A/N: Happy birthday to TheHatterM, thank you for all your enthusiasm and love for my stories, I hope you have a great day :)
The next morning Maggie woke up at the crack of dawn, wrote Tony a quick note, and drove back to her own apartment. She brought her wingpack and her computer hub, which had been sitting under her childhood bed for a month. She had work to do.
It took her an hour of scouring through her algorithms and information drops to discover what she'd already feared: The Ten Rings were still active.
For a moment, she debated telling Tony. But no, he needed time to heal. She cracked her knuckles and took her first step back into her shadow world.
Stark Mansion, Malibu
Pepper was watching the news coverage on Tony's press conference when the man himself called her and asked how big her hands were.
A minute later she found herself down in his workshop, staring at Tony with the metal cavity in his bare chest and the glowing machine in his hand.
"Wh-what do you want me to do?" she asked, eyes wide.
His voice was impossibly calm. "I just want you to reach in, and you're gonna gently lift the wire out-"
Her eyes darted to his face. "Where's Maggie?"
"She vanished again," he said evenly and jerked his head at his worktable, where Pepper spotted a scrap of paper with a scrawled note: Be back later - M. "She's good at that."
Pepper glanced back down at the metal cavity in Tony's chest. She could see wiring at the bottom, and her stomach turned. "Is it safe?"
"Yeah," Tony said, in the same way he used to say Sure, I'll be at that meeting.
Pepper squeezed her eyes shut for a moment. Oh, this is going to go terribly.
Two minutes later, after Tony had briefly gone into cardiac arrest, Pepper tried to calm her racing heart as she wiped gunk off her shaking hands and picked up the reactor that Tony had asked her to set aside.
"What do you want me to do with this?"
"That?" Tony looked over his shoulder. He already looked much better, after one night back at home. "Destroy it. Incinerate it."
"You don't want to keep it?"
"Pepper," he said, with a smile playing at his lips. "I've been called many things. 'Nostalgic' is not one of them."
She looked back down at the glowing reactor, which had kept him alive long enough to get here. "Will that be all, Mr Stark?"
"That will be all, Miss Potts."
Maggie spent the day casting out nets for information, the first step in her hunt. When she looked up from her computer screen and saw the sun setting over Los Angeles, she packed up and headed back to the mansion.
When she arrived back, her chest heavy and her mind full, Tony looked over from where he'd been standing by the window and his still-bruised face broke open in a smile.
"Welcome back, drifter."
Maggie's eyes zeroed in on the blue light glowing from behind his t-shirt, brighter than it had been yesterday. "You didn't do it yourself," she said, aghast.
He tapped the glowing circle and it let out a soft tink like tapping against glass. "Nah, Pepper helped."
She dropped her bag on the floor. "Tony-"
"What, it went fine!"
She shook her head and strode over to join him at the window. "So, what's your plan now?"
He glanced back out over the ocean. She could see him thinking.
"You haven't decided yet," she realized. He didn't respond. "You've just had that press conference and you're not sure-" she swallowed the words. Shook her head. "You have time. Forget the company, forget the stocks." They'd been plummeting all day. She reached out to put a hand on Tony's shoulder, then thought better of it. He was still healing. "You need to take time to heal. I don't know what your plan is, and I can tell you're not ready to share yet. But just… promise me you'll take a few weeks."
He eyed her for a few moments, his eyes dark and solemn. But she saw him relent. "Sure. And what are you going to do?"
"Well, you've put me out of a job," she said with a teasing smile. "But… I'm thinking I'll stick around."
He looked so, so pleased. It made Maggie feel guilty all over again. "Want to order in Chinese?"
She beamed. "That sounds great."
Stark Industries, California
Obadiah Stane closed his office door, then settled back in his desk chair, thinking. He'd been working flat out since yesterday, surrounded by people, and hadn't had a chance to think through his next moves. It's all a game of chess, he reminded himself. And I'll never be the pawn.
The steadily-simmering anger surged, and he frowned. He'd almost had Maggie in the perfect position for him to take over, but then Tony had shown back up in the desert and the girl had grown something resembling a spine. She'd been so close to giving him the company entirely, and that was the ideal scenario: no one could question his legitimacy as CEO if he'd been willingly given the company by a Stark.
He needed to test the waters now. Tony had played his hand, but he needed to see if Maggie could be bent back into that uncertain, unready leader.
He pressed his fingers to his temples and nodded. Yes. Test the waters, push and prod the various pieces on the board. Let the dust settle as I sow uncertainty. It wouldn't be hard to shake the board and the public's faith in Tony, after that display yesterday. I'll see where Maggie's at soon. If I play this right I can edge Tony out. And either Maggie will play into my hands, or I'll knock her off the board too.
He let out a long sigh and steepled his fingers. He'd been patiently planning for years now. Playing the trusted, unambitious uncle figure. But one day, soon, they'd all see that he'd been the king all along.
Maggie and Tony were left at odds for a few weeks. What with Tony's orders to lie low and Maggie's sudden lack of employment, they hung around the mansion together, ordering in food and watching movies and healing. They even went swimming, once Tony was sure the reactor in his chest was waterproof.
Maggie kept a close watch on Tony. Despite their idleness she could see plans germinating and blooming behind his eyes, but he obeyed her: he rested. He seemed more grounded than she had ever known him: the slightly chaotic charm was still there, but there was something about him… purpose, she thought. He didn't throw any wild parties, which she had half expected. In fact he seemed uncomfortable around other people now, stiff and hyper-aware. He spent his time drifting in and out of his workshop, fixing up the half-finished hotrod, though a few times after welding he came upstairs pale and shaking. Maggie understood.
There was something darker to the two of them these days.
Maggie did not rest. Every spare second where she wasn't with Tony, she was gathering intelligence. She'd learned that she didn't have to traverse the world to be the Wyvern now. She was well established enough that she had the resources and the connections to work from her computer. And she had a very specific focus now: hunting the Ten Rings.
The organisation had gone even more shadowy now that one of their bases had been blown up. But Maggie traced echoes of them, tracking down weapons deals and intelligence traded.
Her new focus meant that she turned down a lot of jobs she would have taken as the Wyvern. Though she did leave the mansion once, three weeks in, when one of the people she'd been tracking before Tony's kidnapping popped their head up in Atlanta. A ballsy move for a man with known ties to Somali insurgents, and it cost him. The Wyvern caught up to the man in his darkened hotel room, recorded his terrified confession on a burner phone, then turned both him and the phone in to the local FBI unit. Maggie was back home by breakfast.
She finally had the time to update her Winter Soldier investigation, and cursed when she realised there'd been a hit on an Iranian physicist months ago. It wasn't confirmed to be him - none of them were - but she could feel it in her gut. He's out there. Gritting her teeth, she pushed on with her other investigations.
