Lima to Stockholm
Chapter Six: Accepting Responsibility
After their confrontation Loki withdrew to give Tony the space to collect himself. A short while later he returned as Loptr. Working mostly in silence he and Tony picked through the wreckage left in the wake of the engineer's meltdown. They righted tables, restored tools to their proper places and picked through the remains of Tony's devices sorting out what was worth repairing. It took most of the morning for them to finish.
Loptr left Tony tinkering with one of his cobbled together devices, feeling reassured that he'd pushed the engineer past his guilty dithering rather than breaking him. Loki would have rather stayed with Tony but an ambassador from Nidavellir was expected at court. The Odin-clone was behaving oddly and Thor was only humoring 'Odin' about Thanos' coming, he wouldn't properly motivate the dwarves in their preparations.
When the audience was finished Loki took a female shape he hoped Tony would find pleasing. She checked her appearance in the reflective surface of a shield hung on the wall then darkened the color of her hair several shades, reminding Tony of his Lady Pepper might work in the short run but Loki already felt too much like a ghost in his own skin. "I think you're a Gudrun," the mage decided with a final glance at her reflection then picked up Tony's dinner tray.
Tony glanced up at the sound of the door opening. Gudrun knelt beside Tony's chair. "I am told you do not eat enough, so I thought, perhaps I might make it more interesting?" She picked up a piece of fruit and held it out to Tony.
"I don't like to be handed things," Tony stated, drawing back reflexively.
"I wouldn't call this handing you things," Gudrun replied.
"I don't have the energy for this," Tony muttered. He sighed, "Who's putting you up to this? Even at my worst I didn't, I mean sure sex is, used to be, a commodity but my first rule was to know what they wanted from me and it damn well was always them that wanted something out of it, never a third party."
"Maybe I just like you," Gudrun said.
"Doubt that," Tony replied. "Look I'm sort of busy trying to put everything back to rights, could you just… go away?"
"You do need to eat something today," Gudrun suggested putting the tray down on the table beside Tony.
A few hours later Loki returned as himself carrying the book they'd been reading. "Really?" Tony asked.
"Why not?" Loki shrugged. "I believe we were reading about some strange experiments Mother's ancestors on Vanaheim were performing on themselves back in the dark ages before travel along Yggdrasil's trunk was discovered?"
Tony nodded warily.
Loki took his normal spot, opened up the book and began to read.
The book wasn't quite as old as its subject matter, being a history of the ancient Vanir's scientific advancements rather than a lab book but Loki still estimated that it had been written before Buri's time. Loki had to give Tony credit for finding such a treasure, somehow the engineer had stumbled upon what seemed to be the Vanir's transition from science to magic, the final act of science being transforming themselves so that they ceased to need tools as an intermediary between themselves and the energies they harnessed. It was fascinating and once the two of them had realized what they'd discovered it had led to any number of discussions- arguments about whether it implied magic was the more advanced art or an evolution of laziness that allowed its practitioners to forego the rigorous understanding demanded by science.
Normally when Loki read Tony leaned over his shoulder to examine the diagrams and to try to learn the language. This time Tony kept himself out of arm's reach. As he moved restlessly around the room he shot Loki nervous, guilty glances. After several minutes Loki swiveled to sit sideways, the pages of the book tilted toward the room in silent apology for making Tony afraid.
"Do you ever think about how I must have felt, sitting in that caved in apartment with my parents' bodies and a bomb with your name on it?" Wanda asked. She held Tony's head between her hands, forcing him to look as his parents' car smashed into the telephone pole.
The other Avengers stood around and watched as Barnes jerked his father off the ground and smashed in his face. "This is very triggering for me," Bruce declared. "I can't be here." He turned around and vanished after his first step away.
"Poor Bucky, this must be so terrible for him," Steve observed sadly. "It's not his fault." Sam nodded and patted Steve on the shoulder sympathetically.
"It is my understanding that this occurred years ago," Vision said. "Please help me understand the current relevance of these events."
