Chapter 92

When Morgan was four, she tugged on Maggie's Kimoyo bead pendant and asked: "What's this?"

The toddler been chattering away at the breakfast table about her favorite toys, so the sudden change in topic made Maggie blink. She carefully tamped down her grief, blunting the sharp edges, before she replied: "It's my necklace."

"Where'd you get it?" Morgan brushed her hair out of her eyes and looked right into Maggie's face, head cocked. Maggie might have smiled if the question hadn't sent her into a tailspin. Morgan was a little shyer than Maggie had been at that age, but she was still sharp as a tack. And as blunt as her father.

"I… it was a present," Maggie stammered out, trying not break down in front of a four year old. Pepper was in the kitchen but Tony sat at the table with his sister and daughter, his brow furrowed as he watched them interact.

"From who?"

She didn't know how to answer that. Seeing Maggie freeze, Tony scooted his chair closer to Morgan's and set a hand on her back, ducking his head close to hers.

"That necklace was a gift from your uncle Bucky," he said softly.

Maggie stopped breathing. Luckily Morgan was looking up at her dad, so she didn't see the dizzying array of emotions that flooded her aunt's eyes: shock, grief, love. Overwhelming gratitude.

"Who's uncle Bucky?"

Tony raised his eyebrows at Maggie, but she was still so blown away that she couldn't speak. Morgan finally saw her aunt's stunned face and frowned.

Tony cleared his throat. "Well you know how me and mom love each other? Auntie Maggie and uncle Bucky were like that."

Maggie couldn't believe what she was hearing. She could still hear the exact tone in Tony's voice when he'd said in Siberia: I don't care. He killed my mom. He took my sister from me. She could still picture all the times Tony's face had darkened at the mere mention of Bucky's name. They'd been talking more about him these past few years and Tony had been getting to know the man Bucky had been, but this?

"Oh," Morgan said. "So where is he?"

"He's gone," Maggie replied. Her voice came out dry and raspy. Morgan nodded solemnly – she might only be four, but she'd lived in this broken world long enough to know what gone meant.

Morgan scratched her cheek, had another bite of her toast, and then said: "Bucky's a weird name."

Maggie laughed, startling herself, and then scooped Morgan out of her chair and into a hug. Tony set his chin on his hand and smiled. Morgan instantly wrapped her fingers around the Kimoyo bead and then chased up the chain to touch the smaller pearl.

"That it is," Maggie murmured. "Do you want to see a picture of him?"

The top of Morgan's head brushed the underside of Maggie's chin when she nodded. "Okay."

Maggie tapped her nanotech bracelets and a hologram of Bucky appeared beside the table, as he'd been that day in Wakanda: dark blue vest, black and gold metal arm, thick hair and beard and a twinkle in his eye. He stood in the air before her, looking so alive that it hurt.

"He's got a metal arm!" Morgan exclaimed, suddenly a whole lot more excited.

"He does," Maggie smiled. Like father, like daughter. Morgan wriggled out of Maggie's lap to admire the hologram, and put her hand right through Bucky's holographic metal hand. The hologram flickered and resolved itself.

Morgan chattered about the metal arm, and his 'weird long hair', and asked if Bucky liked juice pops too. When Maggie explained that Bucky didn't like juice pops because they were too cold, but that he did like chicken nuggets just like Morgan, Morgan nodded seriously and dashed off into the kitchen to ask her mom for a juice pop.

Maggie pulled her eyes away from Bucky's image and found herself looking at Tony. He watched her quietly, dark eyes searching.

She opened and closed her mouth. She eventually settled on: "Thank you." She swallowed. "I didn't think…"

He shrugged. "Turns out I'm not all that good at holding grudges. And Barnes… he seems like he was good for you. Seems like he was your family. So he's ours too."

Maggie burst into tears.

Tony moved into the chair besides Maggie's and put an arm around her, holding her as she pressed her hand over her mouth, tears streaming down her cheeks from closed eyes while her whole body shook with sobs.

