Chapter 74

March, 2017

From: Maggie

You know how I said I might have a new project coming up? Well today I got started on my new wings.

From: Bucky

New? That's great doll, I didn't think you'd go long without finding some way to fly again. Is it going to be okay with the Accords Committee?

From: Maggie

You know me too well. I'm itching to get into the air again. As for the Committee, I'm not technically breaking the Accords but I'm going to keep a close eye on them just in case.

From: Bucky

Smart. Be careful Meg. But have fun, too.

"Are you ready?" asked Dr Cho, dressed not in her scrubs but in casual track pants and a bright yellow t-shirt. Tony stood by her side, trying his best to hide his concern.

For the past week Tony and Maggie had spent most of their waking (and some of their sleeping) hours in the workshop, designing and manufacturing Tony's new armor and Maggie's new wings. This project felt different from all the others – Maggie cared about the prosthetics, and B.A.R.F., but designing a whole new set of wings felt less like working on a project and more like shaping her dreams into reality. It felt like growth. And working on the wings with a completely fresh outlook was actually fun. These wings didn't belong to HYDRA. They belonged to her.

But as she'd finalized her designs, Maggie scanned the wing moorings set into her back and realized that both had suffered minute damage from the incident in Germany - nothing she felt day-to-day, but it would make flying impossible. She needed repairs, but the very thought of lying flat on a table with someone sticking tools into her back brought her out in a cold sweat, and made her head spin.

And yet today, she felt calm.

She lay not on her front, but on her back on a modified dentist chair, a warm blanket draped over her. The room around her, she knew, was a sterile operating room, but in appearance it was just a comfy, warm-toned room with no white walls or glinting tools in sight. She glanced to her left, where a wide window showed a view of the lake, then up at the ceiling, where they'd installed a TV.

Dr Cho and Tony stood to her left; on her other side stood Vision, there to assist with the procedure and to offer moral support; and Mai, who was on hand in case of a potential panic attack.

Maggie and Tony had cut a hole out of the back of the dentist chair, so her wing moorings were accessible, and they'd also formulated vials and vials of high-grade anesthetic. Maggie had been involved in every step of the process, including instructing Tony and Dr Cho on what exactly they'd have to do to repair her moorings. She was in control. And no matter what, she told herself, this is better than when the moorings were first installed.

"Maggie?" Dr Cho murmured, and Maggie blinked. Right. Are you ready?

She took a long, deep breath, and nodded. Her back still felt exposed, naked to the open air on the other side of the dentist chair, and she had to grit her teeth when Dr Cho inserted a drip into each of her arms, but she trusted these people. She felt safe.

She was later informed that the surgery went well, but she didn't pay much attention while it was happening. The anesthetic didn't quite knock her out, just made everything feel a bit like a dream. So she watched Jurassic Park through bleary eyes, drooling slightly, not absorbing much of the movie or the world around her apart from a vague notion that dinosaurs are cool, and a numbed sense of tingling in the middle of her back.

Alone in her room later that night, Maggie climbed groggily out of her bed and padded into her bathroom. She still felt a bit off from the anesthetic, and her back ached a little, but overall everything had gone off without a hitch.

In the dim half-light of her bathroom, Maggie slipped out of her shirt and peeled back the gauze Dr Cho had taped over the moorings. She closed her eyes and took a breath, then turned so her back faced the mirror.

She'd more or less known what she would see, but when she opened her eyes and looked into the mirror the bathroom echoed with a gasp.

She'd always looked strange thanks to the two metal holes in the middle of her back, but this was something else. The moorings themselves looked sleeker, more modern, and Maggie realized that they felt slightly different too. Tony and Dr Cho had repaired the damage within the moorings themselves and modified them to suit her new designs.

That wasn't the only change, though. She'd had Tony install a new modification.

It looked kind of like a tattoo, now she thought about it. Two long, gunmetal grey strips of nanoparticles stretched across her back like a large letter X. The X wrapped around her shoulder blades, curving from the top of her shoulder and down to her ribcage, following the muscles of her back. She rolled her shoulders experimentally and watched the metal flow with her skin, sinuous and strong. Maggie could feel the metal there, but it wasn't intrusive – the particles matched her body's temperature. She reached over her shoulder and ran her fingers across the line running up to her left shoulder, and smiled when her fingers couldn't detect a difference between flesh and metal. She dropped her hand and went back to staring at the new shape across her back.

The nanoparticles were a dark, dark grey that seemed black in the low light. Maggie shifted her stance, and as the slanting moonlight hit her back she caught a glint of dark red. She grinned. These were a part of her now.