Barnes walked around the car and reached through the window to strangle Tony's mother. "That's pretty sloppy," Clint said. "How's he going to cover up the bruises on her throat. This is supposed to look like an accident right?"
Natasha glanced over to where Wanda was still forcing Tony to watch, "He doesn't care enough to look into properly," she said. "If he didn't know it's his own fault. You could even say it's a theme with him, he didn't bother checking up on Obie either."
"Why don't they put up a better fight?" Thor complained. "This is a most pathetic showing."
Barnes finished murdering Tony's mother then coolly started cleaning up the scene, starting with the traffic camera.
"Tones, you know I would have helped if I could," Rhodey said regretfully and Wanda let Tony turn enough to see him laying in a hospital bed attached to multiple IV's and monitors, "Even though you put me here."
Wanda's fingernails dug into the sides of Tony's face, drawing blood. "I want you to understand how helpless I felt. You destroyed my entire world so I'll do the same to you. You can hardly blame me if your world is bigger than mine was back then."
Only a few hours after he left Tony for the night Loki heard the engineer rattling around. Obviously he wasn't trapped in a screaming nightmare but he wasn't sleeping either. Deciding that he wouldn't be able to get back to sleep himself, Loki let himself into Tony's room.
Tony had gone back to repairing the damages resulting from the previous night's nightmares. Without speaking Loki started clearing away the debris Tony had deemed too dangerous for Loptr to deal with; the Midgardian's concern about the child handling 'sharps' was ludicrous in Loki's opinion, he'd already been training to fight with swords and daggers for twenty years when he'd actually been Loptr's age.
They worked in companionable silence for nearly half an hour.
"I'm tired," Tony said suddenly. "Back when I started as Iron Man I said I didn't want to be part of a zero accountability system. People died because of my bombs but it wasn't my fault, I just built them. It wasn't the guy that fired it, he was just following orders. The officer who gave the order was just supporting a policy. The people making the policies were generally trying to minimize casualties or prevent something worse. None of us were at fault but there were still dead people at the end of the day, innocent people. So I said, 'Okay, I am a part of a system that kills people.' I never said l was the only one.
"But what do I tell someone like Wanda Maximoff? I'm sorry that I made the bomb that killed your parents but it wouldn't have been anywhere near your family if you and your neighbors could figure out how to stop killing each other over grudges going back six hundred years? She was ten, her parents died, that's all she cares about. She doesn't care that NATO was trying to keep the various ethnic groups in her part of the world from slaughtering each other. She doesn't care about the genocide that triggered NATO's involvement or that the aggressors were retaliating for shit that happened back in WWII which happened because everyone already hated each other for the incident before that one and the one before that. All she cares about is that her parents died and I get that. I didn't really care about all the other factors half a minute after watching Barnes kill my parents.
"Wanda doesn't care about strategic bombings of military targets or efforts to minimize civilian casualties. There were going to be some and her parents were the unlucky ones. They were her parents, the potential lives saved don't matter to her, all that mattered was they died… Which is fucking ironic given how quick she was to write off the people she killed as acceptable collateral damage. Is she planning on just standing still and taking it when the kid of one of those people who died at Lagos pulls a gun on her? Or is she planning on beating them to death the way Rogers and Barnes did me?
"I'm so fucking sick and tired of being the only one who takes responsibility for being involved when things go south. I'm to blame because Wanda lost her parents, so I'm to blame because she did a shitty job of handling it. But Barnes isn't in anyway involved in killing my parents even when I watch him murdering them but I'm to blame because I didn't do a great job of handling seeing it happen. I don't sleep trying to find ways to make up my mistakes, shortcomings. When I do I'm plagued with nightmares about everything I could have done better, everything I'm blamed for. Meanwhile everyone around me just washes their hands. It's the same damn shit I walked away from when it came to making missiles and wars but there I knew the problems were too big, the reasons why the demand for weapons exists were too complex. I knew it couldn't be solved so I just opted out, smashed all my toys and went home. I'll take my share of the blame but I'm tired of shouldering everyone else's too. I didn't really expect the world to change, but I did expect the Avengers, Rogers to step up and own their mistakes."
