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Folie à deux
Good things come in threes.
This is not a completely true axiom, but neither is it wrong. Rather, like most of life, it’s a fairly even mix . . . depending on who you ask, of course.
Bad things come in threes.
See the above explanation.
Then, just to throw off any and all statistical numbers and probabilities (and thus, giving statisticians and Vegas bookies a nasty case of hives), one thing happens to three different people. It’s the same event, but not the same end result.
That exact scenario happened to Wanda Maximoff, Steve Rogers, and Tony Stark. And it truly could not have happened to three more deserving people.
As with most life-changing events, it started small: two days after his death, Wanda first heard the ghostly voice of her brother Pietro murmuring to her right around midnight, as she drifted, not quite awake but not yet asleep. His voice full of love, he crooned his encouragement for her to make the most of her new life while also urging her on in her — their — goal of destroying Tony Stark for the crime of killing not just their parents, but also Pietro. The first time she heard that desperately-missed voice whisper, “Sleep well and dream better, Little Sunshine,” she broke down in tears and cried herself to sleep, missing her twin so badly it physically hurt and cursing Tony Stark’s very existence.
Her demeanor the next day vacillated sharply between joy and morose sadness, which confused and disturbed the others, though she refused to explain, so they quickly chalked it up to lingering grief at Pietro’s death and the new, unexpected changes in her life. That reasoning that served her well, so she easily went along with the assumption, while getting more and more eager for night, when she could sleep without questions or concern and once more hear her brother’s voice.
He didn’t come to her every night, but his appearances did increase as time passed and the manifestations lasted a little longer each time. His . . . communication, as it were . . . was at first along the same lines of familial endearments, intermixed with what should have been troubling encouragement to murder Tony Stark but was instead as comforting to her as ‘adored sister’, but one night perhaps a month after his first manifestation, her sleep-addled mind almost convinced her that he said, “It isn’t fair you sleep so well, so untroubled, when you killed me,” instead of wishing her sweet dreams or luck in achieving Stark’s death.
She easily dismissed such ridiculous thoughts; there was no way Pietro would ever say something so horrible to her. So when more than a few times he mentioned the scepter and her culpability in letting Stark take it along with being responsible for his own death, well, clearly she was just hallucinating because of the trauma caused by Stark. Her beloved twin would never accuse her of things she had actually done, especially when her reasons had been so justified.
Somewhere between her deliberate failure to trap a squad of not-HYDRA agents outside their bunker (so they could be questioned) before Romanova destroyed it and the disaster of Lagos, Pietro’s comforting words and tender voice began to be evenly mixed with his heated, angry accusations of causing his death and almost killing herself in the process due to her mind-rape of Stark and her foolish choice to let him take the scepter instead of simply executing him. He came to her at least three times a week, each time angrier and more aggressive and making it difficult for her to find true sleep. It didn’t take long before the dark circles under her eyes were so pronounced that even Steve finally noticed, though he was easily fobbed off with the semi-true excuse that she was troubled by Stark’s continued refusal to apologize or make things up to her.
Between Lagos and Leipzig Airport, the comforting words and loving voice were finally obliterated under the weight of his truthful accusations observations about the crimes she had so willingly, so eagerly, committed . . . because she loved living in the Avengers Compound, its luxuries indescribable, but she also badly missed the HYDRA base, where she could use her powers to their full, malignant extent — which Pietro also commented on, causing her to finally lose her temper and scream a tearful denial. Fortunately, Stark’s soundproofing held and nobody heard her outburst.
But she could no longer blame his words on exhaustion or distraction, because the frequency of his presence increased again, as did his accusations, torturing her at least four nights out of six, and ensuring that even when she did finally sleep, she got no rest . . . and no respite.
Little by little, without anyone truly noticing, or caring, Wanda Maximoff’s grip on reality became dangerously, treacherously, unstable.
Then, the night after the Lagos disaster, in addition to the bitter accusations unfair statements about her own actions, which had replaced Pietro’s loving, reassuring words of comfort, something . . . shifted . . . in her perception of reality.
Or perhaps her dangerous, treacherous, unstable hold on reality was unable to cope with her refusal to acknowledge her clear guilt of her many crimes, and it steadily disintegrated until she was clinging to sanity by very few, even more tenuous, threads.
Either way, the first night she tried to sleep after Rogers soothed her untroubled conscience about the 98 deaths and 317 injuries that were a direct result of her refusal inability to contain the bomb by telling her that it wasn’t her fault so many people were hurt or dead, nor was she responsible for the fact that people were afraid of her and her unstable, reckless, destructive use of power . . . that night, Pietro’s ghostly voice changed to Pietro’s actual ghost.
She was overjoyed . . . for four, maybe five seconds. Because instead of the adoring face and tender voice of her brother comforting her and planning Stark’s death with her, he screamed that her eager alliance with ULTRON, Stark’s world-protecting brainchild, hadn’t just murdered him, her beloved twin. It had also led directly to the situation she was in now: hated and feared in equal measure, with no tolerance, no understanding, and no leniency granted to her, in spite of Steve’s unquestioning protection and Nat’s manipulations and Clint’s emotional adoption of her.
The next night, he tormented her with the truth accusation that she could have handled the bomb just fine, had she chosen to. But she had been very careful to hide the extent of her abilities, and since they hadn’t been there to stop a HYDRA terrorist — and Steve was so frantic to find his friend Bucky that he would do literally whatever took to achieve his goal — she was able to use the confusion to her advantage. Because Steve mistakenly believed that Wanda herself was a misguided and reformed HYRDA dupe, feeding his need to be ‘the hero’, in addition to her powerful mental abilities, which were a huge part of his plans for Barnes, he let her do anything she wanted and justifed everything she did, no matter how bad or damaging, while also being careful not to make her do things she didn’t like.
She hated Tony Stark, so Steve (who had not-very-hidden reasons of his own; she honestly didn’t understand how nobody but Romanova saw it) got rid of him. She didn’t like ‘training’ with Nat or Vision, because what they wanted her to do was dull and boring and just . . . it was designed to make her help people, to save them, and she hated that.
Steve, desperate to keep her happy, told them to stop the training. When they objected, he declared that she already knew everything she needed to and would ask for help if she deemed it necessary.
All of them, even Vision, were unaware that one of the side effects of getting her powers was the ability to both sense strong emotions and also absorb their energy — and her training under HYDRA unveiled the discovery that she not only had a talent for mentally decimating people’s minds, she really enjoyed it. But during the process of honing that skill, she developed an addiction as strong as heroin to the power surges that her victims gave her as she mentally violated them and absorbed their fear and their pain and their regrets and their desperate hope of rescue, things so violently stolen from them by the red mist of cruelty-fed greed and the ever-deepening need for her next fix.
