The house looked so much worse in person.

Maggie had to walk down the drive because it was so clogged with fire engines, police cars, cranes, trucks, news crews, and a couple of ambulances. There was debris as far as a mile out: chunks of concrete, shattered glass, even a framed artwork that had somehow wound up stuck in a bush half a mile down the driveway.

Maggie paced further into the devastation, ignoring the pitying looks from everyone she passed. She still wore her Wyvern uniform, though she'd taken off her goggles and gloves. A few journalists tried to break through the police barrier when they saw her, but thankfully the cops kept them back.

Smoke still rose from the shattered concrete ruin. Maggie picked her way through larger blocks of debris, trying not to look too closely at what remained of the house. There were floodlights set up for the crews to move around safely, and the flashing lights of the police cars illuminated the ruins red and blue.

But then Maggie saw a lone figure in a stained white shirt, standing on what used to be the front foyer. Maggie recognised Pepper's ginger hair, but then realized… she's wearing an Iron Man helmet.

Frowning, Maggie pushed past a fire crew and stumbled into the ruin of the house itself. It was unrecognizable, now just a grim concrete blast zone instead of the gleaming artwork it had been before. She could hear the ocean rushing and crashing far below, but she couldn't see it. The cliff face was a dark, hazy jumble a few yards away.

Shivering in the cold air, Maggie padded towards where Pepper stood with her hands to her chest and her head concealed by the helmet. There was a deep crack in the face plate. The eyes weren't illuminated - Pepper had to be blind in there.

For a moment Maggie just looked at Pepper. The other woman was shaking slightly, her fingers twisted together. Maggie didn't know if she was ready to talk about this, to share in this awful grief, but… Pepper didn't deserve to be standing here alone. She reached out and touched the other woman's shoulder. Pepper jumped, then yanked off the helmet.

And to Maggie's utter surprise Pepper was beaming - crying, yes, but beaming so brightly she could have lit up the dark ocean all on her own. The shock of it made Maggie take a step back.

"He's alive!" Pepper exclaimed. She shook the helmet in her hands. "Maggie, I - the helmet, Tony sent a message to it, he made it out-"

Maggie took another step back, stumbled, and then dropped. Her knees cracked against the concrete and her head fell into her hands and she sobbed. All the tears that hadn't come before burned her eyes and came flooding down her face. Pepper dropped down beside her and bundled Maggie into her arms, shushing and patting and holding her tight.

"It's okay, he's okay Maggie. He's okay," Pepper murmured. Her hair spilled around her face, tickling Maggie's neck. Maggie couldn't speak, could only let loose an awful croaking cry as she sobbed into her hands.

She allowed herself another half minute to cry, shaking with the overwhelming surge of relief and panic and fury. Then she rocked back on her heels and peeled her hands away from her face. Pepper was there, wiping away her tears and trying to smile reassuringly, though she looked just as shaky as Maggie felt.

"The message?" she croaked.

Pepper handed her the helmet. "Here."

With Pepper's help, she pulled the cracked helmet over her head. It softened the noise of the rushing ocean and the emergency crews, and a moment later the HUD glowed to life.

"Stark secure server, retinal scan verified," said a synthetic female voice. Maggie blinked in the light of the HUD.

And then: "Pepper, it's me."

The sound of Tony's low voice was such a relief that she had to reach out blindly for Pepper's shoulder. She felt Pepper's hand on hers.

"I've got a lot of apologies to make and not a lot of time," Tony continued. The audio quality was a little off; he mustn't have recorded this from inside a suit. "So… first off, I'm so sorry I put you in harm's way. That was selfish and stupid, and it won't happen again. And… tell Maggie I'm sorry too. I put our home on the line, and I lost."

There was a pause. "Also it's Christmastime and the rabbit's too big. Done. Sorry." Maggie frowned at that, but Tony kept going: "And I'm sorry in advance, because… I can't come home yet. I need to find this guy. You gotta stay safe, that's all I know."

Maggie let out a breath, and was about to take off the helmet, when Tony added: "I just stole a poncho from a wooden Indian." And then the message cut out.

She pulled the helmet off, blinking in the dark air and the ocean breeze. She and Pepper knelt on the dusty, cracked concrete slab that had once been a part of the house.

"Right," Maggie breathed. "He's alive."

Pepper took the helmet back. "What are you going to do?"

"I haven't quite decided yet," she replied, her eyes still on the dark void where she knew the ocean must be. "First step is finding Tony. Second is either going to be locking him up in a saferoom, disembowelment, or doing a lot more embarrassing crying."

"You're going to find him?"

"I am." Maggie stood up and looked around. "And I'm going to need that helmet, a laptop, an internet connection, a data cable, a copper conductor and…" she eyed the cracked helmet. "Probably a secondary power source." She looked around. "Should be able to find all that somewhere in this mess."

