I'm back again. I can't believe its been nearly two weeks since I updated. It's gone so fast but here I am and here is chapter 30!

Enjoy!

Disclaimer: In my head Bucky is mine but officially I have no rights over him or anything else *Cries*

CHAPTER XXX

Bucky is falling, screaming out against the apprehension and pain. Crying out for someone, anyone to help him from the doom he was facing. He plummets and feels his body break and crumble against the ice, the snore a blizzard as it consumes him, leaving his brain on fire. But this time it was different, every ache, every thought every emotion and nothing felt more prominent than the feeling the he had once feared more than anything – he wasn't alone.

Bucky's voice is non-existent, the screams weren't his own. The cold couldn't replace the shrieks with silence, they were so loud and as though the pitch could shatter the whole world, that it could seize time and turn everything into nothing.

Red, the colour of the devil. The colour of blood, the colour of passion and love, the colour of danger and warning. The colour of fire and hell. The colour of hair, a mane, rich and vibrant, bold and vivid.

He could see it, all around him, stealing away the cold and melting the ice that tried to trap him in his own personal limbo. He reaches out to touch it, to have it caress his finger with its burning pain, it everywhere but too far away at the same time.

It was his light, it was his surface, it was his solitude away from the cold.

He claws his way towards it, feeling the heat begin to tighten his flesh.

Strength, power but most need is what drove him on and as he surfaces his lungs are attacked y air, too much for him to manage. It swirls and hits him, tugging and pushing, leaving his gasping for normality, as his eyes blur and sting against the attack of the elements.

Raising his hand to try and shield himself against the debris, the air and the light. But the light wasn't bright. It cooked his corneas and the smoke leaving his vision blackened as he tries to blink through it and protect himself from the wild wrath of fire and air.

Somehow it all felt too real, as though it couldn't be a dream and his rapidly dehydrating orbs beg for sight to see through the battle of nature.

For a moment he races his own battle against nature as he pushes himself against the resistance of the blizzard to roll onto his side, his grip into the hard and dry earth to keep him as stable as he could be.

He tries to call out but the efforts of the throat are not match for the whistling of the wind in contrast with the swarming crackles of the fire and a strange distorted ringing in his ears as though an explosion had impaired the sense.

The ability to focus his eyes was impossible but through the blurred mixture of darkness out stretched before him he could just make out his surface that lead away from the mayhem. Road! He could see road, and upon it sands of ashes and lit embers and floated towards something blue in the distance.

His heart worked before anything else and took an unfavourable leap, knowing that the object before him was something his brain began to process was Maggie's car.

His heavy, tingling arm reaches out, finger stretches as far as they possibly could in order to grasp, but once again not far enough.

"Maggie?" His lips may open and his throat might burn and contract as though he was producing sound but his desperate pleas were nothing more than a waste of valuable oxygen. But it wasn't to him.

Two figures, that is what his eyes chooses as his focal point, one male, one female. It was the latter that didn't give him the comfort he needed, her golden hair taunting him with its lack of bronze and copper. However both statures seemed alarmed frightened, but he couldn't do anything about whatever may be the cause. He was ignorant. There was only one face that could give him the solace he pined for in order to build back his strength. But the particular face was being denied him and he couldn't comprehend why. Bucky was positive it had been her screams that had shuck him out of his stupor like an earthquake and he could still hear them polluting with echo in the mild heavy air.

Using the permanent strength of the bulk of metal that hugged his shoulder, he pushes himself up, the world still spinning around and around even his stomach has trouble keeping up.

"Maggie?" He hollers out against the forces around him in plea.

Finding himself on his knees, he manages to summon his body to stand firm and controlled as his spine straightens, only to have the breath taken from him once again as he comes face to face with a pair of scarlet eyes.

Extraordinary and vivid, it wasn't the flames that mirrored within the eyes and cast their reflection upon him, the inexplicable spheres were simply fire themselves, haunting and dangerous with their blind scrutiny.

They should have been green, they were always green! They were never dangerous or haunting, even when conveying fret or anger. But no amount of explanation changed the fact that they were red, nor who they belonged to.

"Maggie?!"

His feet were suddenly weak under him, so much so he staggers back a few steps into the fire, feeling its weapon of a scold threatening his back. Tearing himself away he turns around to face the truth; finally seeing the full picture in all its perilous glory.

It was only by sight that he realized the severe nature of what he was in the midst of. He had seen many things in his unnaturally long life but this took the longest to make sense of.