Her attention shifted back to the moorings themselves, and at the sudden level of focus the moorings activated, their edges glowing a dark red. Maggie's eyebrows raised, and then she concentrated on deactivating them. She wanted to test them, but she had to sleep off the anesthetic first.

Maggie took in the image of herself in the mirror, her dark hair spilling over the top of her spine as she looked over her shoulder. She didn't look normal, with the two metal holes in her back and the dark, arcing design, but it looked like her. She couldn't wait to see if this worked.

With one last smile, Maggie pulled her shirt back on and padded back to bed. But before she went back to sleep, she sent a message to Bucky through the Kimoyo bead: Surgery went fine, barely hurts at all. And Bucky… Tony's been worried that by going through the surgery and changing the way I look that I'm changing myself, and he's right – I changed today. But that's a good thing. Every day I feel more and more like myself. I might not be exactly the person you knew back in Romania, and I don't think you're exactly the same as you were back then either. But we're both changing into better versions of ourselves. And I can't wait to be a better version of us again.

She slipped into dreams she wouldn't remember the next morning, but she never forgot the message she woke up to:

I love every version of you, Meg. I can't wait to spend my next hundred years with you and get to know all the versions to come.

You're beautiful always, but you're stunning when you fly. Go be stunning, doll.

Tony had wanted to do the first test of the wings in the demolitions bay, where there were fire extinguishers and no edges to fall off, but Maggie had argued that if they went to the roof there was less chance of the Accords Committee finding out. And also, she wanted to feel the wind on her face.

So she, Tony, Rhodey, and Vision gathered on the roof of the main hangar, on the end closest to the forest. If Maggie squinted she could see the giant 'A' emblazoned on the far end of the roof. It was one of the first warm days of the year, with a breeze skimming the tops of the trees in the forest and brushing against Maggie's face. She turned her face to the sky. She'd been checking the conditions since she woke up that morning, but it didn't hurt to check one last time: slightly overcast, with the occasional break in the clouds through which the sun shone down.

"How're you feeling, Maggot?"

Maggie looked back down and met Tony's anxious gaze. The first test of his nanotech armor last week had gone great (and looked awesome), and he walked around most of the time with his new triangular nanotech arc reactor on his chest - it seemed both he and Maggie planned to carry the metal parts of themselves with them forever. But that didn't stop him worrying about her. "I'm fine, Tony." She cocked her head. "Well, maybe a little nervous."

"It's not too late to back out," Rhodey piped up, his arms folded across his chest. "You're fresh out of surgery, and it's understandable to need a few days to–"

"Oh, I'm not backing out," she replied with a grin. "Vision, do you have those…?"

Vision produced a pair of red-tinted goggles (not the ones from the evidence box in the Acquisitions room – she'd had these made specially) and handed them over with an unspoken question in his eyes: are you sure?

She nodded at him, flashing him a quick smile, then pulled the goggles over her face. She wore a close-fitting dark blue flight suit that was standard issue for Avengers pilots, and lightweight boots. She took a long, deep breath. "Okay. Wind conditions, check?"

F.R.I.D.A.Y.'s voice emerged from the bracelet fitted to Maggie's wrist (not a Manacle, just F.R.I.D.A.Y.-equipped): "Wind conditions are optimal at 14 knots."

"Airspace?"

"Cleared."

Maggie eyed her brother out of the corner of her eye. "Tony anxiety levels?"

"High, but manageable," said F.R.I.D.A.Y. without skipping a beat. Tony scowled, and Rhodey chuckled behind his hand.

"Alright," Maggie said, rolling her shoulders. "Let's do this."

For a few silent seconds she just stood there, her hands balled into fists by her sides and her eyes squeezed shut, trying to activate the nanotech's neural uplink. But then she felt the wing moorings come to life.

She knew the edges of the wing moorings were glowing a dark red, knew every detail of the minute shifts and data transfers occurring in her back right now. But that knowledge took a back seat when she felt the nanoparticles on her skin begin to move. They slid in from the X shaped design on her back, smooth as water down a stream, flooding into her wing mooring and then sprouting out through the holes in her shirt, arcing away from her spine and forming into metal bones. The nanotech housed in her wing moorings flowed out after the rapidly solidifying bones to form webbing, circuitry, and engines.

Wings grew from her back in a mind-boggling transformation. Feeling the wings arc out and solidify on either side of her, Maggie was reminded of old movies where the previously-unassuming human transforms into a monster. But she didn't feel like a monster.

