Back at the company, Mario pushed his office door and stopped.
Tony sat on the couch, looking nothing like his usual self. His expression was dark and brooding, head lowered like he was staring into some abyss.
The sound of the door opening startled him out of whatever dark thoughts he'd been swimming in. He turned his head toward Mario.
"You're back."
Mario walked over and dropped into the chair across from him.
"What's wrong? You look like someone shit in your cereal. Come on, share the misery, maybe it'll make me feel better about my day."
Tony didn't react to the teasing. His expression didn't change as he said flatly, "I want to see the Winter Soldier."
In that instant, Mario knew exactly why he had come.
The smile faded from his face.
Tony found out what happened to his parents.
What Mario didn't know was that after Tony's last meeting with Bucky, he'd gone straight home and started digging. He'd hacked into S.H.I.E.L.D.'s database. Without Hydra's interference, the agency's network defenses had dropped at least a full level, making his job even easier than usual.
Sure enough, he'd found Hydra's classified files. Among them: detailed information on the Winter Soldier program and a mission dated December 16, 1991.
The night Howard and Maria Stark died.
Mario looked at Tony for a long moment, then reached out and gripped his shoulder. He didn't say anything, what was there to say? Instead, he turned to Ivan, who'd followed them into the office.
"You go handle your business. I'll take him to see Bucky."
Ivan nodded, glanced at Tony's expression, and quietly left without asking questions.
Mario had briefed Ivan on the Winter Soldier situation weeks ago. The guy's mechanical arm had come from Bucky's own design specs, after all. Of course he'd been curious about the man himself.
Tony stood up the moment Mario headed for the door, following close behind.
Before long, Mario led him to a reinforced holding room guarded by two security personnel. The guards were chatting casually when they spotted Mario approaching.
Both men straightened immediately.
"Welcome back, sir."
Mario gave them a friendly nod. "How's our guest doing?"
One of them, a burly guy with a mature face, answered promptly. "Same as always. Doesn't talk to anyone, doesn't do anything except eat. Just sits in the corner like a statue."
He hadn't given the Winter Soldier the milk that would break his conditioning, so the man was operating like a robot waiting for commands. The only exception would be if Mario himself walked in, Bucky's last programmed orders had been to eliminate him and anyone associated with S.H.I.E.L.D.
He turned to Tony. "You ready for this?"
Then to the guards: "Open it up."
One guard moved to unlock the door while the other drew a taser and took a defensive stance.
Mario walked in.
Bucky was crouched in the corner. The moment he saw Mario, he exploded from his position, covering the distance in seconds with his remaining arm raised to strike.
But without his metal arm, he was just another enhanced soldier. Manageable.
BANG.
A white staff materialized in Mario's hands. The staff came down in an overhead swing that caught Bucky on the temple. He tried to raise his left arm to block, but his missing limb offered no defense. The staff connected with the full force of Mario's strength behind it.
Even with enhanced physiology, Bucky stood no chance. His eyes rolled back and he dropped.
Tony watched from the doorway. None of the pity or sympathy he'd felt during their last meeting remained.
Mario nudged the unconscious body with his foot, confirming the knockout was genuine, then turned to Tony.
"Well, you've seen the Winter Soldier now. Notice how much paler he looks compared to last time? That's what happens when you spend all day sitting in a dark room."
For some reason, Tony couldn't stop thinking about what Mario had said weeks ago. "You knew. You knew this whole time."
Mario knew, all right. He'd rewatched the movies enough times to have the plot beats memorized.
He nodded slightly. "I'm a qualified wizard. Having special abilities is part of the job description. And here you are. So let's talk. What are you planning to do? Kill him?"
Tony stared silently at Bucky's unconscious form. Before coming here, he'd already made his decision.
Seeing Tony's silence, Mario understood his choice. The death of a parent wasn't something you forgave or forgot. He respected Tony's decision, even if it would complicate things with Steve later.
He walked over to a crate in the corner, opened it, and pulled out the "tool" he'd prepared specifically for this moment: a massive Minotaur battle axe.
He handed the weapon to Tony. What had felt weightless in Mario's grip nearly toppled Tony the moment it transferred hands.
Ignoring Tony's shocked expression, he pointed at Bucky's head. "Right there. One good swing and he's done."
Tony looked at the axe, then back at Mario. "Is there anything else? A gun would be fine."
Mario gave him a look of disappointment.
"You're useless even when I hand you the opportunity on a silver platter."
Before Tony could protest, he stepped forward and grabbed his hands, wrapping Tony's fingers around the axe handle. Then he swung the axe, bringing it down on Bucky's skull.
Splat.
Being struck by a one-meter battle axe... well, the results were predictably messy. Bucky's head came apart like a dropped watermelon, splattering the floor and wall with biological matter that had, until a moment ago, been keeping the Winter Soldier's brain functioning.
It might have been the first time Tony had seen someone's skull explode at close range. His expression went completely blank.
Because they'd been standing so close, his suit and face were splattered with unidentifiable tissue and fluids. Mario released Tony's hands, pulled out a cigarette, and lit it. He took a long drag, then tapped the pack and offered one to Tony.
He took it reflexively. He didn't usually smoke, but right now he really, really needed one.
Mario lit Tony's cigarette. "So. How does revenge feel?"
Tony took a drag. "Not... not what I expected. Maybe I should have just sent him to prison instead."
"Bucky Barnes. You probably know his history better than I do. Everything he did for this country before Hydra got their hooks in him. Now he's dead by your hand. Do you regret it?"
Tony fought down the urge to vomit, staring at Bucky's headless corpse without speaking. The death had clearly affected him more deeply than he'd anticipated.
