Chapter Text
The Accords and Siberia taught her a lot of things, very fast and extremely hard. The emotional whiplash had been violent and sudden, and it had nearly broken her neck the same way it broke her heart.
She hadn't wanted it to come to this. She'd wanted to work with Steve, to try and be better. She was always trying to be better. That's what Iron Man was about, what every action she'd taken since Afghanistan was about - solving the problems she'd created and taking responsibility for all the things she'd done. Steve didn't seem to see it that way, and perhaps that had been her fault.
On the helicarrier, she'd been smarting from seeing him for the first time, the deluge of negative feelings his very face showered her in were in no way his fault. Her sudden and intense desire to fight, to beat back the feelings even his name brought about was something she'd done her best to bite back, to swallow down. His insult to her person and her building had made that more difficult, but she'd not slung mud back at him for it.
After that, she'd tried. She'd done what she could in the manner she knew how - she built for her new team, funded them and helped them get what they needed. She gave them the material things they lacked and more - particularly Bruce and Steve, who had no lives already established - and tried to accept and understand them. It obviously hadn't worked out, otherwise she wouldn't be in the Avengers compound alone, but she'd done what she could at the time.
But the nightmares were relentless.
Battling alcoholism, recovering from palladium poisoning and working on her depression and anxiety would be enough for any one person, she imagined, but the nightmares were the worst out of them all. Time and time again, she was haunted by the fleet she seen in the stars, one she knew would come again. It was practically guaranteed. If some low-level boss like Loki could lead a small contingency here, that meant that whoever had given it to him - and the Sceptre too, since Thor said it wasn't Loki's originally, come to think of it - would know where they were, what they were capable of. Odds were that next time, should they come better prepared with a larger fleet, there would be no escape for them. And not just New York, but the world as a whole.
So, she built Ultron. Was she wrong to do so? She doesn't know. It had been the right move to soothe her mind, to try and assure herself that maybe, if they just planned ahead, they could have a backup plan that could work. She likes to think that everything had been fine until they returned with the Sceptre. Well, really, until Wanda had gotten into her head. The nightmares apparently hadn't been bad enough as they were, huh? Yeah, let's just ratchet that shit up to eleven and strand you on a space rock with your dead friends so you can have a prime seat for the destruction of Earth. Not a problem.
Thanks, Wanda.
She should have sent that bitch back to Clint's farm if he wanted to keep her so bad.
She thought, too, about how 'the Mandarin' and Project: INSIGHT seemed to happen concurrently. She wondered if she might have been able to help Steve and Natasha had she not been stranded and alone herself, lost and panicking in the midwest. She wondered why Steve never tried to contact her, since he actually had no idea about the Mandarin, Aldritch, none of it.
Whatever. It didn't matter.
It didn't.
And, of course, once Ultron came down, so did the hammer of judgement on her shoulders. She still didn't know whether attempting to build Ultron - corruption notwithstanding - was actually the right thing to do. Steve seemed to liken it to INSIGHT, but the androids weren't meant to harm, they were supposed to be emergency resources - machines capable of diving into burning buildings without issue, lifting rubble and air-evacuating civilians. They were supposed to be expendable, their loss supposed to replace lost human life. All Ultron was meant for was a guiding hand, much the same way that JARVIS handled her suits, and the central node she could connect to for solving issues and updating code. What made Ultron come alive, vengeful and angry, was the Sceptre, not her, and she's not convinced the disaster would have even happened at all had she not taken that fucking thing into her Tower.
But, at the end of day, the machines were her fault, and Sokovia rested on her shoulders. She had to take that blame, and that's what she did. She took responsibility. And yeah, maybe the experience with SHIELD and HYDRA had left a bad taste in Steve's mouth, had made the active criminals that she was shielding nervous, but demonstrating a willingness to own up to poor decisions that cost lives was the right thing to do. She had thought that was understood.
Sure, the Accords weren't perfect. There were a lot of limitations that would have hindered the team to the point of coming back around to being a hazard again, but she and her team of lawyers and lobbyists were already in the process of making amendments and adaptations. She was working on it, like she always was, trying to balance two agendas and make the best of both worlds. Even if they didn't agree with the whole thing - even if they were going to go against it (like she knew would eventually happen), the point wasn't to lick boots, but to prove that they were willing to cooperate, to make amends.
To take responsibility.
But Steve wouldn't hear it. He didn't understand that the restrictions she had on the team were there to protect them. Steve didn't understand what would happen if someone outside the team actually got their hands on Wanda. Hell, even Natasha and Clint no longer had an organization to protect them, so that came down to Tony as well. But Wanda in particular was a walking fucking bomb, and everyone knew it, even if no one else would admit it.
Yes, she was a young woman, decisions wracked by grief and fear. She was a kid, but she was also a superpowered HYDRA-affiliated terrorist who tried to end the world. She only switched sides when she seemed to realize that when Ultron said "end all organic life", he really meant her as well. So, yeah, she was young and stupid and yeah, Tony shouldn't have built Ultron, but Wanda is just as guilty for what happened to Sokovia as Tony is (if not more, since she was terrorizing it long before Tony and her bots got there).
