Chapter 98

Maggie froze.

The voice had been so faint on the comms that she thought she was hallucinating, hearing ghosts on the verge of her own death. Wind whistled in her ears. But she looked down and saw that Steve had halted too, his head tilted. A spark flickered to life in her chest.

"Cap, it's Sam. Can you hear me?"

Maggie's vision narrowed to a pinpoint as she stared at Steve, his chest heaving as he raised a hand to his ear. Surely not. She couldn't breathe, she was choking on hope–

A pinprick of sparking orange light bloomed in the air above the scorched plain. It swirled outward into a glowing circle, brighter than the sun and the dying fires of the facility, and Maggie slapped her hand over her mouth as she burst into tears.

"On your left."

The orange portal yawned wider, pouring out bright sunlight, and up on her pile of rubble Maggie squinted to make out the three silhouettes who walked out. When she saw red and gold armor and a black catsuit she blinked away her tears, shaking from the rush of emotion surging into her chest. Beside Okoye strode T'Challa and Shuri, strong and whole and alive as they paced out onto the battlefield. They met Steve's eyes and he heaved in an overwhelmed breath. Maggie couldn't see him clearly but she knew he had tears in his eyes too.

A moment later Sam soared through the portal, vapor trailing from the tips of his wings as his engines roared. Maggie's sob bubbled up her throat and came out of her mouth as a laugh. Her hands fell away from her mouth and she tilted her face up, following Sam's flight. She wasn't sure if she was laughing or sobbing any more, but she couldn't have wiped the brilliant grin off her face if she tried.

And then hundreds of sparking portals opened all across the sky.

Maggie stared at the glowing portals and felt as if one had opened up inside her as well, pouring in a light so bright that her pain washed away. She watched figures step through: Avengers, Guardians, Asgardians, Wakandans, aliens, and hundreds more, stepping out to face down Thanos and his armies. She didn't know where to look first.

Maggie drew in a breath, ablaze with hope and determination. She wasn't the old Maggie, but everything that had made her a person had finally returned. She leaped into the air. Wings spread, she flew level with the portals and then moved slightly in front of them so she could look around at the warriors pouring out around her. At her family.

"Ibambe!" chanted T'Challa.

"Ibambe!" came the thunderous roar from hundreds of gleaming Wakandan warriors behind him. Maggie's fingers shook. Wanda soared out from a portal near Maggie, her powers glowing scarlet about her hands, and they exchanged a wild-eyed look. Valkyrie flew out from another portal on the back of a white Pegasus and wielding her sword as the rest of the Asgardians followed her out. Maggie spotted Dr Strange, his red cloak flared as he hovered out onto the plain, and over his head leaped Spider-Man, gleaming in a nanotech suit. Peter retracted his mask to reveal his wide-eyed face. Maggie's heart felt full to bursting.

Her eyes darted across the rapidly growing throng of warriors, searching desperately. Until she saw it. A flash of dark metal, a blue vest, a head of dark, thick hair.

Maggie's wings faltered and she dropped ten feet before catching herself again, her breath a sharp rush in her ears. Every thundering emotion charging through her body seemed to rear up and then fall still.

As he always had, Bucky sensed her eyes on him. His head turned, eyes searching, unerringly finding her where she hovered in the sky between portals.

Their eyes met and Maggie felt as if the space between them had shriveled, as if there was no one else on this earth but the two of them. There, breathing and warm and real, stood Bucky. He looked just as he had the day she'd lost him, in his navy blue uniform, clutching a rifle with his black Vibranium arm. His long hair shifted in the smoke-filled breeze, and as he looked up at her his brow furrowed and he touched his flesh hand to the center of his chest, where his Kimoyo bead no doubt rested.

She was too far to hear anything he said, but she knew, as she always had, what he thought as he looked up at her. I'm here.

All of this passed in the space of half a moment. But then Maggie heard battle cries and her perspective zoomed out, and she realized that she didn't just get her heart back: they got back half a universe.

She lifted her eyes, every nerve in her body sparking, looking out at her friends and her family as they flooded on to the field behind Steve. Too many for her to count or to name. She saw her brother rise with burning eyes, just as a sleek blue and silver nanotech suit of armor dropped out of the sky. Maggie knew who it was before the helmet rose up – Pepper, in the suit Tony had made her. The helmet slid back and Pepper stared down Thanos and his followers with more determination than Maggie had seen in battle-hardened soldiers.

Tony looked from Pepper and then back to the army around her. His eyes caught on Maggie beating her wings above their newfound army and relief washed across his face. She nodded to him, wide-eyed.

There was an almighty crash, and Maggie glanced left to see stones erupting from what remained of the main Avengers building. She blinked, and then a giant silver-helmeted head burst from the concrete roof, followed by an outstretched fist. Scott. Standing tall, Scott unfurled his fist and more figures emerged from between his fingers: Bruce, Rhodey in his War Machine suit, and Rocket clinging to Rhodey's shoulder.

War cries and chants roared up from the flood of warriors, a living presence that swelled in Maggie's chest. Her heart pounded against her ribcage. She looked out across the plain to where Thanos and his generals stared at the sudden army. Energy crackled through the air, and Maggie recognized it: the final few crystallized moments before a fight began. She flared her wings and her goggles slid over her eyes.

"Avengers!" came Steve's shout.

The world paused for a breath, and Maggie allowed herself one last glance down at Bucky. He looked back at her.

Steve's command came in a low, gritted murmur which they all heard over their comms. "Assemble."

Thor roared and the rest of the Avengers were a half second behind him, screaming their defiance into the empty space between the armies. Maggie added her voice to the rest with a roar that ripped straight from her very core as she fired up her engines and hurtled forward.

A minute ago, Maggie had been all but alone on this smoke-filled plain. But as she rocketed forward, her wings spread wide and her fists clenched as she roared, she realized she was flying forward as one small part of a giant army. She flew on Valkyrie's left flank, the shadow of her wings passing over Wanda, Dr Strange and Peter Quill as they soared just above the sprinting foot soldiers, and when she looked to her left she saw Rocket riding on Rhodey's gun turret, Tony, Pepper in the RESCUE suit, Sam rocketing forward on his own wings, warships and spaceships and Ant-Man charging along as a giant. Peter swung by her with his mask lenses narrowed. Maggie's engines joined with the cacophony of airship engines and hollering war cries. Below her charged the foot soldiers, a colorful flood of roaring Avengers.

