As the SHIELD analysts on the helicarrier processed the intelligence from the attack in Germany, they also kept a close eye on the news headlines. Reports showed Iron Man, Captain America, and a woman with metal wings facing off against an assailant with golden horns. Intelligence agencies around the world were already identifying the woman as the Wyvern.
Things moved quickly once they got back on the Quinjet. Loki was back in his seat - looking irritated after the several minutes he'd spent paralyzed on the forest floor - and the rest of them were silent, tending bruises and scrapes.
Maggie grabbed an instant ice pack from the Quinjet medkit, cracked it, and iced her knee as she sat on the seat closest to the cockpit. Thor had jostled her prosthesis in their fight and she hadn't built the leg for quite that amount of torque. Tony fussed over her, but she waved him off. She was surprised to see that they'd all come out of that forest battle in more or less one piece - they'd done a lot of damage but it seemed she, Tony, Rogers, and Thor had enough armor or serum or alien-ness to make themselves hard to beat.
"Prepare for landing," Romanoff called. Maggie glanced into the cockpit, and her mouth dropped when she saw a massive shape emerging out of the dark clouds ahead. She stood, testing her weight on her leg.
"Is that…"
"Yep," Natasha replied.
Maggie had not known what to expect from something called a Helicarrier, but nothing could have prepared her for this: the hulking metal airship hovered in the night sky, held aloft by four massive turbine engines. Lights glowed on its deck, revealing the shapes of smaller aircraft, a watch tower, gun turrets, and patrolling agents. In comparison, the Quinjet was tiny.
She felt Tony approach. "Did you know they had all this?" he murmured, staring at the massive ship.
"No," she whispered back.
The Quinjet touched down on one of the helicarrier runways a moment later. Loki was rushed off the jet by a whole team of armored agents, and his wrist bindings were replaced by a thick pair of cuffs. Loki didn't make a move to resist them. He only stared dead ahead, eerily calm. Maggie watched as the agents led him through a sturdy metal door and into the helicarrier itself.
"They're taking him to a holding cell," she heard Natasha explain to Thor, who was staring at the now-closed door. "It's secure."
"Very well."
It was dark on deck as the rest of them filed out of the Quintet. The helicarrier deck lights were kept to a minimum, no doubt to avoid detection. Maggie felt cold and achey, and uncertain where to go. This morning she'd been tracking Loki via her computer. Now she stood on top of a massive flying ship somewhere above Europe, not sure what she'd gotten herself into. SHIELD was much larger than she had imagined. A chill wind, damp with cloud condensation, blew into her face and plucked at her hair.
"This way." Natasha seemed to be gesturing to all of them. Maggie followed, but then another agent appeared and said:
"Mr Stark, we've collected the resources you requested from Stark Industries. You can remove your armor through here."
Tony nodded. "Fast delivery, I like it." He cocked an eyebrow at Maggie in invitation, but she waved a hand. He turned back to the agent. "Alright kid, lead the way."
Tony strode off after the agent, heading through a different door down into the helicarrier. Maggie followed Natasha, Rogers, and Thor through another door into a long, grey corridor lit by fluorescent lights. The inside of the helicarrier looked a little like a naval destroyer, all industrial corridors and bulkheads stamped with identification codes. Maggie wondered how the agents avoided getting lost. She peered around as they walked, noting the design of the ship. Natasha seemed to be leading them down and toward the front of the helicarrier. They passed armories, crew bunks, and a cafeteria space. Agents in dark SHIELD uniforms passed, staring at the strange group. Maggie had dozens of questions about how the helicarrier worked day to day and its capabilities, but she knew now wasn't the time. They might have caught Loki, but he'd left them with yet more problems.
When a pair of metal doors swung open to reveal the Helicarrier's bridge, Maggie fought to keep her jaw from dropping again. A massive window made up most of the far wall, looking over the clouds in the night sky around them and far below, the dark glint of an ocean. The room itself was alive with activity: the upper level was an observation deck, with a planning table and large hologram screens at the helm. A massive silver SHIELD logo took up the back wall. The lower level was filled with computer banks and desks where dozens of SHIELD agents worked, a few of them glancing up at Maggie, Rogers, Natasha, and Thor. For a moment Maggie felt a sickening drop of panic - she wasn't wearing her cowl. But this was SHIELD, and she had never been all that careful with her identity in SHIELD. Besides, she thought, the end of the world is nigh, and all that.
The space was like nothing Maggie had ever seen - the closest comparison she could make was to a NASA launch control room, only she doubted NASA had half of the technology she could see crammed in here. Maggie found herself drifting to the edge of the observation deck, running her eyes over the screens she could see. Satellite feeds, Quinjet controls, search algorithms, monitoring of the Helicarrier itself. The room was filled with conversations and the reassuring sounds of technology: whirring, beeping, the low hum of the massive engines. She couldn't wait for Tony to get up here so she could see his face.
Maggie's fingers curled around the metal railing. I want one.