Only Tony seemed to care that if the authorities got their hands on Wanda, best case scenario, she's deported to Sokovia and dies of old age in prison and worst case scenario, she's kept in a lab by the Pentagon, experimented on to the point of torture. Tony knew, because that's what they wanted to do to her and the suits in 2010. She made weapons for these people, sold them to these people. She knows what they want, what they think like and what next steps they would take. Once upon a time, she would have been the one they came to for the design and manufacture of the equipment they'd need.
And sometimes, to her own horror, she sketches out in her mind what she would have made for them.
She knew the true extent of the danger Wanda was in, and she thought they all did too.
And maybe, above all, that's where she went wrong. She gave them too much credit.
Maybe they didn't know anything - all these facts, the insider's knowledge of how the world worked were obvious to her. Maybe the others in her team had no idea. After all, the worlds they all came from varied drastically. Clint and Natasha might know how to torture, even have been tortured, but they'd never been hired to make the equipment to do it. No one but her - including Bruce - had actually read anything Selvig had left behind when Loki stole the Tesseract. She's damn near certain that no one read the entirety of the Accords - Steve barely skimmed it, a predetermined frown creasing his forehead. How many of them had spent terraflops of processing power sifting through the HYDRA data dump?
None of them.
And then it all comes down to the reason she was tempted to throw away nearly a decade of sobriety - the Winter Soldier.
What was she supposed to do, supposed to feel?
On one hand, she hated Howard's guts. Didn't necessarily want to see him dead, but she wasn't really sad to see him go. She'd loved her mother, and had been left vacant without her. Their deaths had left her vacant and untethered, vulnerable to someone exactly like Obadiah, and so had her life begun to spiral before she was even legal to vote.
On the other, Barnes wasn't even really responsible for it. He'd been a prisoner, body, mind and soul, twisted and bent and broken for seventy years. The thought makes her heart twist in agonized sympathy. She'd nearly cracked under three months, let alone seven decades.
But that didn't absolve Steve. Steve - who preached about trust and sharing secrets and burdens and perogatives - had hidden away not only the man responsible for several dozen high-profile assassinations, but kept the reality of her parents' deaths from her for years.
More than Barnes, more than the deaths themselves, Steve's lies and hypocrisy was what tore her apart. That's why she attacked them in Siberia. Sleep-deprived, emotional and high-strung even before that, she had made the choice that this betrayal merited violence. She had wanted to hurt Steve back.
She'd been left for dead instead, paid back for her weakness tenfold, as usual. T'Challa's mercy on her was what saved her from dying alone in that bunker, flightless and freezing, an already weak sternum fractured anew.
It had been Steve to blame, not Barnes, and she did regret hurting him. He hadn't really deserved it.
But she set those thoughts aside as she exited the Avengers compound, watching almost in a daze as a massive space ship settles down, opens up, and out walks Thor flanked by hundreds of refugee Asgardians.
"Well, fuck."
Eleven months.
It took eight months to get the Asgardians settled. She's sure her money helped that along quite well, with the land in Norway easy to acquire and well-paid twenty-four-hour crews having a whole development lived-in ready.
The immigration process had been less fun, and the paperwork for identification had been a nightmare. But a couple dozen lawyers and a shit ton of money later, she'd managed it.
She's established Asgard, Norway.
She was there visiting Thor, wandering the little town she'd put in his name, when she was approached by Loki himself, dressed down into a business casual suit of black and deep green.
"Tony, may I have a moment of your time?"
"Uh, sure Reindeer Games. What can I do for you?"
He fell into step beside her, offering a congenial smile. "Rather, what can I do for you."
"I got you all you documentation. I can't cover up a crime." She glared at him over the rim of her sunglasses.
He snorted. "I'm a trickster, not a moron. If I'm to wreak havoc, it's not going to be in my brand new home. No, I'm here to offer a favour, rather than ask for one."
"Oh, do tell."
He took her hand in his, bringing it to his lips. "Sincerely, you've done more for Asgard in this last year than Thor or I have done in the last hundred. To be adrift and alone with limited resources and no hope is a desolate existence, and I felt that keenly. I want to thank you, as sincerely as you'll allow me, and offer a personal favour."
"What kind of personal favour?"
Loki faced her. "Magic is the one thing this planet lacks. At the very least, it's uncommon and well-hidden. As a token of my gratitude for your unwavering loyalty to my brother and my people, I want to offer you a spell, for anything I am capable of. It doesn't have to be immediate, and there is no expiry on my offer. One magical act, as massive or miniscule as you'd like."
She opened her mouth to respond, and her mind ricocheted to the one person she owed, someone she had decided also needed her help, should he accept it. "What if I need it done on someone else?"
He inclined his head. "I will do whatever you desire, to the extent I am able. The wish need only be yours."
She nodded slowly. "I'm going to hold you to that. I may have something in mind."
He broke into a knowing smirk. "Of course you do. You're always a set ahead."
"I choose to take that as a compliment."
"Oh, it is." He purred. "Should circumstance had of permitted it, I would have jumped at a chance to be at your side. But alas, this will have to suffice."
She didn't really know what to say to that.
"I await your command, and you know where to find me." He bowed and strode away.
"Well, fuck."