information being downloaded. Besides, this server room is in prime structural position to bring down the whole building."
Maggie grit her teeth. "Small, for a bomb, though."
"Scanning is almost complete, but I am getting traces of-"
F.R.I.D.A.Y. was cut off by Sharon: "Someone better get up on that roof. The chopper's about to take off."
"Bucky?" Sam called, breathless. He must still be fighting Batroc.
"I don't fly, man, that's yours and Meg's thing."
"Maggie?"
"Negative," she replied, retracting her taloned gloves and reaching for a small pouch of tools she kept in a trouser pouch. "I've found an explosive device in the server room. Anyone who's not been evacuated yet needs to be. Including you, Sam."
"You've found a what?" Bucky exclaimed.
"I got this," she replied, investigating the means by which the bomb was affixed to the servers. It had burrowed deep.
"I wouldn't mess with whatever it is, Maggie," Sharon said. "You know how the Flagsmashers work, they'll have left traps specifically designed for a Stark. If everyone gets clear, it's not worth the risk to you to try to defuse it."
Maggie's brow furrowed. "F.R.I.D.A.Y., estimated blast range?"
"I've been able to detect nanotechnology in the core of the device, Ms Stark - black market nanotechnology. There's never been an explosive made with nanotech before. Not even the Flagsmashers could safely estimate a blast range with such experimental technology."
"Great." She cracked her knuckles, crouched down, and began testing the edges of the device with a precision tool. "Sorry guys," she said into the comms. "I know they've put this here to take me out of the fight, but I can't leave it."
"Maggie…" Sam began.
"I don't know if you guys recall," she said calmly. "But I've got experience defusing bombs." Back when it had been just her, Tony, Rhodey, and Vision as the Avengers. Back when the Wyvern had become a hero. "I'll be fine."
Downtown, with the sound of distant sirens in the air, Karli waited with her remaining Flagsmashers by their planned exit route of the Holland tunnel.
"Worst case scenario…" Karli frowned down at a construction site pit full of scaffolding. "We detonate the bomb in the GRC building, and kill the hostages."
She could feel her friends hesitate.
"We're supposed to use them to negotiate," said Gigi.
Karli looked at her. "To stop that vote. Either way, our message gets out to the world. It doesn't even matter if we die. The movement is strong enough to continue without us."
Maggie was distantly aware of Sam, Bucky, and Sharon going to extreme and clever measures to rescue the GRC hostages in the air and on the ground. Sam had rescued the pilots of an NYPD helicopter that had been damaged in the chase, and Bucky had caught up with the trucks, one of which the Flagsmashers seemed to have set on fire. She was pretty sure Walker had shown up too, though it was hard to tell over the chaos of the comms, and amid her own concentration.
Maggie was all too aware that the bomb she'd found was not set to a timer, but to remotely detonate, and that Karli had to be getting more desperate by the minute.
Maggie had almost fallen into a dozen traps as she'd poked and scanned the bomb, trying to find a weak point. Whoever had put it together was clever - one of Karli's tech-savvy Flagsmashers, perhaps. She'd very nearly been too late to realize that they'd installed a trigger for the bomb to detonate if it came into contact with any other nanotechnology; a big problem when a great deal of her uniform was made up of the stuff.
It was resistant to most forms of scanning, impossible to pry away from the server wall without setting off half a dozen booby traps, and had no interface to deprogram it.
In the movies, bomb defusal was a sweaty, nail-biting task, where you nearly overheated from the stress of it all. But in the artificially air conditioned server room Maggie just felt cold. Each creak of the machinery as she carefully manipulated it, each quiet little beep and trill the device let out, made her want to drop her tools and take off running.
"I don't belong here," she told the spider-like bomb, because it was that or scream. "I belong on the back deck of my house, drinking a cocktail and watching my niece swim in the lake." She fruitlessly dug into the body of the server the bomb was attached to, as if she might carve out a whole chunk of it. "I didn't want to do this anymore," she confessed.
