Returning to the Stark Mansion carries no relief or sense of safety with it. Doubtlessly SHIELD will have combed through the house already in search of information on whatever Howard Stark worked on before his death and to get their hands on whatever tech was in there. And to get rid of incriminating info on SHIELD, if it exists at all. They probably desecrated her workshop while they were at it,
Plus, they very likely bugged the house, too. In the name of protection.
"Listen, Maggie," Obie says next to her as the limousine drives up to the house. He'd been waiting for her outside the hospital room SHIELD had smuggled her into, and had soon after bundled her up and put her into the car.
She very nearly threw up at the thought of having to sit in a car after the… accident. But she managed to keep it together. Stark men are made of iron, Father used to say. Maggie is no man, but she can manage the iron thing no problem.
"Yeah?" she asks her godfather.
"You don't have to do anything. I'll take care of everything. You just rest, all right?" He squeezes her shoulder. She bites back a wince.
She's bruised all over. One arm is in a cast which means her work speed will be slow.
"Thanks, Obie," she answers. "You don't have to, though. I need to do something, I'll go crazy if I don't."
"You Starks," he says exasperatedly, shaking his head. "Listen to the doctor's orders, Maggie. Rest. Actually, I'll talk to Jarvis and the mansion staff, we both know you're not going to listen anyway."
"Ha," she laughs weakly. "Well-played. Okay, I'll stay away from the workshop."
Don't expect her to be inactive, though. She can operate a computer just fine.
"Good girl," Obie says.
Not by a long shot.
―~~―~~―
The first board meeting of Stark Industries comes far too quickly for Maggie's liking. Her parents' wills had been read only the previous day, the funeral - a huge production filled with far too many people and speeches - was two days before that.
As expected, Maggie inherited almost the entire Stark fortune and company, with just a few instructions to give money to charity.
But her inheriting the company is just on paper. Major shareholder she might be now, but the board of directors decides on the CEO. They'd no doubt suggest Obadiah take over instead of her. He's already interim CEO.
To be honest, Maggie isn't particularly interested in being CEO - MagTech is already enough work - but it is her birthright, her inheritance, her legacy, and she would absolutely not see it in anyone else's hands, even her godfather's.
So.
She's going to have to convince the all-male and on-average thrice her age board members that she's the best person to be the head of Stark Industries, in all her twenty-one year old female glory. Fun.
Maggie walks into the meeting room two hours early, in part because she has preparations to make, and partly because she is paranoid that they gave her the wrong meeting time to make her look stupid for arriving late. Good call, it turns out, because the old bastards start arriving an hour later and look fairly displeased to see her there, sitting at the head of the table in her father's chair, her currently black hair braided into a coronet atop her head, her subtle but devastating make-up carefully applied. Her black skirt suit is modest in theory, but it's tailored to mould along every slender curve, and paired with her black heels her legs seem to go on for miles even though she's not actually that tall.
She greets every single man that comes in by name sweetly, lets them stare at her legs and curves while she asks how their wives are doing, they'd gotten along so well at the last charity event. Accepts their condolences for the loss of her parents graciously and lets them paw at her hand and squeeze her shoulder, "If you need anything, just ask," and "Howard would have wanted me to look out for you" falling from their lips, of course they'll be here for her in such a trying time, perhaps she would like to come over for dinner sometime. Two of them mention how their sons are her age. Another is oh-so-coincidentally going through a divorce as of last week and invites her over for dinner.
Disgusting.
Obadiah comes in last, strolling in as if he owns the place. Clearly aware of the true meeting time and not having told her a fucking thing about it.
Maggie expected better of him, but business always comes first for Obie. She'd learnt that in the past year of heading her own business, so she isn't particularly surprised. In any case, his confident steps falter upon seeing her, but then he shakes his head fondly, an exasperated smile taking over his features. He knows that she caught him, but he won't apologise for it - business is business. But for the same reason, he can't be angry at her. She's doing the same thing he is.
