Chapter 89

Two Months Later

Drez-Lar

"Wyvern, what's your status?"

Maggie didn't respond at first, so as not to give away her position. She stood pressed against the thick metal wall of Drez-Lar's Planetary Defense Facility, watching one of the facility's employees approach the locked entryway.

The employee bore the typical appearance of the inhabitants of Drez-Lar – a tall and burly humanoid with a large, bulbous head and dusky orange skin. He had a thick head of dark hair, and over his ridged cheekbones his flinty black eyes looked tired. His footsteps echoed on the metal street.

Drez-Lar had apparently been a desert planet once, but after decades of devastating dust storms the industrious inhabitants had used their long cultural tradition of smelting to forge their planet anew out of metal. No sun had shone on Drez-Lar for centuries, but the people had perfected hydroponic crop technology before the last star died out, and they manufactured their own light with millions of automated hovering lightsources, much like mechanical fireflies. In the darkness, the whole metal surface of Drez-Lar was a reflection of the galaxy around it; glinting stars and swirling cosmos. It might have been beautiful, if it weren't for the heavy cloud of grief that hung over the world.

From the shadows Maggie watched the facility worker press his thick-fingered hand against the blank metal door, which whirred and swung open. The worker trudged in, head bowed.

Maggie waited three seconds, then darted forward and stuck her foot in the doorway before it could close. She waited two more seconds, glanced around (the metal street remained empty, thanks to the strictly imposed curfew) and then slipped inside.

"I'm in the facility," she murmured.

Her Wyvern uniform, now entirely black, faded into the shadows. Aside from the color the uniform wasn't much different in appearance, but it had undergone some major changes in the past few months; Maggie had been busily adapting it for space travel. The nanotech was already sturdy enough to protect her from the vacuum of space, but she'd also cannibalized tech from the Benatar and some of the planets she'd visited; her uniform now included an inbuilt universal communicator, alien technology scanners, and a new array of weapons. Rocket had helped, though at first he'd seemed torn between helping her and stealing her tech. She'd also incorporated every kind of cloaking technology she could find. That's how she had slipped onto Drez-Lar yesterday: flying alone through a tiny chink in their planetary energy shield, invisible on their scanners.

She kept her mask up, not because Drez-Lar's atmosphere was toxic but to keep her pale face from giving her away in the darkness. She'd turned off the red glow of her goggles, and her boots softened her footsteps so she didn't clank around like the other employees in the metal building.

"Any issues?" came Nebula's voice.

"None so far," she murmured back. The facility was well-organised, so she only had to consult her stolen facility map once before she made a beeline for her target. She passed only a few facility employees, and easily avoided their attention. "They're understaffed."

"And yet they still won't admit they've got a problem," Rocket drawled.

As Maggie slipped through the dark metal corridors, her brows drew together. For two months now she'd been working practically non-stop with Carol, Rocket, and Nebula. In the wake of the Decimation societies and governments had fallen apart, and violence had exploded across the universe – people were angry, and they lashed out at anyone they could reach. Maggie had traveled across the cosmos and met beings of all colors, sizes, and shapes, from delicate little silver waifs with eyes that shone like mercury, to great hulking rock creatures that looked like they were carved from the side of a mountain, to sentient gas giants. And no matter what race or species they were, they were all in pain.

Maggie was constantly startled by each new manifestation of grief she came across. Drez-Lar was no different. It was a Kree outworld, and when the barely-functioning government in Hala noticed that the planet had gone utterly silent, they reached out to Carol.

Maggie had slipped onto the planet yesterday, flying from the Benatar and through the energy shield, her wings spread in the blackness of space. Carol was too obvious. For this, they needed the silence and subtlety of the Wyvern.

She'd relayed everything she'd found back to the Benatar. After the Decimation, Drez-Lar had locked down its borders and seemed to be… well, she'd describe it as a state of institutionalized denial. Drez-Lar's governing body, the Machinist Council, had banned any mention of the Decimation. They simply refused to acknowledge its reality, even though half of their members had vanished into thin air, out of some misguided attempt to keep things running as per usual. Any citizen who showed any sign of grief was imprisoned, and any memorials were burned. They ignored the chaos they had fallen into, continuing on as if everyone were still at their posts.

It made breaking into their facilities very easy.

Maggie finally reached the generator hub for the planetary shield, and walked into the control room as if she owned it. A wide glass window looked out over the generator itself: a giant spinning, glowing machine that shot a concentrated plasma beam straight up through the roof and into the dark sky. Maggie cracked her knuckles.

It was short work after that. She sat at the control panel and started hitting buttons, cutting her way through the well-designed apparatus. She'd familiarized herself with Drez-Lar machinery for this exact purpose. At one point, a Drez-Larite in a grey jumpsuit walked in and managed to shout "Hey-" before she lifted her arm and knocked him unconscious with an energy blast without even looking up from her work.

Finally, she reached up to touch the comm unit in her ear. "Okay Rocket, you can send the signal now."

"Are you sure? If this doesn't go right, that shield is going to bounce the signal right back at us, cut our power and leave us drifting."