"But admitting that their decisions are as questionable, as prone to error as anyone else's would invalidate their image of themselves. Who is the Captain if he is not the good man bravely standing up to the bullies of the world?" Loki replied. "When he heard that he'd killed you, the first thing he did was look for a sword to throw himself upon to escape the knowledge of what he'd done. I told you your objective mirror is a terrible weapon."
"You're still awake?" Tony asked, surprised.
"I wish you were not," Loki sighed. "Could you not at least try to get a good night's sleep?"
"You know I've heard rumors that those exist," Tony commented giving his bed a wary look. "Wish I remembered what that felt like, maybe a good dream or two if I want to get really ambitious. You wouldn't know any magic to help with that, Rudolph?"
Loki looked startled. "I… I just might," he said. After that the Odin-Clone faithful reported to his throne every time Tony managed to get to sleep. It took several days before conditions aligned but as soon as they did Loki formed a mental bond between himself and the clone viewing Midgard from his seat on Hlidskjalf. For a moment he had the strangest sensation that the clone was hiding something from him but Loki was too busy forging a link with Tony's sleeping mind, channeling his vision to see the view from Hlidskjalf, to pursue the thought.
"Growth in the clean energy industry next year is expected at eight percent, predominantly in developing countries where full-sized Arc Reactors can provide local power with minimal infrastructure," Pepper read in a warm, dramatic style.
"That's not any bedtime story I'd want to hear," Happy commented from across the room where he and a woman Tony vaguely recognized as Harley's mom were monitoring and assisting Vision's attempt at cooking dinner. Harley and Peter had their heads together over a schematic while Rhodey and Peter's aunt went through a stack of request forms.
"At this age all Nettie understands is the tone of voice. This way she gets exposure to language and I get the yearly reports read," Pepper replied archly and Tony noticed the dark haired infant cradled in her arm.
"Give her here," Rhodey laughed, "I've got some technical manuals I know Tony's daughter will like better than your boring financials."
"And let you get out of reviewing the Avengers' division's resource allocation requests?" Pepper replied. "I don't think so."
'Weirdest dream I ever had,' Tony thought trying to get a better look at the baby, 'Weird, but nice.'
Thor strode through the halls of Asgard, heading for his father's study with Bruce trailing behind him looking out of place. "The mission may take several weeks," Thor said, a worried frown creasing his face.
"Something different?" Bruce asked. The earlier missions he'd gone on with Thor had consisted of visiting communities on a number of different planets. Sometimes they dealt with bandits or monsters while they were there, other times they'd help train the local forces.
Thor shook his head. "Just longer but I worry for Father. After Mother's death he was devastated." He looked down, his expression heartbroken, "It was Mother, how could he be otherwise? But Odin is more than my father, more than Frigga's husband, he is the All-Father. When he chose to confront Malekith here, in Asgard, I feared that his desire to see Mother's death avenged had unhinged him. He cared not for the casualties that would be incurred so long as the Dark Elves perished... Perhaps I was little better, my plan risked much to see Jane safe although I was loath to admit it at the time but Father's unconcern when confronted with the likelihood of high casualties among our own people was disconcerting enough to turn Heimdall from his steadfast loyalty to the throne."
"What changed?" Banner asked. "You came stay on Earth immediately after the Convergence. Seeing you here on Asgard, I can't believe you'd have left if your father was unfit to rule."
"Between my return to Asgard after Ultron's defeat and your arrival I was given opportunity to hone my skills as Prince of Asgard," Thor said wryly. "However you are right, I had faith in my father's judgement when I returned to Midgard. Father had asked me to take the throne but I was just confronting the truth of my own recklessness. I had convinced myself that my plan; taking Jane to the Dark World to confront Malekith; was for the good of Asgard. However, trapped on Svartalfheim, Malekith in possession of the Aether, Loki's life sacrificed for mine and Jane cured I had no choice but to acknowledge my true priorities. It was luck alone that enable Jane and I to return to Midgard in time to put a halt to Malekith's schemes.