The clock chimes one and the meeting begins. Obie takes control of it naturally, he's usually the one who dominates the talks. And like her father used to, Maggie sits back, staying quiet and listening attentively. Most of it is concern over stocks falling and what course shall be taken. They tiptoe around the CEO subject, probably because Howard Stark's oh-so-fragile grieving daughter is sitting right there.
"With Howard gone, it's not certain stocks will rise again-"
"Oh, but they will," Maggie finally deigns to speak. From her pocket she pulls a remote control and points it at the metal contraption in the corner that nobody has questioned the presence of so far. It hums to life, lights illuminating, blue rays shining above it, and then the hologram of a 3D blueprint appears. Shocked exclamations ensue from half the board, awed silence from the other. Hologram technology had always been the stuff of science-fiction, until now.
To be fair, the hologram projector was the result of a Star Wars binge with Rhodey during their time at MIT. She was on her twenty-second hour of no sleep and he on his eighteenth, both hyped up on caffeine and sugar. They'd barely come out of the workshop for weeks, and they might have acted various scenes, with Rhodey in the role of Princess Leia, Maggie as Chewbacca, and DUM-E playing both Luke Skywalker and R2D2 with great enthusiasm. The memory makes her want to smile, but in this setting she can't.
"As you can see, the hologram shows the blueprint of a submarine. In speed, stealth, and radar technology it far surpasses everything else currently traversing the seas. The weapon systems are easily customisable, the engines are efficient enough to go around the world on one tankful of fuel." She presses the forward button and a new blueprint appears. The men watch as if hypnotised. It doesn't even matter what she's showing them, all their minds are just going oh, shiny hologram. "A surveillance drone I designed last year. Again, outfitted with stealth technology and completely silent. Next, we have a few military aircrafts and the weapons to go with them. Missile defence system. Radio-communication device. Sniper rifles, various models." On and on Maggie lists the devices she invented over the course of her life and pretends as if the hologram projector is perfectly normal and not revolutionary at all.
It totally is though, and they better be fucking aware of that.
"And that's just the military stuff," she finishes eventually. "So, as you can see, provided we come to an acceptable agreement Stark Industries' stocks are going to be rising rapidly very soon indeed."
"Acceptable agreement?" Generic board member number seven asks. Maggie is pretty sure that this is the one who has a gambling problem. Hawthorn, Basil.
She smirks and leans back. "Oh, come now. Unless you've already decided on a CEO behind my back - which would end very unfortunately for everyone involved with the exception of myself - we all know what the real point of this meeting is."
"Maggie, my dear," Obie speaks up, frowning. "You… want to be CEO of Stark Industries?"
She snaps her fingers. "Bingo."
Uneasy looks traded between sexist assholes. Obie (sexist asshole only when it benefits him) takes charge. "Maggie, you're already responsible for MagTech."
"Which will continue as it always has, as a subsidiary of Stark Industries." Maggie smiles her most charming smile at him.
"I assumed you wanted to go into research, though. You're a scientist first, that's what you always said. Being the CEO of the company will cut heavily into your time in the workshop, and look at all you've accomplished already," Obie points out. He does have a point. But again, Stark Industries is hers. And as if she could ever be content with what she has. She always needs more, needs to create, needs to progress. One day she's going to rattle the stars and even that won't be enough.
"Keyword 'assumed'," Maggie replies. "Father managed, did he not? So will I."
"You are not your father, Miss Stark," Blakely, the guy who's trying to trade his trophy wife for Maggie, speaks up patronisingly.
"I'm not," she agrees. ""My interests are far wider spread than his. My genius is wasted on being limited to military technology, which is why under my leadership, Stark Industries will be expanding into medical technology, biometric systems, communications, entertainment and recreation among other fields. Gentlemen, I am going to take over the world."
Silence follows that grand statement. Maggie smiles triumphantly.
