The Captains Granddaughter (Bucky Barnes FanFic)

Sleeping Beauty or Cinderella

~~~ Maggie~~~

I'm trying to put as much distance between me and them as possible. I can hear feet stomping behind me. Have to keep moving and getaway. I looked for some lower-story buildings as I ran. Finally, one that looked like it was about 4 stories and I jumped up to the fire escape and leaped up to the roof, and kept running. Someone was following me and screaming. I can't turn and look. I just have to get out of here. The voice gets closer, and I can't get faster. The buildings are getting taller as I'm jumping across the roofs. I'm not counting buildings. It's hard to keep the speed up. They're getting closer and still yelling at me to stop running. They can't take me again. While jumping between buildings the footsteps catch up and wrap an arm around me pulling me down. We landed roughly on the rooftop and I kept struggling but the strong arms kept me down. He started breathing calmly saying my name.

"Maggie." The voice finally broke through and I could look around. "I've got you." James. "You're safe."

I forced myself to start breathing slower and stop struggling.

Five. Gravel, Half moon, twilight. No dawn. Dead plants, water tank.

Four. Taxi, Heartbeats, Bird, Sirens.

Three. Gravel, Metal, James.

Two. Sour, dirt.

One. Blood.

Slowly I touched my mouth to figure out where the blood was coming from. There was a cut on my lips, was I punched in the face? Did I hit the fire escape with my face?

"You good?" James shifted letting me have some space. I nodded. I took a look around, the sun was starting to rise and reflecting on the Empire State Building. Did I run over a bridge? Are we in Manhatten now? I looked down and saw my feet were bleeding and the sweatpants were torn. I was a wreck. 

"Yeah. I owe you sweatpants, these are trashed." James rolled on his back looking at the sky, catching his own breath. Before getting himself to his feet and looking at how wrecked they were.

"Your feet are worse."

"They'll be fine. They don't hurt."

"Yeah, they will." He looked at them closer. "Since Sam's in town, he's staying at the tower. We can get you cleaned up there and he can brief us on what he knows. I'm going to carry you, so you don't get more glass in your feet."

"The tower?" I questioned. This should be obvious but I'm not getting it.

"Avenger's tower. It's only a few blocks away." Taking note of another cross-city trot we went on. We are in Manhatten.  "How far were you going to run?" He said, starting to walk towards one side of the building. The pressure seemed to return to normal.

I shrugged in his arms. "Until I lost whoever was chasing me." It was nice to hear him laugh. 

To my surprise, James walked in the front door of Avenger tower. Walking past the night receptionist and he scanned his arm where a watch should be and kept going. Instead of doing something logical, like taking me to a doctor, he took me up to the apartments on the mid-level floors and opened one of the doors by scanning that same spot on his wrist. The door opened to a sparse apartment with basic furniture. He put me down on the couch and started opening cabinets finding things. He was moving on autopilot. He stopped all of a sudden remembering something and walked to an intercom by the front door and called for a doctor and the Falcon. The phone rang and James answered it. "Sam." It was just far enough away I couldn't hear what Sam was saying. "Tower room 1231" and he hung up.

"I called the doctor to get you patched up. Sam will be here within the hour. Apparently, there's a mess at my old place."

The doctor came pulled the majority of the glass out of my feet before wrapping them. He left supplies to rewrap later. Someone else dropped off provisions that included changes of clothes for James and me and my backpack from the car. I dozed off on the couch while James connected with Sam. I woke up a bit later under a blanket to hear Sam and James fighting in the kitchen. "Once more from the top. You're telling me, that of all the girls at that dance, you decide to dance with the one that happens to be a Natural Born Super Soldier, wanted by every agency that we're tracking, and probably more. Your apartment is trashed, your building needs a new fire escape, we followed a trail of blood for two and a half miles across rooftops and the Brooklyn Bridge and a trail of blood to the A Train and you just end up here, at the tower, making coffee, while Cinderella just sleeps on the couch!" Sam's frustration

"I think you mean Aurora. She's the sleeping princess." James sipped his coffee.

"She's got no shoes Buck! She lost her shoes! I stand by Cinderella!"

"Cinderella only lost 1 shoe. I have shoes. They're not lost. They're just next to James' front door. To my knowledge, James hasn't asked every girl in New York to try them on to find me when I ran away. So, I'm not sure I qualify as either Disney Princess." I walked... limped... into the kitchen and poured coffee. "Is there milk?" James passed me a small container of half and half and sugar and I mixed my coffee. I pushed back and sat on the counter. My feet hurt too much to try this barefoot standing in the kitchen thing. "So. What do you got? Who's after me now."

"The short of it. Everyone." Sam said. "Does the name Dr. WIlfred Nigel mean anything to you?" I thought for a moment before shaking my head.

"Isn't he dead?" James asked.

"I thought so too." Sam went into teacher mode. "I don't know if he's the one who put the hit out on you, but he's who the hit says to bring you too alive. It looks like he's making more super soldiers and needs more serum samples to build off of."

"She's never been injected with the serum," James questioned. "She's what happens 2 generations later."

"Sort of." I corrected it.

"Sort of," Sam repeated. "How do you sort of get injected with the super serum. It's a yes or no question. Wait a second generation?" He turned to James. "How many of you turn off the century, rejected artifacts are running around having kids?"

"Only two I know of," James smirked looking over at me.

I pressed the hot coffee cup to my head. The heat felt good on my sinus.  "My mother was kidnapped and injected while I was half cooked."

"Sort of." Sam's face flattened and agreed. "You seem pretty normal. Except dancing with Bucky."

"At least I'm not the guy that showed up to a party and didn't dance." I drank my coffee and tilted my eyebrow as the two of them went back to bickering.

"I was also experimented on when I got kidnapped the second time. But, I don't know what happened there."

Sam put his coffee down, looking square at me. "You got kidnapped twice, experimented on and you think it's a good idea to go dancing with a guy with a metal arm!"

"Who am I to judge? Plus he was wearing gloves." 

As they bickered the problems still hung over their heads. "So, do you guys have a plan on how not to get me kidnapped, sold to this Nigel guy, and stabbed with 6,000 needles? Safe houses don't seem to really work. Or am I better taking myself to Nigel and being like "I'd like my bounty please.""

"Ok, that's the worst idea that has ever been spoken in this tower and Tony built a time machine." Sam didn't exactly throw his hands in the air, but let's just say he was done with this idea. "I'm starting to think all of you super soldiers are clinically insane." James let out a small laugh. 

I looked over at James. "Do I count as one? I'm not a soldier. I'm probably the only one in the family that didn't enlist." It felt like a weird confession to make but it was a clarification to be made. 

James topped off the coffee cups. "How much did your grandfather tell you about the serum?"

"Not a whole lot. Cured his asthma, gave him strength. He always said that it was Grandma that made him who he was."

James shook his head. "Partly true. He was always a boy scout, a good guy who had terrible ideas about what right and wrong were. But since it was a success, Hydra kept trying to recreate it. By the time they got me, they also were working on mind control. If he didn't have Peggy, I don't think even he would have been able to keep everything up here intact." He tapped his coffee cup to his temple. "You have him to keep you grounded."

I remembered all the times he grounded me before sending me away. The grime of last night just caught up with me and I felt sore and gross. "Is there a shower I can use to get cleaned up?" 

James put down our coffee mugs and lead me to the bedroom. "There's a shower through there. I'll grab your backpack and bring it in here."