And… that's me done, for a while. No current plans for any big fic projects, I'm going to try my hand at some original fiction for a while. Wish me luck!
But more importantly, I feel I've done half a dozen sign-offs at this point, and this one feels… less heavy than the others. Probably because this story has not been as long, or absorbed my life as much as the Wyvern, or the Siren, or ITSOYW did. Probably because I feel happy parting ways with Maggie for the foreseeable, happy that she's happy. Call me cliche, I don't care.
Thank you as always to you, for reading. For caring. Thanks to Sadie Kane, who went from reader to best friend (we'll always have Paris!), to my very first ever reviewer monkeybaby, to shorttrooper and DBZFAN45 for being there every week, and to so many others who have become familiar names over the years (so sorry if I miss you!): I Found A Reason, Tobiramama, aturnofthepage, roguereader, childishassassin, BuckyBarnes07, Strawberrycheese, smilin steph, Terion, WiredDreams92, AthenaKnight, WinchesterDixonBros, Artemis Laurens, Loulabelle25, TheRandomReader7, zishigaku, Cleo9427, TenebrisSagittarius, BethiePie1998, TheHatterM, Scribonius4, The Muse's Summer House, GirlNextDoor01, Janeth16, ShadowCupcakes, and… everybody else.
For an introverted kid wanting to write about a lady with wings, having had the pleasure to be connected to all of you through reviews and comments has been a dream. I am braver and more proud of myself for having done this. If you'll allow me to give you a tiny bit of advice: do the thing. That thing niggling at the back of your mind, that you think might be too embarrassing or too silly to do. Mine was Maggie. Do it. Who knows, you might find yourself in five years giving a heartfelt thank you to all those who came with you along the way.
And I hope, like me, that you enjoy returning to these stories. Wherever you do, feel free to check in with me. You know me, I'll probably reply! That's my mission ;)
Lots of love, Emma x
February 8th, 2025
"Well, shit."
"What is it now, Wyvern? Talk to me."
Maggie glanced around; she stood at the edge of a frantic operations room packed with agents from half a dozen organisations, including ex S.H.I.E.L.D., Avengers, and also current agents under whatever the hell organisation Maria Hill and Nick Fury had been running since the Blip.
Maggie and Bucky had got the call a few hours ago, from Maria Hill. They'd been visiting with Pepper and Morgan, regaling them with their most recent visit to hospital; Maggie had been having Braxton Hicks contractions all week as she entered the final stages of her pregnancy, and the first time it happened Bucky freaked out and rushed her to the hospital, only for their very considerate midwife Penny to explain that no, the baby was not about to explode out of Maggie.
"We need you both," Hill had said on the phone, her voice terse. "I wouldn't ask, only it's… it's big. End of the world, Thanos-level big. We're pulling out all the stops."
Maggie had got the details in bits and pieces since that call; an alliance of surviving enemies of the Avengers from Earth and beyond, who'd collaborated to target all enhanced individuals and their allies on the planet, in order to get some kind of revenge. The combatants were primarily non-Earth-based, though they'd mobilised a force of Earth-based mercenaries and even some old Ultron drones. The scale of it was overwhelming; Maggie had been out of the loop as a consulting superhero, more concerned with supporting and funding enhanced individuals and organisations that addressed global problems; the exact people this new threat aimed to destroy.
Bucky had wanted her to stay with Pepper and Morgan. But Maggie knew that even though she could not put herself on the front line, her skills would be invaluable at Hill's base of operations. So here she found herself, nine months pregnant at a standing desk monitoring the unfolding situation in the far north of Canada (the team had identified this as the most remote location they could draw the fight to themselves in a pinch, and the cold might also hamper the enemy's robots and airships).
The fight had begun an hour ago, and had already turned devastating. Maggie and the rest of the team saw via the various camera angles at the scene how the Avengers' forces (they weren't really Avengers, but they didn't have another name for it) waged deadly battle against the mix of robots, alien forces, and human mercenaries, the front line pushing back and forth. Laser blasts and explosions lit up the arctic air, and airships and other flying devices and people rocketed overhead. Hill really had called in everyone: Sam dove recklessly through the sky with his shield, flanked by Rhodey and that new girl with the shiny Iron-Man-esque armor, Iron Heart (Maggie had already been in touch with her before today, as part of her consultant-superhero gig, and found her to be delightfully brilliant).
Bucky was up on the mountain range above the battlefield, picking off fighters from a distance, occasionally tearing them apart with his metal arm when they got close. Maggie tried not to focus on him or worry about him too much; they both knew the fight might call them once again, and she knew the team needed him.
She could hear the Hulk's thundering footsteps as he raged through the battle, saw Dr Strange's flashing magic, and the incessant banter of Clint and his partner/protegee Kate as they unleashed a barrage of arrows. Even Thor had returned to defend the Earth from this invasion, crackling with lightning and accompanied by the Guardians. Maggie kept an eye on the location of John Walker's GPS dot (though he preferred to be known as US Agent these days), and also the rapidly-moving dot belonging to Yelena, who apparently considered herself Natasha's sister. This new war had brought a lot of people out of the woodwork.
And yet.
"Shit," Maggie muttered again. Despite the raging battle, and the frantic hacking and monitoring and rerouting Maggie had been doing on her holoscreens, she now found herself looking downward. On screen, the Avengers let out cries of dismay as a new wave of former-Ultron drones surged over the horizon.
