บท 20: Chapter 20

February, 2014

Salina Cruz, Mexico

"Bucky!"

The frozen air tearing at his clothes, the cold bite of metal under his fingers. His heart pounding, like it wants to jump out of his chest.

"Hang on!" An order he desperately wanted to obey. "Grab my hand!"

The metal groaning, and then – "No!"

A whirlwind of movement, and screaming, and the blue of Steve's uniform spinning into white and black and…

Bucky jerked, eyes flying open. His right hand flew to his shoulder, feeling the unyielding metal, and his chest heaved for breath. His eyes darted around, taking in the tiny apartment with its tiled floors, the sun streaming in through the orange curtains, and Meg. She sat at the desk against the wall, her fingers hovering over a laptop. But she was looking over her shoulder at him, taking in his wild eyes and frantic breathing. She didn't have to say it, because he saw it in her eyes: what do you remember?

He shook his head, wanting to escape the freezing winds and the sickening sensation of falling. He ran his hands over his face and reminded himself of the facts: you're in the future, away from HYDRA, with Meg. Everything in your head that hurts is just… memories. He let out a long breath. Meg watched him for a moment longer, her eyes questioning, and when he nodded at her she turned back to the laptop.

He sighed. The order his memories came back in made no sense – one moment he would be remembering the smell of blood in a muddy European trench, and the next he'd be remembering the bite of ice on his face in the cryo chamber. They kept slipping in and out, unbidden. He wanted some way to order his memories, make sense of them. He remembered soldiers hunching over notebooks back at base in the war, frantically scribbling with pencil stubs, and he wondered if he ought to try it.

He'd written letters to his sisters – he closed his eyes again at a fresh bloom of pain – and that writing had been cathartic in its own way. He obviously didn't tell his sisters about the deaths he'd seen and caused, but putting his thoughts down on paper had made him feel a bit more real. It was something to consider.

He and Meg had travelled south through Mexico, changing up their modes of transport and their appearances. Today Bucky was in a windbreaker and loose trousers, with his hair tucked into a cap. Meg had siphoned some HYDRA funds – completely untraceable and not an amount large enough to wave any red flags – to purchase the clothes. She'd imitated the local women and wore a light green shirt with a long floral skirt and sandals.

Bucky didn't think he'd ever seen her so casually dressed – he didn't remember going on any infiltration missions with her. It had been strange at first to see her in colors and patterns, when his clearest memories of her were of a black, winged silhouette with red eyes. But he found that it suited the person she was becoming.

She was a constant surprise – he remembered noticing that she was something more than a weapon while they were both with HYDRA, but watching her 'becoming a person,' as she put it, was fascinating.

He remembered, kind of, what it had been like to be Bucky. He'd had friends, jobs, had been twenty-seven when HYDRA got him. Her only frame of reference was her hazy memories of being a child. But she was already so changed from the way she'd been with HYDRA – she constantly surprised him when she smiled, or laughed, or gave him a kind word.

He knew that the things that had been done to the two of them, that they had done, were the sorts of things that could break a person; turn them into a shivering, screaming mess. There were times when he retreated into himself and thought he was broken beyond repair, but then he'd recall one of the good memories, or Meg would put a hand on his flesh shoulder, and he'd open his eyes and keep going.

He knew she had her own demons, but she had a fiery determination to put HYDRA behind her and learn to be a person. Not only had she freed herself, but she'd forgiven him, and wanted him with her. He still couldn't wrap his head around it.

Watching her now, her dark hair loose around her shoulders and her bare forearms resting against the edge of the desk, Bucky shook his head. She was passionate, and honest, and startlingly kind. Despite HYDRA's machinery and brainwashing, this was the person she was becoming, and it took his breath away. Even though his memory was useless, he knew he'd never met anyone like her.

Now, with the hem of her skirt brushing the white tile floor, Meg watched a video of her obviously drunk brother speaking at an event. The video looked to be a few years old.

She'd been spending the last few days researching her brother at every chance she got. She told Bucky about Tony, when he asked. She'd told him about her memories of a gifted, arrogant, reluctantly loving brother. She told him about the weapons manufacturer who changed his mind. She told him about the hostage, the hero, the Iron Man.