So when she first joined the Avengers, she unexpectedly went cold-turkey because as a ‘hero’, she was expected to help people, not hurt them.
It was little wonder she was so jittery and twitchy: not only was she badly pretending to be a reformed HYDRA agent, a truly repentant hero, she’d also gone from having multiple hits a day to less than three a month.
But when she realized Steve’s intentions for her with regards to his precious Bucky, paired with his penchant of coddling her so he could feel like the big, strong, protective hero he so badly wanted to be and tell himself he was keeping her safe by letting her use her powers and abilities as she wished, she played into his (and Clint) tendency to infantilize her, because they would excuse and justify everything she did, which meant including her in more missions . . . and giving her more potential targets.
Finally, she was able to indulge her desperate hunger to feel people’s terror at her power, their acknowledgement of her superiority, and the fact that she held their lives in her magic- and blood-soaked hands. Granted, Steve’s preferred methods of destruction weren’t as satisfying or as enjoyable as the personal connection that came from mentally shredding minds, but she got a lot more victims at one time and the end results were the same. The massive waves of fear, terror, pain, regret, and lost hope generated by so many innocents were her heroin . . . and subtlety was not an ability she possessed.
Lagos shouldn’t have surprised anyone.
But it made Steve’s bullshit assertion that she couldn’t control other people’s fears, only her own, both hilarious and the perfect excuse — and the best part was that he actually believed it.
She could literally do no wrong in his eyes and hadn’t had to use a single mental manipulation on him to achieve such an amazing goal.
On top of that, even she was unaware of the ticking time bomb that was the danger in using her abilities. HYDRA had unintentionally poured the mental equivalent of the entirety of the Pacific Ocean into a container meant to hold the Philippine Sea, then made no effort to help her expand those shores; they cared only about increasing the size and power of the waves, as it were. So the more she trained and used her ill-gotten powers, the more damage she did to the edges of her mind. It didn’t drive her insane, but it did cause a strong imbalance of her mental and emotional states. Ironically, hiding in the Avengers saved her life: the cessation of the constant training and usage helped her mental barriers stabilize, though that meant the effects were exponentially worse when she did use them on missions.
Pietro knew all of this and relentlessly tormented her, refusing to let her escape her guilt and complicity by sleeping away the truth.
His ghostly manifestations had no pattern, no kind of timing. Wanda developed a deep love/hate relationship with the deep night, because she never knew when her sleep would be interrupted by those horrible, awful, unfair accusations, but she had no idea how to make them stop. Though she wouldn’t have used it had she known; she craved the contact with her twin more than she wanted to pretend she was innocent and had committed no crimes and harmed no people.
Up until Lagos, Pietro’s specter had done her the favor of staying confined to her room, after midnight, and only appearing when she was alone.
After that unmitigated disaster, when she neither felt nor showed any remorse after she came down from the euphoric high she hadn’t experienced since she abandoned ULTRON, that changed, too. And suddenly, apropos of nothing, Wanda would gasp in affront or cry out in protest at thin air, regardless of where she was or who she was with or what time it was or what any of them were doing. The first time she cried, “No! That is not what happened!”, it scared the daylights out of her teammates, but since they were watching Armageddon, everyone chalked it up to denial of Bruce Willis’ character’s death.
Then it happened again, while Wilson was making sandwiches for lunch.
While they were playing Uno.
During their failed book club meeting.
Exiting the elevator.
Her words were frequently spoken in her native tongue, leaving Steve and Sam clueless as well as confused, but Romanova mostly understood . . . though, true to form, she chose to keep this information hidden from her teammates. The reason why the other woman was randomly protesting her innocence or declaring that Stark was the devil incarnate was something Natasha couldn’t begin to figure out, other than ‘slightly-unhinged HYDRA agent’, but she quickly resigned herself to being confused, because the only time she asked Wanda about the random outbursts, she had to duck and run to keep a burst of furious red magic from throwing her into the next room, accompanied by a furious tirade about privacy and personal conversations and being just as arrogant as Stark.
Being primarily focused on her personal well-being — and knowing that Steve would lose his mind if she hurt the brat — Romanova just blinked. ‘Seriously volatile and losing her grip on sanity’ it was, then.
She could certainly work with that; when you got down to it, it wasn’t any worse than dealing with Steve’s narcissism, inferiority complex, and Little Man Syndrome, after all, or Wilson’s destructive habit of enabling the people he’d glommed onto in order to validate his existence and judgement calls. And that wasn’t counting having to babysit Stark. She could handle one petulant, immature woman-child who refused to grow up because Steve (and Clint, though he was retired and gone now) didn’t want her to and also because it suited her to play the ingénue teenager, even though she was in her late twenties.
Suffice to say, it never occurred to the famed Black Widow, the Greatest Spy in the History of Spies the World Over Since Time Began, that maybe the fact that Wanda was a) hallucinating her dead brother and b) he was accusing her of crimes she had, in fact, committed, might be a problem. Instead, she saw it as another way to control the girl, albeit one a little more dangerous than the Widow’s usual marks.
So Romanova continued to ignore the increasingly obvious signs of a mental breakdown while using the outbursts to her advantage by slowly transferring Maximoff’s trust from Steve to her . . . or so she thought. Rogers didn’t have the experience — or the desire — to know what he was hearing and seeing, so he comforted Wanda by telling her that nothing was her fault and even if it was, she was just a kid, so it really wasn’t. Wilson, as badly as he wanted to like her because Steve did, was too wary of her abilities and her extremely mercurial moods to force himself to spend individual time with her; he stayed away as much as he could outside of team training and missions, which meant that he also missed the increasingly obvious signs of a pending mental breakdown, despite his training and experience (such as it was) as a mediator who mistakenly thought he was a genuine, qualified counselor.
Vision, while having access to literally the entire Internet, was too young, too mentally immature, and too emotionally inexperienced to even begin to grasp the implications of what he saw and heard Wanda do. On top of that, he spent little time with Rhodes and less with Tony, meaning his experience with people who were genuine instead of manipulative users was very limited. Combine that with the fact that Steve was the leader of the team, and his word was law now that Tony was gone, and the end result was that the android trusted his team leader’s assurances that everything was fine, Wanda was just working things out and adjusting to having a new kind of family.
