A/N: This is an AU of my other story, The Wyvern. You don't need to have read that first, but I recommend checking it out anyway. (Especially the first chapter, that serves as kind of a 'prequel' to this story).

Psalm 17:8:

Keep me as the apple of your eye,
Hide me in the shadow of your wings.

She made broken look beautiful
and strong look invincible.
She walked with the Universe
on her shoulders and made it
look like a pair of wings.

- Ariana Dancu

December 16, 1991

Orange light flickered beyond Maggie's closed eyelids. After the sensation of light came sound: crackling, glass tinkling, shuddering breaths.

"Howard!" Mom's voice. "Maggie, say something!"

Maggie tried to open her mouth to speak, but a starburst of pain erupted in her head and ignited across her body. Everything hurt: her chest, her hips, her legs; she was slumped forward in the carseat, seatbelt pinching into her chest and her right leg stuck twisted under herself.

Her ears rang like that time she'd forgotten to put on her earmuffs when she and Tony were exploding things in his workshop, and when she managed to crack her eyes open the world looked… blurry. She frowned, wincing at the pain.

She remembered: they'd been driving, she'd been watching the dark forest blur past and trying to keep quiet. Then there'd been a motorbike-

Maggie opened her eyes wider and the world dribbled into focus. Dad. He sat in the driver's seat, but his head rested on the steering wheel and… and…

"Dad?" she croaked in a much smaller voice than she'd meant. Frightened by what she saw where his face should be, her eyes darted right, toward - "Mom?"

Mom was making weird sounds, spluttering for breath, and when the fire burning from the hood of the car blazed a little brighter Maggie saw why: a man wearing entirely black armor stood outside Mom's window with his hand around Mom's neck. Maggie couldn't see his face since he wasn't looking into the car.

"Stop it!" Maggie cried, lurching forward to try to get his hand off Mom. But her seatbelt held her back, and a moment later the man let go of Mom's neck and stepped away. Mom had stopped making noise.

Maggie squeezed her eyes shut and pulled at her seatbelt, hot tears sliding down her face and her heart pounding against her ribs. She coughed at the smoke filling the inside of the car. She heard a crunch of gravel, and realized that the man now stood outside her door. He had a silver arm which gleamed in the firelight.

Wheezing, Maggie squeezed out from under the confines of her seatbelt and crawled to the other side of the car, crying out when a hot zap of pain shot up from her leg. Her hips and back felt numb, uncooperative, and it was only by feeling her way across the back seat and fumbling at the door handle that she managed to tumble out onto the gravel below. Cooler air brushed over her face and she screamed between her teeth at the pain coursing up and down her body.

After a second of overwhelming sensation, she heard crunching gravel again. The man with the metal arm, circling the car and walking towards her.

Maggie was the third-fastest girl in her class. Using the hummingbird-fast beat of her heart and her rushing emotions for strength, she pushed herself up to her feet and ran. Ran from the burning car, from dad's scarlet and empty face, from mom sitting still and quiet in her seat. Gravel flew beneath her feet and she had to concentrate not to fall-

A metal hand seized her upper arm and jerked Maggie to a halt.

"No!" she screamed, trying to dig her feet into the gravel to push off into a sprint, but the man just turned and began walking back to the car, pulling her along with him. Maggie stumbled and got her feet under her, trying to pull at his metal fingers with her free hand. "Let me go!" As she pulled ineffectually, she looked up into the man's face.

Dark hair framed his face, which was… utterly blank. He didn't look down at Maggie, didn't even look at the car. His eyes were cold. Empty.

Something hot and terrified rose up in her throat, and Maggie gave up pulling at his fingers and swung a curled fist as high up on the man's stomach as she could reach. Her knuckles skidded off his armored vest and came away bloody. Tears blurred her vision and her breath came out in short, terrified gasps as she tried to jerk out of the man's grip.

She didn't realize how close they'd gotten to the car until the man stopped and reached down to his hip for - a gun. Fear as cold as ice swept over Maggie and locked up her joints, making her sag in the man's hand. But instead of pointing it at her he swung the weapon up, up, before firing off a shot that made another starburst of pain erupt in Maggie's head from the volume of it. She glanced up to follow his aim, and saw a street camera with a shattered lens.

The man with the metal arm holstered his gun, his metal hand still firmly wrapped around Maggie's aching arm, then turned and began to walk towards his motorcycle, parked on the other side of the road.

"No," Maggie choked out, slumped and sobbing as the man dragged her, and she turned to look at the car.

It had become a beacon of light in the dark forest, the fire from the crumpled hood spreading and intensifying, radiating heat over Maggie's face. She could see the silhouettes of her parents: Dad's slumped form and Mom - Mom sagged in her seat, head lolled to one side. Maggie's eyes burned as she stared at them, and her skin sparked with pain as she was dragged over the rough ground.