Ahead, Thanos raised his double-bladed weapon and his armies surged forward across the plain. With the rest of the Avengers Maggie unconsciously put on a burst of speed, swooping low over her teammates on the ground. She fixed her red-goggled eyes on the oncoming invaders.

The armies collided in an eruption of noise and energy blasts and within seconds it devolved to chaos. Lightning crackled and fire and screams bloomed along the collision line, and Maggie dove into the battle with her sharp wings flared and her claws out. Her whole body was aflame with the knowledge that they'd gotten everyone back, and the certainty that she'd do anything to prevent Thanos from taking that away from her again. Her fear and her pain faded to a pinpoint at the back of her mind, leaving the entirety of her focus for what she'd been doing since she was five years old: battle.

She flew low over the enemy army, strafing down energy blasts and diving in and out with her claws and heel spurs to carve them up. Her wings were buffeted by the blasts of heat bursting up from the battlefield, but she soared through the air as if she'd been born with wings on her back.

She rolled around the back of a Leviathan as Scott punched it square in the head, then plunged back toward a horde of what looked like Outriders. She sensed a friendly presence on her flank and unconsciously twisted around it, only recognizing it as Sam when they flew around each other in unison and then concentrated fire on one of the glowing alien tanks, blowing it to pieces.

"Nice!" Sam crowed. "Good to see you, Maggie!"

"Good to see you too," she said breathlessly. She wanted to say more, but then a Chitauri chariot fired on her and she had to dodge away.

She swooped low through a plume of smoke, firing down on anything that looked alien and unfriendly, and when she emerged on the other side she rocketed over T'Challa and Princess Shuri's heads just as someone blew up a dome-shaped starship in a burst of light. Maggie looked up, turning to slice open a line of black-armored aliens with the tip of her left wing, to see two shining armored figures rotate back-to-back in the sky shooting blinding repulsor blasts in a sweeping circle around them. The corner of her mouth ticked up as she watched her brother and sister-in-law fight as one, then she flipped downward to blast the engine of a warship angling down to Thor and Steve. Spider-Man swung over her, making her heart leap, but the next second he'd zipped away again.

She spotted a pale-skinned antennaed alien who she vaguely recognized from Rocket's stories fall back beneath a horde of snarling Chitauri. Maggie raised her blasters, hesitated, then dove. She landed right on top of a pile of the ugly pack of aliens, only wobbling slightly on her right leg, and started attacking up close with her blasters and her claws, tearing through the Chitauri to get to… she couldn't remember the Guardian empath's name.

She ripped away a Chitauri soldier and blasted its face when it snapped at her, then looked down as the alien with the antennae popped out of the gap she'd made, wide-eyed.

"You okay?" Maggie asked as she fired indiscriminately at the Chitauri around them, trying to use her body to protect the Guardian even though they were surrounded.

"Okay," the alien replied in a surprisingly breathy, childlike voice, and then stepped toward the nearest Chitauri. Maggie spun, blasters raised, only for her hands to drop when the Guardian touched a finger to the Chitauri's head and made it drop instantly, its eyes rolling back in its head. The Guardian made swift work of the other aliens rushing forward to slaughter her, sapping their consciousness with just a touch, then cast a look back at Maggie.

"Thank you," she said emphatically. Then she turned back towards the thick of the battle, cried "Drax!" and leaped out of sight.

Maggie stood in a dust bowl surrounded by piles of melted wreckage and a dozen unconscious Chitauri, as the main battle raged on all around her. Huh.

A prickle on her neck made her hackles rise and she spun, blasters raised and wings flared, coming face to face with what looked like a massive, snarling gorilla, with the gnashing snout of a Chitauri and thick armor protecting its head, back, and forearms. It towered a good five feet over her, with slits of light for eyes and what looked like metal teeth. Maggie stared up at it, wide-eyed, and the gorilla raised a giant fist over its head. She raised her wings and her blasters, to flee or fight she wasn't sure.

The massive creature unleashed a roar that abruptly cut off with a crunch as a metal fist plunged right through its head and out its snarling mouth.

Bucky yanked his hand back from the cybernetically enhanced monster and watched it slump, then come to the ground with a reverberating thud. Breathless and sweat-drenched, he looked up and found Meg standing directly in front of him.

For half a moment they just stared at each other. Meg's wings were flared and her hands were raised, blasters glowing as if she'd been about to fire. She looked… different. He couldn't put his finger on it, aside from the fact that she'd cut her hair, but this was not the same Meg he'd seen, from his perspective, only minutes ago. Her eyes were concealed by her slitted red goggles, but she'd gone very still at the sight of him. She held her right leg slightly off the ground. He felt her gaze flick from his face, to his arm, to his gun, and back to his face again. She didn't look like she was breathing.

Bucky opened his mouth. "Fancy seeing you here."

As if he'd released her from a spell, Meg let out a rush of air and her blasters swung right, taking out three Black Order members who'd crawled over the nearest pile of rubble. Bucky's gaze followed the shots, so he didn't see Meg's forward rush until she seized the front of his vest with a shaking hand and pulled him in for a kiss.

It was fierce and bloody and not much more than a press of skin against skin, but Bucky felt something light up in Meg – he'd closed his eyes but he felt her against him as a firework, a burning star. When she pulled back and Bucky dragged his eyes open he saw that fire blazing in her eyes, and felt a fire in his own chest to match it.

She'd retracted her red goggles so he could see her face clearly now – it was sharper than he remembered, not noticeably older, but different. When he'd last seen her she'd had a bloody gash cutting through her eyebrow, but nothing remained of it now aside from a faded scar.

Bucky swallowed and said, tentatively: "Five years?" The red-cloaked wizard had given a one-sentence explanation which Bucky hadn't really believed, but looking at Meg now... he believed it.

Her blazing eyes went soft and warm.

All this had passed in barely three seconds, but he could already hear the snarls of incoming Outriders. He could tell Meg did too because her shoulders tensed.

"I love you," she said, her eyes on his. In the next moment her arms loop around his chest. Bucky heard the high-pitched roar of engines, and then felt the sudden jerk as she launched them both into the air.

He took a second to adjust to the feeling of the ground dropping out from beneath his feet then turned, rested his rifle butt against his shoulder and fired downward at the Outriders as they poured into the dust bowl Bucky and Meg had just soared out of. Meg unwrapped one arm from his chest and fired down energy blasts, her other arm firm as an iron band around him. The dust bowl lit up with blasts.

