Wanda is Haunted by Stark's Vision (Marvel)
It always started with carnage.
Carcasses littering the ground, rivulets of blood pooling together, the last, painful breaths before death, weapons now in lifeless hands, gods and beasts easily torn asunder, nothing but silence.
And it always ended with annihilation.
A portal ripping into the atmosphere, a whole armada pouring through, cities razed to the ground, the cries of billions silenced, Earth reduced to a barren wasteland.
This vision, this dream haunted Wanda’s every waking and sleeping moment. It played over and over, the only variance was between the carnage and the annihilation. Sometimes, it was Steve who accused her of not doing enough, but most often, it was Pietro who did. Sometimes, as she looked upon the invasion, she heard a deep voice rumble, “You're not the only one cursed with knowledge.” Other times the voice proclaimed, “I am inevitable.” Sometimes the male voice turned softer with a lilt to it, ”You're a woman who has everything, and nothing." And other times, it was her own voice, filled with guilt, “This is all our fault.”
It was hard to concentrate on anything else those first few weeks at the Compound. The ceremony to be an Avenger was a haze in her mind, overlaid with imagery and voices that weren’t part of reality. The rest of them thought that she was grieving her brother and tried to coax her into conversation or out of her room. They were right that she was grieving but they were wrong about why she was constantly in her room. There, she didn’t have to hide her facial expressions or fear from the vision. In the mostly soundproof room, she could weep in the face of the horrors she saw.
She spent her nights with no sleep and when exhaustion got to her, she slept. But her dreams were filled with it, too, and she found no rest there. She wondered how the others didn’t even notice the bags under her eyes, the greasy hair, trembling hands, and wild, darting eyes? Surely, if they had, they would have said something?
No one did. And she began to wonder when there was those quiet moments before the vision started again, if they cared about anyone else except themselves.
Contrary to what Steve and the rest thought, she was not a misled kid. She didn’t know where that idea sprung up from but she wasn’t stupid. The looped feedback from the vision made her lose any concentration needed to use her powers, but she didn’t need to read Steve’s mind to know that he had a specific reason to do so. She had a feeling if she tried to correct him, he’d just reassure her that nothing that happened was her fault.
Before the vision consumed her, she would have agreed with him. But then the visions came, and she saw Pietro fall lifelessly next to thousands of corpses, his dead eyes piercing hers as his voice said, “You could have saved us. Why didn’t you do more?”
That particular part of the vision happened the third week in and guilt consumed her. It was then, that she changed her focus from trying to suppress the visions to using the little energy she had to gather intel. Using the computer was out of the question, taking too much focus.
It was then, that she had met FRIDAY. She had known of FRIDAY and heard her speak in her lilting, Irish accent but hadn’t directly spoken to her. All she knew about her was that Stark had created her and she was a self-learning A.I., which seemed to mean she had some sort of autonomy. She had heard Stark had one before her, that had died in the creation of Vision. She was reluctant to engage the A.I., not trusting anything Stark had a hand in, but she had tons of information at her proverbial fingertips that the rest of the Avengers seemed to not know.
So, with a silent sigh as she was laying on her bed staring at the ceiling, which was also overlaid with a portal that led to Earth, she asked, “Hey, FRIDAY?”
“Yes, Ms. Maximoff?” came the reply, a little too robotic and professional from the usual soft, kind voice she had heard the others talk to.
Which was…. fair, Wanda admitted to herself. Even though Wanda felt justified in her actions, she still had harmed her creator. It wasn’t the worst outcome and it made her at least feel like FRIDAY was taking her seriously with her attention.
“What were the casualties and injuries with Sokovia?”
“Currently, 177 casualties. There are numerous people who are still in critical condition and may not survive. This does not include those who have diminished brain activity who are in a coma. 200 people were injured from light surface wounds to more serious injuries.”
“How-,” her breath caught but she pushed her words out. “How serious were the injuries?”
“As previously stated, there are those who are essentially brain dead, some are needing amputations from lacerations, others will permanently live with diminishing use of limbs.”
Wanda wanted to stop this line of conversation so desperately. She didn’t want to face this and wavered but her eyes flicked over the bodies around her room. she was not a coward.
“How much of that was by me?”
Here, FRIDAY did not reply right away and she knew it was not from finding the answer. Perhaps it was reluctance?
After a moment, FRIDAY answered, “25 casualties and 100 injuries. 20 of those casualties were from physical force; 5 were from mind manipulation that accumulated into suicide. 59 injuries were of a physical nature, 7 of them as permanent injuries; 41 were from mind manipulation with 19 having permanent brain damage.”
Fuck, she thought, her face paling. She hadn’t even thought of how she was using her powers, all she had cared about was Stark and after, on stopping Ultron no matter the cost. It had cost her her brother and surely, someone else's brother, mother, sister, father. She had not wanted anyone’s destruction except Stark’s and in her blind rage, she allowed herself to be what she accused Stark of.
What an irony, she mused derisively as she thunked her head back on her pillow that was also a rock. She stared at the armada passing her by, stars glittering in the distance. She abruptly sat up, specks of dirt that had gathered onto her from laying on the ground falling off.
“What are the procedures that the Avengers have in place?”
“For what Miss Maximoff?”
“For reparations. There must be something."
She could - she could start there. Maybe help with clean up, she didn't have a job so maybe she could get one and at least pay -
Wanda stopped her thoughts as she realized that her question was met with silence. Dread pooled in her stomach as she waited.
“There are none. However, Stark Industries pays for any property damage and emotional collateral, including funerals and health expenses.”
That made her mind screech to a stop, even the vision had the mercy to stay in the background as she tried to process that revelation. Stark was a warmonger, the Merchant of Death. He craved violence, he sold weapons in the name of peace, ripped families a part with death. He was a petty, rich man bent on finding any excuse to not be held accountable for the blood on his hands. So this? This threw Wanda more than anything in her life had. She had thought she had Stark figured out - just a rich, snobbish playboy. This hadn’t even been on her radar as a possibility.
All that came out as her response was a breathless, “What?”
She was grateful FRIDAY didn’t respond to that and seemed to let her stew with the information by herself. She sat there, among the corpses, and stared unseeingly at the darkness of space.
Everything she thought she knew about Stark was a lie.