"And we all know that I don't particularly need Stark Industries to do it. It would accelerate the process, certainly, but ultimately…" She shrugs. "I have the seed capital a hundred times over, I have the skills to do it… give it a little time and I'll do it without the backing of Stark Industries."
Her father had raised Stark Industries from the ground up, in a less than optimal economy, with barely any money to his name and only his brain to back it up.
Maggie would do so much better than him.
"Your choice, gentlemen. Either elect a Stark to head Stark Industries, the way it was meant to be… or go and see how far the stocks really will fall when the company has no Stark at all. I'd sell my shares right now while they're still worth something."
―~~―~~―
Maggie's throat is hoarse by the time she walks out of SI's Main Office, Obie on her right the way he used to be at Father's.
"You did well, Maggie," he says.
"Of course I did. I had excellent examples to learn from," she answers evenly.
Examples were all she got. No-one ever deigned to teach her to lead a company, she had to figure it all out herself. Then again, she's Maggie Stark, so she did brilliantly. Teachers would have just slowed the process down.
"I want you to know that you can always ask me for advice," Obie tells her seriously. "You're my goddaughter and now, my business partner. I have your back, no matter what, and any experience you lack I can provide."
"That means a lot," Maggie murmurs, halfway sincere. "Thank you."
Obie at her back will make so many things so much easier.
"You surprised my today. All those inventions… was the hologram projector your work, too, or from Howard's pile of jealously guarded treasures, never to be shared with the world?"
Maggie grins. "That baby's all mine. It's still got a few bugs though. But I figured I could make a few jaws drop with it anyway."
"You certainly did." He clasps her shoulder. "I'm proud of you. Howie would be, too."
That… is not a statement she wants to think too much about, the murders and the pain still too raw. What little sleep she'd gotten since was plagued by nightmares.
"Thank you. Hey…" She fidgets, looks at the ground.
"What is it, Maggie?"
"It's just, I know he was working on something important before his death." She looks up. "Do you know anything about that?"
"So you noticed it, too?" Obie sighs deeply. "He skipped meetings and claimed to be busy in the days before the accident. I assumed he was just trying to get his work done so he'd have more time for the family holiday."
"But you don't know what it was?"
He chuckles sadly. "This is Howie we're talking about."
"Haha," she laughs weakly. "True enough. I guess I just want to… I don't know."
"Connect with him?" Obie asks.
"Something like that." She stifles a scowl and shoves the thought of those test tubes deep down.
"It's getting late, do you need a ride home? Can't drive with one arm in a brace," he offers.
Maggie shakes her head. "I've got a ride, but thanks. See you tomorrow."
"Of course." He grins and adds, "Boss."
"I could get used to that," she answers with a grin of her own and watches as he walks away before she makes her way to the parking lot. The black car that waits for her doesn't look special at all, but she knows for a fact that it's bulletproof and runs on electricity the way she designed it. She gets a kick out of the fact that SHIELD uses cars she drew the blueprints for.
Maggie plops down in the front passenger seat. "Board members are all bugged. Have fun eavesdropping on the sleazebags talk about how to best manipulate me."
"No difficulties?"
She gives Fury a look. "They were too busy staring at my legs and pawing at my hand to notice me slipping bugs into their clothes. Ugh, I feel dirty."
He starts the car without answering.
"I still heavily doubt they know anything," Maggie mutters. "Fucking sexist assholes. One of them invited me to dinner in the same breath that he mentioned his recent divorce. While touching my hand." She waves her hand for emphasis. "That'll be the first one to be quietly removed from the board."
"If there is a chance that they have information, it needs to be investigated," Fury answers, eyes on the road. "No matter how you feel about it, Stark. The consequences of Howard Stark's death are far worse than you think."
"Yes, well, it's not like anyone's telling me shit, so how would I know?" She rolls her eyes.
"Do your job until your security clearance is high enough. Until then, the information is classified."
Asshole. She's going to hack SHIELD and get the information her own way. Speaking of, "There were some projects on Father's office computer that I'm assuming were meant for SHIELD. Buried under a fuckton of boring shit. Encrypted to the nines. Well, not anymore." Out of her bag she pulls a hard disk.