Maggie pinched the bridge of her nose. "Believe it or not, I do know what I'm doing."

"Rocket," chided Carol.

"Yeah, yeah, I am Terran hear me roar. Sending it now."

She waited approximately ten seconds, then watched the glowing generator flicker and abruptly die out. She stood up, stepped over the body of the fallen Drez-Larite, and strode out of the facility just as a blaring alarm sounded.

"The shield is down," came Nebula's low voice. "Carol-"

"I'm on my way in."

The Machinist Council tried to kill Carol when she came blasting down in a beam of blinding light, so with a reluctant sigh Maggie flicked open her wings to soar in and help her. She dove through the dark Drez-Lar night, a metal warrior on a metal planet.

Not that Carol needed much help – Maggie mostly soared in rings around the glowing former Air Force pilot, picking off the Drez-Lar soldiers that she missed. All non-lethal force, of course. They didn't want to hurt anyone any more than they had to.

Eventually, the soldiers gave up.

It didn't take long for Carol to talk sense into the Machinist Council once they'd surrendered. She seemed to have boundless reserves of empathy, and after two months of trying to maintain some order in this half-destroyed universe she knew what to say to get people in line.

"Let your people grieve," she finished, when half the Council were already in tears. "Let them rebuild."

Maggie watched on, her wings tucked against her back and her mask still over her face. She'd had to participate in negotiations in the past, whether to threaten or cajole, but Carol seemed to have this handled.

Rocket and Nebula had landed the Benatar in the main square of Drez-Lar's capital city and stood on either side of her. The metal ground of the planet reflected the glinting stars and the floating mechanized light sources, giving the strange illusion that they stood in the middle of the night sky.

The Machinist Council gave in, and Maggie looked over to meet Nebula's black eyes. This was one of the easier missions they'd undergone, and it was still…

She recalled the prisons full of grieving families she'd seen, the hollow look of people suffering and unable to speak. She'd seen Drez-Larites working on in the forges and smelting factories with tears streaming down their faces in the darkness.

There were no easy missions anymore. This was a universe in crisis.

Maggie found a kind of comfort in being the Wyvern: living on her skills, feeling nothing. She was useful like this. A machine. She ate and slept on the ship on the way to the next planet crying out for help, and when she got there she fought and spied and rebuilt; whatever was necessary to keep whoever had survived the Decimation safe. Maggie scuffed her boot against the metal ground beneath her, and looked down at her red-goggled reflection. She liked the idea of what Drez-Lar had done, before the Decimation – coating their vulnerable, flawed planet in metal, shaping it into what they needed. She drummed her fingers against her nanotech spacesuit. Yes, she liked the idea very much.

Maggie was just a name she wore. Better than anything else, she supposed. Maggie, Wyvern, it didn't matter.

Rocket set a hand on Maggie's wrist, the only part of her he could reach. "The Kree can take over from here," he murmured. "Let's get back to the ship."

Carol met them back on the Benatar. "Good work, everyone," she said. There was grime on her cheek, and her glowing power still danced around her fists. "Stark, are you alright?"

Maggie, reclining in her seat with a nutrition bar in her hand, shrugged. "Got in, got out. Didn't get thrown in any prison cells."

Carol narrowed her eyes. "You know what I mean."

Maggie chewed her nutrition bar slowly. "What? You want me to tell you it sucked? Sure, it sucked." She'd spent over thirty hours on that metal planet, with its hard-working people trying desperately to pretend that they hadn't lost everything they cared about. Carol might've talked some sense into them, but at the end of the day the Benatar would fly off, leaving the people of this planet to their metal smelting and their pain.

"Everywhere sucks," Rocket added from the front of the cockpit. Maggie pointed her ration bar at him with a nod.

Carol sighed. The four of them had formed an odd sort of bond over the past two months. Against all odds they worked well together, each of them ready to step in when the pain got too much for one of them. Maggie's time had come a few weeks ago – she'd woken up and simply been unable to move from her bunk. There'd been nothing physically wrong with her, she just… couldn't. Couldn't do anything but lie there with an invisible crushing weight bearing down on her.

Nebula had filled in for Maggie in the next mission, and when she'd finally climbed out of her bunk three days later Carol had a bowl of steaming soup ready and waiting for her.

When Carol had blown up a whole mountain made of crystals the next day, Maggie had walked her back to the ship and wrapped her in a blanket.

So they were a functional team. Barely. But they were just enough for what the universe desperately needed. They had regular holocalls back to earth to coordinate with Natasha's team there. And Maggie kept up her twice-weekly contact promise to Rhodey, though more often than not her messages read like mission reports. Her last had been: Veraxian system now has a semi-functioning government, violence is under control. Not a shred of personal information. Rhodey always replied with a note about his day, or an update on how Tony was healing. He always reminded her of life on Earth.

Maggie's holoscreen chimed, alerting her to a new message.

Before she could open it, Carol cleared her throat. "The Kree have asked me to help their crisis council in the next system over, but there's also a warship in the Maveth region. We should split up, cover more ground."