"When I returned to Asgard, Father no longer seemed the vengeance fill berserker that I had mutinied against the day after Mother's funeral. Between the two of us, the man I returned home to was the better king and so I refused the throne." Thor sighed heavily, "However, when I returned to Asgard to report on the fate of the Mind Stone, I found that my father was not on speaking terms with any of his old advisors."
"That's why you didn't return," Banner surmised. "You thought Odin would talk to you."
"Aye and he does," Thor agreed. "Once I made myself available Father wasn't slow to find uses for me." He shook his head, "It- It was nothing I'd expected. Father is allowing Vanaheim and Alfheim to rearm themselves, Nidavellir's master smiths have been given leave to work their crafts as they will. All three Realms are now allowed a voice in the Thing, if they banded together they could even overturn Asgard's decisions."
"Did he give any reason?" Banner asked.
"A good one," Thor replied. "When the Bifrost was destroyed the Realms fell into chaos. Without Asgard's armies to maintain the peace marauders and rebellions sprang up like wild fires. Father decided that those three realms had shown Asgard millennia of loyalty and to continue to hold them as puppet states served only to weakened us all. In particular he wished Vanaheim, my mother's birthplace, to be strong and capable of it's own defense once again. Hogun the Grim and over three dozen other Vanir who had found high places in the armies of Asgard were allowed to return home and become the core of a new Vanaheim army."
"That doesn't sound particularly alarming," Banner replied.
Thor shook his head, "After what I'd learned of Midgard at the side of my Lady Jane I found it most appealing that Father was willing to share power between the different peoples of the Nine Realms rather than continuing Asgard's age old practice of concentrating all strength in our own hands. Father has even entered into talks with Niflheim and Jotunheim." Thor's gaze dropped to his feet, "Although, after Loki and I's actions, Jotunheim wants nothing to do with us. Father has made so many changes, and I hardly approve of them, but behind them all is his sudden inexplicable belief that a threat looms on the horizon, one that dwarfs Malekith and the second Dark Elf uprising."
Thor glanced around then lowered his voice. "Father has spoken to me of a foe from the dawn of time, a tale told to frighten children as far back as the days of my great grandfather Buri. Father speaks of the mad Titan as a real and pressing threat," Thor said. "He cuts himself off from the voices of his oldest and closest advisors. He avoids the feasting halls. Friend Bruce, Father has isolated himself ever since Mother and Loki's deaths. These last few months, apart from the necessities of ruling his kingdom, Father barely stirs himself to leave his quarters. I do not fault him as a king but I fear for him as a man. He is too much alone."
"So you want to say goodbye in person before we leave?" Bruce asked.
"And return as quickly as possible," Thor said. He threw open the door to his father's study and Bruce promptly walked into Thor's back.
When Thor continued to stand there, frozen in his tracks, Bruce leaned around him to see what had caused such a reaction. He spotted a small, dark-haired boy caught in the act of ducking behind Odin's desk. Odin himself frowned severely at his son, "Have you never heard of knocking?" he demanded .
Thor lunged across the room and fell to his knees, reaching out with shaking hands to turn the boy to face him. "I'd heard rumors," he whispered. His eyes gleamed with tears, with awe.
"Loptr, go to the garden," Odin ordered as he removed Thor's hands from the boy's shoulders. Loptr scurried outside with one fearful backwards at Thor.
"Is he?" Thor asked hopefully turning to his father.
Odin shrugged, "He lost his mother in the Dark Elves' attack, that is all I've been able to learn of where he came from. You would know better than I if your brother had taken lovers."
