Work Text:
Déjà vu
Hubris is an insidious thing.
And so very, very dangerous. But not for the reason most people think.
Because the very nature of hubris leaves its victims — who are always willing and eager to fall prey to its machinations — extremely susceptible to the truth they so blithely ignore in their unshakeable conviction that they and only they are always, immutably, right.
Such was the downfall of Steve Rogers. And nobody would ever find out the complete truth of who was behind it, though the ‘why’ was blindingly obvious. But most of the world population would love to buy that person a drink.
Or possibly the entire bar.
For his part, Ned Leeds was overjoyed to have his role in events hidden. He wasn’t ashamed of his actions, not at all, but if people knew he had been the one to find and release the video, he would have been relentlessly hounded for the rest of his life.
He and his best friend, Peter Parker, had been scouring the SHIELD/HYDRA data dump that Rogers and Romanova had done a few years earlier, seeking any additional information about crimes the Rogues had committed and lied about, covered up, had covered up by someone else, and/or blamed on other people, mostly Tony Stark. They hadn’t gotten as much as they’d expected, but Ned’s hacker instincts told him there was a lot more available; he just needed to get creative about looking for it. So, after Peter headed home, Ned unleashed his slightly-unhinged inner sniffer . . . and, completely by accident, hit the jackpot nobody knew existed.
Well.
Almost nobody.
He vacillated for two days about who to tell before steeling his courage and asking JARVIS (who he and Peter had helped restore) to ask Pepper if he could talk to her the next time he was at the Tower. Understandably curious about this unusual request from the young man whose loyalty was first and always to Peter, then Tony, Pepper readily agreed and made sure to entangle the men in question in a meeting about a project they were collaborating with R&D on, leaving no witnesses and thus, no questions, about why Ned was coming to see her.
She was expecting to be stuttered at and the subject rambled around, along with an embarrassing amount of blushing, so being met with a calm, unflustered Ned Leeds took her completely by surprise.
She’d forgotten he was one of the six people who knew the full truth about not just the so-called ‘Civil War’, but also Siberia.
“I know how to punish Rogers for what he did to Mr. Stark,” was his opening statement.
Her jaw dropped.
Then JARVIS, who had his creator’s sense of humor, played the video Ned had accidentally unearthed.
And the entire Tower paused for several seconds, terrified for no reason anyone could name, as a dark, malicious joy suddenly swelled up around them, and the faint echoes of equally dark, malicious laughter could be heard in the general vicinity of her office.
“You are amazing,” she told Ned when she finally recovered her composure . . . and that brought forth the stuttering, blushing teenager she’d been expecting. Having long experience with Peter, she didn’t give him the chance to get too deep in his head and gave him a very early birthday present. “This just earned you the privilege of an official, full internship with our coding department. And yes, you deserve it. We were waiting until you finished your junior year, but this? Ned, this deserves a Presidential Medal of Freedom. I can’t give you that, but I can and will do this. SI will also pay your tuition in full, up to a doctorate, for whatever college you attend.”
Naturally, this resulted in still more stuttering and blushing, but her experience with Peter continued to work in her favor and she was able to escort him — still stuttering and blushing and rambling and possibly beat-rapping — back to the lab where, with FRIDAY’s able assistance, she successfully distracted him with a coding problem that department had been failing to solve for going on five months.
Just before she left, though, she remembered a trait both Peter and Ned shared and paused, resting a hand on his shoulder to get his attention.
“No one but me will know about your involvement. When people ask, JARVIS found it. You will be safe, Ned. I promise.”
He trusted her, though it would take several months to really believe it. But at that moment, her word was enough, and his only response was, “What are you going to do with it?”
Her reply was so full of malevolent satisfaction, he actually felt sorry for Rogers for half a nanosecond . . . until he remembered what the bastard had done to Mr. Stark and how deeply he’d betrayed not just him, but the world.
“I’m going to wait a bit and let him get complacent. Then, once I have all the players and pieces in place, when he’s at his most vulnerable, I’m going to do him what he did to Tony: cram it down his throat with no warning and at the worst possible time — but also in front of God and everyone and make sure he has no support and nowhere to hide when the truth shatters his life,” she told him, eyes glowing gold for just a second.
His smile was as vicious as hers and they parted ways on the silent agreement to never speak of this again . . . but that knowledge, and the depth of Ned’s loyalty to Tony — wholly separate from Peter — forged an unexpected bond between the CEO and the hacker/coder/programmer, one that grew and deepened surprisingly quickly after he became her personal programmer and IT man when Tony’s expertise wasn’t required. When his parents were killed in a car wreck some months later, she would adopt him.