Meg twisted and together they swooped low over the battlefield, the wind in their faces as they rained down fire. Meg's arm was warm around his chest and their boots knocked against each other as they flew. Bucky moved with her, leaning in to her turns and trusting her to hold him close as he fired down at the snarling, screeching aliens. Despite the black clouds and the smoke-filled air Bucky was reminded of the time Meg had flown with him over the Bolivian rainforest, just the two of them and the sky.

They made two circuits of a half-a-mile stretch of the battlefield before Meg's wings tilted down again, aiming for a rocky outcrop overlooking a large swathe of Thanos's forces. Understanding her without words, Bucky clutched his rifle tight and fell with precision when Meg dropped him, coming to land on the outcrop with a roll. He rose to his feet and lifted his rifle, spraying bullets down at a horde of Chitauri swarming toward the army of wizards. Meg had found him a perfect sniper's nest.

Meg hovered for a second, beating her wings in midair as she watched him. Their eyes met.

A whine of repulsors filled the air and Bucky looked up to see Iron Man soar over his head, firing on a Black Order warship. When the ship went down in a spiral of smoke and flame, Iron Man paused to hover a few feet away from Meg.

"Hey Marjoram, help me take down that big rock-looking one." He pointed, and Meg followed his gaze to an enormous rock monster, sweeping its way through friend and foe alike with a battleaxe.

Tony Stark looked back at his sister, and then the glowing eye-slits of his helmet turned to where Bucky stood on the outcrop.

Bucky tensed.

"Hey, Barnes," Stark called. "Good to have you back."

Bucky's eyes snapped wide open and he glanced to Meg. She smiled, nodded in his direction, and then soared up to meet her brother.

Bucky watched them rocket in unison over the battlefield, their armor shining in the light of explosions as they dove, lifted their hands and fired repulsor blasts and energy beams down at the roaring rock monster. The monster howled as its arm exploded in a flash of light and Iron Man and the Wyvern flipped around each other, his repulsors inches from her outstretched wings, before diving once more and turning the monster into a crater.

Bucky swallowed down a rush of pride and turned back to his own area of the battle.

Maggie and Tony split off from each other as they each spotted new targets to blow up. Maggie's heart was a thundering drum in her chest, overwhelmed and fuller than it had been in five years. She felt the urge to keep looking over her shoulder to make sure that Bucky was still there on that outcrop, alive. But she had decades of training for battle and it did not fail her now - she focused on the mission. Though this was by far the largest battle she'd ever seen. It had to be ten times the size of the battle in Wakanda. Wherever she looked she saw a sea of beings, battling back and forth over rocks and ruins. Just the sound of the battle was an overwhelming presence, a thunderous chorus of shouts, screams, engines, artillery and explosions.

"Cap!" came Clint's voice over the comms. Maggie blinked in surprise – it had been such a chaotic mess that no one had really spoken to each other over the comms yet. "What do you want me to do with this damn thing?"

"Get those Stones as far away as possible!" Steve shouted back, with the sound of Outrider growls coming through his end. Maggie wheeled around a Leviathan, trying to figure out how to pierce its hide.

"No," Bruce cut in. "We need to get them back where they came from."

"No way to get them back, Thanos destroyed the Quantum Tunnel," said Tony grimly. Maggie's gut churned, even as a human male in a red jacket and strange mask dropped a green-skinned alien on top of the Leviathan and they began to fire directly through a gap in its armor.

"Hold on," came Scott's voice. Maggie turned to see his giant form on the other side of the battlefield rapidly shrink until he disappeared. "That wasn't our only time machine."

A second later a strange noise echoed over the sounds of battle: a musical car horn? Maggie's head turned toward the noise, a frown on her brow. A moment later, comprehension hit. Scott's van.

"Anyone see an ugly brown van out there?" Steve asked.

"Yes," Valkyrie called back, "But you're not going to like where it's parked."

Maggie spotted Valkyrie's gleaming figure, hundreds of yards away near one of the Outrider dropships, and she spiraled upwards.

"Scott," Tony said, "How long you need to get that thing working?"

"Uh, maybe ten minutes."

"Get it started," Steve ordered. "We'll get the Stones to you."

"We're on it, Cap," came a voice that had to be Scott's partner Hope Van Dyne.

Still soaring upward Maggie circled, in search of Clint with the gauntlet. She scowled as her HUD informed her that a Sakaaran warship had locked its weapons on to her position. "F.R.I.D.A.Y., flares!"

"You already used them on the Chitauri!" F.R.I.D.A.Y. called back over the wind screaming in Maggie's ears.

Maggie cursed as the warship fired on her, and she twisted into zigzags and pinwheels to avoid the shrieking missiles as she looked about for a way to escape the warship's crosshairs. A bloom of orange and scarlet light to her left caught her attention, and she turned to see Wanda and Dr Strange standing back to back, firing bolts of energy and orange shields at the aliens around them.

Maggie zoomed over their heads and shouted "Strange, portal!"

As if he'd been expecting the request, a glowing portal instantly opened up in front of Maggie. She hurtled through it with her wings pressed close to her sides, squeezing her eyes shut for a moment, and when she opened her eyes again she realized she'd come out behind the warship pursuing her. Grinning, Maggie formed a nanotech rocket launcher on her shoulder and fired it directly into the back of the ship.

When the ship exploded in a starburst of flame she rolled back down over Strange's head. "Thanks!" She passed over Wanda, who looked up at her and nodded grimly. This ends here, said the nod.

Maggie nodded back, then lifted her head to find Clint or the Quantum Tunnel van. For Vision.

As if by fate, a nearby explosion illuminated a tall, gleaming figure clad in armor standing on a hill directly in Maggie's path. Her eyes narrowed and the inferno roaring in her chest intensified to what felt like a single jet of ice blue flame.

Thanos stood at the top of a hill of wreckage, directing troops, when he saw the angular black wings of the Wyvern turn in his direction. A snarl lifted his lips and he flipped his double-bladed weapon in his hand.

Maggie didn't bother waiting until she was close to Thanos before trying to kill him. The instant she was in range she fired a barrage of artillery at him – missiles, gunfire, energy blasts and even the odd grenade. The top of his hill lit up with flame, but when the smoke cleared Thanos still stood there, a protective hand shielding his head. Maggie's hatred for him burned brighter.

She soared down and landed on the hilltop across from him. Missiles and starships soared over their heads.

Thanos narrowed his eyes at her. "Come to die, have you?"