So Wanda’s mental state deteriorated more and faster, until it was simply commonplace for the entire team to hear her talking to — or, well, arguing with — herself, in two different languages, about things that were always related in some way to Tony Stark, ULTRON, Pietro, and/or HYDRA, sometimes under her breath, sometimes just like a normal conversation with an invisible person, and sometimes at the top of her lungs. When the latter happened, everyone would give her a wide-eyed look, Steve would offer an empty, meaningless reassurance, and the group would quietly leave the room — all of which had long since been cleared of anything breakable or fragile.
And yet, not a single member of the ‘team’ gave that necessity a second thought.
By the time the Accords were something even Rogers had to acknowledge, Wanda’s lopsided on-again/off-again relationship with reality was well-known to her teammates, and just as routinely ignored. To be sure, Clint was taken more than a little by surprise when she got into a very intense conversation with herself after he ‘rescued’ her from the Compound, but a quick text message to Natasha gave him the information this was a regular thing and nothing to worry about. He wasn’t entirely sure he agreed, but when Wanda’s hands began to glow with red tendrils as her one-person, multiple point-of-view diatribe about how evil Stark was reached critical mass, he made the executive decision to keep his mouth shut. His orders had been to rescue her and take her to Steve, and that was exactly what he was going to do. And hell, for all he knew, Stark had drugged her or some shit to make her go crazy while he illegally detained her.
When she stopped dead in her tracks mid-battle and dropped the carpark she’d been about to hurl at Tony back on the ground in favor of screaming, “No! It’s not my fault! They lied! Stark wasn’t supposed to be that smart or that strong! He murdered our parents and then he killed you but I can’t kill him because he won’t get close enough and his mind is shielded! It’s all his fault! I didn’t do it!!!”, Rogers, Wilson, and Romanova just sighed. Vision blinked, clearly befuddled. Tony, Rhodes, Peter, T’Challa, Barnes, Barton, and Lang froze, staring at the crazed woman with shock and — in Tony’s case — a surge of vindictive satisfaction. It didn’t take a genius of his caliber to see what was happening, but apparently, it took more intelligence than Rogers’ entire team could claim.
What a surprise.
Oddly enough, the astonishment of Team Iron Man seeing Wanda have one of her . . . moments . . . wasn’t as advantageous for Team Cap as one would have thought. This was mostly due to Spiderman, who had seen pretty much everything humanly and spiderly possible while patrolling Queens and as such, was almost impossible to shock, so he recovered his poise within seconds. It helped that, like Tony, he was able to multi-task, so he could process his lingering confusion while swinging/webbing something up/exchanging witty banter, and his status as an unknown entity for Team Cap meant they really weren’t paying attention to him; their wary, hostile gazes strayed between Iron Man, War Machine, and their hysterical teammate.
This time, Peter took no offense at their disregard of him, because that meant while everyone else — literally everyone, because her team had gotten sucked in to the spectacle despite their experience with her outbursts — was gaping at the Scarlet Witch, who was standing in the middle of Leipzig Airport’s tarmac, shrieking at the top of her lungs about how Tony Stark was the source of all evil in the universe and it was his fault her entire family was dead and she should have killed him in the bunker instead of letting him have the scepter and deliberately mentally pushing him to make something that would destroy his entire world along with him, he was proactively taking away Team Cap’s weapons.
He took full advantage of their stupor at watching their teammate finally lose her mind and webbed everyone’s feet to the ground, adding a second layer just to be sure, then used his new Taser web on Clint’s bow and quiver of arrows, rendering them useless, before giving the same treatment to Wilson and his stolen Falcon wings. Then, after taking a minute to study his remaining opponents, he carefully applied a thick layer of (and he quoted, here) ‘triple extra sticky webs, guaranteed to keep a skyscraper upright’ along the entire surface and under-edge of Rogers’ shield, which was haphazardly slung over one shoulder, meaning he would be unable to throw it for at least 30 minutes despite his strength, because it would be super-glued (well, webbed) to his hand.
That done, he also applied the ‘seriously sticky webs’ to the forearms and elbow joints of first the dude in the black cat suit (he was supposedly on Mr. Stark’s side, but Peter recognized the rage in his eyes and knew that he’d turn on them all in a second if it got him whatever he was after), then the Black Widow (who was also allegedly on their side but had been making his spider sense for danger go wild before the crazy woman with the red mist launched it into orbit), essentially gluing their arms to their sides, then took a deep breath and did a double-shot for the guy with the metal arm, using his left hand to wrap one strand around his waist — which would hopefully trap his guns along with the prosthetic arm itself, at least for a few minutes — while his right hand layered several strands across the back of his knees.
He didn’t know how he knew, but this man would realize something had happened and react immediately, thus breaking everyone else’s stupor. The other guy, the one who could change sizes (which would have been so cool under better circumstances), had vanished, but Peter wasn’t too worried. The man’s feet should still be webbed firmly to the tarmac, but even if they weren’t, fighting two people instead of eight was much better odds — especially since now it would be four-on-two instead of a very uneven one-on-one battle, intention-wise.
His supposition about Barnes was proven correct, but his preventative measures held and with all the heavy hitters crippled but Maximoff, Tony’s team was able to finish things quickly. Rhodes shot Romanova with great relish, which made her miss her desperate throw of a Widow Bite at Peter. With her out of play, he studied a rabid T’Challa, who was actually hurting himself in his frantic efforts to get free from Spiderman’s webs, and sighed before shooting him with a mini-shoulder concussive gun. The force slammed the man flat on his back and knocked him out, while Vision clocked a miniscule Lang (who couldn’t move his feet but could still shrink) and smacked him with a beam from the Mind Stone before restraining and tranquilizing all three of them.
Tony took a dark, vindictive satisfaction in blasting Rogers, whose hand was indeed stuck to his shield, in the chest with a repulsor blast from a distance of about five yards. The hit was so powerful it managed to break the webs on his feet and sent the man skidding several yards across the tarmac, destroying his suit and giving him serious road rash, before a second hit, this time in the form of a punch right in that stupidly-perfect mouth from Tony’s gauntleted fist, knocked him (and a few teeth) out.
Seeing his success, Rhodes copied his actions and hit Barnes in the middle of his sternum with a repulsor and got the same result: one super soldier knocked ass-over-teakettle across the ground. However, it took a second shot to keep him down and a third to finally knock him out, leading Rhodes to make the preemptive decision to go ahead and double restrain both him and Rogers on top of giving them a tranquilizer. That was a headache nobody needed.
The whole thing took less than four minutes. The dual super soldier threat neutralized, Tony took even greater satisfaction in throwing most of his arsenal of weapons at the witch with the purpose keeping her furious, crazed attention — and her magic, which meant her hands — on him. He didn’t want to kill her . . . yet . . . but he fully intended to enjoy her fury at her impotence when she was unable to kill or even hurt him.
