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October, 2011 (25 Years Old)

Bagram, Afghanistan

The Wyvern didn't see the Winter Soldier until the end of the next year. The Director assigned them to an extended mission in Afghanistan, to incite chaos as the US military presence there waned. They worked out of a HYDRA base in Bagram, with a team of fifteen HYDRA agents dedicated to spreading chaos and confusion.

The agents were astounded by the lethal combination that the assets made. They'd heard mixed reports from their colleagues, some stating that the Wyvern did not work well in a team, others saying that the assets were just plain weird when they were together. They certainly weren't conversationalists, but in the month and a half the assets spent together at the Afghanistan base, the HYDRA agents could not help but admit that they were a deadly, efficient pair.

They seemed to fit together – the invisible gun on the ground, and the swift wings in the sky. The HYDRA agents often had to demand reports, because the assets didn't seem to need words to know what they were doing. They would just move, and the skirmish would be over seemingly before it had begun.

The Wyvern learned how to fix and tune-up the Soldier's metal arm, so the base mechanic could concentrate on the agents' guns and transports. It wasn't unusual to see the Soldier sitting, his blank stare aimed straight ahead, as the Wyvern poked precision tools into his exposed wiring. The Wyvern could service her own wings, but once an agent found the Soldier pulling a faulty section of wiring out of one of the moorings on her back, his gaze focused on the tweezers in his flesh hand.

The agents saw a pair of well-honed weapons, working in unison to carry out their orders. But even though the assets were regularly wiped and told their trigger words, their memories flickered in and out like a mystifying carousel of images, voices and emotions. They never remembered enough between the two of them to pose any threat to HYDRA, but on the Afghanistan mission they were both more human than they had ever been in the last twenty years.

After a particularly harrowing battle with local military forces, the Winter Soldier found himself on the top of yet another exploding building. He leapt from the roof, legs windmilling, and had the breath knocked out of him when the Wyvern collided with him mid-fall, taking his weight and coasting down to the street below. When they both had their feet on solid ground, the Soldier met her eyes, a silent thanks.

"You're my mission," she replied, counting on the roar of another explosion to conceal her words from the rest of the HYDRA team on comms. His eyes flashed in reply. Later that day, he shot four heat-seeking missiles out of the sky so the Wyvern could make it safely back to the ground. In the armoured truck on the way back to base he murmured "You're my mission, too." Neither of them moved a muscle.

When their handlers weren't listening, they exchanged the words like a secret. They shared other secrets, too. Twice the Wyvern remembered the name Barnes, and told it to the Soldier. Three times he remembered Margaret, and muttered it under his breath as the Wyvern worked on his arm or carried him through the sky. They hid the confusion and pain that the names caused, and when they couldn't, they twitched and screamed under the arms of the machine.

The Wyvern and the Winter Soldier got used to having the other asset at their side, silent and blank faced and full of secrets. Most of the time they didn't understand why they felt the pull toward each other, only that it made them feel marginally safer, and reminded them of the parts of themselves that weren't dead and bloody.

December, 2011 (25 Years Old)

Ideal Federal Savings Bank, Washington D.C.

Of course, the mission didn't last forever. As the Wyvern and the Winter Soldier stood side-by-side in an office of the bank, giving their report to the Director, the Wyvern's heart thumped erratically in her chest.

She hadn't been wiped in a while, and she was remembering more than ever before. She remembered the Soldier's iron grip on her arm as he dragged her away from her burning parents, but she also remembered the same hand rubbing soothing circles into her back as she gasped for breath in the Tbilisi manor garden. She remembered blood and screaming and metal on her bones. The Soldier's grey-blue eyes were haunting her waking visions, and she wasn't even looking at him. She focused on the office to keep herself in the present, noting the boxes of files, the weapons case on the desk, and the steel and glass cryostasis chamber in the corner.

The Director seemed pleased with their report. He didn't say it, but the Wyvern could see that HYDRA's design for that part of the world had gone as planned: crisis, war, the surrender of control.

They related the details of their last assassination in Kandahar and fell silent. They stood at parade rest, with faces of stone.

"Well, that's a relief to hear," the Director said, nodding at the technicians and agents around the room. "Alright. Wyvern, I've got a mission for you in Jakarta." The Wyvern heard a faint whir from the Soldier's arm, and knew that meant he had tensed imperceptibly. "But first," the Director continued, "let's get the Soldier on ice."

