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He had hoped she wouldn't be here. And he had hoped she would be.

Still, the sight of the Wyvern – of Maggie – standing on the other side of that tarmac shook him to his core. He'd known he'd be conflicted the first time he saw her, torn between being glad she was alive and afraid that she'd be completely unrecognizable to him. He hadn't expected the hurt or the betrayal, but that was what he felt as he saw his sister standing between a murderer and a rogue Avenger, her allegiances clear.

She looked like she had in the footage from D.C., with the ominous metal wings, the black combat outfit and the red goggles. If he hadn't known who she was, Tony might be searching for potential weak points in her mechanical wings, cracks in her armor, but he couldn't bring himself to even look.

She wasn't wearing a cowl this time, and Tony could see glimpses of her face. Her mouth was pressed into a hard line.

He'd heard her voice over the comms: you're looking for revenge on the wrong man. She'd sounded determined, defiant, and in truth Tony hadn't really listened to her words – the instant he'd heard her voice he could think of nothing else but that's my sister. No wonder Wanda and Clint had gotten the drop on him.

Tony could tell that Maggie was looking at him from behind her red goggles. He'd give anything to know what she was thinking. Did she even know who he was? Did she even know who she was? And if she did, how could she stand on the other side of this battleground?

He watched as Maggie's gaze finally lifted from his armor, and turned to Barnes. They only looked at each other for a moment or two, but it felt like a lifetime.

Steve's words echoed in Tony's head: she's where she wants to be.

Tony steeled himself. He'd warned T'Challa and Parker that a dangerous woman with metal wings might be there, and had told them to use nonlethal force on every member of Steve's team. This fight would end, one way or another, and then he would have his sister back. As for what he'd do then…

Before Tony could follow that line of thought, Steve stepped into action.

When Steve took that first step forward into no-man's-land, Maggie fell into step behind him without even thinking about it. Her heart was still pounding and aching, but her mind was focused – she had her mission.

The team across the tarmac from them started walking forward as well, matching their strides. The only one whose face she could properly see – the Black Widow – looked reluctant, but determined. Maggie rolled her shoulders and focused on her opponents, instead of just her brother. She could read most of their body language enough to work out who was going for who, and she sized up their potential strengths and weaknesses. She didn't care who she had to fight, as long as it wasn't Tony.

Steve broke into a jog, and Maggie echoed his pace unconsciously. Her wings clicked and whirred where they were folded against her back, ready for instant takeoff.

"They're not stopping!" she heard Spider-Man shout, alarmed.

She didn't know what Tony said to that, but suddenly his team was sprinting, Iron Man and War Machine taking flight, repulsors roaring.

Maggie and Sam snapped their wings open simultaneously and soared into the air. Wanda sprang into the sky after them, hands glowing red. In the back of her mind, Maggie reflected that she didn't realise the Scarlet Witch could fly.

But the time for reflection was over. Goggles slitted, she rocketed over Steve and Bucky's heads, billowing them with her downdraft. She saw Iron Man go high, leaping up for a downward punch aimed at Steve, so she went low, diving on the Black Panther before he could go for Bucky.

But the Panther was ready for her this time – as the rest of the superheroes collided with a roar of engines and clashing metal, T'Challa rolled under her quicker than she'd expected, and she careened over his head. She didn't have time to turn around before Bucky was engaging the Panther, so she pushed off the ground with one foot to boost herself back into the sky, flipped around and searched for a new target.

It was chaos. Maggie aimed her energy blaster at Vision's back, hitting him with a burst of white energy just as Barton managed to shoot him with some kind of taser arrow. She followed it up with a punch aimed at his chest, but Vision went all blurry and her hand flew straight through him, throwing her off balance. She zig-zagged away through the air, certain he was about to zap her with his glowing stone, but she was surprised when she didn't hear it. But there wasn't any time to think about that, or about anything.

