A/N - Honestly I consider Vision/Wanda canon. I don't really care about the ship, but I'm pretty sure it's canon, so I include it where applicable.

Vision eventually said words nobody was expecting to hear, during one of his rare physical visits to the tower. "Captain Rogers found the video clip where the Belgian Prime Minister endorsed our idea online."

"What did he say?" Tony rocketed to his feet from where he had been sitting in lotus position on the floor. "Does he like it? Does he hate it?"

"Spill, Vizh, what's the story?" Darcy snapped her gum. She was already grinning, the look on Vision's face telling her everything she needed to know.

He smiled. "According to Wanda, he got very excited at the idea and asked her whether she thought it would make matters better or worse if he wrote to the Prime Minister to ask him more about the details."

Tony punched the air. "Yes!" He was practically bouncing on the balls of his feet. "Oh, hell yes, Rogers it is so on now. Phase Two, Phase Two everybody!"

For a minute they all got caught up in his excitement as he reviewed the whole plan for Phase Two rapidly and happily. Eventually, though, his smile fell a little bit.

"Matt, you did great with Ross. Is the other trial going any better?" He looked equal parts hopeful and resigned, and the mood in the room died in an instant.

The lawyer sighed. "I can get you a hung jury."

"Hung jury?" Tony frowned. "Drags the case out, too much bad press… isn't there any other angle you can play? Self-defense, maybe?"

A groan. "Tony, for the last time, we're not doing that to you. You may have attacked Barnes first, but they had no actual right to do that to you. We can see it on the helmet footage. You were down when Barnes destroyed the arc reactor, you couldn't do anything. After that, it wasn't self-defense anymore. It was them kicking your ass because they were seeing red."

Quietly, Tony just said, "You need to try."

"Damn it, Tony, there's no way you programmed a response for that particular response!" Matt clenched his fists. "You aren't in a coma because of self-defense, you're in a coma because you went to help and they almost killed you!"

"In the event that Murdock, for some reason, refuses to use the self-defense argument when it might actually work." Tony adjusted his position. "Listen, Matt. We can't lose this trial. You know it isn't going to hurt my image any more than this whole thing already has, it's just that you don't want to drag my name through the mud, right? Well, I appreciate that, I really do. The fact is, though, that the Demosthenes Protocol is a lot more important to me than my image. The media can only do so much to a scapegoat, but they can do twice that much to two. Don't drag anyone down with me, Matt, not when I'm already dead."

His face softened.

"I know how much you try to get justice. Sometimes even revenge." He raised one eyebrow. Then a picture of the original Avengers appeared behind him. "The truth is, though, that I don't even want revenge in this case. I just don't want to lose a friend, okay? I just want you to save someone that I, no matter what happened, still consider a friend. Just save them for me."

Matt's eyes went wide. He took two paces back, carefully not bumping into a table, then turned and stormed out of the room.

Hank Pym put his holographic hand on Tony's holographic shoulder. "I'm sure he'll be back. The idea of you still considering Steve a friend is just… I don't know what it is to him."

"I don't know what's happening, you all know that, but I have a feeling he would like the Tony Stark from ten years ago better."

"I think he'd kill you, actually," commented Hope carefully.

Tony laughed. After a few seconds of hesitation, the rest joined in. That laugh, recorded or not, was infectious as all hell.

"Back to the question of Phase Two," Vizh said slowly, "Wanda also enjoys the idea, though she is wary to trust it so quickly without knowing if it's going to turn out like the Accords."

Tony's program flickered and disappeared, reappearing in the center of the room. Automatically, they all scrambled to their podiums, but Tony merely beckoned Vision over and had him pull up a tile in the center of the room. Beneath it were several more black mats.

"If Wanda is suspicious of the motives behind Demosthenes, maybe it's finally time she saw them for herself," he said, and Vizh smiled. "But no flirting while you're in here, okay?"

"Oh, we're not allowed to flirt in here?" Dacy frowned. "Well, isn't that disappointing, there goes my idea for date night in the secret control room."

And there went that laugh again.


Wanda Maximoff appeared on a pad next to Vizh's the next day at precisely two o'clock. The whole crew, minus Matt Murdock, was waiting for her, in person or as holograms. That included Tony. She nearly had a heart attack when she saw him. "Are you…"

"Real? Nope." He shook his head immediately. "I'm a pre-recorded set of responses that are programmed to respond to specific stimuli, or when JARVIS thinks it's something I would say."

She just stared at him until the actual welcome program started running.

"Miss Maximoff, welcome. The Demosthenes Protocol was, unfortunately, activated by my death, combined with the Accords being generally accepted as a failure." His face darkened, but he made a conscious effort to smile. "If you're here, it's because you either wholeheartedly agreed with the idea behind it or liked it but were suspicious of the people behind it. Well, I don't know if knowing I'm behind it really sets your mind at ease, but I think knowing Vizh is should help."

"What idea?" Her face was closed off as she scanned the room, casting confused glances at those she didn't know, especially Harley.

Tony smiled and bowed. "The Demosthenes Protocol is an alternative to the Sokovia Accords, unlikely to be accepted unless the Accords fail first. It is based on the idea that we are the best oversight for each other, that superheroes could keep each other in line."

Her eyes widened. "The Prime Minister of Belgium!"

"The Prime Minister," Pepper explained, "was contacted by many of his citizens lately over the idea, which we spread through the country on an email publicity campaign. We figured it was better to start overseas, so that American politicians felt like they had a precedent."

The timeline appeared in the center of the room, and Tony ran through what they had done so far. He even included Matt's legal timeline, though he didn't explain what had happened the previous day beyond, "He doesn't want to play the self-defense angle. I do."

"You're…" if her eyes could have gotten any wider, they would have. "You're campaigning for politicians, you removed Ross, you're attempting to prove the captain innocent, and all of these other lines… and it's all working?"

"Not all of it," Hank corrected her. "Matt stormed out yesterday, Morris is only at second in the primaries, and Jane locked herself in her lab for two weeks straight but still can't figure out what might be coming."

She stared. "Coming? Is something coming?"

"Tony Stark is a paranoid man," Pepper said, nearly biting her tongue when she used the present tense as easily as breathing, "but if he says a new enemy is coming, he's not lying, and that's exactly what he said. His entire explanation had to do with Loki acting crazier than usual and why the hell he had an alien army, but I'm not going to question it."

Slowly, Wanda nodded. Glancing at Vizh, she asked the holographic genius, "So… what exactly do you need me to do, Mister Stark?"

He grinned at her. "Oh, there is plenty to do, Miss Maximoff. You could help Natasha feel out how our friends in exile feel about the new idea circulating. You could help us write anonymous essays defending the idea. You could help us write the damn thing, of course, and eventually help us bring in the others, especially Rogers. We kind of really need him."

"Remember," Natasha said calmly, "he isn't programmed knowing who kills him. Most of his responses don't take that into account, so when he says we need Rogers… he means it."

She nodded, still wide-eyed. "I would like to help," she decided. "I will bring the idea up to different members of the team. I will…" she tapped her head, "see what they think."

"Was that a joke? From Wanda? Already?" Tony smirked. "Good to have you on the team, Miss Maximoff. You're welcome to visit us in person, whenever you can, er, manage it."

"Ah, yes, let me just book a ticket to New York," she replied, and they both laughed. It wasn't even a second later that the whole room was chuckling.

Tony's hologram laughed a lot more than he had.

It was nice.

A/N - Hologram Tony is cute...