Bucky could tell she was proud of what her brother had accomplished, but he sensed that she was frustrated by what she found – she could find everything the public knew about Tony Stark, but had no indication of what he was really like. Bucky didn't know how to help her – this was a man whose life he had personally ruined. He had killed his parents and kidnapped his sister for a lifetime of servitude under HYDRA. He didn't articulate these thoughts to Meg, as she'd made her feelings on the matter perfectly clear, but they weighed heavy on him.

Her research wasn't easy on Meg – yesterday she had suddenly recalled another mission, and had to run to the bathroom to throw up. He'd tried to convince her to take a break, but she was determined to find out about her brother.

He was distracted from his thoughts by the tinny sound of an explosion – Meg had opened another video, of Iron Man fighting drones in Flushing Meadows. She'd watched it before, but she kept coming back to it and other videos of Iron Man fighting.

Bucky watched the cellphone footage of the red-and-gold suit slaloming to avoid drones and rocketing through civilian structures. He shook his head.

"Well it seems you've both got a thing for flying." As soon as he said it he froze – just because he could see how much Meg enjoyed flying, despite what HYDRA had done to her, didn't mean he should bring it up. But Meg just looked over her shoulder and smiled. On the screen, Iron Man flew right through a metal sculpture of the globe, tricking the pursuing drones into colliding with it. The orange glow of the resulting explosions lit up the side of Meg's face.

She smiled, and added: "and explosions." She closed the laptop – a new one, stolen from a tech store a few hundred miles away – and began to stand. "We should find something to eat, I think I saw a-"

She didn't get to finish her sentence. When she was halfway up her whole body seized, her head snapped back, and she crumpled to the floor.

"Meg!" Bucky dove across the floor but didn't catch her in time – her head thunked against the white tile. Her whole body was taut as a bowstring, spine arched and the muscles in her arms and legs twitching with how tightly they were clenched. Bucky reached out to grab her arms, but as soon as he came into contact with her skin he jerked his hand away, shouting.

"Meg, what–" that had been an electric shock, but he didn't understand– "Meg, what's wrong?" He shuffled around so he could see her face – she was still conscious, staring at him with wide, panicked eyes.

She let out a groan through clenched teeth and scrabbled against the floor with her feet. "Moorings," she managed to gasp out. "Find – kill switch!"

When Bucky realised what was happening he swore, and darted toward the bed to grab the comforter. He covered his right hand with it, then knelt beside Meg and turned her over. She groaned again, and her whole body quaked with pain and the electric current running through her. Using the covered hand, Bucky pulled up the back of her shirt and looked at the metal sockets in her back. They didn't look different from when he'd helped her attach her wings; two round metal holes with various connectors and terminals inside.

"Talk to me Meg, what am I looking for?"

"Inside," she gasped. Her face was pressed against the tile, and her hands were clenched into fists. The skin on her back was twitching. "Converter, millimetre smaller than the others-"

Bucky's sharp eyes picked out a slightly smaller circular converter in each wing mooring. "I see them, what do I do?"

"Press in, rotate… ninety degrees clockwise," her voice was shaking with the effort of pushing out each word. Bucky swore again – the converter was obviously only large enough to fit a narrow screwdriver head, not his large fingers. He glanced around the room, until he finally spotted the narrow plastic toggles on the drawstring of his windbreaker.

"Shit," he said, as he yanked out the drawstring. "Meg, which side?"

If she noticed his chosen tool, she didn't say anything. Her body was so rigid she looked like she was about to snap. "Think… left," she grunted.

Bucky shoved the plastic toggle into the converter on the left mooring, and rotated. It seemed to work – with a pneumatic hiss, the interior plating of the mooring loosened and rose up.

"Careful," Meg huffed. "Lift – gently."

Using the comforter as a buffer, Bucky gripped the metal and lifted it like she'd said. The socket rose out of her back, but a forest of wires trailed from it and into Meg's body.