Maggie was glad of the chance to mentally distance herself from Stark Industries after the past month of it swallowing her whole, but even she couldn't help but notice its spectacular drop in the stock markets. The company itself was on a kind of hold, with the Board taking their time trying to sort things out in meetings. They kept the factories going and people employed, but they didn't open any new contracts. Maggie could see what they were doing: stalling. But it literally wasn't her business anymore. Trust the process, she told herself. So she enjoyed the company of her brother.
Come her and Tony's birthdays, just four days apart, Maggie knew a birthday party wouldn't be in the cards. So she smuggled Tony out of the mansion, attempting to disguise him with a hoodie and sunglasses, and took him to a diner they both liked for lunch.
"Happy thirty ninth birthday, old man," she toasted him over their cheeseburgers and fries.
"Happy twenty third, infant," he shot back, and they clinked their beer bottles together.
Maggie beamed at him. When they got home, she knew Happy and Pepper would be waiting for them with party hats and presents, and Maggie would give Tony his gift from her: a new phone to replace the one that had been blown up in Afghanistan, this time with a single panic button for emergencies.
But for now, this was enough: wearing poorly-conceived disguises with her brother in a diner where they could be just any two people. Tony's eyes glinted at her. He'd survived. He'd made it to this birthday, with her. And she'd see him through to many more to come.
Her good mood lasted until the doorway, where they walked out into the glare of sunshine - and a lucky reporter's dictaphone.
"Mr Stark," the eager middle-aged man blurted, his forehead sweaty. Someone inside the diner must have tipped him off. "Mr Stark, how are you coping now that you're back home?"
"Doing great," Tony said evenly, his usual smoothness sliding over his face. "Missed the food here."
Maggie sighed, expecting the next question to be about SI. But to her surprise, the journalist turned his dictaphone on her as she tried to squeeze past. "Ms Stark, what's it like having your brother back?"
She arched an eyebrow. "Are you seriously asking me how I feel now that my brother's no longer being held hostage by terrorists?" She eyeballed him, and the man squirmed. Tony watched them with a quirk to his mouth. "Leave us alone," she said shortly.
And the reporter left. Small miracles. Maggie could practically see the headlines: Margaret Stark is a dick on her brother's birthday.
Tony smiled at her.
She sighed at him. "Let's go home."
In the car on the way home, Obie texted Tony: I thought you said you'd lay low.
Tony read the text out to Maggie as she drove, then tapped the phone against the reactor hidden behind his shirt. "I think we'll have to stick to takeout from now on, Magnolia."
June 4, 2009
A few days later, Tony walked into the living room in jeans and a leather jacket, his beard groomed and his eyes gleaming. Maggie, in pajama pants and an old t-shirt, stared.
"Where are you going?"
"Edwards Air Force base," he said, completely self-assured.
Rhodey. Maggie frowned. Rhodey had kept his distance the past weeks - he'd checked in to make sure Tony was healing and safe, but as the weapons contractor consultant for the Air Force he'd been… busy, since Tony's big announcement.
Tony caught Maggie's frown. "I need to do this. I can't just… it's great to be back, Maggie, but I have to-"
She eyed the look on his face: there were those blooming plans, again. She nodded slowly. "It's time." Whatever it was that he'd set in motion with that press conference, he was ready to act on it. To bring Rhodey in on his plans. Her heart twisted. "Okay."
He cocked his head, and his styled hair flopped to the side. "Come with me."
She wrinkled her nose. "No thanks." This was between him and Rhodey.
"Come on, Mags, you know these pilot types like you."
She shook her head, thinking of the air base, and how it had felt walking those corridors after they'd rejected her. "Rhodey's your friend, Tony. Whatever it is you're after, he'll listen to you."
Tony arched an eyebrow, considering, before he shrugged. "Alright. See you soon."
Tony came back angry.
Maggie heard his car as it roared down the driveway, and set aside her computer full of illegal secrets just before he burst through the front door. She caught the look on his face and hesitated.
"What happened? Rhodey didn't come with you?"
"No," Tony said shortly. He stormed straight for the door down to the workshop, his jaw tight.
Maggie rose. "Why not? What did he say?" She still didn't know what Tony had gone to ask him, but she found it hard to imagine Rhodey telling him no. But then she remembered the glimpse of his face she had gotten, back at the press conference. She'd hardly thought about it until now, but after Tony's announcement… Rhodey's face had completely closed off.
Tony hit the palm reader and the door to the staircase opened. He disappeared a moment later.
But they're friends. Maggie went to follow him, but when she touched the palm reader it flashed red.
"I am sorry, Ms Stark, but sir has requested that he be left alone." J.A.R.V.I.S. truly sounded apologetic.
For a moment her blood boiled. The house blueprints flashed in her mind, giving her ideas for how to break into the workshop so she could wring Tony's neck for locking her out. But then she let out a breath. And another.
Her fists unclenched. "Let me know if he needs my help, J.A.R.V.I.S.," she sighed. "Keep an eye on him."
"Of course."
Maggie pinched the bridge of her nose, still resisting the urge to break down the door. Or to call Rhodey and tear him a new one. She would bide her time, and wait. Like she had been ever since Tony got back. And while she waited, she would hunt.
She returned to her computer.
The next day, Maggie returned from a dawn ride along the coastline just as Tony emerged from downstairs. He jerked his head at her. "You coming? I've got something to show you."
She didn't hesitate. "Okay." She started after him, but before they reached the staircase he whirled on her. "This isn't for the military, Maggie. I don't… I don't know if people didn't hear me right at that press conference, but I don't do that anymore. You understand that? You're not just…" his eyes flickered. "Waiting for me to see sense?"
Maggie blinked at him. I thought we already covered this. Whatever Rhodey had said must have shaken him. "I've been waiting for you to see sense for years," she eventually said, with a soft smile. "I don't have to wait anymore."
That made him smile. "Good. Come with me."
He brought her downstairs to the workshop. She'd been expecting to see it in disarray, but it was surprisingly organized. Tony made a beeline for his computer setup and waved a hand over the keyboard, waking up the monitors. Maggie circled behind him as he typed in a code. When a set of designs flashed up on the main screen, her breath caught in her chest.
"When did you do this?" she gaped.
"You're not the only one who can keep secrets," Tony told her, and there was hardly any sting in it. He nodded at the screen. "Blueprints were already finished in my head, I just needed to get them on the computer. J.A.R.V.I.S., you up?"
"For you sir, always."
"I'd like to open a new project file, indexed as Mark II." Tony picked up a digi-pen and began manipulating the design on screen.
Maggie's eyes roved over the clean lines on the computer monitor, and the lines of code on the other. A pair of etched-out eyes peered back at her. "This is your suit of armor," she said softly. The one he'd told her about, the one that had saved his life.
"Shall I store this on the Stark Industries central database?" J.A.R.V.I.S. asked.
