-8-

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After the Project Leader's death, the Wyvern became HYDRA's weapon in earnest. She was no longer based in any particular facility – instead, HYDRA moved her around the world to wherever she was needed. She didn't have one particular handler, either. She worked alone and in teams, usually given missions straight from the Director, sometimes posted to HYDRA bases requesting backup. But they never let her out in the world by herself unless she was on mission: the Wyvern belonged to HYDRA, and they had to keep up the constant cycle of memory suppression and trigger words to ensure their weapon remained theirs.

The Wyvern did whatever HYDRA needed. She assassinated, gathered intelligence, shaped politics and people to bring more chaos to the world. She also guarded prominent members of HYDRA when needed, passed on secret communications, programmed software, broke codes, and trained soldiers. She was rarely seen without her wings and uniform, appearing more monster than mortal to HYDRA and enemies alike.

The Wyvern didn't keep up the output of designs and engineering advancements that she had while at the Québec facility – no one was telling her to make things, so she didn't. The deaths of Peters, Sanders and Marino meant that steady stream of experimentation and enhancement also ceased.

The Wyvern did, however, fashion herself a pair of combat gauntlets with razor barbs on the fingertips, so her hands were just as deadly as the rest of her. But she found some comfort in being able to take the gauntlets off at the end of a mission – the heel spurs and Adamantium spine were not so temporary. The gauntlets weren't made of Adamantium, but they did the job of helping her to grip things and cut through flesh. The Wyvern could have made them out of Adamantium, but the Project Leader had informed HYDRA that the secret of the metal had died with Marino in 2001. The Wyvern was not asked if she knew how to create Adamantium, so she never felt it necessary to correct them.

August, 2004 (18 Years Old)

Moscow, Russia

Ivan Vanko sat on the stoop outside his father's ramshackle flat, nursing a bottle of cheap vodka and periodically flicking his lank, greasy hair out in his face. He stared at a hole in the plaster, listening to his father cough and rattle around the flat.

His father was weakening by the year, but seemed to have found a new strength when Ivan came home from Kopeisk prison: just enough strength to loudly express his displeasure in his failure of a son.

Ivan knocked his head back against the wall and felt some of the plaster crumble away. Surely he hadn't survived fifteen years in that gadkoye pomeshcheniye [hellhole] for this: avoiding his father in their tiny flat and tracking down enough booze to get him through the day.

After what felt like hours of silent drinking, Ivan lifted his head, his prison-born instincts kicking in. He set down the vodka. What was it – had he heard something? He listened for a moment more, then realised what the problem was. He couldn't hear anything. His father had stopped banging away at machinery and trying to hack the winter out of his lungs.

Ivan got to his feet and stepped back into the flat. Dim light peeked through the thin curtains, revealing peeling wallpaper and piles of junk in his father's dingy workshop.

"Otets?" ["Father?"] He called.

There was a sharp intake of breath from the next room. Ivan stepped through the stacks of machinery and newspapers, and then stopped dead at what he saw.

In the next room, where his father's workshop extended into the kitchen, were two strangers. One was a younger man in a long, well-made brown trench coat and black bowler hat. He was leaning against the kitchen counter with his hands folded in front of him. When Ivan walked in, this man scrutinised him with dark, dispassionate eyes. The other stranger was… some kind of demon. A demon dressed in black and grey, with metal wings. A black cowl covered the demon's whole head, and she looked up at Ivan with glinting red eyes.

"Spasi nas," ["Save us,"] Ivan swore, staring at the demon. It – she – was crouched over his father, who had fallen to the ground.

The well-dressed young man smirked. "Oh, there'll be no one to save you, Ivan. Now, Anton, give me the formula and I won't tell the Wyvern to feed you your own tongue."

The demon – the Wyvern – cocked her head, her red eyes glaring at his father. Ivan shook his head, and the details became a little clearer. Those weren't her eyes, those were goggles. And the wings – he could see the machinery, the joints in the limbs.

"Ty ostavish' yego!" ["You leave him be!"] Ivan cried, throwing himself at the demon. He'd been drinking vodka for most of the morning, but there was a reason he'd survived Kopeisk: he was bigger and meaner than any other man in there. He'd survived quick and brutal scuffles, full-scale prison riots, and men with makeshift knives in the night.

But in his father's kitchen that morning, one moment he was upright and charging, and the next he was flat on his back, gasping for air, with the point of a long, thin blade pressed to his neck. Even with his head pressed into his father's grimy kitchen floor Ivan could appreciate the fineness of the blade, and wondered how it had appeared from the heel of the demon's foot. He held himself still, trying not to swallow and nick himself on the blade.

