Chapter 24

July, 2014

Asunción, Paraguay

The library was silent save for the hum of air conditioning, hushed whispers, and footsteps on the marble staircase. Bucky and Maggie had secured a tactical location, a table with two plush chairs set against the window – the light from behind them obscured their faces, and gave them excellent sightlines down the tightly-squeezed shelves. They had stacks of books on the table before them, and they were constantly aware of the shuffling feet and low breathing around them. To the casual observer, they appeared to be any regular couple at the library.

They'd started visiting libraries three months ago, soon after they began looking into therapies, originally for better access to scientific and therapeutic material. But they kept coming back – they could easily avoid cameras, and it helped to get out of their safehouses every now and then. Maggie liked the hush that filled a library, as if something wonderful was about to happen. Bucky remembered going to his local library in Brooklyn for school assignments, and to pore over books with Steve.

They'd gone to the library today because that morning Maggie had looked up from their dog-eared copy of Unf*ck Yourself, and said: "Bucky?"

"Mm?"

"Do you think it's a bit ironic that we spend most our time reading self-help books?"

At that, he had looked up from his own book – Purpose Driven Life, and huffed a laugh. "Ironic, probably. Necessary? Definitely." But five minutes later he'd closed his book, and taken hers out of her hands. "C'mon, let's go to the library."

So after wandering the stacks, grabbing books that looked interesting – in shifts, while the other held their tactical location – they sat in their plush chairs and read in silence. Maggie had curled up in her chair, her copy of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (Or rather, Harry Potter y la Piedra Filosofal) balanced on her knees. She'd originally been flicking through a stack of scientific journals, but she always found herself drawn to story books. She and Bucky had both read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy, and she was branching out. She found she had a taste for escapist fiction; books and stories that drew her into another world.

Bucky, meanwhile, had one leg tucked under the other as he held Carl Sagan's Cosmos steady with his gloved metal hand. At times he furrowed his brow and asked Maggie to clarify a certain term or idea, and when she didn't know he looked it up. He liked reading a bit of everything, particularly sci-fi. Lately he'd been reading up on world movements since the 1940s, and after getting thoroughly absorbed in the civil rights movement and women's rights, had been particularly excited by the space race. Maggie still smiled at the memory of the elated gleam in his eyes when he found out that men had walked on the moon, and that there were photographs of the earth from space.

He'd read up on nearly every major rocket launch of the twentieth and twenty-first century, and was now branching out to more complex theories. When Maggie accused him of being a gigantic nerd he'd looked up the term, then shrugged and owned it.

And his excitement bled over into her own research – she'd found herself reading up on astrophysics and rocket science almost on autopilot, turning her genius brain toward the topic so she could understand Bucky when he raved about all the progress that had been made since he went to her dad's 'World's Exposition of Tomorrow' in 1943.

Maggie had taken to illegally downloading scientific journals online to satiate her vast appetites for knowledge. She'd recently emailed some prominent scientists from a proxy email address with questions about their work, and gotten some very satisfying responses. Her favourite response had been from Doctor Jane Foster, who had recently become the world's foremost astronomer due to her work on Einstein-Rosen Bridges and the Convergence. The email was actually written by an assistant called Darcy, who passed along the relevant information and wrote Here ya go, smarty-pants. Get your sweet, sweet Space on.

When Maggie wasn't trying to fix her brain she was reading, and when she wasn't reading she was tinkering – usually on her wings, with tools she picked up at hardware stores and workshops, but sometimes Bucky asked her to service his arm. She was nervous about working on the arm, worried it would trigger Bucky's memories of HYDRA, but he said he didn't mind when it was her.

Maggie and Bucky sat in their chairs until dark fell, when they reluctantly relinquished their books and joined the trickle of patrons leaving the library. Maggie's mind was awhirl with the children's book she'd been reading, and Bucky was contemplating the enormity of the universe.

"Want to make that curry thing?" Maggie eventually asked, as they strode down the sidewalk toward their safehouse.

"Yeah, alright."

July, 2014

Avengers Tower, New York City

Sam put down the Kiev file with a sigh and took a long swig of his coffee. He didn't know why he kept going back to it, when it had yielded nothing more than information about the Winter Soldier's old missions, and the tortures inflicted on him. He supposed the file was some of the only concrete evidence that the Winter Soldier existed, beyond his own memories and blurry footage from the Helicarrier battle.