Her wings grew from her back, growing black and wide to her sides, and she felt a weight – not as heavy as her last wings, but noticeable – settle on her metal spine. The muscles in her shoulder, back, waist, and legs adjusted for the weight as if it had been hours, and not months, since she'd last worn wings. She rolled her shoulders and felt data pour in: not all of a sudden, like when she slotted her wings in before, but gradually. Like unfurling a new limb. She felt the cool breeze against the wing membranes, the power running through them, even the warm sun warming the metal. She felt all of it, just like she felt her last wings, and the nanotech ensured an even smoother neural link. There was no noticeable difference in sensation or responsiveness between her arms and her wings now. They were a part of her - completely.

Maggie breathed, and her wings rose and fell.

She realized that she'd closed her eyes at some point as her wings grew outward from her body, and opened them to see the three Avengers staring at her, their eyes round as coins.

Maggie looked from them, to her wings.

They were about the same size of her old ones, but sleeker, honed to be far more aerodynamic and efficient. To her, they were beautiful. Fully extended to either side of her they looked like dragons wings, or bats wings, two arcing bones with five "fingers" pointing down, ending in a sharp barb. Two more barbs emerged from the top arc of each wing, glinting and sharp in the sunlight. The wings themselves were still a dark gunmetal grey, but now with scale detailing on the webbing; hundreds of tiny enfolded metal circlets that enhanced flexibility and impenetrability. In the direct sunlight, her webbing gleamed with hints of dark red.

Maggie pulled her wings in close to her body so the warm metal hugged her flesh, then unfolded them once more, feeling the stretch of metal joints and tendons. A thrill ran up her spine and she couldn't help the grin slowly creeping across her face.

Tony, Vision, and Rhodey were still watching her, and from the looks on their faces she could tell they didn't know what to say. She didn't either. So she paced across the roof toward the edge, where concrete gave way to empty space and then trees below.

Maggie paused right on the edge, her toes hanging in open air, and looked down. She felt the others come up behind her. She shivered. Her wings were spread and she was so close, but…

"Last time I flew, I fell," she murmured. She winced at the memory: shrieking metal, splintering, cracking, then the wind rushing in her ears and screams ripped from her throat as pain like she'd never known consumed her whole. The crunch and shower of sparks as she collided with the ground.

She took a step back from the edge, and her wings folded in to her back.

"Not this time," Rhodey said, his own voice low with the memory of his own fall. He came and stood beside her, one step away from the edge of the roof.

"And if you fall," Tony said, coming to stand on her other side, "we'll catch you."

Maggie looked up at him, meeting his eyes. He still looked anxious, but there was such surety in his gaze and in his words she knew that there was no chance he would let her get hurt. Her gaze tracked to Rhodey, who looked just as determined as Tony, and then to Vision, who floated a few feet off the edge of the building as if trying to reassure her that the air wasn't so scary.

The corner of her mouth quirked up. "Alright then."

She took ten steps back from the edge, her heart pounding and her nerves singing. Her wings twitched. C'mon, Wyvern. You've been doing this your whole life. For the first time, the name Wyvern didn't make her gut clench in instinctive fear. It made her want to fly.

She broke into a run, her eyes fixed on the edge and her breath loud in her ears. She made it to the edge in three quick strides, planted her right foot and leaped.

For two breathless, frozen seconds she fell. Her heart rose into her throat and her skin flashed hot and cold with fear, but then her wings unfurled as easy as breathing, catching the air and bearing her into the sky. She gasped, faltering a little, but then her instincts kicked in and she fired up her engines, streamlining her body so one second she was falling, and the next she was flying.

She soared up from the hangar rooftop, just a beating heart and spread wings, and kept on flying until she punched through the clouds in a rush of dense, wet air, and sudden blinding light.

She cried out when she burst out above the clouds, blinking away condensation and tears as she gazed out at the landscape of soft, curving white laid beneath her. The sun shone down on the tops of the clouds and on Maggie, warming her face and drawing a long, gasping breath from her lungs.

For a moment everything was still – Maggie floated in the sky, not flying or falling but just breathing, weightless in a world of blue and blinding white.

And then her brain caught up with her heart and she let out a whoop that broke the silence, followed by an uncontrollable laugh that sent her spiraling across the tops of the fluffy clouds, her arms and wings spread and a grin spread from ear to ear.

Back on the roof of the hangar, the three Avengers watched in silence as Maggie dipped back through the clouds only to twist with her wings wrapped tight against her body and zip back up, leaving a Maggie-shaped hole in the cloud in her wake.

