Part II
Maggie wasn’t sure if she’d ever been in a more depressing place than she was now.
She stood at the top of a short, wide hallway, the floor slanting and sloping downwards unevenly. The place was all dark and dusty and made entirely of cement. Fluorescent lights blinked and hummed from rusty fixtures in the low ceiling. There were four doors leading off from the hallway, two on each side. They were unlabeled save for a plastic sign next to each door which read 1, 2, and so on. Heart thudding nervously in her chest, Maggie walked to the first door. She pushed it open.
The room was empty. More accurately, the room that Maggie had entered (which seemed to be a sort of anteroom to another room) was void of people. It was small and considerably more well-lit than the hallway outside. The walls were painted a dull tartan color, and the floor was cement. There was a small table pushed against one wall, and a stool next to it which was made of plastic. The most outstanding feature of the room was on the wall opposite the door through which Maggie had entered: there was a second door there, made of heavy, thick metal, with a complex locking-mechanism of sorts. Directly next to the door was an expanse of dark glass which made a sort of window beside the door. She stepped forward nervously and peered through the glass, and at first, not being able to make anything out, she assumed it might be privacy glass, which would allow the occupants of the next room to see her but not the other way around. It took her a moment to realize that the opposite was true, because as her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she realized that she could see through the glass.
There was a person there. It was hard to tell that it was a person, though, as they were curled up rather haphazardly in the far corner of the next room. It was clear that the person either hadn’t noticed Maggie or couldn’t see her, because they gave no reaction when Maggie waved her hands in an attempt to garner their attention. Maggie sighed. Okay, she thought to herself, no way of knowing whether this is Peter or not, but I’m gonna break them out. ‘Cus I’m a nice person.
She took a few steps back so that she was facing the metal door, ran forwards, and kicked in the door. It snapped open with a bang. She stood in the doorway, frowning at the heap of a person which was huddling even further into the wall, and began strutting confidently forward.
Peter jumped at the bang of the door. He still wasn’t used to that goddamn thing banging open every couple of hours. He scrambled away from the light as usual, but it took less time for his eyes to adjust this time. He looked up cautiously, keeping his eyes lowered still from the brightness. He could hear the footsteps of whoever had opened the door (most likely Sharon, as he knew from past experience) coming closer. They stopped in front of him, and Peter looked up slightly, expecting to see a pair of high heels or dress shoes. Instead, he was confronted with something that actually gave him cause to think that he was hallucinating: a pair of dirty white Converse high tops, with the laces tied around the ankles and a bloodstain on the inside of the left shoe. He knew those shoes.
“Maggie?” he whispered. Then he looked up.
“Oh my god.” She stared back at him with a mixture of sympathy and shock. But she was here. Really. She was entirely real. He must’ve looked like total shit, because Maggie looked to be on the verge of tears. “Jesus Christ, Peter, what’d they do to you?!”
He chuckled quietly. “It’s fine. I’ll live.” He raised one hand, showing her the chain. “Think you can get this thing off me?”
Maggie nodded in reply and leaned over, picking up the slackened chain in her hands. She inspected the length of the thing, finally settling on the part that was attached to his wrist, and dug her fingers as deep as they could into the space between his skin and the metal and began to pull. She grunted with the effort; they were quite strong, but not much of a match for her and Peter’s combined strength. After a minute of pulling and creaking, the first metallic clasp came off, and after five minutes, Peter was totally free.
“Finally. Those things were starting to itch,” he mused. Maggie laughed weakly and pulled him into a hug.
“I’m glad you’re okay,” she said. He smiled into her shoulder. He was gonna be okay.
Maggie patted him quickly on the back. “Nice to see you and all, but we gotta go.”
“Yeah.” They both pulled out of the hug, and Maggie sprinted energetically toward the door. She stopped when Peter didn’t follow, and glanced back to see what was wrong.
“You good?”