"Stark, talk to me!" came Hill's urgent voice from the centre of the chaos. "Where are we at with those congruences, we've only got-"
Hill finally turned around to look at Maggie, and abruptly swallowed her words. "Shit," Hill agreed, after muting her comms.
They both looked down at Maggie's damp trousers - Maggie with considerably more difficulty, past her enormous belly. Ruptured amniotic sac fluid, Maggie thought distantly.
"Are you-" Hill began, sweat on her forehead. Her eyes were wide.
Maggie winced as another contraction hit - because this was the real thing, she finally realized. She'd been having them all morning, but thought they were more Braxton Hicks. Her face screwed up and Hill opened her mouth, but then Maggie held up a hand to silence her, the other braced against her desk for support.
"They still need me," Maggie said through the contraction - it wasn't too bad, she was just a little breathless. Her mind, already occupied with robot AI functions and airship control hacking, began running an entirely new set of calculations. "We both know that." Hill's eyes hardened.
The contraction passed and Maggie straightened, breathing out. "I'm going to go change quickly, but then I need some things. There's doctors in this secret base, right? Get me a doctor, and a bottle of water. Have someone call Pepper; she can bring my go-bag from home."
Hill eyed her, clearly tossing up the situation, then gave her a nod. "You're right. We do need you. But if you or a doctor says the word, we pull you out. Got it?"
"Got it." Maggie reached for her bag - she brought a change of clothes most places now - and turned to leave. But then she paused and turned back. "Hill."
Hill turned back from where she'd begun to give orders, one eyebrow raised.
"Don't tell them yet. Any of them."
Hill nodded once. "Agreed."
Maggie returned the nod, then waddled out as fast as she could.
When Maggie returned, she had to rush right back to her station, where someone had fetched her a chair (she ignored it, she preferred to stand), a bottle of water, and a junior agent who hovered by her side as she picked up her headset and tuned back into the battle.
She'd fallen behind - the new Ultron-drone surge had overwhelmed the Avengers' forces, and despite F.R.I.D.A.Y. and Ironheart's best efforts, they remained unassailable to hacking or interference. Maggie's fingers began flying over her holo-display, as she searched for any weaknesses. Her eyes flicked over the battle readout above her; the Avengers had coalesced into tight groups, covering each others' backs. Bucky was with Sam and Yelena, and she could just about hear his low, urgent words over the comms.
Hill approached her briefly and held up a writing pad, where she'd scrawled: Supplies incoming. Doctors on way up.
Maggie nodded distractedly, still working. She rocked her weight from one leg to the other.
She hadn't been too worried about the labor pains during her pregnancy - she'd been nervous, sure, but she'd undergone so much pain in her life that had led to terrible things, she didn't mind the idea of pain that led to new life. But experiencing it was another matter. She'd set the junior agent Hill had assigned her on timing duty, nodding at him to restart the stopwatch every time a new contraction hit; eight minutes apart at first, leaving plenty of productive time for her. She had trouble working through the contractions themselves; they were a throbbing, cramping pain that seemed to draw all her attention inward, making her fingers and jaw clench to withstand it. But even if she couldn't move her fingers her brain was always working; it was almost nice to have the threat of imminent alien and robot takeover to keep her mind off the pain.
After a few contractions, the junior agent was replaced by none other than Doctor Darcy Lewis.
"Hey," she said cheerily when she slipped in beside Maggie, a holodisplay of astronomical projections surrounding her. "They called me in too, can you believe it? They need an astrophysicist to take a look at these portals they've been using, see if we can weaponise them. But then I hear you're about to drop a baby out, and that seems like a much more valuable use of my time."
Maggie shot her a wry smile. She and Darcy had been on friendly terms since the Westview mess. "I'm not going to drop it," she said between slow, purposeful breaths.
"Course you aren't." Darcy took up an almost protective position beside Maggie, where she could still make herself available for the astrophysics questions, but also supervise Maggie as she worked and labored.
"We've got a plan to hit their main airship," came Sam's harried voice through the comms, "but we can't get through the drone forces. Tell me one of you eggheads has got something for us."
Maggie twisted her hand in her holoscreen, her mind whirling. "I might have something, but I need a more thorough analysis of their flight patterns," she replied, still rocking her weight back and forth. Darcy, who'd been analysing chemical readouts of the portals, shot her a sideways glance. "Can someone get up there and give me a thorough scan?"
"You say that like it's easy," Rhodey grumbled.
"Yeah, we're not exactly flying kites up here, Wyvern," came Clint's easy banter. She glanced up and watched on the video screen as he and Kate brought down a whole airship. Thor flew past, harassed by an entire squadron of the drones.
"Alas, there's no one out there who can fly as well as the Wyvern," Maggie replied, smiling when she heard Bucky's low laugh over the comms. But in the next second she had to mute her comms to hide a choked-off groan as a contraction rolled over her like a wave. A tear rolled down her cheek.
Darcy leaned over to support her as she clutched the desk. "C'mon, Maggie, let me call Barnes back in, you need to get to medical-"
"No," Maggie grunted, barely registering Sam's I'll go get you your scan over the comms. "Bucky needs to be there, and I need to be here. Don't tell any of them, they need to focus." She glanced over her shoulder at Hill, who kept shooting her incisive, calculating looks. "We're almost there, and I can still work."
