I am always astounded by just how wonderful this community is. Thank you to every single one of you who has reviewed, DMed, made fanart, made Pinterest boards, recommended songs, and has done me the honour of simply reading the silly little (well, not so little) stories I put out into the world. I've said it before and I'll say it again, you guys are the best. It's been my pleasure this time around to see more of you interacting with each other in the Discord server and sharing the love.

As always, thanks to my Reader in Chief (you know who you are).

I do have plans for later stories, and if I ever get around to trying to publish my original work, I'll drop a link for y'all. So stay tuned, and join us in the Discord server (invite code pDsGenUEUX) for MCU chats, memes, fic recs, and updates on any further writings from myself.

Bring the Wyvern with you after you finish reading this epilogue; be bold, stick to your ideals, learn everything you can, do the things that scare you, and leave the world better than how you found it.

All my love, and see you next time x

Seven Years Later
Miccides-9, Planeillian Star System

In an instant the g-forces pressing down on Maggie's body cut out, causing her to heave in a loud, gasping breath. Her eyes, which had closed during the jump, stayed squeezed shut as she tried to catch her breath. Her whole body ached. Silence rang out for a few moments.

"Well done," came a rough drawl from ahead. "Neither of you hurled your guts up."

Maggie cracked an eye open, and lost her breath again.

Before she'd closed her eyes she'd been staring at the expanse of pitch-black space as they rocketed through it, faster and faster until bright multicolored lights had burst to life ahead and around them and they'd hit the jump. Now… the view was different. A planet filled the entirety of the cockpit window. It was no planet that she recognized. This planet had continents and oceans just like Earth - or Terra, as the Guardians called it - but the oceans were a deep green, the continents rugged swirls of white, blue, brown, green, red, and pink, more colorful than Earth appeared from space. Cloud systems swirled in similar patterns over the atmosphere, and where the planet curved away into darkness, not lit by the nearby star, Maggie could see artificial lights glowing in the darkness; signs of cities on the surface.

They were already very close to the planet, but Maggie could just make out the distant purple glow of a nebulae system in the expanse of space beyond it.

"Welcome to Miccides-9," drawled Rocket from the cockpit seat. His small raccoon-face turned back to eye them.

"Holy shit," breathed a voice to Maggie's right.

She glanced across at Bucky, strapped into the jumpseat next to hers. She still clutched his black-and-gold Vibranium hand, her knuckles white. Bucky had settled well into the 21st century since his pardon; he'd cut his hair short a year ago, leaving it short and a little spiky on top. He had a faint growth of stubble on his jaw, and wore a soft grey shirt and dark jeans.

He met her gaze, his eyes wide.

"Alright," grumbled Rocket, unstrapping himself in the pilot's seat and leaning toward his scanners. "Down we go."

"I still can't believe you got us a trip to space," Bucky breathed, excitement in his voice as he gripped Maggie's hand. "How much did this cost you?"

She glanced up at Rocket. "Oh, an arm and a leg."

She unstrapped herself from the jumpseat, flexing her sore muscles and checking that the space-jump hadn't disturbed the alignment of her nanotech prosthetic leg. She leaned against the inside of the cockpit, still distracted by all the new wiring and machinery she could see.

Maggie had been wanting to visit space ever since she realized it was in the realm of possibility, when they met the Guardians and everyone else during the Thanos business several years ago. It had been a hard fight, their hardest ever, and they all knew how lucky they were that the Avengers had been in a strong position when Thanos and his army came to Earth. Tony's arm still wasn't right.

Maggie had ended up bonding with Rocket over engineering, and a few weeks ago he'd finally agreed to take her and Bucky on a trip, while the Guardians were visiting the Asgardian embassy on Earth.

Maggie finished stretching and turned back to the cockpit window - only to find a series of metal shutters closing over it. "Hey, why can't we see the planet?"

Rocket glanced over his shoulder at her. "You can't land on Miccides-9 without light protection," he snorted, as if she'd asked a dumb question. "Perfectly safe on the ground, but while landing? Phew. I like my eyes in my head."

There was a clank behind her and Maggie glanced back to see Bucky looking guiltily down at a piece of his jumpseat - he'd snapped it off. "You told us this place was safe, Rocket," she sighed.

"And it is!" he protested. "As long as you don't land with the blinds down."

"Alright," Maggie murmured, because there wasn't much she could do about it now. She felt the pressure shift again as they descended into atmosphere, and she retrieved her jacket from where she'd tucked it under her seat. Bucky was pulling on his own jacket.

"Now remember," she said as she straightened, "we have to find something for Morgan while we're here."

His eyes glinted. "You can't give a six year old alien hardware, Meg."

"Says who?"

He rolled his eyes. "Alright. As long as we're getting a housewarming gift for Steve and Darcy as well."

"They moved in to their place like three months ago, it's a bit late."