Tony used the digi-pen to flick the design over to the holographic display beside him, and the design appeared in 3D light before Maggie's eyes. It pieced itself together, calculations forming the 3D model, and Maggie felt as if her brain had lit up like a Christmas tree.
She could already see how the design had been borne out of necessity: certain parts she recognised as parts scavenged from missiles, and the whole thing screamed minimal welding supplies. This was a junkyard scavenger's design. But beyond that… it was completely, utterly, Tony. Despite the rudimentary design it was genius, with a complex power delivery system running from the arc reactor, carefully-planned armor plating, and a dazzling array of weaponry on the arms. It was clearly a massively heavy suit, but he'd built in power dispersal and mechanised movement, which would make mobility relatively simple.
She tried to picture the armor as Tony had made it, a seven foot tall metal behemoth, but her imagination failed her. All she had was this miniature glowing version.
Tony glanced at Maggie as he replied to J.A.R.V.I.S.:
"Don't know who to trust right now. Until further notice why don't we just keep everything on my private server." He stood up and circled the holo-display until he stood on the other side from Maggie, with the glowing armor between them.
"Working on a secret project, are we sir?"
Tony reached out and opened up the glowing helmet with his fingers. "I don't want this winding up in the wrong hands," he muttered, then grabbed the internal computing and wiring from the design and tossed it all in the virtual trash can on the display. He spun the design, baring the miniature arc reactor to Maggie, and tossed some of the external bulking - a power dispersal unit.
"Maybe in mine it can actually do some good." Tony swiped a hand, sending the armor spinning on the display between them, and his eyes finally flicked up to meet Maggie's. "So, what do you think?"
Maggie reached out, cautious, and slowly turned the glowing armor with a twist of her fingers. In the space of seconds Tony had stripped back the armor to a slimmer, less bulky design than the one on his computer screen. The design before them now was a shell, but Maggie didn't see emptiness: she saw a foundation. She lifted both the glowing arms, eyeing the weaponry, then traced the fine glowing lines back to the arc reactor on the chest.
The thrumming feeling pounding in her chest and prickling along her arms reminded her of when she'd first etched out a design of metal wings in her notebook. She knew better than to ignore the feeling.
But… this wasn't just about machinery. Her eyes flicked back up to Tony. The light glowed on his face.
"What will you use it for, Tony?" she asked softly.
His face only grew more determined. "I already told you."
"No, actually, you haven't." He'd hinted at his plans, had even promised her that he intended to make the world better and would not destroy himself, but… "Tell me, Tony. Tell me I'm not helping you make just another weapon."
His eyes tightened, before he sighed. "They had our weapons, Maggie. This…" he hovered a hand over the glowing armor that spun slowly between them. "This isn't a weapon." He held her gaze, earnest. "This is… Yinsen told me not to waste my life, and I want this to be a way of… protecting people against the damage we've already done. I'm going to use it to put a stop to the people who use our weapons to create fear, and violence, and tear apart families. It's a…" his jaw worked, and he glanced back down at the armor.
Maggie let out a sigh. "It's a shield," she finished for him.
Tony's eyes gleamed. "Right." He let out a breath, as if relieved she understood.
And of course she did. Hadn't she already built her own? "Plus," she added with a knowing look, "you want to make this fly, don't you?"
His look of relief turned into a grin, and Maggie laughed.
"You and I are too similar for our own good," she told him.
"What does that mean?" he cocked an eyebrow.
But Maggie just spun the armor again, smiling, then met his eyes. "Just promise me you'll remember something, Tony: a shield can still be a weapon."
He sobered a little, and nodded.
She broke back into a smile. "Let's get started."
It had taken Tony three months in a cave to put together a working suit of armor. With the help of J.A.R.V.I.S. and the state-of-the-art tools in Tony's workshop, work went much quicker, but Tony's designs were so much more complex. For a few weeks they didn't even bother manufacturing anything, too busy twisting light and ideas with their bare hands. Maggie had missed Tony's holo-displays while she was away: she'd forgotten what it felt like to sit, mind churning and fingers twisting, as complex designs took shape in thin air before her. She and Tony flicked ideas back and forth, trading parts of the armor: Maggie worked on the thruster parts while Tony worked on the helmet HUD, then after a few days they swapped, going over the other's work with a fine tooth comb, picking up new ideas and adding their own. Maggie had learned a lot from designing her own wings, though she didn't tell Tony that, and included elements of her design in the armor.
As it had been with their creation of J.A.R.V.I.S., their days were driven by Tony's whirlwind of ideas, and Maggie taking those ideas and helping refine them into something real and tangible. After the weeks of rest, this whirlwind of invention felt like a breath of fresh air. Maggie could see, in Tony's intent eyes and focused work, that this was what he had been planning ever since his plane touched down on home soil: this was the purpose that she'd recognised in his eyes.
Slowly, their work with designs and light began to take shape in reality. They began manufacturing small parts: joints and computer boards, testing out their designs. Slowly, the workshop began to fill: coils of wire snaked across the floor, toolboxes and panels and machine parts stacked out of the way. Old takeout boxes and stale cups of coffee cluttered their workspaces. Dum-E and U, their robot brains intrigued by the new project, hovered around Maggie and Tony, helping where they could.
Tony had come back from Afghanistan with more than a set of mental blueprints, however. Maggie noticed it the first time she absent-mindedly handed him a precision tool when she saw he'd need one. Tony had reached out but then hesitated, his eyes on her outstretched, offering hand. She'd looked into his face and noticed sweat beading on his forehead.
"Something wrong with the tool?" she'd asked.
He shook his head once, then with visible effort forced himself to take the tool from her. She didn't miss the shiver that seemed to go down his neck. Okay.
She put it together when she offered him a mug of coffee the next day. He winced at her, then said: "Just put it down on the desk, thanks."
So Maggie set the mug by his elbow, and a few moments later Tony slid it into this hands and took a deep gulp.
She eyed him. "Is it me, or is it…?"
He shook his head sharply. "It's not you. I don't know, I've noticed… I don't like being handed things."
Maggie cocked her head. There was a whole lot there to unpack, and she could probably trace the root of it. He'd told her a little about the torture he suffered at the hands of the Ten Rings - not much, but enough. Maggie couldn't imagine how that tore at the mind, how it embedded fears deep in the soul. She wasn't sure if this sudden aversion to being handed things was an aversion to the possibility of touch, or a remnant of his relationship with Yinsen. Heaven knew she had her own strange hangups, like how she didn't like people touching her back, or sneaking up on her. Tony had that latter problem too - he seemed so much more physically tense, always aware and alert of what was happening around him. Good for survival, but bad for calm.
She nodded. "If you want to talk about it, I'm here." He avoided her eyes. "But with that, at least, that's something I can easily change. You don't like it, I won't do it." And with that declaration, they got back to work.
