Capítulo 66: Chapter 66
11th January 2017
Thurgood Marshall United States Courthouse, New York City
"How're you doing, Maggot?"
"Great. I feel great."
"I don't think I believe you."
"How dare you. Pepper, how do I look?"
"You look great, Maggie. Very…"
"Innocent?" suggested Tony.
"I was going to say professional."
Maggie looked between Pepper and Tony, trying to draw strength from their confidence in her. Rhodey and Vision were both back at the Avengers Facility – they'd wanted to be here, but Avengers analysts had gotten a lead on the group who hired Tony's would-be-assassin so they had to stay behind to follow that up.
Too soon, the door to the small meeting room opened to admit Andrea and Diego. "We've got to head in now. Are you ready?"
There was a long silence until Maggie whispered: "I guess I have to be."
"You're going to do great," Tony said, patting her on the shoulder as he got to his feet.
"I don't think I believe you," she muttered, but stood and followed him out the door.
They'd talked about her giving testimony for weeks – her lawyers weren't sure it was the best option, but given the weight of evidence against her they decided that Maggie needed to speak for herself. Which was good, because Maggie wouldn't have let them talk her out of it.
It wasn't that she was looking forward to putting her trauma and memories on the line so publicly, but this was what she'd promised the victims of her crimes: accountability and truth. So she was going to do it, her own fragile mental health be damned.
"Your honor, I now call Margaret Stark to the stand."
Everyone knew this was coming but whispers still broke out across the courtroom as Maggie got to her feet, smoothed down her blazer and walked with her head held high to the witness box.
She'd thought she was getting used to people staring at her, but it was one thing to sit behind the defense desk and another to stand in front of a sea of faces all waiting for her to bare her soul.
The bailiff approached and met her eyes. "Do you affirm that you will tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? This you do affirm under pains and penalties of perjury?"
"I do."
The bailiff nodded and she took her seat in the witness box – Tony hadn't been lying when he told her it was surprisingly comfortable. A hush fell, and Maggie focused on what her lawyers had told her: stay focused, be truthful, try to relax, and take your time. She took long, slow breaths, but couldn't ease the sick feeling in her stomach.
Diego stood and approached the open space in front of the witness box. He met her eyes, shooting her a subtle encouraging look, and then spoke. "Please state your full name, date of birth, address and occupation for the court."
Easy start. Sort of. "Margaret Abigail Stark, June 2nd 1986. Avengers Facility, and… um, unemployed."
A mutter went through the courtroom before hush fell again, as everyone focused on her. Maggie kept her shoulders straight and didn't look away from Diego. Her heart pounded against her chest but she kept her face calm – but not too calm, since Diego and Andrea had warned her against resorting to careful blankness when faced with strangers. Your emotions are honest, Maggie. If there's any time to let them show, it's now.
One breath. Two breaths. Three breaths.
"Ms Stark," Diego began. "You're here to speak on your own behalf in what has been a long and traumatic trial focused not only on your crimes but on the many crimes committed against you. I'm going to begin with a simple question, one which I believe will strike at the truth. Ms Stark, please tell us: what happened?"
Maggie looked out at the full gallery of the courtroom. She looked from her brother's face, to Pepper's, to her lawyers. Her eyes slid across the jury and then up to Judge Moore. She breathed in.
And then, not for the first time or the last, she told her story.
"A HYDRA agent killed my parents and took me to a base in Canada: a small island off the coast of Québec…"
"… stood around watching as Sanders injected me with the blue serum. At first it felt cold, like ice seeping into my veins, then all of a sudden it burned. Like I was being set on fire from the inside out. I… I screamed and begged them to stop, but they just stared at me." Maggie avoided Tony's eyes. She didn't want to see the pain there, and she knew it was only going to get worse. "I passed out after about a minute, and when I woke up I was different."
"I thought I could trick them somehow. Get healed and then try to slip away, or call the police…" she shook her head. "It was naïve. But I didn't realize how foolish I was being until they strapped me into that chair. And then it was too late."
"Naïve? How old were you again, Ms Stark?"
She swallowed. "Five." She could feel everyone staring at her.
"It's hard to remember things from that time because they were wiping me so often. But I still remember that they'd… they'd chained two innocent people in a cell, side by side. The first time it was a man and a woman, both middle-aged. I didn't know it at the time but their names were Harold Tremblay and Maria Macdonald. They were so scared, crying and begging to be let go."