All around him oozed fire and if mother nature had her way the two of them would be nothing but bones with the flames eating their flesh. But as it stood the flames were uncharacteristically divided like a parted ocean. Everything about it abnormal as he is lured into the flames, their biting and attack on the clear glass barrier in which protected them from death either side, as the inferno behaved like savaged dogs.

But there was no glass, no barrier; no other explanation other than someone was miraculously doing this in order to save them, someone with mind-blowing power that he most definitely did not possess.

Looking back to the only other person he knew was close enough, he sees the pained and strained expression on her face. Maggie's hands and arms solid and masterfully outstretched either side of her, as though pushing the flames back with nothing but her bare fingers. But that wasn't possible, she wasn't like that. She was ordinary…

She was a nurse, a girl who lived day to day going about her normal life, doing all she could for people and then curling up in bed at the end of the day, spent and exhausted by what he would consider her mundane life, not this. This wasn't… normal.

No matter how much he searched his mind for other theories to prove she was just a typical human girl the story before his eyes, makes sure he couldn't find one. Nothing seemed to make sense.

Above them through the waves of black lingered more darkness but this was from heavy full clouds that congregated before it cracks and begins to release the heavens, nature throwing fires nemesis down upon the scene.

Slowly it washed away the smouldering air, extinguishing the blaze, cleansing their coal stained faces.

But he stares through the storm, watching, fighting the allure of the crimson eyed woman who stared right on back with her whole body possessing the power of the world, the spheres were hollow and of complete mystery to him. They belonged to a stranger.

The weight upon his chest is the desperation for denial, and for someone to wake him up from this hallucination.

He can't move or speak as of that moment the world was foreign to him, even his own ability of communication.

Their comes a sudden burst of light from her eyes and a gust of wind from her soul before whatever haunted her body was being exiled and swept away with the rain as the eyes disappears behind her lids, no sooner her body begins to crumble and plummet to the ground, her nose oozing with blood.

Momentarily disregarding current activities of his mind he acts on instinct to capture the falling lifeless girl as she melted and slumped in slow motion into Bucky's awaiting arms. A girl he had never met before had been the one taking the plunge but it was Maggie he held.

Dark rings lined her sealed sockets, her nose pulsing with blood that was coating her lips and trailing down towards her ear.

He clasps her tight, unsure of his own emotions that overcome him, but he carries her away from any threat left by the wreckage, the ground feeling unsteady and surreal under his feet, but all he could look upon was the sudden pained and frail girl.

The confusion being over taken with fear for her wellbeing as he was sure anyone who had just conjured what she had wouldn't be okay.

There is a crunching of tyres against the damaged, debris filled road, the blue Audi A5 saloon pulling up just feet away from them and the bearded instructive best friend takes control, telling a hectic minded Bucky what he needed to do, in words of getting her into the car while a baffled Alice scrambles around in the back, making room of the fallen clutter from the back seats.

Suddenly the air is thick with echo with a frightened scream and Maggie's eyes bursting open in a fit of panic. She can taste the blood and she understands she isn't on solid ground, someone has a hold of her. She's captured, someone was taking her away.

Out lashed her hands, clutched into fist, kick went her feet, flinging her body in order to get free of the powerful clasps that seize and suffocate her, something tricking down the back of her raw throat causing her to begin to choke in further trepidation. Her brittle nails claw out at her captor, knowing without sight she fetches blood.

Maggie's mind and body go into overdrive and she feels something soft beneath her as she is being forced into a laying position with a heavy weigh pushing down upon her, grabbing at her wrists and pinning them down as her dress is being hitched by her supposed attacker.

"BUCKY!" She roars our like a banshee, needing her saviour.

"BUCKY!" She repeats, tears streaming down the dry skin of her cheeks, once again begins to choke, while her rigid defence is wasted on the pure strength of her aggressor, but she won't stop, they wouldn't have her!

"Maggie!" A chorus of all three of them, trying to snap Maggie out of whatever torment she was currently under. Billy was making them flee from the scene as he informs Bucky he might need to physically slap the sanity lacking girl from the grasps of senselessness. Much to Bucky's dismay and disapproval, not liking the idea of striking the girl in any way, nor too comfortable in hearing the suggestion having come from her best friend who on numerous occasions had proved how he would to anything to prevent his friend being hurt.

It tore at Bucky's chest seeing her like this, so crazed and yet screaming out for him, while it was he she was fighting off.