She found herself caught up with the rest of the fliers, zipping in and out with Sam as they fought against Rhodey and Vision, ducking and swerving over the battles on the ground. Spider-Man shot globs of webbing at them, trying to trip them up, until Wanda gave him her own projectiles to worry about.

There was no time to think, to focus. Maggie was surrounded by powers and engines and the chorus of shouts and impacts over the comms. It was all so loud. The edge of her vision was filled with the red glow of Wanda's powers, and her ears rang with repulsor blasts and the chime of Vibranium. She could barely keep an eye out for Bucky, but what little she did see of him reassured her that he was holding his own against T'Challa. She couldn't break away for long enough to help him, though she fired her energy blaster at T'Challa's black suit whenever she saw it.

She grounded herself to pull Spider-Man off Scott, tossing him into a shipping container. It was because of all the chaos that she didn't get a proper look at the person behind her before she threw a punch at them, only to have her fist caught in a red and gold metal gauntlet, while the other gauntlet came up to aim at her face, glowing with a charging repulsor blast.

She and Iron Man both froze. They stared at each other for a heartbeat, with Maggie's fist in his hand. With a whine, his repulsors powered down. Red goggles met glowing white eye slots.

But before they could do anything else about it an arrow detonated between them, knocking them apart. They threw themselves back into the fight: Iron Man rocketed after the Falcon, and Maggie leaped to cover Steve from one of Rhodey's repulsor blasts.

Maggie did her best to avoid Tony after that, and either she was crazy or Iron Man wasn't really trying to go after her either. She did intercept a repulsor blast aimed for Scott with her wing, though, and when she rolled upwards she saw that it must have come from Iron Man. He hovered in the air for a moment, watching her, before Steve's shield knocked him backwards and he jumped back into the fight.

Out of the corner of her eye, Maggie spotted T'Challa raining down blows on Bucky, herding him away from the others. Heart pounding, Maggie tossed a smoke grenade at Vision to give herself some cover and veered away. Spider-Man sprang up, trying to get in her way, but she knocked him aside with a shrug of her wings.

"I didn't kill your father," Bucky said, his metal hand on T'Challa's throat and T'Challa's claws reaching for his face.

"Then why did you run?" came T'Challa's menacing voice, and he managed to pull Bucky's metal arm away in an impossible display of strength. Still a few seconds away, Maggie felt a thrill of fear go through her.

Bucky and T'Challa exchanged a few blows, rolled along the ground, and then T'Challa kicked Bucky in the face, knocking him through the air and into a stack of crates.

T'Challa was fast, springing for Bucky's throat with his claws extended, but Maggie was faster. She dropped in from the top of the crates and stomped on T'Challa's outstretched arm, knocking his claws away and buying Bucky a moment's reprieve. She threw her elbow at T'Challa's jaw and slammed her own clawed gauntlet into his chest, sending him stumbling back.

Maggie sensed Bucky climb to his feet behind her. She advanced on T'Challa, breathing heavily. All the chaos and fear of the fight was catching up to her, and the image of T'Challa's claws against Bucky's neck burned behind her eyes like a brand.

"What part," she hissed, and blocked a series of kicks as T'Challa attacked. She retaliated with a leg sweep of her own. "Of you've got the wrong guy-" He tried to leap over her, but she snagged his foot and slammed him to the ground. "Don't you understand?" she finished, shouting now.

Bucky had recovered now, and he launched against T'Challa with a knee to the face. She and Bucky worked together, raining down blows on the Wakandan king, until a red glow suddenly appeared at T'Challa's chest and flung him away.

Bucky and Maggie glanced up to see Wanda, who nodded breathlessly at them and then ran back to the main part of the fight. They glanced back at each other, sharing a concerned glance. But there wasn't time, they could hear the rest of their team struggling over the comms.

Maggie touched her fingers briefly to Bucky's stubbled jaw, making his eyes soften, and then they pulled apart again, dashing in different directions. Bucky followed Wanda back to the main fight, but Maggie doubled back to where she'd seen the Widow lying on the ground after being taken out by Wanda.

