TW: Small mention of suicide, but it's not actually suicide. Message me if you're not sure.

May, 2007
Los Angeles, USA

Tony stood outside a private airport hangar, his eyes hidden by sunglasses and his hands in his pockets. Pepper and Happy stood side by side near the dark sedan they'd arrived in, watching Tony fidget as he stared at the sky.

When he spotted the charter jet angling down toward the runway he glanced back at Pepper and Happy, as if making sure they could see it too. The minute Tony had gotten Maggie's short message that she was coming back, he'd chartered a flight for the second leg of her journey from London.

The jet circled once before coming down to the runway with a slight judder, the wheels bouncing off the tarmac before taking hold. Tony shifted his weight as the jet wheeled around toward the hangar. It parked outside, and the steps slid down with a barely audible hiss.

Maggie appeared in the doorway, blinking in the sunshine. For a few seconds Tony stared at her. She was tanner than the last time he'd seen her, and seemed to be standing taller as she stepped down the stairs. She'd cut her hair, too, so it just brushed her shoulders. She wore faded jeans, boots, a beat up leather jacket, and a scarf wrapped around her neck. A dull green rucksack hung over her shoulder. Tony couldn't imagine going out into the world alone with just a rucksack. He wondered what about it appealed to her so much that she'd been gone six months.

When she hopped off the last step Maggie looked up and spotted Tony standing by the hangar. He waved, but instead of waving back Maggie dropped her rucksack and started sprinting, flying over the distance between them with her hair streaming behind her and a wild grin on her face. Tony grinned and opened his arms a moment before Maggie flung herself at him.

"Oof," Tony complained lightly when she collided with his chest, then wheezed when Maggie wrapped her arms around him and squeezed tight. He could feel the corded strength in her arms under her jacket, and the smell of smoke and rain hit him. "Welcome home, Maggot." He patted the back of her head when she buried her face in his shoulder. "Damn, you got jacked."

Maggie squeezed him for a moment longer before pulling away, a gleam in her eye. She shrugged. "Can't get enough of the gym, what can I say."

For a moment, Tony looked her over. He didn't know what he'd expected, but Maggie looked… pretty good. Different from the Maggie he was used to, definitely, and a little tired, but she looked healthy. "You're okay?" he asked. "No issues with your leg? Are you hungry?"

Her smile widened. "I'm fine. Happy to be back. It's so good to see you."

"I hear that a lot," Tony teased, then reached out to put his arm around her shoulder and lead her back to the car. One of the plane stewards brought Maggie's dropped rucksack over with an arched eyebrow.

There was a lot of fuss when they reached the car, with Maggie trying to hug both Pepper and Happy at once and a lot of questions and exclamations being given. Tony didn't know quite what to do with the rush of relief and affection he felt, so he showboated and teased and hastened them all into the car.

Maggie told them all about her journey back as Happy started the car, her voice bright and always ready with a joke. Tony felt, strangely, as if she'd never left. As if she'd always been right here, sitting in his car, making Pepper and Happy smile with a dramatic retelling of how she spilled her in-flight meal. But then he remembered the worry, and the weeks of silence, and the untraceable calls. He frowned.

"So where did you fly out from?" Pepper asked, crossing her legs as Happy drove them out to Malibu. "I know you took this flight from London, but Tony wasn't clear on the first leg."

Maggie's eyes flicked to Tony, but he kept his expression inscrutable. He wasn't clear because he didn't know.

"I flew out of Moscow, actually," Maggie said evenly.

"Moscow?" Happy repeated from the driver's seat. "What were you doing there?"

Tony eyed Maggie's smile, trying to figure out what it meant.

"Well I wanted to see all the cathedrals, and I figured it made sense to visit in the warmer months so I didn't freeze my ass off. You know they've got a vodka museum in Moscow?"

Tony spent the rest of the car ride torn between enjoying having Maggie back, and trying to figure out why sometimes, her smiles didn't reach her eyes.

At the mansion, Pepper carried Maggie's bag in for her. Tony went to follow, but Happy pulled him aside and levelled him with a look.

"Did you see her hands?" Happy murmured.

Tony frowned. "No?" He glanced over his shoulder as Pepper and Maggie disappeared inside the mansion. "Happy, come on, even you have to admit that she hasn't been abducted now."

"Well…" Happy's expression became uncertain. "She's… I don't know, I could be wrong, but I only ever saw hands like hers on a boxer. The knuckles, you know? And the calluses."

Tony cocked an eyebrow. "I don't know, Happy, she's been backpacking and drinking for the most part from what I've heard. I'm sure there's plenty of ways her hands ended up like that."

Happy shrugged, though he still looked unhappy, and they headed inside.

Tony watched Maggie rush around the house, beaming at everything she'd missed, and more anxiety melted out of him. Maggie was back, and everything was right.

"Welcome back, Ms Stark," J.A.R.V.I.S. greeted, and Maggie beamed up at the ceiling.

"It's good to be back, J.A.R.V.I.S."

