Chapter 67: Chapter 67
Maggie's every hair stood on end. She woke up in an instant, cold sweat on her forehead, stomach churning, but she barely had a second to think did I actually just hear that before–
"Transmission."
"No, no, no, no," she gasped as she sprang out of bed. "Stop–"
"Affamé." ["Starving."]
"F.R.I.D.A.Y.!" Maggie called, whirling to where she knew there was a hidden camera. "F.R.I.D.A.Y., Doomsday protocol alpha, shut it–"
"Sept." ["Seven."]
The words tugged at long dormant threads in Maggie's mind. She wailed and dropped to her knees. "No," she breathed, and brought her wrist to her face. "F.R.I.D.A.Y., activate the–"
The Manacle's green LED light had gone out.
"Vieux," ["Old,"] said the man's voice, low and menacing. Maggie stared dumbly at the hunk of useless metal on her wrist, shaking from head to toe. "Sécurité." ["Safety."]
"This is a dream," she whispered, desperate for it to be true. Her mind was cold, her very thoughts shocked into stillness.
"Trois." ["Three."]
Not a dream. Three words left, Stark. Maggie stumbled to her feet and glanced around wildly, her breath sharp in her throat and her heart pounding as if it wanted to escape her body. Think, damn you. But the words were already taking hold, monster's claws sinking into the flesh of her brain.
"Tunnel."
A half-sob, half-growl erupted from Maggie's lips and she broke into a sprint, hitting nearly full speed before she allowed herself to collide with the bullet-proof window. Her head thunked against the glass and she bounced back to the ground.
She registered pain, and blood trickling into her eye. But that meant she was awake.
"Digne." ["Worthy."]
As Maggie dizzily sat up, her own gasping breath echoing in her ears, she reflected that the man sounded triumphant. Could he see her? She whirled to the hidden camera and blinked through her bloody vision.
"Please!" she shouted. The words dug their claws deeper into her mind, plunging into the core of humanity she'd built for herself over these years. She couldn't let them take that humanity away from her. "Please," she sobbed, almost a whisper.
The next word was a whip-crack, a battle-cry: "Quatre-vingts!" ["Eighty!"]
"Wyvern?" came the man's crackly voice, wonderingly.
The Wyvern got to her feet and wiped blood out of her eyes. "Ready to comply."
All at once, the previously-locked doors across the facility slid open. Pepper and Tony spilled out of their bedroom, wild-eyed, just as the unfamiliar voice boomed once more over the speakers: "Wyvern. Kill Tony Stark."
They froze.
"Pep," Tony breathed, his mind reeling, "get… get to the safe room, you've gotta…" he couldn't think, his ears were ringing with the words he'd just heard. When he woke up to unfamiliar French words being broadcast through speakers across the facility, Tony had known right away what they were. And then the voice had called on the Wyvern.
"Tony," Pepper gasped, but she wasn't looking at him. He followed her gaze over his shoulder to their bedroom window overlooking the facility lawns. Lawns which now had three teams of agents in tactical suits swarming across them.
Tony's stomach plummeted. "F.R.I.D.A.Y.?" he called, as if he hadn't been shouting for her since he woke up to an unfamiliar voice on the facility speakers. The sensation of silence when he called for her was sickening, reminding him of that awful night J.A.R.V.I.S. went silent, but he didn't care because Maggie was out there somewhere with those words–
"Tony," snapped Pepper. She sounded like a drill sergeant, and when he turned to stare hopelessly at her she looked like she had when she killed Killian, all burning rage and determination. "I'm going to get Rhodey and get the facility agents mobilized, and evacuate any civilians to the safe rooms. You get in the suit."
She squeezed his bicep and turned to leave, but Tony felt like his feet were frozen to the floor. "Pep–" she turned back. "Pepper, Maggie's… she's…"
Pepper's flaming anger faded just for a moment. "I know," she whispered. But then her shoulders straightened, and her chin came up. "Get in the suit."
The Wyvern strode down a gleaming white corridor with her hands loose by her sides and her eyes focused. The Adamantium plating in her bare heels made soft clinks with every step.
She wore soft tracksuit pants and a shirt with some kind of graphic design on it – not optimal for combat, but she only had one target. She had her heel spurs, and a knife she'd found in a kitchenette. More than sufficient for her mission.