This part of the airport was relatively quiet, filled with abandoned vehicles and shipping containers. It was a good place to hide.

But Maggie's goggles were equipped with thermal vision. She located the Widow quickly, spotting her orange glow slipping toward the fight, using gantries and vehicles as cover.

Maggie cocked her head. The Widow wasn't throwing herself headfirst into this fight. She'd chosen to go up against her friend, Barton, who she must have known wouldn't hurt her, just as much as she wouldn't hurt him. And now it seemed she was slipping around the edges of the battle, watching.

Curious, Maggie circled around so that she appeared in view a few feet away from Romanoff, her wings folded against her back and her posture carefully loose.

Romanoff stopped in her tracks, but other than that didn't obviously react to Maggie's presence. The two women eyed each other for a moment, not moving a muscle.

After a few beats of silence, Maggie inclined her head. "Widow," she murmured. The roaring engines and shouts of the fight seemed distant.

Romanoff cocked her head, her face unreadable. "Wyvern." Her voice was measured, calm, as if they weren't in the middle of a war.

Maggie could see an opportunity here. The fight was confusing, overwhelming, but she couldn't let her team be stopped here at this airport. Surely if anyone would be open to understanding why Steve and his team were so determined, it was Romanoff: a woman who had been trained to read people and situations since she was a child. Not only that, but surely Romanoff understood her friends.

"Steve would do anything for Bucky," Maggie began, keeping her voice pitched low. Romanoff's eyes narrowed.

"But this?" Maggie said, tipping her head towards the sound of battle. "He wouldn't… he wouldn't bring in his friends, people he wants to protect, just to keep Bucky from going to prison. He wouldn't put them at risk like that. You know there's more to this." Slowly, she reached up and pulled her goggles off her eyes, resting them on her forehead. She met Romanoff's green, suspicious eyes evenly. "I know you have no reason to trust me. But trust what makes sense. There is something much worse out there, and Steve is trying to stop it." At that, Maggie let her hands fall loose by her sides, and held her breath.

Romanoff's face flickered, but Maggie couldn't read it. The other woman looked directly into her eyes, and Maggie didn't know what she saw there. Hopefully the truth.

Finally, Romanoff said: "I'm beginning to see that."

With a small exhale, Maggie relaxed. But in that brief moment Romanoff snapped into action, bringing her arm up and shooting a small, electric blue disc right into Maggie's chest.

"Ah!" Maggie gasped, as the disc latched onto her suit and discharged a painful electric current, bringing her to her knees. For three terrible seconds the electricity paralyzed her, making her grunt in pain, but then it faded and the small disc dropped to the ground.

Maggie looked up, gasping, and the Black Widow was gone.

She didn't know quite what to make of what just happened, but she was wasting time here. "Sneaky asshole," she muttered, readjusting her goggles and snapping her wings open. With another mumbled curse she took off, soaring into the sky once more and spiraling upwards to get a focus on the situation.

She instantly saw where she was needed: Sam was flying against Iron Man, War Machine and Vision, and he was having a hard time of it. If the detonating arrows in the air were any indication then Clint was backing him up from the ground, but he needed a wingman. Or wingwoman, as it were.

Maggie rocketed over to the melee just as Scott somehow infiltrated Tony's suit. Glad she didn't have to deal with him just yet, she soared over Sam's shoulder and used her wing to deflect a repulsor blast meant for him.

"Hey, thanks," Sam said, sounding out of breath as he dodged and weaved. "You gonna stop slacking off now?"

Maggie smirked, flipping over backwards to get a good angle on Rhodey with her energy blaster. "Only if you're going to stop sucking."

"Wow, are you actually ten years old?"

She elected to ignore that, as Rhodey was now hot on her tail, firing repulsor blasts and flares as he tried to knock her out of the sky. She found herself remembering things about flying that she'd half forgotten, using her body and her mind to bring her wings to their full potential. She cut through the air, weightless and powerful.