A woman in a SHIELD uniform with dark hair and sharp blue eyes strode up the walkway and glanced at the group. "Just wait there," she said, nodding at the long glass table at the back of the bridge.
Maggie glanced at the others. Rogers had already taken a seat at the table, seemingly at ease with the wonder of the Helicarrier - he must have already seen it. He'd already handed off his shield to an agent on the way in - they must have a special room for it. Natasha moved to join Rogers at the table. Maggie met Thor's eyes, and nodded. He gave her a cautious nod in return. Well, they'd all apparently become accustomed to keeping strange company.
As Maggie moved to the table, she looked over her shoulder at the woman who'd given the order. "Do I know you?"
The woman inclined her head. She had a split in her eyebrow. "I'm Agent Hill. We've spoken on the phone."
Before Maggie could reply, Hill strode back down into the hive of activity on the lower level. Maggie's eyebrows rose, but then she shrugged off her wingpack, secured her cowl and gloves in a pocket of her flight suit, and took a seat at the glass table.
It felt strange to sit at this executive-style table as the Wyvern, though she was really blurring the lines between Wyvern and Maggie today. At least she wasn't alone - Rogers sat a few seats away from her in his bright blue uniform, Nat in her black suit had propped her elbows against the glass surface, and Thor stood in his armor a few feet away, unclipping his long cape. Maggie flexed her leg. She'd come out of the fight pretty well, for a standard human.
She caught Rogers's eye, but he just looked troubled.
Natasha cocked an eyebrow at Maggie when she spotted her looking around. "Fury's about to interrogate Loki. Then we can plan our next steps."
Maggie fidgeted, then noticed that the table itself appeared to be a screen - she tapped the surface experimentally, which sent a glowing array of data scrolling down the surface. Maggie peered down at it. SHIELD had received more intel on the gala attack. That doctor who'd been attacked had been head scientist at a lab which apparently stored a sizeable amount of… Iridium. Her brow furrowed at the implications.
She looked up as the door opened again, admitting a mellow-looking man in a purple shirt and brown trousers. Her eyes widened.
He was a little older, with grey streaks at his temples and tired lines around his eyes, but she'd recognize him anywhere: Doctor Banner. He glanced nervously at the group at the table and Maggie opened her mouth, but then a video feed appeared on the table before them.
It was security footage: the feed showed a dark room of gantryways, surrounding some kind of cylindrical glass containment unit held in sturdy metal supports. Inside the fluorescently-lit glass unit stood the green-clad form of Loki.
A figure in dark clothes strode into view. "In case it's unclear," Nick Fury gestured to a control panel in the bottom corner of the security footage. "You try to escape? You so much as scratch that glass?" He hit a few buttons, and the floor beneath Loki's containment unit opened up: a howling, whistling sound overwhelmed the security feed, and Maggie could just make out what looked like a dark void below.
Fury called: "Thirty thousand feet straight down in a steel trap. You get how this works?" he closed up the hole again. "Ant, boot."
Loki's teeth flashed. "It's an impressive cage," he admitted mildly. "Not built, I think, for me."
"Built for something a lot stronger than you."
"Oh I've heard," Loki's voice dropped as he turned unerringly to face the security camera. His eyes glinted on the feed and Maggie's skin crawled. "A mindless beast."
Everyone glanced askance at Doctor Banner. He stood with his arms crossed, but he didn't look too upset by Loki's dark words.
Maggie listened with a furrowed brow as Loki and Fury traded barbs. Loki called them lost creatures, and then taunted Fury about the Tesseract, calling it a warm light for all mankind to share.
When Fury turned and strode out of view, casting back a comment about fetching Loki a magazine, Maggie leaned back in her chair, still frowning. Some interrogation. Though she didn't know how she would go about questioning a god.
Loki turned to smile up at the camera again, and a moment later the digital screens on the table surface faded. An awkward silence fell.
Banner broke the silence. "He really grows on you, doesn't he?" he commented with a small smile.
"Loki's going to drag this out," Rogers murmured. "So" - his eyes flicked up - "Thor. What's his play?"
Maggie followed Rogers's gaze to the pensive blonde man with the enormous arms.
"He has an army called the Chitauri." Thor had not spoken much since the forest, so his low voice took Maggie by surprise. She was used to hearing him shout. "They're not of Asgard nor of any world known. He means to lead them against your people, and they will win him the Earth. In return, I suspect, for the Tesseract."
"An army," Rogers echoed flatly. "From outer space."
Maggie leaned forward, her elbows resting on the table. "What are the Chitauri's capabilities? Resources, strengths, weaknesses?"
Thor glanced at her and strands of his blonde hair fell in his face. "I have never faced them, so I cannot say. But they will come in great numbers, with weapons this Earth has never conceived of."
Not exactly helpful. Maggie kept the comment to herself. She laced her fingers together and furrowed her brow. She didn't know much of war, but she knew technology. Perhaps if she could think of some weapon, some way of developing a defense...
Banner stepped forward and took off his glasses. "So he's building another portal. That's what he needs Erik Selvig for."