"Okay," Pepper murmured. "I'm going to…" she looked over her shoulder. "There was another person here when the missiles hit, I should get her somewhere safe."

"Alright," Maggie said distractedly. "Just… stay off the grid for a while." She realized that Pepper hadn't moved yet, and was instead looking around at the ruined mess of the house, shadows on her face. Maggie followed her gaze.

There wasn't much left to salvage of the house. What hadn't fallen into the ocean had either been exploded by the missiles or burned up in the fire. Maggie didn't want to think of all the heirlooms and memories that had just been lost. She didn't have time for that grief. She suddenly realized that Dum-E and U were at the bottom of the ocean, and her heart fell. And J.A.R.V.I.S… his main servers at the house had been destroyed. There were backup versions of him saved at Stark Industries and the Tower, but unless there was a surviving suit around here somewhere, right now J.A.R.V.I.S didn't have a voice.

Maggie realized Pepper was looking at her, now.

"I'm so sorry, Maggie."

She forced a smile. "It's just a house."

Pepper sighed. "I'm sure there's something to be said here about houses and homes."

Maggie's face twitched. She craned her neck, and realized she could see her childhood bedroom. The roof had caved in and half of it had fallen into the ocean. She turned, and saw that the space where her trampoline used to be was nothing but rocky cliff face now.

"I learned to be happy here," she murmured.

Pepper wrapped her in a hug, squeezing tight. She smelled like smoke and sweat. "Maggie, you learned to be happy here." She pulled away and tapped Maggie's chest, over her heart.

Maggie took the helmet. "Thank you. You go, be safe."

Pepper nodded. "Be careful." Then she stepped away and picked her way back through the wreckage.

Maggie let out a long breath. Right. Internet connection.

Rose Hill, Tennessee

Two thousand miles away from Malibu, Tony Stark and a young boy named Harley Keener sat outside a snow-scattered memorial at a bomb site. Tony had asked all his questions, and now the kid was back at it with the naggin about New York, and he could feel his heartbeat skyrocketing.

"Do you - do you need a plastic bag to breathe into?"

Tony tried to control his breathing.

"Do you have medication?"

"No."

"Do you need to be on it?"

"Probably."

"Do you have PTSD?"

"I don't think so."

"Are you going completely mental?"

Tony's breath came in sharp bursts now. Black hole in the sky, crushing darkness-

"I can stop. Do you want me to stop?"

"Remember when I said stop doing that?" Tony said in a high voice, his eyes wide. "I swear that you're going to freak me out."

There was a half second of silence. And then Tony could feel it - the crushing tightness around his chest, the heat in his face and the way no breath seemed to bring in enough air. He shot to his feet.

"Ah, man, you did it, didn't you. You happy now?"

"What did I say?"

Malibu Point

With the helmet hooked up to a dozen different wires and connected to the laptop she'd borrowed from one of the police cars, Maggie logged in to the Stark secure server and found the incoming call from Tony. It would be the work of a minute to trace it back to its origin point.

Rose Hill, Tennessee

This wasn't Tony's first time getting arrested. But when the woman with the scarred face who'd arrested him started glowing and tearing after the real cops in the bar, his eyebrows shot up.

"Hey, hot wings!" he called as he ran for the door. "You want to party? Let's go, you and me!" But as he took off down the road, he spotted a man step out from the driver's side of a car with a gun in one hand and a coffee cup in the other. His skin glowed too, like lava pulsing just under the surface.

Huh. Time some for creative thinking.

He'd taken out the glowing woman with a cheap trick involving a microwave and a gas line. But the guy was smarter - he took down the water tower, flooding the town and knocking Tony on his ass, and now had the kid trapped in his glowing grip.

Trapped under a metal pylon, Tony met the kid's eyes. "Remember what I told you about bullies?"

The kid nodded. And then he fired the flash-bang Tony had given him, blinding the man with the burning red eyes long enough to break away and run to safety.

"You like that, Westworld?" Tony shot back. Snarling, the man shot to his feet. Tony was still stuck, but he was calm as he said: "that's the thing about smart guys. We always cover our ass." And then he powered up the one-shot repulsor he'd fitted to his wrist, aimed, and fired.

Turns out whatever that glowing stuff was, it didn't stop a direct hit from a repulsor from knocking you on your ass.

Rose Hill was… not what Maggie had expected.

For one thing, it was on fire. She'd been expecting a quiet, sleepy town tucked away in the snowy southeast state, but an entire corner of the main road looked like it had been through some sort of explosion, and another section of the town was flooded from a fallen watertower. Christmas lights and flashing police lights illuminated the blast zone.