Maggie never handed something directly to Tony again. They worked around and with each other, leaving tools and coffee and sandwiches just within arms reach of each other, but never actually passing them directly. Sometimes Tony snatched things out of Maggie's hands - especially the digital holograms - and that, she thought, was his attempt at challenging the fear. So she just smiled at him whenever he did it.
For the most part, Maggie and Tony were left alone. Pepper popped in and out of the mansion, though they never invited her down to the workshop, and Obie called every now and then to update them on the situation with the board. Rhodey called too, but he was… distant. Professional.
Maggie kept up her hunt. She uncovered more background on the Ten Rings, and traced their movements up until Tony's escape. They'd gone shadowy, but she could tell they were still around: she caught snatches of activity in the areas of Afghanistan and surrounds that were supposed to have been liberated, and the intelligence organisations in the area were clearly uneasy. But there was nothing concrete, and the DoD hadn't released their findings from their investigation into Tony's kidnapping yet.
Maybe the Ten Rings really had been irreparably damaged by Tony's escape. Maybe however they'd gotten Stark weapons was an avenue no one would be able to exploit again. Maybe this armor she was helping Tony make would only ever be needed as a precaution.
Maggie liked to think she was a hopeful person. But she was also a realistic person, so she kept her wingpack close to hand, and made sure Tony's armor was missileproof.
September, 2009
Kunar Province, Afghanistan
After months of searching through sun-baked desert, a man in a dusty, faded uniform pulled a metal mask from the side of a hill.
Sand poured through the eye slits like tears until the mask gleamed in the sunlight, freed from the desert.
Raza Hamidmi Al-Wazar looked over at the man's shout, and for the first time in months looked into that blank metal face again.
Finally.
Stark Mansion
Maggie was hunched over her Wyvern computer on the mansion couch, brow furrowed, when the doorbell rang. She looked up, blinking.
"J.A.R.V.I.S.? Who is it?" Not many people called at the house these days.
"Mr Stane is at the door, Ms Stark."
Oh. "Let him in." Maggie closed up her computer and slid it under the couch. It would completely wipe itself if anyone other than her tried to access it, but she still preferred for no one to notice it in the first place.
She'd been reading over the DoD report on Tony's kidnapping, which had only just been loaded onto their internal servers - which meant Maggie finally had access to it as well. There hadn't been much left of the cave system Tony had been held in, but the DoD had managed to get a few serial numbers off the remnants of the Stark weapons there. The DoD had traced the serial numbers and found that the weapons were part of a routine shipment to the US Army in Afghanistan. And the Army records said that the weapons had been received. Maggie's mind whirled. Was the leak on the SI side of things, or within the Army? And had it been a one-time deal, or a routine?
She pushed it all out of her mind for now as Obie strode into the main room and spotted her on the couch. She stood, smiling. Obie had been far too busy in New York with the board to come over before now.
"Hey, Obie. Tony's not here." Tony had gone out to pick up another shipment of parts for the armor.
"Oh, that's too bad," Obie said, smoothing down the front of his suit as he walked in, and Maggie suspected he'd already known that Tony had gone out. She cocked her head and eyed him. Obie looked exhausted, with tired lines around his eyes.
His eyes alighted on her. "Maggie. How're you doing, kid?"
"Alright," she shrugged. "Better now that Tony's back."
Obie sighed. "He came back different."
Maggie's heart panged. "Yes." Tony had returned, darker and focused and with an undeniable drive.
Obie's eyes tightened and he closed the distance between them to set a hand on her shoulder. "I know that must be hard for you. I know you two have… you've had your issues, in the past, but I can't imagine how it feels to see him…" he cocked his head. "Like this." He glanced around the mansion. "I know you've been holed up here with him a while, is everything going alright?"
She frowned. "Tony's doing okay, Obie. He's been through a lot, but he's not… not broken."
He gave her a sympathetic smile. "What about you? I notice you haven't run off for a foreign country yet."
She straightened her shoulders. "No. Tony needs me."
Again, that sympathetic smile. "What about you? What do you need?"
She opened and closed her mouth. She hadn't really thought about it like that. She'd been focused on helping Tony build his armor, and on hunting down the organisation that had kidnapped him. She had put her hunt for the Winter Soldier on hold for now, but… it hadn't felt like giving up what she needed. But she supposed it might look like that from the outside: she had been holed up in the mansion with Tony since he got back.
Obie watched her face closely, his hand warm on her shoulder. "You haven't set foot in SI since the press conference."
"I'm not an employee there anymore."
"You could be."
She frowned. "What do you mean? Tony's CEO again."
"Yes," Obie said patiently, "but he's on suspended leave. You could step in as interim CEO again." His lips quirked. "You did a great job last time."
Her shoulders hunched. "It wasn't really me. It was you, and Pepper, and everyone else. I'm just… I'm just a Stark."
"Just," he echoed, the corner of his mouth ticking up again. "I'm glad your father never had to hear you say that."
She almost flinched. Her eyes dropped and she stepped out from Obie's grip, heading to the kitchen.
Obie sighed and paced after her, running a hand over his bald head. "Maggie. I know you love Tony. I love Tony. But the world can't wait on him to… to heal." Maggie glanced back at him briefly as she poured herself a glass of water. "Come back to SI, do some good. You'll still be there for him. You'll be helping him, really."
Maggie knocked back her glass, and for a moment she really thought about it. She thought about if it was dad standing in front of her, instead of Obie. Asking her to take the reins. This is our legacy.
She set down her glass and met Obie's gaze. "I'll step in," she said, and Obie started to smile, but then she added: "I'll step in if the board lets me supervise the full shutdown of the weapons manufacturing division" - stormclouds rolled over his face - "and start development on other directions for the company-"
He stepped back, shaking his head. "You know the board won't go for that." He reached up to pinch the bridge of his nose, and the disappointment on his face stung her. "Maggie…" the disappointment turned to something like pity as he eyed her face. "You need to step out from under Tony's shadow. I know… with the upbringing you had it must be hard, but you are your own person. You don't have to bend to his will."
Maggie took a shaky breath. "Yes," she said. "I am my own person." She turned and walked away. On her way out the front door she called back: "You can let yourself out."
Obie watched her go, his dark eyes glittering. Reevaluating. Planning.
When Maggie got back to the mansion Obie was gone, and Tony had returned. She didn't mention Obie's visit. She still felt hot with shame and something else - something a little like anger.
She and Tony had started work on the 'boots' of the armor, by far one of the most complicated parts. First they built the general exo-structure, but then they had to fill it with a forest of wiring and computer nodes, ensuring that every part could move freely and that Tony's feet wouldn't get fried when he put on the boot. They hunched over their working model, tiring their eyes from peering at tiny fluctuations in metal and singeing their fingers on soldering irons. Maggie's back ached from the exacting work.
But her mind still felt pulled beyond the workshop.
A few days after Obie's visit, Maggie left Tony in the workshop with Dum-E helping him wire the toe piece of one of the boots, and drove herself into the city.