Tony watched his sister dip in and out of the clouds, and even though she was too far away to hear he could tell she was laughing. She looked… like a Wyvern, supplied his brain. She kept her body tight and streamlined, and his eye was naturally drawn toward her wide black and red wings that glinted as she twisted through the air. He'd thought the wings looked like weapons last time he saw them. But now… he knew they were so much more than that.

Maggie spun and rolled in the air, clearly having the time of her life, and he squinted up at her with a smile on his face.

"It's weird seeing her like that," Rhodey said, breaking the silence. There was a smile in his voice. "But it's… it's…"

"It's how she's meant to be," Tony finished. He finally got what Maggie had tried to explain to him back in the workshop. I am Maggie Stark. And I'm the Wyvern.

He was afraid the world didn't have room for both. But Maggie had been pretty good at forging a space for herself despite all the odds so far. He was inclined to think that she'd come out on top.

Maggie swooped in and out of the clouds for a few more minutes, then pulled her wings into her body and dove, slicing through the air with the wind screaming in her ears until she was mere feet from the flat surface of the lake, where she flung her wings out and caught the air beneath her. She misjudged slightly and one of her feet ended up in the water, sending her careening haphazardly sideways until she corrected herself. Flattening her body and spreading her wings wide, Maggie looked down at her own reflection in the water – streaming hair, limbs in tight, wings wide and strong. Her red goggles looked back at her. She was flying so close to the lake that the air pressure pushed water down and out, forming a furrow in the surface behind her feet. Grinning, Maggie reached down to trace a finger along the surface of the lake and laughed at the cool water on her skin and the flying droplets. She twisted again, arcing back into the sky.

This was what she had been waiting for, this was what it meant for all the parts of herself to come together. This was joy, this was laughing in the workshop with Tony, this was dancing with Bucky's arms safe and warm around her, this was the impossible friendships she'd made and the knowledge that she'd made herself into a person, whole and happy. This was Maggie, and this was the Wyvern.

She somersaulted, feeling the air sluice over her body and her wings adjust to the change, then glided down toward the forest. Her brain was coming more online, adjusting to the massive rush of dopamine and adrenaline, and as she marveled at the beautiful intelligence of the nanotech she had an idea.

She flew low to the tops of the dark green trees, and with a single thought felt nanoparticles flow from her wing moorings, down the metal in her bones and toward her heel spurs. She flicked her heel spurs out, slicing through her boots. Guided by her mind, the nanoparticles materialized around her heel spurs and united them to form a long, extended barb that ended in a ball of wickedly sharp spikes - like a medieval weapon. The ball trailed behind her in the air like a barbed tail as she soared over the forest, the metal glinting wickedly in the sunlight. With a sudden flare of her wings and a calculated flick of her legs, Maggie sent the ball sailing through the top of a tree. The tree exploded in a shower of splinters.

Huh.

A second later Maggie reformed the nanoparticles into two jet boosters at the base of her feet, like Tony's repulsors, and they sent her rocketing back into the sky. A slow grin curled up the corners of her mouth. The only limit to the nanotech was imagination. And she had plenty of that.

Then she reminded herself that she wasn't meant to use the wings or the nanotech for combat, and she went back to doing aerial tricks. Twists, rolls, tumbles, she did it all, practicing all the moves she'd learned during her time as the Wyvern. Though, as she swooped low over the rocky beach of the lake, Maggie reflected that those nanotech energy blasters she'd been developing would be ideal weapons in flight. She pushed the thought to the back of her brain, and focused on enjoying the feeling of flying once more.

Maggie came back to the rooftop in a blast of wind, pushing Tony back a step with his hand raised to his eyes. Rhodey, moored in his exosuit, and Vision being intangible, did not move.

She straightened from her low crouch, skin singing with the sudden lack of movement and her chest rising and falling with the rhythm of her heart. She deactivated her wings and the nanotech dissolved and slid back through the holes in her shirt, into the wing moorings and the X design on her back. Then she spread her arms with a grin.

"How's it feel?" Tony asked with a knowing grin on his face.

"Better than anything I can describe," she grinned back.

Rhodey smiled. "Those things are way more portable than your last ones."

"I know, right? Bye bye backpack disguises. I never have to take off these wings." Maggie's grin spread wider as the thought sent a thrill down her spine. She held up a hand to Vision, who gave her a reluctant high-five.

"Please remember to be careful," the android said. "The fewer people who know you are flight-capable the better, and you must be careful not to break the Accords."

"I know, Vis, I'll be careful. Thank you guys for not dobbing me in or anything."

Tony rolled his eyes. "We're not quite at the snitch level yet," he said, and Maggie's eyebrow rose at the bitterness in his voice. So all's not well with the Accords Committee, she noted. But she supposed after Ross's stunt with the enhanced-human scanner, she didn't think Tony could forgive and forget. No, she had no doubt he was keeping a very close eye on what the Committee was up to.