Maggie and Darcy both looked back at the base doctor, who had been ushered into the room after signing several security waivers. He had mostly been hovering on standby for the last hour, after making Maggie change into a medical gown so he could examine her periodically, leaving Maggie feeling very silly-looking in the room full of suited and uniformed agents. He clutched a small handheld scanner that he used to check on the baby every fifteen minutes; all signs so far seemed healthy, with a strong and regular heartbeat and no distress. Maggie had been very careful to keep her own mood as regular as possible, and she'd been teaching Darcy some of her breathing techniques as she worked.
The doctor shifted under Maggie's glare. "Contractions are still six minutes apart, but I really must stress the importance of getting Ms Stark to the medical bay when dilation reaches-"
Sam started talking over the comms, so Maggie held up a hand to the doctor and turned back to her workstation, breathing through the remaining cramping of the contraction.
"That's perfect, Sam," she said, as his and Redwing's scan of the Ultron-drones' flying patterns came through. She flexed and unflexed her hand to shake off the lingering pain. "My hunch was right, it seems like to animate the drone's they've centred the AI in a handful of 'queen-bee' type drones, who determine the behaviour of the 'worker-bees', if you will. We'll target those hubs to see if we can bring down the system." Already her fingers were moving, under Darcy's disapproving eye.
But something of the pain must have leaked into her voice. "Is there something else to it, Wyvern? What's wrong?" asked Bucky, even as he dashed along the ridge of a mountain for a better position.
"Nothing," Maggie said shortly. "Sam, watch your eight o'clock, a detachment of airships has just veered to target you."
Half an hour later, Darcy was holding Maggie's hand through another contraction. She had a chair she could lean back on now, though she still preferred to stand, and the whole room seemed to know what was going on now, if the frantic gazes her way were anything to go by. Anyone not at a screen or contributing to the mission was running small tasks for Hill; fetching ice chips, heat packs and towels for Maggie, most of which she waved away.
It wasn't that she didn't care about being in labor, or her baby; she simply let her body do what it needed to do, reassured herself the baby was still healthy with the readouts from the electronic monitoring devices the doctor had placed on her belly, and went about electronically disrupting the alien and robot invaders of her planet.
Maggie tipped her head back and groaned through her teeth, clutching Darcy's hand - but gently, since her full force could crush bones.
"You're so stupid, Maggie," Darcy said as Maggie's eyes began to open at the end of the contraction. She wiped sweat off Maggie's forehead with a cool towel. "Just come deliver your baby, the others have got this-"
Maggie, sweating and teary, straightened and lifted her hands once more to her holo-display, where she was targeting the 'queen-bee' drones. "F.R.I.D.A.Y., what are the chances that the Avengers succeed if I leave right now?"
"Factoring in past success rates and the relative size and unpredictability of this threat, I estimate a 74.3% chance of victory."
That was pretty good, considering. F.R.I.D.A.Y. must have increased her estimation of their abilities since Thanos, especially considering the threat was by no means dealt with. The team on the ground had taken out one of the major generals, but the alien forces remained overwhelming.
"See, they've got it, let's go," Darcy said.
"And if I stay, F.R.I.D.A.Y.?"
When the AI answered, she sounded softer: "85 percent, Ms Stark."
Maggie looked at Darcy. "That's why I can't leave yet. I've got this, Darcy, I know what I'm capable of. Trust me on this."
Darcy's eyebrows pinched with worry, but then she nodded. "Okay."
Mere moments later there was an enormous eruption on the battlefield, ear-splitting even over the comms. The operations room erupted in cries of confusion and dismay, and half the video feeds became clogged with smoke, stone, and snow. Maggie paused in her digital infiltration efforts to help take stock of the situation; one by one the Avengers sounded off, in various states of pain or disgruntlement. Bruce let out a gruff:
"I'm fine. But I've lost visual on Barnes. He was on the rise they hit with the missile."
Maggie's stomach bottomed out, and she heard the beeping from the doctor's handheld device as her baby's heartbeat spiked in time with hers.
"Barnes, check in," Hill said in a flat tone over the comms.
Nothing.
Maggie felt her face go white, and Darcy's grip on her hand tightened.
"He's okay," Darcy promised her baselessly, her eyes wide and worried. "He'll be okay."
Maggie said nothing. She kept working, her movements sharp and rigid, her gaze fixed on Bucky's last location. She and F.R.I.D.A.Y. had infiltrated the Ultron-drones internal digital communications. They had a few firewalls and blocks before they could even think about altering anything, but they had more information about their flight patterns and targeting. Bucky was still silent - her brain veered away from that, back toward lines of code.
Sam swooped low over the rubble that half the mountain had been reduced to, calling Bucky's name. Maggie felt her emotions becoming very distant, as if trapped like smoke on the other side of a glass window. The pain of another contraction gripped her very core and she barely gasped, her jaw tight and her hand even tighter on the edge of the desk. She felt the metal of it creak and warp under her grip. Darcy's eyes widened. Maggie could feel Hill's eyes on her back.
Sam turned, running another sweep over the rubble. And in that moment Bucky emerged from the shattered stone and snow, dusty and swearing. Sam let out a relieved laugh and swooped to pull him out.
The tension left Maggie's body in a rush, followed by more beeping from the doctor's device, and she muted her comms to let out a shuddering gasp as the contraction seemed to fully hit her. She set her elbows to the desk and doubled over, tears leaking from her eyes. Darcy rubbed the small of her back.
When she was able to unmute her comms she swore a blue streak at him. "Bucky fucking Barnes, when you get back here I'm going to rip your arm off and beat you with it-"
"Let's keep this line clear," came Hill's disapproving voice.
