The Viper || BUCKY BARNES [2]

11 ― The Accords

2016 ― Upstate New York

AFTER ROSS LEFT, the Avengers were still all sitting around. Holland wasn't happy about this. Considering what they just went through with S.H.I.E.L.D. and HYDRA, she was not keen on working under another government. She helped create S.H.I.E.L.D. with good intentions, and a parasite came in and ruined everything. She knew working under the control of the government; they wouldn't let them operate to the best of their abilities. She knew they would have agendas, they would keep secrets, and they would keep them in the dark, and they probably wouldn't let them help as often as others would need them.

She wasn't going through that again; she refused.

Steve sat reading through the Accords while Sam and Rhodey were arguing, and everyone else was sitting around too. "Secretary Ross has a Congressional Medal of Honor... which is one more than you have," Rhodey said, and Holland rolled her eyes. Does he really think that medals mean something?

"So, let's say we agree to this thing. How long is it gonna be before they LoJack us like a bunch of common criminals?" Sam asked.

"He's right," Holland added in.

"117 countries want to sign this. 117, Sam, and you're just like, no, that's cool, we got it." Rhodes said.

"How long are you going to play both sides?" Sam asked, and he made another good point as well.

"I have an equation." Vision spoke out, which made the room fall quiet.

"Oh, this will clear it up," Sam said.

"In the eight years since Mr. Stark announced himself as Iron Man... the number of known enhanced persons has grown exponentially. And during the same period... the number of potentially world-ending events has risen at a commensurate rate." Vision said.

"Are you saying it's our fault?" Steve asked as he looked up from the documents; he was about halfway through everything. It was a pretty thick booklet.

"I'm saying; there may be a causality. Our very strength invites challenge. Challenge incites conflict, and conflict breeds catastrophe. Oversight. Oversight is not an idea that can be dismissed out of hand," Vision said.

"Boom," Rhodey said.

"That's still not our fault. A lot of us were not asked to be made this way. I didn't personally go ask HYDRA to run experiments on me. Nat didn't ask to go through what she went through. We didn't ask for this strength, and we don't ask for these people to come after us. You think oversight should be taken into consideration? None of you knows what it feels like to be underneath someone else's control, having to bend to someone else's will, your choices not being your own, but please, by all means, if that's the future you want, go ahead and sign yourselves over." Holland said. Nobody thought of it like that.

Given that she spent the majority of her life as HYDRA's secret weapon, she had no desire to be under the control or jurisdiction of anyone else ever again.

"Tony... You are being uncharacteristically non-hyperverbal." Natasha said.

"It's because he's already made up his mind. He is the one who brought Ross here." Holland said. Tony looked over at his Aunt.

"Man, you know me so well. Actually, I'm nursing an electromagnetic headache. That's what's going on, Holland. It's just pain. It's discomfort." Tony said. He had stood up and walked over to the sink, and grabbed a coffee cup. "Who's putting coffee grounds at the disposal? Am I running bed and breakfast for a biker gang?" He asked, and then he set a device down and tapped the screen twice, and a hologram of an image came up—a teenage boy. "Oh, that's Charles Spencer, by the way. He's a great kid. Computer engineering degree, 3.6 GPA... had a floor-level gig at Intel planned for the fall. But first, he wanted to put a few miles on his soul before he parked it behind a desk. See the world. Maybe be of service. Charlie didn't want to go to Vegas or Fort Lauderdale, which is what I would do. He didn't go to Paris or Amsterdam, which sounds fun. He decided to spend his summer building sustainable housing for the poor. Guess where Sokovia. He wanted to make a difference, I suppose. I mean, we won't know because we dropped a building on him while we were kicking ass." Tony said, and Holland stood up.