Deep breath. "My trainer put electrodes on my chest and a gun in my hand, and told me to kill one of them. I remember looking from the gun, to the people in front of me, and I asked… I asked why. They never gave me an answer. The soldiers in the room shot Harold and Maria, and they electrocuted me." Maggie touched the points on her chest where the electrodes had once been. "After they wiped me, they brought in two more people, and did the same thing. I questioned them again, and the same thing happened. After that, I did what they said."
Maggie took a shuddering breath. "I remember that changed something in my mind. That was when I started to believe what they said about me, when I believed that they'd made me into a weapon. Because if I didn't have a choice, what else did that make me?"
"And how old were you at the time?" Diego asked softly.
"Six."
More gasps. Maggie didn't know how her age managed to surprise them each time.
"I felt the hot metal cooling on my bones, felt them welding metal together inside me." Her voice shook. "I couldn't move, I could only scream and stare at the floor, where my blood was dripping down." She heard people leaving the courtroom, but she didn't look at them.
"Didn't they give you any anesthetic?" Diego asked. "Surely it would have been simpler to knock you out?"
Maggie shook her head. "My metabolism burns through drugs too quickly. For such a long surgery using that much anesthetic would have been… costly." Her face darkened. "And unnecessary."
"We've all seen what videos remain of those procedures, are you saying you were awake for all of them?"
"Yes." Her voice was hard.
"And how old were you?"
"For the first surgery I was seven. The second time, for the wing moorings, I was nine."
"How did you recover from such an invasive procedure?"
Maggie swallowed. "They said that movement would compromise the way my muscles and skin integrated with the metal, so they told me to lie on the table."
"For how long?"
"Twenty seven hours." She was ready for the gasps this time.
"Twenty seven hours," Diego echoed, his face crumpled with dismay. "Lying on your front after surgery, with no food or medical attention?"
"That's right."
Maggie couldn't even make herself sound detached. Each word brought back sights, smells and sounds from those cold years in the Québec tunnels. She tried to keep her voice measured and strong, but it kept cracking and tears kept slipping from her eyes unbidden.
Diego's low, empathetic voice got her through, with his repeated utterances of take your time, and of course, take a minute.
Maggie couldn't look at Tony but she felt his eyes on her the whole time. She felt his rage, his grief, his pain, crackling across the space between them. It broke her heart.
They went over the various scans of her body, from Québec and from more recently. When she took off her shoes and demonstrated her heel spurs for the court there were gasps and fascinated stares. Maggie's skin crawled.
"Before we arrived at the Red Room the Project Leader told me to kill one of the girls. I crushed the throat of the second girl who went up against me. Her name was Zoya. I never learned her last name."
"We were there for almost two years because they wanted me to learn infiltration and espionage – I didn't act like a human, you see, so I didn't know how to assimilate. They taught me at the Red Room by getting me to imitate normal social interactions. Madame B said I was still too blank to be truly convincing."
"There were other girls at the Red Room, yes? Did you ever form any connections with them?"
"No. They were being manipulated in their own way, and I was kept apart from them." She bowed her head. "They tried to kill me four different times."
"And how old were you?"
The question was starting to grate on her nerves, but she understood why Diego kept asking.
She sighed. "I turned nine at the Red Room."
"Horrified Silence": Attendees of the Wyvern Trial Relate the Mood Inside the Courtroom during Maggie Stark's Testimony.
Maggie's testimony lasted days. Once they had gone over her stolen childhood and the end of her time at Québec, they went over the many crimes she had committed.
Maggie went into detail about everything she'd done, laying out facts, names, and dates. Going into such detail wasn't a great idea for defending herself but that wasn't why she was doing this. This was her chance to get everything on public record, to free HYDRA's secrets from her shifting memories and lay them in the light. The memories hurt, but Maggie felt a grim satisfaction even as her voice went hoarse from speaking. She'd said she was here for the truth. This was her chance.
The prosecutor kept trying to object: for relevance or for speculation, but each time he did Diego calmly said "Your honor, the prosecution is charging my client with these crimes, it is her right to talk about them." And every time, Judge Moore overruled the prosecution.