Maggie glanced back across the control room, and Hill raised an eyebrow at her. She shrugged sheepishly.
"Sorry, doll," Bucky said with a laugh in his voice as Sam rocketed him to a better vantage point.
Maggie shook off the lingering panic and pain, rolled her shoulders back, and dove back into the drone network.
"Y'all are stressing me out," Darcy muttered under her breath.
Pepper Potts arrived at the operations room with a pregnancy go-bag, her five year old daughter, and a three-legged dog. A stressed-looking agent admitted her to the room, where she instantly spotted Maggie: the tall brunette had her back to the entrance, wearing a blue hospital gown, her hair slicked back with sweat, taking deep, measured breaths as her fingers danced through the holo-field of information, video screens, and code around her. Outside her constellation of blue light stood Darcy Lewis, watching anxiously with a glass of icechips in one hand, and a doctor, whose gaze was fixed to a device that seemed to be displaying heartbeats.
"Oh god," Pepper said, even though the situation had already been explained to her. She turned to Maria Hill, who had marched over as soon as the door opened. Pepper rested a hand on the back of Morgan's head, who was staring around with wide eyes. "I couldn't find a sitter, I-"
"We have a staff nursery," said Hill, nodding to a nearby agent.
Pepper breathed out. "Morgan, take Artemis and go with Agent…?"
"Dawes, ma'am."
Morgan looked like she wanted to protest, but at a stern look from Pepper sighed and led Artemis out of the room after Agent Dawes. Pepper hurried over to Maggie's station, her brows furrowing when she began to glimpse the battlefield through the various video readouts around the room. It reminded her of the only battle she'd been a part of, against Thanos and his forces. She found the video readout labelled BARNES, which showed a horde of laser-rifle wielding aliens blowing craters in the ground, as a massive airship flew overhead, protected by a swarm of Ultron-like drones. Bucky's rifle swung into view, firing up at the drones.
"Maggie," Pepper said when she drew close, and Maggie's dark eyes flicked to her, softening a little with relief. "What are you-"
But then Maggie held up a finger and turned to one of her many holo-screens, saying: "F.R.I.D.A.Y., there. If we can install the rootkit in that transmission payload sequence, we may be able to gain remote access to their collective flight path intelligence - no, no, it has to be now, I don't care if they shore up that firewall in the meantime-"
Darcy Lewis turned to Pepper. "You're not going to get much conversation out of her," she said sympathetically. "But Dr Alexi there says the contractions are about three minutes apart now, that the baby's heartbeat is still strong, and that even though Maggie's blood pressure is pretty high - understandably - she's staying strong. She mostly gets frustrated when we interrupt her, it seems like she's maybe close to figuring something out? Coding's not my forte, I'm an astrophysics gal myself."
Pepper eyed Maggie as she sifted through streams of code and data, trailing electronic sensor wires from her belly as she turned to another screen. Her sweaty forehead gleamed blue in the holo-light. It was the strangest thing, this heavily pregnant woman in labor orchestrating an electronic battle in midair. Her eyes were sharp and fierce, glowing in the light.
Pepper eyed the stressed-looking doctor, before turning back to Maggie.
"Maggie," she said firmly, drawing Maggie's eye again, even though her hands kept moving. She reached into the holo-light to touch Maggie's arm. "It's time. I know this is important, but so are you, so is your baby-"
A screen full of rolling code to Maggie's left flashed blue, then white, and Maggie's eyes gleamed. "I won't hurt the baby, Pepper," she said breathlessly. "Trust me."
And even as Maggie's face began to twist up in a pain that Pepper remembered all too well, she turned, physically grabbed a segment of code from one screen, and inserted it into the glowing stream of code that had just flashed.
The code flashed red.
Maggie doubled over, reaching out for Pepper's arms to steady herself, and Pepper held her, but couldn't help but look up to the video screens at the main operation's hub: all of them appeared to twist up to the sky, because above them, the drones were falling.
They fell like a metal meteor shower, with dead, lifeless eyes and limbs drifting as they plummeted to earth. Bucky's video feed shuddered as they began to hit the ground, and over the comms the Avengers let out whoops of triumph.
That wouldn't be the end of it - there was still the main airship, and the ground forces, but the drones had been the major obstacle to tackling both of those.
Maggie heard half of Sam's "Well done Wyvern, now let's-" before she ripped the commpiece off her head and dropped it to the floor. She looked up at Pepper as the contraction ebbed away and smiled.
Abruptly, the atmosphere around her changed. The front doors burst open and a medical bed was wheeled in, flanked by the midwife Maggie had been working with for months, to her relief. The doctor who'd been monitoring her was a doctor for agents and soldiers, and had not expected to be dealing with maternity. Darcie grabbed Maggie's go-bag as Pepper helped Maggie to the medical bed. Others around the room kept working, but Maggie was done.
As she was helped onto the medical bed, feeling faintly large and ridiculous, she felt a new hand on her elbow helping her up. When she was settled, she glanced back to see Hill. There was something faintly like admiration in her eyes.
"Well done, Wyvern," Hill nodded.
Maggie smiled back, her brain still reeling from the adrenaline rush of deprogramming the drones. Lines of code still flashed behind her eyelids when she closed her eyes. "When Bucky's finished, give him a message from me: tell him Zenith. He'll know what it means."
Hill nodded. "Understood. Now you go - you've got the hard part left to do."