Their search had made very little progress since the discovery of the Québec base, months ago. All they had on Barnes and the Wyvern after the Helicarrier battle was the CCTV still of them on the D.C. street near the bank fire.

The hunt for HYDRA had gone much more successfully – they were being taken down across the globe, one base falling after another. Steve and the rest of the Avengers spent most of their time on that, while Sam followed up the 'Missing Persons Case'.

Not that the two weren't related – Steve had come back from one mission with a video file of an interrogation of one of the HYDRA agents. When asked about the Winter Soldier, the agent had scoffed and said he was a myth. When asked about the Wyvern, his face hardened.

"I was important enough to be rescued by the Wyvern," he spat at Steve, who was out of frame. The agent lifted his shirt sleeve, exposing pearly white claw-mark scars in the meat of his shoulder and arm. "But she doesn't give you your life back without a reminder." The agent hadn't known anything else about the Wyvern beyond the colour of her wings and goggles, and that she hadn't said a word to him.

Stark had sort of conflated the search for his sister and destroying HYDRA. Sam thought that was fair enough, seeking revenge against the group that had kidnapped and brainwashed his sister, and maybe killed his parents. The problem was, Stark spent every spare minute combing through the S.H.I.E.L.D. dump. Sam could see the signs of a man on an obsessive mission – from what he could tell, Stark didn't get much sleep, and he was pushing away Ms Potts and Colonel Rhodes in favor of the search. On June 2nd, his sister's birthday, Stark had found the nearest fight - a human trafficking ring posing as a modelling agency - and taken them out with extreme prejudice. Then he had come back and gotten blind drunk. But Sam wasn't the guy's therapist, and he was in no position to tell him to quit looking, so he kept his head down and ran leads with J.A.R.V.I.S.'s help. The A.I. was a godsend.

"Is everything alright, Mr Wilson?" asked J.A.R.V.I.S., as if he'd read Sam's mind. Sam really hoped the A.I. couldn't read minds.

He sighed. "We're not having a lot of luck, are we?"

"It is difficult to run a search with no data."

Sam rolled his eyes and ran a critical eye over the paperwork on the desk before him. "Did you know her?" he eventually asked. "The Wyvern."

"Miss Stark's kidnapping occurred before Sir designed me. She did, however, know Edwin Jarvis, my namesake."

"Huh. Are you… like him?"

"Being an artificial intelligence, I cannot say that I am like any living or deceased person. I believe I share his accent, however, and his compulsion to care for the Starks."

Sam raised an eyebrow. "The Starks, huh?"

"Indeed. Sir has made it my alpha protocol to protect not only himself, but his sister."

There was a long silence after that. Sam had been so caught up in finding Barnes, that the Wyvern had seemed more like a lead. He'd overheard a lot of what they'd found in the Québec base, but he'd been in the Quinjet, so he hadn't gotten the full effect.

But of course, of course, she was someone's sister, someone's daughter. Not only that, she was Tony Stark's sister. Sam didn't think the guy knew how to have functioning relationships, but he knew the A.I. was important to him. Naming his sister as the person to be protected alongside himself meant a lot, he knew. He just hoped the kid didn't have the knowledge or the desire to exploit it.

After a moment, Sam scoffed at himself. He knew she'd have the knowledge. From what he'd heard in Canada she was every bit the genius her brother was, and now – if she and Barnes had really broken with HYDRA – she was free to use that genius for herself. No wonder she and Barnes appeared to have vanished off the face of the planet. In 2013, Tony had shown just how complete a Stark disappearing act could be, and he hadn't had a fraction of the training given to the Wyvern.

Sam sighed and scrubbed his hands over his face. He was a therapist, he was trained to get inside people's heads. But when it came to Barnes and the Wyvern – Margaret – he had no clue. Would they have stayed together, or would they see each other as enemies? Had they burned down the bank together? Where would they go?

He stared at the printout of the CCTV still from D.C., at the two figures in dark clothes with their backs to the camera. He shook his head.

"Alright, J.A.R.V.I.S., let's run through the data from the S.H.I.E.L.D. dump again."

August, 2014

Los Andes, Chile

Bucky and Meg nursed their coffees from the best tactical position in the coffee shop, squeezed together in one side of a booth as they shared the iPod's headphones. They'd initially set out to go for a walk, but there was a bitter wind howling through the town, so they sought warmth in the nearest coffee shop instead. The good thing about the higher altitudes in Los Andes was that Bucky was finally able to throw on lots of layers without seeming suspicious. He took full advantage of it, and was currently wearing three layers and a windbreaker, as well as his gloves. Meg wasn't dressed quite as warmly, but she'd thrown on a bright red scarf because she said she liked the color.