Tony took her down to the workshop to show her the new classic Ford he'd bought and his latest gadgets, though she seemed more interested in hugging Dum-E and U like they were much-beloved family pets. Dum-E plucked at her scarf and she batted him away, laughing.

"You aren't going to take off your scarf?" Tony asked as he dug through a pile of machine parts.

"Why, you don't like it?" she replied lightly.

At that, Pepper strode down to the workshop and instructed Tony to let Maggie rest. He sighed and waved a hand, and Maggie handed him back the engine part he'd been showing her before she followed Pepper upstairs. As she handed him the part, Tony couldn't help but look down at her hands: callused, with a rough edge to the knuckles, and a healed scar over the knuckle of her left forefinger.

He pressed his lips together and looked away. Could've been anything. He smiled to himself. If I believed half of what Happy said about Maggie, I'd have to have her locked up for her own safety.

Maggie paced into her childhood bedroom, tired down to her bones and her cheeks sore from smiling. When the door shut behind her, the rush of excitement from returning faded. She trudged through to her bathroom.

Eyeing herself in the mirror, Maggie unwound the scarf from around her neck and winced at the sight.

The swelling had gone down and the bruising seemed less vibrant than when she'd bought this scarf in Moscow, but it still looked bad. Patchy purple bruises littered her neck, as well as a single dark line where the garotte had dug in, and a clotted wound from where she'd cut herself free. Groaning, she lifted up her shirt to see the tight purple bruising from where the man had hit her and knelt on her chest. She dropped her shirt, scowling at where she could see the man's fingers had been. She satisfied herself with the knowledge that his injuries would last much longer than hers.

Too tired to think about any of it, she washed her face and crawled into bed. A few moments later, there was a knock at the door. She pulled her sheet up to her chin just as the door cracked open to reveal Tony.

"You can tell Pepper I'm going to bed," she said.

"Good." He eyed her for a few moments. She wished she knew what he was thinking. "Need me to tuck you in?"

She smiled. "I'm okay, thank you."

He smiled back, then cocked his head. "Are you okay? You… you came back pretty suddenly."

"Apparently I've got a habit of making impulse decisions."

His lips quirked. "I wonder where you could've got that from."

Maggie wanted to smile, but it turned into a yawn. "Good night, Tony."

"Night, Maggot. Love you."

He shut the door before she could reply.

Maggie spent the next few days regrouping. She and Tony really didn't talk about anything of substance, allowing her to catch up on sleep at the mansion, and go for long road trips around Los Angeles. Rhodey visited with a broad smile and a bunch of flowers.

For a few days after her arrival she dressed completely wrong for the weather: scarves and turtleneck shirts, until the bruises had faded enough for her to get away with makeup.

Maggie stepped completely out of the shadow world and basked in the sun of California. She remembered what it was to be Maggie Stark, but soon realized that she was not the same woman she had been when she left.

She found she didn't regret anything. She trusted her instinctive urge to run after the events in Russia, and she'd made extra sure that no one would be able to track her back here. The last thing she wanted was to bring Tony into all this. But she didn't think she'd made a mistake in stepping into that shadow world in the first place.

As she sunbathed on the roof, Maggie contemplated her options.

Someone had tried to kill her. Well, to be fair they'd actually tried to kill Kate Maury, South African ghost story writer, for the crime of asking too many questions. No doubt her attacker had been surprised to find that Kate Maury wasn't completely helpless. Maggie suspected that her supposed helplessness and naivety was why he hadn't come after her with a gun, and thanked her lucky (or unlucky) stars.

I must have been on the right track.

Perhaps she should have tried to question her attacker. But the thought made fear shiver down her metal-plated spine.

Maggie thought about telling Tony about the Winter Soldier. She had more proof than the word of a terrified five year old now, but… no. She sighed. The Winter Soldier belonged to a whole other world. Tony didn't belong to that world, and Maggie didn't want it to touch him. She would tell Tony the truth when she had found the Winter Soldier and brought him to justice.

But this had been her world since she was five years old, she realized. And sinking into it had felt a little like coming home.

She should probably have taken the attack as a warning. Back off. And being back home again was lovely, but her former path felt… unfinished.

Maggie took a few days to think about it, before finally booking another flight for two weeks time. She was still cautious of going back on her hunt, but… she liked the freedom of travel. She even liked what she was becoming, she thought, though she couldn't say why.

It was worth figuring out.

Tony deserved better warning this time.

Once the flight was confirmed, Maggie waited for Tony to come back from work, and handed him a drink. He eyed her suspiciously.

"What."

Maggie busied herself in the kitchen, making herself a drink. "I've booked my next flight."

He stilled. "You're leaving again?"

She looked up. "Yes. I was thinking of travelling down through South America this time."

He set down his drink with a louder-than-necessary clink. "What for?"

"Well I hear South America has one or two things a tourist might be interested in."

"And you just want to travel alone? Why?"

She shrugged, glancing down to finish making her drink. "I like it."

"You like being alone, in the middle of nowhere."

Yes. Maggie frowned, looking down at her drink, and after a few moments she walked over to wrap Tony in a hug. He stood stiffly in her arms. "I'm okay, Tony. Better than okay, actually. I can look after myself."