She soared over the town on her wings, invisible in the night sky, and ran her eyes over the town. The explosion was certainly a sign that Tony had been around, but she saw no signs of Iron Man. Her eyes tracked down the main road until she spotted… there. Her HUD zoomed in, and she caught the glow of an arc reactor.

Maggie plunged out of the sky. She dropped down on the concrete road ten feet in front of Tony with a thud, her wings flared and her red goggles glowing in the darkness.

Tony stumbled to a halt at her abrupt landing - he looked banged up, wearing several layers of clothes that didn't fit him, with a paper file tucked under his arm. He was dripping wet. Even stranger was his company: a kid who looked to be about ten, wearing a cowboy hat.

Tony went speechless at the sight of Maggie in her full uniform suddenly before him. She straightened slowly, her wings still glinting darkly. The kid's eyes widened.

"Oh my god, the Wyvern!" he exclaimed, and his eyes lit up.

Tony blinked, then cast an annoyed glance at the kid. "Seriously?"

Maggie strode forward. "You think you can hide from me?" she demanded.

Tony held up his hands, eyes widening. "It's not you I'm hiding from."

"Right, you're hiding from the terrorist who blew up our house."

"I am sorry, Maggot, but-"

Maggie had closed the distance between them, and she held up her hand to cut him off. "Don't call me Maggot, and don't tell me you're sorry. If you - if you make me think you're dead one more time then I will make it happen, you hear me?"

"You shouldn't freak him out," the kid said. "He goes completely mental."

She tore her eyes off Tony's bruised face to shoot the kid a weird glance, but Tony said:

"Ignore him."

She wheeled back on Tony. "Tell me how we're going to fix this."

"I-" Tony looked at her with her sharp metal wings and her glowing goggles, then up at the sky, then glanced around. "Were you followed?"

Maggie shoved her goggles up onto her forehead so he could properly appreciate the disgusted look she shot him.

"Right, super spy," he nodded. "Look, Mags, there's these crazy glowing assholes, I think the Mandarin's been using young soldiers for some kind of experimentation that causes explosions, like at the Chinese Theater and like here-"

But Maggie's heart had caught up with her head. And Tony was standing in front of her, dripping wet and alive. She launched forward and wrapped her arms around him, shoving her face into her shoulder so the kid couldn't see her damp eyes.

Tony broke off mid sentence, startled, then wrapped one arm around her.

"I'm glad you're alive," she murmured. Then she pulled back, and eyed him. "I wish… I wish you'd talked about this sooner."

"Talked about what?" he asked, cocking his head at her.

Maggie touched his shaking hand. "This."

The constructed calmness on Tony's face wavered for a moment, and Maggie pulled him in for another hug.

"He doesn't like being touched," said the kid.

"This touch is okay," Tony mumbled.

Maggie pulled back. "Who is this, anyway?"

"I'm Harley," said the kid, his head tipped back so he could look into Maggie's face.

She eyed him for a moment. "Great." Tony shifted, and Maggie noticed the plastic Dora the Explorer watch on his wrist. "Nice watch."

"It's his little sister's."

Maggie turned to Harley. "You shouldn't take your sister's stuff."

Harley shrugged.

"Come on," Tony said, knocking his shoulder into Maggie's. "I got this file from the mom of the soldier who died here, I can fill you in in the car."

"The car?" Maggie frowned.

Tony held up a car key and clicked it. A dark sedan on the other side of the road flashed its lights. "I figure the guy who attacked me won't be needing this anymore."

"You were attacked?"

"Like I said, I'll fill you in."

She sighed and followed after him. Tony opened the driver's side door, and she circled around to the other side.

"What, you're just leaving?" Harley called, making Tony turn back. The kid stood a few feet away from the car, his chin lifted. "Admit it, you need me," he said. "We're connected."

Maggie's lips quirked.

Tony stepped out from behind the car door. "What I need is for you to go home, be with your mom" - he took the cowboy hat off the kid's head - "keep your trap shut, guard the suit-"

"Hang on, you're leaving a suit here?" she exclaimed.

But Tony ignored her: "- and stay connected to the telephone, because if I call, you'd better pick up. Okay?" He straightened and looked around. "Can you feel that? We're done here." He clapped one hand on the kid's shoulder and then headed back to the open door of the car. "Move out of the way or I'm going to run you over. Bye, kid. Maggot, get in the car."

She retracted her wings and then slid into the passenger seat. When Tony sat in his own seat and shut the door, she shot him a look.

"What?" he said.

She nodded at the kid still standing just outside the car, looking pathetic in an old tartan coat.

Tony sighed and rolled the window down. "I'm sorry, kid," he said as he keyed the ignition. "You did good."