For two months, nothing happened . . . other than the Rogue Avengers finally being brought to trial, a tedious process that took more than six weeks to finally get started (Rogers wanted to whine about red tape for Avengers missions? He'd clearly never had a single experience with the actual mile, minimum, of mostly-useless red tape that international bureaucracy demanded). And that was when Pepper made her first official move: she ensured that Rogers would be tried last instead of concurrently with his teammates. Given the crimes he had committed not just against Tony (many of which were found thanks to the tireless efforts of Peter and Ned), but the world at large, nobody argued with her; in the grand scheme of things, this was an easy request to grant.
And so it was that Steve Rogers got to watch Sam Wilson turn on him by accident, forced into admitting the truth when he was put on the stand and given to the merciless clutches of Matt Murdock. His admission of his own crimes, lies, and willful involvement in and silence about the crimes his teammates had committed saw him sentenced to 32 years of hard labor — to help pay back not just the cost of the Falcon wings he’d stolen, but also his part of the damage he had done in Berlin, Bucharest, and Leipzig — without the chance of parole. Barton was next, his sentence longer due to the astounding number of crimes committed under SHIELD’S aegis, but he was sentenced to solitary confinement in prison instead of working off his punishment, as it was simply too high a risk to allow him in public, even under heavy guard and shackled with vibranium.
Maximoff was tried and sentenced to death in less than a day. The training videos alone ensured that, never mind her culpability in ULTRON and Sokovia, which were also on video and audio recording, clear as day, and when her crimes under Rogers’ complicit leadership were added to it . . . he railed about how unfair it was, she was just a kid and her bad choices were all Tony’s fault, and was summarily ignored by literally everyone. Even her lawyer scoffed at his protests, which actually shut him up when he realized the woman didn’t want him to help her client avoid being executed.
Romanova was convicted not just for war crimes and terrorism, but also treason because of her massive role in the SHIELD data dump — and her stupidity in bragging about it afterwards. She, too, would be executed, and again Rogers’ protests of her innocence and the necessity of her actions were dismissed. To his fury and considerable disbelief, he was completely and totally irrelevant to what was happening, other than as a witness to both his failings and theirs, and everyone’s ultimate downfall.
Truly, that was one of the more satisfying parts of the trials: watching Steve Rogers finally realize his complete and total irrelevance.
Barnes was found ‘not guilty by reason of diminished capacity and extreme circumstances’ and remanded to a secure location, which was kept hidden from everyone for his safety. Rogers’ wails of outrage at being denied knowledge of ‘his Bucky’s safety from Tony and the corrupt governments of the Accords’ were actively laughed at, which created even more tantrums, and everyone got great entertainment for a full day before the poor souls assigned to babysit him finally had enough and sedated him so he was awake, but not able to move or speak for several hours. They would rather have gagged him, but too many people sniveled about ‘inhumane’ and it wasn’t worth the argument. Besides, this was just as effective: he still couldn’t whine, rage, or throw a tantrum.
Lang surrendered himself and was promptly sent back to prison, where he was quickly forgotten.
T’Challa lost his throne and his diplomatic immunity and, at his mother’s strong demand, was tried and convicted for veritable plethora of crimes as well, and was imprisoned for one extremely unpleasant year in South Korea before being sent back to Wakanda. The only reason he got off so lightly was because he was royalty, disgraced or not, and there were certain precedents nobody was willing to set. Or forego. But it must be remarked on that T’Challa was a much more reasonable, much less arrogant man after that experience. It must also be noted that his mother, having learned well from her son’s many mistakes and great idiocy, sent her daughter first back to the schoolroom to beat some of the arrogance out of her, and solidified both the lessons and the attitude of good leadership by making her serve as a page and a clerk and a personal assistant to various diplomats in countries all over the world.
Rogers was present at each trial, so none of this was hidden from him, meaning that by the time his own trial started, he was demoralized and angry and frustrated and yet, still firmly believed that he was right, the Accords were corrupt and everyone was bullying him for standing up to said corruption.
But he wasn’t afraid.
And he wasn’t remorseful. Despite everything he had been shown, everything he’d heard, and everything his teammates had confessed to, he still truly believed he’d done the right thing. This was verified by Charles Xavier, who refused to allow any doubt who and what the man really was: a self-righteous, sanctimonious, selfish, hypocritical man-child who genuinely believed that he was always right because he was Captain America, a good man who always did the right thing, so everything he wanted was also the right thing. The fact that Xavier was so disturbed by the tenor of the man’s mind and actually had to excuse himself from the courtroom after his testimony was very, very telling.
Rogers maintained that attitude, that lack of remorse, in the face of the death toll, injuries, property damage, and destruction from the data dump.