Fury takes it. "Our agents already went through his data."
"Obviously they didn't do their job right." She crosses her arms. "If they had found it, they'd have removed it. It all but screams spy gear."
"I assume you removed the information from the systems."
"Of course," she snorts. "No idea what he was thinking, saving the data on his office computer. Probably just stashing it there for later because he had an idea while sitting at his desk, then something more important came up and he forgot. Happens to all of us."
Fury nods curtly.
"So we're going to another super secret SHIELD facility. Where is it? Is it underground? Is it like the last one? No, we're in the middle of NYC, of course it's not. It's probably some office building that nobody would ever suspect. With at least twelve basement levels. Am I right? I'm definitely right."
"Do you ever shut up, Stark?"
"Do you ever not sound pissed? Or look pissed? Are you ever not pissed?" Maggie eyes him. "What do you do for fun?"
"Shutting immature brats up."
"How am I immature?" she asks indignantly. "I'm totally mature!"
"'I am going to take over the world,'" he quotes her sarcastically.
"I figured if I was dramatic enough they'd forget I don't have a dick," she explains reasonably. "I'm so not world-domination material. I can't even keep a cactus alive. I'd probably manage to kill a pet rock."
"That I can see," he comments dryly.
"See? I know my limits. Super mature."
He pulls into a parking lot. "Follow," he orders and gets out of the car. Maggie takes a deep breath, bracing herself. Conversation over, no more distraction. Okay.
"Following's not my style," she mutters as she climbs out of the car and follows him.
Fury leads her into a shiny office building - totally called it - purposefully striding past welcoming desks to an elevator. He doesn't touch the buttons for the different floors, instead opens a hidden panel which reveals a hand-print scanner (nice!) and number pad. He angles himself so she can't see what he does. The elevator sets itself in motion.
Maggie doesn't say a word, not even when the doors open again to what is definitely an underground level - again, called it - and Fury leads her down a corridor. More super secret codes entered into super secret number pads, super secret heavy steel doors slide open, and then-
The lab has 'Howard Stark' written all over it. It even smells like him, or maybe that's just in her head. Maggie shudders.
More than anything it feels like a mausoleum, the memory, the essence of a dead man preserved here. Machines, instruments, blueprints. A family picture on the wall, all of them smiling stiffly, and Maggie really doesn't know what to think of her face in Father's workspace, his sanctuary.
She should not be here.
She doesn't want to be here, but Pierce wants to know what Father was working on and how far he got, and it turns out that SHIELD's scientists couldn't make heads nor tail of most of his work. Maggie is the next best option. If she can't give them what they want, they'll try someone else.
The faint suspicion that Pierce knows what Howard's project was - because in the past days she's heard so much about how much he did for SHIELD that she's pretty sure that the organisation is more his child than she was, it stands to reason that if he shared the big secret with anyone it'd be a member, which also might mean that his death was ordered by someone in SHIELD, but she's not thinking about that, can't let anything show on her face - is carefully hidden. Maggie is fully aware that she's way in over her head, trying to bullshit people that sniff out lies and plots professionally.
So she's not going to bullshit them. She'll continue telling them she doesn't know anything about Howard's work - it's the truth. And she's going to bury any suspicions, any thought about the test tubes, even the faintest trace of dishonesty, deep down in her mind, and not touch them for the next three years. New inventions, business expansion, research - that's what she will focus on.
And when enough time has passed, when she's learned how SHIELD operates, once they don't ask her questions anymore, once she knows enough of their surveillance tech to fool it - only then will she begin figuring out just what her father died for.
"So have you got any hints as to what I'm looking for?" she asks Fury, shoving the dread and sense of wrongness invading this place leaves her with down and instead pulling up that bit of anticipation and giddiness that comes with being let loose in her father's secret workshop - she'd rarely been allowed to touch anything in his official one, if she was invited inside at all. The excited smile comes easily, and it grows at Fury's barely hidden look of disgust. "Like, blueprints for a superweapon or some kind of virus or computer program?"