"Pozhaluysta," ["Please."]His father gasped, pulling himself up by the kitchen bench. "Ne nado." ["Don't."]

The well-dressed man pursed his mouth, looking from Ivan on the ground, to his father. "The formula, Anton. I won't ask again. The Wyvern's leg might get tired."

The Wyvern didn't waver, her red goggles fixed on Ivan's scarred, dirty face. He glared back up at her.

"Fine," Anton wheezed, his accent heavy. "Fine. In here."

The strange man cocked his head. "Wyvern, if Anton here tries anything funny, step on Ivan's throat for me."

Anton shuffled into the main room, followed by the stranger, and the Wyvern didn't move a muscle. They stayed frozen together; Ivan flat against the ground, she with her heel spur poised over his throat.

"Ty suka demona," ["You demon bitch,"] Ivan said, his hands fisting at his sides, "Ya prichinyu tebe bol'." ["I will hurt you."] He spat at her, catching the bottom of her foot. The Wyvern didn't move.

"Alright, Wyvern," the man called from the main room, after a minute. "We'll be off now."

The blade vanished into the Wyvern's heel with a snick, and she stepped right over Ivan's face to pace into the main room. He staggered to his feet and looked around wildly for his father. Anton was propped up against the newspapered wall of the flat, looking very small in his threadbare clothes.

The strange man spoke: "Thank you, Anton, for your cooperation. The Wyvern here will be keeping an eye on you and your delightful son, so don't go spreading any stories."

Ivan listened to the man, but watched the Wyvern: she was looking at the wall over his father's desk. The wall was covered in old newspapers about his father's ex business partner, Howard Stark, with some recent spreads about his son. Ivan hated it, hated how the betrayal had led his father to this dirty, junk-filled hovel, with nothing but sickness and a worthless son as reward for his hard work. He hated these people, thinking they could bully his father for whatever they wanted.

The strange man adjusted his bowler hat, then headed for the door. "Cheerio, Anton," he called on his way out.

The Wyvern didn't move. She was still staring at his father's desk. Ivan's eyes flickered to the knife block in the kitchen.

"Wyvern!" called the stranger, in the tone men used to call wayward dogs.

The Wyvern cocked her head, turned on her heel and stalked out of the flat after the man. She didn't look back.

Giving up on the demon, Ivan rushed to support his father. "Otets, ty v poryadke?" ["Father, are you alright?"]

His father slumped against the wall, his face crumpling. Tears spilled down the sides of his cheeks. "Ya proval," ["I'm a failure,"] he wailed, knocking away Ivan's hands so he could slip to the ground. "Ya proval. Ya podvel vas." ["I'm a failure. I failed you."]

Ivan tried to help his father up, but the man just beat at Ivan's hands until he stepped away.

"Ostav' menya." ["Leave me."]

Ivan stepped away from his weeping, hunched father, and returned to the stoop outside the flat. His vodka was where he had left it. He slid down the wall, picked up the bottle, and took a long swig.

April 22nd, 2005 (18 Years Old)

Culver University, Virginia

It was a warm night, and the reporter standing under the shadowy arches of Culver University's physics building was starting to wish she'd agreed to go to the bar with her friends, instead of following up on a dodgy lead. But Ellen was only in her second year at the newspaper, desperate to prove herself, and an old boyfriend's friend had promised her a story.

So here she was at nine-thirty on a Friday night, cooling her heels on the steps of a science building, waiting for a lead who was supposed to show up at nine.

Rolling her eyes, Ellen pulled out her flip-phone and scrolled through her recent messages. The old boyfriend's friend was called Bill, and he apparently worked in the science lab that had been damaged last weekend. It had been an exciting day for the college-town newspaper, and her editor had sent three reporters over to cover the story. Ellen hadn't been one of them.

It turned out that the lab was involved with radiation experiments, and there'd been a small explosion, hence the military crawling all over the university. A couple of scientists had died. But after a five-minute panic about a radiation leak, the Culver nerds had waved a Geiger counter under the reporters' noses and it was all wrapped up.

Bill, however, had somehow got a hold of Ellen's number and sent her a bunch of super paranoid messages, after awkwardly re-introducing himself:

culver lab thing NOT what they say it is. military covering it up. can't let dr banner go down 4 this, i want to speak 4 him but needs 2 b secret.

physics blding steps, 9pm.