She grabbed a buckle on the metal-armed man's vest and pulled herself up to try get her feet under herself again. She stared up into his blank, dead face.

"Why are you doing this?"

For what seemed like the first time, the man finally laid his eyes on her. He stopped in the middle of the road at her question, and his head swivelled until he was looking emotionlessly down at her. Maggie slumped, her knees banging into the rough surface of the road, the man's hand on her arm the only thing keeping her upright. The man looked down at her, with her failed legs and her tear-streaked face and her wheezing, sobbing gasps.

A faint furrow of his brow broke the blankness of his expression. "You are my mission."

Maggie was stunned into silence at the sound of his low voice, just as blank as his eyes. Her mind reeled, as if finally catching up to everything that had just happened to her: the fire, the echoes of crunching glass and metal, the images burned behind her eyes. Her mind was no ordinary one: she understood what had happened to her parents.

The man with the metal arm seemed just as surprised by his words as Maggie was. She refocused on his face and realized that it was not quite as empty as before: like water shifting beneath the frozen surface of a lake, there was something behind those dead, grey-blue eyes. Maggie didn't blink. She stared up at the man's face, watching the shifts and ripples. His jaw clenched. His chin dropped a little, allowing him to look at her more fully. One of his eyebrows twitched, and then his pupils dilated, the blackness nearly swallowing his irises.

Maggie's knees skidded over the gravel as the man seemed to stumble, or take a step back. His non-metal arm shook.

And then the metal fingers around her arm let go.

Maggie dropped, landing face-first in the road with another cry. Her arm throbbed where it had been in the man's grip, flaring cold then scalding hot.

She looked up, her face stinging, to see the man standing a few feet away, staring at her. His whole body shook like a building about to fall apart at the foundation. His eyes had widened.

Maggie broke eye contact and looked over her shoulder at the burning car. She couldn't see the shape of her parents any more. Her dead parents. She glanced back, her whole body stinging and burning, and couldn't move. Her back tingled like pins and needles, making her feel strangely weak, and it was all she could do to crane her neck back to look at the man with the metal arm as he stood and stared at her.

Like a sudden explosion, rage burst through Maggie. It started in her stomach, an inferno stronger than the fire behind her, stronger than anything she'd ever known, and blasted through her limbs, filling her throat and mouth with licking flames and evaporating her tears. She got one arm under herself and pushed up, letting fury burn over her pain, until she'd managed to rise into a sitting position.

She looked into the grey-blue eyes of the metal-armed man and lifted her chin. She wondered if he could see the fire roaring behind her eyes.

"You're my mission now," she whispered.

The man's eyes flashed at her anger, and at her words. For half a second they stared at each other: burning, shaking rage and still, dead ice. Then the man stood up straight, stiff like a toy soldier, and moved. He strode back to the burning car like a robot, his footsteps almost silent. Maggie stared, her arms shaking as they supported her, and watched as he reached into the trunk to remove a metal briefcase.

The man turned again, this time heading straight for his motorcycle. He strode past Maggie without even glancing down at her. He swung his leg over the seat, and started up the engine with a rumble that rose above the noise of the flickering fire. Maggie's eyes burned.

The man kicked up his motorcycle stand, gunned the engine, and drove away. He didn't look back.

Maggie stared after the man until his gleaming metal arm and dark hair and motorcycle vanished from view. The heat from the fire prickled at her back, and her arms shook like twigs in a hurricane. She wanted Mom and Dad. She wanted Tony. She wanted someone to gather her into their warm arms and tell her everything was okay.

But the metal-armed man's dead eyes and the fire still roaring through her body had taken away all safety. Maggie reached one arm out across the black, rough road and dragged herself forward with a low sound like a wounded animal.

She didn't crawl back to the car. Her energy and fear were flagging, and she knew she no longer had the strength to stand. So she reached one arm in front of the other along the road, dragging her useless legs behind her, tears blurring her vision and her mind reeling. Pain crept over her burning rage, seeping back in control, spiking up and down her spine and pounding in her head and scratching at her throat and eyes. But she kept going.

Maggie crawled away from the burning car until she saw bright headlights. She waved her shaking arms and screamed as loud as she could, sure her throat was going to rip apart, until she heard the car stop. Car doors opened and closed. She heard two sets of footsteps, though she couldn't see through the black spots that had filled her vision, and a gasp.

Maggie dropped her head onto her arm and slipped away.

Well readers, it's been over a year since I finished Maggie's story, and so much has happened since then - I've finished another story called The Siren (check it out if you haven't yet), we've ended up in a global pandemic, and I have moved country twice. I hope the year and a bit has been kind to you all, and that you're happier and healthier than when I signed off. If not that's okay too, and hopefully this story will make things even a little bit better.

This story will be updating once a week. I'm so excited to bring you along for Maggie's story (take two). It's going to be different, but I promise you're going to have a lot of fun on the way x

See you next week!