She could hear Scott taunting Tony from within his suit over the comms – it made her uncomfortable, but she knew Scott wouldn't really hurt him.

Half a minute of breakneck flying later, Maggie was teaming up with Sam to try to trick Rhodey and Vision into tripping each other up, when Bucky's voice came over the comms:

"We gotta go," she heard him say. "That guy's probably in Siberia by now."

"We gotta draw out the fliers," Steve replied, and Maggie guessed by the relative quiet from their end of the comms that they were together.

But then what they'd said sunk in, and Maggie cursed when she realised Steve was right. She and Sam were holding their own, but it'd be impossible to get the whole team through to the Quinjet with the way the others were sticking to them.

Steve continued: "I'll take Vision, you get to the jet." Maggie almost rolled her eyes – there was no way Steve could hold up against the android on his own, she was having enough trouble and she had Sam by her side.

Sam piped up before she could: "No, you get to the jet! Both of you!" Sam swooped low, Rhodey on his tail, and Maggie dove in beside them, aiming energy blasts at Rhodey. "The rest of us aren't getting out of here," Sam continued.

Maggie's heart sank, because she knew he was right.

"As much as I hate to admit it," Clint added, out of breath, "if we're going to win this one, some of us might have to lose it."

Maggie gritted her teeth and focused on tossing a series of flares at Vision, distracting him. Her wings pulled taut as she veered away.

"This isn't the real fight, Steve," said Sam.

There was a moment of silence. Then:

"Meg," came Bucky's low voice, with a thread of panic.

Maggie's heart ached. "They're right, Bucky." She had to cut herself off to avoid a repulsor blast from War Machine. "You and Steve need to go, we'll hold them off." She couldn't leave Sam, Clint and Scott like this – they needed her help.

"Meg, no-"

"This is the mission, Bucky," she interrupted, and she was surprised how steady her voice was. "You need to finish it."

He didn't reply to that, and she took his silence as agreement. Then Rhodey hit her with a repulsor blast, sending her tumbling out of control over the stacks of crates. She caught herself just in time, gasping as her feet scraped a metal container, and as she steadied herself she saw Bucky and Steve crouched behind cover, looking up at her. Maggie righted herself, fired up her engines and jetted back to the fight, savouring one last glance at Bucky's dark haired, metal-armed form.

"Alright Sam," Steve said in a low voice. "What's the play?"

"We need a diversion," Sam said. "Something big."

Maggie caught up to Sam and tried to shake Rhodey off his tail as they jetted under a gantry, rattling machinery. As she did, she mentally ran through her arsenal – she was running out of grenades, so she was mostly relying on the energy blaster mounted on her arm. She didn't have anything big.

"I've got something kind of big," Scott piped up. "But I can't hold it very long."

Maggie's eyebrows shot up.

"On my signal, run like hell. And if I tear myself in half, don't come back for me."

Over the comms, Bucky muttered "he's gonna tear himself in half?"

"You sure about this, Scott?" Steve asked.

"I do it all the time!" Scott replied, puffing as if he was running. "I mean once, in a lab. And then I passed out."

Maggie's mind suddenly turned to theoretical Pym Particles, despite how badly she needed to focus on getting away from Vision, who seemed to be trying to grab her. She had a sudden, horrible thought about what Scott might be talking about. "Scott, don't-"

But he was just muttering "I'm the boss, I'm the boss, I'm the boss, I'm the boss!"

For a few seconds nothing happened, and Maggie started desperately thinking of something she could do to cause a distraction, as she scraped against the ground in an effort to dodge Vision. Could she surrender herself? Would that distract enough fighters to give Steve and Bucky time to get to the Quinjet?

But then, with a sound like a clap of thunder, Lang appeared seemingly out of nowhere and rocketed upwards and outwards, until he was at least seventy feet tall. He towered over the nearby plane and the rest of the airport, a giant in a red and black suit. He seized Rhodey's feet, laughing madly.