Yes at this point with the desperation attacking him at all angles he could have slapped her, especially when her knee connects with a more sensitive part of him that was only meant to be treated kindly.

A cry pauses Maggie in the midst of her attack, she had heard a similar cry before and she knew it was someone close in the matter of distance and friendship, the gruff echo sparking positive memory, and with eyes open the sight of reality is pushed down upon her as the steadying of her own heart and the feverish blood in her veins begin to calm themselves.

She looks for any assailant, any sign of danger or threat, but all she is met with are eyes, eyes she knows and that look at her with a mixture of expression but in at least two pairs she sees confusion, apprehension and an ample amount of sorrow, as though something had been lost.

She could still feel the flames of the fire clinging in a clammy sweat to her flesh and as though she had her own personal internal drummer tucked inside of her head, playing upon her temples.

She knew exactly what she had done, something she swore she would never do again, a force inside of herself she had come to control and forget, with nothing but the need for normality in her life. But once more life had thrown obstacles at her she couldn't ignore, nor could she have taken a simple step over or around them.

Seeing a dark haired creature before her, she could see a hint of pain within him, but apart from that as he stares back to her, there was light in his eyes, air in his lungs and no burns anywhere.

She had succeeded.

Panic did course through her veins however, wondering where this all might take her, and yes she might have felt fear that her secret had been revealed to a particular person in a way she hadn't planned, nor knew how he would take the news, being as he seemed to be leaning as far back as possible with suspicious eyes. But how could she blame him? She had projected this vision of herself and her life upon him, given him a taste of normalcy when she was anything but normal.

Her mind is turned to a feeling of dripping upon her chest and she cannot help but case her eyes down seeing the trickling blood and quickly cupping her nose and turning her head away in order to hide away what had already been seen, the metallic taste in her mouth was pungent and sickly, giving her the urge to spit and cough up the crimson syrup that had flocked to the back of her throat, making her want to heave, so much so she couldn't help but do so into her hand.

Billy hears the sound of wrenching and feels the need to comfort his plagued friend, voicing his concerns and backing them up with the attempts of pulling over, as he had already seen to it that they left the freeway in order to be more concealed by any followers.

"I'm… ugkkk fine. Don't…" Maggie can only respond with short instructions, the most important thing right now was that they found safety, and even her heart couldn't convince her that they would find it easily, nor that the mayhem was over.

"Here Maggie" Alice pulled several wipes from a packet and holds them out to the bleeding girl who accepts them the beginning of a thank you stopped by another gag.

Mopping up her nose, she tries to keep herself concealed and as silent as possible as she uses the wipe to catch any congealed gunk from the back of her throat, next Alice passing around some water which once again Maggie takes greedily and guzzled it back her whole body cooling with the nondescript liquid.

Back and forth she wiped at her nose, removing whatever she could of the blood that had begun to crisp against her skin, risking a glance over to the man beside her who was just staring openly and mutely, yet she can ignore the expression for now as she sees she isn't the only one covered in blood, and whether it was his own or someone else's she knew what it all stood for, the danger in which it posed.

Finding her voice came as a gruff scratching voice, but she cleared her way through it, "We need to go back" She declares to the surprise of them all.

"Maggie we can't go back there. We need to get out of the city and somewhere…" Billy is the one to protest first, but is unable to finish.

"Nowhere is going to be safe right now. The car is wrecked; they found him… us once. We'd just be making it easier for them in this car and unarmed. We need to go to my sisters. That is… if we're all going to stick together…" Her eyes shift between them all, a hard look within her eyes ready for all of their voices to concern doubt, especially Alice who seems to be shaking yet putting a brave lid on her can of fears.

"Going back there is too much of a risk." Bucky deadpanned.

"Even more of a risk not to. But I will go on my own if that is what it takes." She straightens her back as the two stare a long unspoken look at one another neither knowing what the other was thinking, but for Maggie it wasn't her priority for the moment. The time will come for that and it wasn't right now.

Without taking his watchful eye away from Maggie, Bucky parted his lips and gave Billy confirmation to follow through with Maggie's plan. He wasn't sure if he would ever understand her reasoning's, especially now. He wasn't about to go against her so she could prove to him just how powerful her ability is to go against him and charge into a situation he had no idea if she could handle. He was still coming to terms with the fact that there were some dramatic state of affairs she could contend with.

"I'll take the back roads" Billy announces, but there was only Alice listening.