Bucky zipped up his jacket - the leather one from his uniform - and faced her. "They got us one when we moved into the lakehouse, doll, and there's no way I'm letting Steve make me look bad."

Steve and Darcy had been a surprise. It turned out they'd been talking on and off ever since Darcy had first visited the Facility to see Maggie. It had been awkward between them at first, Darcy strangely shy around him, and Steve far too stoic around her. It had taken Maggie and Bucky practically tricking the two of them into the same room to get any real traction. Darcy maintained that she and Steve would have got there in the end. Maggie maintained that she and Bucky were their fairy godmothers.

"We got another alert from your Terran pals while we were in the jump," Rocket called back with annoyance. He gestured at Maggie to hurry up as she broke away from Bucky and headed into the cockpit, but kept the holo-message open for her and let her lean over his shoulder to read it, as he piloted the ship down.

"All okay?" Bucky called, checking the bag they'd brought with them.

She smiled. "Yeah. It's an update from Rikki. Says they've got everything under control at the Facility without us… missions all going well… okay, it's basically bragging. I don't know how I never flagged that they were a Barnes." Bucky snorted, and she laughed as she scanned the last few lines. "Rikki still hasn't admitted they're dating that Chavez girl." She rolled her eyes, and then jumped when she felt the ship touch the ground. It had been a remarkably smooth landing.

"Apparently," she continued reading even while she tested out her weight in new gravity, "Peter's come back from MIT to rebuild another suit. We should just give him a Fabricator. I know Tony wants to."

"Alien planet?" Bucky prompted, leaning against the bulkhead at the rear of the cockpit with his brows raised.

"Right, right, yes." She leaned over Rocket's shoulder to close the message.

"Tell your pals to quit blowing up my communicator," Rocket growled, but Maggie knew he loved Rikki.

"Quit being mean to me on my anniversary," she shot back, flipping him the finger. Beside her middle finger, her wedding band gleamed darkly on her ring finger; black Vibranium, a gift from the Wakandans. Her pearl engagement ring sat above it.

Rocket flapped a paw at her, and she pushed away from his seat to join Bucky at the back of the ship. They heard clanks and creaks as the ship settled on whatever surface they'd come to land on, and hissing as the cockpit pressurised.

"You're sure that the atmosphere here is safe for humans?" Bucky called back.

"Danvers said it's fine, and I'm pretty sure Quill's come here, and he's not dead," Rocket called. He was hunched over his scanners. "Ugh, perfect timing though, it's snowing. You won't be able to see the moons."

Maggie zipped up her jacket (it had holes in the back for her wings to shoot through, should she need them), and raised her eyebrows at Bucky. "Good thing we packed warm."

"Alright, running final checks and then I'll let the door down," Rocket called.

Maggie shifted her feet, suddenly filled with jitters. She glanced at Bucky and sensed the same nerves in him. They'd never been to space, unlike some of the others. And for a man who grew up in a Brooklyn tenement, trying his best to see the stars, it put a lump in her throat to see him now standing aboard a spaceship, waiting for the door to open.

Bucky sensed the shift of her thoughts. He leaned in and stole a kiss, prosthetic arm curving behind her back and his flesh hand brushing her hair behind her ear. "Thank you," he murmured against her lips.

"You'll have to find a way to thank me properly later, stargazer," she said, grinning at him as he pulled away.

And then the door came down.

Maggie and Bucky both winced at the bright white light that flooded into the ship, almost blinding after the blackness of space. The cold hit them next, biting at their skin - but no worse than a cold winter's day in New York. Maggie heard the ship's ramp hit the ground.

Maggie and Bucky shuffled forward, squinting in the light and waiting for the scene before them to resolve itself. The details came to Maggie, large and then small.

The horizon in the distance was carved by mountain peaks of a silvery grey stone. In the middle distance, before the mountains, hung a floating city. The shining metropolis hovered a mile off the ground, just below the cloud layer, a huge platform with soaring buildings, greenery, and flying transports hovering around it like a cloud of insects. The underside of the city shimmered; Maggie wasn't sure if this was because of the metal it was made of, or some sign of the energy source keeping it afloat.

The Benatar, the Guardian's ship, had come to land in a field of pale grass, laden with snow. A herd of animals of strange and unfamiliar shapes grazed a few miles away. Snow fell all around them, flurrying and gusting. But it wasn't snow like on Earth.

The flakes that fell were reflective and shimmering, almost holographic. The closest frame of reference Maggie had was glitter, but when she reached out the flakes fell on her palm cold and sparkling, the light melting into a rainbow in her palm. The entire world shimmered before them.

Maggie glanced across at Bucky. His sea-grey eyes, in the falling snow, looked like they had been set afire. He held out his hand and grinned.

Maggie took his hand and they stepped forward, setting foot on a new world, together.