She turned and entered an open foyer space, taking a moment to let her eyes adjust to the early morning light arcing through the glass windows. As she paced in search of her target her eyes caught on evidence of evacuation: abandoned briefcases and jackets on chairs, an overturned coffee cup. She turned, intending to head for the target's workshop, when–
"Ms Stark? What's going on? F.R.I.D.A.Y.'s not answering and I can't find any…"
The Wyvern turned, and when the speaker (civilian boy, backpack, unarmed and untrained) saw her face, he trailed off.
"Ms Stark?" his voice was suddenly octaves higher, and his eyes widened. She watched his gaze flick down to the kitchen knife in her hand.
The Wyvern eyed him for a few long moments, assessing, then bit out: "Where is Tony Stark."
The boy's eyes went even rounder. "Whoah, okay… um, Ms… uh, Maggie," the Wyvern flinched, and the boy's hands shot up in a defensive gesture, "why do you… why do you want to find Mr Stark?"
The Wyvern cocked her head, considering what to do with the boy. Her handler had not given her any mission parameters beyond kill Tony Stark, no orders about stealth or secrecy or what to do about witnesses. Her programming ensured that with such an order she would achieve the mission at all costs.
As she considered the boy there was an explosion on the other side of the facility, followed by the percussive sound of heavy artillery. It rattled the windows.
The boy flinched, but then turned back to the Wyvern. "M-Maggie, I don't know what's happening but you've gotta snap out of it, okay–"
She took a step forward, and the boy sank into an unmistakable fighting stance.
The Wyvern's eyes narrowed. Combatant.
She flung her knife at him, anticipating the blade to slice cleanly into his chest and take him out of the equation, but to her surprise he flipped out of the knife's trajectory, shot webbing from his wrists and launched himself toward the ceiling where he stuck like a spider. Her knife quivered in the opposite wall.
The boy started scuttling along the ceiling. "Okay, Ms Stark, why don't we just– agh!" He dodged the coffee mug she hurled at him and was sufficiently distracted to allow her to slip into the next corridor. She got her bearings and headed for Tony Stark's workshop. The boy wasn't her mission.
But it seemed she had become his mission. He swung into the narrower space after her and then reeled back from a punch to the nose. The Wyvern followed up with a sweep from her heel spur but the boy rolled under the Adamantium spike and kicked her in the knee, compromising her balance.
"C'mon, Ms Stark, it's me Peter!" He ducked behind her and shoved her. "We met at the airport, remember? You're Ms Stark, you can snap out of it! Please–" The Wyvern kneed him in the stomach and seized his arm to twist him into a pinning hold – but the boy managed to wriggle free and shot more webbing to get out of range. The Wyvern turned and stalked down the corridor, senses alert to the boy's movements behind her.
"Ms Stark, just stop!" the boy's voice was high and thready. She kept walking. He shot a web projectile at her and she sidestepped it easily, not even looking back.
The Wyvern kicked down the door at the end of the corridor, revealing another open space that wasn't quite as empty as the last one. It was a long, high-ceilinged room filled with sleek desks and potted plants, and at the far end a group of wide-eyed civilians were filing into a fire exit. At the back of the group a tall woman in pajamas with strawberry-blonde hair looked over her shoulder, went white, then shouted at the civilians to move it!
Another round of gunfire rattled the windows, followed by the distant boom of a grenade launcher, and the Wyvern eyed the large glass windows on the far wall. There was a battle underway on the facility lawns: agents in black tactical gear versus an assembly of what looked like off-duty soldiers or agents, trading gunfire across the manicured green grass.
Ground support, thought the Wyvern. Optimal for distraction.
The Wyvern took one step towards the frightened civilians, then gritted her teeth at the sound of the boy leaping after her. He swung over her head and placed himself between her and the civilians, his hands raised. His breath came short and sharp as he stared at her. "You don't wanna do this, Ms Stark."
A brief flicker of something unfurled in the Wyvern's mind, but she dismissed it. Malfunction. Her muscles coiled. She was about to strike when a new sound reverberated through the room: a high, mechanical whine that had her turning to the tall glass windows with narrowed eyes.
Two flying metal suits lowered into view. A bulky black and silver armor with heavy artillery packed across it, and a red and gold armor with glowing white eyes. The Wyvern's gut clenched as mission-relevant information came to the forefront of her mind: Tony Stark, AKA Iron Man. Red and gold armor, heavily armed and dangerous.
Target acquired.
But Iron Man and the other one (War Machine, her combatant knowledge supplied) were beyond the glass, and she was currently faced with an obstruction. The boy had glanced over his shoulder at the new arrivals, but now his eyes were trained on the Wyvern.