With her awareness fully centered on Tony, Vision took the chance to see if he could use the Mind Stone to calm her down, while Peter was free to aim at his leisure and successfully hit her hands with five rapid-fire shots, thoroughly binding her. She was so insane with fury that it did take all five hits to restrict her movements and subdue her magic, but Vision’s attempt successfully combined with Peter’s and the second her ability to access her powers was cut off, she dropped like a marionette with its strings cut, unconscious as she crumpled to the ground.
The sudden cessation of violence hit Tony’s team all at once and they silently congregated in the middle of the tarmac, doing a wordless inventory to ensure nobody was badly hurt and taking a few minutes to just breathe and try to process what the hell had happened with regards to Wanda’s crazed outburst. They got no answers, because Team Cap was either unconscious or screaming obscenities at them, but that was fine. She was unconscious, bound, and neutered, so right now, it didn’t matter. With swift, brutal efficiency, the entire group of idiots was properly restrained and — in three pointed instances — gagged, hauled to the jet, and taken back to Vienna.
Because of the massive amount of damage Rogers’ team had caused, not to mention the deaths and injuries, nobody wanted to dick around and drag out the legal process of pressing charges and putting the fools on trial. Tony, who had been swimming in the shark-infested waters of global politics since he was a toddler, had never seen that much easy, international cooperation in his entire life. Jaw hanging open, he watched three people, who less than a month ago had cheerfully tried to kill each other in a knife fight over who would sign a treaty first, sit down at the same table and come to an agreement about charges and which government had primacy without so much as a raised voice, while whole countries who hated each other on general principle acted like they’d been best friends since time began as they agreed on punishments and sentencing.
However, being Tony Stark, he just shrugged and went with it. It said a great deal about his life that this level of international cooperation wasn’t the most startling thing he’d seen this month, though it did make the Top Five.
Plus, he wasn’t stupid enough to look a gift horse in the mouth.
Or anywhere else, for that matter.
Then the trials began and it was entertainment for the masses, along with a massive dose of vindictive satisfaction for most people and an equally massive serving of crow for the rest.
During Wanda’s trial, which was third, the descriptor ‘insane’ was omitted from any report on both the witch and her tantrums because two psychiatrists and two psychologists, none of whom knew each other professionally or personally, found her to be fully sane and totally compos mentis. The outbursts, though violent and, from all appearances, teetering on psychotic, weren’t due to any kind of mental illness, including Folie à deux¸ despite their many similarities. Since Pietro was dead, it was actually impossible for her to have developed that particular disorder, to her lawyer’s very mild annoyance. Her great, though well-hidden, relief was carefully ignored.
The unanimous consensus was that the visions of her dead brother were actually a manifestation of her mind’s inability to continue denying her own responsibility and guilt in her numerous crimes, chief among which was the massive part she’d played in her twin’s violent death. It therefore followed that each subsequent incident and death that were a direct result of her actions exponentially increased the mental pressure, which naturally led to ever-more-intense and violent outbursts, and the final, fatal implosion couldn’t be too far off if she continued on her current path.
Rather ironically, her capture and arrest had finally overridden her ability to mentally rewrite her own history, which was why the increasingly unstable manifestations had so abruptly stopped: she was no longer able to pretend she was innocent, not to the world and certainly not to herself.
Then her trial started . . . and the data dump was the gift that kept on giving.
The journals, which she and Pietro had naïvely assumed were truly personal, were used to document not just their lives as two of HYDRA’s favorite assets but their own personal goals and small, intimate details of their lives, details that revealed a disturbing level of enjoyment at living and training in the middle of a busy, active HYDRA base . . . and those details made a great many of the witnesses to the trial nauseous on seeing the self-identified levels of the pair’s depravity.
And giving.
Wanda’s training videos and transcripts, which had been very thoroughly logged and notated, because HYDRA liked their records, were on par with photographs taken of Mengele’s experiments. Three direct descendants of Holocaust survivors had to leave the room after seeing them.
And giving.
The long list of people, from law enforcement to top business executives to high-ranked government officials, that Pietro had abducted both as part of his training and on authorized missions — people who were often given to his sister for interrogation that none of them survived, either mentally or physically — killed what little opposition remained to her execution.
Then it gave a little more, because it was generous like that.
A set of six photographs, captured in black and white, showed Wanda’s face glowing with childish delight that was also dark and malevolent as she saw the man restrained in a simple folding chair, his entire body radiating defeat. He looked so much like Tony Stark that the man himself had to double-check to make sure he was, in fact, standing in the court room. The delight shifted to anticipation and then deepened to rapture, forever caught in a rictus of near-ecstasy as her fingernails, partially hidden behind bright white tendrils of magic, dug grey bloody divots into his cheeks. His eyes were eternally full of raw terror and his face contorted in agonizing pain as she joyfully used her abilities to shred his mind.
More than a few people threw up on seeing the grisly collage.
Then there were the videos and records from the Compound, showing her rabid hatred of Tony and her gleeful, blatant abuse of his generosity . . . and it also revealed the disdainful attitude of the Rogues regarding him, and the hateful way everyone but Vision treated him — and the fact that every single one of them sympathized with Wanda’s claims that Tony had murdered her parents and brother was noted with a mix of grim disapproval and appalled disbelief, despite his multiple attempts to show them evidence that proved otherwise, never mind Wilson’s familiarity with SI’s weapons due to his military service or just plain common sense.
The tide had long since turned against her — against all of them — when the coup de grâce was delivered.
But God has a sense of humor as well as an overwhelming desire for justice, and so it was that by unloading SHIELDRA and their records online for the entire world to see, Romanova and Rogers gave the world one final gift: the undeniable, well-deserved, utter destruction of Wanda Maximoff.
The best part? Tony didn’t have a damn thing to do with it.
At Rogers’ strong urging and despite her court-appointed attorney’s weak objections, Wanda, her magic contained by the twin bands clasped around her wrists and deceptively delicate collar circling her throat, defiantly took the stand on the trial’s last day . . . and Tony got the unexpected, pure joy of watching her world be utterly decimated while he was vindicated in so many ways.
To the surprise of nobody but Steve Rogers, every single question both the defense and the prosecution asked circled back to Tony and how he had deliberately ruined her life by personally coming to her home, dropping the first bomb directly on her parents’ heads and detonating it with his bare hands, and then cruelly, viciously, leaving a second bomb in the hall, taunting her and Pietro with their impending deaths as he left, cackling with glee.