Throughout her testimony Diego kept her on track about her culpability: he asked her how she'd felt about the crimes at the time ("I didn't feel anything"), the rare moments where she'd been confused, or conflicted about what was happening and how her handlers dealt with that, and how she felt about what she'd done now.
Maggie went home each evening exhausted, and slept through fitful nightmares before she woke up in the morning and went back to court to continue where she'd left off.
HERACLES User Alert 01/16/17: Please note that this site has been updated to include court transcripts from Margaret Stark's testimony in the United States v. Stark criminal trial. If you have any questions or comments on this new information, please contact the site admin.
"Tell us about the day you broke away from HYDRA."
Maggie took a deep breath. After going over decades of crimes, she was going to have to take a step back into her mindset on those Helicarriers.
"I had a… mission. To protect Project Insight."
She tried to explain her thoughts as best as she could without giving too much away about her feelings for Bucky – she hadn't had feelings for Bucky at the time, beyond a confused sort of fascination, so she managed fairly well. Trying to put herself back in that headspace of designation: Wyvern, purpose: mission was difficult. It reminded her of snow on her cheeks, lightning in her mind, and ready to comply.
The court hung on to her every word.
She told them about her agony and confusion in the broken hull of the Helicarrier, two decades of programming battling against her long-smothered humanity. She told them how that clash of missions had nearly torn her mind apart. She told them about how she'd remembered her name and then went to save the Winter Soldier, about how the Quinjets got in her way but she hadn't destroyed them because she'd been fascinated by Steve Rogers' mission: People are going to die, Buck. I can't let that happen.
She told them about how she and the Winter Soldier had quietly walked away from HYDRA, both of them aware that they'd cut all ties and yet too afraid to say it out loud.
She told them about her pact with the man named Bucky.
She told them about feeling free.
"I'd known myself as nothing but a weapon for years. But I remember… I remember looking at myself in the mirror after I escaped from HYDRA, and seeing a person. It startled me, looking into my eyes and seeing someone looking back at me. It scared me. But then I made a decision to be a person from that day forward." She swallowed. "I had to learn how to be one. I had to learn how to have choices, from simple things like what to eat and wear, and what my favorite color was, to big things like looking back and realizing that if someone asked me to do all the horrible things I'd done again, without the chair and the words, I wouldn't do it. I didn't want that."
"Why did you want this trial, Ms Stark?"
Maggie leaned back in her seat and stopped herself from running her hands over her face just in time. "I… I asked for this process because I wanted the truth to come out. That's all. And I hope I've achieved that."
"And what will you do if you're vindicated?" Diego asked.
Maggie blinked. He'd warned her that he'd be asking her that question, but with the prospect of all the other things she was going to testify about she hadn't put a lot of thought into it. The trial had taken up so much of her time that the idea of having a future seemed… impossible.
She swallowed. "I… I've only really been a person for two years. I'm still figuring lots of things out. But if I were vindicated… I'd focus on my mental health, particularly on researching how to get rid of my trigger words. But there's more than that." She bit her lip. "I have… a varied set of skills. Some of those I was born with, some of them were given to me by HYDRA. Some of them I've learned since then. I intend to use those skills to help people whether I'm vindicated or not." Diego frowned at that, but Maggie had promised to tell the truth. "I can make things. Tony and I made a line of prosthetics-"
"Objection! Irrelevant and prejudicial!" called Mallory.
"Agreed. That was a hypothetical question, Ms Stark," said Judge Moore.
"Sorry. I guess I'm just trying to say that if I've learned anything since escaping from HYDRA it's that I'm better when I'm helping people. And I have the ability to do that. So… that's what I'd do." She shrugged to indicate that she was finished, and Diego smiled at her.
"Thank you, Ms Stark. No further questions."
Maggie sat back in her seat and sighed.
"Let's take a recess before cross-examination," Judge Moore said, and the courtroom filled with noise as people got to their feet and started talking.
Maggie climbed out of the witness box and walked back to the defense desk, where Tony met her and put an arm around her shoulders. But Maggie couldn't join in the snarky banter he fired off because of the tension winding up her spine and across her shoulders. She might have given her testimony, but there was still cross-examination to come. A hard pit of dread formed in her stomach.