Standing on the threshold of Odin's office Bruce looked vaguely uncomfortable but Thor merely shrugged, "Loki found Fandral's tales of his conquests distasteful and so he made a point of being discrete. The boy, Loptr? He has Loki's look about him. He is- must be- something of Loki that is not lost. Can you not publically acknowledge him?"
"And confirm his father was a frost giant?" Odin asked. "I've already confined the boy to the royal chambers for his own safety."
Thor scowled darkly, "Who would be so low as to consider attacking a child!"
Odin frowned at Thor as if he couldn't believe what had come out of his son's mouth. "You are aware that most of the warriors who survived the Jotun-Asgard war have already killed children younger than that? Did you not listen to your history teachers? We sacked Jotunheim's capital and seven of its other major cities before they tendered their surrender. Loki was left out to die because his parents likely considered it a kinder fate than to allow him to fall into the hands of the enemy army. It was my choice to spare him that was the oddity."
Thor's expression darkened, "And you have banned me from your quarters, from Loki's son."
"Why all the concern for your brother now?" Odin asked coldly. "You left him to die."
He could have punched Thor in the gut and had less effect. "Father," he pled, "Loki was dead when I left him. I swear it."
Odin's expression clouded over with confusion, Bruce stepped forward concern creasing his features but Odin shook his head and waved Bruce back. "Of course. You've explained what happened before. You have a mission Thor. We will discuss Loptr when you return."
Loptr burst into Tony's room looking like a frightened rabbit. "Shit, kid what happened?" Tony exclaimed hurrying across the room to the boy.
"I- He- He-," Loptr stammered incoherently.
"Did someone hurt you?" Tony demanded. "Over the all the stuff I've had you pilfering?"
Loptr shook his head, his expression utterly miserable.
"Okay, okay," Tony muttered to himself. "What do I do?" He patted Loptr's shoulder gingerly and gave him a smile. "You think you could handle being my lab assistant for awhile. Just let whatever it is go for now."
Loptr looked up at Tony hopefully from beneath messy bangs. He took a deep steadying breath and nodded.
"Good, great," Tony declared. "When I was a real little kid my dad used to let me do this. It was about the only thing we ever shared. I ask for tools and you hand them to me. I'll even tell you what everything's called upfront and not yell if you get it wrong. I mean, sure you call a hammer a hammer, but you've probably got your own name for a phillips vs a flathead." Tony grinned and ruffled Loptr's hair, "Hey while we're at it, why don't you teach me the Space-Viking names for all this stuff and we can use those then you can tell me if I get it wrong."
Loptr smiled back timidly and they spend the next half hour discussing tools and rearranging Tony's work bench.
"Now that I've finished cleaning up the mess I made I'm working on something that will scan the All-Daddy's oversized toothpick," Tony explained. "After what I saw of the Mind Gem, I'm figuring 'enchantment' or 'spell' is some sort of coding and whatever the spell is laid on serves as the operating system, the computer."
"Coding? Computer?" Loptr looked puzzled.
"I scanned the Mind Gem, it was an artificial intelligence," Tony explained. "The most complex I've ever seen, and that's saying something coming from me. it's program was written into the molecular structure of a crystal. The scepter, then Ultron and ultimately Vision gave the code physical reality, the ability to act." Tony closed his eyes for a moment, "We took the gem back when we made Vision, and J.A.R.V.I.S. let me add his code to what was already there, to- to- overwrite the HYDRA input about humanity. But it was too late, code can replicate. Ultron had already copied himself into hundreds of drone bodies. J.A.R.V.I.S. debugged the Mind Gem, used his code to repair the corrupted segments, but it didn't fix the copies of the bad software Ultron had already propagated.