"Agreed," Nebula said in her low, husky voice. "We'll go to Maveth."

Carol nodded, her eyes grim, and then dropped a hand on Maggie's shoulder. "See you around, I guess."

Maggie managed a small smile. She knew that if they'd met under different circumstances, she and Carol could have had a different relationship – jokes, friendly teasing, trust. But Maggie wasn't capable of that anymore. They supported each other, and Maggie admired Carol's skill as a fighter, but… she couldn't find the strength within herself for anything beyond work. Carol, for her part, was spread so thin trying to stop the world from falling apart that she had little time for anything other than collapsing into her bunk once they arrived back on the spaceship.

"See you around," she said. Carol nodded once, then strode off the ship.

Sighing, Maggie turned back to her holoscreen and opened her new message.

It was from Rhodey:

Hi Maggie,

Hope you're well. So I've got a message to pass on from Tony and Pepper. They wanted me to tell you that yesterday they got married. They're sorry they didn't invite you – actually they didn't invite anyone, it was just the two of them and a celebrant. Apparently they just wanted to be married already. And they didn't say it, but it was pretty easy to figure out – they didn't want to celebrate with the world the way it is. We all hope you're safe and doing okay.

Your friend,

Rhodes

Maggie stared at the message for a long time. It was only the rumble of the Benatar's engines that roused her.

Married.

"Rocket?"

"Yeah?" he grunted.

She traced her fingers over the holographic words. "Uh… change of plans."

Earth

"Hey Tony?"

Tony shut off the lawn mower at Pepper's shout and looked over. "Ya-huh?"

She hung out the kitchen window, her ginger hair streaming in the breeze. "Do you want tomato or spinach in your grilled cheese?"

He squinted in the sunlight. "Uh, surprise me."

She stuck a thumb out the window. "Poison it is, great!"

Laughing, he turned back to the lawnmower and yanked on the starter cord. It started immediately, because he didn't suffer sub-par machinery, and soon he was walking the growling, spitting machine back and forth across the lawn again. His wedding ring flashed in the light, and grass clippings spat out against his shins until he remembered to get out of the way of the debris chute. As he went, he shook his head. Laughter was still a surprise. So was normality.

For the first few weeks after they'd moved into the wooden house by the lake it had felt as if the two of them were just playing house, pretending. Tony had still been recovering from being stabbed and starved in space, and the world around them had fallen to pieces. But then Tony had healed, the Earth kept turning, and the realization that this life had become his new normal had snuck up on him in the middle of the night and hadn't left him since.

The next normal had been to finally get married, just the two of them and a celebrant out on the jetty.

As he mowed the lawn, Tony suddenly felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. He wasn't sure what had alerted him – not any sound, since the lawnmower was too loud for that. Probably just his old instincts from when he'd been an Avenger.

Whatever it was, he let go of the lawnmower and whirled around, already reaching for an arc reactor that wasn't there, until he saw the figure standing in the middle of his freshly mowed lawn and froze.

Then he heard a godawful churning sound, and had to turn back and chase after his lawnmower to stop it eating up sticks.

When the lawnmower was silent, Tony turned slowly to face the figure again.

The suit which had once been red and gunmetal grey was all black, from the cowl to the wings to the boots. She looked like a ghoul, standing in a shadow on the lawn with the homely sight of the wooden house and the lake behind her. She'd kept the red goggles.

Slowly, she retracted her wings.

"Hi," Tony said breathlessly.

The black nanotech over her head rippled and shifted away, baring her face. She looked so much older, with shadows under her hard, glinting eyes. She swallowed. "Hi."

"You're back."

"I am," Maggie said, her face barely moving, "but I can only stay an hour or so. I… I heard about…" she moved then, shifting her weight from one leg to another. Her dark eyes deepened. "Congratulations, Tony."

"Right." Tony ran a hand through his hair, staring at his sister. How could it be that she looked so different? He raised his voice, tilting his head toward the kitchen though he didn't take his eyes off Maggie. "Hey, Pep?"

"You change your mind about the poison?" she shouted from the kitchen.

Maggie's face didn't change.

Tony swallowed, and then he called: "No, I… I think we might need to make another grilled cheese."

Tony had recovered. That was the first thing Maggie noted from his appearance: his face was fuller, he'd gained back the weight, there was life in his eyes. His beard was closely shaved once more. He wore soft pants and a loose t-shirt, seeming utterly in his element mowing the grass around his house.

The second thing she noticed: he was happy.

Sadness still burned in his eyes, so much of it, particularly when he looked at her. But there was joy in his life, that was plain to see. After much surprise and excitement, Pepper and Tony took her on a tour of their new home. She walked the halls, saw the books in their shelves and the photographs on the walls, looked at Tony's busy garage. It was a comfortable place, designed for people to live in peace. She saw that they were making a life in the midst of grief.

She felt distantly glad that the numbing, paralyzing void inside her had not stretched to Tony's light. This house was the happiest place she'd been since she'd returned to Earth earlier that morning.