Thor's brow furrowed. "Selvig?"
"He's an astrophysicist."
"He's a friend." Thor shifted his weight.
Maggie tapped her thumb against the back of her hand. Suspicion confirmed. For all the good it did her.
"Loki has him under some kind of spell," Natasha explained. Her eyes slid away. "Along with one of ours."
"I want to know why Loki let us take him," Rogers cut back in and gestured around the room. "He's not leading an army from here."
Maggie nodded. "He must know half of SHIELD's secrets by now, it's no accident he ended up in his helicarrier."
"I don't think we should be focusing on Loki," Banner replied, his dark eyes meeting hers. He inclined his head as if they were having an academic discussion. "That guy's brain is a bag full of cats. You can smell crazy on him."
"Have care how you speak," Thor gritted out. He strode up to the table, imposing in only a few strides. "Loki is beyond reason, but he is of Asgard. And he is my brother."
"He killed eighty people in two days," Natasha replied evenly.
Thor fidgeted. "He's adopted."
Maggie rubbed her temple. She wanted to solve the problem before her, but this collection of strange people around her was a distraction. She wanted a room to hole up in, and her Wyvern computer. But she'd left that in Belgium.
After a moment to compose herself she opened her eyes, and so was the first to spot Tony striding into the bridge. He'd changed into a dark suit over a Black Sabbath t-shirt and was accompanied by none other than the smiling, suited Phil Coulson. Maggie's eyes flicked back to Tony, and when she noticed the cock to his head and the bounce to his step, she rolled her eyes. Here comes a dramatic entrance. But she'd always secretly loved his dramatic entrances, so she just leaned back and waited.
It meant she was half a second slow when Bruce said: "Iridium - what do they need the Iridium for?"
Because she knew, since it was a mechanical engineering problem, but Tony got there first.
"It's a stabilising agent," Tony cut in, and all eyes turned to him. He turned to Coulson and had a murmured, brief conversation. Coulson merely smiled and waved him off.
When Tony turned back to face them all with his hands in his pockets, he had the attention of the room. "Means the portal won't collapse on itself like it did at SHIELD." His eyes caught on Thor as he strode forward, and he reached out to knock his knuckles against Thor's bicep. "No hard feelings, Point Break, you've got a mean swing."
Thor simply stared as Tony stepped past him onto the command deck.
"Also it means the portal can open as wide, and stay open as long, as Loki wants. Right Mags?" He glanced over his shoulder at her.
Maggie just made a sarcastic sweeping gesture, as if to say you have the floor. This was the Expo all over again - Tony needed his time on the stage.
And sure enough he took pride of place at the centre of Fury's control deck, glancing around at the hologram screens. "Uh… raise the mizzen mast. Jib the topsails," he called.
SHIELD agents stared up at him with expressions of confusion and disgust.
Tony flung a hand out. "That man is playing Galaga!" Everyone followed his pointing finger. "Thought we wouldn't notice. But we did." He covered one eye, frowned, then turned to Agent Hill. "How does Fury even see these?"
"He turns," Hill responded evenly.
"Sounds exhausting."
As Tony showboated, Maggie ran her eyes over his audience. Hill and Natasha seemed resigned to it, waiting patiently for him to get to the point. Banner looked bemused, fidgeting with his glasses and peering at Tony as he began tapping at Fury's screens. Thor couldn't seem to decide between being angry or amused. Rogers… his brow was heavy as he watched Tony. He was tricky to read, but Maggie could see he wasn't impressed.
"The rest of the raw materials," Tony went on, "Agent Barton can get his hands on pretty easily. Only major component he still needs is a power source." Maggie tracked his hands as he tapped away at Fury's screens - for show mostly, but he did open up a few engine readouts and Helicarrier overviews: crew count and altitude. "Of high energy density" - his fingers brushed the base of one of the screens, and Maggie's brows contracted - "something to…" he clicked his fingers as he turned to face them all. "Kick start the cube."
Hill frowned at him. "When did you become an expert in thermonuclear astrophysics?"
"Last night," Tony shot back. Hill cocked her head. "The packet. Selvig's notes. The extraction theory papers?" he frowned at them all again. "Am I the only one who did the reading? Maggot, did you skip your homework?"
Maggie kept silent still, since Tony knew very well that she had read everything. But this was Tony's bit - flashing his intellect, asserting his intelligence over the whole room to get them to shut up and listen. And it worked wonderfully. She could finally think, able to observe them all as they sat and reacted to Tony. She knew them better now that her brother had held up a mirror to them.
"Does Loki need any particular kind of power source?" Rogers asked, sounding irritated.
Banner had been pacing behind Maggie's chair, so she had to look over her shoulder when he answered: "He'd have to heat the cube to a hundred and twenty million Kelvin just to break through the Coulomb barrier."
Tony's eyebrows rose and he spread his hands. "Unless Selvig has figured out how to stabilize the Quantum Tunnelling effect."
