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An Age Of Ultron reaction snippet. I don’t know where this came from or what I mean it to lead into. Steve, Tony, Wanda, coffee, and a discussion of deep dark fears.
“Fuck,” Steve said, groping hastily for a dishtowel to stop the spread of coffee across the counter. Tony opened his mouth, and Steve glowered at him. “If you even open your fuckin’ mouth right now, Stark—“
“You’ll what?” Tony asked. “What will you to do me, huh?”
“You don’t want to find out,” Steve said.
“Creative,” Tony said, nodding thoughtfully. “Well, about as creative as I’d expect from a man with no dark side.”
Wanda, hithertofore unnoticed at the table behind him, laughed sharply, then cut herself off. Tony turned to look at her. “What,” he said.
“I said nothing,” she said, innocent.
“No, no,” Tony said, “that wasn’t a nothing laugh. You were laughing at Steve not having a dark side, and I know you’ve seen it. Spill, Spookypants.”
“Nicknames like that do not endear you to me,” Wanda said darkly over the edge of her coffee cup, but Steve could see she wasn’t really offended. “But come now, Stark, how long have you known Rogers? You sincerely believe he has no dark side?”
Tony squinted at her, then looked over at Steve, who made his expression as neutral as he could muster as he cleaned up the spilled coffee. It had, of course, been the last of the coffee, and he of course had to put a new pot on and wait for it, and while Stark’s machines were incredibly fast at making coffee, it still meant he had to stand here for this.
“The rest of us were all rattled as fuck from your little stunt,” Tony said, “and Steve came out of it fresh as a fuckin’ daisy. What conclusion am I gonna draw from that?”
Wanda sipped from her cup, then stuck the saucer over the mouth of the cup, swirled it, and set it upside down, still connected. She held it for a moment, watching the outside of the cup where nothing was visible, and then picked up the cup, and considered the resulting sludge on the saucer. Maybe, Steve reflected, that hadn’t been coffee she was drinking. Tea?
She poked idly at the mess on her saucer with a finger. “I think you have it backwards, Stark,” she said. “It is not that Rogers has no dark side. It is that he has nothing but a dark side. I could not show him anything he did not already know. The worst things he can imagine have happened already to him.” She looked up, and smiled at both of them, a tight sad little smile.
Steve set his jaw and looked down, wishing he’d just given up on the coffee and left before this. Tony was staring at him but he wasn’t going to return the look, not now.
“You’re telling me Captain America is all dark side,” Tony said.
“No,” Wanda said. She stood up and came over to rinse her cup and saucer in the sink. Belatedly Steve recognized Turkish coffee, and wondered why he hadn’t thought of that before. Of course this kitchen had equipment to make Turkish coffee.
“Then what the fuck did you mean by that?” Tony demanded.
She ignored Tony for a moment, looking up at Steve, who made himself meet her gaze. “There is nothing left to fear,” she said, and her voice was unexpectedly kind. “You have already lived through the worst, and it has broken you.”
“He hardly looks like a broken man,” Tony said, gesturing, but Steve looked at him then, and could see his doubt.
“Neither do I, I daresay,” Wanda said, “but once you have already lost everything, there is not a great deal you can hide from yourself, down in the dark corners of your soul.”
Tony blinked at her, blinked at Steve, and took a step back. “This is a damn disconcerting conversation,” he said.
“Well, Stark,” Wanda said, “you did ask for it.”
(was going thru, for some reason, my Tumblr archives from 2015, and found this, which is probably in the Full of Grace ‘verse, which I haven’t revisited, but I rather liked it, so I’m reblogging it for those of y’all who didn’t follow me then.
Man AoU was such a dumb movie.)