Stark Industries loomed large and gleaming around her as she drove into the complex and parked in the executive car park. Her heart rate kicked up a notch, a reminder of the panic that used to sweep over her each morning coming into work.
But when she strode through the front doors into the lobby, she kept her shoulders straight and her head high. She'd even put on a suit again, which felt strange after the weeks of tracksuit pants and hoodies.
She wasn't quite sure what she was here for, but looking into that rogue shipment of Stark weapons would be much easier if she worked from within the SI secure servers.
Maggie nodded to a few people she recognized as she strode purposefully through the lobby, then swiped her card at the reader for the executive elevator. The reader flashed red and beeped at her.
Frowning, Maggie tried again. When the reader still wouldn't let her through, she turned and strode to the main reception desk, where the receptionist sat staring at her, red faced.
Maggie held up her ID card in a silent question.
"I'm sorry Ms Stark, you're not permitted up to the executive wing," the receptionist blurted.
She blinked. "Why?"
The receptionist looked like she wanted to sink into the floor. "Because… you're not on the approved list of executives."
Maggie had never been forbidden from any part of the company. She opened her mouth to say But this is Stark Industries, but then realized how it would sound, and shut her mouth.
The receptionist grimaced. "The board is still in negotiations, so they're running the company in the interim. I'm sorry, but the instructions were very clear."
"It's not your fault," Maggie said. She set her hands on her hips and bit the inside of her cheek. She'd only wanted to look around really, but… instantly, the part of her that was the Wyvern wanted to break in. Wanted to hack in to her own company. She shook the instinct away. It wasn't like anyone would be able to trade weapons illegally while the whole board was running the company. It'd get sorted out, one way or another, and Tony would be put in charge again. She hated being patient, but she would have to be.
She needed to keep her focus on the Ten Rings, the real threat across the ocean.
She nodded. "Can I go anywhere else?" she asked the receptionist, who checked her computer screen.
"Your card should get you into the engineering wing, cafeteria, legal, HR-"
"So everywhere except upstairs," Maggie said with a hint of humor. She sighed. "Thank you."
Maggie returned to the mansion, where Tony had made a breakthrough in solving the problems they'd had rerouting the heat produced by the thruster in the heel of the boot. She worked with him until the early hours of the morning, until neither of them could work through their tired eyes and aching fingers any longer. They exchanged a tired high five and then stumbled back to their rooms for sleep.
Maggie woke up at midmorning and strode out of her room to find Pepper in the rarely-used home office.
"Hi," Maggie said in surprise. Pepper was around the mansion more than anyone else, but she usually spent her time at Stark Industries keeping things running.
Pepper glanced over her shoulder as she sorted through binders. "Hi," she said, shooting her a polite smile. "I'm just picking up these audit forms and then I'll be gone, did you need the office?"
Maggie resisted the urge to laugh. "No, I'm good." She cocked her head. "Did you know I've been blacklisted from the SI executive wing?"
Pepper sighed and turned to face her, brushing back her ginger hair. "You haven't been blacklisted, Maggie. The board are trying to sort all this out, and Obie's trying to speed the process along, but until then neither you or Tony can go up there. Tony knows about it."
Maggie wrinkled her nose as she leaned against the door frame. "It feels wrong."
"I know. But what with impending financial doom and a seriously complicated leadership entanglement, things can't be quite as casual as when you were a child," Pepper said sympathetically. "Why, did you want to go back to work?"
She frowned. "Maybe. I don't know. Depends what the work is."
Pepper cocked her head. "I know you agree with Tony. But… don't you see why it scares people? Stark Industries employs thousands of people, all of whom are terrified they're going to be out of a job. The government is terrified that they're going to be without weapons to defend the country." She saw the look on Maggie's face. "I know. I know, I understand your… ethical objections." She sighed. "I can't say that I don't share them. But there needs to be a practical solution. This company has been founded on weapons manufacturing and selling since 1940. When Tony said he wanted to shut that down, it sounded to a lot of people like he was shutting down the company."
Pepper hoisted a stack of the binders in her arms and eyed Maggie. "What I think you both need to think about is… what can you offer the world instead of weapons?"
And Maggie knew that Pepper didn't mean it to be a slap in the face, but it felt like it. Can Tony and I offer anything other than violence? She needed to believe it could be possible. The skeleton taking shape downstairs helped her to believe it could be possible.
She drew herself up tall. "Maybe if the board put a little trust in Tony, they would see what else he had to offer."
A flicker of doubt crossed Pepper's face. She glanced downward, and Maggie knew she was thinking of Tony, who was already probably back in the workshop. Maggie could almost read her thoughts: traumatized, obsessed Tony, holed up in his workshop making god knows what. Pepper glanced back at Maggie. "And it's not you?" she murmured. "You won't be the one to step in, to offer something different?"
Maggie thought about who she was, about what she could offer. If Tony asked her to, then she would. But they both knew that he was the one meant to be at the head of the company, the public face. Maggie knew that she worked better in the shadows. She would work for SI, but she wouldn't run it.
She shook her head.
Pepper sighed. "Then we'd better hope that Tony starts acting like someone the board can trust."
As Tony and Maggie finalised the boots, Maggie began to get some ideas for her own secret machinery. When Tony stepped away for much-needed sleep, she tinkered with her wingpack and gloves, updating the engines and connectivity. She didn't make her own arc reactor, but in working on Tony's armor Maggie had come up with some new ideas to streamline the efficiency of her wings.
She could tell that J.A.R.V.I.S. was slightly annoyed whenever she turned off the workshop cameras to work on her own project, as he was whenever she worked on her Wyvern computer, but he didn't say anything. He had no reason to.
October, 2009
"Alright," Tony said, surrounded by trails of wiring. They'd just successfully run a full powering on-and-off sequence with the boots. "Let's do a control test."
Maggie thought of her first control test, when she'd jumped off a twenty-story building into the unknown. "Okay," she said, "but we need some ground rules."
They cleared up their mess in the workshop for the first time in a few weeks. Maggie laid a digital mat on the floor that would measure all the readings they needed to measure, and set Dum-E up with a fire extinguisher, while Tony equipped U with a camera. When she raised an eyebrow, he said:
"It's not science unless you record it, Maggie."
"You just want to watch yourself fly," she retorted, and he merely grinned.
As well as the fire extinguisher, Maggie's safety measures included a set of crash pads around the floor mat, and a yellow helmet that she'd once worn snowboarding. Tony made a face at the helmet, but eventually relented and put it on.
Once everything was in place, with the midmorning light streaming through the windows into the workshop, Maggie helped fit the heavy boots to Tony's feet. She taped the connecting wires up the side of his legs and to his chest, where the power leads snaked out of the arc reactor. Tony picked up the hand controls, and Maggie strapped those wires to his biceps. He stood tense and grim-faced as she worked, and she remembered that Yinsen had been the one to strap him into his armor the first time. She worked quickly, for Tony's sake.