Maggie watched, amused, as Tony strode towards Banner, each of them exchanging what amounted to quantum physics flirting. They were quickly devolving into theory irrelevant to the mission; all Rogers wanted to know was what kind of power source Loki was after, but now Tony was just testing Banner out with the Quantum Tunnelling theory.
She almost rolled her eyes again - with everything she knew about the Tesseract there was no way Selvig had figured out how to stabilize the Quantum Tunnelling effect, and Tony knew that too. But she kept her thoughts to herself, keeping an eye on everyone else in the room.
"Finally," Tony said with a smile, "someone who speaks English." He strode toward Banner with an outstretched hand.
"Is that what just happened?" Rogers glanced around.
As Tony and Bruce greeted each other with a handshake behind her chair, Maggie finally leaned toward Rogers and murmured: "Loki needs a big, world-class power source - think an engine or reactor the size of a warehouse, instead of a generator."
Rogers's brow loosened in relief and he shot her an assessing look. "Thanks."
"No problem. Tony double majored in mechanical engineering and bullshit at MIT."
On the other side of the table, Romanoff's eyebrows rose in amusement.
She overheard Tony say and I'm a huge fan of the way you lose control and turn into an enormous green rage monster just as Fury strode into the bridge.
"Doctor Banner is only here to track the cube," he said firmly. His eye flicked from Tony to Maggie. "I was hoping you two might join him."
Maggie could feel Banner and Tony shooting each other a look behind her chair.
"I'd start with that stick of his," Rogers suggested. "It may be magical, but it works an awful lot like a HYDRA weapon."
"I don't know about that, but it is powered by the cube," Fury nodded. "And I'd like to know how Loki used it to turn two of the sharpest men I know into his personal flying monkeys."
Maggie winced. The kind of power needed to reroute a human mind, to circumvent personality and cognitive thought…
Thor frowned. "Monkeys… I do not understand-"
"I do!" Rogers exclaimed, pointing with a sudden smile on his face. Maggie's eyebrows shot up. She hadn't seen the Captain smile before. He glanced around, suddenly sheepish. "I… I understood that reference."
"Shall we play, doctor?" Tony asked Banner.
Banner nodded and gestured to the far door. "This way."
Tony looked over his shoulder and met Maggie's gaze. "Magpie, aren't you coming?"
She tapped her armrest. "I'll be right there."
And just as she had trusted him to be okay on his own with the agent earlier, he simply nodded and followed Banner out of the bridge.
Romanoff got up and strode over to murmur to Hill about something, and Thor turned away to look out over the activity in the bridge. Maggie stood, stretched, and then paced around the table.
"Stark," Fury acknowledged when she'd come up to stand before him. He looked as imposing as ever in a long leather jacket and his eye patch. A heavy weight hung in his features.
"Fury," Maggie nodded. She cocked her head. "So am I here as muscles or brains?"
"You're here because we need every pair of hands and eyes to put a stop to whatever Loki is planning."
"And not because you think I'll have some sobering effect on Tony?" she said with an arched brow.
He looked flatly at her. "You know I'd be lying if I said that wasn't true."
Maggie did not allow herself to react. "I think you might be overestimating me there, Fury. I've never been able to make Tony do something he didn't want to do."
"But you just might be able to stop him doing something he wants to do." Maggie opened her mouth, but Fury waved his hand. "But that's secondary. We need you, Ms Stark. As yourself, yes, but I have no doubt we will also need the Wyvern. Can you do that?"
Maggie eyed him for a long moment. Measuring his words, both spoken and unspoken. "You know I can."
Fury nodded, and then strode away to his command deck. Maggie stood still for a moment, drawing a long breath through her nose. SHIELD handled people, she knew this, but she also knew what it looked like when they were handling Tony, and she didn't think she cared for it.
When she felt steadier, she turned. Romanoff and Hill were deep in conversation now. I should go find Tony and Banner. But she paused. The table had been cleared, save for… Rogers. He still sat in full uniform in his chair with the data screen before him, looking a little aimless. His part of the mission was over for now.
Maggie hesitated for a moment, halfway between the door and the table. She could feel Nat's eyes on her back.
Finally, she decided. She strode back to the table and dropped into the leather chair beside Rogers. He glanced at her, his face momentarily open in surprise. He looked younger than she'd expected.
She held out her hand. "Maggie."
He took her hand, though he still wore his gauntlets, and they shared a brief handshake. "Steve."
Steve gestured his head in the vague direction of where Tony and Banner had walked off. "You actually understood all that?"
"Sure. I ate Quantum Physics for breakfast in high school. And I was eleven in high school." That didn't ease his overwhelmed look. "Most of what they said wasn't really important, though. Tony's just showing off."
He shot her a wry look. "I get the sense he does that a lot."
"Yeah, and I love him for it," Maggie said fondly. She rolled up the sleeves of her flight suit, careful with her wrist blasters. She glanced sideways at Steve. "You know, you were a bit of an inspiration for me, growing up."
Steve shifted and glanced down, and then away. "Oh, I uh…" Maggie watched him fidget for a few seconds. He seemed to be trying to summon up that Captain America persona she'd seen back in Germany. When he was able to meet her eyes he said: "I agreed to sign Coulson's trading cards later, maybe…?"