"Meg, what am I-" he cut himself off at the sight of a green LED light on a chip that looked out of place. The chip was clamped around a section of the wires. Bucky described it to Meg, and she nodded frantically.

"Get it off," she gasped. "Scissors, rip it, I don't care-"

Bucky flipped a knife from the holster at the small of his back. The knife had a rubber grip, so he held the mooring steady with his protected flesh hand and used his metal limb to cut away the chip.

The second the chip disconnected from the wires, Meg slumped bonelessly into the floor with a sigh. Bucky didn't bother asking if it had worked, because the sheer relief in her body was evident.

"Thank you," Meg breathed, the words muffled by the floor. "Just lower the mooring back in, it'll connect itself." He followed her instructions, throwing away the comforter when the mooring clicked back into place.

"I'm going to roll you over now," he warned, and eased Meg onto her back. She went willingly, meeting his eyes when she was settled. "Are you okay?" he asked.

She grunted, and rolled her shoulders. "I'm okay. Give me that–"

He handed her the chip, which now glowed red. Still lying on her back, Meg brought the chip to her face and scrutinised it. "It's not a tracker," she eventually said. "Doesn't have the right components. I took the trackers out of your arm and my wings."

"So what is it?"

She sat up with a groan, pulling her shirt down her midriff. "A kill switch, designed to run an electrical current through my body at a high enough voltage to immobilise me, but not enough to kill me. There were two in my wings and one in your arm, which I removed, but they must have wanted to control me with or without the wings." She let out a long breath, and crushed the chip in her fist. "Whatever's left of HYDRA must have noticed we've gone missing. If I hadn't taken out the other stuff they'd have tracked us and immobilised us both."

Bucky was having trouble staying calm – he'd known, cognitively, that HYDRA had put these measures in place to control their weapons. But to see it in action, to see Meg with her body rigid and her face screwed up in pain…

Meg looked up at the loud whirring of his metal arm and took in his dark expression. "Thank you, Bucky," she said. "If it weren't for you…"

The thought of Meg lying alone, electrocuted into submission, only made him angrier. They must have known that the trackers were broken, so whoever had hit that button had done so knowing that they'd never find the Wyvern, they'd done it just to make her suffer–

A hand on his metal forearm shook him out of his thoughts. Meg rested her hand there, not squeezing or pushing, just resting it. He glanced at her face.

"I told you I was going to touch you," she said. "But you were lost in your head."

"It's okay," he sighed, and sat back on the tile. "Are you alright?"

She nodded. "Once the current is gone it doesn't hurt any more."

"You hit your head."

She put her fingers against her scalp and probed the bump. It made her wince, but she shrugged. "It's not bad."

They sat on the cool tile in silence for a few moments, with the crumpled comforter and Bucky's singed drawstring cord between them. They'd been doing relatively well, remembering who they used to be and becoming people. The reminder of HYDRA felt like a dark shadow pressing down on them.

"I helped them make me into this," Meg eventually whispered. Bucky looked up. "I helped them turn me into a weapon, I… I helped to produce the Adamantium, to design the cybernetic linkup, to construct the wings. They wouldn't have had nearly the amount of success that they had if they didn't have my mind."

"Meg-"

"Sometimes I knew what I was doing," she continued, as if he hadn't spoken. "I knew they were going to cut me open and put metal on my bones, but I helped them anyway. When I figured out I was going to fly, I… I was excited." Her eyes widened, and Bucky recognised the horrified look of recollection on her face. "When you first brought me to HYDRA, the Project Leader asked me if I wanted to be made strong. And I said yes." Her voice was low with horror and self-disgust.

"I remember that," Bucky interjected. "I remember you were a little girl, surrounded by men with guns, and you said that you wanted to be stronger than them. That doesn't make you-"

She shook her head, and interrupted again. "But I should have realised, I should have known what they were going to do. And I still can't wish myself to be weak, because I wouldn't be able to protect myself. I can't wish my wings away, because I love flying." Her voice was choked with tears now. "I think that's what makes me a monster – because I knew what was going to happen, and I said yes anyway. You… you didn't have a choice, Bucky, and when you remembered you fought back. I just… gave up."