Hearing the depth of her delusions was . . . extremely disturbing . . . and turned even the stomachs of the German and Russian spy masters (hell, it turned Nick Fury’s stomach, and he’d had it removed the year after he became the Director of SHIELD).
Tony just sighed, long since inured to this particular delusion.
Both attorneys gave up on questioning Wanda after the fourth attempt eventually resulted in the same rant about Tony and his murderous ways; it was clear that nobody was going to get anything coherent out of her, though she accidentally incriminated herself and her team a few dozen times, which was worth its weight in gold on seeing her teammates’ frantic attempts to get her to shut up when they realized she was spilling her guts because she had no control and no filter. The fact that she was helping seal their fates was a nice bonus for everyone but them and full advantage was taken to ensure that maximum sentences and the harshest punishments were given.
And then . . . Rogers and Romanova’s last gift to the world, which they had nearly destroyed for no reason other than hubris and selfishness, was presented.
The president of the Accords Panel had apparently a) learned some painful, but invaluable, lessons from the other trials, b) gained the consent of both his Council and the Sokovian delegation, and c) spoken with Vision ahead of time, because once both parties rested their case, the android silently appeared behind Wanda, placed his hands on her temples, and concentrated. The Mind Stone in his forehead glowed fiercely gold for several minutes, but when he released her and stepped back, she was sitting normally in the chair and her eyes were clear. Full of rage and hate and the promise of death, yes, but the fog of fanaticism was gone. He’d managed to return her to a state of comprehension, at least for a little while, and that was all Accords President Viktor Shonski needed.
He looked at her for a very long minute, a look she returned with artificially-restrained fury, clearly debated with himself about whether or not to speak, then sighed and shook his head before he picked up a remote and used it to lower a giant TV screen down the near wall. He gave her a second look, this one even more loaded with meaning, and quietly told her, “After long, intense consultation with the doctors who evaluated you, the unanimous decision was made to hold this back until after both parties had presented their case and rested, because, frankly, this information has exactly zero impact on the scope and nature of the crimes for which this body is prosecuting you. But it is of personal interest to you. And the people who supported and enabled you deserve to know the truth as much as you do. So I am giving you one chance to truly understand the origins of your folly.”
He gave the courtroom a thorough once-over that made several people shift in clear discomfort, understanding too well his ominous meaning; the Rogue Avengers were not among them. His trepidation and resolve were both on full display, something Tony respected, and after perhaps a minute, a deep sigh came from his chest as he turned his full attention to Maximoff again. “Personally, I’m not convinced this is a good idea, but I . . . despite everything,” he told her, holding her gaze without blinking, “in the interest of justice, you deserve a genuine chance to repent and apologize once you know the real truth.”
With no other preamble, not even a word of introduction, he started a video.
The confused courtroom was unnaturally silent in the face of this unusual turn of events, but after about fifteen seconds, words became redundant.
Because on the oversized screen were Wanda’s HYDRA handers: Baron Wolfgang von Strucker and Dr. Johann List. They were discussing her and Pietro’s training, clearly pleased with their progress, and Strucker nodded at List’s comment about their ravenous, irrational hunger for revenge against Tony Stark.
The date was eight days before the Avengers’ first run-in with the twins.
“It’s ironic, you know,” Strucker told the other man. “They are such eager, vicious disciples for HYDRA and yet, have no idea their parents were members of the ‘Freedom for Sokovia’ group, one formed for the sole purpose of opposing us, much less that they’d actually helped develop a program that would have successfully neutralized our local operation for several days and allowed them to mine our databanks. Fortunately, we found them first and since bomb strikes were a common thing at the time, no one questioned the destruction of the entire block and nobody realized the Maximoffs were actually assassinated — along with five others who lived in or near their complex; that area was a nest of enemy operatives because it allowed them to easily meet in plain sight. That’s why it took so long to identify those upper mid-level agents.”
He took a minute to gauge List’s reaction and was gratified to receive a deeply impressed look in response.
“The failure of the second bomb was initially disappointing, though unsurprising, given we were forced to use modified HammerTech weaponry, but it turned into a blessing, since it resulted in two of the most powerful potential assets we’ve had since we found Barnes,” he continued. “And they still don’t know that it wasn’t an SI bomb, much less realize that Tony Stark likely couldn’t identify Sokovia on a map. But like all civilians, they have no clue what a Stark Industries bomb looks like, so they saw the name ‘Stark’, which we stenciled on all Hammer’s junk after repainting it — the illusion of both fear and superiority are often just as effective as the real thing and considerably less expensive—“ he explained in answer to the confusion on his colleague’s face, “—and that was that: Tony Stark killed their parents. They’re so desperate to murder him to ‘avenge’ them, even close to two decades later, they believe anything we tell them. They’re the perfect weapons, especially the girl, provided we can figure out a way to keep her mentally stable enough to use. Her brother isn’t as powerful, but he is sane, and so far, he’s been able to keep her mostly under control.”
After a short pause to allow List to process that and ask for clarification, Strucker sighed regretfully and said, "She’s a lot more powerful than we intended, but because of that, she’s been unable to develop the fine control needed to harness an actual memory wipe, so we can’t risk training her mental interrogation skills on the Winter Soldier — yet. Her brain simply can’t handle the amount of power she has. However, she's getting impressively good at shredding minds. All we have to tell her is the person has information about Stark and she will absolutely destroy their mind to get to it, gathering everything else they know in the process.”
List blinked, looking wary for the first time. "But . . . that's a huge risk! What happens when she doesn't find anything remotely similar to that?"
Strucker laughed again, sounding maniacal and very pleased with himself. "Why, Dr. List, it's because she didn't find everything. She has to ransack every single corner, hidden crevice, and thought bubble. Until she can do that, she'll keep missing information and not finding what she wants to know while Stark becomes more and more powerful. That is literally all the incentive she needs, and the best part is that our reasoning doesn’t have to make sense. All she has to hear is ‘might hurt Tony Stark’ and she’s a bloodhound with rabies, ready to be aimed and released."
List nodded, once more impressed. “That’s an excellent recruiting strategy,” he observed with a sinister smile, one that Strucker returned with interest.
“Indeed. It’s simply delicious that they volunteered to work for the same organization that eliminated their meddling, obstructionist parents so they could get revenge on someone who doesn’t know they exist but is the most dangerous man in the world, and HYDRA’s biggest obstacle.”
That caused a surprised look to come to List’s face and he rather incredulously said, “Stark? I thought it was Steve Rogers.”