The New York Bulletin: No one person should have to suffer a percentage of what Margaret Stark has suffered. And what have we done? Made her relive that trauma in an attempt to convict her for crimes HYDRA is guilty of.
Mallory's cross-examination was, predictably, uncomfortable and upsetting. It lasted the better part of the day, in which he brought up each victim Maggie was charged with killing and accused her of selecting them for death, planning their murders, and getting paid for it.
To each angry, leading question Maggie could only reply "I didn't have a choice." After a while it started to sound flimsy to her own ears.
At one point he changed tactics.
"Why should we trust any of your memories, Ms Stark?" he demanded.
She frowned at him. "What do you mean by that?"
"Well if, as your lawyers have claimed, your memories were destroyed by the Memory Suppression Machine, why should we trust any that you've 're-remembered'? Isn't it possible that you have misremembered or worse, generated false memories?"
Maggie shrugged. "You can ask me about the details of missions I went on and match them up with verifiable data, if you like."
Mallory frowned. "Just answer the question, Ms Stark. Is it possible your memories could be flawed?"
She bowed her head. "Yes."
Out of the corner of her eye she saw Diego and Andrea share a triumphant look, and she frowned. But then she realized: if Mallory was accepting that Maggie's memories had been destroyed by HYDRA, then that was just one more piece of evidence that spoke toward Maggie being their victim. And he'd done it in front of the jury.
Huh.
By mid-afternoon, Maggie felt exhausted but concentrated on staying sharp and not letting Mallory talk her into a corner.
He paced in front of her, hands on his hips. Right now he was going down a tangent of trying to prove that she had free will over who lived or died. "Ms Stark, do you really expect us to believe that you never killed anyone unless you were ordered to?"
Maggie opened her mouth to say no, but then something occurred to her. Her brow creased and she felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
"I… I only ever killed one person that I wasn't ordered to."
Mallory's head jumped up. "Oh?"
Diego and Andrea stared at her in barely-concealed panic. Maggie swallowed and continued. "He was one of the HYDRA agents at the base in Quebec. I would have been… fourteen." She shifted in her seat, uncomfortably hot. "He ordered me to follow him to his room. I did. But then he – he touched me, and ordered me to" –she swallowed again– "he ordered me to…" she squeezed her eyes shut. She couldn't say the words that still haunted her. She could feel the courtroom holding its breath.
"He tried to sexually assault me," she eventually said, keeping her eyes shut. She could feel Tony's eyes on her but she ignored him. She took a deep breath, then opened her eyes to look down into her lap. "I killed him. I wasn't scared of him at the time – I remember thinking that he was acting against protocol, and that his aim was… was to injure the asset, which was… not optimal." Her face twisted and so did her heart as she recalled the way she used to think. Looking back now she was terrified for that girl, alone in that base.
Mallory cocked his head. "You didn't feel scared?"
She looked up at him. "No. I didn't feel anything."
Mallory clearly didn't know what to do with that; he hadn't been expecting her to confess to another crime. He eyed the page of notes in his hand, then glanced up and said "so you really expect us to believe that – aside from this instance – you never chose targets, that you were only acting on orders from above?"
Silence fell. Maggie was still adjusting from what she'd admitted to the whole freaking world, taking a few moments to focus on breathing and slowing her heartrate. Hearing that question after speaking about what had happened was… jarring.
Even Mallory could tell how tone deaf his question was. Maggie saw the flicker of doubt in his eyes, the way he glanced at the jury and saw the horror in their faces from her original answer.
But he had asked her a question, so Maggie swallowed and said: "No. I never chose targets. Sometimes I was ordered to search for certain things or run internet sweeps, and those would highlight potential targets, but it was just… just data, to me. My handlers chose who died. And sent me to carry it out."
There was a strange note in the air now after her admission and then Mallory's subsequent question. Maggie glanced at the windows – they were screened to prevent pictures being taken from outside, but the sunlight streaming through helped to soothe her frayed nerves.
Mallory changed tack completely. "We've heard a lot about your so-called 'trigger words', Ms Stark. Tell me: would those words still work on you today?"
Her skin crawled, and she wasn't quite able to contain her shiver. "Yes."
"I see. And does anyone know what those words are?"
"No."
"Do you?"
Maggie met his eyes. "Yes."