She'd stopped by the facility first to talk over some things with Natasha. Natasha had given her clinical updates on everyone: Steve was scraping by in New York, helping out the reconstruction there. Bruce had gone to work in a gamma lab, undergoing some kind of self-experimentation. New Asgard was up and running, but Natasha hadn't heard from Thor. Wakanda was limping along a little faster than the rest of the world.

Maggie hadn't stayed long in the facility. The grief there was thick, cloying. It clung to the walls, waited in corners like cobwebs.

She hadn't come back for that, anyway. She'd come because of the message. She'd come because the message reminded her of her heart, and because the warm flicker of happiness that she'd felt when she read it was addictive.

Maggie didn't say much as Pepper and Tony showed her the house. She asked questions about how they spent their time and about the wedding, but talking like this felt alien after her months in space. Luckily, Pepper filled what could have been awkward silences with conversation of her own.

None of them talked about the Decimation. Maggie had flown over some of the monuments on her way from the Facility – forests of stone slabs, etched with millions of names.

Maggie must have zoned out because she suddenly found herself standing on Tony and Pepper's porch, looking out over the lake. It was a beautiful day, with the sun shining warm on the water and a breeze filtering through the trees. Pepper had gone inside, and Maggie got the sense that she'd been standing in silence for a long time.

Tony stood beside her. She could sense that he didn't know what to say to her. She sensed guilt, too.

"It's okay," she croaked, breaking the long silence. "You… I wanted this for you." With an immense effort she moved, turning to hug him. That, at least, didn't feel mechanical. There was still some shred of humanity left in her, thanks to her brother, and she wasn't sure whether to be grateful or angry at Tony for that. His hands came up to press against her black nanotech suit. "You hold this close, Tony," she murmured. "You don't let it go."

His arms tightened around her. "Stay." She pulled away, her back hitting the wooden banister, and he desperately continued: "We've got a spare room, or I can buy the house the next block over, we want you here-"

"I… I can't. I'm sorry."

"You're my sister."

That hurt, like a dull blade against an old wound. "It hurts too much," she said, tilting her head toward the house. The home. "I'm sorry." She felt so out of place, all dark metal and empty chest against this warm wooden house where love lived.

Tony nodded and stepped back. He took a deep breath. "You, uh, you probably want to be heading off soon, right?" he made his voice light, as if he hadn't just been begging her to stay.

Maggie swallowed. "I have to. Sorry."

He shook his head. "No, it's… it's fine. Pepper already said bye, so…" Maggie didn't remember that. She must have been checked out. Tony tried to smile, but it ended up as a grimace. "I'll see you next time." She could practically read his thoughts: how did we end up like this?

She offered a grimace of her own. "See you." She slid past him, striding down the wooden porch toward the open lawn. Her mind was already turning to flight patterns, timing; anything to keep from thinking about how she couldn't seem to stop hurting Tony, but then–

"I'm sorry about Barnes."

Maggie stopped dead on the steps. Her back was turned so Tony couldn't see her face, could only see her shoulders rising and falling. He took a few steps forward, his heart hammering. "I never… I never really understood what he meant to you. I didn't realize…" he trailed off.

Shaking, Maggie turned around and lifted her eyes to meet his. She looked more alive now than she had throughout the whole short, awkward visit – her dark eyes gleamed almost dangerously, and color had risen in her face. After a few seconds of long, painful eye contact, her eyes flicked to his new house and back. She opened her mouth. "He was my Pepper."

Tony's heart wrenched, and he thought back to those days on the spaceship when he thought that Pepper might have crumbled away… his eyes pressed shut.

Maggie's hushed voice intruded on the darkness: "We talked about having kids." Tony's eyes opened. "We'd been communicating in secret – it doesn't matter now. We promised each other: one day. One day we'd be a family. We'd spend our lives together. When the rest of my life began to fall into place… he was the last thing I wanted."

Her face was… Tony could hardly bear to look at it, it was like looking into the sun. He realized with a lurch just how much pain she'd been pushing deep down inside herself. He realized she'd never spoken these words aloud.

Maggie swallowed. "I'm selfish, I think. I keep thinking that I might be okay if it was just Bucky. It'd change me forever, and I'd grieve for him for the rest of my life, but I know he'd have wanted me to live. He'd have wanted me to be happy one day." She wasn't crying, and that made it somehow worse. "But I lost half a universe. I lost. I failed to protect billions of people. And I know there's countless other stories like mine; loves cut short, lives unlived, on a staggering scale. I've seen it." She shook her head. "My heart can't take it, Tony. I – I have to be the Wyvern. It's the only way I can think to keep… keep putting one foot in the other."

Maggie's face blurred, and Tony realized his eyes were swimming with tears. He reached up and swiped them away.

"I'm sorry." Some of the conviction and grief seeped out of Maggie's face. "Just… be happy, Tony. You have to be."

She turned and walked down the stairs. Tony opened his mouth, but there was nothing to say. He closed it again.

A second later, she spread her wings and soared into the sky.

When he sank down beside Pepper that night, Pepper stroked a hand over his cheek. Her eyes were sad, and knowing.