Herself she had begun to contemplate a route of her own away from this madness, feeling an urgent need of somewhere secluded and safe, with her parents so they could protect her like they always had when she was a child. But here and now, she was positive there was nothing her parents could do, neither her cop of an uncle – if anything she would just be putting them in danger too.

"You don't need to get involved in this, Alice" Maggie speaks up, informing the scared blonde of her ability to leave them now and not look back.

"I…" She wasn't exactly sure what to say. She wanted to go home, she wanted to wake from this dream, and she just wanted to be surrounded by simplicity. But at the same time, whether she knew them or not, the people in this car had become family to her. Maybe Maggie and Bucky could contend with this together, but she couldn't leave Billy to face it all on his own.

However Bucky took the decision away from her, "She's already involved. This wasn't just a spare of the moment attack. They know who you are, where you live, what colour your goddamn toothbrushes are. We are prey, and the only thing prey can do is run."

Bucky's words of knowledge cast a silence over everyone and everything in the car.

There was no place Maggie needed to be more in than moment than at the beach, following through with their original plans, but she didn't need anyone to tell her that that was one of the last places they could go.

Minutes grew in silence, Billy felt the need to comfort Alice, while at the same time petrified about his best friend and the person she had awoken inside of her. Memories of the last time pressing heavy against his temples, unsure of what to do for her. Her eyes remained brown for the moment, catching the odd fleck of green now and again out of the rear mirror, the way she squeezed her tingling hands and rubbed her arms as the overdose of power lingers within her veins.

It had never been something she had wanted, something she kept secret from nobody who didn't need to know. Since Bucky's arrival he had feared it would come to this, planned to do everything he could to prevent it, but he could not have stopped her. If he had they would both be dead. She had brought them their lives, now they just had to contend with the cost of doing so.

He knew what it had taken last time; he was positive he couldn't do that again.

As his eyes drift once again into the mirror to check on his absentminded friend he feels a hand take his arm, it was clammy and squeezing and he thought it was Alice's attempts at comforting him until the tension she pushes down upon him came a little more urgent.

"Billy…" Alice shakes her boyfriend's arm while her eyes remained glued to the sight they speed towards.

"BILLY!" Her usual low and soft voice tore through the car at an alarming rate, digging her brittle nails into his flesh, her desperation triggering his eyes to look ahead at the road.

Met with a sight deserving of panic, Bucky's heart was thrown into anarchy with his body tensing up seeing the figure just a few fatal feet away and breaking would not help so Billy acts in the only way he could, tearing the steering wheel as far right as possible in order to avoid collision, the car having not embraced itself for such an abrupt and hash turn that it began spiralling out of control, throwing all of its passengers around in its confinements and lurking them off and down a tree cluttered bank, the breaks screaming out with the weight of Billy's foot.

Off the bank the car toppled and streamed ahead bypassing the trunks of tree's, crushing a number of small flourishing bushes, the wheels entangling themselves in debris of twigs and dirt, sinking further and further down the back with an unavoidable masterful tree trunk ahead of them that only the resistant of the breaks could prevent them from totalling the car.

Heads collided with any barrier before them as they were lurched forward from the impact, the rear passengers gaining a much softer blow from the cushioning of the front seats, while those in front had seatbelts and the sudden eruption of the airbags to keep them from any serious damage.

There is a muffles ringing of disorientation in everyone's ears, Maggie trying to strain her jaw and lift her head in order to pop her ears. Alice is dizzy, feeling an overwhelming sicknesses in the pit of her empty stomach while Billy is fighting with the airbag for air as it smothered him. Bucky is grating his teeth, really coming to despise this day and the attacks rubbing against his nerves, his mind drifting into blood lust.

As for Maggie she filled her lungs with air, she picks herself back up from where she had fallen behind the seat and shook away the mirage of colours that flickered before her momentarily dazed eyes.

However it was her heart that was the most erratic, her pulse eating in her ear, feeling it keep her blood flow on track.

Dud-Dum

She sits up, feeling a tightness in her spine.

Dud-Dum

Billy has found his freedom and is attempting to start the engine.

Dud-Dum

She demands to know if everyone was okay.

Dud-Dum

She demands to know what happened.

Dud-Dum

Alice and Billy are speaking so quickly at the same time that Maggie's bemused mind can't keep up.

Dud-Dum

There is a noise behind them.

Dud-Dum

It's getting closer.

Dud-Dum Dud-Dum

She can almost hear them breathing.