Maggie grinned at him. Trading cards. I'll remember that. She waved a hand. "I bet you $20 you can't guess why I looked up to you."
He eyed her. "I don't think I'm much good at making bets these days. Tell me?"
"Fine, spoil the fun." She rolled back in the chair. "I looked up to you because of this."
She toed off her right boot, revealing the dark metal of her prosthetic foot. She knocked on the leg below her knee and it let out a dull metallic thud. Steve's eyes widened slightly.
"I'm missing my leg below the knee," she explained, then twisted and tapped her spine. "I've also got metal wiring and supports laced into my bones, muscles and nerves from between my shoulder blades, and down into my legs. You should see me walk through a metal detector. It's all there because of severe nerve damage - so bad I can't walk by myself. " She twisted back around, and saw Steve's brow had furrowed. "There was a car crash when I was a kid-"
From the way Steve's eyes darkened, Maggie knew he'd been briefed on exactly what happened to his old buddy Howard.
She swallowed past a sudden lump in her throat, pulled on her boot, and pushed on. "I was five." She shrugged. "It is what it is. But after my first stay in hospital I came home in a wheelchair, terrified I would never walk again. I was stuck at home, so I read a lot of books. And one Saturday afternoon I ended up picking up one of your biographies."
Steve looked uncomfortable again.
Maggie leaned back. "Dad used to tell Tony and I stories about you. But those were always about Captain America - how brave he was, how he ran into battle without a thought for his own safety, how he was larger than life. Good stories, but we both got a bit sick of them, no offense." Steve gave her the smallest smile.
"But I read that biography, in my wheelchair, and I honestly didn't care about anything after Rebirth. Because I realized then that Captain America used to be a sick kid too."
Steve's eyes widened and Maggie was reminded of that photo of him on the inside cover: the skinny little thing in dog tags. "I looked at the list of your diseases - which, holy moly, how did you ever go outside - and I realized that even when you were dealing with all that you were still brave, and larger than life. I thought that if someone like that could become Captain America, then I could too." She kept out the part where her five-year-old self had been dreaming of turning herself into a hero, a weapon, to exact vengeance against that metal-armed ghost.
Maggie shrugged again, then smiled at Steve. "So, thanks."
He stared at her. "I… uh, you're welcome." He looked oddly vulnerable, in a way she guessed he hadn't been in a long time.
She grinned. "But don't expect any more hero worship from me. Seems unfair to hold you to the standard of a biography. You're here now, so what do you say we get to know each other and learn to work together?"
His eyebrows rose. "Alright, Ms Stark." He held out his hand again. "You've got a deal."
They shook hands again, less stiffly this time.
"Nice to meet you, Captain Rogers." Maggie jerked her head toward the door. "Now, I've got to see a man about an alien rock."
Maggie found the Helicarrier lab by stopping every SHIELD agent she passed to ask for directions. When she turned down yet another industrial-looking corridor and spotted a room with wide glass windows overlooking the hangar bay of the Helicarrier, she quickened her pace. It was a wide room, medical-white and gleaming, with a series of workspaces covered in what mostly looked like scientific analysis machines. It was no mechanical engineering workshop, but it would serve for trying to puzzle out the scepter and the missing Tesseract.
At the far end of the lab by the windows looking over the hangar bay Maggie spotted Banner: he peered at a holographic screen beside the scepter, which was propped up in a stand. Tony stood at the other end of the workshop, unpacking equipment from dark Stark Industries cases. He must have had SHIELD pick up some tools from home.
Maggie approached the lab door, hit the sensor with her palm, and luckily it opened for her.
"- hoping to triangulate enough gamma radiation readings to isolate the Tesseract's location, but it's a crapshoot," Banner was explaining.
"Maybe if we figure out that scepter it'll help us with the search," Tony responded.
"That could work. First we have to figure out what it is." Banner peered at the scepter. It was a beautiful design, with the gold, carved staff, and the metal barb at the top housing the glowing blue orb. "Loki was using it as a weapon, but it must be more than that. Maybe some kind of self-contained nuclear reactor - the scepter itself could be part of the mechanics."
Maggie stepped into the lab, her boots squeaking on the gleaming floor, and both men quieted. Banner glanced up, looking over the top of his glasses, and Tony nodded to her as he cracked open a dark case. "Mags."
Maggie paced over to her brother and touched a hand to his shoulder. "You know what you're doing, right?" she murmured, too softly for Bruce to hear.
Tony cocked an eyebrow at her. But Maggie held eye contact with him, her hand still on his shoulder, and after a few moments he just nodded.
Somewhat satisfied, Maggie pulled away, turned around, and strode toward the workbench with the scepter. Banner had been politely looking at his screens, but he looked up as she approached.
"I think you're right about the scepter being an energy source too," she said, "but we have to consider the neuro-psychological aspect as well, given the mind control. Fury reported blue veins, black eyes, a physical takeover. I suggest we look at this from an organic standpoint as well as a chemical one." She'd reached the workbench by the end of her sentence.