He remained as still as a statue for a moment, before he sighed and hugged her back. "You always have."

Maggie and Tony made the most of their two weeks together.

Tony had already planned a massive party at the mansion for his birthday, and since their birthdays were only four days apart, he turned it into a joint party. And he'd really outdone himself this time: the mansion shone so bright the ocean glinted from it, their guests remained tipsy and happy for the whole of the evening, and the music (curated by one of the best DJs in LA) reverberated in Maggie's bones.

She re-met old acquaintances who seemed surprised to see her, but eager to hear about her 'holiday'. She and Tony cut the cake together, which said 37 in big digits with '& 21' written in obviously homemade icing below it. Maggie suspected Pepper.

Maggie didn't think she'd enjoyed herself at one of Tony's parties so much before. It felt strange to live so large and loud like this, after the past six months. It felt like looking at her life with double vision.

Was that woman playing drinking games with her brother really Maggie? The same Maggie who'd snapped a man's arm in her hands after he tried to kill her? The same Maggie who traded in secrets and information with ex Soviet agents? She wondered how she had room for all those people inside herself.

At the end of the night, Rhodey kissed her on the cheek. "Happy birthday, Maggie," he smiled. "Thanks for coming back. He's better when you're here." They both looked at Tony, fast asleep on the couch with a penis drawn on his forehead in glitter pen. "You both are."

That might be so. Maggie smiled back. But I'm still leaving.

While lolling about the house like she used to on spring break, Maggie received an email alert:

UCLA Guest Lectures: Doctor Jane Foster's 'Astronomy of the Modern Age'

Maggie arched an eyebrow at the email, then checked the date. "Huh."

The next day found her sitting in one of UCLA's massive lecture halls, watching a short, brown haired woman in a flannel shirt gesticulate while explaining the complex diagram illustrating the mathematical model of spacetime projected on the wall behind her. There were only nineteen people sitting in the lecture hall, including Maggie, but Doctor Foster seemed undaunted.

Maggie sat with her feet propped against the back of the chair in front of her and a gleam in her eyes. However this lecture might have been marketed, Doctor Foster wasn't starting with the basics. She talked through insanely theoretical details about Einstein-Rosen Bridges and spacetime and fourth spatial dimensions. Maggie didn't even understand some of it, which had her grinning in her seat. She'd missed academia. Even though from Doctor Foster it felt a little like a rambling conspiracy theory.

When Doctor Foster's hour came to a close and the blank-eyed students filed out, Maggie approached the small woman gathering up her notes at the lectern.

"Hi," she said, and waited for Doctor Foster to glance up. The woman's eyes flicked over Maggie as if perplexed. "I'm Maggie Stark," she smiled. "We've been emailing for a while, and I saw you were in town-"

"Oh, hi!" Doctor Foster said brightly, propping her notes in one arm so she could shake Maggie's hand. "Yes, I can't believe we're finally meeting. Thanks for coming."

"It's my pleasure. You've made lots of progress in your research since we last wrote. Sorry I've been a patchy replier, I've been… travelling."

Foster waved a hand. "I'm not known for my punctuality either. My boyfriend, Donald, always says I'd lose my head if it wasn't screwed on."

Sounds like you could stand to lose the boyfriend, Maggie thought, but didn't say. "Would you like to get coffee?"

Foster smiled. "That sounds great."

Having coffee with Doctor Foster felt a lot like sitting in her lecture theatre, but with the pleasant aroma of a cafe. Maggie enjoyed it just as much.

Jane had terrible table manners and drank straight black coffee without seeming to taste it. Each of them hardly drew breath. Maggie had dozens of questions about Jane's ideas and each of Jane's answers only provided her with hundreds more.

"So what do you mean," Maggie asked, when Jane paused for a gulp of awful coffee, "when you talk about stabilising a theoretical negative mass traversable bridge?"

"Well we know that the phenomena could only be stabilised by exotic matter with a negative energy density, and of course exotic matter is sort of a hypothetical stand-in for astrophysicists-"

"Of course," Maggie smiled.

"- so I'm of the opinion that exotic mass is something we've yet to quantify, and it can be theorised about all day long, but we really can't know more about its properties until we observe an event in action, so we can make more concrete predictions about the behaviour of negative mass particles, and the potential existence of tachyons-"

"Hang on, you mean observe an Einstein-Rosen Bridge? They're only speculative."

Jane waved a hand as if the nature of what things did or did not exist didn't matter. "Well I've been working on designing equipment which might be able to measure the events, though I've been having trouble securing grant money to get out there and do practical research with physical equipment, and maybe an assistant or two..."

Maggie let Jane talk on for a while, smiling to herself. She thought it would be easy to call Jane mad, and Maggie didn't wholly understand her, but… she thought she recognised something in her mind. She waited for Jane to take another sip of coffee, then spoke. "Well Stark Industries has a research grant," she said lightly. "They usually prefer their applicants to be working in the field of weaponry" - her gaze dropped - "but if you send a reasonably good application, I'll make sure it gets attention. The grant can take a little while to process, but-"

"No, that's a great idea!" Jane exclaimed, breaking out into a grin. "I'm usually hesitant with private grants, but with that and university funding I might be able to make ends meet on a research trip."