Dud-Dum

She wants this to be over.

Dud-Dum Dud-Dum

She looked urgently over to Bucky.

Dud-Dum Dud-Dum

He looked back.

Dud-Dum

He was pale. The colour had completely drained from his face.

Dud-dum Dud-Dum

If he was scared then they had no hope.

Dud-Dum

Her foot kicks something.

Dud-dum

Bucky is taking a sneaky peak out of the window.

Dud-dum

She looks down to her feet, and spotted the gun that sat there.

Dud-Dum

Maggie scooped it up and clutched it to her chest.

Dud-dum

Billy is cursing that the car wouldn't start.

Dud-Dum

Maggie is ready to start waving the gun around. Take out someone's if she had to.

Dud-dum Dud-dum

A hand had taken her wrist, clasping it and keeping her from making a move.

Dud-dum Dud-dum.

Her legs stopped bouncing and she cast her eyes down upon the steel fingers that held her.

Dud-dum

Bucky's head began to shake, trying to deter her from follow through with her plan.

Dud-dum

She didn't know why he would stop her, the fear in his orbs he had tried to mask but it was still too prominent for her to miss. After everything she wasn't about to give up, and she didn't expect him to be chicken out now. So she glared, fighting with his hand.

Dud-dum

"Maggie!? Maggie Flynn?!"

Dud-dum Dud-dum Dud-dum

Shock took its claim over Maggie mobility within her spine, seizing all it had give, her heart pounding against her sternum threatening to break the hard shell and land out in her lap.

Dud-dum Dud-dum

She knew that voice. The voice knew her.

Dud-dum Dud-dum

They were safe!

Dud-dum Dud-dum

But…

Dud-dum

Her eyes drift over to her companion beside her. A nauseating look on his face.

Dud-dum Dud-dum

He wasn't ready.

Dud-dum

"I'm okay" Maggie called out, her eyes remaining on a frightened Bucky.

"Maggie? I need you to step out of the car. Who is with you?" The voice demanded to know.

"Just me and my friends. We're safe. We're… wait…" A frown takes a hold of her features, "How did you find us? How did you know it was me?"

Bucky rolled his head despite everything, for a girl with whatever gift she may possess, sometimes her lack knowledge of the extreme world around her is quite remarkable.

"The car. Now is everyone okay? I'm coming closer. I want you to all get out of the car."

All four pairs of eyes were looking from one to the other, and the strongest of them all suddenly being the weakest.

Maggie needed to do something, Billy felt the urge also, Alice however was confused as always.

So as she took a deep breath, she let her hand fall upon Bucky's, taking the lead in fumbling with her free hand to open the door. With a squeeze she leaves him behind to climb out and meet with the man who had ran them off the road – None other than Captain America himself.

And in that moment with his attire richly patriotic, he seems a lot taller, and manipulative than she imagined a man in spandex would be.

Steve is slightly alarmed by the presence of the girl, he hadn't seen her in such a way before. She had always been neatly presented, clean with no blood in sight, but the girl before him had a ring of dries blood around her mouth, blacked skin, a graze to the temple and oddly enough no shoes.

"Are you okay?" Was his first and foremost questions, eyes scanning as much of the three other passengers as he could see from where he stood and how she protectively blocked the view.

"I'm fine. Umm, my friend… is a little hurt but he'll be okay. We… ran into a little bit of trouble." She approached honestly.

"Yes, I had noticed. It is all over the news, the bridge has been closed off. Maggie, I don't know what part you played in it all but I must warn you the people who caused this… they are very dangerous peop…"

Maggie stopped him, "I know. We were just… we were going out of town after my friends mom died… and they appeared out of nowhere and they wouldn't… they wouldn't stop following and…"

She pattered her chest a little, feeling herself get caught up in the events and her breathlessness, her fear, what she had done.

"What do you mean they were following you?! Maggie why would… how do you know these people? Maggie why would HYDRA be after you?!" A baffled Steve bombards her with questions she knew she would need to answer. The muddy ground squelching and eating her bare feet, but it is the sound of another pair of feet meeting the slush that cause her eyes to flicker closed in regret.

She understood that her secret was no longer a secret. Her head twisting and eye peaking open to see Bucky raising himself from the car.

"They were after me…"

There you have it. A few won't be too pleased but the signs were there about Maggie. More is to come and that will explain a lot so don't worry.

Let me know what you think, especially after this chapter I'd really like to know how its received - whether good or bad.

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Mwah!