"Meg, you can't blame yourself for that–"

But she just shook her head again, and climbed to her feet. "You don't have to do that, Bucky. Thank you for helping me, I'm just going to… I'll be in here." She walked into the bathroom, the only other room in the flat, and shut the door. Alone on the tile floor, Bucky pressed his face into his hands. He couldn't help but feel like he'd let her down.

They continued travelling south for the next few days, crossing the border into Guatemala and then Honduras. Meg hadn't mentioned the kill switch or what she had remembered since their conversation in the Salina Cruz flat, and Bucky didn't know how to bring it up. They both still woke up screaming at night, and some days he got so caught up in his own head he felt he barely had any connection with reality. Meg steered any conversation they had away from the topic of memories and guilt – usually she only spoke to discuss their ever-evolving contingency plans, or to ask him questions about food and shelter.

In Guatemala, however, she'd offered to look at his metal arm and find a way to reduce the pain in his shoulder. She was hesitant when she asked, as if the mere mention of it would make him angry, but he agreed instantly. The fact that she'd even thought about it, in amongst all the other shit they had to deal with… he didn't know how she'd become so kind after everything HYDRA made her do, but he was glad for it.

Of course she needed tools to work on the arm, so they had to wait to find an appropriate workshop. They eventually found a car repair shop in Comayagua that was locked up at night, and broke in through the roof.

Now, sitting shirtless on a stool with his arm balanced on a dusty bench, Bucky couldn't stop thinking about everything Meg had said back in Salina Cruz. She sat on the other side of the bench, hunched over the open panels of his arm with a precision tool in her hand. She was peering at the uppermost part of the limb, where metal met flesh. So far she hadn't touched it at all, except to open the panels and manipulate the limb this way and that.

Bucky remembered HYDRA technicians working on his arm, but the sight of Meg holding tools over the limb didn't bring back any fear – he knew she was doing it to help him, and not to make him a better weapon. Her touches were gentle, and she explained everything she did before she did it.

So Bucky wasn't worried about the arm. He watched her face as she worked, illuminated by a single lamp. The rest of the workshop was dark, with cars and machinery and mechanical lifts in the shadows.

"If you won't blame me for what happened," he eventually said, "then don't blame yourself."

She froze, but didn't look away from the wiring in his shoulder. "It's not the same," she eventually murmured.

"I know, but just…" he sensed her discomfort, and sighed. "If you want to walk away, you can do that. I didn't mean to trap you."

She didn't leave, so he continued. "You were five when I took you. You were alone, and scared, and no matter how smart you were then, your decision made sense. That's why the Project Leader gave you even the appearance of a choice: because he'd manipulated you into only having one answer. And then you spent decades with HYDRA – no one could blame you for finding even a shred of happiness. Loving to fly, that makes you human, not a monster. And the fact that you got out at all is a goddamn miracle, after everything they put us through. You weren't ever giving up, Meg. You were getting stronger."

Her eyes were shining, and she'd put down the precision tool, but he wasn't done. "I'm not any better than you just because I never got asked if I wanted this or not. I might be worse, because I made the decision to go out and kill people long before HYDRA had ever even heard of me." He sighed. "I know… coming to terms with what you remember is something that you've gotta do on your own. But I don't think you're a monster, Meg. You're sitting here fixing my arm because I told you it hurts. That's the kind of decision you should judge yourself by."

Meg let out a shuddering breath and braced herself against the bench. Bucky wanted to reach out to her, but the metal arm had exposed wires and it would be awkward to reach around with his right arm.

Eyes bright with tears, Meg met his gaze. "I can't just not feel guilty any more, Bucky. Everything I've done…"

"I know," he murmured, holding her gaze. "Neither can I. But you… you can't go on hating yourself. You gotta know, in your head, that you didn't have a choice. Might not change what you feel, but don't go around thinking that you chose to be a murderer."

Meg wiped her eyes, and Bucky watched her process the words. She had a wickedly smart mind, he knew that, but she seemed to have trouble processing the moral and emotional side of things.