The coffee shop wasn't very busy. Bucky supposed everyone else had been sensible enough to stay home. Meg sipped her steaming coffee, and tapped her finger along with the beat of the song – a pop hit from the early 2000s that was making Bucky wrinkle his nose.

"No good?" she smirked.

He shrugged, and his many-layered arm knocked against hers. "Not used to it, is all."

"You're not meant to get used to music," she teased. "You either like it, or you don't."

"I didn't realise you'd become an expert," he replied, his lips quirking. The song changed to a sixties hit that they both liked, and they returned to their coffees.

Bucky didn't necessarily enjoy all of Meg's music tastes, since she'd developed a habit of listening to a wide variety of genres in no apparent order, but he liked that she was expanding and finding the things she enjoyed. She always knew which bands he was going to like before he heard them, though, so he trusted her when she told him he had to listen to some song or other. She was also always stopping to listen to street performers and live music, but he didn't mind the delays.

Bucky scanned the street outside the window, noting the gust of snow that had just blown in. A hard voice in the back of his mind noted lowered visibility: optimal for stealth. He shook it away and focused on the flash-memory of fresh snow in Brooklyn, and snowball fights with kids from down the block.

Abruptly, Meg tensed beside him. Bucky followed her eyeline to the television hanging from the corner of the shop – the news was on, and a rugged-up reporter was speaking rapidly into a microphone in the middle of a snowstorm. The headline below the reporter read, in Spanish, Boy Missing in Los Penitentes Ski Resort. Bucky's brow furrowed – that wasn't far from here, just across the border in Argentina.

"Súbale al volumen, por favor," ["Turn on the sound, please,"] called another customer, and the manager of the coffee shop hit a switch on the television. The reporter's harried voice filtered through the shop, explaining that a ten-year-old boy had wound up by himself on a chairlift down from the mountain, as his parents had deemed it too hard to ski in the worsening conditions, but that his chairlift hadn't arrived at the bottom.

The report cut to footage of a crying woman who must have been his mother. "¡Se supone que iba a ir con su hermana!" ["He was supposed to go with his sister!"] the woman sobbed, her eyes wild with panic. The billowing gusts of snow raged outside a window behind her. "Ella dice que él se enojó y se fue solo, pero, ¿dónde está?" ["But she said he got angry and went by himself, where is he?"]

The footage cut back to the reporter, still standing in the powerful winds, who explained that the chairlift had malfunctioned, and the resort didn't know where on the lift his chair was, only that it was stuck somewhere between the two stations in 60 mile-per-hour winds. A freak storm had descended on the ski field and it was a total whiteout.

Customers in the coffee shop murmured to each other, eyeing the gusts of snow outside and the repeated footage of the crying mother on the television.

Meg and Bucky looked away from the screen at the same time. Their eyes met, grey-blue and deep brown.

There was a moment of silence.

Bucky sighed. "I'll pack the room," he murmured, sliding out of the booth.

Meg followed him out, and put her hand on his shoulder. "I'll meet you at the rendezvous point."

They strode through the coffee shop and out the doors, into the howling winds. Bucky winced at the cold bite of the air and handed Meg her backpack. "Be careful."

She nodded solemnly, and then Bucky watched her as she strode off into the storm.

Maggie had never flown in such strong conditions before, that she could remember. But she'd designed her wings well, and they bore her through the shrieking winds and white snow to the ski resort. It was a white, howling world, with zero visibility. She'd only managed to navigate to the ski resort by turning on her burner phone and using the GPS.

Now, she fought her way through the buffeting winds around the chairlift pylons, peering through her goggles. She'd saved the goggles and her clawed gauntlets from her combat uniform, and she was incredibly grateful she had – without the thermal vision she never would have spotted the boy.

He first appeared as an orange speck amidst the dark blue of the freezing terrain, swinging to and fro on a cold metal chairlift. Maggie let out a breath of relief and gunned her engines, pushing herself down towards the chairlift cable. The wind screamed in her ears, plucking at her clothes and her red scarf, which she hadn't thought to take off. She found herself missing her cowl, because the bite of the air against her exposed cheeks was like a hundred needles pressing into her skin.

Once she had a firm grip on the cable, Maggie scuttled up the line to where the single chairlift was still attached. The chair was swinging back and forth in the wind, jostling the orange shape of the boy.

