Red Whispers || Wanda Maximoff X Reader

Chapter 35 || BARF

Your POV

I watch as my Dad walks onto the stage where a younger Tony stands from the couch to say goodbye. A younger me is seated at the piano with my mother as she tries to teach me how to play while Tony and Dad joke around.

"Do me a favor? Try not to burn the house down before Monday."

"Okay, so it's Monday. That is good to know. I will plan my toga party accordingly. Where you going?"

Young me looks up at Tony, "Dad's taking us to the Bahamas. You would've been invited if you know...you weren't sleeping with the whole country."

He throws his Santa hat at me that I only dodge, standing up to play wrestle with him for a bit.

"We might have to make a quick stop."

Tony and I look at each other knowingly, younger me rolls her eyes, knowing that a true vacation was too good to be true when you're a Stark.

Tony sighs, patting my shoulder as he speaks, "At the Pentagon. Right? Don't worry, you're gonna love the holiday menu at the commissary."

"You know, they say sarcasm is a metric for potential. If that's true, you'll be a great man some day. I'll get the bags." Dad leaves the room and Tony walks over to a door frame, staring out almost at me from it while Mom and younger me approach him.

"He does miss you when you are not here. And frankly, you're going to miss us. Because this is the last time we're all going to be together. You know what's about to happen. Say something. If you don't, you'll regret it."

I feel chills go down my spine watching this. This was the last place I saw Tony before everything went to shit. Only this time it's different. This time, Tony says,

"I love you, Dad. And I know you did the best you could."

He turns to me and smiles briefly, "I love you, Y/N. You're the best little sister anyone could ask for. I should've protected you better."

He hugs younger me and when we part, real Tony appears from behind.

"That's how I wished it happened. Binarily Augmented Retro-Framing, or BARF. God, I gotta work on that acronym. An extremely costly method of hijacking the hippocampus to . . . clear traumatic memories." He blows on a candle that takes apart the entire illusion, now just him on the stage.

"It doesn't change the fact that they never made it to the airport . . . or all the things I did to avoid processing my grief, but . . .Plus, 611 million dollars for my little therapeutic experiment? No one in the right mind would've ever funded it."

He gives a speech to the MIT students, announces that he's going to fund their projects through Stark Industries. When the teleprompter says, 'Now I would like to introduce the head of the foundation: Pepper Potts' Tony goes silent until his eyes land on me off to the side. I make my way onto the stage and smile as everyone cheers for me.

"Now go break some eggs," I say and pull Tony off the stage.

People come at him instantly and one guy asks for Tony to fund the faculty, to which I interrupt and say, "Bathroom is this way?" I start to lead Tony away until a woman comes to apologize about the teleprompter.

Tony says it's fine, but he'll be back.

I follow him out and he struggles to focus his breathing but I just pat his back, "You're alright. Pepper will come around, okay? Just breathe."

We go towards the elevator where we see a woman standing.

"That was nice, what you did for those young people." Tony nods slowly, "Ah, they deserve it. Plus, it helps ease my conscience." And there's that Stark charm.