Maggie knew she couldn't beat Thanos. She'd fought him twice now. She knew her limits, she knew the extent of Thanos's power, and she knew that no weapon of hers could touch him while he was at full strength. But she could chip away at his defenses, maybe enough for another Avenger to break through.

"I know nothing I can say will make a dent in your egomaniac psychopath brain, so just hear this." She paced over the rubble towards him, not allowing her right leg falter. Her eyes burned into his. "When we kill you this time, you'll die knowing that you failed."

Thanos raised his eyebrow.

"And also," Maggie said, "I want you to know that–" she launched in the middle of her sentence, a cheap trick that the titan only fell for for a moment before he blocked her heel-spur kick with the flat of his blade, grunting. She fired her energy blasters into her face and whirled under his blade, kicking again at his side. Her heel spurs glanced off his armor in a shower of sparks. Thanos growled and swung a fist at her. She was too close to dodge it entirely so she let the blow graze off her shoulder, making her hiss, before she rolled behind him, flipped, and kicked once more with her heel spur.

She wasn't sure if she was lucky or if her subconscious had aimed for the chink in the back of his leg armor, but she felt a rush of satisfaction at the sensation of her Adamantium spur sinking into the flesh and ligaments of Thanos's lower leg.

He roared, staggering, and Maggie rose to her feet as her blasters rose–

Only to be seized by her outstretched wing and hurled down the side of the mound of wreckage. She glanced back as she fell and spotted the angular, scowling face of Proxima Midnight, her horns arcing up from her jet blue hair.

You again. Maggie swept her wings and rose back into the air but Midnight had called in a squadron of warships to protect her master. Maggie had to veer away, cursing.

Maggie put on a burst of speed to outstrip the warships and cast her gaze wide. You can't just point and shoot, Maggie, there's an objective here. Her HUD couldn't isolate Clint's beacon from the mess of other readouts on the battlefield but after a few seconds of soaring over the seas of people she spotted two figures standing near a rocky outcrop by one of the dropships, and her goggles zoomed in.

She watched Clint hand the gauntlet to T'Challa like a relay baton, and her engines kicked in as T'Challa took off running through the thick of the Sakaaran forces. She rocketed through the sky towards him, dodging past airships and desperately trying to keep her eyes on T'Challa through the smoke choking the air. She lost sight of him for a moment when one of the bladed wheels of death nearly cut her in half on its devastating path across the battlefield, and when she spun back in the right direction her heart dropped to her boots when she saw the gauntlet go flying out of T'Challa's hands to the rocky ground, as Thanos stood in his path.

Maggie pushed more power to her engines, making her wings shake with exertion, but a second later Wanda dropped out of the sky in a rush of scarlet light, blocking Thanos off from where the gauntlet lay on the ground.

Maggie bared her teeth. "Kick his ass, Maximoff."

Wanda started hurling boulders and blasts of red light at Thanos, and T'Challa sprinted for the gauntlet. Maggie rocketed over Thanos and Wanda's melee, careful to avoid the slashing scarlet energy, and came level with T'Challa just as the gauntlet rose up on a sentient pillar of rock.

"No!" She looked up, wild-eyed, and saw Ebony Maw hovering on another pillar of rock a hundred yards away. The tall grey alien looked on with disdain, his hand curling. T'Challa leaped and grabbed the gauntlet only to be gripped in the moving rock as well. Maw made a 'come-hither' gesture with his hands and T'Challa and the gauntlet were pushed toward Thanos's general.

Maggie soared over T'Challa and the gauntlet in a roar of engines and sliced through the air toward Ebony Maw. He spotted her a moment later and snarled, flicking his hand. But Maggie knew his tricks and she barrel rolled to avoid the flying projectiles he threw in her path. She got a flash of Maw's wide eyes a second before she shoulder-charged him right off his column of rock.

Maggie heard the rock clutching T'Challa crumble and fall away. But Maw was fast. He recovered almost instantly, hurling a slab of concrete at Maggie as he reasserted his control over the Wakandan king.

She had distracted Maw enough, however, that he didn't see the slender red and black suited figure that flipped high in the air over the struggling T'Challa, shouted "I got it!" and caught the gauntlet with a line of webbing when T'Challa tossed it to him. Maggie grinned savagely and punched Maw in the face. He reeled back, touching his bloody cheek.

"Peter, go!" Maggie cried. She bore down on the tall grey alien with everything she had, keeping his attention off Spider-Man as he flipped away. "Get it to the van!"

"On it, Ms Stark!"

Maw slashed at Maggie with a flock of metal shards. She deflected it with her wings and then swept Maw's legs out from under him with a low kick. He hovered up and away, his robes fluttering from his power, but Maggie sprang after him and beat him back down to the ground again. You're not getting away this time. T'Challa leaped in from her left flank and punched Maw, releasing a burst of raw violet power that knocked Maggie back a step.

She stepped forward, extending the barbs of her wings, and the world erupted around her once more.

She saw the missiles a second before they hit this time; electric blue streaks of light that showered out of the sky like comets before plunging into the earth. One of the missiles detonated right behind her, throwing out a concussive blast that sent her tumbling away with heat scorching her back and sending up a plume of dirt and rubble that showered down on her a moment later. She brought a wing up to offer her some modicum of cover and glanced around wildly, but all she could see was the ground erupting around her – smoke and dust and flames filling the air. She couldn't see T'Challa or Maw. The ground shuddered beneath her like a trembling beast and the sound of the screeching missiles and their devastating impacts pierced her ears. Maggie's heart thundered in her chest and her breath rasped in her throat.

The smoke around her cleared for a moment and she saw the blue comets piercing down from Thanos's massive warship, cutting through his forces and the Avengers forces alike. She saw a Wakandan airship get clipped by one of the beams of light and come plunging to the ground in a fireball. Then another struck the ground close to where she lay and Maggie screamed. Nowhere to go, nowhere to hide. Any one of those blinding beams could obliterate her. Crying out, she flung her wings wide and jumped into the sky in some effort to flee her doom.

She soared up just as Strange's wizard army coalesced and threw their magic upwards, casting golden rune shields that canopied over most of the Avengers army. It looked strangely beautiful from the air.

Another blue missile scorched past Maggie's left wing and she yelped, instinctively wheeling away. She could be vaporized in an instant like this. She righted herself just as she heard a cry over the comms:

"Help, somebody help!" Peter. Maggie desperately looked down to find him, and it wasn't hard – he struggled on top of a whole mound of Thanos's forces, who had sensed the Stones and converged on them and were now doing their best to tear Spider-Man apart.