Maggie's mouth dropped open. She was so busy staring at Scott's humongous form that she almost didn't realize she was about to run into him. She flared her wings, veering away, then rolled onto her back so she could keep staring. "Scott, oh my…" she trailed off. She'd seen plenty of things in her life; assassins and glowing stones and Helicarriers falling out of the sky, but she'd never seen anything like this. Scott was enormous. He made everything around him look like a toy.

Hank Pym is a freaking genius.

Rhodey was panicking, trying to use his repulsors to get away, but he was caught in Scott's grip like a ragdoll.

Steve and Bucky stepped out from their cover, and Steve said: "I guess that's the signal."

"Way to go, Tic-Tac!" Sam whooped, laughing.

Maggie was so busy staring at the giant on the tarmac that she almost forgot about the mission. When she remembered, she huffed a laugh. That's a pretty good distraction. "Looking good, Scott!" she called.

She blinked when she heard Tony's helmeted voice: "Give me back my Rhodey."

That kicked off the fight again. Sam swooped down and kicked Tony in the face. Scott threw Rhodey like a frisbee, flinging him past the eerily floating Vision, but Spider-Man managed to catch him before he collided with the nearby plane. Maggie raised an eyebrow. Maybe the kid isn't so bad after all.

Scott was having fun playing Godzilla with the airport, distracting the others, so Maggie hovered by the terminal and waited to engage the first person who noticed that Steve and Bucky were missing.

Sure enough, the Black Panther spotted the two super soldiers sprinting for the hangar, and started chasing after them. I'm getting real sick of that guy.

As she extended her wings and dove toward the Panther, Maggie noticed Sam clonk Tony in the face with Redwing, knocking him backwards. Her lips thinned, but she reminded herself – again – that no one really wanted to hurt Tony.

Scott got to T'Challa before Maggie did. "Wanna get to them? You gotta go through me." He kicked the crates out from under T'Challa with one enormous boot, sending wood splinters flying everywhere, then went to grab him. But then Scott's face lit up with explosions, and he stumbled back at Rhodey's attack.

Maggie continued where Scott left off. She swooped once more on the Black Panther, firing energy blasts at his head. He rolled away, sprinting toward the hangar, but then Barton was there with his bow and arrow, firing shot after shot at the Wakandan.

Maggie rolled onto her back for a second to fire a couple of energy blasts at Rhodey. It gave Scott a few seconds to get his balance back. When she rolled again, diving back to the two men fighting on the tarmac, T'Challa let two arrows detonate on either side of his face and got to his feet, unharmed. Maggie raised an eyebrow. She remembered Steve saying something about that suit being made of Vibranium.

"We haven't met yet," said Barton, as he flicked his bow into a staff. "I'm Clint."

"I don't care."

The two men launched at each other, and Maggie came in on Barton's flank to throw kicks and punches at the Panther, helping to slow him down. As he dodged her razor-sharp wings, Maggie sensed the king getting more and more pissed off at her. This was the third time she'd gotten in his way. Well, she shared the feeling.

Maggie and Barton worked surprisingly well together, coordinating their strikes as they attacked the agile Panther. Maggie knew when to duck under Barton's whirling staff, knew when he was going to go low, so she could go high. At one point Maggie crouched and dipped her outstretched wing, making it rigid, and Clint used it as a springboard to leap up and get some height on the Panther. As she retracted her wing and dove for the Panther's knees, Maggie was surprised at herself – she and Clint hadn't discussed that move at all, but she'd just known to do it.

Out of the corner of her eye Maggie saw War Machine fly after Steve and Bucky. But he was intercepted by a blast of red energy, so Maggie decided to leave Wanda to it.

With a resounding thud, Vision slammed into Scott's massive chest. Maggie caught one of T'Challa's punches and glanced at Scott, concerned, as he stumbled backwards into a plane.