Over the comms, she could hear Bucky fighting. He sounded like he was in pain. Maggie knew just how hard those supersoldiers could hit.
"Helicopter is secure!" Sam called. "Filipino GRC representative Ayla Perez piloting in style."
"Things aren't good by the trucks," Sharon responded. "I'm not there yet but we've got reports of a truck burning, Barnes is at the bottom of a pit, Walker's up against Karli-"
"On my way," Sam responded.
"Karli's going to detonate that bomb the second she gets a free hand!" came Bucky's frantic voice. "She's fighting Walker, but the detonator's in her pocket. Meg, you gotta-"
Her heart skipped. "I - I'm almost there," she lied. "Let me know if she's going for the detonator, I'll try to get out."
"Get out now, Wyvern, that's an order," Sam shouted.
Maggie shook her head as if to shake off an insect, drew in a deep breath, and then crouched so she was face-to-face with the device.
Whoever had made this never intended for this bomb to be defused. They hadn't left any safety switches. Like most things the Flagsmashers did, this was a reckless, committed act of defiance. She'd never seen a nanotechnology bomb before, and the concept of it frightened her. It could not work. It could be the next nuclear bomb.
She drew another deep breath. Break it down to its components. She closed her eyes and remembered the birth of nanotechnology; when Tony had come to her with a new idea in 2017.
I'm gonna call it nanotech, he'd said. Got the idea from bad sci-fi - and kind of from Vision's matter manipulation - and figured out how to make it work. She could practically see his grimace. Well, kind of. I can't figure out any kind of base alloy to synthesize it, and since T'Challa's not exactly handing out Vibranium gift baskets I'm sort of… yeah, stuck.
Maggie remembered looking over his plans, struck by her brother's sheer audacious brilliance. She remembered seeing the empty spaces in his designs, that she'd known how to fill. She and Tony were brilliant on their own, but together…
She remembered sharing the secrets of Adamantium with him.
Maggie opened her eyes and reconsidered the strange bomb with the nanotechnology core. No one else had been able to formulate nanotech without having either Vibranium or Adamantium to synthesize the technology at a molecular level. The nanotechnology in this bomb, though a microscopic amount, had to have been stolen from the existing tech made by Stark Industries, somehow. Maggie didn't care to find out how just now, all that mattered was that she had made this, with her brother.
So she knew how to unmake it.
Again, it wasn't like in the movies. She didn't pry away metal plating, or snip any red wires. Maggie hardly touched the bomb. Using the resources available in her suit, she began treating the bomb with targeted flashes of light beyond the spectrum of human vision, followed by the introduction of various chemical gasses that she was able to generate from her suit, thanks to F.R.I.D.A.Y.
Maggie was likely the last person left alive who knew how to make Adamantium. The secrets had been shared with her on that rainy, miserable Canadian island where she had been turned into a weapon. Adamantium had clung to her bones since she was a child.
No one had ever unmade Adamantium. And Maggie suspected that what she'd done would not work on an amount of Adamantium larger than what was in that device.
But just a few more minutes later, the soft beeps and whirs of the device simply died, like a creature's last breath. Other than that, nothing else seemed to have visually changed. But Maggie knew that the nanotech core had dissolved, the molecules pulled apart at the seams.
She sat back, remembering that day years ago when the only nanotech in the world had sat on a table between her and Tony, as they took turns shaping it into different forms, grinning and breathless.
Nice one, kid.
Maggie was rocketing over the Hudson river with the wind in her ears when Bucky called:
"Meg, evac if you haven't already, Walker's lost Karli-augh!"
"She can hit that button all she wants, it won't do anything," Maggie replied. "You okay?"
"Nice work," Sam replied, pure relief in his voice. "Buck, I'm thirty seconds out, you good?"
"This Dovich guy is a pain in my - oh god."
Maggie urged more power to her engines. A silence had fallen over the comms.
"Talk to me guys, what's happening?" she called as she jetted past the Chelsea piers.
No one replied, and her stomach dropped. "Guys?"