"Start working."
"Mm," Maggie hums. "Do you ever smile? I heard that people who smile are less likely to go bald. You have very nice hair, it'd be a shame to lose it."
"Stark, is this a joke to you?"
"The world's my playground. Are you going to stand there and watch the whole time while I do my thing?" she asks in return.
"As a civilian, you shouldn't even be here, Stark," Fury growls.
She didn't ask to be here. It was just assumed that she'd be. Learning of SHIELD apparently meant being a part of it. They'd wanted to make her sign fancy NDAs and work contracts, too, but she refused to do so without legal counsel. And by legal counsel she meant lawyers not on SHIELD's payroll. As a compromise, she's now a consultant.
Peggy had been understanding, Pierce had pretended to be, and Fury was just plain pissed off. His problem, not hers. Who's she going to tell about SHIELD anyway? There's no benefit in revealing them.
She can't deny though that pissing Fury off is a thrilling pastime.
"Suit yourself," she shrugs. "I'll look at the computers first."
SHIELD would have stripped the room of anything they already understood or deemed too dangerous for her to see. But as she'd seen earlier today, they were not perfect and Howard was too smart for them. Maggie has hopes. Not high ones because she can't believe that Howard would do his secret project in a spy agency of all places, and if he did then why would he have the fruits of his work with him in the car that day of the accident? It wouldn't make any sense.
The ill-fated Christmas vacation was supposed to be spent in a villa suspiciously close to the SHIELD facility Peggy had been at that night, it stood to reason that Howard was transporting the vials to SHIELD under the guise of a family vacation.
But hey, if they want her sniffing through his things, his brilliant inventions, then who is she to argue?
Maggie gets to work, sitting herself in front of the row of computers. Some of them are old enough that she suspects them to be keepsakes from the forties. Which is probably the point of putting information on them - barely anyone knew how to work those things anymore.
Well, she isn't a genius for nothing.
The only times she pauses her work is when she needs a coffee or the bathroom. She doesn't talk to Fury at all, instead chattering at the machines, "Come on buddy, you know you wanna talk to me," and "Sweetie, we'll have you fixed up in no time, won't hurt, I promise."
When Fury next does speak, what he says is: "It's four in the goddamn morning, Stark."
"Mm," she hums, typing with one hand faster than most people ever manage with both. Father kept all his data in some obscure filing system that she only began to understand three hours ago, and of course everything is encrypted. Which isn't much of a hindrance to her, but she can see why the SHIELD hackers gave up. "You can go if you're tired."
"Stark. You are tired," Fury replies. "Go home and sleep."
"I'm not sleepy."
"You have yawned twice in the past ten minutes."
Maggie shrugs. "Still not sleepy. Just a little tired." Hm, that's one interesting file. Now she knows what kind of mics the mansion is probably bugged with. Should be a piece of cake to get some jamming tech running. For the cameras she's going to have to think of something else, though.
"Stark." Fury's entire voice is judgement.
"Yes, Deputy Director Fury?" she asks pleasantly.
"We're going."
"Just a minute longer," she waves him off.
"Stark."
"Yes, yes." She rolls her eyes, shutting down the computer. Her spine cracks when she gets up and stretches. Rhodey hates it when she does that. Fury doesn't even twitch, but she hopes he shares Rhodey's opinion.
The walk back to the car is silent and so is the car ride. Maggie's mind is still reeling from the information she found. Howard built and did things she never considered. The Stark Industries Weapons are one thing, but the work he did for SHIELD? In some cases, unethical at best. Maggie is fully aware that her moral code is not without flaw, but she does have one, whereas Howard unapologetically contributed to the nuclear bomb which says a lot about his, or rather, the lack thereof.