Bucky swept his rifle sight across the field of battle, carefully treading through the bodies of aliens, humans, and fallen Ultron-drones. Nothing had moved in a while, but that didn't keep him from being cautious. Others of the team swept the plain to the right and left of him; he was closest to Strange, who was casting orange symbols in the air while bleeding from his left nostril, Kate Bishop, who was collecting arrows from bodies she'd hit, and Nebula, who stalked across the ground with an eerie grace.
The bitter arctic wind howled across the plain at the base of the mountain range, bringing with it a flurry of ice and snow. Bucky hunched his chin further into his uniform. He hated the cold.
"Alright everyone," came Sam's voice over the comms. Bucky could see him flying overhead, trailed by Redwing. "We've had the all-clear, Damage Control has arrived and Operations says there's no active combatants left."
Bucky lowered his rifle - though only a little - and sighed. His body ached, he could do with a long-
His commset beeped - a private message. "Barnes, I've been told to tell you: Zenith."
Bucky's stomach swooped. His fingers slipped on his gun.
Sam caught a flash of movement out of the corner of his eye: Bucky had just tossed his gun aside and started sprinting.
"Buck?" he called, but Bucky didn't react at all. His super-speed took him nearly flying across the remains of the battlefield, ignoring the confused calls of the others. He bolted straight for the Quinjet they'd arrived on, shut the hatch, and a moment later fired the engines up. They all watched in astounded silence as Bucky piloted the Quinjet up and away, scorching into the sky.
Sam came down to land on the wreckage of the main alien airship, scratching his head.
Clint was the first to speak over the comms. "Did that asshole really just steal our ride?"
Rhodey hovered in midair, head cocked. "Why on earth would he…" then his comms cut out, in the way that Sam knew he was having a private conversation with the AI F.R.I.D.A.Y.
Seconds later, Rhodey bit out: "That moron," fired his repulsors and jetted away as well, in the direction of home.
Sam glanced around - the others he could see looked just as clueless as him; Bruce, Clint, Thor. He touched his commset. "Hill, care to explain what the hell is going on?"
There was a heavy sigh over the comms. "Stark's in labor."
The comms erupted at that, everyone speaking at once, and Sam slid back his goggles to squint in the pale arctic sun, torn between a smile and a worried frown.
Hill continued: "Well, she's been in labor for approximately three hours by now, but she's in the med bay as we speak, and if the Quinjet tracker is anything to go by, Barnes will be back within two hours. I'll have another Quinjet flown in to your location."
A stunned silence followed this announcement.
Sam was the first to speak, tasting snow on his lips. "Three hours?"
Hill sighed again. "You heard me, Captain. Stark can explain herself to you, once you're back and she's… you know. But we do need the Avengers to finish handover to Damage Control, before you can all come back."
Sam nodded, even though Hill couldn't see it, then set about giving orders so they could wrap up. But they were all still talking about Maggie as they worked.
"I can see why she didn't want to say anything," said Yelena, who had only met Maggie for five minutes before they flew out that morning. "Don't want everyone bothering you about such a thing while you're busy working." She sniffed, and kicked an Ultron-drone's leg out of her way.
"I guess," said Clint doubtfully. "I just hope she's alright. Labor's hard enough without having to deal with the potential end of the world on top of it."
"Maggie's tough," Bruce said confidently. "And she knows her limits." He heaved a piece of airship wreckage out of the way, to make a landing zone for the Damage Control jets. "I'm just excited to finish up and get back to meet the kid."
"Me too," called Rocket, with a smile that looked terrifying.
This was such a startlingly domestic statement from a giant green monster covered in alien blood and a biologically engineered raccoon that Sam had to laugh. "I know, me too." He shook his head. "I don't know whether to be annoyed or impressed."
"With Lady Stark?" echoed Thor. "Always impressed."
Rhodey arrived at Hill's base of operations first. He landed outside the medbay and charged into the building in full armor. He burst through the doors on the tail end of a contraction; Maggie screaming and sweaty and crying, standing beside the only bed with her hands gripping the edge and her face screwed up. Pepper stood right by her, arm looped around her back to take some of the weight off her, rubbing her back and making comforting noises. Dr Darcy Lewis hovered nearby, looking supremely awkward.
At the sight of Maggie in pain all of Rhodey's anger at her stupidity slipped away. He stepped out of the War Machine armor and ran to her, taking her hand as her groaning eased up.
While Maggie caught her breath, Pepper smiled at Rhodey. "Hi," she breathed, wiping hair off her forehead with the back of her hand. "Well done today." She jerked her head at Maggie. "She feels better standing up."
He nodded, and then Maggie opened her eyes. She blinked at him. "Hi," she breathed. Seeing the question in his gaze, she sighed. "I didn't want you to come back before the mission was done."
She looked exhausted and pained, and when she let go of the bedframe to rest a hand over the curve of her belly beneath her hospital gown, he saw she'd left a dent in the metal. She had a drip in one arm and all kinds of sensors placed on her skin and belly, connected to beeping machines.
Rhodey reached out to tuck a loose curl of dark hair behind her ear. "That was really stupid," he said kindly.
Her eyes began to water. "It's not fair."
Rhodey frowned. "What isn't?"
"That Tony isn't here," she said, and suddenly tears were slipping down her pink cheeks. "He should be here, he should be telling me I'm stupid, he should get to meet-" she broke off in an open-mouthed but silent cry, her eyes squeezing shut as another contraction hit. At her side, Pepper looked like she wanted to cry as well, but instead shouldered Maggie's body weight, supporting her and talking her through the pain, protective and fierce.