Strucker burst out laughing, this time in genuine amusement. “Rogers?” he spluttered, bracing himself against the desk to stay stable while he brought his mirth under control. “Steve Rogers is a moron. He can’t strategize his way out of a paper sack, something we capitalized on many times during our rise in the 40s, and he’s been of significant use in this time as well — his stupidity in exposing and destroying SHIELD with the foolish idea that we could be eradicated so easily being the prime example. On top of that, if he likes or approves of someone at the first meeting, they must be a good person, so they can do anything and he’ll defend and protect them. His favorites can commit murder or treason and he’ll find a way to justify it since he’s Captain America and can do no wrong, and his judgement is therefore infallible.”
He paused again, smirking at the expression of disbelief his colleague now wore, before continuing, that sinister, smug smile back on his face.
“He has no idea how much he personally did to further our cause in World War II, such as destroying bases and bunkers the Allies didn’t know we had already abandoned.”
This statement made List again frown in genuine confusion, so Strucker elaborated.
“As you well know, the best place to hide is in plain sight. Had we destroyed our own hideouts, it would have been a beacon to the Allied armies and resulted in a level of scrutiny we simply didn’t need. By leaking the information in random order to those infernal Howlies, most of whom were actually decent soldiers, we ensured that Rogers would destroy them for us without establishing any patterns. Those leaks had him running all over the country, quite literally, which wasted triple the resources it would have taken, had a competent commander been in charge — while allowing us to know where that unit would be at very specific times, meaning we could run certain ops elsewhere with a strong chance of success. And, because we ensured he would never find a single shred of evidence that would help locate us, he would literally destroy the base with his tantrum, thus denying the Allies access to reinforced bunkers and bases with underground passages, hidden rooms, extra storage . . . in ‘eliminating HYDRA’, as he loved to claim, he actually hurt his own people.”
“Ah,” List murmured, clearly deeply appreciative, and Strucker smirked again before snorting in disdain.
“The truly hilarious thing is that if Rogers found out the truth today, he would still justify his actions because as Captain America, he’s a good man and always does the right thing,” he sneered. “His willful ignorance of the modern world and pathetic need to be the hero is why he destroyed SHIELD the way he did. And in his arrogance, he refused to call Stark in and personally handed us so many victories on a golden platter. He gave us every agent who actively worked against us and each defector, he gave us every secret we didn’t know, and he gave us all the data and plans we needed to guarantee that the world’s future is ours — and he is so stupid, he actually believes he’s the ‘hero who destroyed HYDRA’,” he jeered, face twisted with contempt.
“And once again, we’ve used his hubris against him and leaked ‘potential locations’ (he actually used finger quotes) where Barnes might be, because Rogers learns nothing and even now, he cannot function without his security blanket. He destroys useless buildings for us and we keep him busy on a fool’s errand, making sure none of the Avengers or any leftover remnants of SHIELD get anywhere near us . . . and since he shoved Stark off the team to keep him from learning the truth about his parents, we might as well be invisible, because Rogers can’t find his backside with both hands and a map, never mind us.”
List lost control of his face and openly gawked, to which Strucker nodded. “Exactly. The fact that he’s spent the last year destroying our deliberately abandoned bases for us again has never once occurred to him; as far as he’s concerned, he eliminated us a year ago and nothing and nobody will convince him otherwise.”
This garnered a wide-eyed look of admiration, one he actually preened at for a minute before he continued, his lips twisting in a sneer.
“On top of his arrogant belief in his own stupidity, Rogers is also ridiculously naïve and thinks he’s a good judge of character, so his first impression is the only one he uses, no matter the circumstances or how long he knows someone. That’s a dangerous combination of weaknesses for him, but a gold mine for us. It’s why he doesn’t trust Stark: that egotistical, short-sighted moron Fury gave him a deliberately-designed ‘bad profile’ on Stark when he first woke up and he took it as gospel, because he thinks everyone who isn’t HDYRA is in awe of him and thus, on his side, and Fury played his role perfectly. He wanted an obedient figurehead, so he knew Rogers had to distrust and dislike Stark and he made sure of it — though to be fair to Fury, it didn’t take much effort. Stark is nobody’s fool and does not bow to anyone. His respect has to be earned and that isn't easy to do. But again, the irony is delicious that Fury’s own actions allowed us to finally kill him and caused Rogers set HYDRA up for life. We couldn’t have engineered a better plan if we tried — and we actually had nothing to do with it. It was all a direct result of Fury’s insane need to be the ultimate puppet master and Rogers’ equally insane need to ‘be the hero’.”
List gaped at him for a few minutes as he processed that before he gave Strucker a weak, disbelieving laugh that somehow also conveyed his genuine appreciation for the meaning of the information. “How did I not know this?” he demanded — surprisingly, he didn’t sound upset, just incredulous. Strucker smirked and clapped him on the shoulder as he replied, “Sometimes, it’s wiser and safer to keep dangerous information limited. This is not a reflection on you; I simply possessed the necessary clearance when he was recovered and defrosted.”
An indignant light entered List’s eyes, but it flickered out seconds later and he sighed, nodded, and wordlessly gestured for the other man to continue. A malevolent expression filled Strucker’s face as he obliged.
“Because Rogers is incapable of growing and changing, we can exploit that weakness very easily,” he said, turning to one of the monitors and gesturing to a picture of Pietro. “Since he actually believes his story is one of righteous rags-to-riches because he’s ‘worthy’ and ‘a good person’, he’s extremely susceptible to the ‘woe is me’ mindset. For heaven’s sake, he actually thinks the Black Widow feels guilty about her past, and she’s one of the worst graduates that program ever produced. His own supposed moral code should have made him distrust her, but because she said she was sorry and looked at him with teary eyes and a quivering lip, he believed her,” he sneered, looking utterly disgusted for a minute before it smoothed back to smug satisfaction.
List just gaped, clearly astonished.
“But his unwavering certainty in his so-called abilities will serve us very well. When Pietro is ready, we’ll send him to Rogers with a ‘poor orphaned child who let people experiment on me so I could help my country, please help me escape so I can rescue my twin sister and be a hero’ sob story. It will fell the idiot like a tree, especially if Wanda can play the same part. He won’t question them because the parallels to his own life will garner his sympathy, but they’ll also feed his need to ‘be the hero’. And of course, Stark will object, which will guarantee success, because even if he wasn’t lying to the man, Rogers takes any dissent or challenge as ‘bullying’ and he’ll double-down out of sheer stubbornness. That will give us a foothold in the Avengers . . . and if Wanda is successful in killing Stark, nothing can stop us. It will take us maybe a year to truly begin to implement our plans for world takeover and domination, assuming Pietro’s success; if they both succeed, it will take maybe five months. Once her training is complete, should Pietro somehow manage to fail, it will mostly be a matter of engineering a meeting between her and Stark without arousing his suspicions.”
