The Keeper of Infinity

In Mourning

July 24, 2025; 5.15 pm; The Sanctum Sanctorum, 177A Bleecker Street, Greenwich Village, New York City, New York

Stephen had a love-hate relationship with masks — both figurative and literal. He could appreciate the occasional need of maintaining a social mask to ward off unnecessary curiosity from others but he also hated being on the receiving end of it, of not being in the know.

However, in his entire life up until now, throughout both his professions, he had never met a person easier to read than Spiderman. His full-face mask did nothing to hide his feelings. He was the perfect example of someone wearing their emotions on their sleeves.

Be it the steady way the large seemingly-intimidating eyes of the mask kept narrowing with each word that rolled off Maximoff's tongue or the hard fists that his hands had formed the entire time during Maximoff's confessions (yes, multiple), Stephen could practically see what was going on in Spiderman's head despite not having the unholy powers of being able to read minds. All he had to do was pay him enough attention.

And it wasn't like he did not understand where the young — that voice could only belong to a young adult — superhero was coming from, or for that matter, all the other Avengers.

Horror, fear and disgust were three prominent emotions that reigned the room in that moment.

Horror at what Maximoff had done.

Fear of what Maximoff could do.

Disgust at what Maximoff had become.

There was some rage going around in the room as well. Besides Spiderman, Thor and Wong looked the most affected by it while Dr. Banner, whom Stephen would have expected to at least start looking a little green, was controlling himself remarkably in spite of the burning fury that Stephen could see in his eyes.

It was almost like he had always known about her misdeeds which, come to think of it now, wasn't exactly impossible. Granted, Dr. Banner had been off-world for two years before...Thanos's first arrival but he had heard, in the intermediate five years when half of the population (including Stephen) were dust, Tony—Stark and Dr. Banner had caught up.

"How dare you!" Thor gritted out, his eyes beginning to spark blue, and that was not a good sign!

Stephen nearly wanted to shut Maximoff up and put a sleeping spell on her — he wasn't delusional enough to think he could lift Atheileisia's spell off the woman — but he refrained.

He knew some of what Maximoff had done — a little reading of the newspapers was all it took for one to know and it was both surprising and terrifying that more people did not know of the horrors that had come to pass because of her.

Until now, they had been given an acknowledgement of how selfish she had been in wanting to take America's powers, how ruthless she had been in planning to replace whichever Wanda Maximoff existed in the other reality; they had also been very kindly apprised of her voluntary allegiance to fucking HYDRA — that had apparently come as a shock to Wilson and Barnes, and while he understood Barnes's cluelessness, there was no reasonable excuse, in his opinion, for Wilson to not know of such an important detail about his teammate's past.

"I had also induced some nightmares. I had wanted to dredge up the fear lurking deep within to make him self-destruct."

"Yes, we know. I don't think anybody here has forgotten Johannesburg." Either Dr. Banner had completely missed the usage of a single pronoun or he had taken 'him' to mean himself. Stephen didn't think Wanda was referring to the attack on the Hulk though.