Maggie returned the smile. She had zero idea where Jane thought she could go where she could observe astronomical phenomenon which had not yet been proven to exist, but far be it from her to curb Jane's enthusiasm. "Excellent. Let me know when you apply and I'll contact the Grants team. And hey, if you do end up on a research trip, I'd love an invite. You don't even have to pay me."

Jane beamed. "Of course. It's been wonderful to discuss this. Normally I bounce my theories off Dr Selvig - a friend of my father's - and he always tells me not to set my sights too high."

"Well, I just hope you don't take his advice."

"I take it under advisement." Jane drained the rest of her coffee and Maggie winced in sympathy. "How about you? Back to college? Have I convinced you to join the astrophysics department?"

Maggie smiled and glanced down. "No. Back to travel for me, for now." She looked up. "Though I'll never look at the stars quite the same way."

Two days before Maggie was due to leave, Tony invited her to lunch. Happy drove them, and Maggie let Tony's conversation wash over her until she realised what part of town they were in. She sat up, looked out the window, then glanced at Tony as Happy took another turn.

"Tony," she said shortly. "You said we were going to lunch."

"And we will," he replied, not looking up from his phone. "I just need to grab a few things from work first." He glanced at her. "You may as well come in and say hi to everyone."

Five minutes later Maggie followed a few steps behind her brother as he walked into Stark Industries, feeling much like she used to when she visited as a kid. She cast a glance over at the Arc Reactor building, and tried to draw comfort from its electric blue glow. But it just made the queasy feeling in her stomach worse.

When they first walked in, it was alright. Every employee they walked past greeted Maggie enthusiastically, commenting on her tan and her new clothes and her hair cut, and Maggie had to admit she'd missed them. Stark Industries did hire the brightest minds, after all. But then they walked through an atrium with two floor-to-ceiling display posters advertising the latest Stark weapons, and her stomach flipped over.

She was quiet all the way up to Tony's office.

"Maggie!" came a loud, genial voice, and she looked up to see Obie beaming at her, with Pepper by his side. "What a surprise!" He took three big strides over to her and put his arm around her shoulders. "It is so good to see you back, Maggie, especially since we didn't have much of a chance to chat at your birthday party. I really think you should stick around, kid."

She smiled thinly as Obie walked her into Tony's office after Tony and Pepper. "Thank you again for the briefcase, it's beautiful."

"Ah, it's hard to buy presents for you two. What do you get someone who has everything?"

"Maybe some humility," she murmured, then frowned at herself. But it made Obie laugh, and he let her go to retell her joke to Pepper.

Standing in the middle of Tony's office as Tony rifled through his drawers and Pepper smiled at Obie while tapping away at her Blackberry, Maggie looked around at it all. The wall-to-wall window behind Tony's desk looked out over the gleaming, sleek SI complex, awards from the Armed Forces hung on the walls, and diagrams of their best-selling weapons were laid out on the worktable in the corner.

Maggie ran an eye over the efficiency and glamour of it all and wondered how she had ever lasted so long. I don't believe in this. She didn't think she ever had. And after living in the world for a time, she could see the lasting impacts of the damage her father's company did. Sure, they didn't invent the concept of war, but they certainly worked hard to make it as bloody as possible. And not even their Intele-Crops or their prosthetics line could make up for that.

Standing in the middle of Tony's office, Maggie confronted herself with the question Tony had never asked, but always seemed to be thinking: What are you doing?

She frowned. Even her hunt for the Winter Soldier, that was a personal vendetta. It would impact no one's life other than her own, probably.

She thought of what the ex-CIA agent had asked her. With skills like yours, why are you chasing ghosts? Aren't you working for someone? Maggie flexed her scarred hands. What am I doing with my skills?

Maggie had learned so much these past six months, and for what? What could she offer the world, which she had seen so much of? She had her mission, but what else?

She suddenly itched to fly away again, to find what she was looking for. She was sure the answer lay out there, not here.

Tony emerged from his desk drawers with a bottle of bright red liquor. "Aha, I knew I'd left it somewhere in here!" he turned to Maggie with a grin.

Maggie sighed, too tired to tell him off. "Let's go get lunch."

June, 2007

This time, Tony saw Maggie off at the airport. She'd already said her goodbyes to the others, so it was just the two of them. They talked about nothing of consequence until the polite private airport steward informed them that Maggie's charter jet was ready to leave.

Tony turned to Maggie. "You're sure about this?"

She hoisted her rucksack over her shoulder, her stomach already zinging with nervous excitement, and nodded. "I am, Tony."

He sighed. "Then… have fun. And good luck. I hope you figure out whatever you need to figure out."

She pulled him in for an awkward hug. "Me too."

July, 2007
Medellín, Colombia

Maggie was very much enjoying her travels. She'd made a point of spending a few weeks just enjoying seeing the sights of South America, though she'd barely scratched the surface so far. She'd been through Panama, Venezuela, Trinidad & Tobago and was now enjoying the culture and specialty coffees of Colombia.