Ellen had followed up with her editor – there was a Doctor Banner in the Physics Faculty, but according to the university he'd been on a leave of absence for weeks.

Ellen waited another fifteen minutes then rolled her eyes, put her phone away and left the building.

"Screw you, Bill," she muttered, heading for the bar. "Your friend's a douchebag anyway."

On the other side of town, police were putting up tape around a gruesome car accident outside an apartment building. Later, the Medical Examiner found that lab assistant Bill Wilkins, 24, had been heavily intoxicated when he walked into traffic at 8:45pm on a Friday night, and ruled his death an accident. Ellen the reporter glanced at the short story her colleague wrote up on the accident the next day, but didn't think to connect it with her douchebag lead. Three weeks later, Bruce Banner transformed into the Hulk while trying to flee into Canada, and injured multiple State Troopers.

The Wyvern was wiped after her mission. Her handlers decided not to assign her to the Chase of Bruce Banner, as the US military seemed to be handling it. When the military got the Hulk, HYDRA would too.

October, 2006 (20 Years Old)

Ideal Federal Savings Bank, Washington D.C.

The Wyvern stepped out of the sleek black car parked outside the bank, and looked up at its sandstone pillars and blue dome. She wasn't sure, but she didn't think she'd been to this facility before. She adjusted her sleek pantsuit and shouldered the duffle bag that held her wings, uniform and weapons. She'd been ordered to report dressed as a civilian, to keep the facility's location sensitive, so she had taken on the guise of a young D.C. office worker. She didn't like wearing pumps, because they made extending her heel spurs difficult, but she didn't anticipate finding a fight tonight.

It was a blustery night, and a gust of wind filled with litter and autumn leaves blew against the Wyvern's legs as she paced up the sidewalk. She walked around to the office building next door, let herself in, and then opened a false wall to enter the seemingly abandoned bank.

The Wyvern couldn't remember where she'd been before she was given civilian clothes and put in the black car, but she had no injuries that she could tell. It must have been computer work, then, or a low-risk mission. It didn't matter. She'd been ordered to report to the bank, so she would comply.

The guards in the darkened lobby lifted their guns as she approached, eyes narrowed. "Identify yourself!" the younger one, a woman, called. Her finger was on the trigger of her gun.

"Wyvern."

The guards' eyes went wide, and they both lowered their guns. "We're so sorry, Wyvern," said the older one, adjusting his cap. "We didn't recognize you…"

The Wyvern merely waited. She didn't know why some HYDRA operatives spoke to her as a superior, one who might be cruel or disappointed. She was a weapon, and weapons did not feel.

The guards seemed to realize that she wasn't going to speak. "The Director, uh, is downstairs. The vault." The younger one gestured to the back rooms with her gun.

The Wyvern turned on her heel and followed the directions, leaving the guards wide-eyed and open mouthed in her wake.

"I thought she'd be older," she heard the younger one whisper. "I've been hearing ghost stories about her since I joined."

The Wyvern walked downstairs, and didn't hear what the older guard said in reply.

The hum of machinery directed her the rest of the way, once she'd made her way downstairs. She could hear the pneumatic hiss of a cryo-chamber opening, and the low voices of HYDRA operatives. She came to a halt beside a locked vault just as a door opened at the other end of the corridor. The Director stepped into view, speaking with a tech in a lab coat. He looked greyer and more lined than the last time the Wyvern had seen him, though she could not recall when that was.

The Director looked up and spotted the Wyvern just as she spotted the men behind him – a whole host of guards and techs, two of them supporting a man with a metal arm between them. The man's face was lax, his eyes barely open as his lank hair fell in his face. He wore a lined black jumpsuit that the Wyvern knew – somehow – was designed to monitor a subject's vitals in a cryo-chamber. The man's legs dragged behind him as the guards heaved him up the corridor.

"Wyvern," said the Director. The Wyvern fell into parade rest, holding her duffle bag behind her. "You're early," he said, running an eye over her outfit.

The Wyvern had no response to that. Her punctuality was entirely dependent on the HYDRA transport that had been arranged for her.

The Director knew that the Wyvern wasn't about to make small talk with him, though, so he merely gestured her into the vault when it was opened, revealing a Memory Suppression Machine in the center of the walls lined with lockboxes.

The Wyvern followed, wondering why she was being wiped so soon, until the man with the metal arm was dumped into the chair. The restraints closed around his limbs, both metal and flesh, and a technician put a rubber bit in his mouth. The man's bleary eyes watched the sparking metal arms descend on his face. The scientists monitored the linked computers when the man began to scream.