Now List looked thunderstruck, but he didn’t say anything and Strucker continued, his voice suddenly serious. “Tony Stark, on the other hand, is a genius on every level and utterly ruthless to his enemies. I wasn’t exaggerating when I said he’s the most dangerous man in the world, and incorruptible. That’s why we’ve left him alone and will continue to do so, should this plan fail — which it well might, because the man is famous for his protective measures, and I don’t mean Iron Man. There’s a reason he’s still alive when literally anyone else would have died several times over.”
List nodded wordlessly and Strucker continued his explanation.
“There’s a higher degree of risk than we’re typically comfortable with, but . . . well, Wanda is . . . she’s crazy, but as you yourself have documented, she’s also unbelievably powerful and motivated like nothing we’ve ever seen. Assuming she gets the opportunity, the working theory is that all we need to do is keep her stable long enough to get within eyesight and 400 feet of Stark and she’ll be able to kill him. The effort will also kill her, of course, but in all honesty, that will save us the trouble. She’ll never be a useful, long-term asset, because she’s already teetering on the brink of psychopathy, and the more she trains and expands her abilities, the worse it’s going to get. Still, using her to eliminate Stark without exposing HYDRA’s existence is well worth the risk, with little loss if she fails. And her brother can become a solid, long-term asset . . . assuming he survives her death. They are rather closely-bonded, even for twins. But we still have time.”
Slowly, List nodded again, and the conversation shifted to another recruit.
President Shonski ended the video and met Wanda’s eyes, his own dark with too many emotions to name. The room was dead still and perfectly silent, every eye fixed on the stand-off.
. . . ONE . . .
. . . two . . .
. . . three . . .
. . . FouR . . .
. . . fIVe . . .
. . . SIX . . .
A violent mushroom cloud of red mist exploded around Wanda, one that dissipated even as it formed, and her scream of rage, denial, fury, and heartbreak shattered several windows, but Vision and Tony’s combined restraints held and her magic remained safely caged. And after a few intense minutes, full of hard effort, Vision successfully trapped and subdued the destructive power of her emotions as well. She broke down in hysterical sobs, interspersed with incoherent ramblings about how “it wasn’t true, it couldn’t be true, it was all Stark’s fault.”
Her grief at the decimation of the reality she’d invented to justify her choices and her crimes filled the room, nearly suffocating people under the weight of it.
She looked so pathetic, so woebegone, that it actually evoked pity in a few people . . . until she raised her head. Even before her eyes found Tony, they were wild with rage — and then she locked on his face. Hers became a rictus of blind, all-encompassing hate, one so deep that nothing and no one could touch it. Despite finally knowing the truth of her past and her choices, it was blatantly clear that she still blamed Tony Stark for everything that had ever gone wrong in her life, and she confirmed it when she snarled, “I don’t know what witchcraft you’ve done, Stark, but it doesn’t matter. You murdered my family and I will kill you if it’s the last thing I do!”
A thoroughly-unimpressed Tony scoffed in response, though he did blink several times in surprise when she let out a noise that wasn’t anywhere near human before screaming something incomprehensible at him while her hair began to frizz with static electricity and her hands curled into fists as scarlet mist flowed out to cover them . . . only to vanish before it truly formed, pulling another shriek of thwarted rage from her throat. Her eyes were blazing with raw, unfettered hatred, but what sealed her fate was her complete lack of remorse, apology, or even the beginning of acceptance of the truth. Her hate-filled rant and promise of murder told the horrified assembly more clearly than a signed confession that even now, despite finally learning the truth, she was refusing to place the blame for her parents’ deaths where she now knew it belonged, and was just as adamantly refusing to take a single morsel of ownership of her crimes or responsibility for her actions.
She wanted to murder Tony Stark for a crime he hadn’t committed, not even peripherally, and held zero responsibility for, a fact that had been decisively proven and then verified. Moreover, she was unhinged to the point of actual insanity and would so clearly do whatever it took to achieve that goal, truth and reality be damned, that even the people who hated Tony and, under normal circumstances would gladly help her kill him, were sickened.
Shonski, remarkably unflustered, sighed in tandem with Tony as they ignored her tantrum. “As we expected, I’m afraid. But she deserved the chance,” he announced to the room at large before turning to the jury and offering the foreman two folders that were clearly old and well-used behind the official UN seal. “These are the original files on Wanda and Pietro Maximoff, as well as the information about their parents’ association with Freedom for Sokovia, provided by the Sokovian government and authenticated as legitimate by three different sources, two of them outside the UN, and it will verify everything you’ve just seen. Do you require privacy to reach a verdict?”
The jury was, to a man, stunned and highly disturbed, but also resolute. The foreman recovered quickly and, after taking a silent but quick poll, refused the folders with a single raised hand. Shonski was noticeably surprised but made no objection; he simply laid them back down on his bench and then waited patiently as the man turned to fully face the other eleven members. He still didn’t speak, but it was obvious what he was asking . . . and equally obvious that to the entire room that the verdict was unanimous, confirmed by each person’s lifted right hand.
In keeping with the formalities of the court, he still had to announce it when he turned back to Shonski. “No, Mr. President. Our verdict has been reached and it is unanimous. We find Wanda Maximoff guilty on all charges, and agree with the request and recommendation for her immediate execution,” he announced grimly, giving the woman a contemptuous but wary look that was definitely justified when she tried to lunge for him, murder in her eyes, only to be stopped by the android standing behind her.
Rogers’ howls of protest were so efficiently gagged, it impressed both Rhodes and the Russians, and Vision had already bound Wanda’s emotions again, adding a gag as well this time, which she was screaming into. Obviously, she was aware and coherent enough to understand what was happening and what was being said, but he was actively blocking her access to her abilities so she didn’t kill them all with one of her little magical temper tantrums, should one of her power surges finally overwhelm Tony’s restraints. That effort, however, forced him to release his grip on her emotions, to the fear and revulsion of those attending her trial.
Her fanatical hatred and unhinged desire for Tony’s death was . . . disturbing . . . to feel, and he summoned his armor as a precaution, though his face was almost serene. But her trial had been fairly conducted and the verdict openly rendered, so the Sokovian representatives swallowed hard, nodded respectfully first to the jury, then Shonski, quietly thanked Vision, and hauled a still-screaming but otherwise unresisting Maximoff to her feet and down the aisle to the door.
Then the ambassador did something unexpected. He stopped in front of a legally, officially blameless, quietly victorious Tony Stark . . . and offered a small but sincere bow.