But, inevitably, she had found herself sinking back into her shadow world. She remained in contact with her connections from before, and continued bartering in the information trade. She was no longer so pointed with her questions, but she still favoured information about Soviet Russia and unsolved assassinations above all else.

She had also taken up her fighting training again, spurred by just how outmatched she had felt against that man in Russia. This time, when she was taught by Capoeira and MMA masters, she did not just appreciate their form and technique. When she sparred, she thought what would I do if he was really trying to kill me? She hoped the next time, if there was one, she'd be ready.

Today she sat at a small coffee shop near her hostel, working on one of her many burner phones and sweating in the sunshine. As was her habit now, she ran a trace on all the surrounding cell towers and ran the results through an algorithm she'd designed to pick up on abnormalities. Paranoid? Definitely. She sifted through the selected abnormalities, sipping her coffee, when she spotted a transmission that her algorithm had labelled untraceable. She could guess from the available data that it had been a phone call of short duration, but nothing more than that.

Maggie sat back in her chair, frowning. For some weeks now, in her travel under the name of Maggie Stark, she'd noticed people… not necessarily following her, but watching her. When she first noticed a woman in a Panama restaurant pretending not to watch her, it had frightened her - as if the man from before was somehow back. But this felt different.

She was reasonably sure these people watching her were connected, since this was not the first untraceable call of that nature she'd noticed. And they weren't closing in, but keeping their distance. Keeping an eye on her. She was pretty sure it wasn't constant either. She wondered if Tony had somehow tracked her and assigned her a team of bodyguards, but she doubted he would be that subtle.

Maggie tapped her phone against her mouth for a few moments, before opening it again and digging into the 'untraceable' transmission her algorithm had detected. It was indeed well-hidden, but ten minutes of hard work saw her crack the scrambler her unseen follower was using, and in another minute she'd traced the device. It was currently in the hotel a few blocks away. So not watching me all the time, then.

She let out a long breath. I'll wait to see what happens.

At that moment, a shadow fell over her face. She glanced up, startled, just as the shadow passed overhead: an orange sail in the sky. A paraglider; she could see the small dark shape of the person, with their arcing orange canopy above them. Moments later two more paragliders swooped overhead, thousands of feet above the rooftops of the city. Maggie leaned back, shading her eyes, as the paragliders dipped in and out of the air alongside a flock of birds.

Slowly, a smile spread over her face.

The next morning Maggie hiked up to the top of the mountain overlooking Medellín, found the paragliding company, and handed over her money.

She sat impatiently through the safety briefing, put on all the gear, and soon she sat on a grassy slope overlooking the city below, as her tandem pilot and a few other employees hooked her up to the paragliding harness. The breeze whisked along the mountaintop, plucking at the hair escaping from her helmet. She eyed the red roofs of the city far below, nestled between the forested mountains, and nerves twisted in her stomach. She'd spent countless hours flying before, but always within the safety of a plane cockpit. Metal and engines she understood. But she was about to trust her fate to a sheath of fabric, a few pulleys, and the whims of the air currents. The sun beat down on her pale face.

"Do not worry señora," said her pilot as they laid the chute out on the grass behind her. "Like I tell everyone - if humans were not meant to fly, then why do we love it so much?"

Maggie opened her mouth to reply, but in the same moment she heard the flapping billow of the chute filling with air, and felt the tug of the harness around her chest.

"¡Aquí vamos!" [Here we go!] cried the pilot.

Her breath caught in her chest and she ran along the slope with the pilot like they'd told her to, her feet thudding in the grass, until between one step and the next her toes could no longer touch the ground. The pilot whooped in her ear.

Frozen in place, Maggie felt a burst of wind sweep her upwards, and the ground dropped away. She felt suddenly, completely weightless, with the wind rushing around her and the arced red chute tugging her and her pilot up off the mountain and into the sky. Her legs shivered from the sudden weightlessness and her fingers clenched on her chest harness.

A rush of electricity crackled through Maggie as they soared into the air, and she realised every muscle in her body was as tight as a coil. She forced herself to relax, and through her blurry vision she glanced around. Her eyes widened when she saw the city already far below, tiny red-rooved houses with the toy cars meandering through the streets and the green forest hugging the mountains. She drew in a long, deep breath and shivered at the wind rushing over her sun-warmed skin. This is what I've been looking for.

After the initial rush of gliding off the mountain, their flight became tranquil. Maggie's pilot adjusted the pulleys, steering them in a curve and pointing out the sights below. Maggie stared at everything, the sky and the ground and the taught red canopy which served as their wings. This was nothing like piloting a plane. She paid attention to the pilot's small hand movements and the way he moved his body to steer them through the air.

"Can we do some tricks?" Maggie breathed.

Her pilot laughed. "Of course." He pulled down on one pulley and they curved into a steep turn, almost parallel with the chute. They dipped, and spun, and felt the wind tear across their faces like it was trying to catch them. They swooped up, dipping into the low-hanging misty cloud, and water droplets brushed over Maggie's skin. She spread her arms like wings and laughed at the open sky.