The Wyvern watched, utterly frozen, from her position by the vault door. She had no orders, so all she could do was watch as the man's face contorted in pain, his hands spasming and his chest heaving. The tendons in his neck bulged, fighting against the electric current, and the whole machine shuddered with his pain.

His cries seemed to rip right into the Wyvern's chest, lodging there like projectiles. A tingle of familiarity went through her – was this what she looked like, when she was in the chair?

When the procedure came to an end, a technician read words from a thin book: ten random Russian words that calmed the man's rapid breathing and brought a mask of blankness over his previously agonized expression. The Wyvern let out a long, slow, breath.

"Dobroye utro, Soldat." ["Good morning, Soldier."]

"Gotov podchinit'sya." ["Ready to comply."]

The Director cleared his throat. "Soldier, this is the Wyvern. Wyvern, this is the Winter Soldier."

The Wyvern looked at the Soldier, meeting his blank gaze with her own.

"You've met before," the Director said, eyeing them both. Seemingly satisfied with their emptiness, he nodded to a tech, who opened the Soldier's restraints, then handed each of the assets a file. "I've got a mission for the two of you."

Later, on the jet out of D.C., the Wyvern reviewed the file in silence. The Soldier sat opposite her, cleaning his weapons. He had four very nice-looking rifles packed into black cases, and he cleaned them with precision. They had a small team with them – a pilot for the jet, and three HYDRA operatives who were there to assist and monitor the assets.

They were being sent to the Democratic Republic of the Congo to assassinate a high-level UN diplomat. It would need to appear to be collateral damage from the hostilities there, but the diplomat was currently heavily guarded by the UN Peacekeeping force, and by military groups from multiple foreign nations. Apparently the Director felt that this mission was important and difficult enough to warrant posting both assets. He had said they'd met before, so the Wyvern supposed they had cooperated on other missions. She could see the use of the Soldier: she was a good shot, but his sniper skills were – apparently – unparalleled. He also apparently had enhanced speed and strength, like her.

But the familiarity of him, of his shining metal arm and his blank face, dug at the Wyvern. The Director had said they'd met before, so it ought not to bother her, but…

The Winter Soldier looked up, feeling her gaze. She didn't look away. They watched each other for a long moment from across the jet, one set of eyes a pale grey-blue, the other a deep brown, both vacant of emotion.

"Three hours to Kinshasa," called their pilot. Both assets looked away, one to her file and the other to his rifle.

Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo

The city was burning. There were rebels all over the city, exchanging gunfire and hand-made explosives.

The Wyvern and the Winter Soldier had arrived in Kinshasa two days ago and got straight to work. They'd each infiltrated the separate rebel groups after a rapid reconnaissance and evaluation of the situation. A few angry shouts in one area, a shot fired in another, a Moltov cocktail tossed into the middle of a crowd, and the city went up like a tinder box.

The Wyvern and the Winter Soldier worked well together – they hardly needed to communicate, sharing only a few words and a look before they were on the same page. But the HYDRA operatives on their team hadn't failed to notice the tension between the two assets, steadily mounting over the days. They watched each other out of the corner of their eyes, like predators eyeing a potential threat. They didn't address each other by their titles, and never needed to get the other's attention: they already had it. Sometimes the Wyvern would stare at the Soldier unblinkingly, as if her gaze could pierce right through the back of his head and into his skull. The Soldier's brow sometimes furrowed when he looked at the Wyvern, as if she were a puzzle he was trying to solve.

But they'd done their job brutally efficiently so far, so the operatives could deal with a little weirdness from HYDRA's deadliest weapons.

The Wyvern was now monitoring the situation from the air. It was almost midnight, and a huge section of the city's power had been cut by one of the rebel groups. The Wyvern had been flying around slicing telephone wires with her wing spikes, to exacerbate the confusion. The eight-lane main highway that cut straight through the CBD was blocked by a pileup of burning cars, and one of the rebel groups occupied a mile stretch of the highway further north. The whole city was shut down, civilians locked in their homes or fleeing as the rebels hunted each other through the streets and buildings. Even from the air, the constant percussion of gunshots, screams and explosions was loud in the Wyvern's ears.

"Target's location?" came the HYDRA pilot's voice over the comms. The pilot was running point on the mission from the cockpit of the jet, hidden in the forest a few miles away. The other three operatives were monitoring the situation from the ground.