Maggie dove just as Steve called: "Hey Queens – heads up."

Seconds later Peter soared out of the mound of aliens, borne away on a line of webbing attached to Mjolnir as it arced over the battlefield. Maggie switched course and soared after him, cutting a straight line through the air and not flinching at the blinding blue beams of light that plunged down through the sky around her.

One of the beams sliced through Peter's webbing and he tumbled, limbs akimbo, until Maggie swooped in and grabbed his arm at the same time as Pepper in her RESCUE suit rocketed down and grabbed his other arm. Maggie let out the breath she'd been holding.

With the gauntlet clutched safe in one of his suit's spider-arms, Peter looked up in bewilderment at the two figures carrying him up into the sky: Pepper in her blue and silver nanotech armor on one side, and Maggie in her dark suit with her metal wings spread wide on the other.

"Oh hey," he said breathlessly.

"Hang on," Pepper called, "we got you, kid."

"Hang tight Peter," Maggie said, and didn't have to check with Pepper before their next coordinated movement; in tandem they swung Peter up through the air, to where Valkyrie reached out and pulled him onto the back of her flying steed. Pepper and Maggie soared side-by-side, covering Valkyrie's flanks as she bore Peter and the gauntlet through the treacherous sky.

"Hey, nice to – oh my gaaaaa–" Peter screamed as Valkyrie dove downwards. In the distance Maggie saw the glint of what she thought might be the orange van and her heart leaped. We can do this–

Whether the massive warship targeted them or whether it was pure bad luck Maggie wasn't sure, but at that moment a succession of the scorching blue blasts rained down in a closely-packed area, one after the other. The first struck behind Valkyrie's steed, sending her and Peter tumbling, and the next clipped Maggie's wing and sent her spiraling down to a screeching crash in the rubble.

For a moment Maggie couldn't move. She'd landed on her leg again and the pain shot straight up her spine and into the base of her neck, making her arch back in a wordless scream. And then the world around her was blue light and erupting rock again, and it was all she could do to press against a rock wall near her and hope that one of the falling missiles didn't land on her. With the constant collisions loud in her ears she screamed, hands over her ears and her body alight with too much pain, her heart aching at the too many failed attempts to end this. Her family was out there under this deluge of death and she had no way to protect them.

She screamed for a few more seconds until she realized that her voice was the only sound she could hear. Gasping, she pulled her hands away from her ears and looked up.

The warship had abruptly ceased firing down on the battlefield. The ground below burned and fell still. Around Maggie, Avengers and Thanos's forces alike breathed a sigh of relief and crawled out of their bolt holes to look up. Maggie shaded her eyes against the sun glowing through the clouds and stared at the warship cannons as they swiveled up from the battlefield to point outward, across the sky. Seconds later they fired a volley of cobalt missiles into thin air.

Maggie watched the bolts of light soar up into the dark clouds and out of sight. Frowning, she beat her wings and soared back into the sky.

"What the hell is this?" Sam called over the comms. From the sounds of things he'd managed to stay in the air.

"F.R.I.D.A.Y., what are they firing at?" Tony asked.

"Something just entered the upper atmosphere!"

Maggie's gut churned with nerves and she shored up her nanotech defenses. What now? She watched the missiles concentrate on a single point in the clouds, and then realized they were impacting against something. The impacts grew closer and closer until the thing plunged out of the clouds in a burst of bright golden light.

The nerves in Maggie's gut evaporated into pure elation as she watched the glowing, burning thing hurtle through the sky toward the battlefield. She'd recognize Carol any day.

In a bright beacon of light Carol plunged straight through the top of Thanos's warship and ripped through the engine on the other side, leaving a path of molten metal in her wake. A second later the soundwave washed across the battlefield: a mighty roar of tearing metal. When Carol slowed her descent and turned back they finally saw her silhouette, illuminated in the white and gold light of her powers, before she tore back into the warship's other engine.

"Oh, yeah!" Rocket cried, the first of them to speak.

When the whole front of the warship crumbled off and fell to the ground in an avalanche of burning metal Maggie threw her hands in the air, adrenaline coursing through her veins and lifting a huge grin on her face. She hovered, her wings rising and falling, and watched the warship plunge into the lake with an almighty crash that made the earth shudder and threw hundred-foot high plumes of water into the air.

"Welcome back, Danvers!" Maggie crowed, and heard other Avengers over the comms cheering at the warship's demise.

Then Steve spoke, his voice tense: "Danvers – we need an assist here."

Hovering above the battlefield which had been brought to a standstill, Maggie blinked. Oh. Right. She flared her wings and swooped down, casting her eyes about for Peter.

She ended up following Carol's bright light down to the surface of the earth. Both armies had begun to recover from the shock of her appearance and the sounds of fighting were breaking out – the Outrider dropships started firing missiles and the Chitauri, Outrider and Sakaarian armies amassed once more. Maggie glanced ahead to see them stream together and start flooding over the no-mans land with four massive Leviathans soaring over them. She urged more power to her engines.

She spotted Carol as she landed in the middle of no-man's land, over a hole in the rockface.

"Hi," came Peter's high, terrified voice over the comms. Maggie sagged a little in the air. "I'm… Peter Parker."

"Hey Peter Parker. You got something for me?" Maggie caught a glimpse of Carol's face as she flew up behind them, and sensed other figures flying close by her sides.

Peter climbed out of his hole and looked up at the oncoming army. "I don't know how you're going to get it through all'a that," he murmured.

Wanda landed first, touching down gently on the rock thanks to her scarlet powers. "Don't worry," she told Peter as he handed the gauntlet over to Carol. Carol tucked it under her arm.

Behind Wanda, Valkyrie and Maggie landed on the rock. Maggie knew she looked scary with her sharp metal wings and her slitted red eyes, but she made sure to nod reassuringly at Peter when he glanced over at them with wide eyes.

Okoye ran in on their right flank, her golden spear steady in her hand. Her determined eyes did not waver from the oncoming army. "She's got help."

The corner of Maggie's mouth curled in a smile. Pepper landed in front of them all, her eyes on the enemy, and to their left the alien with the antennae and Princess Shuri emerged, nodding to Carol as if in assurance.

Carol stepped forward and the rest of them moved in unison. Wings shifting, Maggie stepped past the round-eyed Peter with a squeeze to his shoulder, and then looked up to meet the eyes of the other women around her – they looked back with sheer determination despite the blood and ash on their faces and the howling army bearing down on them, and Maggie felt a spike of pride in her gut. Hope Van Dyne materialized at the front of the group, adjusting her blasters, and on the front right the green-skinned red-haired Guardian strode forward to join them. Finally Nebula joined their ranks, her dark eyes calm.