At that moment the tall woman, now alone at the other end of the room, cried "Peter be careful, she's–"
The boy looked over his shoulder again and the Wyvern struck. She darted towards him and clipped him across his jaw, disorienting him, then seized two handfuls of his shirt, planted her feet and heaved. The boy sailed through the air, crashed through the nearby wall in an explosion of glass, and then went through the next wall as well.
The tall woman let out a sob, but when the Wyvern turned around her eyes widened and she backed away into the fire escape.
And then the wide glass windows shattered.
The Wyvern hissed at the screeching blast and sudden shower of glass, but lowered her center of gravity and locked her eyes on her target. Iron Man and War Machine now hovered just below the high ceilings of the office space, their arms up and weapons primed as they looked down at her.
"Maggie," came Tony Stark's voice, amplified by his armor. His voice shook. And if he fired his repulsor right now, he'd miss her by at least two feet.
Emotion. Weakness. The Wyvern didn't move a muscle, but her mind latched onto the observation. Advantage.
In the next instant she burst into action – she took two strides toward the nearest desk, leapt onto it and sprang up, her arms reaching for Iron Man's dangling legs. But War Machine intercepted her, seizing her around the middle and diving back to the floor.
"C'mon, Maggie, snap out of it," War Machine said grimly. The Wyvern grunted in his grip and noted that Iron Man had flown further into the room (checking on the boy, she realized) then twisted and pushed, freeing herself from War Machine's arms. They came to a skidding landing on the ground, both of them on their feet.
The Wyvern didn't let him recover. She punched the armor's helmet, her enhanced strength knocking him back a step, then followed up with a knee to the gut and a flurry of blows across his face and neck. War Machine lifted a whining repulsor and she seized it, turning it away from her face and squeezing until the glowing white light splintered in her hand. War Machine cried out in surprise, which turned into a grunt when the Wyvern grabbed a nearby desk chair and broke it across his face.
She turned, fists clenched and eyes sharp, to see Iron Man standing a few paces away. He didn't move, didn't make any motion to attack her or defend his friend. She felt him looking at her.
His helmet slid up to bare his face. Dark, haunted eyes looked back at her, and the Wyvern read emotion all over his face.
"Maggie," he whispered, almost choking on the word. The Wyvern felt nothing. "Peter's okay, you haven't hurt anyone. Just please–"
She waited until he was halfway into his next sentence before she snatched a pair of scissors from the closest desk and flung them point-first at Tony Stark's exposed face. She caught a glimpse of wide eyes before the helmet flicked up just in time. The scissors clattered off the gold face plate and fell to the floor.
She came at him heel-spurs first. He managed to dodge, but for some reason didn't take the opportunity to fight back. The Wyvern noted the aberration, and the close quarters that gave her the advantage over the clunky armor. She punched his helmet, his arc reactor, and kicked his feet out from under him. The armor crashed to the floor and she plunged her heel spur down–
Only to find herself being knocked back onto a desk with white-spots in her eyes and her shirt singed, ears ringing with the sound of Iron Man's repulsors. She coughed for breath.
"I don't want to hurt you Maggie," said Iron Man from somewhere to her left, and she rolled off the desk and swung wildly. Her knuckles collided with armor, and she felt the metal crumple under her hand. She spun and kicked out with her heel spur, only to be knocked sideways again. This time it was War Machine, who wrapped his arms around her and propelled them both through the smashed window and onto the lawns outside.
"Maggie," he shouted in her ear, "You're stronger than this, c'mon! You don't want to hurt Tony!"
The Wyvern felt another flicker of… something, but then the mission surged from her gut and up her throat, strangling her and returning her focus to the mission. They were somewhere in the air, the War Machine clearly trying to keep her away from her target, so the Wyvern drove her elbow into the parts of his armor she could reach – face, shoulder joint, then with some twisting, the arc reactor. She elbowed it once, twice, and on the third time heard something shatter. War Machine swore in her ear and tried to readjust, but she used his weakening hold on her to break free.
She'd misjudged the distance. War Machine had been steadily climbing, so she was suddenly faced with a hundred-foot drop and no wings. The wind screamed in her ears and tore at her hair and skin, and fear prickled in the Wyvern's gut.
Luckily for the Wyvern, and unluckily for Iron Man, he arrived to catch her. As soon as he plucked her out of the air the Wyvern threw her fist into his face with a metallic clang. Iron Man swore. "Dick move, Maggie!"