Vision went still in the air, and Maggie just knew that his gaze was trained on Steve and Bucky running toward the Quinjet. Shit. She was under no illusions about the relative powers of the people here – the android was unmistakably superior, with abilities none of the others could even dream of, save maybe Wanda. And Wanda was busy with Rhodey.

Maggie leaped onto T'Challa's back and used him as a launch pad, springing off his shoulders and into the air before he could catch her. She felt a little bad about leaving Barton to deal with T'Challa, but he seemed like he could hold his own.

"Something just flew in me!" yelled a panicked Scott, and Maggie spiralled upwards to see that Vision had phased through Scott and was now floating toward the hangar. Maggie soared over Scott's shoulder, chasing the android, but she didn't get to him in time.

Vision shot a golden, powerful beam from the stone in his forehead. It sliced through the hangar's control tower like butter, sending it crumbling toward the hangar entrance.

"No!" Maggie cried.

But then Wanda, that incredible woman, caught the tower with her glowing red powers. Maggie let out a breath of relief, seeing that Steve and Bucky were going to make it. She rocketed toward Vision before he could do anything else to stop them, her engines whining as she closed in on him. She fired her energy blaster but he let the bolts phase through him, his face surprisingly expressive as she approached. She could see that he was disturbed by this fight as well.

When she reached Vision Maggie threw her fist at him, but he moved lightning-fast and caught her wrist in an impossibly tight grip, stealing her momentum and trapping her in mid-air. Crying out, Maggie pummelled her other fist against his chest. It was like trying to hit a brick wall. She strained her engines, trying to pull away. Her legs kicked helplessly, and she wrenched at the iron grip around her arm.

"I do not want to hurt you, Ms Stark," Vision said in his solemn, measured voice. It made her falter for a moment, but then she fired her energy blaster right into his face. Vision sighed and then threw her, sending her tumbling backwards toward where Scott was fending off War Machine, Iron Man and Spider-Man. She crashed through a gantry, getting tangled in twisted metal and shattered glass.

Trapped in the destroyed gantry, Maggie groaned. Her whole body ached, and she was tired. They'd probably only been fighting for less than half an hour, but it felt like days. Distantly, she registered the sound of the tower thundering to the ground outside the hangar. She hoped Bucky and Steve made it. She focused in on the comms, and outside of the havoc Scott was causing she heard Romanoff's low voice as she changed sides, protecting Steve and Bucky from T'Challa.

Maggie dropped her head back against one of the last pylons holding up the gantry, wincing as the crushed metal around her pressed into her bruised back. It hurt like hell, but she just wanted to lie down. She was tired of fighting, especially against her brother. Her wings loosened, flattening against the awkwardly twisted pile of metal beneath her. She closed her eyes.

Get up, Maggie.

The voice that resounded in her mind wasn't cold, like her remembered echoes of the Wyvern. It didn't sound like anyone she knew, either. It was just her, her own voice, telling her she wasn't done yet.

Get up.

Groaning, Maggie jerked her shoulders free of the crumpled gantry and shook her head to clear it. There was something left for her to do.

She pulled her head out of the trashed gantry just in time to see Scott topple backwards, thudding to the ground with a resounding crash. Maggie clenched her jaw but didn't go to him. Scott had done his job as a distraction perfectly, but there was a mission to compete. Swinging around, Maggie assessed the situation.

Vision was crouched on the tarmac beside Wanda, who was clutching her head, and Maggie's heart leaped when she saw that the Quinjet was aloft, about to fly out of the nearly destroyed hangar. An impossible hope bloomed in her chest – she could go with them. She was sure she could keep pace with the jet long enough to climb aboard. Steve and Bucky could use all the help they could get, and she was still in action.

But as Maggie watched, the Quinjet started hovering out of the hangar, and a figure in black leaped up and clung to the jet's landing gear. The landing gear retracted but the figure sank his claws into the Quinjet's underbelly, holding on despite the slipstream. The Quinjet flew out of the hangar with the stowaway attached.

Maggie's heart skipped a beat, and she surged forward without a second thought.