He maintained that attitude when the deaths, injuries, and damages from Johannesburg, Sokovia, Lagos, Berlin, and Bucharest were detailed.
He maintained that attitude when the destruction of Leipzig Airport was shown.
He maintained that attitude when the videos from Siberia were played. Both of them.
He maintained that attitude when he was found guilty and sentenced to life without parole, serving half his sentence in hard labor for the same reasons as Wilson, and half in solitary confinement for the same reasons as Barton. This was despite the fact that Helen Cho and Hank McCoy had developed a counter to his particular variant of the serum; it would work and strip him of his strength and healing, they guaranteed that, but there was no way to know what, exactly, it would do to his body. He might revert to his original form, or he might retain his current build, just without the strength and speed and healing that made him nearly invincible. And without that knowledge, it was prudent to have a place to confine him just in case.
And, frankly, one of the worst punishments one could give Steve Rogers was isolation. He thrived on being venerated and adored, so denying him any possibility of it was viciously apropos.
Hearing that he was going to lose the privilege of being a super soldier outraged him, and he might even have feared it.
But there wasn’t a single shred of regret. Not an inkling of remorse. And not a hint of understanding about why he’d been found guilty and this specific set of punishments levied.
In every conceivable way, according to Professor Xavier, Steve Rogers felt nothing but justified, because he was always right and everyone who disagreed, argued with, or opposed him was a bully, a Nazi, or corrupt. And the people and places between him and what he wanted? They were regrettable, but acceptable, collateral damage. He tried, but he couldn’t save everyone, and more people would have died if he hadn’t been there. Data and evidence refuting that assertion were scoffed at and brushed aside, because ‘he was Captain America and Captain America is a Good Man who is always right. So everything he does is the right thing and everyone and everything that’s hurt or destroyed during his pursuit of his goals either deserves it for opposing him or were unavoidable and regrettable, but necessary, because their death and pain helped Captain America achieve his objectives’.
Quite a few people wondered — and were outraged — why he wasn’t given the death sentence, too, since not only had he actively protected two HYDRA assets while covering up their crimes, but the data dump had initially been his idea and he had ordered it even in the face of opposition from Nick Fury and Maria Hill. Not to mention the videos and testimony detailing his refusal to fight Barnes, his refusal to consider any other options — like, say, calling Tony Stark — and his callous arrogance in destroying three huge, airborne aircraft in a densely populated area with neither thought nor concern for any of the lives he was so ready and eager to ruin.
It therefore wasn’t surprising that so many people were clamoring for the death penalty and demanding to know why his crimes had only earned him life in prison, especially in the face of his arrogance and indifference to the hurt and pain and loss he had caused to so many people.
The answer was Pepper Potts.
Before Ned’s discovery of Rogers’ ultimate punishment, she had fully intended to hold Tony’s jacket while he killed the bastard, or execute him herself if her fiancé decided that Rogers wasn’t worth any more of his time or attention.
Then she was handed a measure of revenge and vengeance and justice so unutterably beautiful, so perfect, that Rogers’ death instantly became untenable.
So she made sure that Wilson, Barton, Romanova, and Maximoff were there, bound and gagged like the criminals they were, when the verdict was read, because she wanted every single one of those useless, worthless sycophants to witness Rogers being forced to suffer the same betrayal he had so deliberately and cruelly perpetrated on Tony, betrayal they had all participated in and justified to themselves, to the court, to the world, and to Tony. But her main priority, her second biggest power play, was Nick Fury. It took calling in a very old favor, some delicate maneuvering, and several bitter former SHIELD agents who were hungry for vengeance, but she ensured he was not only standing within ten yards of Rogers, he was facing him. Both men were in direct sight of each other.
Nobody got to hide from what was coming.
She’d also managed to work a second miracle and keep Tony away after his testimony, given the first day, by using Peter, Rhodes, Ned, and the inescapable logic that Rogers would be more bothered and upset by his indifference and absence than anything else. And, frankly, he wasn’t worth the time it would take to spit on him once his fate was sealed. Unable to argue that — and lured by the promise of fixing some equipment at CERN as well as a personal, private tour — Tony gave her a lingering kiss and headed out with a group who would utterly destroy anything and anyone who tried to hurt him again.
Alone, Pepper waited.
She didn’t slip into the courtroom until the judges reconvened to issue their verdict and used the distraction to find a place that gave her a clear view of Rogers’ face but shielded her from him. She fully intended to see him break, would relish his suffering, but he was prone to throwing tantrums when presented with things he didn’t like. This? This was going to destroy him. And if he saw her, disguised though she was, he would instantly assume that things were Tony’s doing and attack her because she was there and Tony wasn’t, and frankly, that was a headache she didn’t need.