He frowned. "But you haven't told anyone? Not even the people trying to help you, such as your therapist?" There was a light note of confusion in his voice, as if he was asking an obvious question.
"No," she replied.
"Why is that? Surely if you told someone they would be able to help you?"
"It's possible to make progress on removing the trigger words without knowing what they are," she bit out. "It's about how they were implanted, not about the actual words themselves. So I'm not going to tell anyone my trigger words, because that's far too risky for myself, for the person I tell, and for the people around me."
Mallory's eyes glinted. "You're saying that you're dangerous."
Her heart skipped a beat. "We have procedures in place if that happens, I'll be isolated and knocked out in an instant–"
"Ms Stark, you're telling me that there is a series of words that could turn you into some kind of cold, emotionless killing machine, and there's nothing you can do to prevent that from happening? How is that not dangerous?"
Maggie sat back in her chair, reeling.
"Objection," called Andrea in a cold voice, "Mr Mallory is clearly arguing with the witness."
"Sustained," Judge Moore said, stone faced.
"My apologies," Mallory said. "I'll ask the question more simply: Ms Stark, are you a danger to the people around you?"
She dropped her gaze and whispered: "Yes."
After another half hour of questions, Mallory changed tack again.
"And what about the Winter Soldier?"
Maggie didn't let herself freeze, or gasp, or in any way reveal that her stomach had lurched and her palms were suddenly sweating. Andrea and Diego had briefed her on what to do if this came up: don't lie, obviously, but also don't show any emotion. That would show Mallory that Bucky was a weakness to be exploited. So she just cocked her head and asked: "What about him?"
Mallory gave her an unimpressed look. "The Winter Soldier and the Wyvern were seen as a matched pair for a great deal of your time in HYDRA. You appeared out of the blue at around the same time he did, and you've said yourself that you were on the run with him–"
Diego cleared his throat. "Your honor, what exactly is the prosecution asking? What does this have to do with the charges on the docket?" Maggie used the brief pause to collect her thoughts. As she did she caught a glimpse of Tony's face – he watched the proceedings with a tense face and dark eyes.
"Allow me to rephrase," Mallory said before Moore could make a ruling on the objection. "The Winter Soldier–"
"That's not his name."
He paused. "I'm sorry?"
Maggie grit her teeth and tried to slow her beating heart. "The 'Winter Soldier' is the name HYDRA gave him."
Mallory's eyes narrowed. "Of course. Ms Stark you perpetrated multiple homicides with Sergeant James Barnes as your accomplice, did you not?"
One breath. Two. "He didn't want it either, they'd been controlling him for seventy years–"
"– that's convenient–"
Andrea shot to her feet. "Your honor, Mr Mallory is blatantly arguing with the witness–"
"Let's all calm down," Moore rumbled, then turned to Mallory. "Counsel, get to the point or move on."
Mallory nodded and turned to Maggie once more. She tried to unclench her fists under the table. "You shielded Sergeant Barnes from law enforcement when he was a wanted fugitive, didn't you?"
Blank face. Calm voice. "They attempted lethal force against him for a crime he didn't commit."
"So you thought you'd take justice into your own hands?"
"Mr Mallory–" Moore started, but Maggie just raised an eyebrow.
"I didn't think he deserved to die."
Moore cleared his throat loudly, and both Maggie and Mallory fell silent. "Mr Mallory. Please contain yourself to questions relating to the crimes on the charge sheet. Ms Stark, I'll thank you not to interrupt me."
Mallory's eyes flicked imperceptibly to the jury and back, then he straightened his shoulders and changed the topic once more. As Maggie responded to the relatively safer line of questioning ("how can you say you had no choice for over twenty years") she allowed her gaze to drift toward the defense table and the first row of the gallery. Andrea and Diego watched on with firm faces, ready to object to Mallory's questions at the drop of a hat. Andrea caught her eye and gave her a quick nod. Good job.
Behind them, Tony watched with a clenched jaw. Maggie met his eye for just a moment, afraid of what she would find, but when he saw her looking his eyes warmed and he shot her a thumbs up. Something untwisted in her gut, and she turned her full attention back to the prosecutor.
After that, Mallory went back to trying to get her to admit she was a manipulative sociopath. He cast seeds of doubt over everything she said. Then he went back to calling her a contract killer.