He looked strange, with clunky, complex metal boots on his feet and wiring taped all over his body, and a neon yellow crash helmet on his head. The arc reactor glowed from his chest. Maggie spared a second to eye it. He'd become so accustomed to the reactor in his chest that he hardly seemed to notice it most days. And she had too, as if he'd always had a blue light glowing behind his t-shirt.
"Come on," Tony said impatiently. "Are you staring, or are you helping?"
"I'm helping," she said, backing away to the computer consoles and the emergency kill switch. She ran an eye over the monitor as Tony turned on the floodlight.
"U, start recording," Tony called to the whirring robot, who beeped in obedience. "Okay, let's do this right." He began backing onto the floor mat.
Maggie watched calculations flood across the computer screen before her as the readings from the boots and the mat came through. The boots made millions of tiny calculations with each step, reading gravity and weight distribution and gyroscopic balance and atmosphere.
"Everything's in working order," she called. She consulted the handwritten page of math they'd done in preparation for the test. "You okay to get started?"
"Yep," Tony said, still backing into view of the camera. "Start mark, half a meter, and back and center." He found his mark then straightened, drawing in a deep breath. Maggie chewed the inside of her cheek. Tony glanced over his shoulder. "Dum-E, look alive. You're on standby for fire safety." He glanced back at Maggie. "You stay by those computers and get ready to shut it all down if anything goes wrong." She shot him a mock salute. He turned to U. "U, roll it."
Once Maggie and the robots had their orders, Tony lifted his hands until they were cocked ninety degrees in front of his body, the controls gripped in his hands. "Okay. Activate hand controls."
Maggie flicked a switch by the computer console. They hadn't fully automated the flight control systems yet. The hand controls powered up, a low whir that rose in pitch and volume like an engine revving to life. Tony let out another shaky breath and wiggled his feet, getting his balance.
Maggie pushed down the urge to say be careful.
"We're going to start off nice and easy," Tony said, more to himself than to Maggie or the camera. "We're going to see if 10% thrust capacity achieves lift."
Maggie checked the handwritten math again. They'd had to estimate the output of the arc reactor, but 10% was conservative. It'd be fine.
Still, she couldn't help wincing as Tony drew in one last breath and began his countdown.
"And three, two…" Maggie leaned in. "One."
It was like a bomb went off in the workshop. Blinding white light erupted from the boots with a ricocheting roar like a jet engine and Tony shot off the ground, not in a gentle hover but a violent arc backwards until he collided with the wall several feet away. He hit with a thud on the concrete and dropped, groaning, to the ground.
"Tony!" Maggie hit the power off button, lurched away from the computers and darted across the workshop, cursing when she tripped on one of the main power leads. She stumbled behind the worktables Tony had fallen behind just as Dum-E turned, beeping, and loosed a spray of white powder and gas down on Tony.
Maggie cursed again and dove into the spray, feeling for Tony until she found his shoulder and dragged him out of Dum-E's way.
Tony lay on his back, eyes screwed up and his teeth bared in a grimace. White powder coated him from head to toe.
"Tony, are you okay?" Maggie glanced up. "Dum-E, cut it out!" The robot beeped and stopped spraying. When she looked down again, Tony had opened his eyes.
"Fine," he grit out. "Nothing broken." He unclenched his hands and the hand controls clattered to the floor. He coughed.
Maggie let out a breath and then wiped her eyes clear of the fire extinguisher powder, glancing over her shoulder at the safety setup around the floor mat. "You missed my crash pads."
"Yeah," Tony laughed, sitting up with a groan. "Our math was shit."
Maggie joined his laughter, and the two of them knelt on the workshop floor, covered in white powder and surrounded by machinery.
"You know what," Maggie said, "I am glad you recorded that."
Their first, spectacular failure led to a flurry of inventing. While nasty bruises bloomed on Tony's back and head they dove back into their designs, re-adjusting for the power output of the arc reactor and piecing together how the rest of the armor would function as a unit.
"It wasn't just the power output that sent you into that wall," Maggie thought out loud as they twisted the design for the boots between them.
"The problem was the orientation and the angular velocity," Tony continued. They both reached for their mugs of cold coffee and sipped them, not taking their eyes off the designs. "Like setting off a bottle rocket."
"You need stabilisers," Maggie agreed. "Two points of thrust isn't enough to keep you steady in midair, there's no way you'll be able to maintain direction."
They'd miscalculated. Tony had been thinking of missiles, which only really needed one point of thrust since they were static objects. People were not as aerodynamic as rockets. And Maggie had been thinking of her wings, which calculated and made adjustments midair - but they were balanced completely differently to the repulsors at the bottom of Tony's feet.
"So…" Tony looked over their math with fresh eyes. "If we've got these aerodynamic calculations right - which would be a first - I'll need at least four points of contact to sustain vertical flight."
Maggie nodded. "Good thing you've got two arms."
He grinned. "Back to the drawing board!"
When Maggie checked her Wyvern computer a day later, there was a tip-off waiting for her from one of her UK intelligence contacts. She'd been digging into anyone who'd ever been affiliated with or in contact with the Ten Rings, and her contact had come through. They hadn't sent much, just a name. But Maggie could work with a name.
A few hours later, Maggie set up a new burner phone and made a phone call. She'd escaped up to the roof of the mansion to avoid being overheard, and a chill wind blew off the ocean and into her face. She watched the sun sinking behind the horizon.
The phone rang three times before it picked up.
"Hello?" a woman's voice, softly accented.
"Is this Aisha Baqri?" Maggie knew that wasn't the woman's real name, but the one she went by these days.
"... Yes. Who is this?"
"Please don't hang up," she said. She hadn't disguised her voice, because she was sure the voice modulator would scare Aisha too much. "I think you can help me with some information. I promise I mean you no harm."
"What is this." The other woman sounded cold, scared. And well she might - Aisha Baqri, or Anahita Kurbanov as she used to be known, had lived a life of much fear. Maggie didn't know all the details, just that Anahita had become Aisha when the UK Secret Intelligence Service had provided her with a new identity, in exchange for her information about the organisation that had kidnapped her and trafficked her when she was just eighteen.
Maggie sighed, expecting Aisha to hang up on her at any moment. "I'm trying to… to shut down the Ten Rings."
A long, long silence. But Aisha didn't hang up.
"That's impossible," she eventually breathed.
"Nothing's impossible," Maggie said, emboldened. "I need your help. Just tell me everything you know about them: their operations, who's involved, where they operate out of-"
"I don't know anything. I… I really don't."
"Your name will never cross my lips again. You are safe. Please. I need something to work with."
Another long pause. Then Aisha said, in a small voice: "How will you stop them, when no one else has done so?"
Maggie closed her eyes as the sun finally slid beneath the horizon. The breeze on her skin was cool. "Because I know how to hunt hidden things," she said. She opened her eyes and thought of the armor coming to life downstairs. "And because I'm not alone."