Maggie switched off her thermal vision, then lowered herself onto the chair. The metal creaked at her weight, but held. Her boots connected with the chair's wooden planks, and she lowered herself into a crouch.

The boy was clinging to the handlebar with all his might, shaking uncontrollably in the freezing temperatures as he was buffeted back and forth. Maggie didn't know how long he'd been here, but he didn't look capable of moving. He barely turned his head to look at her, perched beside him on the swinging chair. He was a small thing, with a bright blue jacket, a yellow helmet and orange ski goggles. He'd had the sense to kick off his skis.

Maggie shuffled across the chair to him, and brought her face to his ear. "Voy a llevarte de vuelta con tu mamá," ["I'm going to take you back to your mother,"] she called, wishing she'd caught the boy's name on the news report.

She wasn't sure if he'd heard her properly, but he started shaking harder and her enhanced ears caught the sound of his sobs, muffled by his jacket and the howling wind.

She wrapped an arm around the boy's middle and lifted, but he was still clinging to the metal handlebar. She didn't want to force him, so she steadied herself by wrapping one wing around the back of the chair, and let go with her other hand to uncurl his gloved fingers, one by one.

Once he'd released the bar, she pulled him out of the seat and into her arms, holding his head against her shoulder. He was shaking against her, and felt dangerously cold.

"Estarás bien, pequeño," ["You're going to be alright, little one,"] she called, and felt his trembling arms wrap around her neck. "Ya estás a salvo." ["You're safe now."] With that, she leaped from the swinging chair and pushed her engines to their limits, fighting against the white winds to keep them aloft. The boy screamed in her ear, and tightened his grasp around her neck. Her arms were steady around him as she strained her muscles to bring them safely down the mountain.

There was still zero visibility, so she used her thermal vision to locate the ski resort. She flew over the main building and landed behind a supply shed, glancing around to ensure there were no heat signatures of anyone who might spot her. The landing was rough and she skidded on the icy ground, but the boy was pressed safely against her chest, his heart still beating steadily.

Once she'd regained her feet, Maggie jogged toward the main building of the resort, still clutching the boy.

When she found the back entrance, a heavy fire escape door, she knocked it open with her shoulder and peeked inside – an empty corridor. She set the boy down and noted that he was able to stand on his own. She pulled up her goggles and looked him over – he was still shivering uncontrollably, but it didn't look like he'd injured himself.

She pulled off his goggles and peered into his wide, brown eyes, checking his pupil dilation for a concussion. His lips were purple, but not critically so, and it appeared that his fingers, nose and ears had been covered. She pressed two fingers against his neck and counted his heartbeats.

"¿Acaso sos un ángel?" ["Are you an angel?"]

Maggie froze in her inspection of the boy's health. He was standing on his own two feet, gloved hands pressed under his armpits, staring at Maggie and her wings. She hadn't folded them up completely, and the grey skeleton with its black webbing caked in snow made quite the sight.

"No," she eventually murmured. "¿Cómo te llamas?" ["What's your name?"]

He swallowed, still staring at her wings. "Miguel." He wasn't crying any more – she suspected the shock of being rescued by a woman with metal wings had distracted him from the cold and his fear.

"Miguel," she echoed, and put her hand on his shoulder. "Ve por ese pasillo y gira a la derecha. ¿Puedes hacer eso?" ["Go down that corridor and turn right. Can you do that?"] He nodded, and she gave him a smile. "Has sido valiente, pequeño. Ve." ["You've been brave, little one. Go."]

Miguel turned and shuffled down the corridor – his legs shook, but they were strong enough to get him that far. Before he turned right, into the room that Maggie had noted had the most heat signatures, he paused and looked over his shoulder at her. She was crouched by the open door, wings still partly aloft, watching him. She gave him a reassuring nod, and then he was gone.

Maggie stayed long enough to ensure that the rescue operation and news crew in the main room of the resort had found Miguel, and then trudged back out into the storm. The wind battered her body and face, but she barely felt it.

For the first time in her life, there was someone safe with their family because of her. The feeling was warm in her chest. She held it close as she spread her wings and jetted back into the stormy sky, disappearing into the storm.

When she landed at the rendezvous point, a rest stop on a highway five hours away, Bucky was waiting for her. He took in her flushed face and trembling hands, and beckoned her into the meagre shelter of the rest stop. He pulled her into a hug, wrapping his warm arm around her and sharing his body heat. Maggie shivered gratefully in his embrace.