Then Maggie's midwife returned from checking with the medbay doctor and yelled at Rhodey about the dormant War Machine armor in what should have been a sterile environment, and he sheepishly backed out for a few minutes to get rid of it and clean himself up.
When Maggie's construction subsided, Pepper was there, her arms supporting her and her blue eyes warm with sympathy.
"I think I'm ready to get in bed now," Maggie muttered, and with Pepper and the midwife's help crawled up onto the bed, shifting around until she found a semi-seated position she liked. Darcy hovered with the icechips, and Maggie gratefully accepted a few.
"This fucking sucks," she murmured through the ice chips. "And it lasts way too long." Pepper chuckled. Maggie looked up at her. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said what I said just now."
"Of course you should have," Pepper murmured. "It isn't fair." She leaned over to kiss Maggie's forehead. "But Tony's with us, Maggie, because we keep him with us. Can you imagine what he'd be saying right now?"
"He'd be calling me stupid for working," Maggie laughed. "Though he'd think that end-chain trojan I used today was cool. But he'd still be mad. He'd say there's no prize for the most labor done during labor, Maggot." She hiccuped on the endearment.
"Exactly. He'd be so proud of you," Pepper smiled. "You remember him with me, when we had Morgan? He loved making his machines, but he thought there was nothing so incredible as me making and bringing a new human into the world. You're the real engineer here, he told me once."
Maggie laughed, her head tipping back to the crinkly white medbay pillow.
"See?" Pepper said. "You only ever laughed like that with him. And here you are, laughing. So he's here with us."
Maggie squeezed her eyes shut, not out of pain, but to treasure the feeling of having her brother with her. She could imagine for a moment that he was at her other side, his hand in hers. C'mon, Maggot. Let's get this done.
She smiled, and then abruptly groaned when another contraction hit.
Bucky nearly crashed the Quinjet when he arrived. Maggie could hear the scream of the engines as he landed, so she didn't flinch when the medbay doors crashed open a minute later.
"Sorry," she heard him mumble to the medbay doctor, and then he pulled aside the curtain around her bed and he was there, his brows pinched together and his eyes wide as he took her in. His uniform was singed and his black and gold arm gleamed. Maggie reached out wordlessly and he rushed to her - Penny, their midwife said nothing about him breaking the sterile field.
"I'm here doll, I got you," he said, his worry dissolving into a laugh when she practically tugged him onto the bed with her, her arms wrapped tight around his back. He smelled like snow and fire, and the buckles of his uniform pinched her skin, but she didn't care. His metal hand circled the back of her neck, and the other came to gently cradle the side of her stomach. "Tell you what, the kid's got good timing." His voice was still shaky.
"Just like their dad then," Maggie said, still clutching him close. She noticed Darcy and Pepper slip out of the room (good, she'd been telling Pepper to check on Morgan for an hour). "I was worried you might not make it - and yes, I know that's my own fault, before you get on my ass about it."
He chuckled against her ear. "I know why you did it." He pulled back to give her a kiss, and both of their tensions faded a little. A grin crept across his face.
"Why're you looking at me like that," she said suspiciously, a glimmer of a wince crossing her face as she felt the onset of yet another contraction.
"I'm excited," he whispered, eyes searching hers. "You?"
She couldn't help but match his smile. "Hell yes. Now…" she shifted uncomfortably. "You may not be excited for this next part." Then she was gripping his metal hand and her chin tilted back as she groaned through gritted teeth.
Darcy was sculling down an energy drink when all of the Avengers arrived at the med bay waiting area, in full uniform and covered in ash, blood, and bruises.
"What's up, Avengers," she said a little nervously. "Though are you still called Avengers? Because some of you, I don't know-"
"How's Maggie?" cut in Sam Wilson - Captain America!
Darcy gave them as quick an update as she could.
Sam shook his head, hands on his hips. Some of the others had sat down, receiving medical treatment for their own bruises and scrapes. One of the doctors was inside stitching up a laceration Barnes had gotten during the battle, while he held Maggie's hand.
"So she was really taking down those drones while in labor?" Sam asked.
Darcy nodded. "And not to make everything about me, or anything, but it was the most stressful few hours of my entire life. And I wasn't really doing anything."
Sam laughed. "I can imagine."
They heard a muffled scream from inside the medbay, then, and everyone winced in sympathy. Rhodey paced back and forth.
"This is how humans have children?" said one of the Guardians - Darcy didn't know their names. "Very strange."
The serum didn't help at all with the labor pains, and in fact meant it was impossible for Maggie to have any pain relief. She gripped Bucky's metal hand as she cried, trying not to crush it despite all his reassurances that it was fine if she did. Bucky was wonderful; he'd practiced all the breathing techniques with her before, helped her shift from position to position, as she found herself almost restless even amidst the pain, and talked her through each contraction. He was the perfect face of calm, even though Maggie could tell that her screaming upset him. He'd tugged off the outer parts of his uniform and donned a hospital gown, and Penny had made him wash.
Maggie made sounds she'd never made before towards the end; it felt like she was roaring, her eyes squeezed shut and her muscles tensed. The pain had swept her down like an undertow, the most intense cramping and lancing pain, so different from all the other kinds of pain she'd had in her lifetime. Burning, stabbing, pressure - but Maggie had learned to be a human, she reminded herself, and humans were meant to feel. She clung to that bizarre fact as she cried, and pushed, and Bucky's voice was a low murmur in her ear and -
Pepper had said she'd felt relief, after. And Maggie knew that biologically speaking, her body was at this moment producing a rush of calming oxytocin.