Hm. Maggie's stomach suddenly growled, and she put her hand to her abdomen. "Yikes, I'm starving. Who wants to help me make pancakes?"

Vision put his hand in the air. He'd been trying to learn all kinds of recipes (to surprise Wanda, he'd confessed to Maggie).

Tony clapped a hand on Rhodey's shoulder. "I do not," he said. "But I'll happily help you eat them. C'mon, Amelia Earheart."

"That's the nickname you wanna go with?" Rhodey queried, eyebrows high on his forehead.

"No takebacks!" Maggie exclaimed. "Let's go."

In the privacy of her own room that night, Maggie watched her naked back and unfurled her wings, admiring the nanotech as it streamed smoothly over her skin and outwards. She marveled that in just a day, she already felt inseparable from these wings – they were a part of her, just like her legs or arms, and she felt safe and powerful with them. She stretched her wings, spreading them across the length of her room, and reached out to touch the webbing. The metal was warmer than her last wings, the same temperature as her body, and the intermeshing scales felt textured under her fingers. She grinned, and her eyes fell on the statue of wings she'd made out of her first bedframe, silhouetted against the window. How far she'd come.

Maggie sat on the edge of her bed, wings draped behind her, and pulled out her Kimoyo bead to tell Bucky about her day.

Over the next few days, Maggie kept Bucky updated on each new thing she tried with her wings (she'd worked out she could use them as a hammock when she went for a walk in the forest), and he told her about his goats, and the kids from the nearby village who teased him and hung off his arm like so many limpets.

She was a little surprised when one morning she woke up to the message: Have you ever thought about having kids, Meg?

That threw her for a loop, and she didn't reply straight away. Instead she walked around the rest of the morning in a half daze, contemplating a possibility that had never seemed real before. She went to meetings, emailed contacts in philanthropic groups and international organizations, followed up with the Stark Industries board about B.A.R.F., all with her mind somewhere else.

She honestly had never really thought about having children before – she'd almost forgotten that she was even biologically capable of it. HYDRA had certainly never encouraged any feelings of motherhood. It was a crazy thought when she and Bucky were on the run, and since then she hadn't exactly been preparing to settle down what with being a prisoner and then the murder trial. But if she and Bucky found a way to be together again…

A few minutes into that line of thought, her stomach twisted. Any child of hers would automatically be in danger – she was a target for so many reasons, due to her past and current identity. Not to mention Bucky. What kind of a life would that child have?

A loving one.

The thought struck her out of the blue, and she had to sit down in the nearest chair she could find.

"Maggie?" Pepper called from the other side of the facility's main foyer. "Are you okay?"

Maggie waved absently, her gaze trained on the unassuming carpet and her thoughts whirling.

For the first time, she allowed herself to think about it. Having a child. A child made of her and of Bucky.

Her heart skipped a beat. That child would have two of the most protective parents in the world, probably, and so many loving aunts and uncles. Maggie thought about her life and all the startling, impossible love she'd found in it, and thought about sharing that love with a child. Her child. She thought about Bucky with a baby tucked into his arm, thought about Bucky as a parent. The image made her heart ache.

Maggie had never considered herself maternal, or even particularly sentimental. She'd also seen very few actual babies in her life. But this new, crazy thought had her heart pounding and swelling in her chest. She wanted this: this impossible, beautiful future.

Her Kimoyo bead pulsed against her chest and she hurried away to read the message.

From: Bucky

Meg? I didn't scare you did I? Forget I said anything, it's not even within the realms of possibility right now, I was just… thinking. Never mind.

She shook her head at the message, picturing Bucky tapping away one-handed at a Kimoyo bead, frustrated with himself for daring to dream. She composed her reply.

From: Maggie

I hadn't thought about it before. Ever. In my life. But I am now and… yeah, Bucky. I'd like a family. With you. I'd like it a lot.

It was a long, agonizing wait for his next message. She ended up going down to the gym to work off her sudden excess amounts of energy, and did her best to attempt to destroy one of Tony's super-soldier proof punching bags. The Kimoyo bead finally vibrated as she flipped through the agility course, and at the feeling she fell flat on her face on a foam mat. Not caring, she immediately pulled out the bead and activated it.

From: Bucky

You and me, doll. One day.

She smiled, blinked away a few tears, and then wrote back with shaking fingers. She wished they could do this in person, wished she could hold his face in her hands and look into his grey-blue eyes as she replied.

From: Maggie

One day.