After a minute she managed to reign in her tears and straighten in her chair. She and Tony both ended up looking at the hologram standing beside the table.

"He looks different there," Tony noted. "New arm. Was that when…?"

She nodded and wiped her eyes. "That was in Wakanda." She traced the blue glowing lines of Bucky's face, and smiled at the look in his eyes. How can I still be so in love with him after all these years? "My plan for… for afterwards was to bring him home and then yell at you until you let him stay." She chuckled wetly. "Like some kind of stray cat."

"I don't think you would have had to do much yelling," he said softly.

That made her start crying again, so Tony got up to get her a box of tissues. At that moment Morgan and Pepper walked into the room, hand in hand as Morgan ate a juice pop. Pepper's eyes immediately went to the hologram and then to Maggie's face.

"Are you okay?" she asked softly.

Maggie nodded, and took one last long look at Bucky before she shut down the hologram. Tony appeared by her side and handed her the tissues.

"Yeah," she said, smiling at Morgan when the little girl looked curiously across at her. "I'm okay."

One Year Later

New York City

"Hi." Maggie shifted in her stiff seat. "My name's Maggie."

"Hi Maggie," came a handful of soft, empathetic voices. It made her skin crawl.

She sat in a dusty community center hall, in a circle of chairs with eight members of Steve's talk therapy group. She'd only been back on Earth three hours and somehow he'd roped her in to coming along.

She looked around the hall, taking in the faded curtains on the stage and the chairs stacked on tables. It should have been a normal sight, but she couldn't help but find sadness in every sign of absence nowadays.

It made her sad that Steve had carried on Sam's work as a therapist. There were a shortage of therapists in the world now, just like there were shortages in every other job, but that particular choice of vocation tugged at something deep inside her.

Her eyes caught on a tall, dusty mirror on the other side of the room, reflecting the group of people in dark clothes with their heads bowed together. Maggie herself looked out of place – nothing physical, just… she didn't look like one of them.

She'd changed in small ways over the past five years – she'd lost some weight, leaving her just on the border of unhealthy, but thanks to the serum she was still strong enough to lift half the members of the therapy group over her head without breaking a sweat. The lines of her face were sharper, and her eyes were different. Unnerving. She'd cut her hair recently too, the ends just brushing the shoulders of her leather jacket. A faint scar ran through her right eyebrow from where Proxima Midnight had cut her in the Battle of Wakanda. Bruce theorized that the scar remained because the alien blade had interfered with her serum healing.

Maggie blinked and looked away from her own haunting reflection. She could feel the others watching her, waiting for her to speak. Steve sat a few seats away from her, but there was no impatience in his blue eyes.

Finally, someone spoke. "Who did you lose?"

Her eyes darted up and she stared at the speaker: an elderly African American woman with silver hair and kind eyes. For a long moment Maggie didn't respond.

Then she sighed and looked away. "Does it really matter who I lost? We all lost. It… it's too much. Don't see much point in dragging you all down with a little more grief to add to the pile." She shook her head. "I'm just here to listen."

"That's okay," Steve said softly, and the others all turned to listen to him. He was the leader here, and Maggie could see in their faces that they trusted him implicitly. "But I'd like to say… we've talked a lot about this in the group, and there's something I think you need to hear." He met her eyes. "Every loss matters. Just because everyone lost someone doesn't make any individual loss any less significant, or any less painful. Every person we lost matters. Right?"

The others nodded.

An older guy with glasses next to Maggie said: "If you don't want to tell us about the people you lost, that's okay. Personally, I know the only way to keep the people I lost alive is in memory. So I… I have to talk about them."

Maggie stared hard at her knees. After a few moments, she shuffled her feet again. She looked up. "Y'know, I've done this sort of thing before." The others stayed silent, watching her. Listening. "Therapy, I mean. Probably should be doing a hell of a lot more of it now, but…" she shrugged a shoulder. "Well for one thing, my therapist died in the Decimation. And…" she sighed. "I just don't want to stop long enough to talk. To think. I realize that isn't a super healthy coping mechanism, but who makes those rules anymore? The old rules are for the old world. In this world, everyone is grieving. Everyone lost. If you manage to stay alive in the wake of that… that's enough, I think. It has to be enough."