Aisha let out a staticky breath. "I will help you."
Maggie clenched a hand. "Tell me everything."
An hour later Maggie went downstairs, heavy with the weight of Aisha's story. Aisha hadn't known much about the intricacies of the Ten Rings, but her story gave Maggie a place to start: Aisha had grown up in a village near the Pamir river, on the border between Afghanistan and Tajikistan.
The village was raided in the dead of night by armed men who spoke half a dozen different languages, and all the women were taken back to a base in the mountains. Aisha couldn't tell Maggie where the base was, but Maggie asked her how they had gotten there, how long they had driven for, and what she remembered about the base: everything from the kind of rock, the temperature, and what little of the view she could see. Maggie was certain of one thing: it wasn't the same base that Tony had been taken to.
Aisha and the women from her village had been kept in the mountain base for three days, before they were taken to a market to be sold. A market for people. Aisha had escaped after two years and found her way to a refugee camp in Pakistan. The UK Secret Intelligence Service had used her information to shut down the human trafficking market, but they'd never been able to track down the Ten Rings themselves.
It didn't leave much for Maggie to work with, but now at least she had something.
"Thank you, Aisha," Maggie had murmured to the woman on the other end of the phone. "This helps."
Aisha had taken another one of her long, heavy silences. "I know they're still doing it," she whispered.
"How do you know?"
"I don't… I never went back to my village, but I heard years later that it had died, after the women were taken. No one lives there now. And I don't have any proof, but… I know they're still doing it. They sold me for a great deal of money, and I was just one person. It's too profitable for them to stop, especially when no one has been able to stop them. I know there are others like me, even today. If you do find them…" Aisha's voice hardened. "Make them stop."
Maggie nodded, even though the other woman couldn't see it. "I will."
Aisha had hung up.
Maggie went back to the workshop, where Tony greeted her with a grunt and pointed her toward the holo-display, where a new design for an armpiece awaited her. Maggie sighed and headed over to look it over.
She would start this new angle of her hunt in the morning. But for now she needed the familiar routine of invention. At least until she could learn to breathe with the weight of Aisha's story on her chest, and the responsibility of the promise she had made her.
October 22, 2009
"The intercom's buzzing," Maggie called to Tony.
He didn't respond.
Maggie frowned as she perched at the top of a fold-out step ladder, screws clamped between her lips as she wired up a machine that looked a lot like something out of a car factory assembly line. They'd actually bought the base of it from a car factory: it looked like a giant yellow robotic arm, larger than Dum-E or U, with clamps and levers designed to put machine parts together. This machine would - eventually - help to automate the assembly of the armor and put it on Tony's body quickly and safely. This machine wouldn't be smart like Dum-E and U, but it would get the job done.
The intercom buzzed again, a low beeping tone.
"Tony!" Maggie said again, trying to scrape her hair out of her eyes while both her hands were occupied bolting one of the machine joints together. She screwed it in, then looked over her shoulder.
Tony had his arm in the model armpiece they'd put together on the main workbench: a barebones model, not much more than a metal exoskeleton, wires, and the palm thruster. As she watched, he plugged the power leads into his arc reactor and clamped the joints shut around his arm. "I told you not to mess with that yet," she called, spitting screws out into her hand. "We haven't finalised the power output math and you know what happened last time."
His eyes flicked toward her. "I'm just checking it works before we add the plating."
"Sure," she said, and turned back to the assembly bot. "J.A.R.V.I.S., are you linked up to this yet?"
"One moment, Ms Stark." She waited, sitting at the top of the six foot ladder, one hand on the yellow arm of the assembly machine. Finally it whirred, and the angle joint moved. "The assembly machine is connected, Ms Stark. Running diagnostics."
"Great," she sighed. She heard the workshop door open and looked over her shoulder to see Pepper walking in, carrying two mugs of coffee balanced on what looked like a paper-wrapped box. Pepper's eyes roved over the chaos of metal and wires in the workshop, Maggie sitting on top of the ladder, then over to where Tony powered on the stabilizer attached to his arm.
"I've been buzzing you," Pepper called. "Did you hear the intercom?"
Maggie rolled her eyes.
"Yeah, everything's… what?" Tony adjusted his stance.
"Obadiah's upstairs." Pepper set the box and the coffees down on the nearby table. Dum-E perked up. "What would you like me to tell him?"
"Great, great, I'll be right up." Tony lifted his arm, machinery and all, stabilising the metal casing with his free hand.
Maggie wiped sweat off her brow and checked the assembly machine once more, before adjusting her feet to climb back to the ground.
"Okay," she heard Tony mutter, and looked over her shoulder to see him lifting his hand, the stabiliser glowing white at the centre of his palm, aimed at a small square of blast shield. She glanced back at the ladder.
"I thought you said you were done making weapons," Pepper said.
"It is, this is a flight stabilizer. It's completely harmless."
Maggie heard the whir of the stabilizer powering up before-
Boom.
A bolt of energy scorched across the workshop, blasting past Maggie's ladder and impacting against the far wall. Maggie flinched at the blast of white light and then yelped as her ladder tilted sideways. The world blurred, and she hit the concrete. The ladder clattered to the ground a few feet in front of her face, and above her the assembly machine swung in circles, knocked loose from its mooring but held upright by the cables.
For a few seconds, the workshop rang out with the clattering of knocked-over machinery and the tinkling of shattered glass. Maggie lay flat on her back, gasping and disoriented. Her arm ached.
Then she heard Tony's voice from the other end of the workshop. "I didn't expect that."
"Oh my god," Pepper cried, sounding furious. More metal clattered - probably Tony climbing to his feet. A blast like that had to have knocked him backwards.
Maggie caught her breath, then shot upright. She whirled until she spotted Tony, sheepishly smiling at Pepper. "Fucking hell, Tony!"
He glanced over at her, taking in her mussed hair and furious expression. He spread his hands. "What? So we need to update the math again, big deal."
"I'll update you!" Maggie shot back, and pointed at the drunkenly spinning assembly robot. "Look what you did! You almost hit me!"
Pepper let out a furious, seething breath, and turned to head upstairs.
Maggie watched her go, then turned back to Tony. "I'm going up to say hi to Obie. You can clean this up."
Tony pushed his hair back from his face and eyed the deactivated repulsor still strapped to his palm. "That's fair."
Maggie took the stairs three at a time, her anger cooling. It wasn't the first time Tony had nearly blown her up, and it probably wouldn't be the last. She emerged into the main room just as Obie emerged from the kitchen with a tumbler of whiskey. Pepper sat on the couch, looking upset.
"Hey, kid," Obie said with a tired smile. He headed for the piano. "You doing okay? You look a little…" his eyes flicked over her. "Ruffled."