Maggie climbed back up the mountain every single day after that. She loved all of it: she loved the flap and strain of the paraglider's canopy, sprinting along the grass with the pilot until the wind scooped them off the side of the mountain, swooping up into open air, feeling the wind on her skin, the dizzying rush of weightlessness. Coming back to the ground always felt disappointing, but she even enjoyed setting her feet lightly down to the grass again, as if stepping from the sky to the earth.

Maggie spent her afternoons brushing up on everything she'd ever learned about aerodynamics and flight.

On the fifth day she stared at the pilot's hand movements the whole flight. When they touched down, he hi fived her and said: "You know, we do offer training courses."

When she hiked up the next morning, however, her usual pilot grimaced at her. "Sorry, señora, the winds are too strong today to fly. The forecast is not good for tomorrow either."

Maggie smiled and said it was no bother, but as she hiked back down the mountain her brow was creased by a frown. I can do better than that.

Frustrated by the continued presence of unseen watchers, Maggie moved on from Medellín. She travelled by bus from country to country, never staying anywhere longer than two nights, but still travelling under her real name. On these long bus rides, she started designing.

She started with the basic paraglider design, but its limitations soon frustrated her. The paraglider was essentially the equivalent of a simple sailboat, good for easy seas and skies and nothing more. Maggie wanted a speedboat. She briefly considered going back to jetpack designs like when she was a child, but soon moved on from that as well.

Sitting on a bus headed south through Guyana, Maggie tapped her pencil against her mouth as she stared out the window. She wasn't quite sure why this idle fancy was taking up so much of her headspace. She'd thought of little else since that last day in Medellín. But then she realized that this was the first project she'd taken on since quitting Stark Industries.

She smiled as she stared out the window. She'd wondered if she'd ever come back to engineering, and here it had snuck up on her. And this isn't a design to hurt people.

In many ways it was a logic problem: how can I achieve single-pilot flight without a plane, which won't be subject to the weather? But she knew her interest ran deeper than that. Ever since the attack in Russia she had felt like an exposed nerve: sensitive to every aberration and abrasion. She wanted some kind of cocoon, a safety net, something to make her feel strong.

More than anything else, she wanted to fly. She couldn't explain why, even to herself.

If humans were not meant to fly, then why do we love it so much?

A flock of birds soared out of the rainforest in the distance and into the sky, a blurry cloud of flapping wings. Maggie smiled, but then the expression fell into a frown. Not birds. Bats. Their smaller, more angular wings seemed to slice through the air.

The pencil Maggie was tapping against her mouth fell still. Her eyes narrowed.

Moments later, she pulled out a fresh sheet of paper and started drawing.

Los Angeles, USA

Tony was really not in the mood to be talking to reporters. He was hungover, he'd accidentally left the house without brushing his teeth, and he just wanted to get his 9AM slice of pizza and then have Happy drive him back.

But as he trudged out of the shop cradling his pizza, while Happy held the door for him, a bright-eyed young woman with a tape recorder jumped in his path.

"Mr Stark, do you care to comment on the rumours that Margaret Stark is in a long-term stay psychiatric hospital? Why is Stark Industries trying to hide this?"

Tony felt the question hit him like a gut punch, instead of his usual wrinkle of annoyance. He slid his glasses down his nose to eye the reporter. She was a little too young, probably a recent hire trying to get big headlines.

"Tell you what," he said evenly. "If you can tell me which hospital she's supposedly living in, I'll go give her a visit."

Happy barged past the journalist, freeing Tony's path, so he made sure his pizza was secure and then followed.

In the car, chewing on a slice of pepperoni, Tony considered. This wasn't the first far-fetched explanation for Maggie's extended absence he'd heard. People would believe anything: Maggie was in rehab, or living under care in the countryside, or she'd actually died and he was covering it up.

In a better mood now thanks to the pizza, Tony texted Maggie: In addition to being dead, you're now also in a psychiatric hospital. How's the jello?

Sixteen hours later she replied with a photo of herself, holding a tub of jello in one hand and giving him the thumbs up with another. She looked tanned and happy, and he realised there was a massive waterfall in the background.

He took a few moments to respond:

They really do amazing things in hospitals these days.

Manaus, Brazil

Maggie bunkered down in the colorful riverside city of Manaus. She'd been studying bats, birds, and insects for the past few days, and her designs had taken shape. She knew she couldn't leave this plan on the paper.

Manaus, a city well-known for its manufacturing, offered plenty of workshop spaces. She rented a space in a manufacturing centre in a tall building by the river, and started ordering in materials under various false identities.

Her days began to take a pattern: she woke in the early hours of the morning, finished her coffee and toast on the walk over to her workshop, nodded to the other engineers, students, and architects who regularly used the building, then holed herself up in her narrow workspace. Some days she'd have her lunch out in the warm sun, but most days she forgot and worked right through until the sun went down again. She welded and wired and hammered and plated and swore when she burned herself. She lost herself for hours in the intricacies of a circuit board, or the precise alignment of a joint. Occasionally, when other workers on her floor poked their head in to say hello, they'd cock an eyebrow at the strange devices taking shape on her workbench and ask what she was making. Mostly, she told them she was an art student and it was a postmodernist reflection of the digital world. That usually got them to leave her alone.