Sharon eventually replied. "Karli drove the truck full of GRC members over the edge, into the construction pit - it's right on the edge, Walker's holding it, but-" she cut off in a gasp, and Maggie felt her stomach drop. She was ten seconds away, but that would be too late.
She shot back over land - she left the pier behind, rocketed over parking lots, buildings, searching for the construction zone Sharon mentioned. There - an enormous dug-out pit ringed with scaffolding, surrounded by a staring crowd.
But there was no shattered carcass of a truck at the bottom of the pit, no mangled bodies. No horrified onlookers. She saw Bucky, Walker, and a few of the Flagsmashers at the bottom of the pit, looking up with open mouths at… Sam. He hovered, wings outstretched, at the nose of the truck where it had fallen over the edge of the cliff. As Maggie watched he flared his engines and, assisted by a couple of Redwing drones, pushed the truck up, up, and back onto secure footing on the scaffolding.
The watching crowd, glinting with recording smartphones, burst into cheers when the truck settled safely on the scaffolding and Sam was able to let go.
Maggie tried to calm her racing heartbeat as she coasted down to land by the top of the pit, near the truck. Her metal wings glinted in the streelights and a few of the onlookers jumped, startled by her sudden presence. She stepped forward, flexing her fingers as she prepared to tear open the locked doors of the truck, but then a Redwing drone buzzed in front of her, lasering the locking mechanism clean off.
Her mouth quirked. "Don't need us super soldiers anymore, do you Fal- er, Cap?" she stepped forward, opened the rear door of the truck and began helping the white-faced GRC representatives out onto safe ground.
"You can stick around and make me look good," Sam responded, still hovering in midair. She laughed, and Senator Davis stared at her as she hauled him out of the truck.
"Thank you, Wyvern," said the last GRC member, the member from the UK.
"It's not me you have to thank," she replied. "It's Captain America." She nodded toward Sam.
As she watched, though, Sam turned and flung his shield downward, before swooping into the pit.
Right. Flagsmashers. Maggie pushed the UK GRC representative a little more forcefully than necessary into the waiting arms of the crowd, then leaped across the length of the scaffolding and into the pit.
She landed amidst a tense standoff. Sam faced Karli, who eyed him with an expression of disgust. Bucky stood by a haggard-looking Walker, and the other Flagsmashers arrayed behind Karli. Maggie gave Bucky a quick look; you okay? He nodded in reply, despite a few new bruises and cuts.
"You of all people bought into that bullshit?" Karli said, eyeing Sam's new uniform.
"I'm trying something different, maybe you should do the same," he replied.
But the fight bubbling up in the pit cut off when a series of gas canisters slammed into the dirt, erupting in a cloud of thick white smoke. Maggie just spotted Batroc up in the scaffolding with a canister launcher before the smoke swallowed her whole.
Maggie crouched, wings flaring and circling around herself in protection. "Guys?"
"This way," came Sam's voice, and she flicked over to her thermal vision HUD just in time to see him, Bucky, and Walker take off after the running Flagsmashers.
"I've got Batroc!" she called, leaping in the other direction.
It was as if the smoke had suppressed all sound. The others barely spoke as they followed Karli and the Flagsmashers into the under-construction tunnel. Maggie leaped into the scaffolding with a burst of power from her wings, and began tracking Batroc into the construction site. Her HUD flicked through options; thermal vision, motion sensor, electronic activity. She had a faint lead, which led her deeper and deeper into the construction site, until -
She found a small electronic device in the dust by a cement pylon. On her HUD, it read as emitting motion. She'd been tracking a false trail.
Clever. Maggie picked up the device and crushed it in her hand. She looked around in the hazy yellow light of the construction zone, jaw clenched.
"They lost us again," came Bucky's frustrated voice. "Sam?"
"Tracking Karli," Sam replied, very softly. "Think I just heard gunshots."
"Meg?"
"Batroc lost me, too. They're good." She paced back the way she came, then looked down at the crushed beacon in her hand. "But I've got an idea. Bucky, I'm coming to you and Walker's location. You got your phone?"
"Yeah…?"