The Wyvern ignored him, and went right to trying to crack through his armor and strike at the vulnerable flesh within. Even as he tried to hold her up she threw her fists into his armor and tried to get an angle on him with her heel spurs.
"Maggie, wake up!" he grunted, trying to fly and avoid her at the same time. When she dug her fingers into part of his chest plate and pulled, Stark cursed and dove out of the sky, turning just in time to take the full brunt of the impact with the ground. The impact knocked the breath from the Wyvern's lungs but she didn't stop attacking, even as she suddenly found herself in the midst of the battle between the Avengers forces and the black clad agents. Gunfire and shouts filled the air, and blast marks blackened the lawns.
Kill Tony Stark.
The Wyvern felt suddenly sick; a deep-seated nausea roiled in her gut and cold sweat broke out on her forehead, but her programming did not allow her to falter. She powered on, deadly and ruthless. Iron Man had managed to trap her arms against her sides as she gasped for air so she headbutted him, splitting the skin in her left eyebrow and cracking the glass of his right eye slit.
"Maggot," he cried desperately, and bile rose in the Wyvern's throat even as she tried to buck him off, pitting her strength against his powered metal. She twisted, angled her right foot against one of his armored legs, and extended her heel spur. She felt the spur slice through metal and into flesh. Stark cried out but didn't let her go. A grenade whistled over their heads.
"Maggie, c'mon!" he shouted. The Wyvern growled and pulled her heel spur free, making him grunt in pain, then got an arm free and began to rip her way out of his grip. A nearby black-clad agent shot a spray of bullets at Iron Man that bounced off the armor and into the grass. One whistled past the Wyvern's cheek.
"Dammit," came Stark's voice. He let her go, and the Wyvern drew her knees back to plunge both heel spurs straight through his arc reactor and into his chest, but then there was a glowing white gauntlet in her face, a hiss, a faint shimmer to the air–
And everything slipped away.
She woke up in her room.
Maggie's mind dredged itself out of unconsciousness, and she opened her eyes to see her bedroom ceiling. Her body felt like it was full of lead.
She blinked, and then horrible memories and images filtered into her mind. A glinting knife that left her hand and plunged through the air towards a wide-eyed Peter. Pepper staring at her with bone-white fear on her face. Tony pleading and begging, his metal armor crumpling beneath her fists.
A nightmare. Surely that's what it was, and now she'd woken up for real, safe in her room.
But she knew what nightmares felt like.
Maggie's lips parted and she took in a shuddering breath, more of a sob. That breath turned into two, then three, and all of a sudden she was hyperventilating as she stared at the ceiling, each breath of air slicing into her throat like a blade made of ice and she wasn't getting enough oxygen, she couldn't breathe–
"Your name is Margaret Stark," came F.R.I.D.A.Y.'s soothing voice and Maggie yelped at the sound of it, "You are safe, you are in your bedroom at the Avengers Facility, in upstate New York. I am F.R.I.D.A.Y, Tony' Stark's A.I–"
"I know," Maggie gasped through ragged breaths, still immobile on her back, "F.R.I.D.A.Y., it's… Tony, what, is he–"
Luckily the A.I. parsed her panicked garbling. "The boss is safe, Ms Stark, you didn't hurt him–"
"No I did, I… oh god–" metal crumpling, glass cracking, her heel spur sliding through armor plating and cutting into flesh– Maggie tried to get out of bed, but she only managed to roll on her side before she was throwing up, retching water and stomach acid onto the ground beside her bed.
My words. She heaved again, her throat and eyes burning. They're not just in my head any more.
"Your brother is fine," F.R.I.D.A.Y. said, somehow gentle. "He has a wound in his left calf and minor bruising, but other than that you did not harm him. Mr Parker sustained a sprained wrist and bruising" – Maggie gagged again – "and asked me to tell you as soon as possible that he does not blame you and that he also, quote, 'hopes you feel better soon'."
Maggie dropped her forehead against her mattress and shuddered.
"Ms Potts and Colonel Rhodes are both fine. All civilians were evacuated, even without my help, and the Avengers ground forces killed or captured each member of the invading force with no casualties suffered to our side. The situation is under control, Ms Stark – you and the people you care about are safe. You have been asleep for three hours and forty one minutes."
Maggie blinked and realized that her wrist with the Manacle on it was in front of her face. The Manacle's light blinked green again.
"What happened to you?" she whispered hoarsely.