Banner held out his hand, hovering over the scepter. "Hi. Bruce Banner, we uh… we haven't properly met yet."
She took his hand. "Maggie Stark. We actually met once before, at the-"
"The MIT guest lecture series, right," Banner's lips quirked. "You were a student. You look different."
"Well I was sixteen. I'm told I'm taller."
Banner's lips curved into a proper smile, and they released each other's hands. "You make a good point about the mind control, but I'm not reading any biological signs here." He gestured to his screens, and Maggie rounded the desk so she could scan the readings.
"These scans are incomplete, and there's a lot of unquantified makeup here. Tony, did you bring the-"
"The handheld chemi-scanner," Tony finished her sentence for her, nodding, and reached for another case.
Maggie cocked her head as she looked over the readings Banner had done with the SHIELD equipment. "It could be that we're talking about alien biology and organics, not of this Earth. Everything living here is made up of carbon, but that might not be the case in other neighborhoods of the universe."
"Another good point," Banner conceded.
She shrugged. "I'm not sold on that theory, gamma radiation is still enough of a question mark that we can't rule out that being the factor for the mind control."
Bruce shifted and cleared his throat. Maggie felt mildly guilty - gamma had to be a touchy subject for him - but they couldn't afford to dance around it.
"We really need to get a better scan on this," he said.
They worked in tandem after that, opening up the SI equipment, setting Banner up with the chemi-scanner, while Tony and Maggie had a look over the algorithms and readings for the hunt for the Tesseract. Banner had done good work on it; all that remained now was for one of the various spectrometers set up around the world to pick up enough of a trace reading for them to triangulate it.
The lab was a calm workspace. Banner was polite and soft-spoken, such that Maggie kept forgetting he could become an enormous green monster at a moment's notice. She and Tony were quickly absorbed into the science of the Tesseract and the scepter, which eased the nerves that Loki had played on. Maggie still wore her uniform, but she'd unzipped the jacket and rolled up her sleeves, matching Tony and Banner's casual attire. Machinery whirred in the lab, and when Maggie's fingers brushed against the walls she could feel the faintest thrum of the Helicarrier engines.
Banner ran the handheld scanner over the scepter. "The gamma readings are definitely consistent with Selvig's reports on the Tesseract."
"Rogers was right, then. They're of similar origins," Maggie murmured.
"But it's going to take weeks to process," Banner grimaced.
On the other side of the workshop, Tony was setting up a heavy-duty SI computer processor. "If we bypass their mainframe and direct route to the Homer cluster we can clock this at around 600 teraflops."
Banner chuckled and looked up. "And all I packed was a toothbrush."
Tony finished setting up the processor and strode back to the main workspace. "Y'know, you should come by Stark Tower sometime," he suggested to Banner. Maggie glanced over from her screens. "Top ten floors, all R&D. You'd love it, it's Candy Land."
Maggie smiled to herself. Tony didn't usually make friends.
"Thanks, but the last time I was in New York I kind of broke… Harlem." Banner glanced down.
"Oh I know," she piped up. "I saw this hole in the pavement with a bigass footprint in it. I think the locals want to keep it." She turned away from her screens and moved to the scepter itself, missing Banner's bemused look. She peered at the orb and trying to figure out how it was housed into the structure of the scepter. Maybe if we tried to remove it…?
The blue light hurt her eyes when she looked at it directly. Even the metal blade was like no workmanship she'd ever seen before.
Tony was still coaxing Banner. "Well, I promise a stress-free environment. No tension, no surprises…"
Banner let out a yelp, and Maggie's head jerked up. Tony flicked a thin electric precision tool back into his pocket, as Banner rubbed at his side and stared at Tony.
Tony leaned in, peering at the scientist. "Nothing?"
"Tony," Maggie began exasperatedly, but then the lab doors whirred open and a firm voice called:
"Hey! Are you nuts!"
Maggie glanced over to see Steve striding in, scowling at Tony.
"Jury's out," Tony shot back. He turned back to Banner, who had already returned to his work. "You really have got a lid on it, haven't you?"
Maggie eyed the two of them sharply for a moment, but Banner seemed… mostly bemused. If he showed the slightest hint of annoyance she decided she'd step in. But he seemed to be enjoying the no-kid-gloves approach.
"What's your secret?" Tony continued. "Mellow jazz, bongo drums, huge bag of weed?"
"Mindfulness?" Maggie added wonderingly as she leaned back down to peer at the scepter. Perhaps I could learn a thing or two from Doctor Banner.
"Is everything a joke to you?" Steve demanded. He was practically beside Maggie now, but when she glanced at him she could see he'd fired the question directly at Tony.
"Funny things are," Tony responded, pointing the precision tool at Steve. He cast a glance at Maggie, as if bringing her in on the joke, but she pointedly kept at her work.
"Threatening the safety of everyone on this ship isn't funny." Steve's eyes flicked to Banner. "No offense, Doc."