"You got him," Bucky murmured, barely a question. He smelled like engine oil and canvas.

"Yeah," she replied through chattering teeth. "He's going to be okay."

Bucky let out a long breath. "You did good, Meg."

They didn't need to speak beyond that. They both knew the plan if one of them was sighted – vanishing from the grid for at least a week and monitoring news footage, with their first priority being to get miles away from the area of the sighting. Maggie had no doubt that the silver sedan parked behind the rest stop was the getaway car Bucky had procured. But they took a few more silent moments together in the sheltered rest stop, Bucky's arms around Maggie as they contemplated the boy that had been returned to his mother.

Los Penitentes, Argentina

"Are you sure it was a good idea to let Stark do the talking?" Sam murmured to Steve, watching the billionaire speak to the two police officers at the door to the main ski resort building. He didn't understand what the man was saying, but whatever it was, it exuded arrogance.

"Well unless you can speak Spanish…" Steve replied, eyebrows raised.

Sam rolled his eyes and leaned against the side of the Quinjet. It was a clear, cold day, but he could see the damage from yesterday's storm around the resort – trees had been uprooted and thrown into buildings, cars and street signs were buried in snow, and the chairlift was shut down. Sam shivered in his leather jacket – he should have worn more layers.

To be fair, he hadn't had a lot of warning – J.A.R.V.I.S. had alerted them twelve hours ago to a line on a digital police report about a boy who'd gone missing and then miraculously shown up at the ski resort. In English, the line read: Miguel told officers that a 'lady with metal wings' flew him down the mountain. The report hadn't gone into any further details, as the officers didn't seem to believe the kid's account, but that had been enough to get Stark, Steve and Sam on a Quinjet out of NYC.

Now Stark was trying to sweet-talk their way into an interview with the kid, who was recovering in the lodge. Sam wasn't sure how successful that was going to be, but J.A.R.V.I.S. was also monitoring all travel in and out of the area, and scanning CCTV footage from every town within a 200 mile radius.

Sam's doubts about the billionaire's sweet-talking abilities proved to be unfounded, however, when the police officers waved them into the large pine building. The common area was bustling with people, though thankfully none of them looked up and recognised two of the most recognisable super-heroes in the world walking into the room.

The officers guided them through a set of corridors and into a quieter dining area, where a small family sat around a table. They looked up at the newcomers, and Sam recognised the mom and the kid from the news footage. Both looked significantly warmer and less distressed, though their mouths fell open at the sight of Tony Stark and Captain America.

"¡Hola!" Stark said, whipping off his sunglasses. He strode across the room and took a seat at the table. "¿Te molesta si tenemos una charla?" ["Do you mind if we have a chat?"]

He addressed this last part to the kid, Miguel, who nodded with an open mouth. He was bundled up warmly, and Sam recalled from the police reports and news coverage that he'd had a mild case of hypothermia, which was immediately treated on his return to the lodge.

Tony waved Steve and Sam to the table, then turned back to the kid. "¿Hay algún problema si hablamos solo contigo y tu madre?" ["Do you mind if we talk only to you and your mother?"]

Miguel nodded again, and within a minute the rest of the family – and the two officers – had filed out of the room. Sam settled in his chair and greeted the kid and his mom as best as he remembered from high school Spanish. Miguel was a cute kid, with dark hair and bright eyes.

"I'm just going to jump in with questions," Tony told Sam and Steve. "I'll translate his answers, and if you have any questions let me know."

Tony's first question was short, and the kid bit his lip before offering a nervous response.

"He says a lady with metal wings flew him down the mountain, but the policeman said that wasn't real," Tony translated, then switched back into Spanish, obviously encouraging the boy to say what he remembered.. A moment later, he was translating the kid's reply again: "He says he doesn't remember a lot about her, because he was scared and cold, but he remembers that her wings were black and grey and made of metal."

The kid's mom just watched with a starstruck expression.

"He says he was on the chair for a really long time, and he was scared the wind was going to make him fall. The lady with the metal wings told him she was going to get him back to his mom, and she made him let go of the chair. He says that they flew down the mountain, and that was scary too." Tony smiled at that, and made a comment that made the kid laugh.

Then: "The lady took him inside and told him where to go. She said…" Tony's voice roughened, and he cleared his throat, trying to keep his tone light for their young audience. "She said she wasn't an angel." Tony nodded as the kid kept talking, then sat back in his chair. "That's all he remembers about her. He says she was nice. You guys got any questions?"