"It appears the attackers planned this for some time – they've been working with a mole in the Avengers Facility security analysis department, who gave them enough information about my code makeup to take me out for approximately twenty minutes. This also took down the Doomsday Protocol, the Manacle, and facility-wide security." F.R.I.D.A.Y. paused. "I must apologize, Ms Stark."
"No," Maggie whispered. "No, you don't have to." She squeezed her eyes shut. "Tony?"
"The boss left the facility three and a half hours ago with Colonel Rhodes and Vision, who returned from South America at the end of the battle. They left to chase down the group who attacked the facility." Maggie's eyes opened, and she stared out the window. The forest looked untouched, stark black branches moving slightly in a gust of wind.
Her body ached from abuse and from exhaustion. Whatever Tony had hit her with must be potent stuff. She could feel bruises on her knuckles, radiating pain up her arms, and cuts and bruises across her body. Her left eyebrow was stiff with dried blood from headbutting Tony's helmet, and she could feel what was sure to be a very colorful bruise on her forehead, no doubt from when she'd run full tilt at her window in an attempt to knock herself out.
"Ms Stark, I've assessed that you are in possession of your faculties and are no longer a danger," F.R.I.D.A.Y. said out of nowhere. "I was instructed to allow Ms Potts into the room as soon as you were deemed safe."
"No," she mumbled, still boneless and half-hanging off the side of her bed. "She's not… I'm not… I'm not safe."
"Do you intend to hurt Ms Potts?"
Terror etched across her face as she backed into a fire escape.
"No," Maggie whispered.
"Then I am afraid she won't take no for an answer."
At that, the door slid open. The sound of Pepper's clicking heels entered the room and Maggie hunched in her bed.
"Maggie," Pepper breathed, and rushed toward her. The bed shifted as Pepper sat on the edge, then Maggie felt a ghost of warmth over her arm; no doubt Pepper's hand hovering over her. "Maggie, are you okay? Are you hurt? F.R.I.D.A.Y. said you'd gotten some injuries but we didn't think it was safe to try and treat them until we were sure you were back to yourself–"
"I'm so sorry," Maggie whispered, and then choked because she was suddenly crying, tears streaming down her face and clogging her nose, and shuddering sobs wracking her body. She tried to hunch into a ball but Pepper was there, her slender arms warm and gentle as she pulled Maggie into herself and made hushing, soothing sounds.
"It's okay," Pepper said as Maggie sobbed into her shoulder, "It's not your fault, it's okay. It's not your fault."
Maggie's arms slipped around Pepper's middle and she clutched at the other woman's body, desperately seeking warmth even though it didn't feel like something she deserved. Pepper smoothed her hand over the back of Maggie's head, supporting her and petting her hair. She rocked from side to side as if Maggie was a baby who might go to sleep at the soothing movement.
Maggie was used to crying silently and alone in her bed in the wake of a nightmare, or in the courthouse bathroom after a long day of testimony. But she couldn't make herself be quiet now – her horror and grief burst out of her in sobs and gasps, senseless noises that ripped from her heart and through her throat that she couldn't stop if she tried. Pepper accepted it all with soft hands and a softer voice, though when she shifted Maggie felt tears dripping into her hair.
When Maggie began to quiet down, out of exhaustion more than anything else, Pepper leaned back just far enough to take Maggie's face in her hands. Her fingers were gentle against Maggie's tear-stained skin.
"Maggie, look at me."
She did. Pepper's eyes were red and watery, but hard with determination. Maggie noticed herself shivering.
"This was not your fault," Pepper said in a tone of complete and utter certainty. "You did not want this. I know you, I know you'd have done everything you could to prevent this. Our home was attacked. Not by you, but by people who wanted to hurt us. And the person they hurt the worst of all was you." She held Maggie's gaze, and Maggie could swear she saw fire flickering behind her eyes. Pepper must have approved of what she saw in Maggie's face because she nodded. "So Maggie, you don't have to be sorry about a single thing. I am sorry that this happened to you."
Maggie felt her heart do a weird wobble-glow-melt thing, and she thought she might start crying again, but she just didn't have the energy. She licked her lips and grimaced at the taste of salt. "Tony?" she croaked.
Pepper stroked a thumb across Maggie's cheek, collecting leftover tears. "He's fine." But then her eyes flickered. "Well, he's angry – not at you!" she clarified, hands tightening on Maggie's face for just a moment. "He's angry at the people who did this. As soon as you were safe he took off after them – I don't know a lot about it, but the people who came today were part of a larger group with a base somewhere else." Her eyes hardened again. "Tony and the others should be at the base by now."