She didn’t have to wait long, maybe ten minutes, and had to exercise considerable restraint to keep from pulling out her phone and checking emails or surfing Facebook or something, meaning she greeted the signal that all was ready with a slightly disproportionate amount of relief.
When the final sentence was pronounced and Rogers just stood there, looking as defiant and unrepentant as he was stunned, she finally struck.
JARVIS, loyal to Tony above all things, protective to a frightening degree, and possessed of a dark vindictive streak of his own, took her cue and co-opted the viewing screen in the courtroom.
He also took full advantage of the Wi-Fi feed that allowed the trial to stream live to the world.
The loud noise of the room quickly faded to silence when a washed-out color video began to play. The date in the upper left corner read 4-25-1994: Prospective Director of SHIELD Interview, Part 3.
On the screen was one Nicholas J. Fury.
And one Margaret ‘Peggy’ Carter, Director of SHIELD.
On seeing their images, Fury turned a pale, sickly grey and tried — and failed — to edge his way out of the box he didn’t realize he was trapped in. Rogers went perfectly still, his eyes fixed with greedy desperation on Carter.
Pepper took a deep, satisfied breath and let her lips curve in a tiny smile.
The woman next to her gave her a wary glance and swallowed.
“As Director of SHIELD, you have to be prepared to make decisions that aren’t just hard, but sometimes are genuinely ugly. Stomach-turning, even,” Carter told Fury, holding his eyes without blinking.
“I understand,” Fury replied, looking and sounding unconcerned.
Carter gave an unimpressed scoff. “Do you?” she mused, her voice dangerously soft. “So when I tell you that my superiors in the SSR ordered the death of Sergeant James Barnes in December of ’44, it won’t horrify you.”
It was a statement, not a question, and she was visibly satisfied when Fury didn’t blink.
Rogers jerked in his chair, nearly breaking his wrists as a wordless cry of denial left his lips, which immediately devolved into outraged, incoherent shouting, full of disbelief and insults and threats and more denial. The sight of him being forcibly restrained and muzzled by six of the agents he had burned was so very enjoyable, especially since they made sure he couldn’t look away from the screen. Pepper took great pleasure in his reaction, and Fury’s well-hidden panic was a nice bonus, but then a small movement from the Rogues’ direction caught her eye and she glanced over . . . and saw Natasha Romanova staring at Rogers, her eyes wide with alarm and maybe even a little sadness.
But there wasn’t so much as a flicker of surprise.
Well, well, well. What a shock. Was she properly holding back her astonishment?
Although . . . seeing the spy’s lack of reaction suddenly made Pepper wonder if Fury had told her because he’d discovered the same thing as the SSR and the Army: Steve Rogers was not only unmanageable, he was also unreasonable, refused to compromise on anything, and was utterly incapable of seeing anything but his own goals.
She wasn’t stupid; she knew full well that Fury and SHIELD were desperate to get Tony under their control because they badly wanted his genius, his money and resources, and his connections under their aegis so they could remake the world in their own image. It was why they’d gone to so much trouble to foster a bad relationship between Tony and the rest of the ‘team’, among many other failed manipulations.
The thing they refused to acknowledge or admit was that Tony wasn’t remotely uncontrollable; he was a very reasonable man, in fact . . . when he knew, understood, and agreed with the rationale, which was the exact reason he didn’t trust SHIELD or Fury and refused to work with them unless the world was ending.
Steve Rogers, though . . . well. Pepper wouldn’t be remotely surprised to discover that SHIELD had learned a very hard lesson at a very steep cost and had tried to solve said problem quietly and from the shadows because admitting they’d screwed up would apparently cause the world to end.
Another look back to Rogers showed he was sitting ramrod straight in the chair, held in place by two agents, hands fisted, jaw clenched, and eyes locked on the screen. They were full of tears, disbelief, denial, rage . . . the betrayer was just feeling so many things, none of them pleasant, and Pepper drew another deep, satisfied breath.
Vengeance was so very sweet.
“I can’t say I’m not surprised, but the SSR wasn’t military, so they didn’t have the same rules and restrictions. And they ran a lot more dangerous, ugly missions,” Fury answered, leaning back in his chair. “But now that you’ve told me, I’ll admit to being curious as to the reason.”
This earned a bitter laugh before Carter sighed and rested her elbows on the table, looking away for a minute to gather her thoughts.