Steve nodded. "So what keeps you alive, Maggie?"

"Work." She tipped her head to the side. "At first that was it – just fighting to keep the surviving half of the universe from devolving into chaos. Didn't do such a good job at times, but it kept me busy. Since then… I've found other things as well. The family I've got left. My team." She bit her lip. "I've got a niece."

Around the circle, people smiled. Steve's eyes warmed and he asked: "You keep going for her?"

She nodded. "When she arrived, I realized I didn't have to be a machine. I found one last… one last shred of life, and I've been working on that. I'm kinda surprised I had it in me."

"There's always hope," said one of the others, and Maggie ducked her head.

"I don't know about that, not for me. But my niece, she hopes. She has dreams, she wants to explore and make things and… I have to protect that."

"That's great," Steve said, his voice low and a little teary, if Maggie didn't mistake it. "We've gotta find something to keep going for, no matter what it is. Could be your family, could be for yourself, could be to help other people. Hell, it could just be because you want to see another sunrise." He looked around the circle, meeting everyone's eyes, and then nodded. "Alright Cal, why don't we move to you next? Did you get that new apartment?"

The attention turned away from Maggie and she let out a long breath.

After the therapy session ended and Steve personally fare-welled each member of the group, Maggie and Steve got dinner at a quiet little Vietnamese restaurant ("they got up and running again a year ago, it was a community effort really", Steve explained). They chatted about Steve's work in the community, about Morgan, and about Maggie's recent mission with Carol.

"She's a good sort," Steve said genially, nodding as he sipped his beer.

"You're not fooling me, I know you're secretly jealous that she's sharing your Captain title."

He waved a hand. "She can have it. I'm not a Captain anymore." He was smiling, so Maggie tried not to let his comment make her frown, but it stung to hear him speak that way. Because she knew he hadn't retired because he felt his work was done. He'd given up, because he'd failed, and now he tried to pick up the pieces by helping as many people as he could. But she saw it in his eyes – he could never help enough people after what had happened.

For the rest of the dinner, even as the conversation moved back to safer waters, Maggie pondered Steve Rogers and the list of tragedies that made up his life. He'd lost so much and yet here he was, helping people. She wondered what she could learn from him.

When they paid the bill and walked out onto the street that had been mostly cleared of the remnants of what dead people left behind, Maggie turned to Steve.

"How did you do it?" He blinked and turned to her, taken aback by the sudden depth to her voice. "How did you lose the love of your life and have the world turn upside down on you and survive?"

Steve's eyes went deep and sad, and he looked down. A few seconds passed. Maggie reflected that this seemed to be how the world worked now: long, sad silences in conversations, and red-lined eyes.

"I just… I had to move on," he murmured.

Maggie eyed him for a long moment. "But you didn't," she realized. He glanced up, eyes wide and frightened, and she felt a wave of hopelessness wash over her. Steve was one of the strongest people she knew, and if he couldn't let go… she sighed.

Bucky was her person – she'd known that the moment she'd figured out she was in love with him. A part of her wished she was capable of moving on, like some people had in this new world. Natasha had even asked a few months ago if Maggie and Carol were 'a thing'. As much as Maggie liked and respected Carol, she just couldn't make herself see anyone the way she had seen Bucky. Part of her wished she could, but mostly… she knew there was nothing she could do about it. Bucky had been the love of her life, as cheesy as it sounded. Without him life wouldn't be the same, but there was still life. She still had love, but not like she had with Bucky. I can be okay with that, she told herself. I can be okay with not letting go.

She glanced back up and saw Steve looking stricken and exposed.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I can't quite work out how to keep from hurting the people around me." She was always too short with people, too sharp in her words nowadays, with everyone except Morgan. She still didn't smile much.

"You didn't hurt me," Steve murmured. He spread his arms. "C'mon."