"You didn't tell her, did you?"

Tony bowed his head, and laid tentative fingers against Pepper's abdomen. "No," he murmured. "I… how could I tell her?"

"She wouldn't be angry, Tony. She loves you."

He nodded, his head rustling against his pillow, but he knew he couldn't have told her. How could they tell anyone how impossibly happy they were about this new life, in a world where everyone's heart was broken?

Pepper hummed and wriggled in closer to him, wrapping one arm around his waist as she drifted off to sleep. In the darkness, Tony wondered: why did I get so lucky?

He and Pepper had found only one way to survive: to live, against all odds, to love and be loved. The alternative was feeling nothing.

And as Tony's thoughts turned to his sister… well. He knew what the alternative looked like.

The empty blackness of space was almost a relief for Maggie after that. She could sink back into the mission, let the glittering sharp edges of her pain fade away. And it was easier for her to throw herself headlong into her work after visiting Earth. She knew that Tony was doing okay without her, that he was safe and happy.

She traveled with Carol, Rocket, and Nebula across the cosmos. They arrived on planets where societies and governments had fallen apart and left them with at least some kind of order, tracked down crazy cults trying to kill the survivors of the Decimation, put a stop to ongoing looting and riots. The fallout from the Decimation was always surprising – on some planets, fragile ecosystems had been thrown out of balance. On all planets, survivors struggled with the immense task of honoring and memorializing such a vast number of dead. It seemed that even in space many cultures needed the dead person's body to carry out proper death rituals. There wasn't much Maggie and the others could do for those people.

She started sending her biweekly check-ins to Tony as well. He seemed alarmed at the details of some of her missions so she started censoring out the worse parts, and ended up having to include more personal information as a result. He wrote back about life in his house by the water, about his current projects and things he and Pepper had learned to cook together.

Space was persistently beautiful – blazing star clusters, glinting metropolises, planets of different hues appearing out of the inky blackness. But the moment Maggie got close enough, all she found was pain.

On the Benatar, life was quiet. Rocket sometimes played music (from the 80's on Earth, bizarrely), but it made his eyes well up and his ears droop, and it wasn't long before he turned it off again. Breaking down in tears, at least, was a normal part of life now. Nebula's tear ducts had been removed decades ago, but she expressed grief in her own way.

Nebula and Maggie often sat side by side, watching the stars shine distant and faint outside the cockpit. In bits and pieces, Maggie learned how to fly the ship. Carol just became busier and busier as the months went on, until she was more often away from the Benatar than in it.

Maggie didn't enjoy using violence. It didn't make her feel better, and even when she was fighting death cults and rioters it left a bad taste in her mouth, because these were all beings reacting to immeasurable pain. Usually, it just made her feel tired.

She stopped eating, and only realized she'd done so when Nebula forced her to eat a ration bar. She threw it up, but Nebula made her keep trying until she could keep something down. Nebula's metal fingers were cool against the back of her neck, and her relentless black eyes glittered with understanding.

When Maggie pulled herself out of numbness, from time to time deciding to try something at least resembling a healthy coping mechanism, the names and faces overwhelmed her.

Sam. Sam who'd flown with her in battle. Sam who'd brought her the cure to her trigger words and hugged her and laughed with her in her triumphs.

Vision. Her best friend. The one who'd understood her right away – her urge to become a person, her pain and love and hopes.

Wanda. She'd always looked forward to getting to know her. Wanda who'd died knowing she'd failed Vision.

T'Challa. He'd torn her wings away, and she'd forgiven him. He'd given Bucky a home when the world was against him. He was a good man, a good king.

Shuri. A bright star who'd solved the wicked tangle of Maggie and Bucky's minds and given them freedom.

Peter. Still… still too painful to think about. His earnest enthusiasm haunted the corners of her nightmares sometimes.

Bucky.

Four Months Later

Then there came a firefight that Maggie couldn't find a way out of.

They'd been hunting these pirates for weeks now, always a few hours too late to catch them. The hairless, bright-yellow-hued pirates hailed from the planet of Aakon, and for months they'd been cruising from planet to planet, kidnapping beings left lost and alone after the Decimation and selling them as slaves. The intergalactic slave trade had kicked up since the Decimation, since half the universe's work force had vanished. It was a sickening consequence of an already catastrophic tragedy, and it made Maggie's blood boil.

The crew of the Benatar had found the pirate headquarters, a floating fortress over a bronze-hued gas planet. They'd called Carol, but for whatever reason she was out of reach, so after a short discussion Maggie, Nebula and Rocket set about infiltration. Only it turned out the pirates' scanners were a little better than anticipated, and the infiltration quickly turned into a firefight.

Maggie dashed down a narrow corridor, firing blindly over her shoulder at the pack of shouting pirates chasing her. Laser blasts screamed over her head.

"Guys, I'm pinned down!" she shouted into the comms as she leaped over a riveted bulkhead, but only got crackly static in reply. Of course they have jammers. She heard a whine as some weapon behind her powered up, and dove sideways. Half a second later the passageway she'd been sprinting down blossomed with flame and smoke.