He swallowed. “N-no. I’m not healing nearly as fast as usual. They didn’t exactly have me on a steady diet here.” His hand moved to his chest, gesturing. “I think I’ve got a broken rib. And some kind of half-healed punctured lung. And I’m hungry as shit.”
“Do you think you can walk?” asked Maggie as she went back to stand with him. Slowly, he shook his head no. “That’s okay. Not your fault- I’m gonna kill Carter, my god-”
Slowly, she pulled his arm around her shoulder. She could easily support his weight, but it would be an unneeded encumbrance. The two of them walked to the elevator.
Once inside, Peter let out a quiet breath and slumped against the wall. Maggie let him down gently and sat down next to him determinedly.
“So, I know you’ve just been through hell, but we gotta make sure that you don’t have to be on the run for the rest of all time. We have evidence that Sharon is lying - enough to make a case. But me an’ the Sarge and Cap- we aren’t good with computers. Not like you are.”
He stared back at her, gasping a little from the exertion of the walk to the elevator, and shifted back slightly. “Your point is?”
Maggie took a deep breath. “There’s enough agents in here who don’t work for the Power Broker, but instead work for Sharon Carter-”
“Wait, you guys don’t know that Sharon is the Power Broker? I thought that was obvious…”
“-yes, we know that! But enough people here think that they work for Sharon Carter, and not the Power Broker, that if we can convince them that Sharon has ulterior motives we can get them to arrest her and stop tryna arrest us!”
Peter and Maggie both paused. “Ohh, okay. That does make sense,” he decided aloud.
“Can you do it?” she repeated urgently.
“Yeah. Gimme your phone.”
She obliged, and Peter got to work. They were still sitting in the bottom of the elevator, Peter didn’t seem too eager to move, and Maggie didn’t want to bother him too much, so she pulled the “Emergency Stop” lever on the dashboard. She sat back down with a heavy sigh and peered over Peter’s shoulder as he typed out random things into an app which he had downloaded. It was all very unnerving to watch, the accuracy and speed with which he compiled the evidence on iMovie and Google Drive and then somehow gained access to all the screens in the building through the shared WiFi network (Maggie had swiped the password off a desk she’d seen in passing). After several minutes, Peter frowned at the small screen and looked up at her.
“I’m gonna need access to a computer. This thing is gonna take me forever, no offense.”
“Oh, none taken,” she replied. “Goin’ up!” Then she released the Emergency Stop lever, and the elevator started upwards.
—————————————————————————————————————
“Holy fucking shit! They brought in the cavalry!”
Sam and Bucky were crouching behind an overturned desk (which was apparently bulletproof?) while they shot it out with the entire combined manpower of SHIELD’s New York office, as well as some parts of the National Guard.
An explosive detonated behind them, briefly illuminating the room with a fiery orange glow. Sam peeked quickly out from behind the overturned desk, his eyes wide and alert, and ducked back into place next to Bucky.
“What’s our plan?”
“Well, we’re badly outgunned and blatantly outmanned. This is a firefight.” He paused and locked eyes with Sam. “Now, neither of us want to kill anyone, so our best option is to draw some of them out and trap them elsewhere until Maggie and Peter can figure out that hack.”
Sam agreed. “Okay. I’ll do it, I can draw them out.” He glanced around the room, analyzing the scene around them. “I’ll go to the right. I can incapacitate them at worst, but I think I saw some rooms down the hall outside where I can barricade them in.”
Bucky grinned. “Sounds like a plan. Do me a favor and don’t get yourself killed?”
“Yeah,” chuckled Sam encouragingly, “because if I die, then who’s gonna keep you from gettin’ yourself killed?”
Bucky cheerfully patted him on the back. Sam ducked and rolled out from behind the desk, flashing one last grin at him. He tried to ignore the way he wanted to smile back. He tried to push down the things he wanted to say to Sam as he watched him barrel into the storm of bullets.