But Maggie didn't know if it was relief or oxytocin she felt when Penny rose, clutching a wrinkly, slightly purple baby with a shock of dark hair and a wide, wailing mouth. It wasn't relief she felt. Her heart swelled impossibly, like it wouldn't fit in her chest. Like she was flying.
Maggie's ears were ringing, but she saw Penny's mouth make the shape of: it's a boy. Penny wrapped him in a cloth and carried him to Maggie's chest, where she looked down with blurry eyes at him. He was a warm weight on her sternum. Bucky's arm was around her, and he was laughing. She was laughing too. She looked at him, this new person, and carefully put her hand to his back where he lay on her chest, and wanted to shiver right out of her skin at the feeling of his tiny heartbeat under her fingers. He'd stopped crying, and made a strange gurgling, fussing noise with his cheek below her collarbone.
She managed to drag her eyes away for long enough to look at Bucky. She could see her own impossible amounts of love reflected in his eyes as he met her gaze.
"This is the mission now," she whispered, her eyes focused on his even as the midwife and the doctor and what felt like half a dozen other people bustled around them. "He is. Our son."
Tears slipped down Bucky's cheeks even as he beamed at her. He wrapped his arms around them both, so carefully, and nodded. Maggie looked down at his hand supporting their son's head, and they both stilled when the little person on Maggie's chest opened his eyes, squinting blearily with dark eyes.
Maggie let out a long breath. She felt her aching muscles and the metal on her bones, and she felt the wonder of having made a new life.
The Avengers still in the waiting room looked up when the medbay doors opened. There stood Bucky Barnesl Bucky Barnes, still half in his Winter Soldier uniform, carrying a swaddled baby in his flesh arm with a look of dumb-struck wonder on his face.
They all leapt to their feet and started exclaiming in whispers, overwhelming him with questions and exclamations. Bucky looked around at them, smiled, and held up a metal finger to quiet them.
"Avengers," he murmured, and shifted his arm so they could all see the face of a fresh-born baby, its pudgy cheeks soft in sleep and its dark hair still drying. Bucky beamed. "Meet Luke Anthony Barnes."
Rhodey's face went slack, but the others all erupted in coos and awws, making the baby shift and grumble. They were all inching forward, but Bucky looked up toward Pepper, who stood holding Morgan at her hip, looking overwhelmed.
"Trade you?" Bucky murmured. Morgan, wideyed, hopped down beside her mom, and watched as Bucky carefully handed the swaddled newborn over. She didn't say a word when Bucky picked her up in return like she weighed nothing.
"He's so small," Morgan whispered, and Bucky nodded.
Pepper looked down at her nephew with glimmering eyes. After a few moments, Rhodey came up behind her shoulder and looked down.
"Kinda like an eggplant," Rhodey muttered. "Just like his mom." And it sounded like an old joke, with a sadness to it that told Bucky it was meant for Tony.
That broke some of the tension. After Pepper had had some time admiring him, Luke was handed from Avenger to Avenger, most of them still in their uniforms. They were all exceedingly careful.
Sam was next after Rhodey, positively overflowing with emotion as he looked from Luke to Bucky. "I'm so happy for you, Buck, you and Maggie. This is… this is huge."
Bucky grinned. "He's actually pretty small right now, but I hear that changes."
Sam rolled his eyes, and carefully elbowed Bucky while still holding Luke. "He looks like you."
"Got his mom's eyes, though. He was looking around, before."
"Curious little guy. Weird place to be born, I suppose." Sam looked around at Hill's top-secret military installation, turned maternity ward. He glanced back to Bucky. "Steve'd be proud of you, you know."
Bucky's eyes went bright with tears again, and he looked down at his son. "Wish he could meet him."
Thor was huge but gentle with the baby, and placed a small wolf he'd whittled while waiting on Luke's stomach. "Asgardians give gifts to well-wish children," he explained. Bucky pocketed the wolf for safe-keeping.
Bruce hung back, but smiled at Luke while he was in Thor's arms. Clint was a natural at holding a baby, and joked around with Bucky to ease some of the heavy responsibility he now felt. Darcy was nervous about holding the baby, but did so for a few minutes with Bucky's reassurance. He thanked her profusely for being there for Maggie. The Guardians were quick with holding Luke, but Rocket held him longest, looking down at his sleeping face thoughtfully.
"Well I'll be damned," he said after a little while, his voice strangely soft. "You travel the universe with a kid, and then she up and makes a person."
Then Luke shifted in his arms and began to make a grumbling noise.
"Why's it doing that," Rocket said, and looked up at Bucky. "Make it stop."
"Feel like it'll take me a while to figure that out," Bucky said, but couldn't help smiling as he gently slipped the baby out of Rocket's arms.
Bucky had told them all that Maggie was sleeping, but Rhodey slipped into the medbay to check on her anyway. In the darkness he heard the low beeping of machines, and spotted her in bed, her eyes closed and her chest rising and falling deeply.
"Faker."
She cracked an eye open and peeked at him. "How'd you know?"
"I've seen you and Tony sleeping in the lab enough times to spot the real thing - you look like you're not breathing when you're really asleep."