“Given the grievous harm she has done to you personally, Dr. Stark, my government decided it was only right to offer you the chance to execute her,” he told Tony, eyes never wavering, even when Maximoff shrieked into her gag again, an objection echoed by Steve Rogers, and vainly attempted to fight her way free as the room shook around them and a few window panes cracked before Vision wrestled her back under his control.
Once again, silence fell — and even Tony Stark, one of the world’s most unflappable people, looked shocked.
He also looked very, very tempted.
But after a few minutes of contemplation, in which the entire room warily eyed Wanda and absentmindedly ignored Rogers’ muffled shouts, he slowly shook his head. “Thank you for the . . . respect . . . you’ve afforded me, but her crimes against her — your — people and your country far outweigh those she committed against me. I leave her fate to you, though I do request that either myself or War Machine, Colonel James Rhodes, be a witness when her sentence is carried out.”
He got another respectful bow, this one considerably deeper, and an equally respectful reply of, “Of course, Dr. Stark. Once again, your humanity and your generosity are clear to see. Thank you and we’ll send a message when it’s time.”
Nothing more was said; the quartet left, frog-marching a panicking but still-restrained Wanda between them, while Vision followed to act as a failsafe, and all eyes were on the group as they exited the courtroom with quiet dignity.
She would be dead within the hour and the entire world would heave a sigh of pure relief.
Once she was gone, Tony turned to Rogers, deactivated his suit, gave him the most obnoxious smile in his arsenal, and, in an equally-obnoxious singsong voice, intoned, “I told you so. I FUCKING TOLD YOU SO, YOU SANCTIMONIOUS PRICK!”
With that expression of bitter vindication finally off his chest, he paused and took several deep breaths before looking back at the holier-than-thou, hypocritical liar who had made his life miserable for four years before betraying him on every possible level. Eyes black with hate, he spat, “Remember the eighteen times I tried to show you the proof that it wasn’t one of SI’s bombs and you called me a liar and told me to take responsibility for my war-mongering and wanton, reckless destruction for the first time in my life? Remember how you ordered me to stop being mean to that poor kid, that helpless waif, whose family I murdered and life I ruined because I was just so selfish and so careless about being the Merchant of Death, and to give her everything she ever wanted in a never-ending attempt to purge my guilt? Remember the 29 times I tried to show you evidence that she fucked with my head in that bunker and you and Romanova both told me to get my ego under control, because I wasn’t important enough for her to target since you were there? Any of that ringing a bell, Captain America?”
Those baby blue eyes hardened not with guilt, but with fury . . . a fury that crashed into Tony’s and rocketed him into an incandescent rage that was so powerful but so tightly controlled, several people peed themselves out of pure fear.
“I have one thing to say to you, Steve,” he breathed, eyes burning with the passionate fires of revenge and long overdue justice, and the entire room went dead quiet again. The temperature also spiked and flames threatened to break out along the windows, because Tony’s wrath was a palpable thing and the entire world knew that it, and he, were completely, totally justified.
If he decided to execute Rogers right that second, not a single objection would be raised, considered, or even thought.
And Steve Rogers knew it.
He still didn’t back down.
Despite being gagged and handcuffed, his posture screamed his insolence and disregard for the evidence so clearly presented to him, to Wanda, to the world, and his contemptuous sneer had more than a few people hoping that Tony would finally snap and kill him on the spot.
However, though he was a gifted showman when necessary, Tony Stark was extremely disciplined. More than that, he hated Steve Rogers with an intensity that could not be satisfied with anything less than the utter devastation of his entire life.
“You and your mind-raping trial run for Barnes might have shared the madness of fanaticism and the false narrative that I’m the sole source of all evil in the world, but you aren’t suffering from folie à deux any more than she is, despite your pitiful hope to use that excuse to squirm your way out of finally getting the justice you and we so richly deserve,” Tony hissed, eyes suddenly brightening to gold, with flecks of red swirling in them, and thinly rimmed in black. It was the only physical indication of the power he wielded and it was both awe-inspiring and terrifying. He was implacable in his triumph as he destroyed the nonexistent ground Rogers had claimed as his last stand and it was magnificent to see.
“No. You don’t get that ‘get out of jail free’ card,” he declared, unblinking gaze never leaving those cold blue eyes as he clearly relished every syllable. “Those delusions are all you, they’ve always been you, and her, and it’s finally time for both of you to pay the piper. What goes around, comes around, you worthless waste of everything human, and I mean that literally. Your pet witch isn’t worth my time, but I asked for the right to deal with you and my request was granted. Unanimously.”
He paused for just a few seconds to let Rogers absorb the true meaning of that statement, eyes blazing with rage, hurt, a glimmer of sorrow, a lifetime of betrayal, and the conviction of a just — and justified — man before swearing in a low, raspy voice, “You are going to die in a fire built in that thrice-damned shield while I toast S’mores over your ashes, inside an abandoned HYDRA bunker in Siberia.”
He picked up the microphone on the witness stand, dropped it directly at Rogers’ feet, and stalked out of the tomb-quiet courtroom. Rhodes silently accompanied him and Happy Hogan met him at the door. None of them missed a stride or gave a single glance behind them, so they missed the horror that filled those baby blue eyes when the man realized what Tony was talking about.
But just before they left, one last whisper floated across the room, heard only by Rogers . . . and finally, finally, struck genuine fear into his heart.
“Karma’s a bitch, Rogers, and so are you. We know every one of your secrets — and we know all of your lies. My S’mores will be chocolate butterscotch and our roasting spit will be a certain metal arm; the owner despises you and hates it and willingly donated it, so it’s going to give us a hand.”
James Rhodes’ smile was positively terrifying as he followed Tony out of the room, and he relished hearing Rogers’ furious cry of denial when he realized what that ominous promise meant.
One didn’t hurt Tony Stark, or betray him, and escape unscathed. It might take a while, but Tony’s people always exacted revenge when he couldn’t . . . or believed he shouldn’t.
But when he did feel that he could claim the right . . .
Folie à deux doesn’t always mean mutual delusions or shared hallucinations or a corresponding fake reality. Sometimes, the shared madness is that of revenge, of vengeance, of righteous retribution.
Of justice.
The fires of that shared madness, flames they deliberately coaxed into life under the foolish — and deadly — assumption that they could control the inferno, incinerated Steve Rogers and Wanda Maximoff . . . and then it burned everything they had ever cherished to ashes.
From those ashes, a new meaning, an evolved understanding, would rise as a rallying cry for those who have been wronged and left to suffer by those who should have been their support, their foundation, their source of strength when life has taken everything else.
Folie à deux: a madness for justice shared by two.
~~~
fin