Sam drew them forward; just as they’d predicted, a solid chunk of the group detached from the rest and followed him. He leapt over unconscious bodies and piles of rubble and strips of fire, holding his shield up to protect himself from the bullets. Finally he led them to a sort of cul-de-sac, a circular rotunda in the center of the building with high ceilings and echoey marble floors. The soldiers poured in eagerly.
Flinging his shield about, Sam managed to take down several at first. He was sweating like crazy, and he could taste blood in his mouth. A man in tactical gear charged toward him, holding a piece of lead piping which had been exposed. The man swung crazily at Sam, and he ducked around the pipe and grabbed the man’s arm, flinging him sideways into the wall. His senses pricked up in time to get him to move his head aside while a bullet zipped past his shoulder. His fist connected with someone’s jaw; he twisted a knife from someone else’s hand and used it to stab yet another in the leg. Blood was spilled all across the floor. He grew tired.
After what felt like an hour of tiring, ceaseless fighting, Sam managed to slip out the way he’d come and temporarily trap the remainder of the force in the rotunda. His barricade of desks and chairs and bookshelves couldn’t keep the wounded soldiers in check forever, but hopefully it would hold for just long enough.
This time when he went back to the hallway, he snuck around. Sam could hear the distant sounds of gunfire several rooms away, and reminded himself that it was a good thing because it meant that they hadn’t captured Bucky yet. He crept between rooms until he was able to covertly roll back up next to Bucky behind that same overturned desk. Bucky had just sat up and chanced a peek around the desk to return fire with the other side, and now he sat back with a grimace and a glance at Sam.
“Didja do it?”
Sam nodded. “Yeah, yeah, I got them. How’s it going over here?”
“Not great.”
“Oh?”
“I’m almost out of ammo.” Bucky grimaced again when he said it, and Sam noticed for the first time that blood was flowing rather heavily from a wound in his shoulder, and from another on his leg…
Sam stared at the blood surrounding them. He realized that it was Bucky’s. It had come from those sons-of-bitches with the guns on the other side of that hallway. He suddenly felt incredibly angry - angry at everything they’d been through those past months, angry at everything he and his friends had had to endure - and turned to his friend. “You’re hurt. You can’t keep doing this.”
Bucky looked back at him, equally desperate. “Well, what the hell are we supposed to do then?”
“I’m gonna attack them offensively. It’s our only option,” he stated, ignoring the terrified look on Bucky’s face.
He started to stand up and move away, but Bucky pulled him in rather harshly by the elbow. “Hey- what the hell?” he grunted.
“Sam, I gotta tell you something.”
“Well, say it quickly, man!”
Bucky frowned nervously. “I dunno if we’re all gonna make it out of here alive, so it’s… now or never… I like you, Sam.”
Sam seemed irritated, but he found the gesture rather sweet. “Yeah, man, I like you too, but I gotta go-”
“No.” Bucky pulled him back down again, more gently this time. “I- I’m not totally sure how to say this, Sam, but I really like you.” Sam was still giving him a weird look. He wasn’t quite sure what Bucky meant.
Finally Bucky let out an exasperated sigh. “I have feelings for you, you dumbass!”
Sam started to smile. “Whaddaya mean?”
Bucky made a split-second decision. He leaned over quickly and gave him a kiss, a quick one. They looked at each other for a second, the gunfire and shouting fading distantly, and then Sam pulled in slightly and kissed him back. Bucky allowed himself to gently touch Sam’s cheek, run a hand over his hair, and press his forehead against Sam’s. They sat there together for a moment of perfect stillness and chaos. Explosives raged through the air. Smoke soaked their lungs, and blood soaked their hands, but none of that mattered. They kissed again, as if they had all the time in the world. Sam pulled away gently.
“Buck?”
“Yeah?"
He grinned. “I have feelings for you too, dumbass.” They both chuckled softly, and then Sam turned around and plunged away into the fray of combat.