Maggie had only one advantage over the Aakon pirates, which was that she was faster than them in their bulky armored outfits. There were simply too many of them to fight in the cramped space of this fortress, they'd overwhelm her, so her only option was to outrun them. She put on a burst of speed, darting down passageways searching for an exit. The floor shook from hundreds of heavy footfalls, and the shrieks and booms of blaster fire chased her through the halls.

"Rocket, Nebula, do you copy?" she shouted, heart in her mouth. She turned another corner, cursing, then abruptly skidded to a halt.

She'd come to a dead end. The passageway stretched about thirty feet down to a blank expanse of wall, with not even a window to give her a glimpse of the black sky outside. Narrow, curved alcoves in the walls gave the passageway an eerie, shadowy feeling. Maggie already knew she didn't have enough firepower to break through the fortress hull without killing herself.

Chest pounding, Maggie swiveled, only to hear the pirates' clattering footsteps sharply increase in volume. An orange laser blast streaked down the corridor she'd come from.

She dove sideways, pressing herself into one of the curved alcoves just as the first pirate came running past the intersection. Dozens followed, until the air reverberated with the sounds of blasterfire and boots on metal.

Maggie barely fit in the shallow alcove, and despite the clamor she clapped a hand over her mouth to stifle her ragged breaths. She pressed herself further against the wall. "Guys?" she whispered into the comms.

Still no reply. And any moment now one of the pirates would think to run down this dead end, to check each shadowy alcove.

It's alright, she thought, as the laser blasts and shouts reached a deafening pitch. Pressed against her back, her wings whirred. Standing tall, wings held high. She always knew she'd die that way.

It's alright. She'd made a difference here, crippled the pirates' raiding ships and destroyed their holding cells, so they couldn't kidnap anyone else. She'd protected people. In the wake of her failure, she had saved lives.

She thought about something Natasha had mentioned about a red ledger, dripping with blood. Maggie wondered where her scales rested. If she'd done enough good.

The footsteps grew louder, and she heard shouts that her universal communicator translated as calls to turn back and search the ship from top to bottom. The laser blasts were thick now, a constant stream of light just around the corner from the dead end she was trapped in. She curled her hands into fists.

Maggie thought of Bucky's sea-blue eyes, calm and glinting with light, as if they were saying hello.

"One day," she whispered to herself, and stepped out of the shadows.

Two minutes later, Maggie's eyes snapped open and she felt her peace ripped away.

She'd charged headlong into the horde of shouting pirates, roaring her defiance. But when they'd knocked her down and aimed their blasters at her head, the corridor had erupted once more with light before falling still.

Groaning, Maggie pushed bodies off her and sat up to see Rocket and Nebula standing at the other end of the passageway, each holding a massive energy cannon.

Maggie put a hand to her chest. Alive.

Still.

"You alright, big bird?" Rocket called. His brow was drawn together, and he watched her closely. Had he seen…?

Maggie looked down at her clawed gauntlets. They were coated in black, sticky blood. "I'm alright," she intoned.

Nebula dropped her energy cannon and picked her way across the fallen pirates toward Maggie. "Carol's here, she took care of the rest of them." Maggie blinked when Nebula's blue hand appeared in her field of vision. "Let's get back to the ship."

Maggie looked up into Nebula's hard blue face. Her usual scowl was gone, meaning her expression was uncharacteristically open – her eyes, black as the empty night sky, seemed almost warm. Maggie's heart lurched. She knew.

"Come on," Nebula murmured, not unkindly.

Maggie took Nebula's outstretched hand and let her pull her to her feet.

She slept for eighteen hours after the mission. When she woke, Nebula and Rocket heard her moving about and called her to the cockpit.

"We're heading back to Terra," Rocket said, his feet propped up on the control panel.

Maggie glanced sharply at Nebula. "Why?"

"Rhodey and Natasha are short staffed," Nebula said coolly. "They need some help with a mission. It'll take a few weeks."

"And let me guess, I'm going on the mission and you two aren't?"

Rocket held up his paws. "Someone's feeling spiky." She shot him a glare.

Nebula leaned forward. "This isn't punishment, Maggie."

"Isn't it?"

Nebula's dark eyes held hers. "No." It was almost eerie, how Nebula seemed to read Maggie's thoughts and intentions so clearly. "Our friends need help, and you can help them. We're still needed out here, but we'll be okay without you for now." She paused. "Maybe you could see your family."

For a moment, Maggie considered getting angry. She could shout, insist on staying with the Benatar. But even though this was a poorly concealed attempt to baby her, Maggie didn't doubt that there was a mission she was needed on. And even though the universe still churned with chaos, things had certainly settled down over the months. Most major population hubs had regained some kind of order. Minority factions like the Aakon pirates still caused violence and upheaval, but on the whole life was stable again. Stable, and filled with grief.

So Maggie lowered her hackles and sighed. "Alright," she murmured. "Earth it is, then."

Paris, France

"Rhodey!"