Harley took a step forward. "So now you're just gonna leave me here, like my dad?"

Maggie's eyebrows rose.

Tony appeared to think about it, before he said: "Yeah." Then: "Wait, you're guilt tripping me, aren't you?"

"I'm cold," Harley said in a soft voice, hugging himself.

"I can tell," Tony said in a falsely-sympathetic voice, his bottom lip stuck out. "You know how I can tell? Because we're connected." Then he stepped on the gas and they peeled off down the main road.

When they'd cleared the town, Tony glanced sideways to find Maggie leveling a look at him. "What?"

She shook her head at him. "You like the kid."

"Absolutely not. He's a pain in my ass."

"That's what you said about me growing up."

"And look at you now. Still a pain in my ass."

Maggie huffed a laugh, then leaned back in the seat. "Okay, fill me in."

As they drove, Tony filled her in on what he'd learned: the similar explosion in Rose Hill, the grieving mother with the strange file, the two glowing assassins who had come after Tony. She could hardly believe the things he was describing: burning hot skin, instant healing, regrowth…

Her phone beeped part way through his description, and she checked it. "Shit, there's been another Mandarin video," she said. "This time he… Jesus, he shot a guy in the head on live TV. After he got the President to call him."

Tony's fingers clenched on the steering wheel. "We need to stop this guy, Maggie."

"No arguments here." While she had her phone open, she reworked a couple of her running search algorithms to include any reports of glowing people.

"Here." He dropped the file he'd gotten in Rose Hill onto Maggie's lap. "I only got a quick look before, tell me what's in it."

She put her phone away and picked up the file. The front cover bore no identifying information about whatever organisation had made it: it only identified the subject as Davis, Chad. She flipped open the cover. Tony sped down a lonely highway, the headlights flashing over snow-laden fields.

She frowned down at the contents. "Uh… there's a few loose photos - must be of Davis, when he was in the Army. This page says Point of Death Initiative, with a list of soldiers… some of them are crossed out."

"Who's crossed out?"

She read the names, but they didn't appear to mean anything to Tony.

"That, um… Jack Taggart," he said, and Maggie found the man's profile. He wasn't crossed out. "He was at the Chinese Theater. Happy was pointing to his dog tags."

"You think he set off the bomb?" she asked, looking at the man's face - cleanshaven, bright eyed.

"Hm," Tony said, eyes on the road. "When is a bomb not a bomb?"

Maggie frowned at him, but then kept reading. "This is, uh… a disposition report, it says. Christ, there's every bit of information you could need about him here. Health records, service record, mental capacity…"

Tony let out a frustrated sigh. "Man, what did Happy get involved with?"

"Hang on." She peered at the suitability report. Someone had gone over it in black sharpie, crossing things out and redacting information. And in the top right corner there were three stencilled letters... MIA? She flipped the page over.

"AIM," Tony hissed. He'd taken his eyes off the road and now glared down at the three handwritten letters. "Killian."

"Killian?"

"Aldrich Killian. He's… it's his thinktank. Advanced Idea Mechanics. He and Pepper used to work together, and he was back in Stark Industries recently trying to sell her something."

"AIM… I've heard of them. Why have I heard of them?" She reached for her phone, but then Tony slapped the wheel.

"They're the ones who defiled Rhodey's suit!" he dug in his pocket for his phone.

"What are you doing? Don't use your phone while driving."

Ignoring her, Tony hit a few buttons on the screen, and then the sound of a dial tone filled the car.

"Who are you calling?" she whispered.

But she was answered a second later when the call connected. "Hello?" came Rhodey's voice.

"You ever have a chick straddling you and you look up and suddenly she's glowing from the inside out, kind of a bright orange?" Tony said by way of greeting. Maggie rubbed her temple.

"Yeah, I've had that," Rhodey replied flatly. "Who is this?" Maggie smiled. She'd already texted Rhodey to let him know Tony was alive.

"It's me, pal," Tony said. "Now, last time I went missing, if I remember correctly, you came looking for me. Maggie came looking for me."

"Maggie found you," she corrected. "Hi, Rhodey."

"Hi, kid."

Tony cut in. "What are you doing, Rhodey?"

"A little knock-and-talk, making friends in Pakistan," he replied. "What are you doing?"

"Your redesign, your big rebrand, that was AIM, right?"

"Yeah...?"

Tony's jaw clenched. "I'm gonna find a heavy-duty comm sat right now, I need your login." Maggie nodded, realizing what his plan was.

"It's the same as it's always been, WarMachine68."

"And password, please?"

"Well look, I gotta change it every time you hack in, Tony."

"It's not the 80s, nobody says hack anymore. Give me your login."

There was a pause, and then a sigh. "WARMACHINEROX, with an X, all caps."

