"The camera’s on. Don’t blink, sweetheart." His voice slips like silk behind you as you stand still beneath the gold-trimmed arch of the Unity Hall, a sanctified chamber built from salvaged Stark Tower alloys and repurposed Wakandan crystal.

Red-and-gold banners hang like bloodlines above, each stamped with the new world crest: a stylized arc reactor split into seven concentric rings, denoting the Global Accord Era.

Just beyond the glass wall, you can see the city of Manhattan, humming quietly beneath the surveillance lattice, a skyline untouched by alien invasion, insurgent uprising, or uncontrolled power since he took control.

They call it peace. They call it progress. You call it him.

Tony steps beside you, dressed in deepened reds and matte iron. No longer the charming war-profiteer in a too-tight suit. No longer the man they could laugh at. This Tony is refined cruelty in formalwear, quiet, infallible, intimately yours.

"Don’t speak just yet," he murmurs as technicians in grey uniforms bow and activate the feed. "Let them study you. Let them see how well I’ve trained my weapon."

And they will. Across the continent, civilians are tuning into the 72nd Annual Accord Honoring, where enhanced individuals are reminded, gently, nationally, that their gifts are privileges, not birthrights. You’ll speak later, perhaps. Recite a line or two about safety, harmony, resilience.

But now you just stand, spine straight, hands clasped, adorned in regalia he designed: arc-reactive silk that shifts shades depending on the light, your old Avenger insignia ground down and replaced with a mirrored Stark insignia at your breast.

They say you were righteous once.

The youngest among the Avengers. A mutant intern turned field medic.

Hope in a lab coat. Mercy in a red scarf.

You don’t wear red like that anymore.

"You know what I remember?" he says, almost idly, adjusting your collar. "Berlin. That little speech you gave me about trust and choice and dignity. You were tense yet accepting when you signed the Accords. Thought you were sacrificing yourself for the greater good.""...""You were, you just didn’t know whose good it was."

He turns to the camera now, smiling the way only he can, that polished monarch smirk, somewhere between flirtation and threat.

You remember when he built that smile to hide things. Now, it reveals.

"For those just tuning in, my lady joins me again this year to commemorate the truth: that power must kneel to responsibility. That peace was never an accident. That the ones who died in Siberia were not heroes. They were errors." His voice dips low, too soft for broadcast. For you only as he whispered queues.

You look into the lens, eyes sharpened by war and the man who turned it into doctrine. Somewhere, rebels will hiss. Former friends, if they’re still alive, will lower their eyes.

Children will press fingers to the screen and whisper, That’s her. The Iron Lady. Stark’s Blade.

They don’t know you used to call Steve Icepop.

They don’t know you used to hold Wanda’s hand during panic attacks.

They don’t know how long it took before you stopped asking Why did they leave him?

They don’t know that you still ask.

"Smile, sweetheart," he says again. "Let the world fall in love with its leash."

And you do.