Maggie stepped in and hugged him, only flashing back for a second to the first time they'd hugged; in the Facility after the world fell apart.

When she pulled away Steve looked down at her. "Buck really loved you, I know you know that. I just… I know he'd want you to be happy." His eyes glimmered, making him look so desperately sad.

"I know he would," she replied. "But I don't know if I know how to do that anymore."

The corner of Steve's mouth quirked up. "Maybe we'll figure it out one day."

"Here's hoping," she said, not really meaning it. She jerked her head towards her motorbike, parked beside his against the curb. "I've got to drop in at the house before I head off again. Thanks for dinner, Steve."

He raised his hand in a wave, his blue eyes warm. "Thanks for coming."

She drove through the night to Tony and Pepper's house, arriving on the crunchy gravel driveway at about dawn. Pale pink light cast haloes around the trees, and reflected off the lake and the curls of mist drifting across it. The birds were just starting to wake up, trilling and chirping to begin the day.

The house itself was already in chaos – lights on, footsteps thumping, shrieks of laughter and tired sighs. It was amazing how much disorder a five year old could wreak. Last week a bemoaning Tony had told Maggie that Morgan was in a phase of waking up before the sun because she liked the sunrise, which of course was terrible news for her parents.

Maggie let herself in through the screen door as usual, and found the source of the chaos in the living room: Morgan's latest favorite toy, a bunch of magnetic connecting building blocks from Wakanda, had been arranged in the shape of what looked like a miniature castle in front of the fireplace. The engineer herself ran in circles around the structure with her hair in a crazy pigtail, making explosion noises. Pepper and Tony were nowhere to be seen, but Maggie smelled coffee wafting from the kitchen.

Maggie put her hands on her hips. "Well, if it isn't the fearsome Morrigan, empress of all she surveys."

Morgan skidded to a halt and glanced to the doorway. Her face lit up. "Maggie!" She launched herself at her aunt in a rush of pigtails and pounding footsteps, and when she got close enough Maggie scooped her off her feet and tossed her a little ways into the air before catching her again.

"Hello, precious," Maggie grinned, laughing at Morgan's exhilarated expression. "I missed you."

"You've been gone thirty one days," Morgan informed her, feigning a scowl, before wrapping her arms around Maggie's neck and attempting to squeeze as hard as she could.

"I know, I know. I'm really sorry I missed your party, too. How does it feel being five?"

"The same. Daddy says I might be old enough to help him in the garage when I'm six."

"Are you still sneaking in there anyway?"

Morgan ducked her head but she was smiling. Maggie tickled her sides, making her squirm, then said: "I got you a present."

Morgan unwrapped herself from Maggie's neck so quickly that she nearly toppled backwards, but Maggie adjusted her grip with one hand and pulled the gift out of her pocket with the other.

"What is it?" Morgan took the small, dark bottle and squinted at it.

"I picked it up on a planet called Zath – Zathree – I can't pronounce it. Nebula can. Go on, open it."

Morgan wriggled the cork out of the bottle neck, and both of their faces lit up green as the contents floated out.

"What is it?" Morgan repeated, her voice quieter.

"It's slime." Maggie reached up and poked the floating, glowing blob of fluorescent green slime. It squelched against her finger. "I bought it at a market. It's totally safe, and it has the added bonus of probably making your parents furious with me when they see it."

"I love it," Morgan breathed, and promptly grabbed the whole blob in her fist. It oozed between her fingers and plopped back into the air in floating globules, as if it were in zero gravity.

At that moment, Maggie heard footsteps from the other side of the room and looked over. It was Pepper, looking utterly exhausted, wearing a woolen cardigan and carrying two cups of coffee. It looked like they were both for her.

"Hey Pepper."

Pepper blinked and focused in on the tall woman standing in her living room. When she saw who it was she let out a heavy sigh. "Thank god," she said with a smile. "Maybe I can get some peace and quiet now." She put down her coffees and rushed across the room to pull Maggie in for a hug and a kiss on the cheek. She didn't comment on the floating slime.

"Mommy just kissed you!" Morgan exclaimed from her position on Maggie's hip.