Tony and Maggie both burst out laughing.

"Yeah, okay," Rhodey sighed.

"That is so much better than Iron Patriot," Tony grinned. Then with no warning he pulled the car into a tight spin, swerving them around on the road and then roaring back the way they'd come.

There was a beauty pageant being filmed at a county hall along the highway, with several news vans parked outside.

Maggie and Tony went in in disguise. Tony had the kid's cowboy hat and a stolen loop of wiring to blend in. Maggie stole a fluorescent yellow jacket from the back of an ambulance that mostly covered her uniform.

"Channel 5," Tony murmured when they converged in the busy parking lot. They made a beeline for the Channel 5 newsvan.

"You go, I'll keep watch," Maggie replied. She veered left, then tripped over a powercable near a firetruck, drawing the eyes of everyone in the vicinity. It gave Tony enough cover to slip into the back of the news van and shut the door behind him.

Maggie stood, brushed herself off, and then wandered over to the van. She leaned against the back door and reached down, as if fixing her shoes. She could just hear Tony moving around inside. The cold air bit at her bare face.

Two minutes later, a man in glasses and a puffer vest strode up to the back of the van, hissing at someone on the phone. He looked up and spotted Maggie leaning against the van.

"Ma'am, would you mind budging for me?"

Damn. Must be his van. "Uh… no."

"No?" The guy pulled his phone away from his ear. "Look, I don't know who you think you are-"

Her mind raced. The guy would draw more attention if he caused a scene. But if he was the only tech with this van…

One hostage is better than a crowd of witnesses. She stepped aside and waved a hand, inviting him to go ahead.

"Thanks," the guy said sarcastically as he strode for the door. The moment he swung it open, Maggie seized the back of his vest and shoved him inside, sending him tumbling. She jumped up after him, shut the door and locked it.

Tony sat inside at the computer array, but had turned around at the intrusion. He glanced from the guy sprawled on the floor of the van to Maggie crouched behind him. "This is what you call keeping watch?"

"I kept watch," she hissed back. "And now I'm keeping hostages."

"Jesus Christ."

The guy shoved himself upward, exclaiming in anger, but then he spotted Tony and he froze. Tony held his finger to his lips and the guy's mouth dropped open. He fumbled for his phone on the floor.

"Mom, I need to call you back, something magical is happening!" He hung up the phone, his face lighting up. "Tony Stark is in my van."

"Shh, keep it down," Tony hissed. His eyes darted to Maggie, and then the guy glanced over and finally looked into her face, taking in the scar along her cheek.

"Oh my god, Tony Stark and Maggie Stark are in my van-"

"No we're not," Tony tried.

"I knew you were still alive!" the guy exclaimed, turning back to Tony.

It took a few minutes for them to calm the suddenly very excitable hostage down. Turned out his name was Gary, and he was… a fan. And he had a tattoo of Tony's face on his arm.

Tony calmed him down enough to be able to ask him to go up on the roof to recalibrate the ISDNs to give them more processing speed for the commsat.

"Tony needs Gary," he said firmly.

"And Gary needs Tony."

Maggie covered her eyes with her hand.

When they had the processing speed (thanks, Gary) Tony used Rhodey's Defence Force login to access the National Security Contractors database, and from there rerouted to an Advanced Idea Mechanics secure server.

"And… Chad Davis," he murmured, searching the data available. That search stream brought them to a section of the private server labelled PROJECT_EXTREMIS/CANDIDATE_INTERVIEWS

"Project Extremis," Maggie murmured.

Tony brought up the attached video file. It looked like a mental aptitude interview, a male interviewing voice asking Chad Davis about the defining moment of his life.

Tony moved on to another candidate interview. "This is the psycho who attacked me," he told Maggie as he brought up the interview for a woman named Ellen Brandt.

When her video popped up, Maggie's eyebrow rose. Ellen Brandt was a pretty, auburn haired woman with a scarred face - and her arm was amputated above the elbow. "You didn't say she-"

"She didn't," Tony said grimly.

"Okay, so the injections are administered periodically," said the interviewer, and the camera suddenly shifted to show a blonde man with a closely-shaven beard.

"Killian," Tony hissed.

"Addiction will not be tolerated," Killian explained. "And those who cannot regulate will be cut from the program."

"What's that?" Maggie asked, pointing at another section of the screen which read INJECTION_TEST/PHASE1

Tony clicked on the attached file. This time the camera was on Killian again, but he looked to be giving a speech in what looked like a laboratory. "Once misfits, cripples… you are the next iteration of human evolution."

Tony cycled through the rest of the videos in the Phase 1 cache. It showed security footage of a handful of… of human test subjects being strapped onto metal benches and injected with something that glowed.