“You’ll need the backstory,” she began, sitting up straight and once more donning the persona of Director of SHIELD. “First thing is that Erskine was a lot more paranoid than we realized. And despite his brilliance, he was so unbelievably stupid, it defies all logic. It just took us reading his private diary to realize that. You see, after what happened with Johann Schmidt, he decided that he couldn’t risk giving the serum to a person who was truly intelligent and aware of it, which Schmidt was. His ego was legendary long before he became the Red Skull. Erskine also decided that he couldn’t have someone who was physically strong, because the serum would apparently make those traits go to the subject’s head and cause them to become a megalomaniac. How he came to that conclusion from just one person, I’ll never know, but I’m not a scientist. But those were his new criteria. So when he met Steve, well, it was perfect: a physically weak man, one who wasn’t bursting with intelligence but not grunt soldier stupid, either, and who seemingly displayed a strong moral code in his stance on ‘bullies’. Plus, he was blonde and had blue eyes. It was like he was tailor-made for Erskine’s revenge.”
Rogers screamed into his vibranium-reinforced muzzle, but not a single person looked his way.
Only a lifetime of discipline kept Pepper from laughing.
“Huh. I suppose that makes sense,” Fury said slowly, clearly fishing for more, and got a cold smile.
“It does. Phillips hated the decision from the second it was made and he actively opposed it starting on Steve’s second day of boot camp. He was completely unsuited for military life, and not just because he refused to be told what to do. Anyone else would have been sent home with a dishonorable discharge. Well, actually, he never would have been there, but Project Rebirth was under the SSR’s purview, not the Army’s, so Philips didn’t get a say. Of course, when Erskine was killed and Steve not only caused more than a quarter million dollars of damage chasing Heinz Krueger down but also killed him instead of capturing him so he could be questioned . . . after that, nobody argued his decision to send Steve to the bond circuit. It was partly to get him away from an active war unit, but mostly to teach him some discipline and restraint in a different, calmer setting. Nobody intended him to stay there longer than eight or ten weeks, but that’s because we were expecting him to learn control, and discipline, and how to properly fight in a one-on-one environment, instead of just throwing punches until who or whatever fell over. In short, we expected him to grow up and become the soldier we so badly needed and he claimed he wanted to be. So him turning into a petulant adolescent girl took us all by surprise.”
“I imagine so,” Fury drawled, bringing a cigarette to his lips and lighting it after Carter refused his offer of one.
“We really didn’t know what to do with him other than leave him there, because he not only raised an absurd amount of money, he literally hadn’t learned a damned thing about being a soldier: no discipline, no restraint, no patience, and according to his CO, his sense of entitlement was still off the charts . . . and then James was captured and he immediately went haring off to rescue him. Despite my supe—well, to be honest, everyone objected — I remembered how determined he was to do something after people told him he couldn’t. Combine that with his complete failure to learn anything before or after the procedure, and we didn’t have anything to lose, other than an entire Special Forces unit who’d already been written off. So I convinced Howard to fly him out, because no one else would do it and Howard was a lot better pilot than most people knew. And damned if Steve didn’t succeed. He brought the entire unit back, safe and mostly unharmed.”
She paused, watching Fury’s cigarette burn, then sighed.
“At first, we were thrilled: we thought finally had our weapon. But it didn’t take a month for our hubris to get shoved down our throats. Steve Rogers would not listen to anyone. For any reason. As far as he was concerned, he neither had nor needed a commanding officer and he certainly didn’t need any training or combat aids. He was strong and powerful and could beat anything up. Every battle he fought, he won because of his brilliance, and nothing and nobody could convince him otherwise. He went into the ice without ever realizing that Phillips and Ralston ran point and just used him as a battering ram and distraction. That was a very serious problem, though it could be worked around and even used, assuming there was enough time."
She paused again and sighed once more, shaking her head at the memory.
"But then Barnes got hurt and Rogers abandoned his post to rescue him and got five civilians killed. When he was informed of that fact, he just looked obstinate and said, “I had to help Bucky. He was hurt.” And for him, that was that. His actions were perfectly justified in his mind, and Barnes came back alive and well, so everything was fine. And that was when the other Howlies came forward privately and told us how often that happened, and how obvious it was to everyone — including the Germans — that Barnes was Steve’s weak spot, and he had no discipline or control, especially when it came to his safety. If losing Barnes meant saving 100 lives, Steve would shrug and say they couldn’t save everyone, and go after Barnes.”
One could have heard a feather falling in the silence of the courtroom . . . except for the broken, muffled sobs of Steve Rogers.
Pepper’s smile was positively beatific.
The woman standing next to her swallowed and eased a little further away.
Fury hummed deep in his throat. “That would be a problem,” he agreed, sounding surprisingly neutral, and Carter nodded, looking tired all of a sudden.