Maggie glanced down at herself. She thought she'd done an okay job of straightening her clothes and brushing her hair back, but she had recently fallen off a six foot ladder. "I'm fine." She looked up. "You were in New York today, right? SI stuff?" Obie had called to update Tony earlier this morning.
Obie eyed her. "I thought you'd washed your hands of the company."
That stung. Maggie shot him a thin smile then went to join Pepper on the couch. Obie began to play, the notes ringing out strangely melancholy. Maggie closed her eyes and rubbed the arm she'd landed on. She didn't play the piano much these days. Mom had taught her, years ago, and Tony had made sure to buy a piano for the house, but… it hurt.
Tony came up the stairs a few minutes later, his shirt slightly stained - with oil or coffee, Maggie couldn't tell. He glanced over to where Obie sat at the piano.
"How'd it go?"
Obie didn't reply.
Tony strolled over to the couches, and spotted the pizza boxes on the coffee table. "Wow. Went that bad, huh?"
"Just because I brought pizza back from New York doesn't mean it went bad," Obie replied.
Tony sat down beside Pepper, who did her best to ignore him. Maggie slumped down further on the couch.
"Uh huh, sure it doesn't," Tony said, opening one of the boxes. "Oh boy."
Obie stopped playing. "It would have gone better if you were there."
Maggie's brow furrowed.
"Uh uh," Tony retorted. "You told me to lay low, that's what I've been doing. I lay low, and you take care of all-"
"Hey, come on," Obie said, standing and walking over with his hands raised. "In public. The press. This was a board of directors meeting."
Tony glanced up. "This - this was a board of directors meeting?"
Maggie glanced at Pepper, who did not look up from her tablet.
Obie sat down beside Tony and let out a sigh. "The board is claiming you have post traumatic stress."
Maggie sat up. "What?"
Obie continued: "They're filing an injunction."
"A what?" Tony exclaimed.
"They want to lock you out."
Tony and Obie started arguing about the stock drop, and Maggie sat on the edge of her seat, watching them. She hadn't expected this. She'd run the company for a month and she was still blind to the intricacies of it all. It had never felt more like a weakness than now. She should know these things. She should have seen that the board might do this.
"Tony, the board has rights too," Obie sighed. "They're making the case that you and your new direction isn't in the company's best interest."
"I'm being responsible!" Tony cut in. "That's a new direction for me - for the company."
Obie's eyebrows raised at the stumble.
"I mean, me on the company's behalf being responsible for the way that…" Tony glanced to Pepper, as if for help, and she just sighed. Tony glanced back. "Oh, this is great." He seized the pizza box and got to his feet.
"Oh, come on," Obie protested. "Tony, Tony!"
"I'll be in the shop," Tony said curtly. He jerked his head at Maggie. "You coming?"
She gaped. "I… shouldn't we try to fix this?"
Obie turned sharp eyes on her. "Maggie-" but then Tony started walking for the door again, and Obie stood and jogged after him. "Hey, Tony, listen" - he put one hand on Tony's shoulder. "I'm trying to turn this thing around but you've gotta give me something! Something to pitch them." Tony turned to face him and Obie nodded at the arc reactor, which gleamed from a hole Tony had cut in his stained shirt. "Let me have the engineers analyze that. You know, draw up some specs."
"No-"
"It'll give me a bone to throw the boys in New York-"
"No, absolutely not, this one stays with me," Tony said, raising his voice over Obie's. "That's it, Obie. Forget it."
Maggie swallowed, still perched on the edge of the couch. She knew why Tony was guarding the arc reactor, but… this was his company. Was he not going to step in? Be the person the board could trust? An uneasy squirm of doubt appeared in her stomach.
She couldn't see Obie's face, but he seemed only mildly frustrated when he said: "Well this stays with me then," and took the pizza box from Tony. "Go on, here, you can have a piece."
As Tony and Obie exchanged a few parting words, Pepper's hand landed on Maggie's. Maggie realised she was pulled as taut as a bow, her hands rigid on the couch and her back tense, her face written with anxiety.
"It'll be okay," Pepper murmured. "We'll sort this out."
Maggie nodded slowly. She relaxed back into her seat and murmured: "He… he's got a plan, Pepper."
Pepper's blue eyes seemed sad. "For the company? Or for himself?"
Maggie thought about the suit of armor. She believed in it. Believed in Tony. She wondered if she was just as blind when it came to him as she had been with the company. She swallowed. But then she thought of all the darkness in the world - the people she had been chasing as the Wyvern, and the people who took Tony.
"It's not just about the company," she murmured.
Pepper's eyes pinched with sympathy. Maggie stood and went to follow Tony, who had disappeared downstairs. Obie didn't say anything when she passed him, but she could feel his eyes on her back.
As she strode downstairs, she overheard Obie say to Pepper: "Do you ever think they might be bad for each other?"
She didn't hear Pepper's reply.
When she walked back into the workshop, still rubbing her sore arm, Tony was already re-wiring the stabiliser on his workbench.
"We can't help the company until we stop the weapons, Mags," he said without looking up at her.
"I know," Maggie murmured. She eyed him, his focused work. "I know Obie told you to lie low, but… what if you started going in to work again?"
He dropped the precision tool and turned on her. "Maggie, I need to do this. This isn't just for fun, this is…" he searched for the words.
She sighed. "I know."
She knew. She knew, damn her, she understood his need to turn himself into a… not a weapon, but a shield. She understood the need to give yourself the power to stop the bad things from happening.
They were each becoming reflections of what they wanted to stop: she'd become the Wyvern to hunt the ghosts of the world, and he was becoming… whatever this was, to stop the terrible influence of their company.
Part of her wished he would go back to the old Tony - the Tony who'd take the helm of the company and make these leadership concerns go away. And she would do the dirty work for him, she'd hunt down the weapons and the Ten Rings and put a stop to it all. But she could see that Tony needed to do it for himself. Hell, he might even be better at this than her.
So she sighed, and nodded, and strode across the workshop to help him finish wiring the armpiece.
Reviews
MyCelestialFury (from Ch11): Sorry I missed this, ff net has been weird with review notifications! I sure did cram a lot into the chapter lol, but I didn't want to spend too long on Tony's imprisonment. And Obie is fun to write because he's such a snake haha, I'm glad you (didn't) like that ;)
The1975Love (from Ch11): Same story as above, I didn't get a notification for your review! I'm here for the Obie hate honestly, he's a manipulative snake ;)
DBZfan45: Maggie definitely likes her dramatic entrances! As does Tony. And they are the cyborg siblings now lol. And no, Maggie still hasn't told Tony about the Wyvern ;) Maybe a mistake on her part? Time will tell! Stay safe and healthy x
Pervy sage: LMAO yes huntsmans are pretty big, but luckily I don't have to worry about them as I'm currently living in the UK! So only have to worry about insane amounts of COVID, instead of spiders. Shoot any other australian questions my way ;) Just wait until you hear about drop bears!