The Wyvern swooped over the fires flickering on the highway and landed on a nearby block of apartments. She peered over the edge at the tin-rooved building where the diplomats had taken shelter earlier that day.

"Still in the shelter," she reported, crouched on the edge of the rooftop. "Evacuation vehicles have arrived."

"Holbrook, you're up," said the pilot.

A pillar of fire scorched into the sky a mile down the road, closely followed by a percussive boom. Holbrook was with a main faction of the rebels, and had just taken down a police blockade.

"Rebels incoming," came Holbrook's panting voice.

"Soldat?" the pilot asked.

"In position."

At the Soldier's low murmur, the Wyvern's head swiveled to the abandoned office building across the street where she knew he had made his sniper's nest. It had an open view of the street outside the tin-rooved building, and had been clear of civilians since the start of the fighting. The Wyvern pictured him, his rifle propped against the window, patiently waiting for his target to appear. She fought against the wave of feeling that rose in her chest at the thought of him – it felt like a sickness, threatening to overwhelm her and cause her to react. It had been growing over the past two days, the familiarity itching at her and causing a headache to throb behind her eyes.

The Wyvern looked away from the building when she heard the raucous shouting of the rebels as they sprinted down the street. The evacuation vehicles had noticed, too, and the peacekeeping forces hurried their motions. The Wyvern leapt soundlessly from her perch, catching herself in mid-air and gliding over the tin-rooved shelter. She pulled a grenade from her combat suit, armed it, and dropped it just as she passed over the edge of the building. Seconds later, a noisy explosion erupted from the back of the structure. The Wyvern's enhanced ears caught the screams of the diplomats as they rushed away from the explosion, fleeing for the relative safety outside the front door. She gunned her engines and rocketed upwards, flipping over to view the situation.

"Rebel contact in ten seconds," she reported. "Target inbound to street."

The Wyvern hung in the air, gaze focused, watching the diplomats stream out of the building just as Holbrook's rebels flooded the street, waving their guns and shouting about their political leader. Two days of preparations had led to this moment.

"Target sighted," the Winter Soldier said.

Half a second later the Wyvern saw blood spray from the target's neck, coating the diplomats around them and sending the group into an even greater frenzy. The report from the Soldier's rifle shot was lost amidst the clamoring and other gunshots on the street. She lost sight of the target in the press of bodies, so she returned to her perch on the higher apartment building, waiting for confirmation of death.

Finally, Holbrook's voice came through: "Target eliminated."

"Bug out," came the pilot's order.

The Wyvern's muscles tensed, ready to spring from the rooftop and soar into the cover of clouds and smoke, when another bloom of light and roar of noise caught her attention. She turned, clinging to her perch as the shock wave rolled over the top of the apartment building.

A car bomb had gone off at the base of the abandoned office building the Winter Soldier occupied. The Wyvern watched, fascinated, as a whole corner of the building shuddered, cracked, and collapsed to the ground in a plume of dust and sparks.

The city seemed to snap – the rampaging rebels only got angrier, flooding the streets and firing indiscriminately. The HYDRA operation also devolved into noise. The operatives swore at the building collapse, and frantically tried to figure out what to do. They all clamored for the Winter Soldier to report, dammit.

The Wyvern remained on her perch, eyeing the exposed offices and sparking wires across the street. There was no word from the Soldier.

Finally, the pilot got a handle on the situation: "Operatives, return to the jet. Wyvern, do a fly-by, find the Soldier."

The Wyvern complied. She soared into the night sky, feeling the heat of the flames below her. The city was so focused in on itself, its own pain, that no one thought to look up. Even if they had, they wouldn't have seen her silhouette jetting across the sky – the stars were obscured by clouds and smoke.

The Wyvern circled the smoking office building twice, inspecting the demolished corner and looking into the undamaged windows. Finally, on her third turn, she caught a glint of shining metal in the rubble. She dipped lower and came to land on a nearby lamppost. The metal groaned under her weight, but held.

The rubble was strewn out across the sidewalk and underneath the lamppost, chunks of concrete and brick mixed with twisted rebar and demolished office equipment.

The Soldier was about half-way up in the rubble, his legs trapped under what looked like a slab of balcony, his hair sweaty and strewn around his face. But the Wyvern's eyes were drawn to his stomach: poking through the Soldier's leather and Kevlar armor was a length of dusty, sharp rebar, glinting scarlet. His flesh hand pressed beside the metal, and blood seeped from the wound.