"Alright," she eventually whispered. "Thank you, Bucky."

"Just carrying out the mission," he replied.

She smiled and shook her head at him. "Then I'd better get back to my mission, hadn't I?"

"When you're ready," he murmured. His arm chose that moment to let out a loud whirring noise, making Meg laugh softly. She wiped away the last of her tears, picked up the precision tool, and went back to scrutinising his exposed arm.

February, 2014

Medellín, Colombia

"El próximo autobús a Bucaramanga sale en cuarenta y cinco minutos." ["Next bus to Bucaramanga leaves in forty-five minutes."]

Maggie leaned forward in her creaking plastic seat to adjust the backpack sitting by her feet, simultaneously reassuring herself that her wings were close by, and did another sweep of the bus terminal for surveillance. There was only one camera on the far wall behind them, probably not working, and no one in the vicinity gave the pair of former assets a second glance. Moments later, the bus announcing lady gave the same message in clanky English.

They appeared to be any other tourist couple, bus-hopping around the country. Bucky, sitting casually with his arm thrown over the back of his seat, was dressed as usual in jeans and a long t-shirt, with light gloves and sunglasses. He was dressed a little warmly for the weather, which stood out, but they had no other option. He'd started shaving, so his jaw was smooth. He was also wearing a straw hat, because the sight of him in it had made Maggie laugh.

She'd noticed that when they bought or stole clothes, he tended to choose the comfiest options, in green and blue. She tried different styles; for disguise purposes and because she hadn't had a choice in what she wore since she was a child, and she wanted to experiment. Today she had on a blonde wig, which itched at the back of her scalp, and large sunglasses. She only had to worry about concealing her back and the soles of her feet, so she'd opted for loose, high waisted white pants and a red floral top. She found that she liked patterns and colours and flowy clothes, and in the colder temperatures enjoyed wearing knitted sweaters.

The clothes weren't doing anything to soothe her current anxiety, though. Something about the busy terminal with its echoing ceilings and creaking plastic seats was putting her on edge. She wanted to tell herself that it was her instincts telling her something was wrong, but she knew it wasn't. There was no sign of surveillance, no askance looks.

It might have been that she'd had another sleepless night – she and Bucky often still woke screaming, and when she closed her eyes at night she didn't know what memories her tormented brain was going to relive.

They'd been on the move for over a month now, never staying anywhere long, usually hiding out in safehouses locked away from the world. Maggie had managed to ease some of the pain in Bucky's arm in that darkened workshop a few weeks ago, by updating the wiring in his shoulder. She knew it still pained him sometimes, because there was only so much she could do from the mechanical side of things when half of the issue was in the flesh-and-blood part of his shoulder. She'd started researching biology and joint reconstruction, to see if there was anything she could do.

They constantly swapped out their tech whenever they could, to avoid tracking, but they wanted a computer with them at all times so they could track the news coverage of the fall of S.H.I.E.L.D. and be alerted if there was any sign of a hunt for the Winter Soldier or the Wyvern. So far they hadn't found anything public, but it would be too much of a risk to hack into intelligence agencies to see what they were up to. But from what Maggie had found, it looked like HYDRA cells were being located and shut down the world over.

The thought of HYDRA sent a shudder down her spine. She leaned closer to Bucky. He was writing in a notebook, which he had bought a few weeks previously. He said it helped to put the memories somewhere physical, so they existed outside of his own disjointed mind. Maggie hoped it helped. She wasn't having trouble with the impermanence of her memories, so much as she struggled with what the memories contained: death, pain, blood and her own guilt.

The anxiety in Maggie's gut tightened. "Tell me something," she murmured, and Bucky looked up with a questioning glance.

She swallowed. "I don't like the waiting," she explained. "It reminds me… it's like…" she took a deep breath and folded her hands in her lap, trying to control her outward appearance.

"Like waiting for a mission," Bucky finished. He closed his notebook and turned to face her. "You're okay Meg, you're not there anymore. You're here, with me."

