Zari Maximoff |1| The third Maximoff

Chapter 9

Church in Sokovia Wanda pov

Pietro and I meet with someone in an empty church in the middle of the city.

"Talk. And if you are wasting our time..." I start talking.

"Did you know this church is in the exact center of the city? The elders decreed it so that everyone could be equally close to God. I like that. The geometry of belief." Someone says interrupting me siting in a church.

"You're wondering why you can't look inside my head." He observes.

"Sometimes it's hard. But sooner or later, every man shows himself." I tell him and he stands up and faces us revealing a metal body. Pietro and I slowly back away and I briefly looks shocked but quickly hide it.

"Oh, I'm sure they do. But you needed something more than a man. That's why you let Stark take the scepter." He tells us.

"I didn't expect...But I saw Stark's fear, I knew it would control him, make him self-destruct." I respond.

"Everyone creates the thing they dread. Men of peace create engines of war, invaders create avengers, people create...smaller people? Uh...children! I lost the word there. Children. Designed to supplant them, to help them...end." He tells us.

"Is that why you've come? To end the Avengers?" Pietro asks.

"I've come to save the world.
But also, yeah." He answers us and we follow him to a secret area.

"We'll move out right away. This is a start, but there's something we need to begin the real work." He tells.

"All of these are..." I say referring to the robots flying around.

"Me. I have what the Avengers never will. Harmony. They're discordant, disconnected. Stark's already got them turning on each other. And when you get inside the rest of their heads..." He responds.

"Everyone's plan is not to kill them." Pietro says impatient. Ever since Zari has been taken by the Avengers all he want to do is get her back, whatever it takes.

"And make them martyrs? You need patience. Need to see the big picture." He reassures Pietro.

"I don't see the big picture, I have a little picture. I take it out and look at it every day." Pietro states.

"You lost your parents in the bombings. I've seen the records." He tells us.

"The records are not the picture." Pietro spat.

"Pietro." I try to stop him.

"No, please." He urges him to continue.

"We were ten years old,
Zari, our little sister, was four. We were having dinner, the five of us. When the first shell hits, two floors below, it makes a hole in the floor. It's big. Our parents go in, and the whole building starts coming apart. I grab her, roll under the bed, but Zari was to far away. She runs underneath the other bed to take cover but by time she got there she was cover in rubble and her own blood. Then the second shell hits but, it doesn't go off. It just...sits there in the rubble, two feet from Zari's face, and three feet from our own faces. And on the side of the shell is painted one word..." Pietro says full of emotion, staring off.

"Stark." I spat angrily.

"We were trapped for two days. We watch as our sister lies there, bleeding out and there was nothing we could do." Pietro says with guilt.

"Every effort to save us, to save Zari, every shift in the bricks, I think, 'This will set it off.' We wait for two days for Tony Stark to kill us." I tell him.