The Director gestured to the technicians, and the room sprang into action. The Soldier didn't protest as he was ordered to climb into the cryostasis machine. He didn't even blink when the techs turned the machine on and hooked up his vitals.

He's your mission, the Wyvern thought. Do something.

But she didn't move. Neither did the Soldier. His heartbeat was steady on the monitor, even when the walls of the chamber closed around him. His gaze was fixed straight ahead, at the Wyvern. She looked back.

If the Director noticed his assets looking at each other in the final moments before the Soldier was frozen, he didn't think anything of it. He'd had only positive reports from the agents in Afghanistan, with no signs of cognitive relapse beyond a few instances of confusion. He knew that the assets killed well together, and that was it.

The Winter Soldier watched the Wyvern through the thick glass of the cryochamber until the ice crept into his bones, and his eyes closed.

Two hundred miles away, Steve Rogers tried to make sense of the world.

Not many people spoke to Tony Stark about Maggie. Mostly he thought it was because the whole Your Dead Sister thing was kind of a conversation killer, and he was usually trying to be the life of the party.

The other reason, he suspected, was that she had become a tragic footnote in the Stark legacy. Tony himself often wondered, after the car accident, what the point was of such a clever kid if she only lived to five years old. Once he was done wondering, though, he would just end up missing her. And then he ended up drinking, and partying, and… well. He wasn't about to go write a self-help book any time soon.

He visited his family's graves sometimes, though that never ended well.

But for the public, Maggie's death was a sad ending at the very beginning of his career. People still brought up Howard, because they all felt like they knew him, but Maria and Maggie faded away. No one wondered any more if his sister would have been the greater genius.

Pepper, ever discreet, never brought up Maggie. But once they'd started dating, Tony started to talk about her. At first they were fleeting mentions, covered up in a whole flood of words, so Pepper couldn't get a word in edgewise. They both knew what he was doing, though neither of them mentioned it.

But one day, while inventorying old Stark projects at the L.A. headquarters, Pepper held up a small model of a jetpack. "Tony? Was this one of your early designs?"

Tony dropped the rocket hull he was holding, and then tried to act natural by appearing to be very busy with a rack of grenade pins.

"Tony?" She was turning it around in her hands now, smiling.

"No, it wasn't mine," he eventually said, keeping his hands busy. "That was Maggie's."

Pepper, bless her, didn't let an awkward silence fall. Tony would have been down for that and then never talking about it again, but she asked: "She wanted to fly, then?"

"She saw Peter Pan when she was about four, and never shut up about it. She nearly kidnapped Rhodey when she found out he was in the Air Force."

Pepper laughed softly. "She must have been bright."

Tony sighed, tightening a screw on the grenade pin rack just because he could. "She was. I hated it," he said matter-of-factly. "Everyone and their mother kept talking about how she was learning and developing faster than I had."

Pepper hummed, then stepped towards him, took the wrench from his hand, and replaced it with the jet pack model. It felt flimsy, like he might crush it if he gripped too hard. He stared at the wall as he held it, breathing steadily.

Pepper wrapped her arms around his middle. "I wish I could have met her."

"You'd have liked her more than me."

"It's possible," she teased. The kiss she pressed against his shoulder was feather-light. "But I love you."

May 1st, 2012 (25 Years Old)

Camp Lehigh, New Jersey

The Wyvern pulled up outside the defunct army barracks at sunset. She eyed the chain-link fences and red brick buildings, then got out of the car, hoisting the duffle bag with her wings and uniform over her shoulder.

Three hours ago, her harried-looking handler had ordered her to report to Camp Lehigh, with scarce instructions about what to do once she got there. They didn't explain why, but the Wyvern had picked up on some of the details – something big was going down with S.H.I.E.L.D., and all hands had been called in, including all the undercover HYDRA operatives. The Director, in the spare moments he had, decided to post the Wyvern to this compound while S.H.I.E.L.D. was distracted.

On the way the Wyvern had turned on the car radio to see if she could find out what was happening – it might prove mission relevant – but only heard something about the anticipated powering-up of Stark Tower. She had furrowed her brow at the odd jump in her heartbeat, and turned off the radio.