Suddenly, Mario patted Tony on the shoulder with a grin. "Lucky for you, I've got a cure for regret. Tony, choose again."
As he spoke, he pulled from his inventory the staff that radiated holy light.
"Rise, my warrior!"
[Resurrection:
Tier: Master
Element: Healing
Mana Cost: 150
Effect: If cast at the location of death within 24 hours, this spell will resurrect the target. Upon resurrection, the target's HP is restored to only half of maximum]
A beam of brilliant white light descended onto Bucky's body. Even Tony, who still hadn't processed what Mario meant by "cure for regret," found his attention completely captured by the radiance.
Bucky, who moments ago had been missing his entire head, was suddenly whole again. As the light faded, his eyes opened, and he looked around in confusion.
"Where... where am I?"
Mario, cigarette hanging from his lips, raised an eyebrow with a shit-eating grin. "Congratulations. The surgery was a success. You're a girl now."
The resurrection had completely restored Bucky's mind, breaking through all the conditioning and brainwashing. Not only that, but his missing arm had regenerated as well. He'd been given a completely fresh start.
"What?"
Tony's eyes nearly popped out of his skull. "You... you can actually do something like that?"
Mario shrugged. "I told you, I'm a qualified wizard. This is pretty basic stuff."
Basic, my ass.
Even though Tony didn't know much about magic, he understood damn well that resurrecting the dead was not something a normal practitioner should be capable of. That was god-tier power, not parlor tricks.
But he didn't even care about Bucky anymore. Now what mattered was something else entirely.
"Mario, can you—"
"No."
Mario cut him off instantly. The moment Tony opened his mouth, Mario knew exactly where this was going.
"If someone's been dead longer than a day, just bury them. I'm a wizard, not a god. Get that straight."
He took another drag, flicked the cigarette butt to the floor, and crushed it under his heel. Then he looked at Bucky.
"Your memories should be back now. Everything you did over the years, I assume you remember all of it."
He pointed at the cigarette butt on the ground.
"Your friend Steve Rogers is like this room. There shouldn't be stains like that in it."
Bucky's expression went blank as two sets of memories collided in his mind, one from before the brainwashing, one from his decades as Hydra's puppet.
Several minutes passed before he raised his head, and looked at Mario.
"Thank you. Thank you for freeing me from Hydra's control. I've done too many terrible things over the years."
He turned to Tony, guilt written across every line of his face. "I'm sorry about your parents. Kill me if you want. Mario's right, Steve shouldn't be tainted by someone like me."
Now that his memories had returned, Bucky naturally remembered Mario's name. Mario wasn't surprised the guy knew who he was.
Tony's expression was complicated. He thought back to how he'd felt after killing Bucky the first time, then looked at him coldly.
"Just... don't show up in front of me again. Ever."
He turned to Mario and managed a smile. "I'll wait for you outside. By the way, Stark Tower in New York is almost finished, it'll have one of the world's best labs. I've got a project that needs your expertise."
Mario narrowed his eyes at Tony. "A project? You don't mean you want to study me, do you?"
"What? No! At most I'll take some blood samples and run a few scans. I wouldn't—" Tony didn't finish the sentence. He turned and hurried toward the door because he saw Mario reaching for the battle axe again.
The maniac would absolutely split my skull open just to test whether the resurrection spell works on me too.
Only Bucky and Mario remained in the room. Mario shook his head slightly. He had no particular feelings about Bucky one way or another, whatever the man had done while brainwashed wasn't his concern. If it weren't for owing favors to both Tony and Steve, he would have killed Bucky the first time they met.
"Stay here for now. When the Steve needs you, I'll have him come pick you up."
For Bucky, regaining his memories was more painful than death would have been.
Mario left the room and addressed the two guards. "Keep an eye on him. Upgrade his meal plan to match standard personnel, no more shoving bread and water at him. If he shows suicidal tendencies, restrain him immediately. Also, Research and Development finished that wearable shock device. From now on, when someone needs to be detained, file the proper paperwork and use that instead of manual restraints."
Both men looked at Mario respectfully and nodded.
"Understood, sir."
Mario glanced down the corridor at Tony. He was standing there chatting and laughing with Anna, who was holding a stack of documents. You'd never guess from looking at him that he'd just personally executed someone less than ten minutes ago.
Anna spotted Mario emerging from the holding room and walked over immediately. "The government scheduled a congressional hearing. They're requesting your presence."
Mario glanced at Tony again. If memory served, Tony had been dragged to one of those dog-and-pony shows too.
Tony caught Mario's look and shrugged. "Politicians are all the same. Your company's making too much money, people are getting jealous."
"Same everywhere," Mario agreed.
But he wasn't too concerned about the hearing. Unlike Tony, who'd kept his armor tech locked down tight, he had been selling suits openly. He had orders from enough high-ranking military officials that no feeding frenzy would occur. The power players had already gotten their slice of the pie.
"Anna, the hearing's yours to handle. When it's over, bring me files on whoever made the biggest scene. I want to know exactly who's trying to steal from me."
Mario was a hands-off boss by nature. Anna had the position and ability to handle this easily.
"Understood." Anna accepted the assignment without hesitation. She'd already expected Mario to delegate it to her, but the formal report was still necessary. "I'll prepare the materials for the hearing. Anything else you need?"
"No, get to work."
Anna started to leave, but Mario called after her. "I might be away from the company for a while. You're in full charge while I'm gone."
He thought about the Hydra incident, then added, "If anything unexpected happens, your priority is staying alive. Understood?"
"Understood."