Ellen Brandt's skin glowed orange from within as she was injected, and she squeezed her eyes shut in pain. She burned hotter and hotter, and sparks drifted off her skin. The camera panned down, and…

Like molten lava, her arm grew before Maggie's eyes. It extended down, crackling red, forming into skin, bones, joints. She grew a hand, burning red and flexing. Her fingers curled and faded into the rosy shade of flesh.

Maggie's stomach sank and despite herself, her gaze drifted down. Down to where beneath the trousers of her uniform, her leg ended at a scarred nub below her knee.

When she looked up, Tony's eyes were on her. But then there was a shout from the computer monitor, and they both looked over to see one of the human test subjects screaming, burning molten orange and fighting his restraints. His head tipped back as he screamed and burning light poured forth.

"We've gotta get out of here!" Killian shouted.

The light shot out of the test subject's eyes, his ears, and then he was glowing like a burning beacon - they saw the bright burst of the explosion a second before the security feed cut out.

Maggie let out a breath.

"A bomb is not a bomb when it's a misfire," Tony murmured.

She shivered and rubbed her knee. Tony followed the movement. "On second thought, I'm good," she whispered.

"The stuff doesn't always work," Tony thought aloud. "It's faulty, but he… he found a buyer. Sold it to the Mandarin."

"An army of terrorists with a substance that turns people into practically invincible soldiers who… occasionally explode," Maggie added.

"Got you, pal," Tony murmured, eyes on the screen.

At a hotel room in Los Angeles, Aldrich Killian slammed Pepper Potts against a wall, holding her by the neck.

"Look if you want to launch product next year, I need Stark," Maya Hansen told Killian, her eyes bright and her voice firm. She nodded at Pepper. "He just lacked a decent incentive. Now, he has one."

Killian looked into Pepper's grimacing face, then back at Maya.

"You know, you may have a point. And I can think of another one."

Textiles Manufacturing Plant, Pakistan

Rhodey stared up from the ground as the blonde woman with the glowing eyes who'd just burned his hand and deactivated his suit made a phone call. He was trapped in the metal casing, glaring up at her.

"Savin? I've acquired the Patriot armor," she said.

"If you want this suit," Rhodey groaned, "you're going to have to pry my cold dead body out of it."

She smiled down at him. "That's the plan, Colonel."

Tennessee

Back in the car, Maggie and Tony sped along the highway. They didn't really have a destination yet, and were talking through their next steps.

"So we've got AIM and Killian, who made Extremis, and we've got the Mandarin using it to… spread fear," Maggie said. "Or whatever he wants. Who do we go after?"

"I've got J.A.R.V.I.S. tracing that Mandarin broadcast, should take some time but hopefully he'll get us something," Tony said.

"J.A.R.V.I.S.? How?"

"The suit I left back at the kid's garage. I gave him the instructions while I was back in that van."

"Huh. That failing… Killian's tricky to track. I traced AIM's public holdings, but from what I could see his listed facilities don't have the capacity to do experimental testing on humans, so he's obviously got off-the-books bases. And we've got no guarantee we'll find him at any of them."

"As much as I dislike the guy we can worry about Killian later. We need to focus on the Mandarin, he's the threat right now. And the Extremis subjects," Tony said with a grim look. "They're the ones putting lives at risk."

Maggie's phone buzzed and she checked the screen - she was expecting a ping from one of her search algorithms, but instead it was an alert of a report in one of her digital Wyvern dead drops. She opened it for more details, and went still in her seat.

Her digital dead drops had been set up for law enforcement agencies to request her help, back when she'd been the anonymous Wyvern. Most still used the drops, or went to SHIELD instead. This was a report from a police department in North Carolina, asking for help since they'd just had an encounter with armed assailants who glowed.

She looked at Tony, and then back at her phone. She took in the contusions and bruises on his face, the tightness to his jaw.

"Tony," she murmured. Sensing the changed note in her voice, he looked over at her. "You… stay on the ground, stay out of trouble. Wait until your suit is in working order again."

"Why, what are you going to do?"

She pocketed her phone. "I might have a lead." She rolled down her window and snowflakes blew into the car. "I'm going to go check it out."

"Hang on, if it's a potential Mandarin location-"

"I don't think it is, it's… more local." She unbuckled her seatbelt and started climbing out the window. "I'll call you when I've checked it out."

He leaned over, hands still on the wheel and one eye on the road. "Maggie, hang on, we should go together. I need to come with you-"

She was now sitting in the window, her legs inside the car and her body hanging out of it, the winter wind sluicing over her. She ducked her head back down. Tony's dark, desperate eyes met hers. "You need to stay safe." And with that she flared her wings, letting the wind catch her and drag her out of the car and up into the sky.