Now, dressed in jeans and a button-down blouse, the Wyvern glanced around, scaled the chain link fence, then picked her way through the overgrown weeds to the munitions bunker. It was a warm day. Despite her dusty, peeling surrounds, the Wyvern felt oddly light; perhaps because there was no one else around. She was used to narrow facility corridors packed with agents, and bright flourescent lights.

The Wyvern produced the key for the munitions bunker, then heaved open the door and went inside. The air was stale. She paced through the dusty offices, eyeing the empty desks and the S.H.I.E.L.D. logo on the wall. No wonder the Director had wanted her here while S.H.I.E.L.D. was looking the other way – this must be where the organisation started.

In the next room, the Wyvern stopped in her tracks before three black and white photographs on the wall. One was of a man in a WWII Colonel's uniform, one of a beautiful woman with a piercing gaze, and the one in the middle…

The Wyvern reached up to the image of the moustachioed man with dark hair and dark eyes. The other people in the photos looked proud, patriotic, but this man… he looked like a hard man. Serious. She was sure she'd seen that look before.

The Wyvern's trembling fingers connected with the photo and the frame slipped off one of its pins, sliding down the wall a little. The glass cracked, and part of it fell from the photo and shattered at her feet.

She flinched, yanked her hand away and turned to the left, determined not to look back. She carried out the rest of her instructions: revealing the secret elevator, putting in the code and descending to the bottom level of the base. Her hand was still trembling when the elevator doors opened to a darkened room. She walked in and the power switched on, illuminating a warehouse-sized room completely filled with ancient computer banks, coated in dust and whirring softly.

The Wyvern dropped her duffle bag and stared. She noted the stained, boxy camera that lifted to capture her with its gleaming black eye. She could hear the system – or whatever it was that these computers did – booting up, a rising melody of whirring fans and electronic clicks. The desk of screens before her flickered to life, showers of green static with an indistinct shape forming within.

"Welcome, fräulein."

The Wyvern did not react to the mechanical, glitchy voice emanating from the speakers. She held her ground, taking in the sheer scale of the computer banks around her.

"May I just say, Wyvern," somehow the voice managed to sound scathing, "it is an honour to have one of HYDRA's greatest creations inside my brain."

The Wyvern stayed at the bottom of the old S.H.I.E.L.D base with Arnim Zola's computer consciousness for the better part of three days. The consciousness had actually directly contacted the Director, demanding the help of the Wyvern to perform maintenance on his servers and assist with upgrading his software.

Once her mission was explained to her, the Wyvern got to work. She paced along the aisles and aisles of databanks, following Zola's directions to the most damaged or dysfunctional ones and repairing the machinery with the tools she'd been ordered to bring. She hooked up wiring, replaced fans and circuit boards, and worked at the computer screens for hours, interacting with Zola's programming. She barely slept, catching only a couple of hours during a reboot, and ate nutrition bars specifically designed for her higher-intake diet while she tinkered with Zola's brain.

As she worked, the computer consciousness spoke to her. The Wyvern got the sense that though it was active in the world, Zola's consciousness had not had someone to talk to in many years. She never responded to his reflections and veiled taunts, beyond going where he directed her and fixing what he told her to.

"You are a fascinating weapon, fräulein," he mused at the end of the first day. "A marvel of HYDRA's might and mind. You are everything the free world fears: a pinnacle of human strength, skill, and intellect, consigned to the shadows. You, like me, will be an architect of HYDRA's ultimate victory over mankind."

The Wyvern's only response was to continue re-wiring one of the memory centres.

On the second day, Zola spoke up after a long silence: "The world above is changing, Wyvern. The heroes gather, flawed as they are."

On the third day, he called her back to the keyboard interface. "I am going to show you something, Wyvern. I would like your insight."

She sat at the creaking chair before Zola's largest screen, her hands blistered and burned from working with the overheating tech. They'd heal soon.

Zola showed her an algorithm. It was pages and pages long, scrolling in green script down his enormous screen. The Wyvern scanned it silently, a furrow deepening between her brows.

"Well?" Zola asked, once she'd read it through. "What do you make of my work?"

"It's…" the Wyvern cleared her throat – the dusty air had clogged it. "It's a predictive targeting system."

"Yes, fräulein."

"What work does it need?"