"I'm hypothesizing that there's some sort of coding on the toothpick, and Thor's hammer, that gives them some sort of rudimentary intelligence." Tony grimaced, "That's not right. Limited intelligence, the hammer can, somehow, judge its wielder. It can refuse to be lifted if it finds them unworthy but it doesn't act on its own. It doesn't decide a course of action, Thor decides lightning or pounding and who deserves it but the hammer decides he's worthy of making that judgement and it can change its mind. I put a biometric lock on my weapons and it's me, deciding, at this moment in time, this person is not going to misuse what I give them. But once I make that choice it's out of my hands. Sure I can change the locks later but from the time they walk out the door to the time they ask me for upgrades, and they always do, it's out of my hands, they can do whatever they want with what I've given them. More than that I can misjudge, not see when they lie, Vision hadn't done anything, the hammer didn't have any actions to judge him on but it still made the determination. It could, must have somehow, looked inside him and judged on that not on what he'd shown the world."
Seeing Loptr looked anything but bored, Tony continued. "The Mind Gem was easy, obvious. The crystal it's made of two distinct but matching units: complex face centered cubics, the individual atoms in the two units are different but they sum to the exact same size for the cubic so they're interchangeable on a unit to unit level. Ones and zeroes, easy to read as a coding. Easy to find the code, I never did manage to fully untangle it. Just realized the surface of it could be recoded, J.A.R.V.I.S. was already there, willing and available. The only other thing we needed was Thor's lightning to energize the Gem's structure enough energy to move, to rewrite the code. I've seen you and Rudolph casting spells, I think it's got to be more coding but the hammer and spear? No obvious hard drive. I don't know where the code goes and I don't have anything to read it, not like I had at my lab. So that's what we're doing, building a system to find the code on Gungnir. Now get me that torque wrench and let's get to work."
"This one?" Loptr asked selecting the correct tool and handing it to Tony.
After maybe twenty minutes Tony pulled Loptr closer and carefully guided him through the process of lining up and assembling a number of components. Loptr giggled and used his magic to easily repeat the task on the next set. "Smart-ass," Tony grumbled cheerfully, "Just for that you can do all the rest of them."
"Of course I can," Loptr declared snootily and just to show off he did three sets at once.
"Sorcerer's apprentice," Tony snarked.
"Sorceress's apprentice," Loptr corrected. "My mother was my only master."
Tony made a thoughtful sound at that.
Notes: So assuming the twins are in their mid-twenties and their parents were killed when they were around ten, that puts the bombing that killed their parents in approximately 2000. The 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia puts the US military in Eastern Europe in the right time frame. The military action didn't have UN approval due to opposition from Russia and China… So taking that as the most likely reason for missiles over the Maximoff household, if NATO had abided by the UN's oversight then her parents wouldn't have been killed (by a US missile anyway), but Wanda's fighting on the side of refusing UN oversight.
From Wanda's side of the equation that one bomb is the most important thing in the world. Her parents aren't terribly important people so whether the missile was fired by the US or by either side in the conflict they're collateral damage, not a target. I don't think she's in the least bit capable of looking at the larger situation in a rational manner, no matter how much time passes or how tenuous the connection between Tony and the missile ending up in her house was she's going to cling to her chosen scapegoat. Even if I leave out my theory that Wanda was using her powers to subconsciously poison the team against Tony and make them sympathetic to her (because otherwise the decision to put her on the Avengers is just too stupid to bare and everyone from Steve to Natasha to Rhodey to Tony all apparently bought off on her presence on the team) I still think the way everyone buys into her sob story would still serve the same purpose judging from how easily Steve bought into her view of Tony's character while she was still dizzy from her face-turn.
So for Wanda's side of the equation I want Tony completely divorced from her parents' death, I can't see anything less convincing her that she was wrong to want revenge against him. From Tony's side that particular bomb doesn't matter. Even if one of his bombs didn't kill her parents it could have and they did killed others people. Yinsen and getting blown up himself already gave him a personal connection to the unintended victims of his bombs, the Maximoffs are extraneous. The only way I can deal with Tony's zero accountability system statement from IM1 is to assume he was hoping that other people would follow his lead and take some responsibility for the existence of war. Instead, because this is Marvel, everyone just nods their heads and says "Yep, Tony's to blame."