"It's all right, I wouldn't have come aboard if I couldn't handle… pointy things."
Maggie scraped a thin curl of metal from the gold of the sceptre and tipped it into a nearby petri dish.
Tony strode away again. "You're tip-toeing, big man," he told Banner. "You need to strut."
"And you need to focus on the problem, Mr Stark," Steve fired back in that same determined tone.
"You think I'm not?" Something about the tone in his voice had Maggie looking up again. "Why did Fury call us in? Why now? Why not before? What isn't he telling us?" He met Steve's eyes. "I can't do an equation if I don't have all the variables."
Maggie slowly straightened.
"You think Fury's hiding something?" Steve asked. The indignation in his voice had dropped away. Maggie and Banner shared a quick glance.
"He's a spy," Tony said as if it was obvious. "Captain, he's the spy. His secrets have secrets." He popped something in his mouth - did he bring snacks? He gestured carelessly at Banner and Maggie. "It's bugging them too, isn't it?"
Maggie looked to Banner.
"Uh…" Banner glanced around at them all, then held up a hand. "I just want to finish my work here, and…"
"Doctor?" Steve prompted.
Banner hesitated, sighed, and then took off his glasses. "A… a warm light for all mankind," he began. "Loki's jab at Fury about the cube."
"I heard it," Steve confirmed.
"Well, I think that was meant for the two of you," Banner said, glancing from Maggie to Tony. Maggie kept her face still, but Tony offered his packet of snacks - blueberries - to Banner. Banner took one as he explained: "Even if Barton didn't tell Loki about the tower, it was still all over the news."
"The Stark Tower?" Steve asked. "That big ugly-" Maggie and Tony both turned to Steve with raised eyebrows. He sensed their indignation and he finished, a little softer: "... building in New York?"
"It's powered by an Arc Reactor, a self-sustaining energy source," Banner explained. "That building will run itself for, what, a year?" he glanced to Tony.
"It's just the prototype," Tony said with a gesture. "And the SI Clean Energy division is working on powering whole cities." He turned to Rogers. "We're kind of the only name in clean energy right now. That's what he's getting at."
"So, why didn't SHIELD bring them in on the Tesseract project?" Banner prompted. "What are they doing in the energy business in the first place?"
Steve's frown deepened as he listened.
Tony popped another blueberry into his mouth and then cocked his head at Maggie. "Magnet? You look like you're itching to say something."
She'd been trying very hard not to visibly react to Banner's words, but when they all turned their gazes on her she sighed and leaned against the worktable. "You're both right. I heard about the SHIELD Tesseract project for the first time yesterday, but I've been working for them for almost a year. Kinda. They're working for me." She waved a hand. "It doesn't matter - SHIELD had two of the world's greatest engineering minds at their disposal and they didn't reach out to us."
She frowned. "Now, SHIELD knows that if I saw them doing something I didn't like, I'd work against them. That's why they don't trust me. And that's why I think they didn't tell me about the Tesseract." She looked at Steve. "I think that's the same issue they have with you."
He blinked. "Me?"
She eyed him. "Can you really say that if you saw SHIELD using the Tesseract for something… less than legitimate, that you'd keep quiet and just do your job? I seem to remember that being the excuse that German soldiers used after the war - they were just doing their jobs. And I also seem to remember that you fought on the other side."
She pinned her gaze to the Captain, watching thoughts flicker across his expression. Tony and Banner watched curiously.
His eyes narrowed. "You're manipulating me."
"A little bit," she admitted. "But I'm doing it with the truth." She leveled him with her best honest look, and some of the suspicion faded from his face. Maggie would never be the spy Natasha was, but she had recognised earlier that Steve could either be her greatest ally, or the greatest thorn in her side. So she'd befriended him, and now she hoped he would trust her.
Maggie clapped her hands. "But we don't have to deal in guesswork, do we Tony?" She glanced at him. "How's that spyware program you snuck into SHIELD's computers going?"
Tony looked disgruntled. "Caught that, did you?"
She snorted. "Caught that? I taught you that magic trick when I was nine."
Steve caught up. "I'm sorry, did you say-"
Tony flicked his phone out of his pocket and circled the workspace to face Steve. "J.A.R.V.I.S. has been running it since I hit the bridge." He waved the phone with the running algorithm, then pocketed it. "In a few hours I'll know every secret SHIELD has ever tried to hide. Blueberry?" He offered the packet to Steve.
"Yet you're confused about why they didn't want you around," Steve said flatly.
Tony lifted his chin. "An intelligence organisation that fears intelligence? Historically… not awesome."
"I think Loki's trying to wind us up. This is a man who means to start a war, and if we don't stay focused, he'll succeed. We have orders. We should follow them."
Maggie rubbed the back of her neck and shared a glance with Banner. She felt that headache from before creeping back - indecision, confusion. She didn't know who to trust. She certainly wasn't going to put her trust in orders.
Tony tossed more blueberries into his mouth. "Following's not really my style."
"And you're all about style, aren't you," Steve said, dripping with condescension.