From amidst a circle of men and women in wrinkled suits standing outside the Palais Bourbon, Rhodey's head jerked up. People filled the street outside the grand stone palace – Rhodey stood in an area cordoned off and defended by soldiers armed to the teeth, but beyond the barriers milled a thick crowd of shouting protesters. The world was so empty nowadays that it was startling to see so many people in one place, and the clamor was jarring after the eerie silence that usually met Rhodey wherever he went.

Still, he spotted her immediately. Maggie had somehow slipped through the cordons and she stood on the other side of the long stone steps, watching him. She wore a long, dark trench coat which glistened from Paris's misty drizzle, and under the trench coat he could see the dark metallic glint of her uniform.

Rhodey grabbed the official closest to him and muttered a few last-minute instructions, then jogged across the steps as fast as his exosuit could take him.

"Maggie, oh my god." He stopped short a few feet away from her and took her in. It had been six months since he last saw her in the flesh, and it seemed that everything had changed since then. She looked different, older, and she'd lost weight. She still had that scar through her left eyebrow that she'd received in the Battle of Wakanda, and it made her look hardened. He felt a twinge of sadness at that thought – as if she hasn't been hardened enough in her life.

The corners of Maggie's mouth turned up, but the smile didn't reach her eyes. "Hi Rhodey."

He stepped forward and wrapped her in a hug, ignoring the shouting crowd and the fine drizzle on his face. After a moment's hesitation, Maggie returned the hug. "Natasha said you'd be coming back, but I didn't realize you'd be here so soon."

"Perks of space travel," she murmured as she pulled away. Rhodey realized for the first time ever that Maggie was probably the first human to ever travel so far in space. Funny how little facts like that could fall by the wayside in this new world. Her eyes flicked over him. "You look tired."

Didn't he know it. Six months of travelling all over the world trying to put out literal and metaphoric fires took its toll. "Pot, kettle," he replied pointedly. "How are you doing, Maggie?"

Her eyes flickered, but beyond that she betrayed no emotion. "I…" she pressed her lips together. "How are you?"

He nodded slowly. "Right, stupid question. Forget I asked."

Maggie's brow creased. "No, that's not…" she sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. "I'm sorry, I've just spent the last few months in space with a cyborg and a raccoon, I don't…" she gestured between them. "I still don't know how to… how to do this."

"No, I'm sorry," Rhodey reached out to squeeze her shoulder. "There's a lot going on, I snapped. I shouldn't have. I'm glad you're back."

She smiled gratefully at him. "Thanks, Rhodey. It's good to see you."

"How's space?"

"It's uh…" she looked around, taking in the tall stone pillars of the Palais Bourbon and the screaming, furious crowd on the street below. "It's a lot like this."

Rhodey's mouth quirked. "So this should be a no brainer for you, then."

"What's going on? I literally arrived on Terr- on Earth twenty minutes ago. Fill me in."

Rhodey let out a sigh. "What isn't going on? I thought we were starting to make headway these last few weeks and then it all fell to shit again." He started counting things off on his fingers. "The global economy fell apart again yesterday, right after Wakanda got it up and running again. There's been urban wildfires all across the Southern Hemisphere because of all the unattended personal property and the understaffed emergency services, there's riots in Russia because the government's destroying property belonging to the Vanished, gangs in Southeast Asia are getting violently murdered and we don't know by who, there's more looting in China, and…" he gestured around. "A bunch of European countries have banded together and are holding elections. Turns out people have some pretty strong opinions about that."

Maggie's eyes steadily widened as he spoke, and her gaze flicked to the crowd. He watched her attention fall on one of the biggest signs, a giant wooden placard with the silhouette of someone fading to dust and the word REPENT on it.

"What's that about?"

Rhodey grimaced. "Don't worry about them, there's not many of them in the crowd. They're just the best at making signs, apparently."

"What does it mean?"

He folded his arms across his chest. "They're religious nuts. They're claiming that the Decimation was actually the rapture – god's will, and all that. They, uh… they've been worshiping Thanos like some kind of messiah."

The darkness that rolled over Maggie's face made Rhodey's eyes widen; her brow lowered and her eyes glinted with something dangerous, so suddenly that it took him aback. He shuffled forward, as if to hold her back, but she didn't move a muscle.

"I suppose it's easier for them to see it that way," he said cautiously. He'd made his peace with it. "For them, everyone who died was worthy. They're in a better place."

Maggie swallowed and tore her eyes away from the sign. The darkness rolled back to leave blankness in its wake. "So where does that leave us?"

"Picking up the pieces," he replied. And for the first time in a long time that phrase didn't make him want to curl up and hide.

Maggie took a long breath through her nose. "Let's get to work, then." They paced back toward the gaggle of officials outside the palace. Maggie's boots were silent on the stone steps, so Rhodey had to keep looking at her out of the corner of his eye to make sure she was still there.