She had considered asking Bucky to call her Maggie, instead of Meg, but something stopped her. Meg was the name he'd given her, because she'd wanted a name and Margaret hadn't sounded right. He hadn't guessed correctly, but something about the nickname made her feel a little warmer. It might have been the fact that if Bucky could give her a nickname, he was another step away from the Soldier; it might have been that she felt so different from the Maggie of so many years ago. It might have just been that she liked the way Bucky said the name, low and kind and for her.

"Just keep breathing," Bucky was saying. While Maggie had been monitoring press coverage and researching things like joint reconstruction and her own brother, Bucky had been taking active steps to fix his brain. The breathing thing was one of the first he'd learned about, and any time his own memories got too much, she could hear him taking long, slow breaths – in through the nose, out through the mouth. She tried it now, and found that it helped ease the frantic edge to her nerves. She remembered Bucky saying that he used to help Rogers with his breathing when he had asthma attacks.

"Tell me something," she repeated.

"What do you want to hear?"

"Anything – something from your notebook, a memory, just… anything." In through the nose, out through the mouth.

"How about the Howlies? They were a bunch of crazy bastards, you would've hated working with them."

She nodded to indicate her acceptance of the topic.

Bucky leaned back in his seat and put his flesh arm on the back of her chair – not touching, but providing warmth and support. "Okay, so the first one of 'em I met was Dugan, he was in the 107th with me. First conversation I ever had with him, he punched me in the face."

Bucky told her about the Howling Commandos for nearly half an hour, detailing their battles and in-jokes and embarrassing stories. Maggie was enthralled in the first five minutes, her panic fading away, but she didn't stop him talking. He didn't say it outright, but she could tell that his men had loved him, trusted him with their lives. Rogers was the icon that anyone would follow into battle, but Bucky had been Sarge, the one they turned to when they needed a smoke or a drink or a friendly word.

She could hear in his voice how much he missed them. She'd looked them up, early on – they'd all died before Rogers came out of the ice.

"I don't think I would have hated working with them," she eventually said.

"Did you hear the story about the explosives in the corset?"

She smiled. "Yes. They were risk-takers, but they were clearly effective. The Wyvern mightn't have worked well with them, but I… I like the sound of them."

Bucky smiled, eyes crinkling. "I think they'd have liked you too – some of 'em probably a little too much."

"Well now that I know how they spent their down time, that would definitely not be an issue."

Bucky laughed, and she heard his metal arm faintly whirring. Biting her lip, she decided to ask a question that had been bothering her for a while now.

"When you were a POW at that HYDRA base… was that when they gave you the serum?"

His smile slipped away.

"The serum is what made Captain America strong," she continued. "My father helped to make Captain America strong, and the blue liquid from his briefcase made me strong. And you're not a normal man, Bucky, even without the arm." She kept her voice carefully neutral.

He glanced down at his closed notebook. "Yeah. Zola gave me… something."

"But then you fought with your friends for more than a year. Did you know?"

He sighed. "Sometimes I think I knew I was different, but most of the time… I don't know, it was easy to ignore it, with everything else going on. I spent most of that year seconds away from a heart attack thanks to Steve running headfirst into battlefields."

Maggie smiled and shook her head. "It's a wonder you didn't have a stroke right there in the European theatre, what with Rogers and the Commandos."

"It was a near thing," he agreed. "Now come on, you've got to tell me something now."

She'd made him talk about Zola, so she agreed that was a fair enough deal. She didn't have as many stories to tell as Bucky, given that he'd had about twenty years more life experience outside of HYDRA than her, but he always seemed to enjoy what she could remember. Stories about her family made him quiet and melancholy, but she could sometimes make him laugh with stories of Tony and Howard's antics, or make him smile with stories about her mother. But she'd been remembering another member of the family lately.

"Dad had a butler," she began. "His name was Edwin Jarvis, and he was with Dad since the end of the war. I think people thought it was a bit silly, having this very British butler serving the family, but Jarvis was… he was kind. Dad was busy, so most of my memories are of Jarvis – eating dinner with me, making sure I kept out of trouble, listening to my rambling. He was always there, and he loved us so much. I remember he used to tell me stories about the adventures that he and Aunt Peggy had back in the day-"

Bucky sat up a bit straighter. "Peggy Carter?"