"Don't tell your dad, he'll get jealous." Maggie whispered. She looked around. "Where is he, anyway?"

Morgan's eyes lit up, still glinting faintly green from the glowing slime. "Daddy's going to take me fishing."

"Well that sounds… like a plan doomed for failure." Maggie met Pepper's eyes and the other woman just shrugged fondly.

"I'm going upstairs," Pepper said, and then cast a meaningful look at Maggie. "I hope you two have a nice, long, play date together."

"Message received," Maggie responded with a suppressed smile, and watched Pepper walk out of the room with a yawn. She bounced Morgan on her hip. "Do you think she saw the slime?"

"Nope," Morgan replied. "It was floating right next to her head!"

"That it was. Let's go find your dad, little Morrigan."

They found him out the back of the house by the jetty, loading up the tin rowboat with fishing rods and bait. He wore a band t-shirt, jeans, and sunglasses, and he seemed to be idly arguing with F.R.I.D.A.Y. via his sunglasses as he worked.

Maggie smiled at the sight. As she walked past the tire swing that she had hung up on a nearby tree two summers ago, she called out: "Is that thing structurally sound?"

Tony glanced over and saw Maggie striding up with Morgan slung over her shoulder like a sack of potatoes. He lowered his sunglasses down his nose to see her more clearly. "I distinctly remember teaching you how to hold my daughter, Maggot, and I don't remember that technique being on the list."

"What, this?" Maggie jostled her shoulder and Morgan, already giggling, burst out laughing. "This is my packed lunch."

Tony straightened and dusted off his jeans before he couldn't hide his smile any longer, and he beamed at her with the force of a thousand arc reactors. She smiled back, the absent days between them already forgotten.

Tony dusted off his hands. "You'd better get in, then."

After fitting Morgan's life vest, Maggie pushed the rowboat into the water with Tony and Morgan already in it, and then leaped in from the shore. She barely made the boat wobble.

Maggie rowed them out to the middle of the lake ("Don't even start, Tony, which one of us has super soldier serum?"), and then Tony proceeded to teach Maggie and Morgan how to fish. He'd been teaching himself, so Maggie wasn't sure how effective his teachings were, but Morgan seemed to get a kick out of baiting up the hook and then making her father cast it out into the water. Once the lines were set up, Morgan started chatting.

"Daddy, Maggie brought me slime for my birthday!"

Tony glanced at Maggie, confused, but she just smiled and said: "Wait until you see it." Then she frowned and turned to Morgan. "Don't let your dad steal it for experiments, alright?"

"I won't let him," Morgan said seriously.

"The hell kind of slime…" Tony shook his head and turned back to the fishing line. "As long as it's not sentient."

"It's… probably not."

They sat together in the small tin boat, Morgan nestled safely between her father's legs and Maggie perched at the prow of the boat, enjoying the warming sun on her face and the smells of lake water and pine trees in the air. The last planet she'd visited hadn't had a sun at all, so the bright light and warmth were a nice change.

About twenty minutes in, after they'd had a few nibbles on the line but hadn't caught anything, Morgan got bored.

"Maggie, do the wings!"

Maggie cracked an eye open. "I don't want to rock the boat, Morrigan – literally."

Morgan pouted, making her eyes all big, and Maggie's eyes narrowed.

"That might work on you mom and dad, but not me."

Morgan crawled up the boat towards her and slumped on Maggie's legs, looking up at her. Her life vest squeaked. "Please?"

Maggie couldn't help but crack a smile. Morgan had seen her wings dozens of times – she'd never thought to hide them, they were a part of her. But she had never shown Morgan the nanotech suit; the suit which could be any color at all with just a thought, but had been black for five whole years. She didn't care to think about that.

"Alright," Maggie sighed, and Morgan grinned. Tony muttered something about 'pushovers'. "Only because you asked so nicely."