"I'm downloading an app to your phone. Head to the northeast corner outside the tunnel system. Maybe we can use the Flagsmashers' clever tools against them."
Karli's fist smashed into Sam's Vibranium's shield.
"I'm not gonna fight you!" he roared, leaping away. She tore a metal pylon free and slammed him with it, knocking him down.
"Stay down!"
He rolled to his feet. "No."
The three remaining Flagsmashers hurried together toward the northeast corner of the tunnel system, guided by their app. Their faces lightened as they saw the open road, only to fall when two figures stepped out of the shadows.
"Mercy bears richer fruit than strict justice," quoted John Walker, smiling as he stood in the path of the Flagsmashers.
Beside him, Bucky looked up from his phone. "It's a great app," he acknowledged, holding the screen up to show them that he'd been the one communicating a 'safe exit' to them. Behind him a siren blared, and police began to flood in.
Dovich turned, thinking to disappear back into the tunnel system, only to flinch when he saw a single dark figure with burning red eyes standing in the tunnel entrance.
"Thank you," Bucky said to the Flagsmashers, and as the police flooded in, surrounding the last Flagmashers, he turned away.
"Lincoln, really?" he said to Walker, who strode beside him.
"Great man, great quote," Walker said, clapping Bucky on the shoulder.
"Not when you say it."
Walker glanced to his left and swore when he saw Maggie striding beside him soundlessly. "You always sneak up on people like that?"
Maggie looked into Walker's face. She saw none of the blank-eyed madness she'd seen in Latvia, but she still couldn't bring herself to walk as comfortably in his presence as Bucky did. She swallowed, then said:
"I think your friend Lemar would be proud of you for today."
Walker's eyes gleamed in his grimy face. He nodded stiffly.
Maggie touched her commset. "Sam, we've arrested the other Flagsmashers. Send us your location, you shouldn't have to face Karli alone."
There was no reply. Maggie shot Bucky a worried glance. He clenched his jaw, then nodded at her.
"He'll be okay," he assured her.
Sam cradled Karli's head, pressing a hand to the four bullet holes Sharon had put through her chest.
She'd been about to shoot him. He'd seen it in her eyes, he knew the look.
But he couldn't help but hold her. Couldn't help but see his friend Riley in her frightened eyes; Riley, who'd also died too young. Who he hadn't been able to save.
"I'm sorry," Karli said, looking up into his face as tears welled in her eyes. She looked so young. Sam held her, wanted to say something, but…
She was gone.
Maggie, Bucky, and Walker had made it back to the main street, which was lit up with the flashing lights of dozens of police cars, fire trucks, and ambulances, and packed with people. They heard the crowd go silent as Sam appeared in the sky, gliding down to the road with a body in his arms.
Maggie pressed her hands to her stomach at the sudden ache there, as she watched Sam land with Karli Morgenthau cradled to his chest. His wings retracted and he stood tall, striding forward with her. Her red hair blazed in the flashing lights.
A pair of paramedics ran a stretcher over to him, and Sam carefully set Karli down. They rolled her away and Sam kept striding forward, toward the congregation of emergency services, onlookers, media, and GRC members receiving first aid.
Walker strode toward an ambulance to get a bandage for one of his wounds, but Maggie and Bucky hung back in the space toward a fire engine and an ambulance, able to see what was going on, but unseeable by others.
Bucky reached out to take Maggie's hand.
The press surged forward to shout questions at Sam, and Maggie wanted to rage forward, to tear them away from him. But Sam didn't break his stride as he moved toward the GRC members, his shield on his back and his chin high.
"Are you still going forward with resetting the borders?" Maggie heard him ask, once they'd done thanking him.
"Our peacekeeping troops will begin relocating soon," said Prime Minister Lacont, of India. "The terrorists only set us back a bit."
"You have to stop calling them terrorists," Sam said. Maggie's stomach swooped and she tightened her grip on Bucky's hand.
She had a million things she wanted to say, but she knew this wasn't her time to speak. If it looked like Sam needed her help, she'd step forward, but… she could see he didn't.