Maggie swallowed. She remembered the way she'd felt when Ross threatened Tony, and then how that feeling had amplified a hundredfold the day a stranger turned a gun towards her brother. It was a gut-twisting mix of rage, fear, nausea, protectiveness and vengeance. She wondered if that concoction was burning through Tony's veins right now. Her heart ached.
Pepper's eyes flicked over Maggie's face. "Medical bay," she said abruptly, as if deciding on what to have for dinner. "C'mon."
A shiver ran over Maggie and she looked over her shoulder. "I threw up."
Pepper rubbed her back. They sat together in the middle of the bed, Maggie still half-slumped against Pepper. "I know," Pepper murmured. "We'll get a cleaner in while we're at the med bay. Can you stand?"
"I dunno." Maggie tried anyway, crawling to the non-vomit side of the bed and then standing on shaky legs. She winced, and leaned down to pull a sliver of glass out of her heel. Pepper went a bit pale, but then slung Maggie's arm over her shoulder and helped her stagger out of the room.
The medical bay looked as if it had been busy very recently, but had quietened down. A team of cleaners made their way through the area collecting snippets of bloody clothes and used medical supplies.
Maggie assumed that most of those who'd been injured in the attack had already been treated and left the med bay, but some of the beds were occupied – all by Avengers agents she recognized, banged up and bruised but surprisingly cheerful. They turned to look at her, and she shied away.
But Pepper held her firm. "Not many people saw you when you were… different," she murmured, dragging Maggie further into the gleaming space.
"But they heard my words," she whispered, as something clawed at her throat. "They know what I was told to do."
"Okay, sure. But they understand, Maggie. Look: no one blames you."
Maggie glanced up from under her lashes, and realized that none of the looks she was getting were judgmental. Most people eyed her and her bloody forehead, then looked away. Maggie's eyes darted around the room and a rush of something went through her. These people knew her words, knew what she'd set out to do only hours ago, and they were accepting her into this room as if she wasn't a threat. She swallowed thickly.
A female agent Maggie had met a few times in the gym met her eyes and delivered a sloppy salute. She lay in a hospital bed with a tub of jello in one hand.
"Alright, Stark?" asked the agent, her voice light but her eyes heavy. Maggie could see in her eyes that she'd seen the Wyvern.
Maggie swallowed. "Um." She wasn't sure how to answer the question, so she deflected. "You?"
The agent tugged down the white hospital sheets to reveal a bandage wrapped around her waist. "Shrapnel," she explained. "I'll be fine though, just waiting my turn for the Cradle. Take care, you hear?"
Maggie gave her a watery smile, then let Pepper pull her towards the triage area. She sat still on a hospital bed and let Dr Cho and a couple of nurses fuss over her; extracting glass from her skin, cleaning up the split in her eyebrow and her bruised forehead, and checking her symptoms after experiencing Tony's experimental knockout gas. She realized partway through that she was still wearing the clothes she'd slept and fought in: a pair of sweatpants and a shirt that had a cartoon tea-bag with the words 'tea shirt' on it. Her clothes were torn and bloody, streaked with mud from the facility lawns.
Pepper stood a few feet away, biting her lip but shooting Maggie an everything-is-fine face whenever she looked up.
Just as they were finishing up, Maggie heard an awkward scuffle of shoes and an ah-hem as someone cleared their throat. She looked up, and the blood drained from her face.
"Peter."
He stood just inside the curtain around her hospital bed, hands stuffed in the pockets of his jeans and his eyes hopeful as he looked at her. There was a split across the bridge of his nose held together by butterfly bandages, a shadow of a bruise along his jaw, and as her eyes tracked down to his ripped sweater she spotted a bandage immobilizing one of his wrists. All at once, Maggie felt close to throwing up again.
"Hey Ms Stark," he said cheerfully, and she felt his eyes track from the wounds on her face, to her bloody clothing, and back up to her eyes. "How're you doing? Or... that might be a stupid question." He winced.
She swallowed. "Peter, I…" she gaped, unable to find the words. "I'm so sorry."
He shook his head. "No I get it, the A.I. lady explained it to me – you've got that trigger word thing, right? So it wasn't you." He said it so matter-of-factly, as if she hadn't thrown a kitchen knife at him, tried to kill his mentor, and thrown him through not one but two walls. He shifted his weight and pulled his hands out of his pockets to fidget with his bandaged wrist. Maggie's heart lurched. She couldn't do anything but stare at him.