Her days in the rented workshop reminded her strangely of the weeks she and Tony had spent building J.A.R.V.I.S.: the only thing they'd built together that was for them, aside maybe from her prosthetics. She did wish she had Tony's state of the art computer setup (particularly his 3D hologram design portal), but there was something satisfying about going back to basics.

She spent her days surrounded by metal. She could smell it, taste it, feel its cool rigidity and warm flex under her fingers. One of the nosy students on her floor came in, saw most of the finished product (she hadn't been quick enough to hide it) and made a joke about Icarus.

Icarus? Maggie wondered to herself as she tested the cybernetic jointry after shooing away the student. Metal flexed and curved before her eyes. Icarus had a resource problem: using feathers and wax is grade school stuff. Metal is where it's at.

While Maggie had the materials, space, and tools, she also set about designing herself a new prosthetic. Her last one had gotten all scuffed up from travelling (and from the fight clubs), and the one she wore now was good for walking, but got in her way when running.

This time, she designed a leg that could truly do everything she wanted to do. She built it out of a lightweight titanium alloy, painted charcoal grey, with dual walking and running features. It was lighter than her usual limbs, so it would take some getting used to, but she'd also built in three hidden compartments that could hide anything up to the size of a pistol. Thinking of her attacker, Maggie also built a blade into the heel that could be deployed with the subtlest of movements. Now I'll never be without a weapon.

Every evening, Maggie packed up her main design and her plans into a canvas bag and carried it home. She still spotted people watching from time to time, and she didn't want snoopers. The first afternoon she tried out her new leg, she detoured through the local park and took great pleasure in secretly stabbing the ground with every step. Soon she could deploy her heel spur with barely a thought.

August, 2007

Maggie had not thought about what would happen when she actually finished building her device. But sure enough she did, and found herself staring at it in disbelief.

It rested, fully open on her worktable, spanning from one end of the room to another. Maggie reached out and ran a hand over the smooth black surface of the carbon fibre membrane. Tiny wires ran through the thin layer, like blood vessels.

This was the most intricate design Maggie had ever attempted. Even more shocking than the fact she had finished, she thought, was the fact that it looked like it would work.

She touched a button and the device completely closed up, smooth and soundless.

She glanced out the window. Night had fallen, and there was no moon tonight. She bit her lip. This is a bad idea. She glanced back at the device sitting on her workshop, so simple-looking but with so much advanced tech in it that Maggie wasn't sure she could put a price tag on it. Some of the things she'd done with it had never been attempted before.

She looked back out the window. Oh no, this is a great idea.

The night air clung hot and thick to Maggie's skin as she stepped out onto the building's rooftop, twenty stories up. It was a flat, gravelly expanse with a water tower at the end, all of it cast into darkness. The city stretched out below, warm and glowing, save for the dark swathe of the river to the west.

Feeling her hair curl in the humidity, Maggie slowly pulled on her newest creation. It looked like a compact metal backpack once she'd cinched the harness around her chest, and felt deceptively light. She swung her arms around a few times to get used to the harness, then pulled on a pair of fingerless gloves. The gloves communicated wirelessly with the device, though they felt slightly stiff on her hands due to all the tech woven through the fabric.

Maggie cleared her throat and closed her eyes. Nerves zinged through her body, though she couldn't quite explain why. I'm just up here to run some minor tests, she told herself. She let out a shaky breath and braced her legs.

She slowly clenched her fists, and in almost the same second the device strapped to her back came alive. With the faintest of hums metal slid outward, stretching away from Maggie's back and out to either side of her like unfurling limbs. She opened her eyes and saw the dark gleam of metal out of the corner of her eyes.

In the space of three seconds the device had fully deployed. Maggie stood in the middle of the rooftop, breathing, staring at the two large, black wings that stretched wide to either side of her. They hung like the deepest shadows of the night, massive and inhuman.

A breeze washed over the rooftop, catching at the wings, and Maggie gasped. The right wing dipped momentarily as she lost concentration, before she corrected it with a twitch of her fingers.

Maggie locked the wings' position so she could bring her hands to her mouth to stifle her sudden laugh. It worked. She turned in a circle, admiring the metal limbs sprouting from her back. They were beautiful: each wing had a rigid metal skeleton made up of telescopic 'bones': a long arching one at the top edge, with five phalanges stretching down and ending in a sharp point. Carbon fibre webbing stretched between the phalanges, lightweight but durable. Engines were built into the end of each phalange, and a whole forest of internal wiring and connectivity stretched along the wings like veins, blood vessels, and nerve endings. Each wing stretched out ten feet to either side of her. They were angular like a bat's, with a wingspan only matched by long-extinct dinosaurs.