Tony's gaze darted to Maggie for an instant and she cast her eyes heavenward.
Sure enough, Tony frowned and shot back: "Of the people in this room, which of us is a) wearing a spangly outfit, and b) not of use?"
"Steve," Banner finally cut in, softly. "Tell me none of this smells a little funky to you."
A beat passed. The four of them traded heavy glances.
Finally, Maggie sighed. If Banner was brave enough to keep the peace, then she could give it a shot too. "Tony's an idiot." That got their attention. "But he's a genius, too. So am I, and so's Banner, and we know something's up." She looked at Steve pointedly. "And I don't think you're the kind of guy to let a feeling like that slide."
Steve's expression darkened, and a moment later he turned to leave. "Just find the cube."
The lab door whooshed shut behind him with an air of finality.
Maggie watched him walk off down the corridor, her finger tapping restlessly against the worktable. When she glanced back, she met Banner's eyes.
"Men," she sighed.
He nodded in understanding.
Maggie scrubbed her hands over her face and paced across the workshop to one of the screens displaying the scan readouts of the scepter. She let Tony and Banner's conversation wash over her as she worked. Tony bitched about Steve, and then they spoke about Loki. Then, somehow, the conversation turned to Banner and his large green alter ego. Tony and Banner were on the other side of the workshop from her, and their companionable conversation soothed the rising anxiety she'd felt in the encounter with Steve. She played with hologram versions of chemical structures and bonds, trying to puzzle out the similarity between the scepter and the Tesseract. Without much success.
"I don't get a suit of armor," Banner said softly. "I'm exposed… like a nerve. It's a nightmare."
"Y'know, I've got a cluster of shrapnel trying every second to crawl its way into my heart," Tony said casually. Maggie glanced up. "This…" he tapped his Arc Reactor, "stops it. This little circle of light. It's part of me now." He abandoned his work and approached Banner. "Not just armor. It's a… terrible privilege."
Maggie kept her silence as she watched Tony and Banner connect over the dark, impossible parts of themselves. She couldn't say exactly what it was about this mild-mannered scientist that had brought out this… empathy in Tony, but it was fascinating to watch. Tony was only outwardly kind like this with a few people - herself, Pepper, maybe Rhodey and Happy on occasion.
But their conversation also called to something else within her.
"So you're saying that the Hulk… the other guy, saved my life? That's nice. It's a nice sentiment. Saved it for… what?"
"I guess we'll find out," Tony murmured.
Maggie pressed her palm to her chest, and found her heart pounding erratically. She understood: that feeling like there was something inside you that you couldn't get out. Some days, Maggie wondered if she was a monster too. Because at her very core, deep inside her, there was a pit of molten, burning rage, that everything else she was was built around. She didn't think she could get rid of it if she tried.
I survived, too. For what?
She worked on, monitoring the search algorithms and trying to understand the scepter, but thoughts of what lurked beneath her depths snagged at her mind. Banner and Tony spoke softly as they worked, trading ideas, but seemed to content to let her be. Finally, after an hour or so the pressure in her temples was too great too ignore.
Maggie drew in a deep breath. "I'll be right back," she called. She stepped away from her screen and made for the door before either Tony or Banner could speak. "Let me know if those scans come in."
Tony watched her walk away for a moment, his brow furrowed, before he turned back to his work.
No action this chapter, but I promise you guys are going to have plenty of that very soon ;)
Review
Guest: I do have ideas for including Maggie in TFATWS somehow! Probably as a separate story. I'll need to finish the series before I finalise any plans though ;)
Guest (from chapter 25): I do apologize for getting that wrong, I've fixed it now! Thank you for pointing it out.
EchoMoment: Hopefully you enjoyed the Steve interactions in this chapter! And yes, I think in TFATWS they're purposefully showing Bucky as being kind of oblivious to the prejudice Sam faces - I hope he comes to see and learn about it as the show goes on, so he can be a better ally.
The1975Love: No spoilers (as ever), but I'm actually not planning to include Maggie in too much of the middle part of CA:TWS ;) And as for TFATWS, I am so impressed by the John Walker actor - it takes special skill to be so unlikeable
DBZFAN45: I'm glad you enjoyed Maggie and Steve's interactions haha, and hopefully you liked them getting to know each other better this chapter! Avengers is so much fun, and throwing Maggie into the mix was even more so. Have a great week!
Don't touch Lola: I'm so glad you liked the last chapter! And don't worry too much about Steve, he's a bit wary of all the other Avengers at first, but he warms up to them. Hopefully you enjoyed him and Maggie getting along this chapter! Thank you so much :) I adored the last episode of TFATWS, so much good stuff happened in it! So excited for the return of Wakanda.
Guest (from chapter 12): I definitely see what you mean, but Maggie and her secrets/lies has been a purposeful addition to the fic this time around! Chapter 1 Maggie here is not going to be the same as chapter 100 Maggie from the Wyvern - she still has a journey to go through and lessons to learn, and I promise that will be addressed :)