"I, uh…" he gestured awkwardly at her. "I got out of that pinning hold, like you taught me."
Maggie burst into tears again.
Peter reacted about as well as any teenage boy did when someone started crying, but luckily Pepper was there to swoop back in and rub Maggie's back and soothe her through the tears. When she'd hiccuped herself quiet and Peter looked less like a deer in headlights, they spoke for a few more minutes. Peter seemed to want to reassure himself that she was alright now, and Maggie interrogated him in return about his wounds, asking if they hurt and if his aunt knew he was okay. Peter seemed… remarkably calm about it all. He'd seemed more stressed when he met Maggie for the first time than he did now.
After a brief chat Peter got a call from his aunt, who had been watching the news and decided that what they were talking about was significantly worse than however he'd described the morning's attack, and he left with an apologetic wave.
Maggie waited until he'd left the room before she sagged in on herself, her shoulders bowing and her head drooping until her forehead nearly touched her knees. Pepper let out a soft breath.
"What do you want to do?" she asked, her hand resting beside Maggie's on the hospital bed.
Maggie sighed. "I don't know."
"Maybe you should try to get some sleep, you've–"
"No," she interrupted. "I don't want to sleep."
"Now where have I heard that before," Pepper murmured fondly. "Alright. Let's go watch some movies."
Maggie let Pepper take her by the hand and lead her out of the med bay, her mind filled with ringing numbness.
Tony and the others returned that night.
When F.R.I.D.A.Y. paused Maggie and Pepper's movie to alert them of the incoming Quinjet Maggie sprang to her feet and ran to her room, barely hearing Pepper's "Maggie, wait–".
Once the vacuum-sealed door slid shut behind her, she let out a breath and slid to the floor.
"Ms Stark?" F.R.I.D.A.Y. said. The A.I. managed to pack a lot of questions into just two words.
Maggie knocked her head back against the door. "What if I try to kill him again," she replied breathlessly.
"You've shown no signs of regression this morning, and if you're concerned we can run a controlled meeting–" F.R.I.D.A.Y. began, but Maggie interrupted:
"It's not even that. I'm terrified to see him because he saw me as the Wyvern, F.R.I.D.A.Y., that's never happened and what if… what if he…"
F.R.I.D.A.Y. fell silent. But she didn't leave Maggie to wallow in her thoughts for long, because a few minutes later the door slid open again and Maggie, who had been leaning against it, toppled backwards.
Tony, fresh out of the armor and having just left a brief, breathless conversation with Pepper, ran down the corridor to Maggie's room.
"F.R.I.D.A.Y., open the door!"
"Boss, she's–"
"I appreciate your respect for Maggie's choices, but in this instance you can forget about it. Now open the door!"
As he reached the room the door slid open, and Maggie fell out.
"F.R.I.D.A.Y. what the hell–" she shouted as she fell, but then Tony ducked down and caught her, throwing his arms around her and pulling her in for a too-tight and too-desperate hug. At first she stiffened, but on realizing just who had near-smothered her, her breath caught in her chest.
"Hey, Maggot," Tony mumbled, not quite sure what to say or what to check on first, and a millisecond later Maggie's long arms wrapped around his chest and squeezed tight. She buried her face in his shoulder, and he just knew that she was listening to his heartbeat.
Pepper had said she's in a really bad place, Tony. He'd been expecting sobs, maybe, but Maggie didn't do that – he didn't even realize she was crying until he noticed that the part of his shirt she'd buried her face in had gone damp. His arms tightened around her and something in his chest shuddered. They didn't say anything, just held each other. Tony wondered how many times he would have to hold his sister as her world fell apart. He wondered why he was so incapable of protecting the people he loved.
He thought he'd understood the trigger words, or at least the seriousness of the threat they posed. But when he'd flown into that room and seen Maggie standing there, poised to attack with her fists balled and her eyes sharp and calculating, something inside him had shattered and fallen away. He'd suddenly understood all the times Maggie had said I'm a person now, because what he'd seen in that room wasn't a person. It was a machine, a weapon, primed for nothing but violence and death. The Wyvern looked exactly like Maggie and yet at the same time was utterly different: she held herself in a different way, looked at the world with different eyes; eyes that didn't see hope or humor or love, only angles and targets. Tony had looked at her and realized that the Wyvern would not hesitate to kill him. That realization was closely followed by a second: he might not be able to stop her.