Sam rubbed his hand across his jaw. He couldn't discount what the kid said about metal wings, but still… it was hard picturing the Wyvern, who'd hunted him through the sky in D.C., as the 'nice lady' this kid described. "Does he remember what colour her eyes were?" If anyone asked him what the Wyvern looked like, the first thing he'd mention would be her wings, and the second thing would be her freaky red goggles.

Tony relayed the question, and then said "huh" at the kid's reply. "He says she was wearing goggles, like his, but when she took them off her eyes were brown."

Sam glanced at Tony's face, and cursed himself for noting that his eyes were brown. Was he really buying this?

Steve cleared his throat. "Any sign of the Winter Soldier?"

Tony asked, but the kid said he hadn't seen any man, especially not one with a metal arm.

The mom appeared to get over some of her shock, and asked Tony a question. He shrugged, giving an answer that sounded dismissive, and the look he shot Steve and Sam told them that the interview was over. They each smiled at the kid and said their clunky thank-you's, then filed out of the resort.

"Are we actually thinking this is a solid lead?" Sam said, once they were in the open air again. Their shoes crunched in the heavy snow. "I mean, D.C. to Argentina's a bit of a jump, and so is going from burning down banks to rescuing kids from malfunctioning chair lifts."

Stark had put his sunglasses back on, and his hands were shoved in his pockets. He seemed busy processing what they had learned, so Steve spoke up.

"I know it's hard to believe, but he described her pretty accurately. Besides, how else did he get down from the chairlift?"

The hope in Steve's voice was infectious, but Sam was the only one here who didn't have a HYDRA assassin as a loved one, so he had to be the voice of reason. "I don't know, Steve-"

"He wasn't suggestible," Tony piped up, as they climbed back into the Quinjet.

"What?"

"When I suggested that the wings might have been white, or when I asked him about a man with a metal arm, he didn't add to his story. He just said that wasn't true. So whatever he remembers, he's not changing the details."

Sam pinched his nose.

"J.A.R.V.I.S.?" Tony called. "What do you have for me?"

"Sir, there are no other images or mentions of a woman with metal wings in the surrounding area, nor of a man with a metal arm. I have, however, found this CCTV footage of a woman matching Miss Stark's general height and body type in the town of Los Andes, fifty-five miles away, recorded forty minutes before the child was recovered."

The screen in the Quinjet's cockpit flickered into life, and the three men rushed toward it. The footage J.A.R.V.I.S. had found wasn't very long – the grainy black and white video showed a woman in a thick jacket and a scarf rushing across the frame, carrying a backpack. She was tall, and despite the poor weather conditions it was clear that she had dark hair, and that she was fast. After playing it over a few times, J.A.R.V.I.S. paused the footage when the woman first entered the frame, and zoomed in on what was visible of her face. She had high cheekbones, dark brows and eyes, and a serious expression.

"Facial match?" breathed Tony.

"Inconclusive, sir, given that there are no photographs of an adult Miss Stark to compare to, and her face is only partially visible."

Tony stared at the woman's serious face framed by dark hair. "You haven't found anything else, J.A.R.V.I.S.? Travel records, police reports, CCTV footage…?"

"I am afraid not, sir," J.A.R.V.I.S. replied in a softer tone.

Tony let out a sharp breath, and climbed into the cockpit to sit in the pilot's seat.

"What now, Tony?" Steve asked, resting one hand against the seat.

Tony laughed tiredly, and Sam heard the thunk of his head hitting the back of the seat. "Well we haven't got a lot to go on, do we? Just a kid who somehow flew down a mountain and three seconds of footage that could be her-" Tony fell silent for a few seconds, and Sam just knew he was staring at the still of the woman's face. "Or it could not be." He sighed. "Either of you got any ideas?"

Sam winced at the hopeless tone to Tony's voice, and his heart sank at the forlorn expression on Steve's face.

"We can sweep the surrounding area, at least," Sam suggested. "Check out that town from the CCTV footage, ask around."

Steve perked up at that. "Sounds like a plan."

Nothing ever came of it. All they came away from South America with was the CCTV image of the woman, and the hope that maybe the Wyvern had gone from assassinations to rescues. Sam and J.A.R.V.I.S. widened their search criteria to include vigilante acts. Steve had renewed hope that Barnes might have broken through his brainwashing and remembered his past.

Tony just had more questions to keep him up at night, and a black-and-white video of a woman who might be his sister.