“It was. The general consensus was that keeping Barnes and Steve together was the issue. Separate them so Steve didn’t have to worry about James and everything would be fine. So Phillips transferred Barnes to another unit, one that was headed to fight Kesselring in Italy . . . and Steve literally lost his mind. He destroyed two tanks and a Jeep so he could get to James’ transport and either stop it or join it, and the Army and SSR both realized they had no choice but to either keep Barnes with the Howlies or kill one of them, because Steve refused to be separated from him. We still thought that Steve was the better option as a soldier, if only because he was almost indestructible, but that incident finally forced everyone to admit that as long as Barnes was alive and well, Steve would be useless. He was unmanageable on a good day, but endanger James Barnes or potentially risk him, and the world could burn while Steve ensured he was safe. I don’t know if the idea of permanent injury was floated, because the Army couldn’t just send him home for no reason, and ‘I could no longer serve as Steve Rogers’ teddy bear’ wasn’t a viable excuse. But it doesn’t matter. Steve had to be gotten under control,” she said so matter-of-factly, Fury flinched. It was subtle, but there.
“After another disastrous mission that was only saved by the sheer dumb luck of a shed collapsing and distracting the Germans while Steve panicked over James, the SSR had had enough, and they ordered James’ death. The plan was to have him killed by friendly fire in the middle of a battle, so everyone would assume it was the Germans and be an understandable outcome, the risk every soldier takes. Steve would grieve and maybe even go a little crazy, but as unstable as he already was, it couldn’t get much worse. We could point that crazed instability at a German battalion and stand back, knowing he’d obliterate it, and do that as many times as necessary. Since he had a massive crush on me, I was assigned as his handler. The assumption was that he would listen to me.”
Fury snorted and stubbed out the cigarette. “That was risky,” he observed. “I can see the logic and the reasoning, but it was risky. Way too much could go wrong.”
“Like the unit running into a squad of HYDRA agents on the mountain pass?” she replied tartly and he shrugged, conceding the point. “Nobody saw that coming. But the objective was achieved: James Barnes was killed. Only, his loss didn’t make Steve settle down so he could be used like the weapon he was after he grieved. No, he exceeded everyone’s expectations and went completely off the rails. There was no controlling him after that, no reining him in. At all. Not even I could do it, though at first he would think about my request before either refusing or changing it to suit himself.”
She paused and swallowed hard, clearly remembering something unpleasant, and then sighed.
“Steve was . . . James’ death at HYDRA’s hands was the worst thing that could have happened. From that moment, he didn’t give a damn about the German army or the war itself. All he cared about was obliterating HYDRA. And that would have been fine, only — as ever — he went too far. In his zeal to kill everyone he blamed for James’ death, he destroyed more towns, property, and military equipment than anyone could keep up with, on both sides, and we lost count of the civilian casualties. Then he heard the rumors about the Tesseract and its ability to rewrite reality, and that Schmidt had it, and that became his only goal in life: get the cube and bring Barnes back. The amount of destruction he wreaked when he followed a lead for that damned artifact and it wasn’t there . . . it was horrifying,” she said so quietly, Fury had to lean forward to hear it. His expression was blank, but his shoulders were taut with tension.
“He quickly became so dangerous to the Allies that we were forced to realize we’d have to kill him, too, because he was never going to stop. He was never going to calm down, mature, and become the soldier and weapon he was supposed to be. He only cared about avenging James and without him there to keep Steve’s worst impulses under control, he was nothing but a walking, unpinned grenade that constantly reset itself. He couldn’t be controlled or even safely used as a weapon to destroy any of our enemies, because he was just too stubborn, too pigheaded, and too determined to get what he wanted, damn anything that stood in his way. Eliminating him was the only option, because in our hubris, we’d made him virtually indestructible — and Howard was in Los Alamos, helping Oppenheimer. Even we couldn’t get someone in there, meaning there was no way to counteract the serum, or weaken it. And there was no chance he’d just go meekly home; but even if we could get him back to the States, he’d just sneak back over, no matter what it took or who he hurt. So they reassigned me after three weeks and started making plans to take him out and blame the Germans but not irreparably damage morale.”
“That sounds terrifying. And impossible,” the future director quietly said, leaning forward a little and pinning Carter with a knowing look. “When did you find out about the plan for Barnes?”
She blew out a deep breath, took one, and blew it out as well before finally answering.
“Two days before they got on the train,” she replied.
Rogers screamed in agonized betrayal and furious denial before breaking down in desolate whimpers . . . but even then, he couldn’t look away from the recorded embodiment of his betrayal.
It was magnificent.
“Did you try to warn him?” Fury asked, looking unsurprised when she shook her head. “Either of them?”