"Have things been…" Maggie mulled over the words. "Have things been alright here? Y'know, with Natasha, and Wakanda, and, uh…"

"And Tony?" Rhodey finished wryly. Maggie just bowed her head. "I see him from time to time, when I get the chance to visit. Mostly I'm around Nat, and she's… well, she's working. Like us. Still no word from Thor, though Valkyrie assures us he's alive. Steve's doing alright for himself in New York." He scratched his head. "I haven't seen more than two Avengers in the same room in months, though, now that I think about it."

"I suppose the holocalls don't count," Maggie murmured.

"Probably not. Are you going to visit Tony while you're here?"

She avoided his eyes. "Tony's doing fine without me, Rhodey. I just want to work."

"Maggie-"

"I mean it. He and Pepper deserve a chance to be happy. I'm not going to be any help with that."

"And what, you don't deserve a chance at being happy?"

She shrugged noncommittally.

"Maggie, I promise you they'd be glad to see you, especially now because of the" – his eyes snapped wide open. Shit, shit shit. He'd almost forgotten Tony had told him to keep it a secret – "because of the new work they've done on the house," he finished lamely, though he kept his face as stoic as possible. "It looks great."

As they walked the last few steps toward the group of officials, Maggie cast a long look at him and he was sure he'd spilled the beans. Don't tell anyone, Rhodey, Tony had told him that night he'd visited the house, months ago. Not even Maggie.

But then Maggie's eyes slid away from his face, and she walked right into the middle of the huddled officials. "Alright," she said. "First thing we need to do is disperse these crowds, and then we can work on getting people engaged in a way that's actually going to help us." She gestured at the armed soldiers and the cordons, as the officials stared at her. "The last thing we need at a time like this is barriers."

She met Rhodey's eyes, and he nodded. Time to get to work, indeed.

Ten days later, the situation in Europe had stabilized enough for Maggie to borrow Rhodey's Quinjet and fly across the Atlantic. Her mind was so full of geopolitics and flight plans and the latest transmission from Carol that she didn't put any thought into what to say to her brother until she found herself standing on the wooden porch of his house by the lake, her finger on the doorbell.

She looked down at herself. She hadn't even thought to change out of the uniform. Stupid. She reached up to her hair, thinking she could at least pull it out of its severe braid, but then she heard footsteps and suddenly the front door swung open.

"Well look what the cat dragged in." The corners of Tony's warm eyes wrinkled as he grinned at her. He looked like his old self again – better, almost. He'd grown into his grey hairs, and as he stood in the doorway wearing a warm navy sweater and dark trousers it looked as if he inhabited every inch of this cozy house. It looked like him. There was still sadness behind his eyes, but Maggie couldn't remember the last time someone looked so completely and utterly happy to see her.

His grin softened. "Just kidding, we don't have a cat. Yet. C'mere, Maggie." He spread his arms and without thinking about it Maggie stepped forward and hugged him. He smelled like laundry detergent and fresh air, and his sharply trimmed beard scratched the side of her face as he pulled away. "Heard you were back." His eyes flicked over her. "Hi."

Maggie stared at him. He looks different, she thought. Maybe it was just her perception. She'd been working hard for ten days, and yet the entire time in Europe she'd had a suspicion – or more of an observation, really – swirling to fruition in the back of her mind. She could hardly believe it, but she still trusted her own instincts. Only one way to confirm it.

Tony had started to frown. "Maggie? What's-"

"Pepper's pregnant," she blurted out.

Tony's eyes went wide, and then narrowed in a scowl. "Rhodey."

Maggie's heart fluttered. "It's true." Her own eyes widened, staring at her brother and not really seeing him, and she waited for her own words to sink in. Pepper's pregnant.

It floored her. In amongst all the death and chaos she'd been wading through for months, she'd almost forgotten that life was possible. Some semblance of a future opened up in her mind; a small chink in the darkness.

At that moment, Pepper appeared in the hallway behind Tony. "Maggie, oh my god!" She hastened forward, but Tony seemed to be rooted in place in the doorway and she couldn't get past him, so she settled for waving. Maggie waved back, staring at her stomach. Pepper wore a baggy sweater so Maggie couldn't really tell, but she looked from Pepper's wide, glinting eyes and back to Tony's face, and she knew.

Tony seemed to be frozen, looking conflicted and wary and like he was trying to string together some kind of explanation.

Maggie opened and closed her mouth a few times. "Holy shit."

Behind Tony, Pepper smiled and tried to look at her husband's face. "You told her?"

"She figured it out," he replied, still staring at Maggie.

For a few moments, silence hung between Tony and Maggie. Birds chirped in the garden. Maggie was still struggling to comprehend the idea of Pepper being pregnant, but she understood the look of growing wariness on Tony's face. He didn't want to hurt her.

She met his eyes. "Are you scared?"

A beat of silence passed. "Terrified."

Pepper covered her mouth with her hand, her eyes gleaming as she looked between the siblings.

Slowly, Maggie reached out. She watched her hand land on the shoulder of Tony's blue sweater, and she cautiously tightened her fingers, holding him. Her eyes lifted back to his face.

"Tony," she said, her voice hushed. "You're going to be a wonderful father."

Tony Stark's eyes filled with tears.