"Son of a bitch!" Tony yelled after her. He fumbled for his phone. Time to call the kid, check on the suit.

J.A.R.V.I.S. had traced the Mandarin's broadcast to Miami, Florida. Huh.

Tony thought about calling Maggie, but a petty instinct held him back. I'll text her the location when I'm there.

"Okay, first things first, I need the armor. Where are we at with it?"

The kid sounded wired from all the candy he'd been eating. "Uh, it's not charging."

Tony stomped on the brakes and veered to the side of the road, his chest suddenly tight. All of it: the attack in Rose Hill, and Maggie's desperate, angry eyes when she'd taken off her goggles, and Extremis, and Maggie taking off, and now this-

"Oh, god, not again."

And then… the kid was still there. On the line. Talking him through it.

"Just breathe. Really, just breathe. You're a mechanic, right?"

"Right." He'd stumbled out of the car, letting the freezing air cool his sweaty face.

"You said so."

"Yes I did."

"Why don't you just… build something?"

And Tony's breath came steady as an idea occurred to him. He stood up. "Okay. Thanks, kid."

December 24, 2012
Wilmington, North Carolina

Maggie reached the factory from the police report just after dawn. She perched on the chimney of a nearby building and hunkered down for surveillance.

The industrial area was a mile or so out of town, mostly disused factories and cement plants from the 80s, but with a few manufacturing buildings left. The surrounding area was sparse, all grassy fields and underbrush. Occasionally a sea breeze would waft through. The police report had named a specific factory, and said that police had had a run-in with two glowing assailants.

Maggie ran her HUD over the factory. It was a squat concrete building. Thermal readings were out - the factory seemed to deal with metalworks of some kind, and the temperature readouts were all over the place. So she settled into her perch and simply watched the factory. For forty minutes, nothing moved. Then she saw a brush of movement around the side of the factory and zoomed in on a man, mid-thirties, with dark hair and clothes too smart for him to be a factory shift worker. She captured a still of his face and set it to search against military service records. While the search ran, she watched the man take long drags from a cigarette. He looked around as he smoked, eyes on the surrounding buildings and the fields. His eyes passed over Maggie's hiding spot, but the sun was behind it and he had to shield his eyes, squinting. She was safe in her shadows. After a minute he dropped the cigarette and strode back into the factory, leaving it to smolder on the gravel.

Her HUD pinged a match: Drew Grey, honorably discharged from the United States Army in 2009 due to a disability incurred in combat. She dug deeper. Grey had been blinded.

She glanced back at the factory. Well that guy sure isn't blind anymore.

She rolled her shoulders back, flared her wings, and then glided over to the top of the metalworking factory. Her boots touched down without a sound. She could feel the heat radiating from the vents on the rooftop. She padded over the concrete roof, then carefully opened the roof access door. She pulled a gun from her vest holster, drew a deep breath, and then paced inside.

The factory was eerily quiet. There mustn't have been any workers in today. Which is strange, she thought, since the machinery is all on. Her nerves prickled.

She made her way down the top four administrative floors without meeting another soul. She crept through the shadows, gun aloft, her senses and her HUD straining for any sign of a heat readout, or an uttered word, or an electronic signal. When she padded down the metal stairs to the metalworking floor, a bead of sweat trickled down the back of her neck. It was hot down here, and she could hear machinery whirring all along the open space. But she couldn't see anyone. Drew Grey had to be down here, unless he'd gone for another smoke.

Maggie's phone buzzed in her pocket. She ignored it, instead slipping into the forest of machinery on the factory floor. Her footsteps were silent on the ground, and her gun held up and straight, as Natasha had taught her. She heard no sounds other than whirring and pumping machinery, and the hiss of the exhaust vents.

What on earth are the Mandarin's men doing in a place like this? She wondered as she turned down another row of machines. A metalworking factory hardly seemed like a good target.

Then Maggie heard a metallic scrape that didn't seem to mesh with the smooth, rhythmic sounds of the machinery. She hesitated, turning in a tight circle to cover all her angles. Nothing.

But then she remembered how she was always able to sneak up so easily on her targets: no one ever looks up.

She looked up just in time to see a massive bearded man drop down from one of the steel support beams on the roof, his eyes and fists burning with an orange glow. Maggie dove backwards, just evading the man as he landed with a thud and grabbed for her, sparks trailing from his hands. She raised her gun to fire but then her senses prickled and she dove sideways, narrowly avoiding the red-headed woman who had crept up behind her, orange veins glowing behind her skin. Maggie whirled to find herself surrounded: seven snarling, glowing people had hemmed her in in the centre of the sweltering workshop.

Maggie let out a breath and flared her wings. "Okay, let's do this."