“No. I thought about it, but you have to remember: the train wasn’t the plan,” she explained. “It was the pitched battle that was supposed to happen the day after. Three snipers had already been inserted or put in position, so even if Steve had known, he couldn’t have stopped it. Shield or no shield, inhuman reflexes or not, nobody can stop three bullets fired simultaneously from three distinctly different directions, from expert marksmen. James . . . God help me, James would die either way, so telling Steve would only have hurt him. And it would ultimately have made things worse, because he would have turned his murderous rage on the SSR instead of the Germans or HYDRA. I just couldn’t risk that. So I kept quiet. And then later, what good would telling him have done? James was dead, even though it truly was at HYDRA’s hands instead of ours, but the intention was still there. And we were doing it for the greater good, because with Barnes in play, Steve was completely useless to everyone. It was his own fault for refusing to become the weapon he wanted to be so badly that he volunteered for an experiment that by rights should have killed him. If he’d just fallen into line and accepted his role, we would have gladly fed his battle hunger. After all, that was the whole purpose behind Project Rebirth. It was just everyone’s bad luck that Erskine was a hideous judge of character. In retrospect, it should have been Barnes.”
Rogers’ pathetic whimpers, so perfectly stifled by the Tony Stark-designed muzzle, were soothing emotional bruises Pepper didn’t know she had, and she couldn’t keep her satisfied, extremely malevolent smile hidden any longer.
Seeing the destruction and the soul-shattering misery of an enemy she loathed more than anyone she’d ever known — including Obadiah Stane — was so deeply, viscerally satisfying, tears of joy sprang to Pepper’s eyes.
Carter fell silent and neither of them spoke for several minutes. Fury finally shifted and lit another cigarette. “Do you regret not telling him?” he asked, voice perfectly even.
Without hesitation, she shook her head. “No. I hate that we killed a good man for nothing, but at the time, we honestly had no way of knowing that. With the available information, and Steve’s very blatant, and consistent, behavior, it was the best possible solution — and we had no reason to think that losing Barnes wouldn’t force him to become what we wanted. What we needed. Finding out that he would never be anything but an uncontrollable, petulant, violent, destructive child was . . . very dismaying. And Steve wasn’t like us; his world was black and white, and also set in stone. He could never understand our reasoning, much less agree, and telling him wouldn’t change anything. It still happened, it still would have happened, so why rock the boat?”
She paused expectantly, but Fury just nodded, so she continued.
“And . . . well, we did get a few good successes out of it before he saved us the trouble and crashed the Valkyrie. But Barnes . . . that was a hard, ugly decision to make. And while I wasn’t involved in the debate, I still knew, and I had to make the choice to speak up or stay quiet. It was . . . difficult, Nick. I liked Steve for the most part, though I was eternally grateful we were rarely stationed in the same place afterwards. He thought we were falling in love because I was the only woman who paid him any attention before the serum and he had as little personal restraint and discipline that he did as a soldier. It . . . it got very awkward a few times. I mean, the serum was part of the reason I paid such close attention, naturally, but I try to treat everyone with respect when I first meet them, and I did use his feelings to my advantage a few times, but only to distract him or get him to do something we needed. It was my misfortune that he mistook those interactions for true flirting and genuine attraction.”
“Really?” Fury said, finally looking surprised. “But . . . when he took the plane down . . .”
“Well, what would you have done?” she replied waspishly. “We all knew he was about to die. There was no escaping that. I could be cold and brutal and crush his dreams just so he understood how things really were, or I could comfort him in his final moments and let him have his fantasy. Despite my sins, there was no reason to hurt him like that. So I lied to him again and he died feeling gentle regret instead of bitter rejection. That was the easiest decision I’ve ever made.”
His choked, desolate sob was one of the sweetest sounds Pepper had ever heard. The silver tears sliding down those perfect cheeks, formed in eyes full of horrified denial and bitter heartbreak, were just as beautiful.
The crack in Pepper’s heart finally began to heal.
Slowly, Fury nodded and leaned back again.
“So what was the point of this little walk down memory lane?” he asked, his eyes boring into hers with an intensity that would have unnerved anyone else. She merely raised her eyebrows.
“As Director of SHIELD, one day you’ll have to make the wrong decision for the right reasons, even if you don’t know that at the time. And you’ll have to stand behind it. Sometimes, that impossible decision will hurt or kill someone you like, or even love. I respected James Barnes more than I can say, and I did like Steve, just not the way he wanted. I kept the secret of his best friend’s death because telling him would have cost us his loyalty, such as it was, and his abilities, as useless they ended up being. And if he hadn’t taken that plane down, I would have been complicit in his death as well, because it was necessary. Do you have the stomach and the balls to do the same?”
Fury stared at her for several minutes with a deep, thoughtful expression.
He didn’t answer.
The video went to static and for a short eternity, the room was completely quiet.