He dragged a nearby chair over to the side of her bed, and sat down. "Congratulations, Maggie. He's beautiful." She smiled, and despite her exhaustion it lit up her face. "You really should get some sleep," he added.
In the dim silence, he watched her chew her lip.
"I'm scared to sleep. I keep thinking, what if I wake up and it's all… gone? What if he" - her voice hitched - "what if he was never real? I've been through a lot, Rhodey, but I know I wouldn't survive that."
Rhodey leaned forward and covered her hand with his. "You've been through a lot, Maggie. And this - he - is real. Real as the lecture you're going to get from Sam when you wake up." She smiled tearfully. "Don't you worry about Luke while you're asleep. Barnes isn't going to take his eyes off him, and you can bet that Pepper and I probably won't either. We've got this."
A tear slipped from the corner of her eye, and she squeezed his hand.
"You did good today," he reassured her. "Are you doing okay?"
"Yeah. Tired. Sore. This giving birth business is no joke."
"Do you want to talk about what you said before? About Tony?"
She smiled tiredly. "Pepper helped. And now I keep… it's like he is here. Somehow. Because I know him so well. I think he'd be making a lot of Star Wars jokes to Bucky. Luke, I am your father, and all that, and especially with the metal hand-"
Rhodey laughed. "You know what, you're right. We did joke about E.T. after you were born."
She looked at him with something like awe, and he settled back in his chair.
He continued: "He pretended for so long that he wasn't interested in his new baby sister, you know. But I think I knew, even on that first day. He kept his distance because he was scared of caring about someone. Loving someone. And I think he loved you more than anything he'd seen before the minute I dragged him to that hospital." He sighed, his heart feeling tired as she talked about his friend. "He got better at loving people later on. After Pepper, and after you came back. He learned how not to keep his distance. It's what made him such a good dad with Morgan." Maggie smiled again, her eyes gleaming. "And if he'd been lucky enough to meet Luke," he looked in the direction of the waiting area, "I don't think any power on earth or in space would've kept him from showing just how much he loved him."
Tears tracked silver down Maggie's face. "Thank you," she whispered. And for a moment they could almost see the ghost of Tony there with them, looking in the direction of his nephew like he was looking at the most complex piece of machinery ever created. The afterimage faded.
"You definitely need sleep now," Rhodey said. "Sleep tight. We'll all be here when you wake up."
Maggie closed her eyes.
When Maggie opened her eyes again, she instantly saw the little plastic tub beside her bed, with a bundle of blankets and pink skin inside. Bucky was asleep on the chair on the other side of the tub, and his flesh hand rested on the edge of it, his palm open toward Luke as if saying hello. Maggie wondered how her heart didn't shatter her ribs, it was so big.
She propped herself up on one elbow, wincing, and peered down at her son.
Luke had a shock of dark brown, almost black hair, and brown eyes that looked blearily up at her - Stark looks. He could be Morgan's brother, they looked that similar. But Maggie saw Bucky in him, too: his dimpled chin, and his ears. He seemed almost relaxed as he lay there, looking up at her, an almost cheeky expression on his face. Maybe she was imagining it. She'd already reassured herself yesterday that he was healthy, and strong; it was difficult to tell so early, but the doctor was pretty sure the serum had had some impact. There were definitely indicators of it in his blood.
That worried Maggie, but she knew he had two fiercely protective and skilled parents, and a whole host of extended relatives and friends who would do anything to protect him. If anything, Maggie chose to look on the bright side - Luke would be healthier and more able to protect himself if needed.
Maggie smiled down at Luke. She and Bucky had a lot to do today. They needed to ask Sam and Pepper if they'd be Luke's godparents, and Maggie wanted to get the hell off this secret base and go home. She also kind of wanted to look at the wreckage from the alien ships, but she didn't think the doctors or Hill would let her do that.
She sensed Bucky move, and glanced over at him just as he opened his eyes.
"Good morning," she smiled.
"Marry me," he murmured, his dark hair mussed and his sleepy eyes gleaming in the sun filtering through the window.
Maggie laughed. "That has to be the hundredth time you've asked me that, Bucky."
He sat up. "And all the other times you said not until after the baby, Bucky. It's not the 1930s anymore, Bucky, we don't have to have a shotgun wedding-"
"And all of the above remains true-"
"I don't want a shotgun wedding," he insisted. "I'm not just asking because of Luke" - his hand settled gently over Luke's swaddled chest in a silent kind of greeting - "I'm asking because I want a marriage. To you."
"Well, alright."
He stilled, blinked, then looked properly at her. "Alright?"
She rolled her eyes, then leaned across their son and put her hand to Bucky's stubbled cheek. "You asked me to marry you. Well I do."
He stared into her eyes. "Holy shit, let me go get a priest."
She smacked his chest. "Not right now." He laughed, then pressed forward to kiss her, making her skin light up.
She pulled away after some time. "We've got all the time in the world."
Because just like the realization that she was attracted to him had struck her like a bolt of lightning out of the blue, the realization that Bucky Barnes was going to be her husband had struck her at that moment. No sooner and no later, but precisely when it was meant to be. Tony would have called her sentimental, or worse superstitious, but Maggie had learned that she couldn't pin everything in her life down to a science. Some things, like love, could not be predicted or planned.
Though, she thought as she watched Bucky excitedly digging in his bag for the ring he'd apparently been carrying around for a year, and the baby lying peacefully between them, she couldn't have planned it better if she'd tried.