SHIELD steals technology and research. Howard has papers on his computer that were never published, papers that could do so much good in the world of science. Written by scientists that Maggie has mostly never heard of, but some she did and she knows that they'd never have given Howard the fruits of their labours willingly.
The thought of herself being exploited in such a way makes her want to punch someone's face in.
"Stark, wake up."
"I'm not sleeping," Maggie answers. "Oh, we're here. Great. Thanks for the ride. See ya tomorrow."
―~~―~~―
The next few days pass in more or less the same manner. Endless meetings with the board of Stark Industries, casually dangling her more flashy inventions in front of them like carrots. After that, car rides with Fury and going through her father's stuff until he decides it's bedtime for her. Ha, as if. The moment she's back at her childhood home, she's back in the workshop she set up there.
It's more of a temporary thing. The thought of staying in the house of her childhood is stifling. She wants to go somewhere sunny. The elegant New York mansion is cold and empty, her steps there echo when she walks the halls. The staff does their best, but it's not a home, not the way her house near the MIT was. There are memories everywhere, but they are rarely happy ones. Any moment, she expects her mother's clacking heels to approach, followed by exasperated comments to be a little more Margaret and a little less Maggie.
Having the staff around is nice, though. Mr. Jarvis is the best. She missed having the man who taught her boxing and tucked her in at night after telling her stories around.
But he's getting on in years and should be with his family instead of taking care of a giant mansion and garden that his dead friends owned and only Maggie lives in now - and she's gone most of the day and night.
No, Maggie wants to move somewhere warm and sunny. Live in a house by the sea far away from SHIELD's headquarters, a house that she herself will build. Somewhere that's only hers. With a gigantic workshop and lab, of course. As soon as she can, she's going to look for properties that suit her needs - and do it discretely. Tipping off SHIELD before it's done would mean that they'd somehow get their hands on her building plans, probably infiltrate the construction workers and put listening devices in the walls the way they did in the mansion, and just generally poke their noses where Maggie doesn't want them.
Thanks but no thanks.
If they claim that it's for her protection, she'll introduce them to the world's most advanced security system. It's still in the crazy idea stage, but she's got some time still. She has a three-year plan for getting the hell out of NYC, in order to begin working on the mystery liquid her father died for after that without anyone knowing.
She'll have to be careful. Make it look like the whims of a spoiled girl. Demand the Stark Industries Headquarters move with her, expect everybody to cater to her demands. Generally act like everything the media has so far accused her of being.
Might be fun, actually. No reason she shouldn't enjoy it, so long as she didn't get careless.
The doorbell rings on the fifth day after her gaining the title of CEO. It's early, six in the morning, but Maggie is awake already, or rather, awake still. She's running on coffee, determination, and spite. Which SHIELD would know, they had installed cameras even in her workshop despite acquiescing to her requests not to and not told her about it - needless to say, she's taken to writing her notes down triple-encoded and working on three projects at once to make her work harder to follow.
It was probably a SHIELD agent at the door.
This turns out to be a false assumption.
"Rhodey," she breathes, and throws herself into her best and only friend's arms.
"Hey," he answers, hand soothing on her hair. His voice is rough with exhaustion. "I came as soon as I could, Mags. I'm so sorry."
She buries her face in his neck. Neither of them acknowledge the fact that her eyes are leaking tears.
―~~―~~―
The first thing Rhodey does is to throw himself with her in his arms onto a couch and fall asleep. No escape possible, even if she wanted to, but she doesn't.
Rhodey means safety and unconditional support, and she hasn't had any of that since her parents' deaths. Plus, she likes Rhodey-hugs.
She falls asleep after a while. When she wakes up it's because her inner clock reminded her that she has shit to do. Rhodey is still so deeply asleep that he only grunts when she extricates herself from his now looser grip, writes him a note, and leaves the house.