"Tell the truth Ms Stark, you murdered those people and you were paid for it!" he demanded.
Maggie's eyes narrowed. Keep swinging. "No, I wasn't." She could see him opening his mouth to ask another inflammatory question so she spoke before he could. "Look, I killed those people."
The frank statement got Mallory to shut up for one goddamn second, and the sudden silence echoed in the courtroom.
Maggie held up her hands. "These hands ended their lives." She looked at her palms and fingers, all of a sudden hit by a rush of exhaustion. "But I didn't want that. If I could I'd go back and save every one of them. I see their faces every night and I want – I want… I want to save them. But I can't."
"Ms Stark," Mallory said. "How can we believe anything you say?"
She ignored him. "I've been wrestling with this question of my guilt for years now, and… at the end of the day all I can say to keep myself sane is that the person I am, the person I discovered once I broke out of HYDRA's programming… that person doesn't kill people. That person is repulsed by everything HYDRA was and did. She – I, will do everything I can to make up for the years I spent as the Wyvern. But if that's not enough… I get it." She sighed and sank back into her seat. "I understand."
Mallory shot a few more questions at her after that, but he wasn't asking anything new and Maggie wasn't saying anything new, so Judge Moore eventually put a stop to it.
Maggie trudged back to the defense desk feeling as if she'd spent ten years inside that witness box.
"You've spoken up for yourself and your victims, and you did great," Diego murmured as she sat down next to him with glassy eyes. "You don't have to do that ever again. Estoy muy orgulloso de ti." ["I'm very proud of you."]
WHiH Reporter Chess Roberts: "Prosecutor Mallory's line of questioning at times seemed confused or overly aggressive, but ultimately he succeeded in casting doubt over the verity of Ms Stark's words. From the witness box, Ms Stark largely kept her cool though we saw outbreaks of emotion such as when she described an attempted sexual assault against her in her early teens, and her thoughts about her own guilt. We saw a very powerful battle of wills in the courtroom today, and at this stage it's impossible to say who the jury believes."
CNN Panel Commentator: "The question isn't whether she's guilty or not. It's about whether we as a people are comfortable with having someone in our midst who, at the mere mention of a few words, could murder any of us at the drop of a hat."
"But that's the thing, Bill. On the one hand you have someone who's at risk of being flipped into a completely obedient killer, and on the other hand you have Maggie Stark, someone who's impressed us all with the way she fervently pushes for the truth, her frank honesty, and her remarkable recovery after spending years under HYDRA. Do we punish someone like that for something she has no control over?"
"It's not about punishing her, Katherine, it's about our protection."
Once court let out, Andrea put a hand on Maggie's shoulder. "Let's find a meeting room and debrief."
"Good idea," said Diego past the pen in his mouth as he reviewed his notes from the day.
"Hey," murmured Pepper. She and Tony had approached the defense desk. Maggie glanced up at them and saw concern and empathy written across their faces. She tried to shoot them an encouraging look, but she was too tired.
"Can we get you anything?" Pepper asked.
Maggie dropped her head onto her folded arms. "How about a mercy killing?" she groaned.
"We'll get you a coffee," Pepper replied. "Come on Tony, I'm sure they've got lots to talk about after today." Tony did as he was told, though as they left on their coffee quest he kept glancing over his shoulder at Maggie with a crease between his brows.
Once Maggie had followed Diego and Andrea to a private meeting room, they reviewed her testimony.
"You know," Andrea said, "It's actually a good thing that Mallory asked those questions about the Memory Suppression Machine and the trigger words."
"Didn't feel like a good thing," Maggie grumbled. "And he's not wrong, I am dangerous."
"That's besides the point – he showed today that he doesn't think he can dispute that the machine and the words were real, and that HYDRA used them to manipulate you. That means the jury will accept them as well."
Maggie propped her chin up with one hand as Andrea and Diego talked her through her testimony, reassuring her that she hadn't tanked her whole case and praising her level-headedness.
"So let's see," Diego eventually said, leaning back in his chair. "Your testimony is over, which means we have… one more witness, and then that's it. We'll question the witness after the weekend and then rest our case."
"Agreed," Andrea said with a nod.
Maggie swallowed. She'd almost forgotten how close they were to being finished. The prospect of it all being over – the roulette of witnesses, the anger and intense scrutiny – gave her a gut-churning feeling that was part relief, part dread. Her uncertain future loomed before her.