The Soldier was looking down at his wound, his chest heaving and his eyes wild. His metal arm scrabbled at the rubble around him, looking for purchase. As the Wyvern watched from her perch, the Soldier's eyes went from his wound, to the concrete pinning his legs, then traveled to the top of the lamppost.

Their eyes met. Or rather, the Winter Soldier looked into the narrowed red eyes of the Wyvern, and knew what she was going to do. He clenched his jaw but didn't look away. He didn't even speak.

The Wyvern stared a moment longer at the Soldier as he lay impaled in the rubble. Then she raised her wings, released her grip on the lamppost, and flew into the night sky.

"Wyvern, report. Did you find the Soldier?"

There was a pause. The Wyvern clenched her fist, pressing the sharp barbs on her fingertips into her palm. "He was lost in the wreckage."

"Damn. Alright, we'll move out once Holbrook gets back."

Holbrook finally arrived at the jet four hours later, his face sweaty and streaked with blood and grime. He'd lost two guns and a knife in his fight out of the city. The pilot took his preliminary report, then started flight checks for their stealth extraction back to the US.

The Wyvern remained in uniform, her face covered and her red eyes fixed on the opposite side of the jet. Her heart was pounding in her chest, and her breath was still short. She had disobeyed orders, had lied to her handler. But that wasn't the only reason for her physical distress.

She'd wanted the Soldier dead, had felt a jolt of bitter satisfaction in her gut at the sight of him impaled in the dust. But she remembered his screams, back at the bank. She remembered other things, too, though she couldn't quite put her finger on them. They made a blinding light pulse in her skull.

She'd wanted this. Hadn't she? The Wyvern's mind was a snowstorm of conflicting missions and forbidden feelings.

Just as the pilot was performing his final flight check, a clang resounded against the fuselage of the jet. The Wyvern sprang to her feet, gun cocked and ready, and the three operatives were quick to follow. They glanced at each other, and then the Wyvern. She strode to the hatch at the back of the jet, threw it open and swung up her gun to face their attacker.

When she saw who it was, the Wyvern almost reacted. Whether that reaction would have been to fire her gun or to drop it, she wasn't sure.

Standing outside the back of the camouflaged jet, dripping wet and oozing blood from the wound on his stomach, was the Winter Soldier. His brow was pinched in pain, and his eyes flicked up to meet the Wyvern's, grey-blue and – seemingly – blank. But she caught a flicker of emotion – not anger, but something a little deeper. Something like understanding.

"Shit," said Holbrook, lowering his gun. "It's the Soldier!" he called back to the pilot.

"Well get him inside, we're out of here."

The Soldier stumbled into the jet, and the Wyvern closed the hatch behind him. He took his original seat on the other side of the cabin, his flesh hand pressed against the hole in his stomach. He dripped stinking water onto his seat, and his wet hair hung in his eyes: he must have swum across the river.

As the pilot gunned the engines and flew them out of the forest, Holbrook sat by the Winter Soldier.

"Soldier," he said, when they were safely out of range of detection from the ground. "Report."

The Wyvern held her breath.

"The building was blown by the rebels," the Soldier said, through gritted teeth. "I was buried. I got out."

Holbrook let out a humph, as if surprised at himself for expecting a report more detailed than that, then gestured for Davidson, their medical operative, to attend to the Soldier.

The Wyvern took off her goggles and cowl, finally exposing her face.

While Davidson pressed at the hole that went straight through his torso, the Soldier glanced up at the Wyvern. Between their blank gazes, understanding bloomed. Yes, the Wyvern had left the Soldier to die. No, the Soldier had not told their handlers. Now they had both disobeyed. But what did that leave?

The Wyvern didn't know if she was relieved or if she wanted to leap across the cabin and put her Adamantium-reinforced foot through the Soldier's head. She suspected that he wouldn't try to stop her, and she didn't understand why. The mess of confusion and hatred in her head was exhausting. She didn't understand herself, and she didn't understand the Soldier. She could admit to herself that she had to respect an enemy who could survive having a building exploded beneath his feet.

She dropped her goggles onto the floor of the jet and stalked toward the cockpit. She sat beside the very uncomfortable pilot for the rest of the flight, trying to forget about the Soldier and his blank blue-grey eyes.

Back in D.C. she only caught a glimpse of him, already on his way back to the cryo-chamber. He looked over his shoulder as if sensing her gaze. The Wyvern's brow furrowed.

A moment later, he had vanished.

Half an hour later, the Wyvern got her wish and forgot about the Soldier.

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