The oncoming army was just a few hundred yards away now. Maggie spotted loping Outriders, the thundering cybernetic gorillas she'd seen earlier, and the hulking Leviathans with their sharp maws open wide. Thanos's generals ran on the front lines of the army, leveling their weapons forward in an unmistakable order to attack.

Surrounded by her fellow warriors Maggie fell into a sprint, her boots resounding on the bare rock of the battlefield. Her heartbeat mounted with each sprinting step she took and her breath came sharp in her throat. Then she spread her wings and flew.

Wanda cast a blast of red light which broke Thanos's generals momentum, and the female Avengers surged forward. Maggie fired an energy blast at one of the cybernetic gorillas and watched the firepower of her fellow warriors scorch across the battlefield, bright and devastating. Below her the green-haired alien ran up an outcrop of rocks to slice her blade across the throat of another of the hulking monsters, so Maggie swooped down, grabbed her slender hand and swung her directly at her next opponent without either of them needing to say a word.

Valkyrie and Pepper had soared ahead so Maggie spiraled up to follow them, firing every weapon she'd ever thought to equip her suit with; she rained energy blasts down on Chitauri footsoldiers, sliced Sakaarans open with her wingtips and sprayed gunfire into the thick of the army, roaring a warcry. She looked up to see Valkyrie dragging her Asgardian spear along a Leviathan's hide while Wanda crushed the jaw of another one with her powers.

Maggie spotted a third Leviathan angling down to drag its gnashing teeth along the front line of Avengers, and angled her wings to meet it. Her HUD instantly brought up readouts for the Leviathan, noting the strength of its hide and its thick Chitauri armor. That thing was near impenetrable.

But then her gaze fell on the Leviathan's massive, roaring mouth and she thought back to something she'd seen while hiding in an alley in 2012 New York.

Oh, no.

She wheeled until she flew head-on toward the Leviathan, catching a glimpse of Carol's streaking figure out of the corner of her eye before she focused her gaze on the Leviathan's gnashing jaw. In the space of a thought, her nanotech suit rippled and reformed – she reinforced her defenses and formed dozens of sharp metal spikes across her body like she had in Wakanda five years ago, until she resembled a flying porcupine. She pushed all remaining power to her wings and stared down the Leviathan's gullet.

"Maggie, what-" Pepper cried, but the rest was cut off a second later when Maggie flew right into the Leviathan's mouth.

Ten dark, disgusting seconds later Maggie ripped out through the other side, dripping with alien slime, and looked over her shoulder to see the Leviathan drop dead to the battlefield below. She allowed herself a vicious grin before soaring ahead to follow the blue streak that Carol left in her wake.

She cleared a plume of smoke with Pepper at her side to see Carol soaring straight for the van, where the Quantum Tunnel glowed like a beacon at the end of the road. But then Maggie caught the flash of light off a blade as Thanos ran forward, his eyes on Carol.

No you don't.

Maggie flared her wings and joined her hands together, sending nanotech flowing out over her palms to form the largest energy cannon her suit could handle. It fired a pulsing beam of energy that scorched across the battlefield, and her eyes shot wide as beside her Pepper, Princess Shuri, and Hope Van Dyne in her remarkable suit fired energy beams of their own toward the armored titan. Their shots hit him in a concentrated burst of light that knocked him down and away, leaving Carol free to rocket past him toward the Quantum Tunnel.

Maggie's heart soared as she watched Carol close in on the open doors of the van, only for it to stop beating when she saw, out of the corner of her eye, Thanos rear his arm back and hurl his weapon.

She thought he was aiming for Carol. So when the blade sliced through the intricate machinery of their last remaining Quantum Tunnel a cry ripped from her throat and out her mouth, her hand flying out as if to stop the blade.

The Tunnel shuddered, glowed with a bright white light, and then imploded.

Blinding white light blasted outward from the van in a shockwave that knocked down everyone in mile radius, be they god or mortal. Maggie saw Carol reeling backwards, the gauntlet missing from her hands, a second before the blast slammed Maggie's body and outstretched wings and sent her tumbling backwards through the air. Her head rung like a struck bell.

She thrashed her wings to right herself and didn't allow herself a moment to recover from the blast or to mourn the lost Quantum Tunnel before she surged forward. Because Thanos hadn't hesitated either.

She swooped down, seized the back of Thanos's golden armor as he strode toward the abandoned gauntlet and tugged, pulling him physically away. He staggered back with a growl. She didn't have a plan anymore, she only knew that he could not touch those Stones. As her fingers yanked at the titan's armor she spotted Tony push a Chitauri body off himself, his eyes wide.

Thanos growled in frustration at the winged hindrance. Maggie expected him to pull against her so she redoubled her grip, but instead of pushing forward, Thanos reached behind his back and seized her leg. Her eyes widened.

Thanos yanked her off his back and pulled her in front of him. Reeling, Maggie desperately beat her wings to get away, her engines whining and her breath short in her chest as she pulled against the titan's grip. Thanos wrapped his hands around her right leg and snapped.

"Maggie!" Tony cried.

The nanotech did its best, but Maggie felt her bones break under Thanos's fingers. She howled. Instead of the blinding white flash of pain from before, this felt like blackness. This felt like a lance of burning darkness erupting in her leg and flooding through her, dissolving her to nothing. Her throat ached from screaming.

She barely felt the impact when he tossed her to the ground behind him.

Trying to think through the blaring pain that had flooded her mind, and blinking past the black spots in her vision, Maggie tried to follow Thanos's movements. She heard rather than saw Tony tackle him away from the gauntlet, followed by the roar and smash as Thanos beat him to the ground. Maggie tried to prop herself up on one elbow, but her shaking limbs refused to obey her and she slumped back down. Every cell in her body screamed stop him but it was all she could do to breathe and not sink beneath the paralyzing blackness shooting up from her leg.

Thor leaped in, swinging his electrified axe, and as he and Thanos matched their wills against one another in a struggle over the weapon Steve leaped in and added his strength to Thor's.

Maggie scrabbled at the ground with her fingers and managed to slump over onto her side. The movement made her vision grey out, and when it came back Thor was on the ground and Thanos loomed over Steve with a snarl on his face. He slammed a devastating punch down on Steve's head, knocking him out cold, and Maggie choked on an ash-filled gasp. Thanos slid off Steve, scrambled toward the gauntlet and swiped it up.