She reached out to stroke a finger along the top ridge of her left wing, as far as she could reach. The metal felt cool against her skin, but alive - she wasn't sure if it was all in her head, but she thought she could feel the microscopic thrum of each small correction and communication through the wing, like a living being's unconscious biological functions.

"Hello there," Maggie whispered. The wing swayed slightly in the breeze, then corrected automatically to keep balance. She beamed.

She closed and opened the wings once more, feeling them bunch up close to her back before stretching wide again. She closed her eyes at the feeling of it.

These wings were like the paraglider, really: an aid for flying, something to be strapped into. But they felt like more. Maggie had designed each joint and particle of these wings, and she knew them inside and out. She knew the relays of information running through them. The weight of them at the small of her back felt grounding, as if all this time she'd been drifting, unable to set foot on the ground. But now she felt solid, and real. She felt as if something inside her had clawed its way free.

Maggie ran a few tests with the hand controls in her gloves, experimenting with manipulating the wings, twisting and stretching them. Her fingers twitched and danced, and in response her wings changed pitch, angle, and degree of contraction. All perfectly scientific, though it felt like magic.

The hand controls were not how Maggie intended to use the wings forever. The harness strapped to her back was equipped with low-beam infrared sensors which could 'see' every twitch and movement of Maggie's muscles, and read the data going through the wires and plates in her spine, from her childhood surgeries. She'd worn an open-back shirt so the harness could read her more easily. The metal pressed against her flesh. She'd gotten the idea from Stephen Hawking's speech translation device. It would take time, but she hoped that she could train her wings to read and learn her body, just as she would have to learn the wings. By training the mechanical to read the biological, she hoped she would be able to control the wings with just a thought.

Satisfied that everything was in working order, Maggie clenched her fists again and the wings retracted into the small, strange-looking metal lump on her back. She reached up to unclip the metal harness, but then her eyes caught on the black curve of the river in the distance.

I really shouldn't.

The gloves on her hands seemed to tingle, and she felt the coiled strength of the wings at her back. Now that she had felt them, had seen them arcing away from her spine, Maggie could not think of them as the device any longer. They were two more metal limbs, and she felt their phantom absence when they were gone.

Almost unconsciously Maggie moved toward the edge of the rooftop. The city seemed to expand beneath her, warm and inviting. She tilted her face up and felt the hint of a breeze on her skin. The distant glimmer of stars looked like an invitation.

Her toes grazed the edge of the rooftop, and a bolt of electric nerves ran down her spine.

A strange, errant thought drifted through her mind: All my life, I have been waiting for this moment.

She put one foot out into open air-

"Ms Stark!"

Maggie flinched and stumbled back a step from the roof edge, spinning around.

By the roof entrance stood a man in a dark suit, with one hand stretched out toward her and his eyes wide. His chest rose and fell sharply, as if he'd been running.

Maggie narrowed her eyes. She didn't recognise the man. His suit was a little too professional for the kind of people she'd seen in the building, and she could see a bulge in his jacket pocket which she knew meant gun. Her eyes darted to his face.

The man met her eyes as he caught his breath. "You… you don't want to do this, Ms Stark." His eyes flickered to the roof edge. "We can talk about this."

Maggie let out a breathy laugh. Oh. The wings were folded back up into the metal pack on her back, so she could imagine what this looked like.

She didn't know this man, or how he knew her name, or why he was here (though she suspected he was one of the people who'd been following her from a distance). But something about his sudden appearance gave her the last bit of courage she needed.

Maggie smiled, took a step back, and tumbled backwards into darkness.

Agent Meyer of S.H.I.E.L.D. ran to the edge of the rooftop, his heart in his mouth and his hand still outstretched. Christ, if only he'd known the surveillance target was a suicide risk…

He peered over the edge, squinting in the darkness, but couldn't make out anything.

"Shit."

He turned and ran back the way he'd come, pounding down the fire stairs. His phone buzzed in his pocket, but he ignored it. He burst out into the night air again on the ground floor, and sprinted to where - to where…

To where there was nothing. The ground below where Ms Stark had jumped was a shadowed pavement and a bit of lawn, but they were completely empty. His brow furrowed. He turned in a few circles, checked the nearby bushes, but still nothing.

He finally answered his buzzing phone. "Boss. Yeah, yeah, I like I said" - he paused to catch his breath - "I did the hourly check and she'd gone to the roof. Yes, and she jumped!" he wiped his forehead as the voice on his phone got significantly louder. "No. I don't know what the hell happened, but she's not dead. She's gone."

If Agent Meyer had thought to look up, he might have noticed the silhouette of black wings that flashed over the stars.

See you all next year!

Reviews

MyCelestialFury: I hope you're having a lovely holiday period! Maggie is indeed becoming more and more the Wyvern ;) And we are getting closer to the Iron Man storyline! About two chapters off now.

DBZFAN45: You know what I didn't realise the parallels between Maggie and the Batman Begins storyline until your review haha. I'm glad you enjoyed the last chapter, and I hope you liked this one! Merry Christmas x

The1975Love: Hello again! I'm so glad you liked the chapter, and I hope you're having a happy holiday period x