He'd always known that Maggie was dangerous - he'd seen videos of her in action, seen her at the airport in Leipzig, heard hours of testimony about her lethal efficiency. And yet going up against her when she absolutely, one-hundred-percent wanted to kill him was another story. He could see why she'd been HYDRA's prized weapon. His and Rhodey's suits bore the evidence - she'd almost gotten to both of them.
And while all these thoughts had circled and raged through his brain, they crystallized around a single truth: she was Maggie, she was his sister, and he couldn't hurt her.
Maggie's breath hitched again, as if she could read his thoughts.
"It's not your fault," he murmured, head tucked beside hers. "It's not your fault." He was awkwardly hunched over her - she'd half-fallen out of her room and he'd caught her on his way in, so she was mostly propped against his chest as he knelt on the hard floor. Maggie's fingers dug into his shirt and he felt her try to control her breathing.
For his part, Tony squeezed his eyes shut, allowed himself to feel relieved that Maggie was here and herself (and that seeing her as the Wyvern had not changed the way he thought about her), and tried to ignore the sick feeling in his gut like everything was falling apart.
After a few more minutes he muttered: "I gotta sit down or something, my knees are killing me."
That combined with the grunt he let out as he rolled sideways startled a laugh out of Maggie, and she pulled back just far enough to look him in the face. He wasn't sure what she saw – he was grimacing at the ache in his knees (and in his calf where she'd managed to stick him with a heel spur), and he no doubt looked exhausted and concerned – but at the sight of his face something in her eyes loosened, and her body relaxed a little.
Tony looked her over. "Are you alright?" She looked as exhausted as he felt, bags under her eyes and shoulders slumped. His eyes tracked to the butterfly bandages across her eyebrow and the purple-black-blue bruise just below her hairline. "You're hurt, how are you feeling? Dr Cho said–"
Maggie gaped at him. "What about you?" She leaned back even further to give him a once-over and her attention darted down to the bandage wrapped around his left leg. Her face shuttered and closed off, but not before he saw a flash of horror.
"Don't worry about it," he said, waving her off. He eyed her face, then got distracted by the bandages around her bare feet. He suddenly remembered that she'd done all that fighting without any kind of protection–
Her voice cut off his train of thought. "Tony, I'm so–"
"If you say sorry right now I'm going to throw you out a window." He looked up and winced. "Again." Well that had technically been Rhodey, but Tony had been about to do it.
Maggie's mouth shut. She didn't seem to know quite what to say to that, so she leaned back against the door jamb and looked at him. He looked back at her, running a hand across his sweaty forehead.
"Did you just get back?" she asked, her voice making it clear that she wasn't sure where he was coming back from.
But Tony was still caught up on what she'd almost said to him. "I'm the one who should be sorry," he replied, making her blink. "I already lost one A.I. but I didn't think… I made F.R.I.D.A.Y. better but I didn't think about fall backs if anything went wrong, I haven't learned from a mistake I made ten goddamn years ago." He shifted where he sat, agitated, and glared down at his knee. "I promised you there would be checks in place if your words were ever spoken, but they all relied on F.R.I.D.A.Y., and just by taking her out for 20 minutes those assholes wiped away… everything." He hung his head. "It was stupid. I was stupid. And I'm sorry, Maggie."
Maggie kicked him. Not hard, more of a nudge from her toe against his shin, but it got him to look up at her.
"If – if you say sorry I'm going to throw you out a window," she whispered hoarsely. She bit her lip, clearly not sure how the attempt at a joke would fly, but he cracked a smile at her and something in him settled when he saw the corners of her lips turn up. This was a Maggie he rarely saw these days - unsure of herself, hesitant, seeming almost surprised to find that she could do something so human as to make a joke or to smile. He wondered if this was what she'd been like those first weeks and months after breaking away from HYDRA. The thought made his heart ache.
Maggie swallowed and continued: "I… I tried to kill you this morning. And you feel shitty about it, apparently, which is weird because I feel shitty about it." She sniffed and wiped her tears away. "But I've, um, been doing some thinking throughout the day. And it seems like it… wasn't either of our faults." Relief hit Tony like a truck - relief that she wasn't going to blame herself for this, and a guilty relief that she didn't blame him for not protecting her. Maggie saw the relief in his eyes and her shoulders straightened. "So tell me whose fault it really is."
He met her gaze, met her anger. After a beat of silence he got to his feet and held out his hand. "Come with me."
She took a deep breath, and put her hand in his.
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone