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Last night, at 10 pm local time, Wanda Maximoff was executed at a Sokovian prison. The former Avenger turned war criminal had been sentenced to death by a panel of judges under the terms of the Sokovia Accords in June. After 4 unsuccessful appeals, the sentence was finally carried out. A spokesperson for the Accords issued the following statement right after the sentence was decided due to the controversial nature of it:
“We at the UN do not take this sentence lightly. The UN’s stance has always been against such irrevocable measures. However, in Ms Maximoff’s case, we felt we had no choice. The nature of her powers and the danger she represents to the public are too great to ignore. We have already seen how destructive she can be. In this case, this is the only way we can ensure people’s safety.”
Authorities in Sokovia said, at the time, that they were satisfied with the result of the trial. Today, the government decreed a day of mourning for the victims of Maximoff’s crimes both in Sokovia and in the rest of the world.
The Nigerian and Ugandan governments also issued statements expressing relief that the former Hydra operative’s reign of terror had finally come to an end.
The New Avengers, who declined attending Ms Maximoff’s execution, have released no formal statement so far.
*****
Tony turned off the news and sat back at his desk in the lab. He knew this was coming, of course – he’d even been asked to be there as a witness, which… yeah, no thanks – yet it was still… weird. He honestly didn’t know what to think or how to feel about it. He hadn’t when he’d heard the sentence months ago and he still didn’t. It was a relief to know that Wanda wouldn’t hurt anyone ever again, though – that she wouldn’t be coming after him or his family as she’d threatened multiple times during her trial. She got what she deserved as a result of actions she chose to take. And yet… he couldn’t help but feel a little sorry for the little girl who lost her parents at such a young age in such tragic circumstances. Perhaps if she’d had better support, better options, things could have turned out differently. Or perhaps there was simply something fundamentally wrong with her, and it wouldn’t have mattered either way. There was no way to know.
After stepping back from the Avengers following Ultron’s defeat, Tony had had very little contact with Wanda. He hadn’t felt comfortable around her for a number of reasons, and she had never made any secret of the fact that she hated him. At the time, he hadn’t known about her mental manipulation of him, still under the mistaken belief that the vision he’d had in that bunker had been his PTSD acting up. If he had known right away, would it have made a difference? Would it have made him more wary of studying the scepter and using it for the Ultron program? The worst thing about it was not knowing how much of his actions then had been him and how much it had been her preying on his fears.
She should never have been made an Avenger, and it was still hard for him to understand why the others had thought that was a good idea. Some people in the press had suggested that Rogers might have been trying to set a precedent for Barnes, introducing her as a reformed Hydra agent given a second chance to pave the way for his brainwashed friend. Tony wasn’t sure about that. It seemed far too cunning and long-term for Rogers, who had never given much indication that thinking ahead was a particular skill set of his. In fact, it was almost ridiculous how Rogers always seemed to be completely blindsided by the consequences of events he was involved in. It was like he had no idea of cause and effect on a larger scale.
“Sir? Are you all right?” Jarvis asked, and Tony realized he had just been sitting there staring into space.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine.”
Dum-E rolled over and beeped inquisitively, pointing his arm in the direction of the coffeemaker.
“Yeah, sure. I could do with some coffee,” he told the bot, who rushed off to prepare it right away.
“Is there anything we can do, Boss?” Friday added.
Tony smiled at his kids. “Yep. We all need to get back to work.”
Maximoff was dead and Tony was… okay with that. Not happy about it, exactly, but he couldn’t really say he was unhappy either. It was not his doing, whatever she might have said. She’d had a trial and she had been found guilty by a panel of judges that had nothing to do with him. He was not responsible for her death in any way, and that was… a good thing. After spending so much time with the weight of the world on his shoulders, it was good to know that this was not on him. It was on her. And Rogers too, perhaps.
It was also closure. Not just for him but for all the people she had hurt. A page turned and a book closed for good.
“We’re moving on, kids,” he said. And he was. Finally.
*****
Steve sat in Dr Gibson’s office, hands twisting uselessly on his lap.
“Mr Rogers?” the doctor prompted when the silence had stretched for too long.
“I don’t know,” he finally said. How could he answer that question? How do you feel about Ms Maximoff’s death?
“You don’t need to have a definitive answer, you can just say whatever comes to mind.”
“I… The things I learned in her trial… it was… I didn’t know she was like that… I thought… I thought she was a good girl.” Like me. I thought she was like me. Someone who was overlooked, someone who wanted to matter.
Dr Gibson waited a bit, but Steve didn’t know what else to say.
“You often refer to her as a girl or a kid. Yet she was only a few years younger than yourself, considering your time actually living. Why is that?”
Steve frowned. He had always thought of Wanda as young, as someone who needed help and guidance. “I… I don’t know.”
“She was an adult the entire time you knew her,” Gibson insisted. “Don’t you think it is a little insulting to treat a grown woman as a kid? The implication being that she was unable to make her own decisions or know her own mind. How would you have felt if someone had treated you like that?”
“I would have been angry,” Steve answered, somewhat sullenly. He hated these conversations where Gibson pointed out all his flaws. He hadn’t meant to treat Wanda like a kid, and he hadn’t meant to insult her. He hadn’t meant a lot of things, but he’d fucked up again and again anyway. “I didn’t think of it like that.” He’d hated when Tony had talked to him like he was a moron who couldn’t understand technology or the references he always made that went over Steve’s head. Did Wanda feel the same? She’d never said. “She never complained.”
“Perhaps she realized that it benefitted her.”
Steve looked up at that. “What do you mean?”
“By treating her like a child, you absolved her of all responsibility for her actions. You said she was misled into joining Hydra and working with Ultron, and as such she suffered no consequences from any of it.”
“I… I just thought… She lost her brother.” Like he’d lost Bucky. “That seemed like punishment enough.”
“Her loss did not negate the loss of others, Mr Rogers. Yes, she lost her brother, but many other people lost loved ones too, arguably because of her and her brother’s actions. And their loss was ignored.”
Throughout his trial, Steve had been called selfish multiple times. It still hurt, but he had to admit that people had been right about that. Steve had not thought about the lives Ultron had destroyed when he’d accepted her into the team. He’d only thought about her. And about Bucky.
“I didn’t mean to do that.”
Dr Gibson didn’t reply right away, watching him quietly. “You need to start thinking about things more, Mr Rogers. About how your actions impact those around you and the larger world. Now, back to the original question. How do you feel now that Maximoff is dead?”
“I feel sad,” he finally said, not sure if that was the right answer.
“You thought of her as a friend.”
“Yes.” Was that wrong? Wanda was not, in the end, the person he’d thought she was, but he still… It didn’t feel right that she’d been killed. Executed. It was so… cold.
“Do you think she thought of you as a friend as well?”
Steve was going to say yes, but then he remembered how she’d ranted about killing him once her trial had begun. Had she just been using him? Had it all been a lie? Was this how Tony had felt in Siberia? Going over every piece of interaction to find the hidden meanings that would make sense of this new information?
“I thought so, but…”
He’s my friend.
So was I.
Maybe Steve didn’t really know what friendship was. Even Bucky didn’t want to talk to him anymore.
“She said I betrayed her.” Just like Howard had said. Like Tony would have said if he’d had the chance, probably. And Steve had betrayed them both.
“Do you think you did?”
“No. I mean… I didn’t put her in jail.” But she’d ended up there partly because of his actions. Maybe if he’d let her stay at the Compound like Tony had wanted, she wouldn’t have been dragged into that mess. Why had he been so against that? Because it had been a decision made by someone else? By Tony?
“No, that was a result of her own actions.” Gibson paused. “Many people find it difficult to accept that they make mistakes, so it is easier to blame others.”
Steve sighed, knowing that that was directed at him as well. He’d blamed the Accords and Tony for a lot of things that were his own fault.
“Did they really have to kill her, though?” he asked. “Couldn’t they just… lock her up?” Like they’d done with him. “It doesn’t… it doesn’t seem right.” Even after everything, he still couldn’t help but think how scared she must have been, dragged to her death in such an awful deliberate way. And what about all the people she deliberately killed? he heard in what sounded like Tony’s voice. He thought about Tony a lot these days.
“As I understand it, she was sentenced to death because there was a possibility that she could cause further harm. The collar that blocked her powers could not be guaranteed to hold indefinitely, and if she escaped the consequences would have been catastrophic.”
Steve had never really been afraid of Wanda and her powers, despite having once been subjected to them. When she’d given him that vision in the ship, Steve hadn’t felt the terror others had described. He’d felt… sadness. Loneliness. Loss. Hopelessness. It hadn’t been all that different from how he’d felt right after waking up in the future and realizing his entire world was gone. He’d been off-footed and confused, but not terrified. It was only later, watching Wanda’s trial, that he had heard what other people’s experiences had been like. Maybe if he’d felt the way some of the others claimed they did, he would not have been so quick to dismiss the damage she could do. Somehow Steve had managed to fool himself into thinking she was harmless, that she was someone who needed to be protected.
Even now he was doing it, he realized. Sure, she might have been scared before the end, but she had spent quite a bit of time during her trial making threats against many people, including him. She’d tried to escape once, he knew. What if she had really done it? How would people have defended themselves against her? (How had people defended themselves against him? They hadn’t. The Task Force officers had been hurt, so had Tony.)
“I just wish things had been different. For… for all of us.” For himself, for Tony. For Sam and Wanda and Clint and Bucky and Natasha (who was now also in prison for helping him).
“We cannot change the past, Steve,” Dr Gibson said gently. “The best we can do is try to learn from our mistakes and move forward.”
Wanda would never have the chance to do that now. Steve didn’t know if he could.
Good thing he had about 40 years left to figure it out…
*****
Howard and Maria smiled as Maximoff’s execution was announced. That witch had hurt their son (and plenty of other people), so they were glad she had finally been put to death.
Though Howard had worked with the military most of his life, he had never been a blood-thirsty man. He believed weapons were necessary sometimes, but that didn’t mean he wanted to kill people. He’d seen far too much death in World War II and after to ever make him wish for more. It was one thing to fire on enemy soldiers who were firing back at you, it was something else to throw a bomb that didn’t discriminate between enemy forces and innocent civilians. More and more Howard had felt disillusioned about the weapons business as it had gone from protection to outright massacre of innocents.
Wanda Maximoff, however, was not an innocent. She had willingly joined Hydra and allowed herself to be experimented on because she was promised power to enact her revenge on Tony. She had deliberately used her powers to hurt and kill people without a shred of remorse to further her goals. She was the worst sort of psycho imaginable, and she deserved to be put down like a beast. When Howard really thought of all she’d done, he only regretted that her death had been so quick and painless. She should have suffered more to pay for all the suffering she had inflicted on others.
What really grated, though, was that, if not for Steve going off the deep end to protect Barnes, Maximoff might have still been an Avenger, living a life of luxury and privilege on Tony’s dime and getting away with all the horrible things she’d done. All because Steve had decided that despicable monster was more worthy of care and consideration than Tony. Steve had chosen to ignore her crimes and put her on the team while blaming Tony for the mess she had caused with Ultron. In his more vindictive days, Howard wished Steve had gotten the death penalty too.
Still, her death would hopefully work as a deterrent for future nutcases. Now that the world knew there was a system in place to regulate what enhanced people could do, there would be fewer self-righteous vigilantes like Steve who thought their word was law. Fewer crazy people with ludicrous reasons for using their ill-gotten powers for revenge.
“What do you think is going to happen to her remains?” Maria asked.
“She’ll be cremated and her ashes dumped at sea,” Howard replied. “Tony mentioned it a while back, when the date of the execution was set.”
“That’s good. No chance of anyone trying to recreate whatever was done to her that way.”
“Yeah, that’s the idea.”
“I hope she rots in hell. That psycho deserved to die.” Maria’s conversation with Maximoff (and all ‘Team Cap’ members) after the trial had been very satisfying. Howard had cheered for her as he watched her eviscerate that bitch with cutting words. “I’ll rest easier now that I know she won’t be able to make good on all those threats against Tony and Vision.”
Howard nodded. That had been a real concern. What if the collar failed and Maximoff was able to use her powers again? There was no doubt in his mind that she would have hurt even more people. Now that risk was gone. Tony was safe. Their family was safe. And that was all that Howard and Maria really cared about.
*****
Clint sat in his cell staring at the walls like he did most days. Usually he thought about Laura and the kids, and how much he missed them. Today, however, he was thinking about Wanda. Today he was thinking about how he left his family to go “rescue” her when she’d never needed rescuing in the first place. Not only because Tony hadn’t been keeping her locked up, but also because she was a Hydra murdering bitch who deserved to rot in hell. He had not seen her trial – too busy moping about his own fate – but he’d heard about it. It was impossible not to when everyone seemed to be talking about it, even in prison.
Wanda had not been a “misguided kid” like Steve had insisted. She was a monster who killed and tortured people for Hydra because they had promised to give her powers. Powers that she had used against them, the Avengers. She was a mind-raping creep who had no qualms about messing with people’s minds. Why in the world hadn’t Clint seen that? Why hadn’t any of them seen that? Had she been fucking with their minds the whole time? The thought made him shudder and he felt fervently glad she was dead.
If not for her, maybe Steve wouldn’t have called him. Maybe he would still be with his family, doing ordinary things while bored out of his mind. Maybe he wouldn’t be in a fucking prison cell.
She got what she deserved, and Clint was only sorry he hadn’t been the one to kill her.
What in the world had they been thinking, putting her on the team after everything she’d done? She’d looked so lost when her brother died that Clint had felt sorry for her. And Pietro had died protecting him. He’d felt… responsible, in a way. And she’d no doubt taken advantage of that. She’d played up the little defenseless girl act and they’d all bought into it, hook, line and sinker. All except Tony, that was. That should have told Clint something right there, but it was always so much easier to just blame Tony for everything… So much easier than looking at themselves. Tony just… took whatever crap they dished out and went right on being there, even when he wasn’t. They’d still had all his cool toys, all his money, all his behind the scenes handling. And in their midst, they had Wanda.
The anger was powerful enough to make him feel like he was choking on it some days. Days when he tried to recall Cooper’s laugh and Lila’s smile. Days when he couldn’t remember what Nate sounded like after he’d woken from a nap. His family was gone and Clint was in prison. Wanda might be dead, but that changed nothing for him. There was still no way out, no forgiveness, no second chances. Wanda was dead and Clint might as well be too. He’d lost pretty much everything that mattered to him.
Fuck Wanda. Fuck Steve. And most of all, fuck himself for being such a complete moron.
*****
Vision wasn’t sure how he felt about Ms Maximoff’s death, so he sought Dr Delancy’s help. Therapy had been very helpful to him so far.
“I feel like I should be… sad about it. About the loss of her life.”
“But you’re not?”
“I… do not know.”
“There is rarely a ‘should’ involved in feelings, Vision. There is no right way to feel. Everyone is different and reacts differently to things.”
“She allowed me to believe that she was… a friend. I cannot understand why, if she did not truly feel that way.”
“Maybe she did, in her own way.”
Vision frowned. “She attacked me violently when I had done nothing to her.”
“I know, but, as I said, people are not logical. From what I understand about Ms Maximoff, she might have had sociopathic tendencies, which means that her definition of ‘friendship’ would be rather different from ours. Perhaps in her mind, you were… an ally.”
“Until I wasn’t.”
“Yes. And then she turned on you. Or perhaps she was simply manipulating you for her own gain all along. It is impossible to say for sure. But either way, you did nothing wrong. The fact that you were wrong about what kind of person she was is not your fault.”
Vision looked away. “I know that. Yet I still feel foolish.”
“That’s certainly understandable.”
There was a pause in the conversation as Vision figured out what to say next. Dr Delancy was always good about letting him proceed at his own pace.
“I had not thought about her for months,” he finally said.
“Do you think you should have?”
“No. I had simply not realized how… thoroughly… I had… forgotten her.”
“She hurt you, and many others. It’s okay that you moved on.”
Yes, he had moved on. At the time of the trial he had still harbored some anger and resentment towards her, but now… There was nothing left of any feelings on his part. And it was… freeing.
*****
Being in prison was… boring. There was nothing to do, and so far Natasha had not been able to get anywhere with the prisoners. None of them talked to her, and the doctors looked at her with a mixture of pity and distrust. She was still very much at the bottom of the pecking order here, and she hated it.
Then the news of Wanda’s fate broke out, and that made things even worse for her. Being associated with the dead witch did Natasha no favors at all. She was regarded with even more suspicion and hostility.
“She’s probably Hydra scum too, like the witch,” one of the inmates said in English, just loud enough for Natasha to hear. “It’s too bad they didn’t put her to death too. It would be fitting.”
Natasha refrained from rolling her eyes. The woman in question was in prison for murdering her husband and his mistress (and cutting off the cheater’s dick and balls for good measure), so it wasn’t like she was an upstanding citizen.
“It’s good that witch is dead,” another one said. “Her power was scary. Mind control… Ugh.” She shivered and the others all agreed.
Natasha remembered the feeling of being trapped in her nightmare vision of the Red Room when Wanda had used her power on her. It had left her feeling shaky and unsure of herself. If Wanda had been in her sight when Natasha had recovered her senses, she would have killed the witch right there and then. Why had she accepted her as an Avenger, then? Because it had been Steve’s idea? She couldn’t recall what her reasoning had been. Had Wanda messed with her mind some more? With all their minds? Did she somehow make them more sympathetic to her? Keeping Bruce close had been her way of controlling the Hulk, making herself safe from the beast, but Wanda? What guarantees did she ever have that Wanda wouldn’t turn on them anyway?
The more she thought about it, the more likely it seemed that they’d been influenced somehow. Natasha wouldn’t have been so stupid as to just blindly follow Steve. (Wouldn’t she? Wasn’t that what she’d done in Liepzig?)
It didn’t really matter, though. Wanda was dead and the rest of them were rotting in prison with no end in sight. They had all lost, one way or another.
*****
Stephen Strange never properly met Wanda Maximoff, but he disliked her on principle. First for hurting a whole lot of people, including his new friends in the New Avengers, and second for giving magic users a bad name. In the aftermath of her trial, the Order of the Mystic Arts had faced a great deal of scrutiny and suspicion from the world for their perceived association with the witch. It had taken him and his fellow Order members a great deal of hard work to convince the general public that they were nothing like Maximoff. The fact that they had been a secret organization prior to that had not helped matters either, not after the mess with SHIELD/Hydra. Still, it had turned out all right in the end. Stephen became an official magical consultant with the Accords Panel and a reserve member of the Avengers.
As such, he had been asked to be there as a witness – and as back-up in case something went wrong. Stephen had seen plenty of people die – he’d been a doctor, after all – but watching an execution was not something he was comfortable doing. Fortunately for him, Wong had volunteered to go instead. While Stephen was very much aware that he might not always have the luxury of sticking to his oath of doing no harm, this was not an emergency that required him to break it, so he’d been happy to pass it on to someone better suited to the task.
According to Wong, everything had gone well (considering that ‘well’, in this case, was the deliberate end of a human life), including the cremation of her remains. Maximoff would no longer present a danger to the world.
There were still other magical threats out there, however. Stephen and the Order would remain vigilant and ready to offer their expertise whenever needed.
*****
There was very little to do in prison except think and regret. At first, Sam had felt nothing but despair and hopelessness. After a while, however, things started to get a little better thanks to the therapy he was doing. It was something of a double-edged sword, though, because the more he talked about the whole mess – and put the anger and hurt within him out – the more clearly he saw what had gone wrong and why. He could say, honestly, that he was no longer the blind arrogant idiot who ignored the UN and racked up an impressive list of mistakes and bad decisions. Unfortunately for him, it didn’t change his situation. He was still going to be stuck in prison for at least 10 years – and that was being extremely optimistic about his chances of early release.