"Yes, I believe so. You knew her?"

"Yeah, she was… well, she was Steve's girl, but she'd have knocked me out for calling her that. She was an agent with the SSR, she was great." He smiled at the memories.

"Well she certainly seemed so, from the stories. I know she came around the mansion every now and then, but I don't really remember her… most of the time she was there to talk to Dad. They named me after her."

She reminisced about Jarvis and Aunt Peggy for a little while longer, until their bus was ready for departure. In the line for the bus, they stood with Maggie's arm looped through Bucky's metal limb – partly to maintain their cover as a couple, and partly to prevent members of the jostling crowd from noticing that his arm was not quite as it seemed. Maggie liked the soft whirs and clicks the arm let out, and they both liked knowing that the other was watching their flank.

"You know," Bucky said as they boarded the bus, "it doesn't have to be like this."

"Like what?" She let him take the window seat – if there was enemy contact, he could smash the window with his metal arm, and she would handle the aisle space.

"The nightmares, the panicking, the mess in both our heads. I've been doing some research, and there's… there's ways of getting better." He was avoiding her gaze, as if he was embarrassed.

Maggie cocked her head. "Like what?"

"Well… first all I could find was stuff about therapists – people you go to with your problems, and they help you with them."

Maggie had never heard of such a thing. "What kind of problems? How do they help you?"

"Problems with your head," Bucky explained, and they both flashed fake smiles to the driver as he walked past. "They… I don't know, talk to you about them. Help make it better."

Maggie had observed that discussing her guilt and her memories with Bucky had helped, but the idea of going to a stranger like that was unsettling.

Bucky continued: "'course, we can't go to therapists, since we're on the run and all, but there's other ways of getting better – therapies and whatnot."

"Therapies?" Maggie had advanced knowledge about mechanics, engineering, cybernetics and many other sciences, but she had never even heard of methods to heal one's mind. She supposed HYDRA wouldn't have a lot of use for it.

"Yeah," Bucky replied. He seemed encouraged by her curiosity. "From what I can tell, there's lots of ways that people – ordinary people – have gotten rid of their nightmares, or learned to deal with bad shit that happened to them. Some of it's related to talking, but there's also some complicated scientific ways that I thought you might…" his metal arm whirred as he trailed off. "I thought… if it works for some people, then it might… for us…"

Maggie was captivated by the idea. She'd just accepted that her mind was a broken mess of horrific memories and guilt. The idea of improving it somehow, of easing the darkness swirling inside her, was fascinating. "You said you've done research?"

Bucky smiled – he could tell, by now, when her brain started really kicking into gear. "Mostly online, but I, uh… stole this last week." With a wince and a shrug, he pulled a book from inside his jacket.

Maggie read the title, and laughed. Unf*ck Yourself. "Really?"

He shrugged. "Seemed appropriate. And from what I've read so far, it's pretty good."

Maggie settled into her seat, considering the term therapies. Any time she'd heard the word before, it had always been HYDRA-speak for some kind of torture, or experimentation. But Bucky wouldn't have brought this up unless he thought it would help, and if he genuinely wanted to try it.

To face the darkest parts of herself and try to make them better? The thought was terrifying, but the idea that it might be possible? Healthy, even? Maggie could feel herself itching for knowledge, to collect all the available data about therapies and their success rates.

She'd spent a lifetime repressing and concealing her feelings from her handlers and herself, but she didn't see the point any more. Of course this often got overwhelming, and Bucky had had to ease her back from an anxious, self-loathing meltdown almost weekly.

Seeking empirical data and applying it to their situation was… tempting.

"May I?" she eventually asked, nodding at the book. Concealing a smile, Bucky handed it over and crossed his arms, signalling that he would keep watch while she read.

It was a good thing that Bucky was keeping an eye out, because Maggie didn't take her eyes off the book for the rest of the eight-hour bus trip. When she was done, she handed the book back to Bucky.

"Well?" he asked.

Maggie straightened her wig and lifted her chin. "I'm going to do some research."