The speakers emitted an awful, mechanical laugh. "Ever the mechanic, I see. It does not need work, Wyvern, it is almost completed. I am showing you this, because it is your legacy."

Images flickered on the auxiliary screens: the S.H.I.E.L.D logo dissolving into HYDRA logo. A flash of images ranging from black and white to full colour: faces, events, places, that the Wyvern knew were significant from the last seventy years, but could not name. Her breath caught in her chest as the image of the dark-haired man popped up.

"Howard Stark was one of the founders of S.H.I.E.L.D." The Wyvern watched a clip of the dark-haired man – Stark – shaking hands with the older Colonel, while the woman smiled in the background. "He and his colleagues brought me into their midst. They were weak, allowing HYDRA to grow within their ranks." An image cropped up of a man who must have been Zola, short and stooped, with round glasses. "Howard Stark also brought you into the world, Wyvern."

A family portrait: Stark beside an elegant woman, holding a swaddled baby while a gangly-looking teen stood to the side. The Wyvern's heartrate doubled, and she pushed back in her chair.

"And here we both are, working together towards HYDRA's new world order," continued Zola. "That is Stark's legacy: two of the world's greatest minds, working to bring down everything he created."

The Wyvern's breath was coming fast. She stumbled to her feet, seized her bag, and ran for the elevator.

"You are the greatest weapon Howard Stark ever created, Wyvern!" the computerised voice called after her. She slammed the elevator button, cracking it. "And you will turn his legacy to dust."

The Wyvern pulled on her wings in the elevator, gasping for breath, her head reeling. She tore her blouse in her haste, and left her bag behind as she ran out of the bunker and into the afternoon light.

Her mind was a mess, mangled images and voices fighting for space. She sobbed, gripping her head.

You will turn his legacy to dust.

The Wyvern raised her wings and launched into the sky. Her only thought was to get away, away from the insidious computerized voice and the terrible truths. The wind shrieked in her ears and tore at her face, near-blinding her as she soared out of the compound.

She didn't make it far. Zola alerted her handlers in New York, who instantly activated the remote kill switch for her wings.

The Wyvern lay in the dust of Camp Lehigh's training yard, with one leg twisted beneath her and three broken ribs jabbing into her left lung. If she'd had a mission, she might have been able to push through the pain, clamber to her feet and stagger out of the camp. But she had nothing: just a dead pair of wings, and a legacy of blood.

Later, when her handlers came, they eyed the crumpled asset. She was alive, looking up at the sky, but wasn't moving.

"Send her to be wiped," said the lead handler. "She's done here."

Eighty miles away, the other half of Howard Stark's legacy sat in a Shawarma restaurant with his teammates.

Over the next year and a half, the Wyvern was as lethally efficient as ever. No trace of Zola's taunts remained, and the Wyvern's programming only faltered twice.

The first time was on an espionage mission in Singapore in December, 2012. The Wyvern was perched on a windowsill of a high-rise skyscraper, wearing her black and gunmetal grey full-body combat suit, the slitted red goggles, and her wings. She was spying on a neighbouring building, when she caught sight of a headline on one of the resident's TV screens: "TONY STARK'S MANSION DESTROYED: BILLIONARE FEARED DEAD."

The Wyvern's reaction to the headline felt eerily familiar – it felt like someone had dug a hook into her gut and wrenched. She abandoned her mission for a moment, staring at the TV screen, trying to process her physical malfunction. The screen showed an image of the man – Tony Stark – beside an image of the Iron Man. The Wyvern reflected on her operational knowledge about Iron Man: level 6 combatant, advanced weaponry, genius IQ. She tried to connect the dots between the Iron Man and her current mission, but could find no causality.

There was movement in her target's apartment, drawing the Wyvern's attention back to the mission. She pondered her physical malfunction in response to the news about the Iron Man until she was wiped three days later.

The second time her programming faltered was after a two day mission with the Winter Soldier in late 2013. The assets took down a vigilante cell in Cuba who were looking a little too closely into HYDRA's interests, and impressed their handlers with their silent communication, effortless cooperation and the precision of their kills.

It wasn't until the very end of their mission, when the Soldier murmured you are my mission as he was taken away to be frozen, that the Wyvern realized that she had been missing a part of herself. But then it was wiped away.

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