Then Rogers screamed again, lunging against his restraints in a violent attempt to free himself and get to Nick Fury, who was surrounded and blocked in by twelve of his own former agents and actually looked afraid, while the room descended into chaos. All he succeeded in doing was tearing the skin around his wrists before one of his babysitters, already tired of the flailing, put him in a headlock and applied a specially-designed Taser to the bundle of nerves at his shoulder.
It was, Peter had explained, a Vulcan nerve pinch, only without the requirements of brute strength and telepathy.
This made no sense to Pepper, who had watched the original Star Trek but never read any of the novels, but the end result was still satisfying: Rogers vibrated in his chair for several minutes before the charge worked its way through his body and left him conscious but unable to move. But his eyes . . .
They were pinned to Fury and promised a death so unspeakable, the former director of SHIELD was visibly alarmed.
This was her moment.
No.
No, this was Tony’s moment. He wasn’t here, and he shouldn’t be, but she wanted Steven Grant Rogers, the Great Captain America, to know that now everyone knew his truth.
The entire world knew that he’d betrayed a friend for nothing, because the woman he loved had allowed HYDRA to capture, torture, and abuse the man he’d destroyed the world for. And then she’d lied to him even as she used him. She had done the exact same thing to Rogers that he had done to Tony. She’d even used identical justification.
The poetic justice was breathtaking in its righteousness.
Pepper shed the scarf hiding her mouth and distinctive hair, gently patted the strands into place, and stepped into his view, loving the way he jolted when he recognized her before his entire countenance began radiating a threat he would never be able to make good on. The rage and betrayal blazing in his eyes was eclipsed by his clear determination to blame someone, anyone, for what he’d just learned, and Pepper couldn’t help it. He was completely helpless and utterly at her mercy, and he still thought he had any power.
Knowing he would hear it, she laughed softly in response to the wordless demand he truly believed was imperious . . . and even though it was nearly silent, her amusement still split the noise of the room and the cacophony instantly died as every person’s gaze fixed on the face-off with the wary fascination of a mongoose watching a cobra.
Her genuine amusement at the predicament she’d put him in cut Rogers so deeply, his fingernails drew blood as he realized that she, too, had known before today. His hatred was a palpable thing, so strong it was visibly writhing in the space between them, but she just arched both perfectly-shaped eyebrows, daring him to do a single damn thing while bound, gagged, and shackled to an indestructible chair.
It was so very satisfying to watch that hatred vanish, smothered by a desperate plea for this to be a lie, a joke, a prank . . . anything but the truth. At that moment, Steve Rogers would sell his soul for this to be nothing but Pepper’s idea of revenge for Tony, not the new reality born from the ashes of the life he himself had burned to the ground.
She took great, malicious joy in crushing his final dream. Her smile drew blood, but she wasn’t anywhere near merciful enough to make that cut deep enough to kill him. Oh, no. She fully intended that Rogers would suffer from this knowledge for the next century, at the absolute minimum. She would never allow him to have another peaceful day for the rest of his long, miserable life.
“Is it still okay, Steve?” she asked in a voice so sweet and poisonous that everybody listening took a step back and swallowed. Hard. “Was betraying Tony still the right decision?”
Tears filled his despairing, desperate, disbelieving eyes again, but his words were smothered and unintelligible because he had verbally abused Tony too many times and the people who loved him had had enough. Since Rogers couldn’t keep a civil tongue in his head, he didn’t get the privilege of using it.
Pepper’s smile widened.
“He was your friend,” she told him, sounding almost tender . . . and terrifying the entire world, which was still collectively watching. “Of course, so was she.”
Steve Rogers broke.
As she walked away, each step punctuated by a pitiful, desolate cry of denial, heartbreak, and betrayal, the taste of victory grew ever stronger and sweeter and healed her cracked heart and bruised soul, because justice had finally been served. In every possible way. And so had vengeance.
When Tony met her at the door, windswept and looking like an avenging angel, she laughed in pure joy and relief so strong, it almost broke her heart even as he kissed her like she was the only oxygen left on Earth.
It was done. Tony was finally free: free of the guilt, free of the lies, free of the manipulations. Free from the past. His life was finally his own and he was holding out his hand, asking her to share it with him.
Her smile was as joyful as his when she nodded, and he released her long enough to summon his suit . . . and then hers. A heartbeat later, they were soaring through the skies, free for the first time in so very long, and heading for their future with wild, jubilant abandon.
Halfway home, they were joined by War Machine and Spiderman, with Ned narrating on comms and Happy grumbling about getting that much Italian food on such short notice, and Pepper laughed again. She was here, with her family, and the world was finally at their feet.
Nothing could stop them now.
~~~
fin