As one the Extremis soldiers launched at her.

Miami, Florida

Tony had to admit he'd done a pretty decent job of infiltrating the Mandarin's mansion, for a man with nothing but a bag full of jerry-rigged goodies from the hardware store.

But then the Mandarin turned out to be some drama club tool called Trevor Slattery, and then Tony got himself captured.

And now he was zip tied to a bedframe, and Maya Hansen was an asshole, and Aldrich Killian was explaining his evil plan about how he used the Mandarin as a coverup for his Extremis accidents. They wanted Tony to help stabilise Extremis, as if zip tying him to things was a way to butter him up.

"I wanted to repay you the selfsame gift that you so graciously imparted to me," Killian said smoothly, and tossed a trio of tiny metal orbs on the ground. And a moment later a holographic feed popped up, showing-

Pepper.

She was strapped to some kind of upright metal slab, her eyes screwed shut as a glowing substance flowed from an IV bag and into her veins. Her skin glowed.

Tony's stomach dropped away. Killian kept talking, impossibly calm as he explained how Extremis would either be accepted into the body or rejected, and Tony couldn't take it - couldn't take the words, couldn't take the pain in Pepper's face as she let out a silent scream. He turned away, his eyes burning.

Killian hit a button on a remote he produced from his pocket and the hologram dissipated, as if he were changing the channel. Tony rolled his head to look at him, tears burning at the corner of his vision.

"And to add to your gift of desperation… there's another contender for the role." Killian hit another button, endlessly calm, and another holographic feed popped up. This one was from further away, showing what looked like a factory floor. Figures weaved and dodged on the feed, so fast that it took Tony a second to process what he was seeing. It was the dark slash of wings that made him realize.

Maggie was surrounded by a pack of glowing soldiers. She whirled and cut, lifting weapons to fire at them. There was no sound, but he could see the swift slashing of her metal wings and the speed with which she fired on her attackers. But there were too many - she leaped, wings flaring, only for one of the attackers to leap up as well, impossibly high, to seize her wing and bring her down. Another one grabbed her arm in a scalding hot grip and Tony shuddered at the silent scream on her face.

"I haven't decided just what to do with the younger Stark," Killian mused as they watched the other Extremis soldiers pile on to the Wyvern. "But I think… she'll be your understudy." He stood up and paced toward Tony. "If you fail to solve the regulation problem for me, she's likely to be able to help, isn't she?"

On the holographic feed Maggie broke away, rolling out of reach and firing an energy blast from her wrists. But then another soldier tackled her from behind.

"Or maybe…" Killian mused. "I've no doubt she misses her leg." His eyes flashed as he saw the expression on Tony's face. "Maybe she'd be motivated to solve the problem if it affected her directly. A gift from me to her, a second chance at life."

He clicked the remote again and the feed with Maggie vanished. "And we haven't even talked salary yet," he said brightly. He strode over to where Tony hung from his restraints, shaking and defeated, then seized him by the throat. "What kind of perk package are you thinking of?"

Wilmington, North Carolina

Maggie was so close to escaping. She'd done it - wriggled free of the pack of Extremis soldiers, burned and breathless, and aimed a last gunshot over her shoulder as she bolted for the door. But as she looked back to aim, she saw it: Drew Grey, who had once been blind, and who she had just hit with a bullet to the face. He'd dropped to his knees and he was burning, orange light surging against his skin and rising, golden light roaring from his mouth-

Maggie dove behind a metal press an instant before Grey exploded.

The blast knocked her against the far wall of the factory, a surge of heat and light that might have killed her if it wasn't for her suit. She hit the ground, disoriented and half-blind from the flash, vaguely aware she was groaning.

Get up, get out. Get up, get out.

She got her arms underself and struggled to a half-sitting position. The factory was groaning around her, the other end completely blasted open to let in the sunlight.

She looked up. And she had a moment of frozen shock before a snarling, glowing Extremis soldier rained down a devastating punch that knocked her into unconsciousness.

Sorry for another cliffhanger! Also I know we don't want to spend ages on Iron Man 3 haha, it'll be wrapped up by next chapter :)

Reviews

Morgzw: thank you so much! Not long until Bucky now :)

DBZFAN45: Sorry for the torture! Things got even worse this chapter haha. But this is Tony and Maggie figuring out their family issues - it's dramatic, and involves violence, but it'll be alright in the end. See you next time!

Guest: Thank you very much!

Aqua: Sorry for breaking your heart! But yeah, I wasn't about to write Steve and Peggy's meeting, it felt like it needed to happen 'offscreen'. Sorry for another cliffhanger this time around! And Maggie and Clint are just good bros tbh. Thank you again for a lovely review! Hope you had a lovely week x