"No," Maggie groaned. She raised a trembling arm to fire a succession of energy blasts at Thanos. Two went wide but the next five impacted against his back, knocking him forward a step. He barely noticed.

Like an avenging angel Carol dropped down in a shroud of glowing light, and slammed her feet into the back of Thanos's knee. He turned, growling, and the two of them threw blows back and forth before Carol made a grab for the gauntlet. Thanos seized her around the wrist and hurled her across the burning rock. Maggie heaved herself onto one elbow with a cry.

Thanos slid the gauntlet onto his right hand, a nightmare illuminated by the soft glow of the sun and the flickering flames of the destroyed facility. Power crackled up his arm like bolts of lightning and he raised his hand, roaring against the overwhelming power of the Stones.

Maggie tried to push herself to her feet only to crumple back down again. Her heart leaped when Carol swooped in just in time to catch Thanos's hand before he could close it in a snap. On one knee Carol gripped his hand, keeping it still, and Maggie's vision hazed over with blackness again because she'd forgotten to breathe.

She focused on breathing, trying to get her hands and knees under herself as she watched Carol slowly rise, shining bright like a star as she matched her strength against the mad titan's. Thanos headbutted her. Carol just glared up at him.

Maggie got one trembling arm under her to support her weight and she looked back over to see fear in Thanos's face. Carol stooped over him now, hovering in midair with her fist cocked. Maggie's heart leaped once more and she managed to sit up, her chest heaving. But then Thanos seized the Power Stone out of the gauntlet, formed a fist and hit Carol with a blast of purple power that sent her hurtling away and knocked Maggie flat against the ground again.

She found herself looking up at the smoke-filled sky. Blood dripped down the back of her throat. No. Not again.

You are stronger than any loss, Tony had told her. But now she lay broken and bloody on the hard rock, unable to even lift her head to see Thanos return the last Infinity Stone to his gauntlet, and she knew she was not strong enough for what came next.

Tony rolled onto his front and looked up. Thanos was getting to his feet, the Power Stone bright in his hand. Tony's gaze flicked across Steve, Thor, and Carol, all beaten down to the ground and too far away to do anything. He saw Maggie, a hundred yards away behind Thanos, lying limp on the ground with blood trickling out of the corner of her mouth and her leg twisted at an unnatural angle. Her screams still echoed in his ears. He thought of Pepper, somewhere out there in this burning nightmare, and then of his daughter. I will shred this universe down to its last atom, Thanos had said.

There was no one left.

He looked to Strange, holding back the lake, and Strange met his gaze with knowing eyes.

Strange held up a single, shaking finger. One.

And Tony knew.

Maggie heard the hum and crackle of power as Thanos set the Power Stone into the gauntlet.

Get up, Wyvern.

With a remaining trickle of power she didn't know she had she sat bolt upright and flung her hands up, ready to blast Thanos with every last weapon at her disposal. But then Tony stepped in, seized Thanos's fist and tugged. Maggie roared and fired at Thanos's head, distracting his attention as he threw his knee into Tony's gut and then punched at his head. Maggie did not take a breath to stop firing, and behind her she planted her wingtips into the rockface to steady herself. Between the two of them, Tony managed to struggle for the gauntlet for a few seconds before Thanos swept his free hand and knocked him away across the rock.

Desperate tears welled in Maggie's eyes and spilled down her cheeks. Get up, she willed herself. She pushed her wingtips further into the rock and pushed, lifting herself to her knees. Get up.

Thanos raised his hand and looked down at the palm of the gauntlet, awe in his eyes. He raised his thumb to his middle finger.

Behind him on the ground, Maggie's breath stilled in her chest.

"I am," Thanos hissed, "inevitable."

He raised his hand higher and finally, easily, snapped his fingers. But instead of a blast of light and a crackle of surging power, the air echoed with nothing but the tinny clink of burnt metal.

Thanos's victorious expression fell and he looked at his gauntlet in confusion, but Maggie wasn't looking at him any longer. She looked to her brother as he got to his knees, his hand behind his back.

"Tony," she breathed. His dark eyes met hers for a moment, across the battlefield. Maggie's voice came bloody and desperate through her lips: "Let me."

For a moment his lips twitched in a ghost of a smile. She knew that look: not on your life, Maggot.

Thanos let out a breath and turned to Tony, his eyes wide, just as Tony brought his hand from behind his back to reveal six glowing Stones sliding up the red and gold armor plating. He met Thanos's eyes.

Then the Stones set themselves into the gauntlet which he'd formed out of his own nanotech suit, and Maggie's hands fell to the ground beneath her to support herself as she watched blinding bolts of energy flare up her brother's arm and into his chest, around the Arc Reactor. The light seared her retinas. Tony's head fell back for a moment before he looked up again, his eyes wide from the rush of power. He met Thanos's stunned gaze with a sharp flash of satisfaction in his face.

Maggie watched her brother smile.

"And I" – Tony heaved in a breath, his teeth bared, and Maggie breathed with him. "Am…"

Her hand reached out toward him, as if that could stop anything.

Calm settled in Tony's glittering eyes. "Iron Man."

He snapped his fingers.

And then there was light.

White light.

Breaths in the silence.

Stillness.

The first thing Maggie saw when the scorching white light faded from her vision was the sky; she'd fallen again, like a marionette with her strings cut loose. The ground felt cool against her back.

The dark, undulating body of a Leviathan crossed her vision, then blurred and shifted as she watched it. She frowned, but the shape didn't resolve itself – instead, its solid mass crumbled away to a cloud of ash that vanished on the wind.

An electric thrill ignited in Maggie's gut and crackled outward. She sat up once more, her head turning so fast she felt dizzy. The battlefield around her had become a world of fading dust; she watched Chitauri and Outriders crumble away where they stood. In the distance one of the massive Outrider dropships faded away like a cloud drifting in the wind. The silhouette of the fallen Sanctuary III in the lake faded away. Behind her she heard the heavy footsteps of a cybernetic gorilla, but when she turned it was gone.

Like last time, the vanishings didn't make a sound.

Maggie lurched to her feet, slamming the points of her wings down into the ground to steady herself when her legs wouldn't support her, and limped as fast as she could across the hard rock. She ran past a stunned, frozen Thanos without even deigning to look at him.