More board meetings. They've stopped being careful and feeling her out now - now they just want her to dance to their whims and drain her dry of her brilliance until she's an empty husk. Do this, do that, you're a girl, let the men take care of the heavy lifting, you're young, I hope we can have a closer relationship, there is so much I could teach you. Who do you think you are, foolish female, how dare you be better than us, just spread your legs and whore out your brain. She feels dirty every time she walks out of the door at the end of it. Meeting with the research teams goes far better. She's right at home in the labs, these people speak her language - not quite as well, but that's fine, they're teachable and they respect her. In R&D she's the queen.
Less great are the meetings with Stark Industries' lawyers, but that was a given. Legal jargon is not her thing, laws and guidelines bore her to tears. But it's a part of her life now, she signed up for this, so she listens, nods, fact-checks and cross-references until she's satisfied, no matter how tedious the work is.
On and on the meetings go. There's always one more person to meet, one more hand to shake, one more smile to paste onto her face. And when it's over, Fury is waiting for her to take her to Howard Stark's lab so she can be useful to SHIELD. Honestly, why they make the deputy director babysit her instead of someone less important, Maggie has no idea.
It's better today, when she has actually slept and charged up on Rhodey cuddles. Rhodey's waiting for her at home and that makes everything so much more meaningful. Plus she gets to shock Fury by announcing she's ready to go home at only eleven pm.
When she gets home, Rhodey is wearing an apron with heart prints and cooking pasta with Mr. Jarvis, and for the first time in so many days everything is all right.
―~~―~~―
"Let's take a walk. I wanna see the stars, platypus," Maggie announces during the middle of the movie. It's a sappy love story because Rhodey loves those. Maggie is more about sci-fi and explosions. They give her ideas.
Which is probably why they stress Rhodey so much, come to think of it.
"Okay," he agrees, giving her an odd look but rolling with it. They amble along the gardens in amicable silence.
"Mother loved gardening," Maggie says into the silence. "You'd think for all her society lady obsessions she'd hate getting her hands dirty, but she loved it. She tried to teach me but I never had the patience."
"Hm," Rhodey hums. "D'you wanna try?"
"Nah," Maggie waves him off. "It just came into my mind."
She pulls him along further.
"This was her favourite thing about the whole garden, though," she says, pointing at the intricate fountain. The water forms oddly hypnotic patterns, the soft yellow light illuminating them beautifully. "Father built it for her. He made it so it can run all year long, regardless of temperature. The water is heated in winter, see the steam coming from it?"
"It looks like mist is rising up," Rhodey comments, looking at her oddly. Maggie is not a small-talk person. She's also not particularly sentimental about anything concerning her parents.
But this isn't small-talk.
"It's a little loud for my liking, though, what with all the water noise," she adds casually, hand drifting into her pocket and pressing the button on her jamming signal device. "Come sit with me, Rhodey-bear." She gives him a significant look.
They sit on the edge of the fountain, Rhodey laying an arm around her and she cuddling close. It's a cold night after all, and she shoves her nose into the space where his shoulder and neck meet, long hair obscuring her face. "Place is wired," she admits. "Sorry 'bout the secrecy, Honey-bunch."
He stiffens. Shifts her around until she's sitting in his lap, and buries his face in her hair. The people monitoring the cameras won't be able to read their lips this way. "What the hell did you get yourself into this time, Mags?"
"It wasn't a car accident," she answers quietly.
Rhodey breathes a curse. "You-"
"I saw it. I got lucky, hitting that man with a taser." Maggie shudders. She'd looked death in the face that night. Faced her own mortality and all that. Not pleasant.
"Shit," Rhodey whispers, clutching her tighter. "Shit. Mags, baby-girl, how are you really doing?"
"Hanging in there." The words are the most honest she's been in what feels like forever. "And it turns out Father was working for a super-secret spy organisation which is why I've got almost zero privacy at the moment. I'm working on it."
Rhodey swears again. "What can I do?"
"Right now, nothing," Maggie admits bluntly. "I might ask you for stuff in the future. Might need a middle-man at some point."
"I hate not being able to help."
"The hugs help a lot." She cuddles closer to him. "I'm glad you're here, platypus."