Over the comms, Steve muttered "Buck, can you see him?"

Maggie plowed out of the crushed gantry, engines roaring as she pushed herself to maximum speed. "I've got him, go!" she called, and as Steve took off he tilted the Quinjet to give her a better angle.

Maggie's eyes focused on T'Challa, clinging to the bottom of the jet and using his claws to inch forward to the windshield. He was strong, she had to give him that. And determined.

Steve and Bucky, in the pilot and copilot's seats, spotted the Wyvern as she rocketed below the nose of the jet, and the sound of her engines washed over them. A second later they saw her shoot out from under the other side with her arms tightly linked around the Black Panther's middle, tearing him away from his prey.

"Thanks, Maggie," Steve breathed, and Maggie smiled sadly as she heard the Quinjet flying away.

But she didn't have time to respond to Steve because T'Challa was fighting back now, trying to claw out of her grip as they sailed back to the airport. His suit was hard to get a grip on, but she had him trapped in a bear hug, so he wasn't slipping away anytime soon. She could feel his fury at having been plucked away from his revenge. The Quinjet was a fading roar.

Seconds later, Maggie heard the others going after the Quinjet, and she picked up her pace – Steve and Bucky needed backup to get out of here free and clear, so she needed to get T'Challa back down safely and then go to help. Even if she couldn't go with them, she could make sure they got away to do what needed to be done.

Furious, T'Challa managed to drive his knee into Maggie's ribs, making her gasp and jerk to the side. She readjusted her grip, scowling, and aimed for the tarmac. She considered the chances of still being able to convince T'Challa he was after the wrong guy.

But then, before she realised what he was trying to do, T'Challa's gauntlets were on her back, on her wing-

There was a shrieking metallic sound, splintering and cracking. Maggie winced at the noise. Half a second later, the pain hit.

It was as if a bomb went off in her cybernetic neurons – blinding white pain erupted in her synapses, scorched up her back and into the base of her neck, making her scream and seize up. Maggie's whole body recoiled, and she could feel the metal on her bones pulling, stretching in ways it was never meant to. She heard her own ribs cracking.

Maggie's vision whited out from the pain, but she knew she was falling – she instinctively knew that tumbling, weightless feeling. She couldn't move.

Seconds later she crunched into the tarmac, landing on her right wing and screeching along the ground in a shower of sparks. The collision jarred her entire body and her skin scraped along the ground, bringing new heights to her pain. Maggie didn't know where T'Challa was, she didn't know what was happening, what had–

She must have checked out for a moment, because she wasn't aware of anything for the next few seconds. But she wasn't unconscious, because when she managed to regain some awareness she was mid-scream, her head arched back in agony as pain surged into her lungs and out her mouth in a wordless cry. Flash memories bloomed behind her eyes, of screaming while her body was torn apart.

There was talking in her ears – the commpiece, she realised dully. She could hear Bucky's voice, calling her name – no, he was shouting it, the words laced with more fear than she'd ever heard in his voice.

That startled her out of her screaming, and her voice lowered into a long, drawn out groan. She rolled her head, disoriented and sobbing, and the first thing she saw other than the open blue sky was her own blood, pooling on the concrete beneath her. She was lying on her side, resting on her right wing.

Maggie realised her whole body was shuddering. With another long wail she managed to crane her head and glance over her shoulder. Her body went numb at what she saw.

Where her left wing should have been there was only a twisted metal stump, torn off near the root. Blood dripped from the shorn-off end.

At the sight Maggie screamed again, fear and pain flooding her voice, and she looked around wildly for the rest of her wing – she'd lost all sense, she just knew that she needed her wing, where was it? T'Challa had taken it from her–

But when Maggie lifted her head, briefly spotting the crouched Panther, frozen as he stared at her, the bones in her chest shrieked in pain. She cried out again, her throat raw from it, and her vision started swimming.

On the horizon, a glinting metal person fell out of the sky in a trail of smoke.

Maggie's eyes drifted shut.

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