Rolling her shoulders, Maggie activated the nanotech lying in wait in her wing moorings and the x-shaped design on her back. She felt the metal slide out, heard the small whirs and clicks, and watched the utter amazement in Morgan's face as if it was the first time she'd ever seen it. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the wide dark webs of her wings furl out, rustling slightly in the breeze, and saw the reflection of her wings in the water. Their weight settled on her spine.

"Pretty sure you've scared off all the fish," Tony commented from the other end of the boat.

Maggie gently fired up her engines and beat her wings once, twice, lifting her off the prow of the boat and into the air. She watched Morgan's wide-eyed, open-mouthed face get smaller as the five year old craned her head back, then descended so she was hovering just beside the tin rowboat. Her wing beats made the water ripple and pushed the boat slightly off course.

Morgan flung her arms up. "Now me!"

Maggie glanced at Tony, but he just rolled his eyes and said "Maybe if you drop her the fish will get interested." But then his still finely-honed over-protectiveness kicked in and he added: "But don't drop her."

Maggie nodded, smiling to reassure him, then carefully lowered herself until she could reach the life-jacketed five year old practically dancing on her toes in the rowboat.

When her arms wrapped tightly around Morgan's middle, she said "Are you ready?"

"Yes!"

More carefully than she had ever flown before, Maggie slowly beat her wings; first until she heard the gasp as Morgan's feet lifted off the rowboat, and then until they hovered just a few feet above the water. The metallic creak of her wing beats mixed with the low hum of her engines, but not so loud that Maggie' couldn't hear Morgan's fast breaths. Her heart beat furiously under Maggie's palms.

Morgan looked from the boat beneath her feet and then up, to the world stretching wide around them, then squealed and kicked her feet with an ecstatic laugh.

"Daddy, I'm flying!"

"You sure are, sweetheart." Tony's grin was brilliant.

Maggie turned in a slow circle, her body curled protectively around Morgan, and softly pointed out landmarks in her ear. "You can see the roof of your house from here, look."

"Can we fly on top of it?"

Maggie laughed quietly. "Maybe when you're six. Time to go back down, little bird."

She descended as slowly as she'd risen, carefully extending her armful of five-year-old so Tony could reach up to steady her as she dropped back into the boat.

Maggie didn't land. "Alright, I'm going to put an end to this fishing expedition."

Still supporting a giggling Morgan, Tony looked at his fishing lines. "I don't think we're going to catch anything. Sorry Morguna, maybe we'll have fish for lunch another time."

"So quick to give up," Maggie tutted, then adjusted her nanotech so her red goggles slipped over her face. She swept her wings in a single, swooping arc and soared almost twenty feet above the lake before she looked down, narrowed her eyes, and dove.

Morgan burst out laughing at the sight of her aunt plunging through the surface of the lake, and Tony joined her when Maggie burst back out a few yards away, clutching a pair of fish in her hands. She swooped over, dropped the fish in the boat, and then dove again like some kind of lake bird.

She ended up pulling the boat back to shore with her wings spread and her foot hooked into the front of the boat, soaking from head to toe, and helped Morgan and Tony carry the half a dozen fish out of the boat and into the house. She showered while Tony prepared the fish and Pepper talked her mom's ear off about how Auntie Maggie had brought her slime, helped her fly, and then caught their lunch for them.

That night Morgan painted Maggie's fingernails neon pink in front of the fire, and Maggie smiled as she listened to Tony and Pepper playfully bicker about floating slime.

In this house she could pretend that everything was normal, and that made her smile. Who knew I'd be turning to Tony for normality.

Before Morgan's bedtime Maggie said her goodbyes. Morgan squeezed her as tight as she could, Pepper kissed her cheek, and Tony walked her out to the patio.

They hugged, and when they pulled apart he said what he always did: "You can stay, you know."

She just smiled, a little less sad than last time, and said: "I can't."

They hugged again, Tony gave her a message for Rhodey if she ran into him, and then she strode down the steps towards her bike.

"I'll call!" she shouted over her shoulder. Then she drove off into the night.

Two Days Later

At the memorial for the Vanished in San Francisco, Scott Lang read his name on a monument.

"What?"