Tony had somehow gotten to his feet and was staggering, his eyes round in his pale face. Maggie reached him as he turned away and grabbed him around the middle, holding his weight by using her wings as support pillars. "Tony," she gasped. She singed her fingers on his burnt armor as she helped him toward a heap of rubble nearby and carefully lowered him to a seated position. He let out a breath. She half-knelt, half-crouched beside him, balanced on her wings. "Tony, you did it."

She looked over her shoulder to see Thanos bow his head and crumble away to ash.

"You did it, Tony, you did it," she mumbled desperately, her hands dancing lightly over her brother's shoulders. She glanced down at the burnt-out gauntlet. "You saved the universe, I always knew you would–"

He lifted his head and she saw his face: half blackened from the energy that had surged through him, his eyes wide and unfocused.

And Maggie knew.

Her hand stilled on his shoulder. "Tony," she said softly.

His wide, dark eyes slid away from hers to glance skyward, and Maggie heard the telltale whine of repulsors as Rhodey landed a few feet away. Her breath shuddered in her throat. Rhodey paced toward them and reached out, cradling Tony's head in his armored hand.

Tony and Rhodey looked wordlessly at each other, and a small smile flickered on Tony's lips. Maggie's head dropped between her shoulders.

"Mr Stark?"

Her head rose again and she met Rhodey's pain-filled eyes before he hung his head and stepped away, leaving room for Peter to crouch before Tony and look into his burned, staring face.

"Hey," Peter said in high, trembling voice. He rested his hands on Tony's chest. "Mr Stark? Can you hear me?" Maggie's lips trembled at the sight of Peter's wide, tear-filled eyes. "It's Peter."

She looked back at Tony and saw him recognize Peter; his eyes focused on the teenager's face and a little more concentration filtered into his expression. She squeezed her brother's hand.

"Hey," Peter breathed. "We won. Mr Stark… we won." His eyes welled with tears and he pressed his mouth shut for a moment. "We won, Mr Stark." His face crumpled. "We won, you did it sir, you did it." Blue and silver plated arms reached down to hold Peter's shoulders. Maggie couldn't look up at Pepper, couldn't look anywhere aside from Tony's dark eyes in his pale, charred face, growing rapidly more vacant.

"I'm sorry, Tony," Peter gasped in between sobs. Maggie rested her hand on his arm.

Pepper gently pulled Peter to his feet as he broke into sobs, and Maggie's hand slid off his arm. Rhodey set a hand on the teenager's shoulder to steady him.

The world had gone silent.

Outwardly calm as she had always been in the face of unspeakable terror, Pepper crouched down before Tony and put one hand on his shoulder, and the other on his arc reactor. He managed to move his head to look her in the eyes. He looked so tired.

Pepper Potts smiled. "Hey."

"Hey Pep," Tony breathed. He lifted one hand and rested it over Pepper's on his arc reactor. The light shone out between their fingers.

Beside them, Maggie clamped a trembling hand over her mouth and squeezed her eyes shut. Tears rolled down her cheeks, clearing away the grime and blood.

"F.R.I.D.A.Y.?" Pepper said in a falsely calm voice.

The A.I.'s voice sounded small when she replied: "Life functions critical."

Maggie's eyes snapped open again to see Pepper and Tony looking at each other with so much love in their eyes; Pepper so strong as her cheeks shone with tears, and Tony looking up at her like she was the only star in a universe of darkness. His dark eyes gleamed and he managed a smile. Maggie knew most of Tony's smiles and what they meant, but not that one. That one was for Pepper.

His eyes slid sideways, back to Maggie, and despite the darkness she could see closing in around his mind she saw that he knew her. "Maggot," he mumbled.

"I'll look after them," she choked out, though she could barely see him through her tears. "I promise. We're a family, and I'll look after them."

He trained his eyes on her with great effort. "Stay," he whispered, a breath on the wind. A faint smile played about his mouth.

Despite herself, a small laugh bubbled out of Maggie's trembling lips. She leaned in to press a kiss against his cheek. "I'm going to stay," she whispered. "I promise." She pulled back and saw his eyes losing their focus, drifting away from her. She choked on a sob. "I love you, Tony."

His eyes went distant and his head rolled to one side.

"Tony," Pepper said. His focus continued to drift. "Look at me."

He did. He let out a tired breath, his eyes dark with fatigue. Maggie felt carved out, terrified, but not numb. Not numb. She wanted to hold him here a little longer, to see another smile or hear another joke. She wanted to tell him don't go.

Pepper held Tony's eyes. "We're going to be okay," she whispered. She smiled, her eyes crinkling even as they overflowed with tears, and she reached up to stroke Tony's hair. His focus drifted away again.

When he was no longer looking at her, Pepper's mouth trembled. "You can rest now."

As if he'd been waiting for her to say the words, Tony let out a small, almost inaudible breath and his gleaming eyes fell still. Maggie stared for a moment, tears glittering in her eyelashes, waiting for him to move again.

He didn't.

Tony's dark eyes looked into the middle distance, a calm, tired expression fixed on his face. He did not breathe. Maggie kept staring. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Pepper's face crumple and her head bow.

Maggie's eyes slid down to the glowing arc reactor in his chest, with Pepper and Tony's hands resting over it. Before her eyes the reactor flickered, and went out. Tony's hand fell away.

Maggie sat back heavily on the shattered rock. She caught movement out of the corner of her eye and tore her gaze away to see the Avengers, what seemed like every single one of them, one by one lowering into a kneel. They set one knee to the broken ground and bowed their heads before Tony - Tony's body. Steve, Carol, T'Challa, Strange... all of them brought to their knees. Maggie couldn't bear the look in their eyes.

She looked back at Tony.

Maggie curled into herself, knees pressed up to her chest and her head in her hands, and sobbed. Not loud sobs but silent ones, tired and hopeless ones that wracked her chest and her heart in a void of sound. That silence seemed to emanate outwards – she couldn't hear anything but the wind. And then Pepper's soft gasps as she cried.

Tony's dead eyes were burned into her retinas.

Maggie's whole body shuddered as if she were going to shake apart at the seams. Her mouth opened in a silent scream.

After what felt like lifetimes, she felt a metal hand on her knee. "Meg." The word was so soft, so full of feeling, that her chest seized up and she thought she was having a heart attack. But the pain galvanized her into action.

She wrenched her hands away from her head just long enough to tug Bucky – alivealivealive – into her, and he went willingly with his arms wrapped around her and his head tucked beside hers. She felt tears on his cheeks.

They held each other at the end of the world, just like Maggie always knew they would.