"What else would we call them?" asked Senator Davis with bemusement.
"Your peacekeeping troops carrying weapons are forcing millions of people into settlements around the world, right? What do you think those people are gonna call you?" Maggie noticed cameras swinging toward Sam's conversation with the representatives, people in the vicinity stopping their discussions to hear him speak. "These labels. Terrorist, refugee, thug. They're often used to get around the question why." His dark eyes were determined behind his goggles.
The GRC members fired back at Sam, questioning whether he really expected them to uphold the settlements and changes that had emerged during the Blip. And Sam, who Maggie was used to hearing say don't ask me, I just follow him, answered back.
Sam had always been wise, always been a leader, but Maggie had never seen him like this. Passionate, determined, outspoken. Persuasive.
"You have no idea how complicated this situation is!" Davis argued, and moved to stride past Sam.
"You know what, you're right. And that's a good thing." Sam turned to face Davis. "We finally have a common struggle now. Think about that." There was not a single person in the area not listening to Sam now. "For once, all the people who've been begging, and I mean literally begging for you to feel how hard any given day is… Now you know. How did it feel to be helpless?"
Maggie stopped clutching Bucky's hand so tightly, and contented herself to settle back into the shadows with him, and watch.
She'd been learning, this past week. Looking at policies, expertise, and opinions. She had plenty of ideas, but she'd known something had been missing.
"I'm a Black man carrying the stars and stripes," Sam laughed in the face of Davis's derision. "What don't I understand? Every time I pick this thing up, I know there are millions of people who are gonna hate me for it." Maggie stole a glance at Bucky, who watched Sam with a hundred complicated emotions gleaming in his eyes. "Even now, here… I feel it. The stares, the judgement. And there's nothing I can do to change it. Yet I'm still here. No super serum. No blonde hair, or blue eyes. The only power I have is that I believe we can do better."
Maggie had been missing Sam: a leader who could really, truly sway the opinions of those who counted. Maggie's role was not to lead here. It was to support, to facilitate, to empower.
Sam truly had the floor now. He turned to each of the GRC members in turn, questioning their power, questioning how they used it. "People believed in Karli's cause so much that they helped her to defy the strongest governments in the world, why do you think that is?" He turned. None of them could look him in the eye now. "Look, you people have just as much power as an insane god, or a misguided teenager." He lowered his voice, made them meet his gaze. "The question you have to ask yourself is… how are you going to use it?"
Maggie let go the breath she'd been holding.
It had always been Sam who needed to speak.
And Maggie would be there to follow him. Her Captain America.
He strode away, toward them, and the GRC and the press let him go. He nodded to Walker, who nodded back. He slipped into the space between the fire truck and the ambulance where Bucky and Maggie waited.
"Sorry, I was, uh, texting, and all I heard was 'a Black guy in stars and stripes'," Bucky joked, making Sam laugh. "Nice job, Cap."
Sam nodded. "Thanks." He looked to Maggie.
"You write all that down first, or was it just off the top of your head?" she gave him a bittersweet smile. Steve had told her that story, from the Triskelion, when they used to reminisce together during the Blip.
Sam chuckled again, and Bucky patted him on the back.
Sam cocked his head at Maggie. "You're gonna help me, right?" He jerked his head back toward the crowd. "With them."
"I spent most of the Blip on other planets, fixing their problems. I think I could do a halfway decent job on my own." She nodded. "I'm with you, Cap." She frowned. "Though I think I've lost my last binder."
Together, they walked over to Sharon, who was hiding a hundred yards away with a bullet wound in her gut.
It ended up taking both Maggie and Bucky to convince Sharon to go to at least a black-market doctor to see to her wounds, since Sam had to fly off to deal with cleanup. Sharon would be alright. She was quiet, and didn't seem up for sticking around once she was better.
Once Sharon left, Bucky and Maggie went home to her family's old mansion in Manhattan. They cleaned up, and went to bed. But neither of them slept that night, too acutely aware of just how much the world had changed.