"Why did you decide to take my case?" she blurted. Diego and Andrea turned to her. "Other than my brother's money," she added.
Diego and Andrea shared a glance, eyebrows raised.
"Why do you ask now?"
Maggie put her head in her hands. "All of this… I knew at the start that this was going to be a big, messy, painful trial, but I was still surprised by how massive it got. And I think you knew what was coming, so… why? Why did you take my case?"
Diego rubbed his beard. "Well… I got into law to help people. I know that's unusual for a lot of lawyers. But I got distracted. Went for the big clients, with big money." He gestured to his patent leather briefcase and tailored suit, then nodded at Andrea. "Andrea and I made it to senior positions in another firm, but we realized we'd lost our way. So we cut our ties, opened a new firm, and used that big money to start helping the people we got into law in the first place for." Andrea flashed Diego a rare smile.
Maggie eyed them both. "So how do I fit into that?"
"To be honest," Diego said, "when we heard that Tony Stark was looking to hire us, I wasn't sure. That's a whole realm of politics and media that could be harmful for our firm, and for what purpose? Money? Then I looked at your file, and I realized that you weren't a hardened criminal hiding behind her brother's money. I realized you were someone who deserved our help."
Maggie thought about it, then looked up from under her eyelashes. "And Andrea, your relatives had nothing to do with it?"
"No," Andrea replied, eyes glinting. "And I told Diego about the connection in our first discussion about the case."
"Andrea is an incredible lawyer," Diego continued, a hint of a smile at his lips. "She focuses on facts and the law over how the case impacts her, and we both agreed that the connection shouldn't matter. Andrea fights just as hard for you as she would for any of our clients. Granted, you give us a bit more work to do than our other clients…"
Maggie smiled and ducked her head. "Well. However this goes… thank you. Really."
"You're very welcome," Diego said. "We couldn't have asked for a better client."
At that, the door swung open.
"Maggie!" Tony called. "I got you three different kinds of coffee because I couldn't decide–"
"Because you couldn't remember her favorite kind–" Pepper cut in.
"And Pepper and I had a small disagreement about what coffee you like, so here: do you want the latte, the iced frappuccino or the espresso?" He thrust the tray at her, trying to conceal the way his eyes darted over her face, assessing how she was doing.
Maggie beamed at him. "I'll take all three."
That night, Maggie lay on her bed back at the Avengers facility and stared at the pale grey ceiling. She was reminded of lying in the exact same spot a few months ago, after her and Tony's first outing around the facility – like then, her thoughts flew in every direction.
She missed Vision – he was in South America following up leads about the people who had tried to have Tony shot (no one would tell her anything about it, but she could tell that there was a lot going on she wasn't hearing about – it seemed the assassination attempt led back to some very bad people). Vision said he would be back before the jury went into deliberation, but she wished she could have some time with him before then. Because it could be the last time–
Maggie shook the thought away. Pepper, Rhodey, and Tony were here, and they'd all cleared their weekends to spend time with her. She'd agreed to another training session with Peter early tomorrow morning, so she tried to occupy her mind with planning out drills to run with him.
But then her thoughts turned back to the inevitable: this could be the last time I train Peter. This weekend could be the last one I spend at the facility. The last one I spend with my family.
The thought turned her stomach, and the blood drained from her face. She was terrified, and normally when she was terrified she could do something about it: fight her way out, or go through her therapy exercises. But now there was nothing left to do but to wait.
She closed her eyes. Focus on getting a good night's sleep, she instructed herself, feeling echoes of Mr Jarvis and her mother in the words. And then make the most of the time you have left.
Maggie woke up the next morning to a staticky crackle.
She blinked awake just in time to see the lights in her room flicker to life, and her window cleared to show the grey light of dawn over the forest.
"F.R.I.D.A.Y.?" She mumbled, pushing her hair out of her face.
But instead of F.R.I.D.A.Y.'s comforting accented voice, the speakers resounded with a male voice that Maggie didn't recognize:
"Verre." ["Glass."]
(images)
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" I. Am. Inevitable." *Snap* Then the Publisher turned to dust.....
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Status de energia semanal
-- Ranking de
Poder 
-- Pedra de
Poder