There were days when he thought it was unfair. Sam was a good person and he didn’t deserve to rot in a cell for over a decade. Then he remembered that believing himself good and actually doing good were two very different things. Prison wasn’t only for people who were ‘bad’, but also about making ‘good’ people face consequences for the mistakes they made. Sam’s actions had resulted in a great deal of destruction and harm to others, and saying he was a good guy who didn’t mean to hurt anyone didn’t erase any of that.
Still, when he saw the news about Wanda’s execution, all he felt was bitterness and anger – at the world and, mostly, at himself. Her trial had shown quite clearly that Wanda had never been the poor innocent girl Steve (and the rest of them) had believed her to be. She had done terrible things for Hydra of her own free will (unlike Barnes), and they had welcomed her with open arms in spite of it. Saying they didn’t know about it was hardly an excuse, when they had never even tried to find out anything about her, simply accepting her word that she was sorry and wanted to turn over a new leaf. Now Steve and Sam, along with Natasha and Clint, would forever be known as the people who helped a Hydra terrorist escape justice. They would be known as the people who defended a murderer and called her innocent, utterly oblivious (and indifferent) to the lives she had ruined.
When Sam thought about that, about how he and the others had acted towards Wanda, he felt sick. He wanted to blame some kind of mind-control for it, but he knew there had been no such thing. They had made their own stupid decisions based on their own bias and lack of care, and now they had to own up to it. And it was hard. Really hard.
The news mentioned that there were celebrations happening in Sokovia, and the idea made Sam deeply uncomfortable. He couldn’t help but wonder if there would have been celebrations if the rest of the so-called ‘Team Cap’ had been sentenced to death as well. Would people now be cheering if Sam was dead? Or Steve? Given the hostility and anger they’d faced during the trials, Sam didn’t doubt it, and the thought filled him with shame and regret. What had he (they) done? And no matter how hard he tried or how sorry he was for all of it, he might never escape the taint of being a criminal. Worse yet, a terrorist.
All the therapy in the world couldn’t fix his mistakes.
What have we done?
*****
The day Maximoff died was a day like any other. Bruce was in the middle of an experiment when the news pinged on his worktable, courtesy of Jarvis. He continued what he was doing and only acknowledged it once the tests were running and there was nothing else to do while waiting for the results.
Bruce had once told Maximoff that he could kill her and not change color, and at the time – and for a long time afterwards as well – it had been true. The anger had faded a bit with time and distance, however, and the murderous rage had abated somewhat. At least it had until she had attacked people in Uganda for no apparent reason. Until she had shot a doctor and a security guard in an attempt to escape. Until she had threatened Tony, Vision and the whole world for not bending over backwards for her.
Maybe Bruce would not have killed her with his own hands – he already had too much blood in them – but he could not say he was sorry she was dead. She was a delusional crazy psychopath who saw no problem in messing with people’s minds if it got her what she wanted. There was nothing innocent or redeemable about her, and it still baffled him that Steve and the others had apparently thought so.
Bruce regretted leaving as he had – running away like he always did because it was easier than staying and fighting – not for the Avengers, who were, all in all, a bunch of selfish assholes, but for Tony. And because his leaving had made it possible for Maximoff to join uncontested. Her death was a relief and, in a way, absolution for him. It rectified a mistake made (by him and others), and ensured the world’s safety. It would no doubt make him sleep easier to know that she would never again have the opportunity to use him, to twist him into his worst nightmare. After Ross being sent to jail, it was another weight lifted off his shoulders, another threat gone.
Being the Hulk was easier these days, and would be easier still now. He could focus on healing, on moving on, on helping instead of hiding, afraid of everyone and everything. Bruce would not go so far as to celebrate her death the way some people were doing, but it did make him feel better. It was closure for the former era of the Avengers and all they represented. It was closure for him, and it felt good.
*****
The news of Wanda Maximoff’s execution was a relief to James. While the nightmares about the chair had dwindled with time and therapy, the thought that someone could do what the chair did (and worse) had still weighted heavily in his mind. Sure, she was in prison, but as long as she was alive there was a possibility that she could get free. Even if it was unlikely that she would come after him, she could have mind-raped other people. Now that she was dead, that danger was past.
And he felt much better.
Thank god she’s gone. Hopefully one day soon all of Hydra would be too.